The world has just experienced the worst global economic recession during the last years. With the start of 2010 every body is willing to see a positive change in the economy through out the world. Some major economists have claimed that the recession period is over. Moreover, some major economies of the world showed positive trend in their quarterly GDP. It looks like everything is going to run smoothly very soon.
B2B is one of the sectors that suffer whenever recession hits an economy. The purchasing power of the power tightens and eventually the demand of businesses for purchasing different products and services also goes down. It is always considered difficult by the b2b marketers to attract visitors and make them loyal customers. During the recession period when people do not possess purchasing power it gets even more difficult to do that. In such conditions some b2b marketers stop marketing and advertising of their products, cutting down the marketing budget or reducing head counts to balance the profit and loss. All these acts by the b2b marketers create problem for them when the recession period ends. A lot of b2b marketers after implementing such strategies during the recession period lose customers as they did not market their products timely and then they have to put an extra budget on marketing to attract more customers. Moreover, reducing the head counts also creates difficulty for them in retaining the employees.
Ideally, they should bring a change in the marketing and advertising strategies during recession period but those strategies should be profitable in the long run. One of the most important strategies during the recession period is to retain the old customers. More focus should be on old customers as they are an important asset to the business. Keeping up with them and bringing them what they want during the recession period will lead them towards being loyal. Another way of marketing and advertising during the recession period is to bring the best value to the consumers. Marketing is the only tool through which a number of customers can be attracted by any business. Therefore, any changes in the marketing and advertising strategy should be made carefully. Besides, with the start of 2010 the global economic recession is headed towards improvement and the economies are recovering, still these things should be kept in mind. 2010 should be viewed as the best time for B2B marketer as the major economies are recovering from crisis and a game plan could be set in advance to avail this opportunity.
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Embarrassed to Discuss Your Prices...How To Overcome
Last week, a wonderfully-skilled computer technician fixed my computer which I have had some trouble with. She was competent, courteous and efficient. She answered all our questions simply, with skill and eloquence. I was amazed, as how might imagine, when I asked her how much we owed her, her embarrassed reply was, "Gee, is $50 okay?"
With the quality of work she'd done and the amount of time she put into it, I would have expected to pay double that amount. Her resistance to naming her price reminded me of my own business clients who have the same problem.
All entrepreneurs feel fear at some point, including attorneys, consultants, coaches and writers.It's a natural part of starting or growing your business. It can be uncomfortable to take risks, to name your price and tell a prospective customer that you want to work with them.
Roberto Goizueta, the late chairman of Coca-Cola, said, "If you take risks, you may still fail; but if you do not take risks, you will surely fail. The greatest risk of all is to nothing." Put this mantra into your head: Risk equals reward.
So, what's the problem?
Do you feel your fees are too high?
Do you think you are not qualified or experienced enough to charge that rate?
Are you afraid of rejection? (Or, possibly, afraid of acceptance, which will mean you will have to perform?)
Are you afraid the prospect will raise an objection to the fee, and you won't know how to reply?
Are you shy and uncomfortable talking with strangers?
Are you afraid to take risks?
Are you generally uncomfortable talking about money?
Where do these thoughts and beliefs arise? Is it part of your personality or is this a behavior you learned from your past experiences or culture?
In many families and cultures, it's taboo to talk about money or to ask to be paid. While it might be personally beneficial to look inside yourself for the reasons why you act this way, it's also important to get unstuck by using techniques which help you move forward, such as:
Have a good pricing strategy. Research the average fees for your type of business so that you know your prices are in line with expectation. If you can't get competitor pricing information, try Brenner Books. If your experience warrants it, increase your pricing to reflect your higher skills, knowledge and experience. If your're not sure how to create a pricing strategy, research it online to talk with a small business consultant or mentor.
Before discussing prices with a prospective customer, establish that the prospective customer needs your services or products. You'll feel more comfortable discussing your fees if you know the prospective customer really wants what you offer. Ask a lot of questions to see if their problem and your solutions are a good match.
Here are some more tips:
Put your fees on your website and brochure. In this way, prospects will know your fees before the sales conversation begins.
Be honest. Tell the prospect what the options are for your services or products, any quantity discounts you offer, and how payment is delivered. Practice saying this over and over again until the words and phrases slip comfortably from your mouth.
Act confidently when delivering your fees. Don't downplay your fees. State your fees, then shut up. Don't make excuses for your fees or ramble on about them. Look directly at the prospect while delivering tour fees.
Don't automatically offer discounts. This tells the prospect that your fees are soft and that they're negotiable. Instead, state your fees and options, then ask them which package is right for them.
Act "as if". How would an experienced person in your industry act, when discussing her fees? Act as if you are that person and you'll find your confidence increasing with each conversation. Practice, practice, practice.
Get Training. I you're uncomfortable with the whole sales process, get sales training. By attending a class, you'll learn different ways of saying the same thing, and you're bound to find a way that's right for you.
Refer Out. If the prospect really can't afford your fees and you can't afford to offer a discount, refer that prospect to someplace where they can find an alternative. Say, "If you can't afford my fees, you can try these online referral services where you might find someone in your price range."
Talking about your prices can be uncomfortable. But with practice and persistence, and a willingness to overcome your fears, you can begin to have comfortable conversations with your prospective customers.
With the quality of work she'd done and the amount of time she put into it, I would have expected to pay double that amount. Her resistance to naming her price reminded me of my own business clients who have the same problem.
All entrepreneurs feel fear at some point, including attorneys, consultants, coaches and writers.It's a natural part of starting or growing your business. It can be uncomfortable to take risks, to name your price and tell a prospective customer that you want to work with them.
Roberto Goizueta, the late chairman of Coca-Cola, said, "If you take risks, you may still fail; but if you do not take risks, you will surely fail. The greatest risk of all is to nothing." Put this mantra into your head: Risk equals reward.
So, what's the problem?
Do you feel your fees are too high?
Do you think you are not qualified or experienced enough to charge that rate?
Are you afraid of rejection? (Or, possibly, afraid of acceptance, which will mean you will have to perform?)
Are you afraid the prospect will raise an objection to the fee, and you won't know how to reply?
Are you shy and uncomfortable talking with strangers?
Are you afraid to take risks?
Are you generally uncomfortable talking about money?
Where do these thoughts and beliefs arise? Is it part of your personality or is this a behavior you learned from your past experiences or culture?
In many families and cultures, it's taboo to talk about money or to ask to be paid. While it might be personally beneficial to look inside yourself for the reasons why you act this way, it's also important to get unstuck by using techniques which help you move forward, such as:
Have a good pricing strategy. Research the average fees for your type of business so that you know your prices are in line with expectation. If you can't get competitor pricing information, try Brenner Books. If your experience warrants it, increase your pricing to reflect your higher skills, knowledge and experience. If your're not sure how to create a pricing strategy, research it online to talk with a small business consultant or mentor.
Before discussing prices with a prospective customer, establish that the prospective customer needs your services or products. You'll feel more comfortable discussing your fees if you know the prospective customer really wants what you offer. Ask a lot of questions to see if their problem and your solutions are a good match.
Here are some more tips:
Put your fees on your website and brochure. In this way, prospects will know your fees before the sales conversation begins.
Be honest. Tell the prospect what the options are for your services or products, any quantity discounts you offer, and how payment is delivered. Practice saying this over and over again until the words and phrases slip comfortably from your mouth.
Act confidently when delivering your fees. Don't downplay your fees. State your fees, then shut up. Don't make excuses for your fees or ramble on about them. Look directly at the prospect while delivering tour fees.
Don't automatically offer discounts. This tells the prospect that your fees are soft and that they're negotiable. Instead, state your fees and options, then ask them which package is right for them.
Act "as if". How would an experienced person in your industry act, when discussing her fees? Act as if you are that person and you'll find your confidence increasing with each conversation. Practice, practice, practice.
Get Training. I you're uncomfortable with the whole sales process, get sales training. By attending a class, you'll learn different ways of saying the same thing, and you're bound to find a way that's right for you.
Refer Out. If the prospect really can't afford your fees and you can't afford to offer a discount, refer that prospect to someplace where they can find an alternative. Say, "If you can't afford my fees, you can try these online referral services where you might find someone in your price range."
Talking about your prices can be uncomfortable. But with practice and persistence, and a willingness to overcome your fears, you can begin to have comfortable conversations with your prospective customers.
How to Manage Your Brand Online
Reputation Management: How to Manage Your Reputation Online
If you've ever Googled your name, you know how important managing your reputation online can be. Each day, thousands of individuals are searching online for information about others simply by searching on Google or other leading search engines. With information being so readily available, managing your reputation is more important than ever.
Fortunately, managing your reputation online isn't all that difficult, but it does take work. Here are 7 basic steps you can take to ensure that your reputation doesn't become negatively impacted by what's being said about you online.
1. See where you stand. Start your reputation management initiative by Googling your name. Try it with quotes and with out (first and last name together). Look through each of your results on page one and page two of Google. Are there any there are are negative or you wish to remove?
2. Set up a Google alert. Visit Google and set up an alert for your name. After setting up the alert Google will send you and email to confirm that you wish to receive the updates. Accept the alert and each time your name is published to the Web, you'll know about it.
3. Contact website owners for name removal. If there are sites that include your name and commentary that is less than desirable, contact the appropriate websites requesting that the information be removed. More often than not, website owners will agree to remove your name and/or inappropriate information.
4. Purchase a domain with your name. Add sites and webpages associated with your name and watch negative search results get pushed lower on Google rankings. Visit GoDaddy or another provider of website URLs and hosting, and purchase a domain that contains your name. Even if your name is rather common, experiment with variations until your name can be established in the form of a dot com. Once you own a domain, publish a webpage with your personal profile.
5. Start a blog under your name. Blogger is a great tool for setting up your own blog which can be used to publish information about yourself. Popular blog sites are often picked up by Google and you can control the content. Be sure to sign up for Technorati after your blog has been published. Submit your blog for review and its popularity will increase, improving search rankings and continuing to push down negative search results.
6. Free press release. Use free-press-release.com or a similar free press release site to publish favorable information about your and your reputation. This form of reputation management is easy and costs nothing. Be sure to use your name throughout the release and in the release title.
7. Author articles in your field. Publish article relative to a particular topic or area in which you've done some work or have experience. Use article distribution serivces to build online references to your content. Make sure your articles contain an about the author section that links back to your main website.
There are a variety of strategies you can use to manage online references about you, your family, or others that need to manage their reputation online. Other online sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and Squidoo, offer ample opportunity to deliver favorable search results that can push unfavorable results down in search engine rankings. The key is to start today - proactively manage your reputation and put yourself in a favorable light.
If you've ever Googled your name, you know how important managing your reputation online can be. Each day, thousands of individuals are searching online for information about others simply by searching on Google or other leading search engines. With information being so readily available, managing your reputation is more important than ever.
Fortunately, managing your reputation online isn't all that difficult, but it does take work. Here are 7 basic steps you can take to ensure that your reputation doesn't become negatively impacted by what's being said about you online.
1. See where you stand. Start your reputation management initiative by Googling your name. Try it with quotes and with out (first and last name together). Look through each of your results on page one and page two of Google. Are there any there are are negative or you wish to remove?
2. Set up a Google alert. Visit Google and set up an alert for your name. After setting up the alert Google will send you and email to confirm that you wish to receive the updates. Accept the alert and each time your name is published to the Web, you'll know about it.
3. Contact website owners for name removal. If there are sites that include your name and commentary that is less than desirable, contact the appropriate websites requesting that the information be removed. More often than not, website owners will agree to remove your name and/or inappropriate information.
4. Purchase a domain with your name. Add sites and webpages associated with your name and watch negative search results get pushed lower on Google rankings. Visit GoDaddy or another provider of website URLs and hosting, and purchase a domain that contains your name. Even if your name is rather common, experiment with variations until your name can be established in the form of a dot com. Once you own a domain, publish a webpage with your personal profile.
5. Start a blog under your name. Blogger is a great tool for setting up your own blog which can be used to publish information about yourself. Popular blog sites are often picked up by Google and you can control the content. Be sure to sign up for Technorati after your blog has been published. Submit your blog for review and its popularity will increase, improving search rankings and continuing to push down negative search results.
6. Free press release. Use free-press-release.com or a similar free press release site to publish favorable information about your and your reputation. This form of reputation management is easy and costs nothing. Be sure to use your name throughout the release and in the release title.
7. Author articles in your field. Publish article relative to a particular topic or area in which you've done some work or have experience. Use article distribution serivces to build online references to your content. Make sure your articles contain an about the author section that links back to your main website.
There are a variety of strategies you can use to manage online references about you, your family, or others that need to manage their reputation online. Other online sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and Squidoo, offer ample opportunity to deliver favorable search results that can push unfavorable results down in search engine rankings. The key is to start today - proactively manage your reputation and put yourself in a favorable light.
The Most Important Aspect of Marketing: TEST, TEST, TEST
One of my colleagues recently asked me, out of all the aspects of marketing including online marketing, marketing strategy, Web 2.0, market research, etc., what was the most important? Without hesitation I replied, "Testing".
Many of my marketing friends might argue and profess that if you don't have the right message, reach the right audience, the right timing, or the right offer, you won't succeed. And to that I say ABSOLUTELY! In fact, those are the very elements of a successful campaign that can be identified through proper testing. So how do you know that your messaging is optimized or that you're reaching your target audience in the most effective way possible? Only proper testing can give you that information.
When someone on my team says that a particular campaign was a success I ask, "how do you know?" The answer often has something to do with metrics around campaign performance. But this information is merely releative. If your click through rate was 20% and your conversion rate was 0.35% for an online campaign, it may have generated a positive return, but is 0.35% the best we could have done? Did we test the campaign to set expectations before full launch?
By testing multiple landing pages, post cards, direct mail packages, keyword campaigns, and other marketing campaigns, you can find what resonates best with your audience and set proper expectations for performance. Once you've established a baseline, continue to test and experiment with different messaging, timing, and offers and compare your results against your baseline. Then, when someone asks you how well your campaign performed, you can say good, bad, or indifferent based on real data.
A great example of this was a recent email marketing campaign completed by my team. They tested 3 subject lines - everything else remainded the same (the list, the email creative, the price, the timing, etc.). During our test, one subject line outperformed the others 3 to 1. Wow! What a difference this made in our overall campaign performance when we sent the email to tens of thousands of potential customers.
Ongoing measurement and testing is essential for marketing success. If you're not testing your marketing campaigns on a continuous basis, you're missing out. Of course, once you establish a solid control (baseline), you'll have a hard time out performing it. In general, you'll only improve your success rate about 10% of the time. But continue to test, test, and test some more and you'll see your knowledge and results increase.
Many of my marketing friends might argue and profess that if you don't have the right message, reach the right audience, the right timing, or the right offer, you won't succeed. And to that I say ABSOLUTELY! In fact, those are the very elements of a successful campaign that can be identified through proper testing. So how do you know that your messaging is optimized or that you're reaching your target audience in the most effective way possible? Only proper testing can give you that information.
When someone on my team says that a particular campaign was a success I ask, "how do you know?" The answer often has something to do with metrics around campaign performance. But this information is merely releative. If your click through rate was 20% and your conversion rate was 0.35% for an online campaign, it may have generated a positive return, but is 0.35% the best we could have done? Did we test the campaign to set expectations before full launch?
By testing multiple landing pages, post cards, direct mail packages, keyword campaigns, and other marketing campaigns, you can find what resonates best with your audience and set proper expectations for performance. Once you've established a baseline, continue to test and experiment with different messaging, timing, and offers and compare your results against your baseline. Then, when someone asks you how well your campaign performed, you can say good, bad, or indifferent based on real data.
A great example of this was a recent email marketing campaign completed by my team. They tested 3 subject lines - everything else remainded the same (the list, the email creative, the price, the timing, etc.). During our test, one subject line outperformed the others 3 to 1. Wow! What a difference this made in our overall campaign performance when we sent the email to tens of thousands of potential customers.
Ongoing measurement and testing is essential for marketing success. If you're not testing your marketing campaigns on a continuous basis, you're missing out. Of course, once you establish a solid control (baseline), you'll have a hard time out performing it. In general, you'll only improve your success rate about 10% of the time. But continue to test, test, and test some more and you'll see your knowledge and results increase.
7 Lean Marketing Laws For The Business Owner
The following laws will provide guidance on how to act,think and work in a lean way. You can apply these laws to all areas of your life, work and business to get bigger results from the time you invest.
1. Multiple Rewards
Aim to be rewarded multiple times for a single effort. Money can be recovered but time cannot. Time gets spent. You can't put it in a bank and you can't earn more of it.
Wherever possible, you should look for ways to get paid/rewarded multiple times for each hour you invest. You will never be truly independent if your income comes from your own time and labor so package your knowledge as a product. Once you have a product you can sell your packaged time again and again.
2. Mistakes Are Gifts
Mistakes are nothing more than "Learning Opportunities". The best way to learn more and grow more is to make more mistakes. Mistakes are unavoidable when you're learning so adopt a ready, fire, aim approach to decisions and learn as you take action. If it doesn't work you can easily make another decision to put things right again.
3. Know When To Stop
Be prepared to stop what you're doing. Take stock and try something different. Don't let pride, fear of ridicule or ego get in the way of good judgement. When a mission is over, learn from it and move on.
4. Use Your Levers
Do the little things that make the biggest difference. Aim for maximum impact with minimum effort. Focus will help but there are other forms of leverage too. Here are just two.
OPT - Other People's Time. Don't be afraid to ask for help. You don't have to do it all yourself. Use your network. Ask and you shall receive. Give and you shall get.
Recycle - Learn to recognize value in everything you do. Turn your ezine into a book and sell it. Write your words of wisdom down and share them.
5. Don't Be Busy - Be Effective
Don't waste your hours simply being "busy". Being busy does not cause you to be wealthy. So don't be busy - be effective. Remember the 80:20 rule.
Typically 20 per cent of the things you do will be responsible for 80 per cent of the results you get. So focus on the 20 per cent that gets the result.
6. Always Look For The Easy Route
If there's an easy way to do something and a hard way - take the easy way first. I call this "inspired laziness".
7. Measure Progress By What You Reap
The only truth is the result. Doing lots of things is not the same as achieving lots of things. Measure progress by your outcomes not your inputs.
Contribution of: Mr. Joe Dager
1. Multiple Rewards
Aim to be rewarded multiple times for a single effort. Money can be recovered but time cannot. Time gets spent. You can't put it in a bank and you can't earn more of it.
Wherever possible, you should look for ways to get paid/rewarded multiple times for each hour you invest. You will never be truly independent if your income comes from your own time and labor so package your knowledge as a product. Once you have a product you can sell your packaged time again and again.
2. Mistakes Are Gifts
Mistakes are nothing more than "Learning Opportunities". The best way to learn more and grow more is to make more mistakes. Mistakes are unavoidable when you're learning so adopt a ready, fire, aim approach to decisions and learn as you take action. If it doesn't work you can easily make another decision to put things right again.
3. Know When To Stop
Be prepared to stop what you're doing. Take stock and try something different. Don't let pride, fear of ridicule or ego get in the way of good judgement. When a mission is over, learn from it and move on.
4. Use Your Levers
Do the little things that make the biggest difference. Aim for maximum impact with minimum effort. Focus will help but there are other forms of leverage too. Here are just two.
OPT - Other People's Time. Don't be afraid to ask for help. You don't have to do it all yourself. Use your network. Ask and you shall receive. Give and you shall get.
Recycle - Learn to recognize value in everything you do. Turn your ezine into a book and sell it. Write your words of wisdom down and share them.
5. Don't Be Busy - Be Effective
Don't waste your hours simply being "busy". Being busy does not cause you to be wealthy. So don't be busy - be effective. Remember the 80:20 rule.
Typically 20 per cent of the things you do will be responsible for 80 per cent of the results you get. So focus on the 20 per cent that gets the result.
6. Always Look For The Easy Route
If there's an easy way to do something and a hard way - take the easy way first. I call this "inspired laziness".
7. Measure Progress By What You Reap
The only truth is the result. Doing lots of things is not the same as achieving lots of things. Measure progress by your outcomes not your inputs.
Contribution of: Mr. Joe Dager
Marketing Challenges
Business owners often get frustrated with marketers because there’s so much misinformation in the discipline. Most marketers want to run campaigns in their areas of expertise, regardless of whether it’s the most effective choice for the business.
It’s only natural, right?
There are so many challenges in marketing. The first pertains to the term “marketing” itself. What activities does marketing include? Is marketing the same thing as advertising? How does marketing tie into sales and strategy?
For SMEs, the core challenge for marketers and business leaders is to:
Understand what they need to do to accomplish their revenue goals
Find the resources to execute SMEs are stretched thin on time and resources. They need answers and results—fast. Kreative Marketing Group delivers. Marketing teams and individual marketers can use Kreative Marketing Group to centralize marketing activities and execution:
Determine marketing and business growth strategies
Decide what marketing campaigns to run
Download tools for marketing execution
Manage marketing tasks
Expand resources and expertise
Train the team
Measure results
Marketing Structure for Better Results
Even managing a single campaign can be challenging: You have your list, your message, your offer, your creative, and your copy; you have fulfillment, tracking, follow-up and metrics.
Then you have to execute.
Then you have to get sales people on board to turn the leads into sales.
It’s not easy for SMEs to understand what the best marketing programs are for their company. Where should they spend their budget? The options are overwhelming:
Advertising
Direct mail
Telemarketing
Search Marketing
Traditional Media
PR
Tradeshows
And now “social media” is all the rage!
Few marketers have marketing expertise in all areas. Most focus on doing a great job in one area, whether it’s creative, branding, advertising, direct response, PR, Internet marketing, or social media.
The reality is most SMEs need marketing activities in many of these areas, but they aren’t able to add headcount to address each specialty.
Organize your activities with Kreative Marketing Group so your marketing team understands your goals, their assignments and expected results. Marketing structure delivers better results.
This “left-brain” structure appeals to most business leaders--those non-marketing types that usually control the budget. Tie your decisions and activities to their business goals and earn their support.
It’s only natural, right?
There are so many challenges in marketing. The first pertains to the term “marketing” itself. What activities does marketing include? Is marketing the same thing as advertising? How does marketing tie into sales and strategy?
For SMEs, the core challenge for marketers and business leaders is to:
Understand what they need to do to accomplish their revenue goals
Find the resources to execute SMEs are stretched thin on time and resources. They need answers and results—fast. Kreative Marketing Group delivers. Marketing teams and individual marketers can use Kreative Marketing Group to centralize marketing activities and execution:
Determine marketing and business growth strategies
Decide what marketing campaigns to run
Download tools for marketing execution
Manage marketing tasks
Expand resources and expertise
Train the team
Measure results
Marketing Structure for Better Results
Even managing a single campaign can be challenging: You have your list, your message, your offer, your creative, and your copy; you have fulfillment, tracking, follow-up and metrics.
Then you have to execute.
Then you have to get sales people on board to turn the leads into sales.
It’s not easy for SMEs to understand what the best marketing programs are for their company. Where should they spend their budget? The options are overwhelming:
Advertising
Direct mail
Telemarketing
Search Marketing
Traditional Media
PR
Tradeshows
And now “social media” is all the rage!
Few marketers have marketing expertise in all areas. Most focus on doing a great job in one area, whether it’s creative, branding, advertising, direct response, PR, Internet marketing, or social media.
The reality is most SMEs need marketing activities in many of these areas, but they aren’t able to add headcount to address each specialty.
Organize your activities with Kreative Marketing Group so your marketing team understands your goals, their assignments and expected results. Marketing structure delivers better results.
This “left-brain” structure appeals to most business leaders--those non-marketing types that usually control the budget. Tie your decisions and activities to their business goals and earn their support.
The New Game Plan For those Starting a Business The Lean Way
In a recent survey reported by the Financial Post, one in three Canadians said they were interested in starting their own business in the next two years. Of those, 35 per cent said they're going to follow through.
If even half of those do follow up on their dreams, that will be quite astonishing.
What will also be astonishing, however, is if those thousands of would-be Canadian entrepreneurs proceed as 21st-century entrepreneurs instead of blindly imitating the entrepreneurship methodology of 30 years ago. Anyone who takes up the challenge of business start-up today would do well to examine how entrepreneurship has changed in this century.
The biggest change is that today, less is best. Starting a business now is all about less -as in less elaborate business planning; less imitation and more innovation; less step-by-step execution and more going with the flow; less one-way delivery and marketing and more conversation with customers.
This less-is-best concept generally goes against traditional business training. Business plans, for example, are about execution of known factors, so if you're building a factory that is going to be around for 10 or 20 years, you'll need a business plan. But in today's world of continuing change, any plan that details steps further out than quarterly or semi-annually is unsuited for anyone starting a small business.
The top entrepreneurship method now is the lean startup, an application of Lean thinking, an organizational method of operation derived from the Toyota production system. In Lean thinking, an organization attempts to eliminate wasteful effort and cost.
Lean thinking means new start-ups rarely use formal business plans because in a rapidly changing world they cannot obtain the information they need to plan several years in the future.
The lean start-up applies the Lean thinking approach at the crucial period when new companies often have a concept but really don't know how their businesses are going -evolve. Since most new businesses -even those in traditional areas such as retail or services -now primarily operate online, this learning process is much easier.
Generally, a Lean start-up features three characteristics:
- It keeps costs low by using open source and free software. -those aren't available, it uses low-cost cloud computing (renting software and other services online) instead of initially buying expensive systems and so ftware. They also try to "rent" as many business needs, such as personnel, as possible;
- It applies agile development when creating products or services. -this methodology, product development borrows from new software-creation models. Agile development is perfect for startups in which the problem (the genesis for all business concepts) and the solution (the business's answer to the problem) are still fuzzy;
- It constantly talks with customers, existing or potential, to see how they can improve. It usually begins with a simple product or service and then changes or expands it to answer customer concerns. Its main business process is continual customer research and development.
A good example of this form of small business development is Stewart Butterfield of Vancouver, who cofounded with his then-wife Caterina Fake a company that had developed a multi-player online game. The game went nowhere, so they dumped it and began working on an instant messaging application that had features such as game-like experience and the ability to handle photos. That soon evolved into a photosharing application that, in 2004, became Flickr, now the most dominant photosharing site on the Internet.
Fake said the pair couldn't write a business plan because they couldn't do any research on where the company might go. "We weren't planning on building a photosharing site," she said. "If we had done our research, we would have said we shouldn't bother because it's all been sewn up (by competitors)."
The biggest lesson is that in the early years businesses often change as they attempt to find a market niche in which their concept meshes with customer needs.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
If even half of those do follow up on their dreams, that will be quite astonishing.
What will also be astonishing, however, is if those thousands of would-be Canadian entrepreneurs proceed as 21st-century entrepreneurs instead of blindly imitating the entrepreneurship methodology of 30 years ago. Anyone who takes up the challenge of business start-up today would do well to examine how entrepreneurship has changed in this century.
The biggest change is that today, less is best. Starting a business now is all about less -as in less elaborate business planning; less imitation and more innovation; less step-by-step execution and more going with the flow; less one-way delivery and marketing and more conversation with customers.
This less-is-best concept generally goes against traditional business training. Business plans, for example, are about execution of known factors, so if you're building a factory that is going to be around for 10 or 20 years, you'll need a business plan. But in today's world of continuing change, any plan that details steps further out than quarterly or semi-annually is unsuited for anyone starting a small business.
The top entrepreneurship method now is the lean startup, an application of Lean thinking, an organizational method of operation derived from the Toyota production system. In Lean thinking, an organization attempts to eliminate wasteful effort and cost.
Lean thinking means new start-ups rarely use formal business plans because in a rapidly changing world they cannot obtain the information they need to plan several years in the future.
The lean start-up applies the Lean thinking approach at the crucial period when new companies often have a concept but really don't know how their businesses are going -evolve. Since most new businesses -even those in traditional areas such as retail or services -now primarily operate online, this learning process is much easier.
Generally, a Lean start-up features three characteristics:
- It keeps costs low by using open source and free software. -those aren't available, it uses low-cost cloud computing (renting software and other services online) instead of initially buying expensive systems and so ftware. They also try to "rent" as many business needs, such as personnel, as possible;
- It applies agile development when creating products or services. -this methodology, product development borrows from new software-creation models. Agile development is perfect for startups in which the problem (the genesis for all business concepts) and the solution (the business's answer to the problem) are still fuzzy;
- It constantly talks with customers, existing or potential, to see how they can improve. It usually begins with a simple product or service and then changes or expands it to answer customer concerns. Its main business process is continual customer research and development.
A good example of this form of small business development is Stewart Butterfield of Vancouver, who cofounded with his then-wife Caterina Fake a company that had developed a multi-player online game. The game went nowhere, so they dumped it and began working on an instant messaging application that had features such as game-like experience and the ability to handle photos. That soon evolved into a photosharing application that, in 2004, became Flickr, now the most dominant photosharing site on the Internet.
Fake said the pair couldn't write a business plan because they couldn't do any research on where the company might go. "We weren't planning on building a photosharing site," she said. "If we had done our research, we would have said we shouldn't bother because it's all been sewn up (by competitors)."
The biggest lesson is that in the early years businesses often change as they attempt to find a market niche in which their concept meshes with customer needs.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
Improving Your Marketing Through Social Bookmarks
Generate word of mouth with powerful social marketing tools.
As an Internet marketing professional, I try to keep on top of new marketing avenues and opportunities for leveraging word-of-mouth. In recent years, the method by which individuals get their information has evolved and so have the tools for sharing information from one individual to another. Social bookmarking is now a popular method of communicating among younger audiences and is proving to be an effective marketing tool for increased exposure of products, services, and brands.
Imagine telling your friend about a recent story you just heard. That story could be newsworthy, provide information about a given topic of interest, or perhaps an online video you watched that had you rolling around in laughter. Once you communicated that to your friend, he went ahead and sent an email out to 4 of his friends who then forwarded that email to dozens more – and so the story goes.
Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. With the help of the Internet, this type of marketing has grown in importance and has been accelerated with the advent of social bookmarks.
Popular bookmarking sites allow users to identify, with just the click of a mouse, online content that they deem worthy of sharing. As more and more individuals identify the same content, it receives a higher priority on social bookmarking sites and continues to grow in importance. Social bookmarking sites are like a multi-level marketer’s dream!
The most popular social bookmarking site is Digg.com which has an Alexa ranking of 98 and boasts more than 8 million monthly visitors. Other popular sites like Technorati (1.4M monthly visitors), and Del.icio.us (1.3M montly visitors) illustrate just how big social bookmarking has become. Taken collectively, these sites are continuing to garner more supporters and changing the way consumers share information they deem valuable.
From a marketing perspective, this creates an opportunity for improving the effectiveness of our marketing practices. Word of mouth has always been an effective means of marketing but has been difficult to initiate and manage. Today, with the help of social bookmarks there is now an easier way to encourage and promote the sharing of your information.
Recently, I added a footer on my blog to encourage users to “share” information they deem valuable. This has created an opportunity for users to interact with content and start the viral marketing effect all online marketers seek. When considering the merits of social bookmarking, there are a few guidelines to consider.
Your content needs to provide value or be unique. Social bookmarking doesn’t happen on its own. You need to provide content that’s worth sharing. Whether that content is helpful to someone seeking guidance, unique, funny, or just plain novel, it needs to provide value in order to be shared.
Make bookmarking easy. Have you placed the appropriate social bookmark icons on your webpage in a place that’s closely aligned with the content you wish to share? Are the bookmarks easy to identify? Make sure your customers and prospects don’t need to work all that hard in order to share your information.
Encourage communication. Don’t just paste some social bookmarking icons on your website, ask for support. Common phrases like, “Share this” or “Bookmark us” are a great way to get the wheels of social media moving.
If you’re not leveraging social bookmarking tools then you’re word-of-mouth campaigns aren’t being optimized. Reach more people, more quickly, by leveraging your website’s visitors, prospect, and customers. Ask them to share your information and create valuable content that encourages viral marketing. Utilizing social bookmarking as a preferred marketing medium can help improve awareness of your products and develop a preference for your brand.
As an Internet marketing professional, I try to keep on top of new marketing avenues and opportunities for leveraging word-of-mouth. In recent years, the method by which individuals get their information has evolved and so have the tools for sharing information from one individual to another. Social bookmarking is now a popular method of communicating among younger audiences and is proving to be an effective marketing tool for increased exposure of products, services, and brands.
Imagine telling your friend about a recent story you just heard. That story could be newsworthy, provide information about a given topic of interest, or perhaps an online video you watched that had you rolling around in laughter. Once you communicated that to your friend, he went ahead and sent an email out to 4 of his friends who then forwarded that email to dozens more – and so the story goes.
Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. With the help of the Internet, this type of marketing has grown in importance and has been accelerated with the advent of social bookmarks.
Popular bookmarking sites allow users to identify, with just the click of a mouse, online content that they deem worthy of sharing. As more and more individuals identify the same content, it receives a higher priority on social bookmarking sites and continues to grow in importance. Social bookmarking sites are like a multi-level marketer’s dream!
The most popular social bookmarking site is Digg.com which has an Alexa ranking of 98 and boasts more than 8 million monthly visitors. Other popular sites like Technorati (1.4M monthly visitors), and Del.icio.us (1.3M montly visitors) illustrate just how big social bookmarking has become. Taken collectively, these sites are continuing to garner more supporters and changing the way consumers share information they deem valuable.
From a marketing perspective, this creates an opportunity for improving the effectiveness of our marketing practices. Word of mouth has always been an effective means of marketing but has been difficult to initiate and manage. Today, with the help of social bookmarks there is now an easier way to encourage and promote the sharing of your information.
Recently, I added a footer on my blog to encourage users to “share” information they deem valuable. This has created an opportunity for users to interact with content and start the viral marketing effect all online marketers seek. When considering the merits of social bookmarking, there are a few guidelines to consider.
Your content needs to provide value or be unique. Social bookmarking doesn’t happen on its own. You need to provide content that’s worth sharing. Whether that content is helpful to someone seeking guidance, unique, funny, or just plain novel, it needs to provide value in order to be shared.
Make bookmarking easy. Have you placed the appropriate social bookmark icons on your webpage in a place that’s closely aligned with the content you wish to share? Are the bookmarks easy to identify? Make sure your customers and prospects don’t need to work all that hard in order to share your information.
Encourage communication. Don’t just paste some social bookmarking icons on your website, ask for support. Common phrases like, “Share this” or “Bookmark us” are a great way to get the wheels of social media moving.
If you’re not leveraging social bookmarking tools then you’re word-of-mouth campaigns aren’t being optimized. Reach more people, more quickly, by leveraging your website’s visitors, prospect, and customers. Ask them to share your information and create valuable content that encourages viral marketing. Utilizing social bookmarking as a preferred marketing medium can help improve awareness of your products and develop a preference for your brand.
7 Strategies to Convert Contacts into Sales
MISGUIDED MARKETERS ARE trying to use "old-school" marketing tactics in a new, consumer-driven business landscape. But being the best, the cheapest or the most convenient is no longer going to get you the results you're after; so don't promote these virtues on social networks.
We've all seen how kindness, honesty and generosity online are rewarded. And yet internet conversations are getting heavier with sales pitching and self promotion by the minute. This sales pitching is not only turning consumers off, it's giving internet marketing a bad rap and making it more challenging for business to convert contacts into sales.
There are a few marketing strategies you should add to your daily practice to set yourself apart and turn your online communities into profitable business transactions. What's more, these activities will increase the ROI for your online efforts without looking or sounding sales pitchy.
Here are seven strategies for successfully converting online contacts into sales.
1. Focus on generosity: Share your knowledge and expertise willingly online. Avoid the attitude that people are out to get you, instead think of it as people are out to do business with you. The more you are generous with your expertise and resources, the faster people will connect with you online and want to do business with you (because they've already had a sneak peek at what you offer).
2. Use the 3/3 Rule: The opposite side of the generosity coin is this; you have to set some boundaries online so as not to give too much away. When you are directly e-mailed or approached for advice, offer your services no more and no less than three times to that contact before you ask for the business. Don't spend more than three minutes responding or chatting per person or group. After the third such activity (on the same network, of course), just ask. This is the one thing that separates the broke from the prosperous--asking.
3. Don't act desperate: There is a big difference between desperate and sincere. Make sure that you really want the relationship and their business specifically and that you're not just asking for the sake of getting another deal (or because it's the third action and you're "supposed" to). Consumers are smart, they can tell the difference between the two.
4. Do aSPAM check: Before you even ask for the business when you're beginning to build a relationship you need to do a SPAM check. Whether it be online or off, make sure that your conversation does not involve constant:
Sales
Pitching
After
Meeting
If you start a sales pitch before you've even established a rapport then you are spamming, something that consumers do not tolerate very well. This can instantly shut down a relationship. Make the conversation about the consumer, not you. [link to Green]. Start by listening and end conversations by asking what you can do to help them with a goal or problem. By doing this, your services and offerings will become a natural part of the conversation, rather than a forced sales pitch.
5. Have a communication plan in place: Once you start to engage with people make sure that you have an ongoing plan to stay in touch. A great way to do that is to get their e-mail address and send them periodic updates, resources and tips.
6. Build your social proof: Do you have testimonials or recommendations on your social sites and your main website or blog? Social proof is basically proving to your target market and community that you are worth doing business with. Testimonials show potentials how great you are, you don't have to say a thing. LinkedIn is a great place to house some of those testimonials.
7. Just be yourself: Do not try to be someone that you are not because you think that you will get more contacts, leads and business. Consumers want to feel like they are doing business with someone real, not someone that's insincere.
Above all, don't hold yourself back from reaching out to new people, groups or industries. The internet is full of millions of new contacts for you, just engage with them sincerely and leave out the sales pitching. You never know if that invite or accepted request will be your next big customer.
We've all seen how kindness, honesty and generosity online are rewarded. And yet internet conversations are getting heavier with sales pitching and self promotion by the minute. This sales pitching is not only turning consumers off, it's giving internet marketing a bad rap and making it more challenging for business to convert contacts into sales.
There are a few marketing strategies you should add to your daily practice to set yourself apart and turn your online communities into profitable business transactions. What's more, these activities will increase the ROI for your online efforts without looking or sounding sales pitchy.
Here are seven strategies for successfully converting online contacts into sales.
1. Focus on generosity: Share your knowledge and expertise willingly online. Avoid the attitude that people are out to get you, instead think of it as people are out to do business with you. The more you are generous with your expertise and resources, the faster people will connect with you online and want to do business with you (because they've already had a sneak peek at what you offer).
2. Use the 3/3 Rule: The opposite side of the generosity coin is this; you have to set some boundaries online so as not to give too much away. When you are directly e-mailed or approached for advice, offer your services no more and no less than three times to that contact before you ask for the business. Don't spend more than three minutes responding or chatting per person or group. After the third such activity (on the same network, of course), just ask. This is the one thing that separates the broke from the prosperous--asking.
3. Don't act desperate: There is a big difference between desperate and sincere. Make sure that you really want the relationship and their business specifically and that you're not just asking for the sake of getting another deal (or because it's the third action and you're "supposed" to). Consumers are smart, they can tell the difference between the two.
4. Do aSPAM check: Before you even ask for the business when you're beginning to build a relationship you need to do a SPAM check. Whether it be online or off, make sure that your conversation does not involve constant:
Sales
Pitching
After
Meeting
If you start a sales pitch before you've even established a rapport then you are spamming, something that consumers do not tolerate very well. This can instantly shut down a relationship. Make the conversation about the consumer, not you. [link to Green]. Start by listening and end conversations by asking what you can do to help them with a goal or problem. By doing this, your services and offerings will become a natural part of the conversation, rather than a forced sales pitch.
5. Have a communication plan in place: Once you start to engage with people make sure that you have an ongoing plan to stay in touch. A great way to do that is to get their e-mail address and send them periodic updates, resources and tips.
6. Build your social proof: Do you have testimonials or recommendations on your social sites and your main website or blog? Social proof is basically proving to your target market and community that you are worth doing business with. Testimonials show potentials how great you are, you don't have to say a thing. LinkedIn is a great place to house some of those testimonials.
7. Just be yourself: Do not try to be someone that you are not because you think that you will get more contacts, leads and business. Consumers want to feel like they are doing business with someone real, not someone that's insincere.
Above all, don't hold yourself back from reaching out to new people, groups or industries. The internet is full of millions of new contacts for you, just engage with them sincerely and leave out the sales pitching. You never know if that invite or accepted request will be your next big customer.
How to Get Free Publicity For Your Product Or Service
Have you ever wondered how some companies always seem to obtain good placement in print publications, online, and even on TV? What’s even more impressive is that many of these companies don’t even spend a single cent on advertising. Why would they? They’re getting all of the media coverage they need simply by following a few basic public relations principles.
Position yourself as an expert. The media relies on experts for their information. The news that gets printed is only as credible as the source from which it comes. Begin by selecting a news related story to comment on. It should be a story that you are qualified to speak about, aligned with your area of expertise.
If your background is in engineering, and a building falls down, you are qualified to speak about the structure and answer possible engineering related questions. Being an expert simply means that you have a background in a specific area and can lend your expertise.
Do your homework. To get coverage, find the reporter who is covering the news you wish to comment on. For example, if the news is about a specific current event, then Google the current event name followed by the name of a popular newspaper like the Wall Street Journal or USA Today. You’ll quickly find the reporters who have written on the subject. Call the newspaper (contact information available on their website) and ask for the reporter by name. If the operation asks what your call is in reference to, simply state that you have information related to a specific news item.
Compliment the reporter. When you locate the reporter, and contact him, start with a compliment. Reporters take great pride in their work. Be sure to compliment their position on a given topic or their previous work. After complimenting them, you’re ready for the pitch.
Talk to them about your position on the given news story and what you have to offer. Again, referring back to our earlier example of the building, mention that you have an engineering background and have a position on the story. For example, you might be able to comment on why buildings collapse and the structural aspects that could be the cause. Let the reporter ask questions but have a point of view. After the dialogue, the reporter will verify your information such as name and company.
Leave a compelling yet non-descript message. If you’re unable to get in touch with the reporter directly, leave a message – but be discreet. You don’t want to show all of your cards before speaking to him directly. However, if you leave enough information to get them to return your call, they will call you. Reporters follow up with any leads they consider opportunistic.
When leaving a message, simple say, “I have something you need to hear about (fill in name of story here).” Be specific with regard to the story the reporter is covering. You want them to consider your possible information valuable.
State your expertise. After complimenting the reporter about their coverage on a specific article or issue, let them know your position on a given topic and why you are qualified to comment on it. Give them your pitch and be confident that your opinion matters base on the experience you have to offer.
In today’s environment, it’s difficult to attract the media’s attention. The best way to get PR for your product or service is by commenting on current stories being covered by the media. The process is simple. When you hear a news story that you can comment on, find the reporter using Google and the name of a major publication.
Position yourself as an expert. The media relies on experts for their information. The news that gets printed is only as credible as the source from which it comes. Begin by selecting a news related story to comment on. It should be a story that you are qualified to speak about, aligned with your area of expertise.
If your background is in engineering, and a building falls down, you are qualified to speak about the structure and answer possible engineering related questions. Being an expert simply means that you have a background in a specific area and can lend your expertise.
Do your homework. To get coverage, find the reporter who is covering the news you wish to comment on. For example, if the news is about a specific current event, then Google the current event name followed by the name of a popular newspaper like the Wall Street Journal or USA Today. You’ll quickly find the reporters who have written on the subject. Call the newspaper (contact information available on their website) and ask for the reporter by name. If the operation asks what your call is in reference to, simply state that you have information related to a specific news item.
Compliment the reporter. When you locate the reporter, and contact him, start with a compliment. Reporters take great pride in their work. Be sure to compliment their position on a given topic or their previous work. After complimenting them, you’re ready for the pitch.
Talk to them about your position on the given news story and what you have to offer. Again, referring back to our earlier example of the building, mention that you have an engineering background and have a position on the story. For example, you might be able to comment on why buildings collapse and the structural aspects that could be the cause. Let the reporter ask questions but have a point of view. After the dialogue, the reporter will verify your information such as name and company.
Leave a compelling yet non-descript message. If you’re unable to get in touch with the reporter directly, leave a message – but be discreet. You don’t want to show all of your cards before speaking to him directly. However, if you leave enough information to get them to return your call, they will call you. Reporters follow up with any leads they consider opportunistic.
When leaving a message, simple say, “I have something you need to hear about (fill in name of story here).” Be specific with regard to the story the reporter is covering. You want them to consider your possible information valuable.
State your expertise. After complimenting the reporter about their coverage on a specific article or issue, let them know your position on a given topic and why you are qualified to comment on it. Give them your pitch and be confident that your opinion matters base on the experience you have to offer.
In today’s environment, it’s difficult to attract the media’s attention. The best way to get PR for your product or service is by commenting on current stories being covered by the media. The process is simple. When you hear a news story that you can comment on, find the reporter using Google and the name of a major publication.
Top 10 Marketing Tips
With more than a decade of experience in marketing, ranking from pay-per-click to direct mail, I’ve seen a lot of failures and far more successes when it comes to marketing.
Today, the art of marketing is far more complex than it once was. However, many of the same basic principles still apply. Too often, professional marketers and small business owners overlook the basic techniques that have separated successful campaigns from those that never turn a profit. Here is my all time list of effective marketing tips.
Know your audience. Successful campaigns get that way because marketers know their audience. They fully understand their needs, how to help meet those needs and how to create demand. Knowing and understanding your audience through proper market segmentation means a well targeted campaign that generates a profitable return.
Focus on the offer. A marketing offer is the driving force of marketing promotions that drive results. In fact, market testing has proven that the offer is the most significant criterion for conversion. Focus on your offer if you want to be successful.
Split test. Never ever run a campaign without testing something. One of the most common is a split test which allows you to simultaneously test two versions of something. It can be a web page, post card, or email. Split testing is essential for improving performance.
Never work alone. The most creative ideas come from working with other creative people. Don’t feel like you need to have all the answers or great ideas. You may start with an idea, but an open dialog with creative individuals will make it better.
Don’t sell on price. I’ve seen so many marketers fail because they sell on price alone. This leads to a discounting war, lower profitability, and often bankruptcy. Rather, focus on creating so much value that the perception of price becomes insignificant.
Consistent messaging. Consider the entire user experience before you launch a campaign. From email to website to offer, is the prospect having a consistent user experience? If they are, your campaigns stand above 98% of others.
Create value after the sale. As marketers, it’s our job to understand our market segment and build relationships, not dump people off at the front door of our store and walk away. Focus as much of your energy on building relationships with customers as you do prospects.
Test. Test. Test. In addition to split testing, you should consider multiple forms of testing in each marketing discipline. For direct mail, test headlines, offers, copy, time of direct mail drop, etc. Consider testing a life long mission.
Integrated Marketing Works Best. You can’t rely on one form of marketing to carry you to success. It’s okay to generate most of your leads or sales through PPC marketing if you will but what happens when that dries out? Use multiple media sources to meet your goals.
Nothing can replace experience. You can run out and hire all of the best consultants in the world, but you still have to do the work. Nothing can replace actual experience. It will make you a stronger marketer and more successful in the long term.
Apply these helpful marketing tips if you want to be truly successful. These techniques and tips are applied by successful marketers on a daily basis. The result is an ever growing success rate of marketing success.
Today, the art of marketing is far more complex than it once was. However, many of the same basic principles still apply. Too often, professional marketers and small business owners overlook the basic techniques that have separated successful campaigns from those that never turn a profit. Here is my all time list of effective marketing tips.
Know your audience. Successful campaigns get that way because marketers know their audience. They fully understand their needs, how to help meet those needs and how to create demand. Knowing and understanding your audience through proper market segmentation means a well targeted campaign that generates a profitable return.
Focus on the offer. A marketing offer is the driving force of marketing promotions that drive results. In fact, market testing has proven that the offer is the most significant criterion for conversion. Focus on your offer if you want to be successful.
Split test. Never ever run a campaign without testing something. One of the most common is a split test which allows you to simultaneously test two versions of something. It can be a web page, post card, or email. Split testing is essential for improving performance.
Never work alone. The most creative ideas come from working with other creative people. Don’t feel like you need to have all the answers or great ideas. You may start with an idea, but an open dialog with creative individuals will make it better.
Don’t sell on price. I’ve seen so many marketers fail because they sell on price alone. This leads to a discounting war, lower profitability, and often bankruptcy. Rather, focus on creating so much value that the perception of price becomes insignificant.
Consistent messaging. Consider the entire user experience before you launch a campaign. From email to website to offer, is the prospect having a consistent user experience? If they are, your campaigns stand above 98% of others.
Create value after the sale. As marketers, it’s our job to understand our market segment and build relationships, not dump people off at the front door of our store and walk away. Focus as much of your energy on building relationships with customers as you do prospects.
Test. Test. Test. In addition to split testing, you should consider multiple forms of testing in each marketing discipline. For direct mail, test headlines, offers, copy, time of direct mail drop, etc. Consider testing a life long mission.
Integrated Marketing Works Best. You can’t rely on one form of marketing to carry you to success. It’s okay to generate most of your leads or sales through PPC marketing if you will but what happens when that dries out? Use multiple media sources to meet your goals.
Nothing can replace experience. You can run out and hire all of the best consultants in the world, but you still have to do the work. Nothing can replace actual experience. It will make you a stronger marketer and more successful in the long term.
Apply these helpful marketing tips if you want to be truly successful. These techniques and tips are applied by successful marketers on a daily basis. The result is an ever growing success rate of marketing success.
6 Easy Ways To Write & Sell an eBook
1. The idea. The Vision. We need a good idea for our readers and prospective clients. You notice, I didn’t say a good idea that I like—instead my idea must be something of value to my reader. It must be something that will motivate them to click on the link to buy and download my e-book.
2. Organize Your Thoughts. We must come up with at least 10 topics to include in our e-book. Or if you just want to write a short e-book of less than 10 pages then come up with a shorter number of titles. Start writing your topic ideas then organize them in the most logical manner. For example, if you are writing about ’10 Easy Tips To Keep Your Car Running Smoothly At All times,” your e-book will include 10 tips (10 topics).
3. Start Writing Freely. Begin writing your e-book based on your outline you created in #2. Since you are the expert in this field it should be easy to write down your ideas. Don’t worry about format, structure or grammar. Just get your thoughts down in writing. Write freely.
4. Finalize Your e-Book. Now it’s time to put some structure in your e-book. Ask yourself, “What is the easiest way to organize this so that my readers will understand it and follow it?” Always write from your reader’s point of view. Make it easy for your reader to find information and understand your concepts and thoughts.
5. Create Final Product. Now you decide how to produce your product to make it easy for your reader to purchase it. The most inexpensive and easiest way is to produce a PDF file. All computers now usually come with the PDF format available to use from Adobe. On my computer I press the ‘PRINT’ button and I can choose PDF from a choice of printing options. It then will produce a PDF file for me that go to my Desktop.
I like PDF files because they look professional. Can someone copy your PDF file? Yes, if they have the Adobe software. However, unless you are creating a “Harry Potter” bestseller book, it is a good way to get started producing e-books. Most of the e-books you order are produced this way. There are other software products that state they make your ebook harder to copy, but they are cumbersome to read because they usually separate every chapter and you can’t print them out easily. They are not available for a Mac computer. I still like to read long articles on the printed page instead of online.
6. Sell your e-Book.
Website. If you have a website set up then you will want to sell the e-book on your website. If you don’t know how to do this, hire a savvy Internet student to help you set it up on your site. You need a way to collect your money. I would start out with a Paypal account because it covers International countries that might want to buy your e-book. Later when you are financially successful you can add a commercial credit card service, but Paypal let’s everyone use their credit cards now so it is easy to get started.
Digital Products Retailer. If you do not have a website then start with a digital product retailer such as Clickbank, Payloadz, and others. You store your e-book on their site and they take a small profit for every e-book that’s sold on their site. Get the word out. What you have to do is send out e-mail messages to your list announcing your e-book and the great benefits your reader will get by buying it. You can also ask your friends if they would send a message to their list of friends and colleagues announcing your e-book.
This is a great rainy day project: Write and sell an e-book in 6 easy steps. Now is the time to start writing and who knows by the time the rain stops you may be finished!
2. Organize Your Thoughts. We must come up with at least 10 topics to include in our e-book. Or if you just want to write a short e-book of less than 10 pages then come up with a shorter number of titles. Start writing your topic ideas then organize them in the most logical manner. For example, if you are writing about ’10 Easy Tips To Keep Your Car Running Smoothly At All times,” your e-book will include 10 tips (10 topics).
3. Start Writing Freely. Begin writing your e-book based on your outline you created in #2. Since you are the expert in this field it should be easy to write down your ideas. Don’t worry about format, structure or grammar. Just get your thoughts down in writing. Write freely.
4. Finalize Your e-Book. Now it’s time to put some structure in your e-book. Ask yourself, “What is the easiest way to organize this so that my readers will understand it and follow it?” Always write from your reader’s point of view. Make it easy for your reader to find information and understand your concepts and thoughts.
5. Create Final Product. Now you decide how to produce your product to make it easy for your reader to purchase it. The most inexpensive and easiest way is to produce a PDF file. All computers now usually come with the PDF format available to use from Adobe. On my computer I press the ‘PRINT’ button and I can choose PDF from a choice of printing options. It then will produce a PDF file for me that go to my Desktop.
I like PDF files because they look professional. Can someone copy your PDF file? Yes, if they have the Adobe software. However, unless you are creating a “Harry Potter” bestseller book, it is a good way to get started producing e-books. Most of the e-books you order are produced this way. There are other software products that state they make your ebook harder to copy, but they are cumbersome to read because they usually separate every chapter and you can’t print them out easily. They are not available for a Mac computer. I still like to read long articles on the printed page instead of online.
6. Sell your e-Book.
Website. If you have a website set up then you will want to sell the e-book on your website. If you don’t know how to do this, hire a savvy Internet student to help you set it up on your site. You need a way to collect your money. I would start out with a Paypal account because it covers International countries that might want to buy your e-book. Later when you are financially successful you can add a commercial credit card service, but Paypal let’s everyone use their credit cards now so it is easy to get started.
Digital Products Retailer. If you do not have a website then start with a digital product retailer such as Clickbank, Payloadz, and others. You store your e-book on their site and they take a small profit for every e-book that’s sold on their site. Get the word out. What you have to do is send out e-mail messages to your list announcing your e-book and the great benefits your reader will get by buying it. You can also ask your friends if they would send a message to their list of friends and colleagues announcing your e-book.
This is a great rainy day project: Write and sell an e-book in 6 easy steps. Now is the time to start writing and who knows by the time the rain stops you may be finished!
As An Entrepreneur: Give Away Your Expertise!
One of the best ways to generate more income is to stop selling your expertise by the hour. Your expertise -- knowledge, skills, methods -- are your most valuable assets. By taking your expertise and packaging it in various forms, you can sell your expertise 24/7/365.
So if your knowledge, skills and methods are your most valuable assets, why in the world would I suggest that you give it away as a marketing strategy?? Because giving away your expertise lays the foundation for multiple streams of income. Why this works:
Access to lots of free information is already available and potential customers expect to find it. Making your expertise available enables your *ideal* customers to find you -- among all the free information available, they need to hear it the way *you* say it. Having information that tells them what they need to do isn't the problem for most customers -- implementation is where they need help.
Once potential customers have found your free information, make it easy and enticing to sign up for your email list. Now you've laid the foundation to build a trust relationship, and can start offering them the help with implementation they so desperately need -- and will pay for.
Giving it away effectively and profitably
Use multiple channels and formats. For instance, give away information on your blog, in articles posted on other sites, in free giveaway ebooks, in audio teleclasses and excerpts. Get something in return when possible. Encourage blog visitors to sign up for blog updates via email. Put a subscription box to your newsletter on every page of your website (particularly where you post your newsletters, etc.) For bigger "chunks" of information like ebooks and audios, require that they sign up for your newsletter to get these freebies. In ebooks, make a link to your website prominent at the bottom of each page. Make the give-away process hands-free. Use an autoresponder to handle signups and instant download delivery for your giveaways. Once it's set up, it costs you no more to give away a thousand than it does the first ten.
Plus, potential customers get instant gratification. Leverage from one format to others. Write a blog post. Add more details and turn it into an article (to post on your site, use in your newsletter, and submit to other sites). Take a series of articles and turn them into an ebook. Engage someone to interview you about the content of your ebook and record it. Get help where possible and practical. You can hire a ghostwriter to write articles for you. Your VA can take existing articles and put them into an ebook format and set up the autoresponder and download capabilities. Recordings of classes and interviews don't need to be professionally done when given away for free; many bridge services offer recording capability.
So if your knowledge, skills and methods are your most valuable assets, why in the world would I suggest that you give it away as a marketing strategy?? Because giving away your expertise lays the foundation for multiple streams of income. Why this works:
Access to lots of free information is already available and potential customers expect to find it. Making your expertise available enables your *ideal* customers to find you -- among all the free information available, they need to hear it the way *you* say it. Having information that tells them what they need to do isn't the problem for most customers -- implementation is where they need help.
Once potential customers have found your free information, make it easy and enticing to sign up for your email list. Now you've laid the foundation to build a trust relationship, and can start offering them the help with implementation they so desperately need -- and will pay for.
Giving it away effectively and profitably
Use multiple channels and formats. For instance, give away information on your blog, in articles posted on other sites, in free giveaway ebooks, in audio teleclasses and excerpts. Get something in return when possible. Encourage blog visitors to sign up for blog updates via email. Put a subscription box to your newsletter on every page of your website (particularly where you post your newsletters, etc.) For bigger "chunks" of information like ebooks and audios, require that they sign up for your newsletter to get these freebies. In ebooks, make a link to your website prominent at the bottom of each page. Make the give-away process hands-free. Use an autoresponder to handle signups and instant download delivery for your giveaways. Once it's set up, it costs you no more to give away a thousand than it does the first ten.
Plus, potential customers get instant gratification. Leverage from one format to others. Write a blog post. Add more details and turn it into an article (to post on your site, use in your newsletter, and submit to other sites). Take a series of articles and turn them into an ebook. Engage someone to interview you about the content of your ebook and record it. Get help where possible and practical. You can hire a ghostwriter to write articles for you. Your VA can take existing articles and put them into an ebook format and set up the autoresponder and download capabilities. Recordings of classes and interviews don't need to be professionally done when given away for free; many bridge services offer recording capability.
Fear Of Public Speaking: 10 Steps To Know
There's an often-quoted statistic that the fear of public speaking is right up there with the fear of death as the two events people most fear in their lives. However, as a business owner, I can guarantee you that public speaking is a phenomenal way to grow your business, so if it's an activity that scares you, you need to take the bull by the horns and start working past that fear. As somewhat an introvert, public speaking isn't something that comes naturally to me, although I'm told I'm good at it. It's been quite a learning process, and I've had as many failures as successes. My best learning experiences have come through the process of finding the courage to just do it and learn along the way.
If you're a self-employed service professional, you work in a time-based economy. You have only so many hours in the day to work directly with your clients. Speaking to groups gives you the opportunity to reach out and touch and impact others who might otherwise never cross your path and for you to get them into your marketing funnel so that they can begin to get to know, like and respect you. Once they're in your marketing funnel, and if you provide a solution that solves a problem that they have, they'll ultimately hire you.
Here are ten steps I recommend to get you into action to use public speaking to fill your professional practice:
1. Pick 3 topics on which you can present a 20 minute - 60 minute speech. These should be topics on which you love to speak and will readily showcase your expertise to your audience. The topics also need to be ones that speak to your target market's pain and provides a solution for a problem that they're having.
2. For each presentation, write a 2 - 3 sentence description of that provides a brief overview of your content. To add some meat to the description, create a benefits statement for each presentation and what they'll learn or get out of your talk. Remember, your audience will always be asking the same question, "WIIFM", or "What's In It For Me?", so make your description so compelling that they think, "Hey, I've got to hear that!"
3. Have a professional photo made, and create a 3-6 sentence introductory bio of yourself. Many bios sound the same and are pretty boring, so on my website, I decided to tell something of a story about myself to make my bio a bit different. Let your personality shine in your bio.
4. With your topics, bio, and photo in hand, you can now put together in MS Word a simple speaker one-sheet that tells a prospective association program chair everything s/he would need to know about you. If you have a list of audiences to whom you've spoken previously, you will want to list some of those under the heading "Satisfied Clients", and spread 2 - 3 testimonials from other speaking gigs throughout the sheet. In order to get ideas for layouts of the one sheet, visit the National Speakers Association, www.nsapseaker.org, and view the speaker one sheets of other speakers to jumpstart your creativity.
5. Create a speaking link on your website and have the presentations you've outlined available on your site, as well as your speaker one sheet, and a separate link with your photo and bio. Many association program chairs will want to "check you out" online, even though you're offering to speak to them free of charge, so give them the opportunity to read all about your speaking topics on your website.
6. Now you need to find audiences filled with your target market. To start locally, approach the program chairs of professional associations to which you already belong and see if you can get on their speaking schedule. Your local library or Chamber of Commerce may have a current list of professional associations in your area which you can also approach. Other sources for finding speaking gigs include the American Society of Association Executives. On the website, click Directories on the left hand links column, and then Associations, and then select Gateway to Associations. Once you're in the Gateway, you can look up associations by keyword or by location. A second place to locate associations is Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations. This multi-volume encyclopedia is present in the reference section of all major libraries.
7. You (or your Virtual Assistant) will then need to call these associations and get the name and contact info of the program chair. Some program chairs will want to talk to you right away regarding your speaking topics, so be prepared to have that conversation on the fly. Being able to send them to your website to read more about the topics is also helpful. Others will want you to send information, so you'll need to draft an introductory letter that you can snail mail or email along with your speaker one-sheet.
8. Once you've got a speaking engagement, ask the program chair some questions about the audience so that you can better tailor the speech to fit their needs. I learn best through hearing stories, so as I'm asking questions about the audience, I'm going through my own list of illustrative stories I've told to see which ones might best match my audience's needs. Remember that your audience wants a full experience of you as well as the information that you're providing, so be sure and inject alot of your personality and wit and humor into your speech.
9. Before your speech, determine how you want to get audience members into your marketing funnel. Do you want them to sign up for a complimentary consultation on the spot? If so, bring your calendar or a sign-up sheet. Do you want to get them on your mailing list? Give away something at the end of your presentation that is compelling enough for them to part with a business card or to write down their contact info to enter the drawing. If your goal is to get them on your email newsletter list, be sure and get their email address. If you use direct mail, you'll want to get their physical mailing address.
10. The day of your presentation, just relax and have fun! This may be the hardest of any of the steps outlined here, but being authentic and being yourself will get you in the good graces of most of your audience, despite what you might say (or forget to say!). Think of your presentation as the beginning of a great relationship that you're establishing, and leave your audience feeling good about themselves and about you.
Try and book 2-3 speaking engagements per month, and soon you'll become the "go-to" expert in your industry!
If you're a self-employed service professional, you work in a time-based economy. You have only so many hours in the day to work directly with your clients. Speaking to groups gives you the opportunity to reach out and touch and impact others who might otherwise never cross your path and for you to get them into your marketing funnel so that they can begin to get to know, like and respect you. Once they're in your marketing funnel, and if you provide a solution that solves a problem that they have, they'll ultimately hire you.
Here are ten steps I recommend to get you into action to use public speaking to fill your professional practice:
1. Pick 3 topics on which you can present a 20 minute - 60 minute speech. These should be topics on which you love to speak and will readily showcase your expertise to your audience. The topics also need to be ones that speak to your target market's pain and provides a solution for a problem that they're having.
2. For each presentation, write a 2 - 3 sentence description of that provides a brief overview of your content. To add some meat to the description, create a benefits statement for each presentation and what they'll learn or get out of your talk. Remember, your audience will always be asking the same question, "WIIFM", or "What's In It For Me?", so make your description so compelling that they think, "Hey, I've got to hear that!"
3. Have a professional photo made, and create a 3-6 sentence introductory bio of yourself. Many bios sound the same and are pretty boring, so on my website, I decided to tell something of a story about myself to make my bio a bit different. Let your personality shine in your bio.
4. With your topics, bio, and photo in hand, you can now put together in MS Word a simple speaker one-sheet that tells a prospective association program chair everything s/he would need to know about you. If you have a list of audiences to whom you've spoken previously, you will want to list some of those under the heading "Satisfied Clients", and spread 2 - 3 testimonials from other speaking gigs throughout the sheet. In order to get ideas for layouts of the one sheet, visit the National Speakers Association, www.nsapseaker.org, and view the speaker one sheets of other speakers to jumpstart your creativity.
5. Create a speaking link on your website and have the presentations you've outlined available on your site, as well as your speaker one sheet, and a separate link with your photo and bio. Many association program chairs will want to "check you out" online, even though you're offering to speak to them free of charge, so give them the opportunity to read all about your speaking topics on your website.
6. Now you need to find audiences filled with your target market. To start locally, approach the program chairs of professional associations to which you already belong and see if you can get on their speaking schedule. Your local library or Chamber of Commerce may have a current list of professional associations in your area which you can also approach. Other sources for finding speaking gigs include the American Society of Association Executives. On the website, click Directories on the left hand links column, and then Associations, and then select Gateway to Associations. Once you're in the Gateway, you can look up associations by keyword or by location. A second place to locate associations is Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations. This multi-volume encyclopedia is present in the reference section of all major libraries.
7. You (or your Virtual Assistant) will then need to call these associations and get the name and contact info of the program chair. Some program chairs will want to talk to you right away regarding your speaking topics, so be prepared to have that conversation on the fly. Being able to send them to your website to read more about the topics is also helpful. Others will want you to send information, so you'll need to draft an introductory letter that you can snail mail or email along with your speaker one-sheet.
8. Once you've got a speaking engagement, ask the program chair some questions about the audience so that you can better tailor the speech to fit their needs. I learn best through hearing stories, so as I'm asking questions about the audience, I'm going through my own list of illustrative stories I've told to see which ones might best match my audience's needs. Remember that your audience wants a full experience of you as well as the information that you're providing, so be sure and inject alot of your personality and wit and humor into your speech.
9. Before your speech, determine how you want to get audience members into your marketing funnel. Do you want them to sign up for a complimentary consultation on the spot? If so, bring your calendar or a sign-up sheet. Do you want to get them on your mailing list? Give away something at the end of your presentation that is compelling enough for them to part with a business card or to write down their contact info to enter the drawing. If your goal is to get them on your email newsletter list, be sure and get their email address. If you use direct mail, you'll want to get their physical mailing address.
10. The day of your presentation, just relax and have fun! This may be the hardest of any of the steps outlined here, but being authentic and being yourself will get you in the good graces of most of your audience, despite what you might say (or forget to say!). Think of your presentation as the beginning of a great relationship that you're establishing, and leave your audience feeling good about themselves and about you.
Try and book 2-3 speaking engagements per month, and soon you'll become the "go-to" expert in your industry!
Steps To Successful Relationship Marketing!
Take a close look at some of your neighborhood service firms to see how well they're prospering. Doubtless everyone has cut back in the last year or two --- that's just common sense. But there might be another reason why some companies are surviving while others shrink.
In good times and bad, savvy business people have but one focus --- the customer. They know it's much more cost-effective to sell more services to an existing client than to fund new customer acquisition. Their client list is their most valuable asset, but more than that, they develop long-lasting relationships by keeping in touch -- in good times and bad.
Relationship marketing delivers many benefits to a design firm, big or small. Slowly but surely, as you build your client and prospect list, you'll be able to reduce marketing expenses, build referrals, and grow your business in step with your clients' needs.
1. Change your Perspective from "Here's what I do" to "What do you need?"
The cornerstone of successful relationships is to discover precisely what your clients need and want.
Your clients say they need a Website. But what they mean is they need to increase sales revenue. You can develop the right kind of site to do that, but only if you understand your client's basic needs. You find those out by asking questions: lots and lots of questions!
2. Recognize your Vulnerability
In the midst of a project, you might be in touch with your client several times a week. But it's the time between projects that is crucial to relationship-building. Once the work is done, you drop out of that enviable top-of-mind awareness position. Over time, your client isn't as likely to think of you as their first port of call for a solution to their problem. This is when you're most vulnerable to replacement by a competitor.
Fortunately, an affordable solution can help you retain those clients you worked so hard to acquire.
3. Keep in touch
It's such a simple concept, but keeping in touch often sinks to the bottom of the 'to do' list. The single easiest way to keep in touch is to publish an email newsletter. Ask clients to subscribe and insert a subscription box on your site to capture email addresses of prospects who like the look of what you're doing.
The secret to a good newsletter is to avoid blatant self-promotion, and instead offer valuable information to your subscribers. With their permission, you have the opportunity to drop into their email boxes every month with news, tips, case-studies, FAQs, and other relevant info that subtly promotes your services, reinforces your brand, educates your clients, and builds trust.
4. Position Yourself as an Expert
So many Web designer sites are elegant portfolios, and while they look great, they don't say anything.
Words matter. Prospective clients are looking for more than thumbnail images of sites you've built. Your job is to tell them how you can meet their needs. Your Website is the perfect place to start, but the focus must be on the client, not on you.
Include white papers on design issues, special reports, case-studies, and links to other resources that will educate your clients on the inner workings of design. Be careful to avoid jargon, overly technical concepts and acronyms. If you're publishing an email newsletter, use it to introduce this new content and bring subscribers back to your site.
When you are perceived as an expert, you become attractive to prospects who use the Web to research. They see you as someone who has answers to their questions, and who can help solve their problems. Not only that, the added site content should also improve your search engine rankings.
5. Grow to Meet Client Needs
Websites are hardly stand-alone entities that need an occasional tweak. For most businesses, they're but one tool amidst many that are used to build brand, inease revenues or minimize costs. And by offering more tools that help your clients reach their goals, you become more valuable. Build affiliations or strategic relationships with copywriters, photographers, search engine marketers, and other specialists whose talents will benefit your clients.
The Payoff
The benefits of a relationship marketing approach go both ways. Your client views you as a valuable consultant, rather than a cost center. Your potential for increased revenues and a long-lasting relationship is real.
There's payoff for you, too, including reduced marketing expenses measured in both time and money. If you can retain more clients for longer periods, you'll trim costly space advertising and other marketing costs.
If you ask, you'll get more referrals from your clients. Priceless word-of-mouth endorsements from satisfied customers will result in new business which magically walks in the door.
You won't even have to request client testimonials. You do include several on your Website... right? Start by recognizing when you receive a spontaneous testimonial, whether it's in an email, thank-you letter, or a conversation. Ask your client if you may use his words and name in your brochure and on your site, with a link to his business. Most often, the answer is yes. Testimonials are a critical piece of successful service marketing and worth their weight in whatever precious metal you value.
Case-studies will be a breeze and add a powerful marketing tool - perfect for your Website or for inclusion in printed marketing materials. Follow a 'situation -- problem -- solution -- benefits' flow to highlight how you solved the client's problem, stressing the benefits the client now enjoys as a result of your work. Use a handful of client case studies in industries you're targeting for new business development. Examples of "just like me" situations help prospective clients understand exactly how useful your services are.
Relationship-focused marketing isn't something that will happen overnight. It requires a change in thinking and some discipline along the way. Your email newsletter won't do much good unless you publish it regularly and the content is valued by your subscribers. But the rewards can be significant. And the truth is that no matter how wonderful you are, clients go away. Their businesses close down, change focus, or are sold.
But if your objective is to build relationships instead of Websites, you'll be one of the designers in business for the long run.
In good times and bad, savvy business people have but one focus --- the customer. They know it's much more cost-effective to sell more services to an existing client than to fund new customer acquisition. Their client list is their most valuable asset, but more than that, they develop long-lasting relationships by keeping in touch -- in good times and bad.
Relationship marketing delivers many benefits to a design firm, big or small. Slowly but surely, as you build your client and prospect list, you'll be able to reduce marketing expenses, build referrals, and grow your business in step with your clients' needs.
1. Change your Perspective from "Here's what I do" to "What do you need?"
The cornerstone of successful relationships is to discover precisely what your clients need and want.
Your clients say they need a Website. But what they mean is they need to increase sales revenue. You can develop the right kind of site to do that, but only if you understand your client's basic needs. You find those out by asking questions: lots and lots of questions!
2. Recognize your Vulnerability
In the midst of a project, you might be in touch with your client several times a week. But it's the time between projects that is crucial to relationship-building. Once the work is done, you drop out of that enviable top-of-mind awareness position. Over time, your client isn't as likely to think of you as their first port of call for a solution to their problem. This is when you're most vulnerable to replacement by a competitor.
Fortunately, an affordable solution can help you retain those clients you worked so hard to acquire.
3. Keep in touch
It's such a simple concept, but keeping in touch often sinks to the bottom of the 'to do' list. The single easiest way to keep in touch is to publish an email newsletter. Ask clients to subscribe and insert a subscription box on your site to capture email addresses of prospects who like the look of what you're doing.
The secret to a good newsletter is to avoid blatant self-promotion, and instead offer valuable information to your subscribers. With their permission, you have the opportunity to drop into their email boxes every month with news, tips, case-studies, FAQs, and other relevant info that subtly promotes your services, reinforces your brand, educates your clients, and builds trust.
4. Position Yourself as an Expert
So many Web designer sites are elegant portfolios, and while they look great, they don't say anything.
Words matter. Prospective clients are looking for more than thumbnail images of sites you've built. Your job is to tell them how you can meet their needs. Your Website is the perfect place to start, but the focus must be on the client, not on you.
Include white papers on design issues, special reports, case-studies, and links to other resources that will educate your clients on the inner workings of design. Be careful to avoid jargon, overly technical concepts and acronyms. If you're publishing an email newsletter, use it to introduce this new content and bring subscribers back to your site.
When you are perceived as an expert, you become attractive to prospects who use the Web to research. They see you as someone who has answers to their questions, and who can help solve their problems. Not only that, the added site content should also improve your search engine rankings.
5. Grow to Meet Client Needs
Websites are hardly stand-alone entities that need an occasional tweak. For most businesses, they're but one tool amidst many that are used to build brand, inease revenues or minimize costs. And by offering more tools that help your clients reach their goals, you become more valuable. Build affiliations or strategic relationships with copywriters, photographers, search engine marketers, and other specialists whose talents will benefit your clients.
The Payoff
The benefits of a relationship marketing approach go both ways. Your client views you as a valuable consultant, rather than a cost center. Your potential for increased revenues and a long-lasting relationship is real.
There's payoff for you, too, including reduced marketing expenses measured in both time and money. If you can retain more clients for longer periods, you'll trim costly space advertising and other marketing costs.
If you ask, you'll get more referrals from your clients. Priceless word-of-mouth endorsements from satisfied customers will result in new business which magically walks in the door.
You won't even have to request client testimonials. You do include several on your Website... right? Start by recognizing when you receive a spontaneous testimonial, whether it's in an email, thank-you letter, or a conversation. Ask your client if you may use his words and name in your brochure and on your site, with a link to his business. Most often, the answer is yes. Testimonials are a critical piece of successful service marketing and worth their weight in whatever precious metal you value.
Case-studies will be a breeze and add a powerful marketing tool - perfect for your Website or for inclusion in printed marketing materials. Follow a 'situation -- problem -- solution -- benefits' flow to highlight how you solved the client's problem, stressing the benefits the client now enjoys as a result of your work. Use a handful of client case studies in industries you're targeting for new business development. Examples of "just like me" situations help prospective clients understand exactly how useful your services are.
Relationship-focused marketing isn't something that will happen overnight. It requires a change in thinking and some discipline along the way. Your email newsletter won't do much good unless you publish it regularly and the content is valued by your subscribers. But the rewards can be significant. And the truth is that no matter how wonderful you are, clients go away. Their businesses close down, change focus, or are sold.
But if your objective is to build relationships instead of Websites, you'll be one of the designers in business for the long run.
Brand-Based Marketing
At its core, brand-based marketing emphasizes the value of a specific brand, branded product or service. Brand marketing includes a range of terms and concepts, including brand awareness, brand recognition, brand image, brand equity, name awareness, name recognition, etc.
In the past, the primary goal of brand marketing was to create awareness and recall for the brand. The difference between awareness and recall can be best understood as awareness being the desired customer's ability to remember having heard of the brand if the brand is identified, whereas recall is the ability of a desired customer to name your brand when the brand category (industry, niche, product, service) is identified generically.
Over recent decades, brand advertisers have increasingly realized that brand awareness and recall does not necessarily translate into sales and true brand equity. For that value to be established in the information age of the 21st Century, a brand must go beyond and deeper than awareness or recall. Today's successful brands must resonate with their audiences. Brand resonance is the relationship and level of identification of the customer with a brand.
Healthcare practices tend to prefer this method of marketing because it focuses on the positive image and qualities of the practice and the practitioners. While brand-based marketing has obvious benefit and appeal, it also presents some limitations and challenges for most private practices.
Brand-based marketing challenges for private practices
Brand-based marketing requires massive amounts of exposure and repetition to establish and maintain awareness, recall and resonance with the desired audience. Those massive amounts of exposure and repetition usually translate into equally massive and consistent volume of marketing dollars in the practice marketing budgets.
Most private practices (like other small businesses) have limited budget resources for marketing - particularly by comparison to the large corporations that commonly use this method of marketing. This limitation represents a significant challenge to success in utilizing exclusively brand-based marketing methods.
The other major challenge is time required to develop brand equity through increased recognition, recall and resonance.
Consumers today are besieged and inundated with literally thousands of marketing and advertising messages every single day. In order to have any chance to break through the "clutter" of informational and promotional "noise" to achieve awareness, recall and resonance, the marketing effort must be consistent and constant. Even so, it takes time (and money) to achieve results, and it is difficult (if not impossible) to predict how much time it will take to get measurable results with exclusively brand-building strategies and tactics.
In the past, the primary goal of brand marketing was to create awareness and recall for the brand. The difference between awareness and recall can be best understood as awareness being the desired customer's ability to remember having heard of the brand if the brand is identified, whereas recall is the ability of a desired customer to name your brand when the brand category (industry, niche, product, service) is identified generically.
Over recent decades, brand advertisers have increasingly realized that brand awareness and recall does not necessarily translate into sales and true brand equity. For that value to be established in the information age of the 21st Century, a brand must go beyond and deeper than awareness or recall. Today's successful brands must resonate with their audiences. Brand resonance is the relationship and level of identification of the customer with a brand.
Healthcare practices tend to prefer this method of marketing because it focuses on the positive image and qualities of the practice and the practitioners. While brand-based marketing has obvious benefit and appeal, it also presents some limitations and challenges for most private practices.
Brand-based marketing challenges for private practices
Brand-based marketing requires massive amounts of exposure and repetition to establish and maintain awareness, recall and resonance with the desired audience. Those massive amounts of exposure and repetition usually translate into equally massive and consistent volume of marketing dollars in the practice marketing budgets.
Most private practices (like other small businesses) have limited budget resources for marketing - particularly by comparison to the large corporations that commonly use this method of marketing. This limitation represents a significant challenge to success in utilizing exclusively brand-based marketing methods.
The other major challenge is time required to develop brand equity through increased recognition, recall and resonance.
Consumers today are besieged and inundated with literally thousands of marketing and advertising messages every single day. In order to have any chance to break through the "clutter" of informational and promotional "noise" to achieve awareness, recall and resonance, the marketing effort must be consistent and constant. Even so, it takes time (and money) to achieve results, and it is difficult (if not impossible) to predict how much time it will take to get measurable results with exclusively brand-building strategies and tactics.
Key Marketing Tips For 2010
Now that it’s a new year and decade, it’s time to wean the marketing group away from their delusions of strategic grandeur. Here’s a simple, six-step program to ensure that your company’s marketing is successful and productive in 2010:
STEP #1: Know What Marketing Means To Your Business. If your company’s marketers think that they’re doing something “strategic”, they’re wasting money. Marketing is a relational function now whose sole purpose is to build and enhance relationships with potential and current clients. In a thriving marketing group, all activities serve the goal of building business and profit share.
STEP #2: Create A Strong Marketing Strategy. In most companies, there isn't a strong strategic marketing campaign that can be implemented with a systematic approach. This is very much needed in order to generate revenue within your company. Marketing has to be faced head on in order to survice in this economy, because there are so many businesses that have folded, your clients have to know that you are still in business.
STEP #3: Know Who Is Your Target Client. A sales lead should identify a decision-maker inside a company that’s part of your target market and provide enough information about the decision-maker, and the decision-maker’s philosophy and techniques on how they run their business. Know your client inside and out!
STEP #4. Create Systems. Systems creation should never be an ad-hoc improvisation based on whatever product you want to sell today. Systems creation must be part of an integrated process that constantly creates leads and has a measurable effect on sales effectiveness.
STEP #5: Responsible Sales Force. Once the sales team has agreed that a lead is qualified, they MUST be made 100 percent accountable for closing that lead through strategies that your specific target audience will be engaged. Know how your client would like to receive your marketing messages and how you can consistently create loyalty though them.
STEP #6: Marketing ROI. Monitor your strategic activities, find out which ones result in leads that close, and then tune the demand creation process in order to constantly improve the quality of the leads. Make sales and marketing jointly accountable for closing deals.
STEP #1: Know What Marketing Means To Your Business. If your company’s marketers think that they’re doing something “strategic”, they’re wasting money. Marketing is a relational function now whose sole purpose is to build and enhance relationships with potential and current clients. In a thriving marketing group, all activities serve the goal of building business and profit share.
STEP #2: Create A Strong Marketing Strategy. In most companies, there isn't a strong strategic marketing campaign that can be implemented with a systematic approach. This is very much needed in order to generate revenue within your company. Marketing has to be faced head on in order to survice in this economy, because there are so many businesses that have folded, your clients have to know that you are still in business.
STEP #3: Know Who Is Your Target Client. A sales lead should identify a decision-maker inside a company that’s part of your target market and provide enough information about the decision-maker, and the decision-maker’s philosophy and techniques on how they run their business. Know your client inside and out!
STEP #4. Create Systems. Systems creation should never be an ad-hoc improvisation based on whatever product you want to sell today. Systems creation must be part of an integrated process that constantly creates leads and has a measurable effect on sales effectiveness.
STEP #5: Responsible Sales Force. Once the sales team has agreed that a lead is qualified, they MUST be made 100 percent accountable for closing that lead through strategies that your specific target audience will be engaged. Know how your client would like to receive your marketing messages and how you can consistently create loyalty though them.
STEP #6: Marketing ROI. Monitor your strategic activities, find out which ones result in leads that close, and then tune the demand creation process in order to constantly improve the quality of the leads. Make sales and marketing jointly accountable for closing deals.
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