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What Turkeys Know About Marketing…

By Charlie Cook | November 20, 2007

Will you sit down for Thanksgiving dinner eager to dig in to a feast of tasty turkey, succulent sweet potatoes, green beans, gravy, cranberry relish, fresh rolls and an array of apple and pumpkin pies?

In our house, the cooking begins the day before. Homemade pumpkin and pecan pies start popping out of the oven – but we can’t eat them yet. Early Thanksgiving morning, the big bird gets washed and stuffed and hefted into the oven. Then the work of preparing all the side dishes commences.

Walk into our house on Thanksgiving day, and you’ll be greeted by delectable smells. I’m sure most of your homes are the same.

By noon, the roasting turkey smells delicious, and you’re making frequent trips through the kitchen hoping to sneak a bite. You’re ready to eat, but if your family is like ours, you don’t sit down for the Thanksgiving meal until mid- or even late afternoon. By that time you’re very hungry.

Do you need to be sold on the idea of digging into this delicious meal?

Of course not. When you’re hungry and someone offers you something to eat you don’t need to be convinced. The hungrier you are, the more impatient you are for a meal and the better the food tastes.

Wouldn’t you like to be in a similar situation with your business? How would you like to have prospects so eager to buy that you didn’t have to sell and could focus instead on taking more orders?

Want to make your prospects hungry to buy from you? Use this link to find out how >>

If you’re like most business owners, marketers and sales people, you want to increase sales, but you don’t want to be so pushy that you turn people off. The problem is that you aren’t selling a delicious Thanksgiving dinner to family and friends. What can you do to increase the success of your marketing?

Focus Your Marketing On Your Prospects’ Hunger
Food, family and friends are what motivate most of us to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner. What are your prospects hungry for? You need to know in order to attract them to contact you and motivate them to buy.

Are they looking to eliminate wrinkles in their skin, get rid of back pain, avoid costly data loss, increase sales from their web site, increase repeat sales, look younger, make more money in a volatile stock market, or save on taxes?

Everybody is hungry for something and their hunger prompts them to take action. The hungrier they are, the more likely they are to take action.

Want to prompt your prospects to take action and buy from you? Find out how with this link >>

Make a list of the five top reasons your prospects seek out your products and services. Next, list the reasons that it’s important or urgent for them to buy from you right away. Then use this information to focus your marketing.

Help Your Prospects Get What They Want
When you sit down for your Thanksgiving dinner and someone asks you if you want turkey, rolls or cranberry relish, you don’t feel like they are trying to sell you. You’re pleased that they’re helping you get what you want – delicious food.

Your prospects don’t want to be sold, either. They want help solving a problem or satisfying a need. The fastest way to get them to buy is to stop trying to sell them and help them get what they want.

Picture this; before you get your fork anywhere near a plate of your Thanksgiving favorites, the cook insists on telling you where he or she bought the turkey, what it had been fed, where it was raised, how it was roasted, etc., etc. You’d probably never eat another bite of the big bird.

Instead, imagine what your reaction would be if the chef of the day simply asked you what you want to eat, and helped you get another serving of your favorite dish.

In your ads, your marketing brochure, your web site and your sales conversations, tap your prospects’ hunger for solutions to their needs. Speak to their concerns, problems and goals. When you communicate to prospects in terms of their hunger, you’ll get their attention and their business.

Ready to finally “talk turkey” about what works to generate more
leads and clients? Get the answers with this link >>

What do turkeys know about marketing?

Nothing, obviously. Turkeys’ brains are said to be about the size of a walnut and they have fewer brain cells than a cockroach. But they sure taste good when you’re hungry.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results

How to Keep Your Customers Happy… Marketing Ideas from Charlie Cook

By Charlie Cook | November 15, 2007

“I’m working for a company that sells windows for high rise apartments. I love my job except one thing is my company doesn’t keep their promises. They don’t deliver on time and customers get upset.

How should I handle it, to keep my customers?”
– Peter T.

How do you keep your customers happy even if the product doesn’t get there promptly as it should? Use this marketing idea and this idea to manage your boss.

Manage Your Customers’ Expectations
Let them know that even though delivery is scheduled for two weeks that it usually takes four weeks or whatever. No one likes surprises but most people can adjust to a realistic delivery schedule even if its the three to six months it takes to get a couch made and delivered here in the U.S.

Do the Math.
Calculate how much more business you’d be getting if your customers windows were delivered on time and they were happy. E.g. with happy customers you get reorders and referrals which can easily double your sales.

Then take your report to management and ask them if they are interested in increasing sales by 25% or more next year. Show them how much more they could be making if they delivered the product on time and ask them if they can make a commitment to improving delivery times.

– Charlie Cook
Marketing Ideas That Work

What’s Missing From Your Web Marketing?

By Charlie Cook | November 13, 2007

How can you tell what’s missing from your marketing, and how do you fix it? What’s the secret to attracting more visitors and converting them into buyers?

Find the answer in this week’s article on web marketing >>

Charlie
Small Business Web Marketing Ideas That Get Results

3 Ways to Shorten the Sales Cycle With Your Marketing

By Charlie Cook | November 8, 2007

How do you motivate your prospects to buy, now, today, right away with your marketing?

Have you ever had a prospect you were talking to and just when you thought it was time to close the sale they brought up an objection to the sale?

What do you do next?

Discover the 3 ways to shorten the marketing and sales cycle in this week’s article >>

Charlie
Business Marketing Ideas That Make You More Money

Don’t Make This Marketing Mistake, Again And…

By Charlie Cook | November 6, 2007

Ever hit your finger with a hammer when you were hanging a picture on the wall? It hurts! Make this painful mistake once, and you’ll swing more carefully the next time, and try to improve your aim. With practice, you’ll hit the nail on the head and get the job done.

Is your marketing also missing the mark? That will hurt your bottom line. Banging away with the same failing marketing strategy is like hitting your finger over and over, all pain and no gain. Believe it or not, I know many small business owners that do exactly this.

Ron was one of them. He mailed 5,000 postcards to generate leads for his business. When he only got one response, he tried again, with the same result.

Ron had a web site that was only bringing in a trickle of leads, so he hired a marketing firm to rewrite and rebuild it at a cost of $40,000. What happened? The new site was even worse than the original one. He stopped getting any leads at all from the web.

Ron was spending more and more and getting fewer and fewer leads and sales. I wish I were making this up, but I’m not, and Ron is only one example of many I could tell you about.

Want to avoid making the same marketing mistake?

Use this link to find out how to get results with your marketing >>

What was Ron doing wrong?

Ron was missing a lead building strategy, one that converted prospects to clients and instead was focused on the individual marketing tools, postcards, ads, and websites.

A hammer is just a tool and if you don’t know how to aim it you’re going to do damage to your fingers and the wall and maybe even need a bigger picture to cover the hole you’ve made. And, if you’re missing the nail and hitting your fingers, an even bigger sledge hammer isn’t the solution either.

Ads, postcards, websites and any other marketing tool you use only work when you know how to aim them. Ron didn’t have a marketing strategy to help him target his marketing efforts. Worse, the marketing firm he hired took $40,000 of his money and gave him a handful of marketing tools that got even fewer results than the ones he’d had.

If your marketing isn’t generating the results your business needs, the answer isn’t spending more on doing the same thing or just shooting wildly and hoping for the best. That’d be like hammering your fingers again and again.

The answer is finding out what works to get results. To make your marketing bring in more business you need to know the triggers that prompt prospects to respond and the simple steps to take to get them to become buyers.

Have you ever spent money on marketing that didn’t get the results you wanted? Ready to stop wasting your valuable resources and finally find out what works? Use this link to hit your marketing targets >>

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Work

Should You Use Marketing Tricks or Treats?

By Charlie Cook | October 31, 2007

Are you spooked by your marketing. If you’re not getting results, its your marketing strategy which is playing a trick on you.

Should you sugar up your marketing and pass out treats to prospects? What’s the answer, how can you make your small business marketing bring in a flood of new business?

Find the answer in the article I wrote on Marketing Tricks and Treats to Use All Year Long >>

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Get… Results

3 Wealth Habits You Don’t Know…

By Charlie Cook | October 30, 2007

Are your marketing habits good for your business?

Bill is a friend of mine who is smart, hard working and dedicated to his management consulting business. His clients love him, but his business is stagnating. He gets referrals occasionally, but considering how good he is at what he does, new clients should be lined up outside his door.

When business slows down and his client list shrinks, Bill blames it on a lack of interest in the marketplace. What’s Bill missing?

He doesn’t have good marketing habits. Actually, he doesn’t have any marketing habits.

Marketing is like your health. If you want to see your business continue to increase its profits year after year you need to have healthy marketing habits.

If you eat three meals a day, get exercise, take some time to relax, brush your teeth and get 7-8 hours of sleep. You have reasonably good health habits. Maybe a few more vegetables instead of cookies, more exercise and some more sleep would help but basically you’re doing the right things to keep yourself in decent shape.

Want to do the same with your marketing to get it in shape?

Ready to discover the simple marketing regimen that can make you rich? Use this link >>

Every day you do at least 4 to 7 tasks to keep your body fueled and functioning well. You eat more or less balanced meals, get a little exercise, brush your teeth, sleep. etc.

But are you doing the 4 to 7 things you need to do every day to keep your business fueled with a steady stream of new clients and profits? If not, don’t panic, but don’t shrug this advice off either. It’s time to adopt healthy marketing habits.

The 3 Most Important Wealth-Building Marketing Habits

1. Take Responsibility for Your Marketing Strategy
Puzzled by what to do to grow your business? You need a proven marketing strategy that’s right for your business.

If you’re serious about growth, it’s time to find out what really works to generate more clients and sales. Use this link to get the details >>

Thinking of hiring a marketing firm to do it all for you? It doesn’t quite work that way. I can’t tell you how many business owners I’ve heard from who’ve hired marketing firms and seen little or no increase in sales. Even if you hire a firm to implement your marketing, you’ve still got to take responsibility for understanding what it takes to develop and maintain a winning marketing strategy.

You may have hired a personal trainer to guide your fitness routine and a full time cook to make delicious, nutritious meals (lucky you!); your health is still your responsibility. The same is true of your company’s marketing.

Discover what works to generate more clients and sales. Use this link to get the details >>

2. Schedule Time For Marketing
If they aren’t locked into your schedule, you won’t get to your marketing tasks and you won’t ever see your marketing strategy kick into gear.

You eat regular meals to keep yourself thriving; likewise – establish regular times to nourish your business by focusing on your marketing. I schedule a morning a week to write newsletters and manage the various on- and off-line tasks that keep traffic coming to my website and convert prospects to clients.

If you haven’t done so already, block out time each day or each week to spend on marketing – a minimum of five hours a week.

3. Use a Proven Marketing Strategy
Most business owners and marketers make the following mistake. They spend money on advertising and then sit back and wait for results. Or they put up a web site and sit back and wonder why so few people are buying from it.

If you wanted to grow your favorite variety of tomatoes, you wouldn’t just throw a handful of seeds onto a patch of soil and expect them to thrive. You’d water and weed and pinch them back and check their progress at least once a week.

In marketing as in gardening, a simple strategy will help those leads turn into clients and you’ll have healthy profits. Without a proven marketing strategy you’ll just end up wasting your time and money.

Ready to discover a proven marketing strategy to grow your business? Use this link to get the details >>

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Make You Money

Is Your Marketing Out Of Gas…

By Charlie Cook | October 29, 2007

Marketing Ideas #5

How can you fuel your business profits? Use these marketing ideas .

– Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing
That Puts You In The Fast Lane

Is Your Business Disaster Proof?

By Charlie Cook | October 24, 2007

When my client Sarah called on Tuesday earlier this week I was a little surprised, since her normal time is on Wednesday. Then when she told me she’d just packed her children and a few belongings into her Toyota Prius, it started to make sense.

Sarah was forced to evacuate her home in San Diego on Tuesday morning because of the wildfires closing in on her neighborhood. She was calling because she wasn’t going to be home for our scheduled call on Wednesday, much less she wasn’t sure she’d even have a home.

Sarah runs her business out of her home – and while she was worried about losing her home, she was even more concerned about how she was going to keep her business going. She had wisely grabbed her computer on the way out the door and was now out of harms way at a friends who had Internet access.

Is your business disaster proof?

What would you do if a disaster wiped out your place of business? Would you be able to be up and running within a day or two at a remote location?

Want to disaster proof your business? Use this link to find out how >>

I hope you never have to pack up all your belongings in a suitcase and leave your home or your business, but it happens more often than you think.

California has it’s share of wildfires, my daughter was forced to flee New Orleans half a dozen times during her four years of college at Tulane, my family was forced to evacuate our home here in coastal Connecticut in the bucket of a highway front loader when a December Noreaster flooded our neighborhood.

Making your business portable is a good idea whether you ever encounter a disaster or not. Last winter I set up my business so that I could spend every other week working from our ski home in Vermont. All I needed to do to pack up my business and run it from anywhere with a phone line and Internet access, was grab my laptop. Thanks to my marketing strategy, the Internet and two Virtual Assistants, (now three), my business is both disaster and vacation proof.

How can you make your business portable so you can run it from anywhere whether you fleeing a natural disaster or just going skiing like I do? Use this link to get the answer >>

No, this won’t work for everyone but you’d be amazed at how many businesses can be run just with a phone line and the Internet if you know how.

How to make your business portable?

1. Have a website that generates leads and use your follow-up emails to pre-sell prospects.

2. Outsource your administration and operations to a small handful of trusted employees around the country. If one person in your virtual organization loses power due to a storm, another one will be able to take over. I’ve got staff in Toronto, Texas and I’m here in Connecticut.

3. Put your agenda, calendar, contact list, etc online so even if you lost your computer and had to borrow one, you’d still be able to keep your business running.

Want to know a secret?

Setting up your business so its portable can not only give you more freedom to live the life you want but doing so can help you make more money with less effort.

Ready to get started? Use this system >>

Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work

Why 97% of Website Marketing Doesn’t Work…

By Charlie Cook | October 23, 2007

Most web sites don’t successfully generate more than a small trickle of sales. Is yours one of them?

Let me guess. You have a web site and it may be attracting visitors, but it’s only generating a couple of sales each week, if any. Is the volume of traffic the problem?

It’s true that you need visitors in order to convert them to buyers, but even getting thousands of visitors a day won’t guarantee a single sale. So you turn to your web designer for the answer to the problem. Your web designer should know what to do, right?

No!

Marcia called me from Chicago. Thanks to some top search engine positioning, her web design firm’s site gets around four thousand visitors a day. Wow! Even I’m impressed by that number. With that kind of traffic, Marcia’s firm should be generating between two and four hundred leads a day and have more business than they can handle.

When I asked Marcia what their conversion rate was – how many leads they generated from their site – she told me that it was only one lead per month. That’s only one lead out of 120,000 visitors.

Ouch! With all the interested prospects that stop by their site but never contact them, Marcia’s firm is losing millions of dollars of potential business a year, and their site was built by some great web designers.

Want results from your site? Find out how to get visitors to your site – and – how to convert them to buyers. Use this link >>

Building a website is like building a house. Given enough time and lumber, you could throw up some kind of structure that you might call a house even without any blueprints. Of course, the plumbing might not work and the kitchen might end up on the third floor.

But you wouldn’t hire a builder to put up your new home without a plan. You’re smarter than that. The first thing you’d do is find an architect to draft a plan for your house. Once you’d worked out a plan that you liked, you’d find a builder to turn your plan into reality.

Did you ask your web designer to build your site without first giving them a marketing plan and the marketing copy they needed to create a winning site? Whoops, you and 97% of web site owners did the same thing and got the same results.

Web designers build sites, but they don’t create your web marketing strategy or the master plan to start with. And without a master marketing plan to get prospect’s to contact you and to convert them to buyers, no matter how much you spend on your site, it won’t sell your products and services.

It’s not your web designer’s job to map your online selling plan, they just build sites. If you told your home contractor you wanted an all black granite kitchen, they’d build it whether it was a good idea or not.

Web designers and carpenters get paid to create what the owners want. And if you don’t know how your site should be structured to generate sales, don’t count on your web designer to tell you what to do.

If you want a web site that generates leads and converts them to buyers, you’ll need to give your web designer the compelling marketing copy and the marketing strategy and plan for your site to follow.

With a web site marketing and sales strategy in hand, your web designer can do their job and help you build a web site that sells. Without it you’ll waste your money.

Want to build a web site that sells, or fix yours so it converts visitors to buyers? Use this link to get the details >>

Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results