Breakthrough Growth

Local Marketing: 10 Easy Ways to Sell More to Your Neighbours

2007-01-16T22:20:00.000Z

Have a business that's purely local, such as a hair salon or dry cleaners? Or simply want to beef up your client roster with more folks from your local area?

Here are 10 simple solutions to your local marketing challenges ...

1. Make sure that your website specifically targets your local market. People are increasingly heading online to find local vendors. Make sure to broadcast your site's URL to all of your prospects and clients, and ask your web designer to ensure that the website is search-engine friendly for people seeking information about vendors in your city.

You might also investigate pay-per-click search engines such as Yahoo! and CitySearch, which offer targeted marketing to people in your local area.

2. Network. I know that the odds are good that you might consider the term "networking" to be almost as bad as a four-letter word, but I assure you that there are ways to meet other businesspeople in town that won't make you feel uncomfortable. Most of us have access to local organizations that are full of nice people just like you who simply want to meet other like-minded people.

The local Chamber of Commerce and other industry-specific organizations in your area are a good starting point. Just make sure not to just go to meetings -- make an effort to get to know people or even volunteer for a leadership position where you can show off your responsibility, reliability and talent.

3. Partner with other small businesses catering to the same group of prospects. This seemingly simplistic tactic works for both service- and product-based businesses very successfully.

If, for example, you are a graphic designer and are seeking additional design work, you will benefit from getting to know a local copywriter or printer who knows plenty of prospects who might need your services. Alternatively, come up with a plan that sells quantities of your wares to local businesses as gifts/rewards for their clients and employees. Either way, it means more business!

4. Give talks at local organization meetings. If you enjoy public speaking, seek out associations full of your target prospects and volunteer to give speeches for free in exchange for the chance to market yourself and your services/products.

5. Send direct mailings to local prospects, and make a quick phone call to each prospect a few days later. The beauty of local prospects is the fact that you can afford to call your prospects for free as a way of following up.

6. Write articles on your area of expertise for the local paper, organization newsletters or your local business rag. Here in the Los Angeles area, for example, there are quite a few possibilities to choose from in the immediate area, and looking beyond what's in close proximity, there are dozens of others in Orange County, Ventura County and beyond.

7. Don't underestimate the power of a good Yellow Pages ad. Local businesses still look in the phone book to find sources of assistance for many types of their needs. The key in all this is to use the space in your ad wisely -- include more copy than your competitors and share insights in that copy about how to select a (Fill in the blank) and give them reasons to get to know you.

8. Hold a contest and get local press for it. Could your business benefit from the added attention of a contest? Get creative and go for it!

In all of these suggestions, I've focused on how you can find new clients, but don't forget: One of the very best ways to make more profits is to get your current clients to spend more on each purchase and/or get them to come back to you more often.

With that in mind:

9. Make sure to educate your current clients about what you do. Regardless of how many clients you have, you need something in place to keep them up to date on what you and your business are capable of.

Recently a listmate on a discussion group I participate in mentioned that she lost business to another vendor because her client didn't know that she could provide that particular service. How much business are you losing because your local clients don't have a clue what you do?

10. Set up a loyalty program designed to keep your current clients coming back for more. Depending on your business, you might want to send out coupons, freebies or even simply send out an update of the types of products/services you offer.

The good thing about most of these methods is their low cost. Regardless of your business's location, make sure to study your local competitors' marketing methods and see what works. Then give it your own personal twist and reap the benefits.

Are you a coach, consultant or other solo service professional who's struggling to grow your business? Find out how you can attract more clients more easily with Jennifer McCay’s FREE audio course and FREE weekly small business marketing lessons at http://AvenueEast.com

What Is A Marketing Initiative?

2006-11-29T06:01:00.000Z

Marketing is not as simple as many may lead you to believe. In order for your business to be effective, you need to understand what is involved in promoting what you are offering in terms of products and services. That is where a good marketing initiative comes in to play. A marketing initiative is essentially anything that is clearly defined as a marketing effort. Simple, isn't it? It is basically anything specific in your marketing plan. So what types of things are considered marketing initiatives? Here are a few examples that may help you.

For larger companies, a marketing initiative can be a theme. For instance, a set of commercials that use a specific character or funny situation over and over may be considered a marketing initiative. This, though, would certainly be more common with large businesses. An example of this is the Geiko commercials that feature the cute talking gekko. The initiative is to associate their car insurance services and products with a character that sticks in your head. Being cute is an added advantage. This is why many commercials use cute, cuddly characters such as babies and puppies etc.

Another example of a marketing initiative is undertaking a certain method relentlessly. Sometimes you may wish to focus your efforts solely on one method of marketing. If, for instance, you decide to implement email marketing with great fervor, then you can call that your email marketing initiative. You will outline a plan very specific to that initiative. And you will carry it out. Focusing your efforts into a sole initiative demands that you understand it intimately. You better know what you are doing if that's the ONLY initiative you've got. In addition you also need to have a backup plan in case your initiative does not come through for you as you hoped. Often, when you put all your eggs in one basket, you better have more eggs!

Another type of marketing initiative you may invoke is a large scale shift in what you are doing. If you are going away from traditional marketing to exclusively use the internet that is a whole new marketing initiative you are putting in place. Though not as specific as other examples, it is certainly something that directly affects the marketing of your company. These types of initiatives are usually done parallely with your existing marketing initiatives. The old initiatives are slowly phased out as the new one takes over.

A marketing initiative can also be as simple as a shift in an idea. You can have a new marketing initiative that simply changes the way you promote your company, or more specifically what about the company you are trying to promote. A shift in positioning is a good example.

Marketing initiative is a broad term that is used often. However, if you understand what it is you will be more able to effectively put an initiative in place if you need to. Changing or implementing an initiative is a big part of the promotion of your business. So it's important that you understand what it means in the first place.

Khemal Dole owns and operates
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experts find their perfect Work At Home job. Visit
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Business good, but you want GREAAT

2006-11-29T04:07:00.000Z

Businesses can do well without planning, many do. However,
to become a high performing organization, to grow rapidly,
a company really needs a planning and monitoring process.
Got yours? I sure do have mine!

Back in 2000 a major shift in my business occurred when I
came across the One Page Business Plan (R) process. Now,
don't let the simplicity of the name fool you. While the
process helps you create a business and marketing plan -
its much more.

. Help you diagnosis how every area of your business is
doing.
. Clarify your thinking and focus on the elements that are
the most critical to your success.
. Test your ideas without having to put large amounts of
cash at risk.
. Help you to boost the profits and performance of your
small company or department.
. Be ready to be used over and over again.

If you're on a budget, as many new business owners are, you
can purchase the workbook that includes the Entrepreneur
Toolkit CD (for PC and MAC use) at your favorite bookstore,
although it's easier to find online. It includes
systematic, practical, interactive exercises and templates,
worksheets, powerful sales calculators, mini-sales budgets,
one page performance scorecards, sample plans, and bonus
tools! All created in programs you usually have on your
computer -- MS Excel and Word files.

If you're a more seasoned business owner, department
manager or executive, you can sit down at your PC to create
your plan in courseware called Point, Click, Plan. Your
solid draft will be complete in 1-2 hours.

Together with reading the E-myth Revisited, by Michael
Gerber, creating a business plan are "mandatory to do's"
for all business owners. Why? because the E-myth shows you
what happens when you don't have a plan and systems and how
much better off you'll be with them. And the One-Page
Business Plan processR helps you simply create your plans
and systems to monitor your progress. Creating a plan now,
will save you hours upon hours worth of your valuable time
and will help you make fewer large and costly mistakes.

Isn't that what you need as a business owner? Systems that
work and more time to do what you're passionate about?
Below are 10 key elements of any process. Most are taken
from the One-Page Business PlanR workbook, by Jim Horan.

1. It helps you choose opportunities more wisely and waste
less time because you have a plan in place.
2. A single page can contain all the elements you need to
tell your employees, board of directors, potential partners
or banker where you are taking your business and how you
are going to get there.
3. The most important reason to have a business plan is to
clarify your thinking, regardless of the size of your
company.
4. Knowing where you're going creates hope and enthusiasm
about the future.
5. It facilitates creating and analytical thinking, problem
solving, communication, and teamwork.
6. It also brings out procrastination, frustration,
differences of opinions and possibly anger.
7. Somehow writing initiates the transformation from idea
to reality.
8. Writing allows others to participate in your dream and
give you feedback.
9. You review it each day to create the day's priorities
and make decisions about your business.
10. The Entrepreneur CD, which comes with the book,
including scorecards, templates, budgets, and bonus tools
to help keep you on track!

C2006 A former Wall Street trader, Maria Marsala is a
nationally known business and marketing strategist,
trainer, author and owner of Elevating Your Business.
Maria helps women involved in financial services, as
business owners, independent agents, branch managers and
executive to boost profits, productivity and have more
playtime - faster! Subscribe to Powerful Business
Strategies Ezine to receive your free one-page business and
marketing plan audio in your Welcome Note Visit
http://www.ElevatingYourBusiness.com

Marketing That Grabs - Uncover This Hot Secret

2006-11-28T22:17:00.000Z

Boost your marketing with this secret. It is so effective, it

reaches out and grabs your would-be buyer. It doesn’t matter

what your product is. This secret works with everything.

To make it even more valuable, practically nobody uses it. That

is why it's still a secret. What is it?

It is a face.

Everyone loves to see a face. Even your pets like seeing your

face. Look at all the ways in which people are attracted to

faces. A few decades ago, there was the Potato Head craze.

Later, the Pet Rock took us by storm.

People wear the face of favorite cartoon characters as charms

or on tie clips. We are used to receiving “smilies” in Emails

and dashing off a smiley face on a note we write.

Here are 5 ways you can use a face to sell your product:

1) If you have a Web site, include snapshot of yourself. It

builds instant trust. Buying and selling is a personal matter

and customers like to feel they are dealing one-on-one with a

real person.

2) Place a picture of a person on your product. It can be on a

book cover or on packaging. Researchers discovered that viewers

are most attracted by a face that is looking straight at them –

eye to eye.

3) For an advertising piece, such as a mailer or a postcard, a

pet’s face is very effective. It can be used for any type of

product – not just pet products.

4) Testimonials are powerful buying triggers. Would-be buyers

believe others who have already bought. Make your testimonials

even stronger with a picture of the testimonial giver.

5) A child’s face is a winner. A few days ago, I saw a man

selling a filtration system on television. He held a little boy

on his lap as he spoke. Without mentioning the child, he spoke

of the benefits of his filters. Seeing that little boy’s face,

you knew you needed that filter to protect your own children.

Bottom line - put a face on your product as soon as you can.

Your marketing will come alive and good things will happen.

About The Author: Siriol Jameson helps you make m0ney from

home. Choose from over 40 guaranteed profitable businesses and

make m0ney forever. Visit

http://www.easy-home-businesses.com/work-from-home-businesses.html

Subscrobe to Siriol's f^re.e newsletter:

http://www.easy-home-buinsesses.com/newsletter.html

The Secret to Successful Marketing is in the System

2006-11-22T17:25:00.000Z

Copyright © 2006 Michele Hanson-O’Reggio

In marketing professional services, entrepreneurs rarely fail due to lack of information about effective sales and marketing techniques. They fail because they don't use the information that is right at their fingertips. If any or all of these obstacles have stopped you in your tracks, you are not alone - How do I put it all together? What should I do and in what order? Where should I begin? How can you stay motivated? Unless you have a system in place, you will be spinning your wheels.

Any business can be broken down into two parts - Vision (what do you want) & Systems (how will you get it). Entrepreneurs are usually challenged by the "How will you get it" part and skip this crucial step. Dr. Edwards Deming, a statistician who revolutionized American business practices, tells us that 97% of all failure is due to the SYSTEM and not the person.

Having a system that enables you to choose a set of simple, effective things to do consistently is the magic formula for professional services. A system will provide you with both structure and the tools you need to turn your marketing goals and ideas in to productive action to achieve marketing success.

According to CJ Hayden, a Business Coach, marketing and sales operates on a predictable cycle, "The Universal Marketing Cycle". This cycle has four separate stages: filling the pipeline (prospects, contacts, leads, referrals), following up, getting presentations and closing sales. The activities that take place within each stage of the cycle will vary depending on your business, but the cycle is the same for everyone. Knowing how this cycle works will enable you to determine exactly where to focus more time and energy in your marketing to achieve marketing success.

There's an old saying in sales and marketing of professional services: "People do business with people they know, like, and trust". Without having at least one of these factors in place, getting and keeping business will be an almost impossible task. So the key to your marketing success is to implement marketing strategies that will build and nurture your relationships with prospects and clients.

A crucial strategy to implement is following up with prospects. According to the market research firm Yankelovich Inc., the average American sees or hears up to 5,000 marketing messages a day. How will you get others to remember you? Statistics say that you have to contact a prospect approx 7-9 times before they will remember you! This is an area that many entrepreneurs don't like to do or just don't do at all! Having an effective follow up system is a must for all entrepreneurs.

Do you have a system in place to achieve your marketing goals and to increase your marketing success? If not here 3 steps to get you started:

Step 1: Is there something in your way? Determine any resistance you might have so that you can stop letting it stop you. Are you a procrastinator? Do you struggle with managing your time? What are you afraid of? Be aware of any negative self-talk - it is one of the biggest obstacles you must overcome to achieve marketing success.

Step 2 : Commitment - It takes 21 days to form a habit. Commit to creating your system within a specific time frame. Get the support of a business buddy, action group or a business coach ( a professional who is trained in assisting people to set and achieve goals) to get perspective, and accountability that will increase your marketing success.

Step 3: Action - Get started. Determine which area of the marketing cycle you are stuck at - filling the pipeline (prospects, contacts, leads, referrals), following up, getting presentations or closing sales? Then decide which marketing strategies you will use and how you will implement them.

About The Author:

Michele O’Reggio helps entrepreneurs grow their
business and get more clients by delegating and using systems.
Claim your FR-EE copy of “The Five Secrets to Finding All the
Clients You’ll Ever Need” and learn about the GET CLIENTS NOW! TM system at http://www.IWantMoreClients.com

Article Source: thePhantomWriters Article Submission Service

The Reality of Multi Level Networking

2006-11-14T23:05:00.000Z

MLM or Multi Level Marketing offers loads of business opportunities for a business owner, distributor and a consumer. There have been many popular myths on MLM. Some of these myths include the potential to earn mega-dollars for little or no effort on the part of the distributor. This is far from the truth.

MLM as a multi level marketing system works well for business expansion. The chain of distributors gets the business in return for commissions. The consumers can get a better deal by buying at wholesale prices when they become distributors themselves.

The whole concept of MLM is based on the very basics of the term "business". Under the system of MLM, goods and services are distributed via various sublevels in the form of distributors and reach the end-user consumer via this chain of distributors. This system is providing extra income opportunities to thousand of distributors all around the world. Statistics reveal that in the 50 states in America and in over 100 countries world wide, the business model of MLM is successfully functional.

If you are a distributor and looking for a business opportunity using the MLM structure you may want to look into online MLM options.

To work effectively in an online MLM model, you just need to exercise a bit of caution before venturing into a program. This saves you from fraud which is prevalent in this business. Look into companies that have a proven track record. Companies that are debt free and that have been successful in using the MLM structure as their business model for a considerable period are good candidates to consider. Being part of a reputable company ensures your profits and potential loss are kept at minimal risk.

Keep in mind that this type of business is not for everyone. If you are a self-directed person who is full of enthusiasm, online MLM may be suitable for you. You will certainly be your own boss in this venture. The personal qualities needed to succeed in this business are similar to that of being an entrepreneur. The challenges of an MLM business are dynamic and a self directed person would thrive in such a business model.

Lastly and certainly not the least, this business allows you not only to work from home but also when travelling. You can easily do business using a laptop and an internet connection. If you are person on the go this could turn out to be a profitable venture as your potential to earn is related to the flexibility that the business model provides.

Make Copywriting Easy - Create A Marketing Swipe File

2006-11-14T22:27:00.000Z

Direct marketing's a tough way to make a living but if you can master certain skills it can be extremely lucrative. It takes on many different forms, some of which are easily translatable to the web.

Although the term may bring to mind door to door salesmen pushing their wares to housewives in robes and curlers, it also has roots in print ads such as classifieds and space ads and direct mail.

The internet has created a massive opportunity for the skilled direct marketer to thrive without doing the customary legwork and engaging in personal contact with their prospects, basically expanding on the concept of direct mail.

So what skills do you need to hone in order to succeed at direct marketing?

The top priority of anyone interested in making money on the internet should be their copywriting skills. This is simply putting your sales message into words.

Since the face to face encounter has been eliminated you need to be able to convey your pitch through the words on the pages that your prospects are reading.

A great way to polish your copywriting skills, even if you've never written a single word of ad copy before, is to create a swipe file. This is just a file of already successful ad campaigns.

Swipe files are incredibly useful tools. Every major player in direct marketing keeps a swipe file and for good reason. Everybody gets stuck for words and ideas at some point. When this happens it's good to have an example of past successes to go to and freshen your creative juices and get the words flowing again.

What should your file consist of?

You should gather any material that has spurred you to action, whether its purpose was to get you to buy something or just leave your name and email address. Copy the good stuff and study it. Realize what was in the ad that made you act on the offer.

Look for layout designs (bulleted lists are a big direct marketing tactic), action words, headlines and sub heads. You'll notice certain words popping up along with questions and statements that are all fairly alike but are tailored to specific products and services.

That's the key to a good swipe file. Gather a wide array of different styles and mold the message to your particular target audience. Study the material and write out many different versions of the same ad. Practice your art and perfect it.

A word of caution though. Never copy an ad word for word. That's plagiarism and it's illegal. Use your swipe file as an aid only, to sharpen your copywriting skills and make you better at direct marketing.

Local Radio - The Golden Nugget in Local Marketing

2006-11-14T22:19:00.000Z

How amazing would it be if you could tap into a fiercely loyal pocket of potential customers - a group of people that actually wanted to give you money? Incredible as it may sound, this is exactly what John discovered, purely by accident.

Radio advertising today is generally considered a poor investment. Besides the fact radio ads are an unwelcome interruption to the listener, the huge growth of "ad-free" satellite radio stations serving your market has grown dramatically and greatly diluted the audience base of local radio broadcast stations.

But, with that said, there is a nugget of gold in the radio market that most people do not know about.

This secret marketing "golden nugget" is Christian radio.

Yes, they have a smaller listener base than most regular radio stations. But if the most important thing to you is the number of real dollars coming into your cash register, then you will want to read this story.

John P. opened a new appliance and satellite dish store in a community of about 35,000 residents, in Northwestern Wisconsin. For his grand opening, he advertised on the main TV station in the area, the two highest rated radio stations, and in the local newspaper. As an after-thought, he purchased a few ad spots on a Christian radio station located in a community about 60 miles away.

John was a very analytical person, so he kept very close track of the results.

The TV ads pulled the highest number of visitors. The newspaper pulled in the second highest, and the two major radio stations came in third and fourth. The Christian station came in last in total volume of visitors. As far as his advertising spend, most of his money was spent with TV, his second highest investment was with the two main radio stations. His third highest investment was the newspaper and his lowest investment was with the Christian station.

The highest total dollars spent by visitors came from the newspaper readers. This he found as no surprise based on experience.

According to this, you would conclude, and rightly so, that the newspaper was his best return on investment. His worst investment appears to be the Christian station.

But here is where it really gets interesting.

His second best medium for volume of actual dollars brought in during this event was the Christian station. The Christian station brought in more profit than TV and more than the other two radio stations combined.

John also kept track of conversion ratios. Newspaper provided one paying customer out of eight visitors. TV and the two radio stations converted at the rate of one customer per 16 visitors. But the Christian radio station came in at better than one sale out of two visitors.

Here is why John got such a phenomenal return on investment from the Christian radio station.

Christian radio listeners are a fiercely loyal audience. So committed and loyal, in fact, that they are continually sending in DONATIONS to support their station. Just think about that. What other medium that accepts advertising have you ever heard about that receives supporting donations from its audience?

When they hear your ad on "their" station, you become, in their minds, "part of the family". Because you are supporting them, they feel a strong inclination to support you. If there is a choice to be made for a specific need they have, they will tend to choose you first. This is true, of course, provided your products or services are not in conflict with their beliefs.

The biggest challenge in marketing any business is building credibility and trust. These are built in features with Christian radio advertising.

John chose the "interview-commercial" format for his ads. This is a powerful advertising method. The station owner or manager interviewed him about his business. This type of ad format comes across to the listener as informative rather than an irritating interruption. Also, in the listeners mind, they are not doing business with an impersonal business but a real person just like them.

Before moving forward with an ad program such as this, it would be wise to listen to the station for a few days to get a feel for their content, so you can better harmonize with their audience. Also, find out when their most popular programs air and use only those time slots - at least initially. These will be the most responsive times for you and give you more accurate test results.

Because Christian programming is normally more content than music drove, you may find the most popular programs air in early evening.

And, as with all marketing, your best results come from being honest, being genuine, being yourself.

Keep newspaper as your base source of revenue generation, but you may find the local Christian radio station a strong ally and a wise investment for a long term boost in business. This group of loyal customers can create steady growth for your business, and help smooth out the ups and downs of the marketplace.

Social Bookmarkting with Technorati

2006-11-02T23:28:00.000Z

Technorati Profile

Take Back Control! (of your Marketing)

2006-10-30T22:27:00.000Z

Take Back Control! (of your Marketing)

I have heard "I hate marketing" or some version of that

statement many times, and I understand. I like marketing,

and still sometimes I hate marketing.

One of the biggest problems is that there are so many

options that it's sometimes impossible to know if you're

doing the right things at the right times. I really do

understand.

If you have thousands of dollars in your marketing budget,

you can pay consultants to help you with creating a plan,

purchasing print advertising, executing a search engine

optimization (SEO) program, creating an effective pay per

click internet advertising campaign and/or creating a viral

marketing movie. Oh yea, you will also need a highly

effective and gorgeous website.

One way I suggest for business owners to become educated on

the business side of their businesses is to take free

teleclasses. This is a great, easy way to become educated

on marketing. Keep in mind that most of the teleclass

leaders are doing the class at no charge so they may

promote their program or product, or both. Don't buy

anything yet - do more research. The product will still be

there next week.

Here are most of the 'best' ways in which teleclass leaders

and other experts have told me I 'must' promote my business:

- Blog

- Become an affiliate

- Write and submit articles to banks

- Join leads groups

- Speak

- Create a subscription website

- Give teleclasses

- Create products to sell

- Do PR

- Network

- Teach

- Form exclusive strategic alliances

Since I do not have a very large marketing budget, I also

need to maintain my website, optimize it, write effective

copy, write my marketing plan, and, of course, follow up

with everyone I have met or spoken to, among other things.

If I did all the things the experts tell me to do, I'd be

working 30 hours per day and spending no time with clients.

It's impossible!

Unfortunately, marketing often requires some trial and

error to learn what works best with your industry, your

personality, your location and your target market. The

first and most important component of effective marketing

is narrowing down your target market. It's extremely

difficult to make an emotional connection with anyone using

a watered-down marketing message - which is just what will

happen if you try to appeal to too broad an audience in

your marketing.

See if you can network with someone else in your same

industry and compare notes - what works and what doesn't.

With most businesses, that can be done by locating someone

in a different geographic area. If that doesn't work, try

finding someone who services a completely different target

market than yours. For example, I am a small business

coach and have 'buddy coached' with a couple of life

coaches. We are marketing ourselves in very similar ways,

but looking for completely different clients.

When deciding which ways to market your product, keep your

limitations in mind: time and money. Also, there may be a

learning curve to incorporate into your plan. Personal

choices should also be considered - because I'm a single

mom, I don't work nights and weekends. That affected my

choice of target market!

You will make sense of it all; don't put too much pressure

on yourself. Stick with it and take care of yourself.

Enjoy the journey!

About the Author:

Audrey Burton, Small Business Coach, is “The Tigress”. Get

her FREE Special Report, “Closing the Sale is Not

Complicated!” and her FREE monthly email newsletter at

http://www.TigressCoaching.com

It's All About Marketing

2006-10-25T20:58:00.000+01:00

It’s All About Marketing

Promoting your CD to radio takes a lot of organization and time management skills. Let me help organize your process. First you need to find radio stations that are willing to accept submissions from independent artists (Contact names, addresses, phone and email for radio stations across the globe are listed in “The Indie Guide To Music, Marketing and Money” ISBN 978-0-9746229-4-1 and The Indie Contact Guide – it’s companion book.).

You have to decide whether you are going to local and regional stations (which are a good recommendation if you don’t have a lot of money to work with and you aren’t worried about charting.), or if you are going after national stations, which is only a good idea if you are already established locally and are seeking national exposure and a chance to chart.

As with all submissions, always get permission ahead of time before you submit your music. There are two easy ways to find radio station information. The first is to log onto the internet and search the radio station databases available. This method is free, but will take some time. The best resources I have found are “MIT Radio Stations on the Web” and “BRS Radio.

Most sites list the stations by genre (style of music), state, etc. You should bookmark these sites in your Internet browser. You will find yourself going back to these sites often.

The major advantage the internet offers is the ability to download information into a spreadsheet or word processing document to make labels and save data for your follow-up files.

However, if you decide looking for information on the internet takes too much time, an alternative is to purchase books that already have all the information for radio stations listed in them.

When finding radio stations to submit to, it’s best to start with college radio first, especially if you are a new act without a track record. It will be easier for you to get added on college stations, which are usually “free format” and are more likely to air something new and exciting.

If you decide on the college route, make sure you have verified they have a format for your music. Most college stations have a variety of music styles and Music Directors.

Rock, Jazz, and Alternative Music tend to be the main stay for college stations. Country acts will have a more difficult time on college stations and there are many that have Folk Music programs. For Country acts you’ll have a better opportunity at stations that play Country Music specifically and/or those that play Americana.

Once you conquer the college charts, you will have a solid base and track record to promote yourself to the larger stations. It’s like a snowball that rolls down the mountain. The more it rolls, the larger it gets. Make sure when approaching larger stations that you ask specifically if they play independent artists.

If they tell you they occasionally give an independent artist an opportunity, and you have the extra resources, go ahead and submit your CD to them. You never know, they may play it.

But if you hear: ‘No. We only play major-label releases, or artists that are in the top 50 of the Billboard charts, but why don’t you go ahead and send it along anyway.’ Think long and hard about it before sending your CD. You’re better off to be patient, record the comment on your spreadsheet and wait until you chart before contacting that station again.

If the goal for your music is charting you will need to make sure that all of the radio stations you submit to, report to the same charts. This will help ensure that all of your “spins” count. (Spins are the amount of times a song is played.)

If the radio stations don’t report to any charts, or the charts they do report to are not consistent with those you already have, you may want to think about passing on them until you have more resources. It would be like sending an unsolicited press kit to a management firm that doesn’t accept them. It’s a waste of time, energy and press kits.

If you are only looking for exposure, then by all means send it to every radio station you get permission from as long as your budget allows. However, try to stay in one local/regional area so it’s saturated with your music. It will give you a much better chance at lining up a distributor as well as selling more CD’s.

It is easier to get added to a play list on stations that don’t report, than do. The competition is not as fierce. Remember: air time is an important commodity to a radio station. Each station only has so many hours and slots they can play songs. If you can get your song charted, you will have a better chance of getting into one of those precious slots. You have to decide which route you want to take.

Once you have found the radio stations you plan to submit to, and you have entered that information into a database, you are ready to send the press kit out (assuming your CD is ready).

At this time, make sure to call the radio stations again and verify that all the information you’ve gathered is still the same. The industry is very volatile. Stations get bought and sold very quickly, and there is an extremely high turnover rate for personnel. You don’t want to send your Heavy Metal CD to a station that is now a Smooth Jazz station. And you don’t want to send something out with the words “Material Requested” on it, to someone who no longer works there.

You’ll need a cover letter for your press kit, make sure to suggest the tracks you think radio personnel will like, and the ones you think are more commercial. Give them an opportunity to listen to several tracks, but don’t ask them to listen to the entire CD. It’s not professional. Radio promoters push one track at a time.

Pushing only one track will show them you know what you are doing and are respectful of their time. To push a track means to tell the radio personnel which track you are suggesting at this time for airplay. Tell them it’s the first release off your new CD.

In order to chart you must have a substantial amount of “spins”. Here’s another major reason to push only one spin: If you have a lot of tracks that are being played, but no stations are playing similar tracks, your chances of charting for a particular song are very slim. While you really don’t have a choice of what is played, you can help it along by constantly suggesting the same track.

Most Program Directors (PD’s) and Music Directors (MD’s) have specific call times, on specific days, every week. You can only call them on these days or they will not take your calls. Once you have sent your press kit out, wait approximately two weeks, then call and confirm that your CD has arrived safely.

If the CD has not arrived, wait one more week and call again. If at that point the CD has still not arrived, tell the PD or MD that you will send another package and then send it. Wait another week and then follow up again.

The life of one song is anywhere from 4 - 6 weeks. You can’t just assume that at the end of 6 weeks the radio station is going to automatically play another track from your CD. It’s up to you to suggest it.

At the end of your first 4 weeks of air time, continue to push the first track but also start suggesting the next track you plan to release. Start building a rapport with the PD’s and MD’s. Find out their likes, dislikes, and interests. You will get much farther if you are truly interested in who they are and what they do, than if you are only interested in what they can do for you.

Because Program and Music Directors have different call times and days, time management is essential. To help make your job a little easier, create a database to hold all your contact information and keep track of calls and call times. If you have succeeded in getting a station to add your music, here are some questions you should ask:

• If they are playing your CD, ask them how your CD is doing at their station.
• Ask them if they are playing the track you specified in your promotional package, and if they have had any listener response.
• Ask if there is anything additional that you can do to assist them.

More often than not, you will only be able to leave a message when you call. If you are able to contact them directly, always ask them if it is a convenient time for them to talk to you. If it is, keep your conversations short, as they are extremely busy people. If it is not a good time for them to talk, ask them when you can call them back and then do.

Keep them informed of any newsworthy items. Every time you succeed in getting another station to add your music, go a little further on the chart, or score a major gig, send out a press release by faxes or emails, and definitely hype it on the phone during your conversations with them.

Build excitement so you keep yourself in the forefront of their minds. Keep them interested in your music. Offer to do interviews and liners. Liners are a small commercial you record for the station. For example: ‘Hi! This is Joe Smoegh and you are listening to today’s hottest mix on such and such a radio station.’ I will say it again, be persistent and pleasant.

If you have not been added, or you are not receiving airplay yet, continue promoting yourself to these stations via email, fax, or doing your follow up phone calls. Ask them if they do test spins. If they do, ask them if they would try your CD during one of their next test spin slots. Additionally, stop by radio stations in your area and make live appearances.

Bring something special, perhaps pizza or donuts and soda. You will bring a smile to their faces and create a personal association. Try to come up with unique ideas to “sell” your CD to them. Additionally, when you release your CD to radio will affect how much airplay you receive.

If everything fails, try to remain upbeat and positive with them. Radio is very political. Remember there is only so much air time and only so many time slots available. Most will not pick Joe Smoegh over Britney Spears. After repeated efforts have failed and you’re still not getting any air time, it may be time to call it quits on that particular station and stop contacting them with your weekly phone calls. You should still continue to keep them informed of your comings and goings via email.

Jaci Rae is a #1 Best Selling author of The Indie Guide to Music, Marketing and Money and Winning Points with the Woman in Your Life One Touchdown at a Time. Book Jaci for your next show: http://www.jacirae.com/ and hit contact button for her publicist

Small Business Marketing Is More Like Romance Than You Might Think: Make Them Fa

2006-10-25T07:35:00.000+01:00

People like to do business with people they trust. And more than that, they like to work with people that they like.

The "courtship" phase of your relationship with your prospects is critical to your small business success. So are you giving your clients the reasons they need to fall in love with what you offer?

First of all, do you know why you're the best choice or -- even better -- the only choice worth considering?

If not, it's high time you found out. Take a look at 4 or 5 competitors' websites and see how they communicate their services.

What works? What doesn't?

Do they focus on the results they achieve for their clients? Do you? Results you have achieved for other businesses can be powerful stuff.

Do they specialize in exactly the same market? Do you currently have a specialization? If not, would this help you?

If you're not a better option on paper, find ways to set yourself apart, such as choosing a market niche that is slightly different or deciding to add your own personal twist to your marketing. You might see success just by adding helpful articles and a more client-focused approach to your marketing mix.

Are your marketing materials full of powerful statements that show your prowess in your field, without being pushy? Or are you mainly sending prospects the marketing equivalent of cheesy pickup lines?

Anyone can come out with a promotion that says they offer the best-quality services in your line of work, but unless you can back it up with real proof, it can easily sound slick and untrustworthy.

Be yourself.

It's a common mistake that especially newcomers to self-employment sometimes make to try to put on airs in order to appear more successful, but frankly, this almost always backfires. For starters, you won't feel confident during the exchange, which means that your personal passion will not shine through. And having the passion to help your clients goes a long way toward building trust.

What's more, you might promise more than you can deliver -- and the very best way to make clients unhappy is to do just that. Instead, promise excellence and then deliver even more than you promised!

And remember, even if you're not confident about your marketing, you are unique. No one else can offer exactly what you can. Use your current marketing techniques to express your personality, your business's brand, to let people get to know you.

Listen more, talk less.

Have you ever spent time with someone who really listened to you? Talk about an amazing way to make you feel special.

More than one love relationship has been ignited by such simple means -- and the same tactics work for your prospects, if you are truly sincere about wanting to hear about your prospects' concerns. I know that every time I open my ears and shut my mouth, I learn more about my clients' needs and am able to better help them in the future.

Besides, there are plenty of "experts" out there who can talk all day and all night about what they know and what a great a "catch" they are (in the business sense and otherwise!). But who likes to deal with talking heads who are full of themselves? That's not attractive in the slightest.

The last bit of wisdom that I might offer is to take a step back and allow your relationship with your prospects to progress at their pace. You should stay in touch while the decision is being made, but don't force the issue.

As I said, marketing your small business is a little like dating. If you keep the pressure off, share your strengths and set yourself apart, your relationship with your clients will be founded on trust, respect and -- yes -- you'll find that your clients actually like working with you very much.

Are you a coach, consultant or other solo service professional who's struggling to grow your business? Find out how you can attract more clients more easily with Jennifer McCay's FREE audio course and FREE weekly small business marketing lessons at http://AvenueEast.com

Marketing Success Secrets Of A Homeless Man: Fishing In The Right Pond

2006-10-25T07:34:00.000+01:00

Success speaker Earl Nightingale, who with the revelation gained from the idiom "We become what we think about," wrote and recorded "The Strangest Secret." It helped him to pioneer the personal development industry, and defined success as "the progressive realization of a worthy ideal."

We live in a society where the amount of money a person banks often equals accomplishment. The pinnacle of success for business owners and entrepreneurs rest on what they do rather than what they own.

It may be a stretch to consider someone without a home to call his own as being successful. Yet, I deem a homeless man that I see on a regular basis at an intersection of a major freeway in Humble, Texas as "successful," mainly because underlying marketing efforts result in him getting (progressive realization) a good number of "donations" (his worthy goal)every day.

I dare not make light of the homeless situation. I agree with Sharon Cohen, writing in "A Day in the Life of the Homeless in America" when she states: "From villages to large cities, homelessness has spread like dye through the weave of America's social fabric. A single day in the life of the homeless reveals hundreds of thousands without shelter, and blame goes to everything from the lack of affordable housing and unemployment to drug abuse, mental illness and a flawed foster care system."

However, some enterprising "homeless" people use the system to their advantage and actually earn more money begging, than when they were gainfully employed. You might ask, "How do they do that?"

In two earlier articles, we established the first two tenets of success for any business owner: looking the part, and possessing tenacity in the face of adversity. The third marketing success secret of the homeless man I speak about in this series focuses on, "Fishing in the Right Pond."

Internet marketing legend Marlon Sanders says, "If you want to catch fish, the very thing you have to do is find a pond of hungry fish. That is your target market. A lot of people are racking their brains trying to get fish to bite first. The problem is their fish aren't hungry. Man, you got to have hungry fish."

The intersection where this particular man begs daily makes up the right pond for what he does. Because of its proximity to middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods, I believe he plays the numbers' game, betting that x amount of drivers will show enough compassion for him to spend the extra 30 seconds or so to give him a dollar or two or whatever spare change that might be riding along in their vehicle's console.

Fishing in the right pond also means knowing your niche. The homeless man knows that he stands in the right place (pond) where paying clients (fish) will pass by.

Maybe without fully realizing it, he discovered that the power of niche marketing stands as one of the most underutilized marketing weapons for small businesses. Niche marketing means you market to customer groups that fit the demographic and psychographic profile of your target market.

You see, the homeless man does not try to be everything to everyone. He waits for one specific customer to pass his way; he seeks to cross paths with his ideal customer.

Now to me, although begging works for him, he expends a lot of time on it for the amount of money he gets in return. Yet, if it meets his need (I suspect he makes more money than we think) -- if he achieves his goal for today, consider him a success.

In my book publishing and author services' company, it took me a while to learn the value of fishing in the right pond. Although I am aware of the statistics which state that 81% of people believe they want to write a book inside, clients needing my services became readily available when I started speaking to writer's groups, book clubs and the like instead of waiting for potential clients to find me.

Marvin D. Cloud provides a self-publishing alternative through http://www.mybestseller.com/. For a free writers' workbook and online marketing ideas, go to http://www.mybestseller.com/html/marketing_tips

Searching for marketing ideas?

2006-10-19T22:32:00.000+01:00

Searching for marketing ideas?

At one point or another in our marketing careers we face

the challenge of coming up with new marketing ideas.

Consistently coming up with ideas for new ways to attract

prospects attention or to keep your name in front of

existing clients can be exhausting and frustrating.

Sometimes we just plain run out of ideas.

Here are a few ways to get ideas flowing if you find

yourself stuck:

1. Read. Read everything you can get your hands on.

Marketing articles (like this one), business articles,

industry journals, the daily newspaper. You don't get new

ideas from doing the same thing every day. Be learning and

looking all the time.

2. Go outside of your industry and read what others are

doing. It will give you a different perspective on things.

Read general business or start-up magazines like

Entrepreneur or Business 2.0. These publications are filled

with success stories from a variety of businesses.

3. Find someone (or several others) that does what you do

in another part of the country. Watch their ideas and

marketing techniques. Sign-up for their ezine. Try to get

on their mailing list. In addition to finding similar

companies online you may try to network with someone

through a national association or at a networking event.

4. Allow yourself one day a month to get outside your

office -- outside your normal work environment -- and

brainstorm. Find a relaxed setting where you can sit down

for a while and just write. Write down what’s happened over

the last month or so, where you're heading, and where you'd

like to go in the future.

Find out what environment works best for you to do this

exercise. It may be finding a big comfy chair at Starbucks

for a few hours, or working from home instead of the

office. It's hard to come up with ideas when you're in the

thick of things; so get out of your work environment and

relax. The ideas just might flow.

5. Search for marketing ideas online. You may have some

ideas you've been kicking around but haven't fully

materialized. Jot down some key words and just go digging

around. You never know where your next great idea will come

from.

If you don't have much time and are feeling pressured to

come up with a marketing promotion right away, at least try

to back away from your problem for a little while. Ideas

don't generally flow when you're under pressure. Watch a

movie; read a novel. Your great idea may come while you're

sleeping or in the shower once you relax. Oftentimes you

have to let things go so they can come to you.

About the Author:

Author of Healthcare Copywriting Secrets Revealed and The

Healthcare Copywriters Toolkit, Kelly Robbins is a

healthcare copywriter and marketing coach/consultant. She

also publishes The Healthcare Marketing Connection

(http://www.healthcaremarketingconnection.com), a free

e-zine on healthcare marketing tips. Contact Kelly to

receive her free report, "5 critical things you must know

when writing for the healthcare industry" —

info@KellyRobbinsLLC.com or 303-460-0285.

Why Your Marketing Plan Is Important To Your Business

2006-10-17T23:53:00.000+01:00

You hear the term "Marketing Plan" thrown around but it's sad how many businesses don't know what it means to have one. Perhaps the most vital aspect of any business is the marketing plan. A business cannot really get off the ground until they sell something. And that is what marketing is all about. If marketing is how sales are made, then a marketing plan is about figuring out how sales will be made. Developing a good plan is a way to overcome your shortcomings and increase your business’s income. No plan equals to no sales. Which in turn means your business is not going to make it. This is why a solid marketing plan is a MUST.

A marketing plan prepares your business to be proactive in what the market does. Without one, you end up reacting to changes and to competition, which means you are always a step behind those who are already prepared. So, then, a marketing plan is crucial to being ready to deal with the ebbs and flows of the market. It's always better to anticipate and plan for a market change well ahead of time rather than find out about it later on. You need to be in the leading edge and not the following edge.

At the beginning of the process of forming a plan for your marketing, you should make sure you have answers to basic marketing questions like: Who are your customers? Know your competition. For you can be sure that they know you. And how do you put your product or service into the hands of your customers? What's the most effective method to do so? In addition to several others that address where you are as company and where you are going. You need to know where you are before you can figure out where you want to be.

Once you have those questions answered, your marketing plan will essentially write itself. You will form ideas about where you want to go, and you will know how you want to react to changes and challenges from the marketplace. A well planned plan means nothing though if it's not well executed. Make sure that once you make a plan you put it motion by delegating it to the right people.

Overall, if you have a good marketing plan in place you will have a business that is in control of itself. When you're in control, yu cans steer it towards profits. You will be able to stick to certain sales strategies and have an idea what kind of results you want to see. Measurable mile stones will let you know if you are on track. All advertising efforts are targeted at a specific goal, and overall you will know what success looks like to you and your associates. A good plan with tell you exactly what to expect to see and when to see those results. This is an indicator of how successful your plan is. A well placed and established marketing plan will help your business, big or small, to unite in a common effort and will promote teamwork. Ultimately you, as a whole, will see your business grow.

Khemal Dole owns and operates
http://www.PaychecksDirect.com, a completely F*R*E*E
service which helps many first-timers and even
experts find their perfect Work At Home job. Visit
www.PaychecksDirect.com right now and see for
yourself why so many are flocking to his site.

Risk Reversal a Marketing Skill

2006-10-16T23:30:00.000+01:00

Customers do not want to make the wrong decision and waste money on a product they really don't need or won't fulfill all their needs for their particular situation so they are naturally hesitant to buy, especially when it comes to major purchases.
Consumers take all the risk where there are no guarantees, see either the company selling the product takes the risk or the customer does.

Thus if you can overcome this hesitation the consumer has when they come to a buying decision, by offering to guarantee their purchase reversing the risk, you will see a lot more sales. That's a proven fact.

If a customer came back to you with a problem, a complaint, or a change of mind, you'd probably give him back his money anyway, right? So then why don't more companies make the guarantee of risk reversal a strong part of their sales proposition. As I mentioned before, "risk reversal" is whenever a sales proposition is extended to a prospective customer, someone has to take the risk; either the seller or the buyer.

Considerably too many companies make the buyer bear the risk. That's a huge mistake!

By taking all the risk off the purchaser and assume it yourself, your sales proposition is so much more potent, alluring, and embraceable that significantly more customers will break their habit of hesitation and benefit from your offer because there' is no risk on their part to do so.

Before the scared "what about all those returns" thought comes into your head, just humor me on this incontrovertible truth.

Whenever a company practices risk reversal assuming the risk for the customer, double or triple sales increases are often the result. Yes, there are those unique few who will take advantage of your guarantee. But, as a rule, the double and triple sales from strategy of reversing the risk, the refund amounts are in effect inconsequential. Even with refund requests, it's a piece of cake to turn those desires and complaints into compound earnings.

Here is an example of a company that applied this strategy to the worst product ever conceived by man kind.

This company had a "quick-fix" product which was of incredibly poor quality. In fact, they were getting almost more returns and refund requests than they were making in sales. They were in incredible cash flow trouble.

After drafting a very nice letter that apologized so unconditionally for the pitiful quality of the product that customers couldn't help but be impressed at their honesty. But what made this letter really successful was that they offered to make up to the customer for the negative feelings they felt toward the company by giving the customers absurd savings on similar products from sources they had negotiated hard to believe wholesale prices from.

They invited the customer to simply call and tell them what product they had selected, shipped it out immediately and adjusted their account accordingly refunding the difference or billing their credit card the lean further amount.

The customers loved them. They were able to throw away the terrible purchase they had made getting the top-quality products they really wanted. Everybody won something out of the deal.

Naturally, the customers that were adamant on getting a complete refund were happily sent their money. So many people took advantage of the discount pricing on the other products, the company ended up making more from the refund requests than they did off the original product!

Bart Gibby, http://www.BartGibby.com a SEO Specialist, recommends two sites one for LDS music, http://www.LDSAudio.com and http://www.LDSLibrary.com, because it's the largest LDS search engine known to man kind.

Marketing for the Brick & Mortar Business

2006-10-15T16:05:00.000+01:00

Deciding to start a small business is the easy part. Especially if you're passionate about your product or service, it's easy to get caught up in the initial excitement of your launch.

Brick and mortar businesses (those that rely on a physical location such as a store front) in particular, are especially vulnerable to the temptation to simply open their doors and let the customers come in. In the good old days that was enough.

But not anymore.

Today's consumers are savvy and busy, which means they're unlikely to stumble across your business. And that means you are opening your small business in a time of great challenge and great opportunity.

Internet vs. Brick and Mortar

While there are parallels between marketing an internet-based business and marketing a location-business (commonly called a bricks and mortar), there are differences as well. By spending a little time doing some front-end research, you can spend your marketing time and money in the most cost-effective and efficient way possible.

Who is Your Customer?

The first thing you need to ask yourself, in any business, is, "Who is my customer?"

This might seem elementary, but in order to be truly effective you have to go beyond the basics. For example, if you're running a private plane charter business, knowing that your customer frequently travels overnight for business isn't going to give you all the information you really need to market your small business.

How old is your average customer? Is your customer, generally speaking, male or female? In which financial demographic is your client? What does he/she read?

By answering a few questions like those listed above, you might come up with a quick profile that indicates your client base is made up mostly of men between the ages of 45-60. They're wealthy, making an average of over $250k per year. They read The Wall Street journal, Newsweek and Forbes and don't watch a lot of TV.

If you know your client pretty well (and you probably do, since you're opening a business in which they're the target!), you will probably be able to come up with a good profile on your own. If not, you can contact direct response companies and get demographics for markets similar to yours.

Either way, by knowing your client, you now know where to focus your efforts.

Ya Gotta Spend Money to Make Money

But that doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money! By now you should already have a preliminary marketing budget in mind.

Taking the information you've gathered in your client profile, think about the places your client is likely to visit and the things he/she is likely to do. Using the charter commuter plane example above, you might decide your client is likely to eat in expensive area restaurants, stay overnight in upscale hotels, rent cars for shorter trips (or even limos).

One of the best way to leverage your marketing dollar is to contact other businesses that share your client demographic and see if you can work together to pool your resources. Printing costs can be a lot less than you imagine (you could even print material yourself with a quality printer), and you can easily put together a brochure or coupon booklet aimed at the busy executive that includes phone numbers and service breakdowns for area restaurants, clubs, hotels and limo.

Your local Chamber of Commerce is also a great place to start marketing. Joining is usually very inexpensive (less than $500) and gives you access to networking functions, reduced cost advertising, and sometimes a mention on the Chamber's website. In most cases you will also have access to a list with the business names of the other members - which is another name for built in prospects!

Using the Internet - When you're Not on the Internet

Even if yours is a brick and mortar business, leveraging the widespread appeal and reach of the internet is cheap and effective. In other words, it's just good business!

It is a rare individual who doesn't use their computer on a daily basis, and having a presence on the internet can give your customer confidence that yours is a "real" business and not just a guy working out of his garage - even if you're just a guy working out of his garage!

There are quite a few sites online that offer free or inexpensive websites. In most cases you can develop a simple brochure site by walking through pre-existing templates and plugging in font, color and text preferences. Most of these services will take you less than a day or two to set up, and even if all you have is a list of services and a little blurb about what you do, it can make you seem more established than a company without a website. Plus you get to put your web address on your new business cards!

The Key

Thousands of small businesses open every day. Some succeed, most fail. The difference, the key, is marketing.

All of the techniques used in the charter plane example can be put to use in any demographic. If your client is a truck driver who eats fast food twice a day, that tells you something useful, too. Using that example you might utilize billboards, local newspapers, or radio as method for getting the word out about your business.

It doesn't really matter what type of business you have - a little research on the front end will pay big dividends on the back.

John Edmond worked for many years in insurance and finance and now writes on small business marketing at http://www.business-in.info/blog. Join our Newsletter at http://www.business-in.info/blog/free-ebooks-offer and get 5 ebooks completely free of charge.

Why Referral Marketing Programs Fail

2006-10-14T20:07:00.000+01:00

Why Referral Marketing Programs Fail
Copyright C 2006 Judy Murdoch
Highly Contagious Marketing
http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm

True or False: Referral marketing is the easiest way to get the
word out about your small business? The answer is...

FALSE

Don't feel bad if you answered, "true." Most people do.

So often, I've seen someone start a new business, with the
assumption that their friends and colleagues would send lots of
new business their way. Three months, sometimes six months later,
these new business owners are still waiting for the phone to
ring. And even if the phone does ring, only a small percentage of
those calling end up converting to real paying customers. Sadly,
many of these businesses don't make it.

The owners of these failed businesses aren't dumb or naive. Many
have owned successful small businesses in the past or had
successful corporate careers. They know how to get things done.

So what's going wrong? Why do referral marketing programs so
often fail to produce results?

First, business owners simply don't ask for referrals. Often
this is because the business owner assumes that others "know"
they need more customers. Unfortunately, the folks outside their
business often assume the opposite; that if a business owner
isn't asking for customers, they probably don't need any! It's
easy to see how this dynamic undermines the referral marketing
process.

Business owners may also resist asking for referrals because they
think they're "bugging" people or haven't earned the right to
ask for referrals.

Regardless of the reason, the consequence is the same: if you
don't ask for referrals, you won't get them.

The second reason referral marketing programs fail is because
when we do ask, we leave it up to our referral source to figure
out who to send us. So often, we ask for referrals in a vague,
general way ("uh, do you know anyone who needs my services?").

Asked in this way, people almost always say, "no, can't think of
anyone." Why? Because they're running through their mental
contact list, a list so large for most folks, that they rarely
think of someone specific when asked.

The third reason referral marketing program fail is because
people forget your request. Let's say someone has agreed to send
you referrals and they are completely sincere in their desire to
help you. Unless they immediately call the person they want to
refer to you, chances are that they will forget because they're
busy and there are more urgent things demanding their attention.

Unfortunately, if they don't remember you, they won't send you
referrals.

At this point you may be thinking, "Sheesh, this is harder than I
thought, maybe I should tattoo my company logo on my forehead
after all," don't be discouraged. With the right skills,
know-how, and a little creativity, your referral marketing
program can thrive. Read on for strategies that will take the
number of referrals you receive from "blah" to "VROOM."

Four strategies to getting more referrals:

1. Don't assume anyone knows what your business needs. Ask for
referrals.

2. Understand why people give referrals and, in particular, why
they will give YOU referrals.

Put simply, people give referrals to look good.

Think about when you are the referrer. Have you ever referred a
friend to your favorite restaurant and your friend ends up loving
the place? They probably thank you every time they see you and
you feel pretty great--like you let someone in on something very
cool and special.

That's why people give referrals for everything--plumbers,
realtors, pediatricians, electrical contractors, you name
it--they get to be a hero in a small but significant way.

3. Make it easy for people to refer you.

To send you referrals, your referral sources need to remember you
when opportunities arise and they need to know what to tell the
person about your business. For example, compare these two
referrals:

"My friend, Ann is a realtor"

"My friend Marion is a realtor who will buy your house
if it doesn't sell within 90-days."

See the difference? Which is more memorable? In a tough seller's
market, who would you rather refer? If this were all I knew about
the two realtors, Marion is the one I'd refer.

4. Follow up and acknowledge.

If you assume people don't care whether or not you say thank
you, you assume wrong. When you call your referral source and let
them know how your meeting went with the prospective customer
they sent you, it reinforces their involvement in your success
and their ablity to make things happen.

In addition, sending a note of appreciation regardless of whether
the referral works out, encourages your referral source to send
more.

When done right, referral marketing is, without a doubt, the most
inexpensive AND most effective way to get the word out about your
small business. Although it requires more of your time upfront in
terms of planning, developing a strong message, and educating
your referral sources, remember that--every dollar--every
minute--you spend on your referral marketing program will pay for
itself many times over in terms of the high quality new business
you attract.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost,
effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals,
guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances.
To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt?
Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers
Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com

Are These Common Myths Stopping You Creating Your Business Plan

2006-10-10T21:52:00.000+01:00

Business plans are at the heart of almost all successful small businesses. Yet an amazing number of small business owners seem to think plans are not for them.

In many cases entrepreneurs and small business believe things about starting their own business that are just not true. Continuing to believe in these myths can lead you down the path to destruction.

Here are some of the top small business myths. Don't let them hold you back:

•Since I’m just working for me, there is no need for a business plan. Would you go on a trip without a plan? Would you get married without a plan? Plans are good. They will help you get focused and stay that way. A good business plan will help you to think through all the aspects of your business and see you on your way to success.

•I’ll have to invest in expensive software to get a good business plan. Nope. Software may help, but you don’t need it. How do you think all those businessmen succeeded before the invention of the computer?

•Then I’ll need to hire a consultant to write my business plan for me. You are the one who knows what you are going to do. If not, then all the consultants in the world can’t help you. Try a coach or mentor to guide you, rather than do things for you.

•I should get one of those business plan templates that sound really complicated. Complicated is good, right? Wrong! Simple is better.

•I need to have everything perfect before I start. If you wait that long you may never start. Fix it as you go. Just make sure the major points are as good as they can be.

•If I don’t do everything my business plan says I’m a failure. Sometimes detours or changes can be beneficial to your long-distance plan. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

•My business plan must be typed, at least 50 pages long with a professional looking cover. You can write it in hieroglyphics on the wall – so long as you can understand it and access it when you need to.

•I only need a business plan if I’m getting a loan. Would you invest in any business without seeing a prospectus? You’ll be investing in this one! Just do a budget and run it by your accountant.

•If I have a business plan in my head - that will do. But can you remember it? Can your friends give you advice by reading your mind? Can your accountant?

•Friends and family are all I’ll need to give me advice. Could a city man tell a farmer how to run his farm? Only if your family are accountants and market research experts will they be qualified to give the right advice.

Follow this link for indepth help and advice on constructing your small business plan

Email to Mobile Telephone

2006-06-27T11:59:00.000+01:00

Email on mobile telephones is the current business rage. Many busy city executives swear by the Blackberry. Receiving and responding to emails while on the move can be a fantastic boon to productivity and customer services.

Yet the Blackberry is terrilbly limited. It does one thing well - send and receive emails. Even here it is highly limited if you want to send or receive attachments.

True mobile working requires a suite of applications all working together.

And that's what you get with DiaryPoint. DiaryPoint offers true mobile to email, the ability to open MS Office attachments, diary and contact management, and an online file store to keep all of your documents organised and accessible.

DiaryPoint also scores over the Blackberry in ease of set up. Designed from the ground up as an internet solution you can be up and running in minutes. In contrast, the Blackberry relies on the functionality within MS Echange. If you are not already running MS Exchange the set up and maintenance overhead can be quite a shock (not to mention expensive).

Want to Carry Your Office in Your Pocket?

2006-04-17T22:17:00.000+01:00

DiaryPoint is just about the complete office solution that you can carry in your shirt pocket.
It's a complete software suite that you can access through your Windows CE equipped Smartphone.

Wherever you can use your mobile telephone you can access DiaryPoint. You get email, diary scheduling, contact management and complete task managment.

Unlike the Blackberry, DiaryPoint allows you to open, and modify email attachments including MS Word and MS Excel. So now, you really can take your work with you wherever you go.

There's far too much to put into a simple blog post. Go check it out at the DiaryPoint web site

Small Business Articles

2005-08-06T23:21:00.000+01:00

7/19/2005
Online Niche Marketing - targeting adsense
Filed under: General, Online niche marketing — keilo @ 2:36 am Edit This
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a strong interest in online, niche marketing. Unfortunately, my real world commitments usually keep me from too much experimentation.

Now however, I have launched a web site that squarely meets 2 important criteria: it concerns a subject that I love, and it provides a way of targeting adsense income.

I’ll write more shortly but for now why not visit the site and let me know what you think.

JulesVerneOnline

Comments (0)
6/15/2005
Easy Way to Get Links to your Web Site
Filed under: General — keilo @ 4:24 pm Edit This
Getting one-way links to your website can be amazingly difficult. Casey here has found a simple sure fire route - leave complimentary comments on my blog. You can see Casey’s original comment by scrolling down a few posts. I have repeated it here for ease of reading.

“Hi there,

Great blog for readers. Wow you really put your heart into it and give away alot of valueable content.

I hope your small business readers value what you’re writing - because it’s great.

Casey

The Business Growth Specialist “

Comment by Business Growth — 6/15/2005 @ 8:59 am | Edit This

Comments (0)
6/13/2005
Article factoring - Adapt your articles to target specific market niches for maximum effect with minimum effort
Filed under: General — keilo @ 2:59 am Edit This
It ought to be hard to find anyone marketing their business on the internet who does not know of the power of writing and publishing articles. Write an article on a topic of general interest pertinent to the theme of your web site and distribute it to lots of article directories.

Whenever your article is referenced or used in someone elses web site and you get a rush of traffic. Getting lots of one-way links is great for your google page rank too.

But how do you keep on producing articles? Where do you find the time?

Many authors write new content each time. Nothing wrong with that of course. Except that there is an easier way - article factoring.

In plain english article factoring is the process of tailoring each article you write for a specific niche market. There are 2 samples below:

6 steps to success for independent consultants
5 steps to success for small business owners
These 2 articles are in turn based on a root article, 4 Steps to Success to Life, the University and Everything

A cursory glance at all of these articles will show that the bulk of the content is essentially identical. The differences are the addition of a couple of paragraphs pertinent for the specific target audience. Oh, and a change of title to make the article more immediately appealing to the target market.

The opportunity for further factoring is pretty much unlimited:

5 Steps to Success for Journalists
4 steps to success for college students
How to achieve success in internet marketing
Secrets of successfully marketing small businesses online
And so on
No matter what niche you target there is sure to be a ready made audience for you article.

So why work harder than you have to?

Factor your existing articles to address specific niche markets pertinent to your web site theme. Distribute your articles to specialist niche directories. Sit back and enjoy an immediate traffic boost.

What could be easier?

Comments (0)
5 Steps To Success for Small Business Owners
Filed under: General, Small business articles, Breakthrough Growth Site Updates — keilo @ 2:37 am Edit This
Everyone wants to succeed in life. Most people want to succeed in business. And no one starts a business of any sort wanting to fail.

Yet the sad fact is that 80% of businesses will fail in the first 3 years of operation.

So what can you do to ensure your success?

Luckily these five simple (never confuse simple with easy), tried and tested steps dramatically increase your chances.

1. Vision
It might seem like management gobbledigook or newage psychobabble but all the evidence is that developing and articulating a vision for your business and life is a major key to success.

Take time out. Really think about what you want from your business and life.

Write it down.

A vision statement should not be long - it doesn’t even have to be in words. If you think graphically then capturing your vision in a picture or diagram could be just what you need. You are striving for a short, to the point description of where you want to be in 1, 2 and 5 years time.

In addition to your financial vision you need to ask yourself some questions:

What will our major products and services be?
What will be our target market?
Will we be market leaders, followers or niche players?
What will our unique competitive position be?
How will we ‘know’ our ideal customer?
How will we be perceived by our customers?
How will we promote your services to our customers?
An old Japanese Proverb says,

”If you aim at a tree and fall short, you may only hit the ground.
If you aim at the sky you may hit a tree.”

Make sure you don’t set your targets too low.

Just before leaving the subject of ‘Vision’ - the number one key to achieving your vision is to communicate it widely. Make sure you tell your family and friends. Make it a central pillar in corporate literature. Include it in job descriptions.

The more you communicate your vision the more you demonstrate your commitment and the more likely you are to succeed.

2. Set Out Your Goals
Success means something different to us all. A self-made businessman worth millions of dollars would be thought
successful by most. But if that businessman only rarely sees his family, never gets to play golf and spends all of his time on airplanes or in some exotic sounding (but usually antiseptic) hotel, is that really a success? Would that businessman think his life a success?

Possibly, possibly not.

But if that man had set himself goals for his business, private and social lives he at least has some way of measuring his achievements.

Your vision is all about ‘what’ you are going to achieve. Goals are about the stepping stones to achieving that vision.

Before starting on any endeavour - set your goals.

Make sure your goals are specific enough that you know when you have achieved them. “I want to make lots of money” is weak. “I am going to make $100,000 next year and $200,000 the year after” is much stronger.

The more specific and well articulated your goals the greater your chance of achieving them.

Don’t forget to include your private and social goals. Many rich people complain that they have all the freedom that money can buy - but money can’t buy the time to enjoy what they have earned.

An old boss of mine from my days in corporate consultancy once observed, “You can’t buy back the years of your children’s lives”. He’s right.

Make sure you know what real success would mean to you.

3. Plan, Plan, Plan
If the number one key to success in retailing is location, location and location, the number one key to success in business
is plan, plan, plan.

Remember the 5 Ps success model - Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. (When I was taught this in the military there was a 6th P - for the sake of a mixed audience I have left this out. Use your imagination - you’ll guess what it was )

If you’ve done your goal setting you know what you are going to achieve. The point of planning is how you are going to do it. Break each goal down into constituent steps needed for its achievement. For each step decide what, who, where and when it is to be done.

Be realistic and make sure that every step is achievable in the time set. Be prepared - when you plan-out all that you need to do, the amount of work can be daunting. Better to know this up-front than sale merrily into a venture only to find it is a huge monster that is going to take you a lifetime to kill.

4. Action Counts
I’ve seen some beautiful plans. Highly researched, well thought out and presented. I’ll talk to a business owner and they’ll say, “We’ve got a plan” and pull it out of the bottom draw of a filing cabinet somewhere.

“So, why aren’t you using it”, I’ll ask. Nine times out of 10 the plan was produced to obtain
funding. Lot’s of really good work is done but once the money is obtained the plan is put to one side and ignored.

Big mistake. Taking action is the only thing that counts.

Every successfull business I have looked at has clear, current business, operational and marketing plans. It doesn’t matter whether your business is offline or online. It’s taking action that delivers the results.

5. Another 5 ‘P’s to Success
Passion - You have to believe in what you are doing. No where is this more obvious than on the internet. You can spot the ‘me-too’ advertisers in a second. The people who succeed are the ones in have passion, who truly believe in what they are doing. Do something that you love.

Push - No matter how good your plan you have to provide a big push to get it moving. Your plan inevitably involves change. Achieving change takes effort. Think of it as if you were trying to move a boulder. To get that boulder up and moving takes a lot of muscle and effort. Once it is moving though it becomes much easier.

Persistence - Getting started is relatively easy. Afterall, you are all fired up with energy and enthusiasm at that time. Few things worth achieving happen over night. Instead, there will be problems, hold-ups and frustrations. Don’t allow yourself to become disillusioned or demotivated. You need persistence.

Patience - Results don’t happen instantly. Allied to persistence you will need some patience.

Profit - OK, OK it’s trite. But follow the steps here, gear yourself to provide these 5 Ps and you will succeed. In
business, profit is a measure of your success.

No one can guarantee your success whether in life or in business. But you can dramatically increase your chances of success through these five simple, very well established principles.

The question is, “WILL YOU”?

—————————————————-

Comments (0)
6 Steps to Success for Independent Consultants
Filed under: General — keilo @ 2:36 am Edit This
Everyone wants to succeed in life. Most people want to succeed in business.
And you certainly didn’t start your consultancy business wanting to fail
Yet the sad fact is that 80% of all businesses fail in the first 3 years of operation. Independent consultants have, if anything, and even blearker survival rate.

So what can you do to ensure your success?

Luckily these six simple (never confuse simple with easy), tried and tested steps dramatically increase your chances.

1. Niche, Niche, Niche
You have probably heard the phrase, “Get Niche, Get Rich”. Nowhere is that more true that for independent consultants.

Try a little thought experiment for yourself.

Imagine you run a car hire business. You are doing OK but not great. Your time is being absorbed by the day to day running of the business and you have no time for marketing. You decide to get some help from a marketing consultant.

A friend gives you the names of 2 consultants that you decide to meet.

Both of the consultants have great resumes - both show evidence of lots of success in helping businesses grow.

The only real difference is that one consultant has worked in lots of different industries and markets. The other specialises in vehicle hire.

Which one would you choose?

For most business owners it’s a no-brainer. They will always pick the consultant that specialises in their industry. You see, we all perceive our problems as unique. They can only be understood by someone who really understands our business.

Whether you like it or not your success will be immeasurably enhanced if you specialise in some particular vertical niche. Before you take any other steps on your way to success in life and business - pick a niche and stick to it.

2. Vision
It might seem like management gobbledigook or newage psychobabble but all the evidence is that developing and articulating a vision for your business and life is a major key to success.

Take time out. Really think about what you want from your business and life.

Write it down.

A vision statement should not be long - it doesn’t even have to be in words. If you think graphically then capturing your vision in a picture or diagram could be just what you need. You are striving for a short, to the point description of where you want to be in 1, 2 and 5 years time.

In addition to your financial vision you need to ask yourself some questions:

What will our major products and services be?
What will be our target market?
Will we be market leaders, followers or niche players?
What will our unique competitive position be?
How will we ‘know’ our ideal customer?
How will we be perceived by our customers?
How will we promote your services to our customers?
An old Japanese Proverb says,

”If you aim at a tree and fall short, you may only hit the ground.
If you aim at the sky you may hit a tree.”

Make sure you don’t set your targets too low.

Just before leaving the subject of ‘Vision’ - the number one key to achieving your vision is to communicate it widely. Make sure you tell your family and friends. Make it a central pillar in corporate literature. Include it in job descriptions.

The more you communicate your vision the more you demonstrate your commitment and the more likely you are to succeed.

3. Set Out Your Goals
Success means something different to us all. A self-made businessman worth millions of dollars would be thought
successful by most. But if that businessman only rarely sees his family, never gets to play golf and spends all of his time on airplanes or in some exotic sounding (but usually antiseptic) hotel, is that really a success? Would that businessman think his life a success?

Possibly, possibly not.

But if that man had set himself goals for his business, private and social lives he at least has some way of measuring his achievements.

Your vision is all about ‘what’ you are going to achieve. Goals are about the stepping stones to achieving that vision.

Before starting on any endeavour - set your goals.

Make sure your goals are specific enough that you know when you have achieved them. “I want to make lots of money” is weak. “I am going to make $100,000 next year and $200,000 the year after” is much stronger.

The more specific and well articulated your goals the greater your chance of achieving them.

Don’t forget to include your private and social goals. Many rich people complain that they have all the freedom that money can buy - but money can’t buy the time to enjoy what they have earned.

An old boss of mine from my days in corporate consultancy once observed, “You can’t buy back the years of your children’s lives”. He’s right.

Make sure you know what real success would mean to you.

4. Plan, Plan, Plan
If the number one key to success in retailing is location, location and location, the number one key to success in business
is plan, plan, plan.

Remember the 5 Ps success model - Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. (When I was taught this in the military there was a 6th P - for the sake of a mixed audience I have left this out. Use your imagination - you’ll guess what it was )

If you’ve done your goal setting you know what you are going to achieve. The point of planning is how you are going to do it. Break each goal down into constituent steps needed for its achievement. For each step decide what, who, where and when it is to be done.

Be realistic and make sure that every step is achievable in the time set. Be prepared - when you plan-out all that you need to do, the amount of work can be daunting. Better to know this up-front than sale merrily into a venture only to find it is a huge monster that is going to take you a lifetime to kill.

5. Action Counts
I’ve seen some beautiful plans. Highly researched, well thought out and presented. I’ll talk to a business owner and they’ll say, “We’ve got a plan” and pull it out of the bottom draw of a filing cabinet somewhere.

“So, why aren’t you using it”, I’ll ask. Nine times out of 10 the plan was produced to obtain
funding. Lot’s of really good work is done but once the money is obtained the plan is put to one side and ignored.

Big mistake. Taking action is the only thing that counts.

Every successfull business I have looked at has clear, current business, operational and marketing plans. It doesn’t matter whether your business is offline or online. It’s taking action that delivers the results.

6. Another 5 ‘P’s to Success
Passion - You have to believe in what you are doing. No where is this more obvious than on the internet. You can spot the ‘me-too’ advertisers in a second. The people who succeed are the ones in have passion, who truly believe in what they are doing. Do something that you love.

Push - No matter how good your plan you have to provide a big push to get it moving. Your plan inevitably involves change. Achieving change takes effort. Think of it as if you were trying to move a boulder. To get that boulder up and moving takes a lot of muscle and effort. Once it is moving though it becomes much easier.

Persistence - Getting started is relatively easy. Afterall, you are all fired up with energy and enthusiasm at that time. Few things worth achieving happen over night. Instead, there will be problems, hold-ups and frustrations. Don’t allow yourself to become disillusioned or demotivated. You need persistence.

Patience - Results don’t happen instantly. Allied to persistence you will need some patience.

Profit - OK, OK it’s trite. But follow the steps here, gear yourself to provide these 5 Ps and you will succeed. In
business, profit is a measure of your success.

No one can guarantee your success whether in life or in business. But you can dramatically increase your chances of success through these five simple, very well established principles.

The question is, “WILL YOU”?

—————————————————-

Comments (1)
5/31/2005
Online Marketing Tools - Link Manger Assistant
Filed under: General, Online niche marketing — keilo @ 4:24 am Edit This
This weekend I have been busy updating one of my online marketing sites. My very first online niche marketing site was My Prom Hairstyle purchased from Dr Mani. To be fair, I wasn’t overly impressed with the site as bought. That was OK - I always expected that I would have to customise the site to make it stand out from the crowd.

Instead I have used that site as my sandpit. You know, the place where I try different techniques to see what happens. To date I have tried various adwords campaigns (never spending much money), blog and ping and some links from my other reasonably highly ranked pages.

Now I have decided to shoot for links. Duncan Carver is unique on the internet (in my opinion). He offers his ‘Link Manager Assistant’ software as a free download. Other suppliers provide similar software for up to $197.

Link Manager Assistant is different. While it may be free it is immensely powerful. It will certainly take a while to get to know all its online nich marketing capabilities. For now I have simply added 30 to 40 hair style directory pages. Almost all of thes pages come directly from DMOZ.

When I have a bit more experience with Link Manager Assistant I will write a full review.

Suffice to say that I have added Link Manager Assistant to My Prom Hairstyle. Most of the time has been spent in customising the directory templates so they have the same look and feel as my other pages. This is not for the faint hearted. I am not a computing whiz but I have a pretty good background knowledge. It took quite a lot of time to figure out exactly what I had to do to customize the template.

Take a look. Let me know what you think.

Comments (0)
5/28/2005
First Niche Marketing Web Site Created With Xsitepro
Filed under: General, Online niche marketing — keilo @ 7:59 pm Edit This
I have just posted my first web site created with XsitePro. It took a bit longer than the 2 hours claimed by the XsitePro people. In fact it took something more like 3 days.

In that 3 days Ihave

identified a niche,
researched the site content,
learned how to use Xsitepro, wrote the content for the pages,
identified and joined suitable affiliate schemes
chosen and ordered a domain name
transferred that domain to my hosting service (Thirdsphere)
Uploaded the web site files

The actual site building bit was simple. It took a couple of hours to go through Xsitepro’s tutorial - time well spent. It then only took about an hour to build and publish the web site. As always - it’s the preparation that takes the time.

All in all I am pretty happy with the result to date. Still plenty of work to do but why not have a look at Choice Lift Chairs and tell me what you think.

I have spent much of the last week promoting the site through goodle adwords. Only time will tell how well I am doing. I’ll let you know.

If you want to take a look at Xsitepro click here now

Comments (1)
5/22/2005
Niche Marketing and Web Site Building Tools
Filed under: General — keilo @ 2:26 am Edit This
21 May 2005

Look anywhere for making money on the internet and you will be inundated with information about niche marketing. Somehow there is some idea that the internet invented niche marketing. The truth is that most small businesses would benefit from identifying and dominating a niche.

If you have spent any time looking at my main site, Business Growth Solutions You’ll know that I am passionate about small businesses using the internet to promote their businesses. So, while I would usually argue for a wider consideration of niche marketing, this time I am going with the crowd. This post is all about internet niche marketing.

One of the great difficulties is knowing the best way to get on line. Web site designers charge large sums for highly variable work (if you find a good one stick with them). One alternative is to build your own web site. Lots of tools claim to help you to do this with no knowledge of the web, html, search engines or any other related topic. Perhaps the only one that really does do this is the one Business Growth Solutions is built with - Site Build it (try the link at the bottom of the page).

Until now.

Recently I bought a copy of XsitePro. It came with a 365 day money back guarantee so I thought I’d give it a try.

In all honesty, I have been blown away. XsitePro is not only easier than SiteBuilIt to use, but it also offers much more flexibility and control.

To start with I have used it to collect a whole bunch of my articles together in one place. Now, I can publish them all on a web site at the touch of a button.

But that’s not the point.

Using XsitePro’s search engine optimisation tools, each and every article is now optimised for the key words it features. I have continued to place these articles with article and ezine directories. I will wait to see the results.

Of course, SiteBuildIt could be used to do this. But to be fair, SiteBuildIt’s block building approach is pretty slow and clunky in comparison to XsitePro.

As confidence increased I decided to have a little experiment with a niche web site myself. You can see the early results here Choice Lift Chairs. Using XSitePro’s built-in templates, a couple of hours research on the internet and a few hours writing the content, and you have a pretty good looking web site in 2 evening’s work.

Click here to view the “7 Reasons Why You Need XSitePro Now!” video

Comments (0)
5/21/2005
Affiliate marketing for small businesses
Filed under: General — keilo @ 3:12 am Edit This
Anyone who has visited my main website Business Growth Solutions cannot have failed to realise that I am passionate about the appropriate use of the internet to market small businesses. So much so that I am actively investigating the use of affiliate marketing. You might like to have a look at my latest effort at Choice Lift Chairs.
No what do you know about lift chairs you might ask. And the answer a couple of days ago would have been, “not a lot”. However, a few hours of research on the web, a bit of personalisation of the results and a few hours with a word processor and presto Choice Lift Chairs. The plan now is to use a variety of traffic generation techniques - including this blog - and see how we get on. I’ll keep you informed.

Comments (0)
5/12/2005
Work SMART and Transform Any Business Into a Go-Getting Power House
Filed under: General — keilo @ 2:30 am Edit This
We’ve all heard the phrase: “work smarter not harder”. Well, the SMART acronym contains all you need to know to make it a reality.

If there is one key to turning busy, ineffectual organisations into models of streamlined efficiency then this is it. Probably as well known as SWOT, SMART turns weak, aspirational goals, objectives and tasks into concrete deliverables.

More accurately SMART ought to be SMARRRT. There are at least three equally valid definitions for the ‘R’.

OK, the one minute introduction to working smarter:

Specific: Be completely clear on the outcome expected of the goal, objective or task

Measurable: Phrase the statement of what is to be achieved so that the achievement of that outcome can be clearly measured.

Achievable: The idea is to clarify and motivate. There is nothing more demoralising than carefully constructed, but utterly impossible, goals.

Realistic: Given your current situation: is your goal realistic? Relevant: Is this specific task or goal relevant to the overall aims of the company or plan? Resourced: Are the relevant time, people, facilities and equipment available to deliver the desired outcome?

Time bound: Make sure there is a claim time limit on the completion of the activity.

Properly applied, SMARRRT transforms your business.

An example:

I specialise in helping owner-managed businesses grow. One of the first questions I ask is “Just how much do you want your business to grow?” Pretty typically the answer is something like “we’d like a few more customers” or “a lot”.

Even at this early stage I start to apply SMARRRT.

What does growth mean to you? More income, more profits, more customers, more staff, bigger premises…. Usually we settle on income and profits.

OK, just how much more profit would you like? What would you be delighted with, what would just make you happy and what is OK but not very exciting? (I use stretch goals in a balanced scorecard type of approach - more on this in another article).

Now we start to get some real thought and progress.

“I’d be happy if we could get 50% more in profits each year”.

So far so good. When do you want to achieve this level of increased profit by?

Usual answer is immediately - pretty unrealistic. So maybe we settle on within 12 months.

It’s certainly more specific. “To increase profits by 50% within the next 12 months”. And it’s got a time frame.

Is it measurable? For most small companies you would certainly expect them to be able to measure an increase in profits. Tight controls on expenditure may have to be agreed though. Profit can be badly damaged by unplanned expenditure. In general it is much more positive to use precise measures. Instead of a 50% increase it would be better to say “Increase profits from $500,000 per annum to $750,000 within 12 months.

Is it achievable. This is what I do. And I have never seen a business where it isn’t possible to increase profits by at least this much. All that holds businesses back is the lack of commitment and will from the top management. So let’s assume it is achievable - for now.

Realistic? Good products. Poor history of marketing and promotion. Stable market with ongoing demand for the product. Certainly ought to be realistic.

Relevant? This would be a top level goal. As long it genuinely represents a part of the owner’s strategic vision it is relevant by definition.

Resourced? Hmm, this is a difficult one for top level goals. Exactly how much work will be required? How much investment would be needed in terms of marketing or capital investment? How much time will the owner need to put in? Lots of questions which can only be answered as more detailed SMARRRT planning takes place. For now we must take an educated guess. In my experience, if the owner is sufficiently committed the rest of the resources will be found.

Perhaps the most certain aspect of this hypothetical situation is the clear time scale.

A little re-wording of the original goal statement, “In the next 12 months we will grow our profit from the current $500,000 to $750,000,” and we have something that is SMARRRT. Note: All the answers to these questions should be recorded as part of an overall strategy document. For public consumption the statement we have used here is generally sufficient.

Time bound? Within 12 months.

As you can see, the goal is defined in the ‘Specific’ element of SMARRRT. The MARRRT are essentially checks to ensure the goal makes sense for your business given current business context, strategies and constraints.

As you get more sophisticated with your use of SMARRRT you will probably want to start recording not just your goal, but exactly how you will measure progress and achievement, how this goal fits in with your overall organisation, the resourcing implications,…

For now, you will be astonished at how much more you achieve simply by constructing your goals to be SMARRRT.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses.

Copyright 2005 Keith Longmire.

Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

Comments (0)
5/11/2005
Cross-selling for increased sales, profits and customer satisfaction
Filed under: General — keilo @ 1:48 am Edit This
Cross-selling - the art of selling for non-salespeople

Cross-selling is the act of selling related products at the time and point of sale. Here’s a couple of examples:

You buy trousers, the salesperson offers you the shirt, tie, cufflinks, shoes…
You buy a computer, the sales person offers you a printer, scanner, software…
When done well cross-selling will dramatically improve your sales, profits and customer satisfaction. Done poorly it will drive customers away in their droves.

The first time I told my wife about this concept she was scathing – “all those *£$% sales people trying to sell you something you don’t want” (She doesn’t really swear – much). We chatted for a while without too much meeting of minds. So I told her a story.

In days gone by you used to be able to walk into a hardware store, walk up to a counter and be greeted by a real person (this is before the days of big supermarkets and anonymous self-service). The conversation might go something like this:

You: 5 litres of white exterior gloss paint please.

Sales: Certainly sir, here you go. The finish from this paint is helped a lot if you use good brushes – how are you fixed for brushes?

You: Well, I haven’t looked for a while – I am really not sure.

Sales: What are you going to paint?

You: 3 doors and a couple of window frames.

Sales: Umm, for window frames you are probably going to need a 1 inch brush for the detail and a 2in brush for the rest of the frame. The 2 inch brush would be good for the doors too if they are not too big. Tell you what, why don’t you take a couple of brushes. If you find you don’t need them you can always bring them back later.

You: Great – good idea.

Sales: You’ll need some white spirit to clean the brushes– do you have any?

You: No – you better give me a bottle.

Sales: What are you planning to do on preparation? We have some pretty good packs that contain wire wool, assorted grade wet and drypaer, and some soft soap. Soft soap is much better for cleaning up old paintwork than detergents as it doesn’t leave any residues.

You: I hadn’t thought about preparation – I’ll take one of those packs as well.

Now that salesperson probably didn’t even think what they were doing was ’selling’. They were simply ‘helping’ a customer.

But look what happened - you have been cross-sold into spending 3 or 4 times the price of a tin of paint. But when you get home you are ready to do the job. And if you don’t need the paint brushes you know you can take them back (but you probably won’t).

In the end my wife agreed that it wasn’t the cross sell itself she found objectionable – it was the way in which it is done.

Good cross-selling provides a service to the customer. It is nothing to do with pressure selling. It is not a tool simply to help salespeople hit their targets. And it has noth whatsoever to do with pushing products that the customer will never use.

And the really good news?

I haven’t yet seen a company that could not benefit from training its staff in the art of cross-selling. Notice I said staff. Cross-selling is not just for sales people.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses.

Copyright 2005 Keith Longmire.

Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

Comments (0)
5/6/2005
Adsense and Blogs
Filed under: General — keilo @ 6:04 pm Edit This
So far I have not placed any advertising on this blog. Now it is time for the blog to pay its way. For the moment I am experimenting with Google’s adsense. I want to see how google copes with placing ‘in-context’ adsense ads on a page which is constantly being updated.

Let me know what you think

Small business marketing articles

2005-06-10T21:57:00.000+01:00

5/31/2005
Online Marketing Tools - Link Manger Assistant
Filed under:
General
Online niche marketing— keilo @ 4:24 am Edit This
This weekend I have been busy updating one of my online marketing sites. My very first online niche marketing site was My Prom Hairstyle purchased from Dr Mani. To be fair, I wasn’t overly impressed with the site as bought. That was OK - I always expected that I would have to customise the site to make it stand out from the crowd.
Instead I have used that site as my sandpit. You know, the place where I try different techniques to see what happens. To date I have tried various adwords campaigns (never spending much money), blog and ping and some links from my other reasonably highly ranked pages.
Now I have decided to shoot for links. Duncan Carver is unique on the internet (in my opinion). He offers his ‘Link Manager Assistant’ software as a free download. Other suppliers provide similar software for up to $197.
Link Manager Assistant is different. While it may be free it is immensely powerful. It will certainly take a while to get to know all its online nich marketing capabilities. For now I have simply added 30 to 40 hair style directory pages. Almost all of thes pages come directly from DMOZ.
When I have a bit more experience with Link Manager Assistant I will write a full review.
Suffice to say that I have added Link Manager Assistant to My Prom Hairstyle. Most of the time has been spent in customising the directory templates so they have the same look and feel as my other pages. This is not for the faint hearted. I am not a computing whiz but I have a pretty good background knowledge. It took quite a lot of time to figure out exactly what I had to do to customize the template.
Take a look. Let me know what you think.
Comments (0)

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5/28/2005
First Niche Marketing Web Site Created With Xsitepro
Filed under:
General
Online niche marketing— keilo @ 7:59 pm Edit This
I have just posted my first web site created with XsitePro. It took a bit longer than the 2 hours claimed by the XsitePro people. In fact it took something more like 3 days.
In that 3 days Ihave
identified a niche,
researched the site content,
learned how to use Xsitepro, wrote the content for the pages,
identified and joined suitable affiliate schemes
chosen and ordered a domain name
transferred that domain to my hosting service (Thirdsphere)
Uploaded the web site files
The actual site building bit was simple. It took a couple of hours to go through Xsitepro’s tutorial - time well spent. It then only took about an hour to build and publish the web site. As always - it’s the preparation that takes the time.
All in all I am pretty happy with the result to date. Still plenty of work to do but why not have a look at Choice Lift Chairs and tell me what you think.
I have spent much of the last week promoting the site through goodle adwords. Only time will tell how well I am doing. I’ll let you know.
If you want to take a look at Xsitepro click here now
Comments (1)

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5/22/2005
Niche Marketing and Web Site Building Tools
Filed under:
General— keilo @ 2:26 am Edit This
21 May 2005
Look anywhere for making money on the internet and you will be inundated with information about niche marketing. Somehow there is some idea that the internet invented niche marketing. The truth is that most small businesses would benefit from identifying and dominating a niche.
If you have spent any time looking at my main site, Business Growth Solutions You’ll know that I am passionate about small businesses using the internet to promote their businesses. So, while I would usually argue for a wider consideration of niche marketing, this time I am going with the crowd. This post is all about internet niche marketing.
One of the great difficulties is knowing the best way to get on line. Web site designers charge large sums for highly variable work (if you find a good one stick with them). One alternative is to build your own web site. Lots of tools claim to help you to do this with no knowledge of the web, html, search engines or any other related topic. Perhaps the only one that really does do this is the one Business Growth Solutions is built with - Site Build it (try the link at the bottom of the page).
Until now.
Recently I bought a copy of XsitePro. It came with a 365 day money back guarantee so I thought I’d give it a try.
In all honesty, I have been blown away. XsitePro is not only easier than SiteBuilIt to use, but it also offers much more flexibility and control.
To start with I have used it to collect a whole bunch of my articles together in one place. Now, I can publish them all on a web site at the touch of a button.
But that’s not the point.
Using XsitePro’s search engine optimisation tools, each and every article is now optimised for the key words it features. I have continued to place these articles with article and ezine directories. I will wait to see the results.
Of course, SiteBuildIt could be used to do this. But to be fair, SiteBuildIt’s block building approach is pretty slow and clunky in comparison to XsitePro.
As confidence increased I decided to have a little experiment with a niche web site myself. You can see the early results here Choice Lift Chairs. Using XSitePro’s built-in templates, a couple of hours research on the internet and a few hours writing the content, and you have a pretty good looking web site in 2 evening’s work.
Click here to view the “7 Reasons Why You Need XSitePro Now!” video
Comments (0)

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5/21/2005
Affiliate marketing for small businesses
Filed under:
General— keilo @ 3:12 am Edit This
Anyone who has visited my main website Business Growth Solutions cannot have failed to realise that I am passionate about the appropriate use of the internet to market small businesses. So much so that I am actively investigating the use of affiliate marketing. You might like to have a look at my latest effort at Choice Lift Chairs.No what do you know about lift chairs you might ask. And the answer a couple of days ago would have been, “not a lot". However, a few hours of research on the web, a bit of personalisation of the results and a few hours with a word processor and presto Choice Lift Chairs. The plan now is to use a variety of traffic generation techniques - including this blog - and see how we get on. I’ll keep you informed.
Comments (0)

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5/12/2005
Work SMART and Transform Any Business Into a Go-Getting Power House
Filed under:
General— keilo @ 2:30 am Edit This
We’ve all heard the phrase: “work smarter not harder". Well, the SMART acronym contains all you need to know to make it a reality.
If there is one key to turning busy, ineffectual organisations into models of streamlined efficiency then this is it. Probably as well known as SWOT, SMART turns weak, aspirational goals, objectives and tasks into concrete deliverables.
More accurately SMART ought to be SMARRRT. There are at least three equally valid definitions for the ‘R’.
OK, the one minute introduction to working smarter:
Specific: Be completely clear on the outcome expected of the goal, objective or task
Measurable: Phrase the statement of what is to be achieved so that the achievement of that outcome can be clearly measured.
Achievable: The idea is to clarify and motivate. There is nothing more demoralising than carefully constructed, but utterly impossible, goals.
Realistic: Given your current situation: is your goal realistic? Relevant: Is this specific task or goal relevant to the overall aims of the company or plan? Resourced: Are the relevant time, people, facilities and equipment available to deliver the desired outcome?
Time bound: Make sure there is a claim time limit on the completion of the activity.
Properly applied, SMARRRT transforms your business.
An example:
I specialise in helping owner-managed businesses grow. One of the first questions I ask is “Just how much do you want your business to grow?” Pretty typically the answer is something like “we’d like a few more customers” or “a lot".
Even at this early stage I start to apply SMARRRT.
What does growth mean to you? More income, more profits, more customers, more staff, bigger premises…. Usually we settle on income and profits.
OK, just how much more profit would you like? What would you be delighted with, what would just make you happy and what is OK but not very exciting? (I use stretch goals in a balanced scorecard type of approach - more on this in another article).
Now we start to get some real thought and progress.
“I’d be happy if we could get 50% more in profits each year".
So far so good. When do you want to achieve this level of increased profit by?
Usual answer is immediately - pretty unrealistic. So maybe we settle on within 12 months.
It’s certainly more specific. “To increase profits by 50% within the next 12 months". And it’s got a time frame.
Is it measurable? For most small companies you would certainly expect them to be able to measure an increase in profits. Tight controls on expenditure may have to be agreed though. Profit can be badly damaged by unplanned expenditure. In general it is much more positive to use precise measures. Instead of a 50% increase it would be better to say “Increase profits from $500,000 per annum to $750,000 within 12 months.
Is it achievable. This is what I do. And I have never seen a business where it isn’t possible to increase profits by at least this much. All that holds businesses back is the lack of commitment and will from the top management. So let’s assume it is achievable - for now.
Realistic? Good products. Poor history of marketing and promotion. Stable market with ongoing demand for the product. Certainly ought to be realistic.
Relevant? This would be a top level goal. As long it genuinely represents a part of the owner’s strategic vision it is relevant by definition.
Resourced? Hmm, this is a difficult one for top level goals. Exactly how much work will be required? How much investment would be needed in terms of marketing or capital investment? How much time will the owner need to put in? Lots of questions which can only be answered as more detailed SMARRRT planning takes place. For now we must take an educated guess. In my experience, if the owner is sufficiently committed the rest of the resources will be found.
Perhaps the most certain aspect of this hypothetical situation is the clear time scale.
A little re-wording of the original goal statement, “In the next 12 months we will grow our profit from the current $500,000 to $750,000,” and we have something that is SMARRRT. Note: All the answers to these questions should be recorded as part of an overall strategy document. For public consumption the statement we have used here is generally sufficient.
Time bound? Within 12 months.
As you can see, the goal is defined in the ‘Specific’ element of SMARRRT. The MARRRT are essentially checks to ensure the goal makes sense for your business given current business context, strategies and constraints.
As you get more sophisticated with your use of SMARRRT you will probably want to start recording not just your goal, but exactly how you will measure progress and achievement, how this goal fits in with your overall organisation, the resourcing implications,…
For now, you will be astonished at how much more you achieve simply by constructing your goals to be SMARRRT.
—————————————————————-
Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses.
Copyright 2005 Keith Longmire.
Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.
Comments (0)

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5/11/2005
Cross-selling for increased sales, profits and customer satisfaction
Filed under:
General— keilo @ 1:48 am Edit This
Cross-selling - the art of selling for non-salespeople
Cross-selling is the act of selling related products at the time and point of sale. Here’s a couple of examples:
You buy trousers, the salesperson offers you the shirt, tie, cufflinks, shoes…
You buy a computer, the sales person offers you a printer, scanner, software…
When done well cross-selling will dramatically improve your sales, profits and customer satisfaction. Done poorly it will drive customers away in their droves.
The first time I told my wife about this concept she was scathing – “all those *£$% sales people trying to sell you something you don’t want” (She doesn’t really swear – much). We chatted for a while without too much meeting of minds. So I told her a story.
In days gone by you used to be able to walk into a hardware store, walk up to a counter and be greeted by a real person (this is before the days of big supermarkets and anonymous self-service). The conversation might go something like this:
You: 5 litres of white exterior gloss paint please.
Sales: Certainly sir, here you go. The finish from this paint is helped a lot if you use good brushes – how are you fixed for brushes?
You: Well, I haven’t looked for a while – I am really not sure.
Sales: What are you going to paint?
You: 3 doors and a couple of window frames.
Sales: Umm, for window frames you are probably going to need a 1 inch brush for the detail and a 2in brush for the rest of the frame. The 2 inch brush would be good for the doors too if they are not too big. Tell you what, why don’t you take a couple of brushes. If you find you don’t need them you can always bring them back later.
You: Great – good idea.
Sales: You’ll need some white spirit to clean the brushes– do you have any?
You: No – you better give me a bottle.
Sales: What are you planning to do on preparation? We have some pretty good packs that contain wire wool, assorted grade wet and drypaer, and some soft soap. Soft soap is much better for cleaning up old paintwork than detergents as it doesn’t leave any residues.
You: I hadn’t thought about preparation – I’ll take one of those packs as well.
Now that salesperson probably didn’t even think what they were doing was ’selling’. They were simply ‘helping’ a customer.
But look what happened - you have been cross-sold into spending 3 or 4 times the price of a tin of paint. But when you get home you are ready to do the job. And if you don’t need the paint brushes you know you can take them back (but you probably won’t).
In the end my wife agreed that it wasn’t the cross sell itself she found objectionable – it was the way in which it is done.
Good cross-selling provides a service to the customer. It is nothing to do with pressure selling. It is not a tool simply to help salespeople hit their targets. And it has noth whatsoever to do with pushing products that the customer will never use.
And the really good news?
I haven’t yet seen a company that could not benefit from training its staff in the art of cross-selling. Notice I said staff. Cross-selling is not just for sales people.
—————————————————————-
Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses.
Copyright 2005 Keith Longmire.
Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

Small Business Growth Solutions

2005-01-19T09:43:00.000Z

Breakthrough business growth - the blog dedicated to small business growth solutions - is moving.

The value and success of blogging is clear. Although a relative newbie to the whole blog concept my experience with blogger has established blogging as one of the most important online marketing tools available to small business owners.

Unfortunately, blogger makes it difficult to get statistics and feedback on site performance.

So, this blog is moving to www.jklbusinessgrowthsolutions.com. All posts, small business marketing articles, news and information from breakthrough growth have been transferred. All that remains is to publicise the changes to lots of blog directories.

See you over at www.jklbusinessgrowthsolutions.com

Breakthrough Business Growth - Site Updates

2005-01-17T22:04:00.000Z

17 January 2005
Another 10 days shoots by.

Most work recently has been off site and off line. Delivering consultancy has taken priority over building this site further.

However, I have had time to build a niche site to try my hand directly at internet marketing. Have a look at www.mypromhairstyle.com and let me know what you think. (you can use the
contact form on this site.

Forays out into building simple sites using html outside of SBI also extend to building a site for the Muskham Art Group. This is much more my wife's interest rather than mine. But it has been an interesting exercise.

Again, please do let me know what you think. Please also let me know if you know of any other art groups that might be interested in exchanging links.

That's all for now. I have a whole mass of articles to optimise, upload and link. They all need publicising. Where does all the time go?

Muskham Art Group

2005-01-15T17:46:00.000Z

A foray away from the small business marketing theme for a moment.

My wife is an excellent amateur artist. I think her work is much better than she gives herself credit for. Anyway, she is a member of a local art group - "The Muskham Art Group" no less.

In the last couple of weeks we have designed and implemented a very simple web site for the Muskham Art Group. What we would like to do is to find lots of links with other amateur art groups around the world.

So, please take a look at the web site and contact us if you know of any other art group which would be interested in forming links with us.

Thanks for your help.

Online Marketing for Small Businesses

2005-01-15T17:22:00.000Z

Those who have looked at the JKL website will know that I really beleive in the power of web sites and online marketing for small businesses.

But online marketing is only a part of the marketing mix - and a very small part for many small businesses. The sad thing is that many businesses have leapt on the online marketing bandwagon, spent thousands on web sites and then sat back to reap the rewards.

The result - nothing, nada, zilch,...

So you hire expensive search engine optimisation experts. Typically these guys will change you an arm and a leg (this is beginning to change) and guarantee to get one or more of your key phrases into the top 10 positions on the internet.

The result - more traffic and maybe more sales - but not a lot.

At this point most small business owners give up. How many times have you heard someone say, "the web doesn't work for my business?"

Yet, some degree of online marketing is appropriate for almost any business. Even you local gas station should have a web site even if it only shows the name, address and telephone number. More and more people let their mouse do the walking and search for all sorts of things on the internet rather than in yellow pages or telephone directories.

The first step to successful online marketing is to set very clear objectives. Knowing precisely what you expect to get for your web investment is paramount. Armed with this knowledge the website can be designed to achieve your objectives. If you expect to sell off the site then you will need to hire good sales copy writers. If you simply want a brochure presence then hire a good web designer and brochure designer. If you want to proide technical support gear your whole site to providing that support.

The list goes on.

The real point is - design your web site to achieve your clear online marketing objectives. If you haven't got clear objectives then don't spend your hard earned cash on a website just yet.

Including JKL Business Growth Solutions Site Map in Blogger template

2005-01-10T13:38:00.000Z

Following on from my previous post I thought I had better amend the Breakthrough Growth blog template to that it includes the JKL Business Growth Solutions Site Map in the footer of every post.

If you decide to do this be careful. When you elect 'modify template' from the template tab of the main blogger window you are taken to a page where you can change the template for the entire blog - it does not affect the appearance of each post.

You need to go to the settings tab, then to the formatting tab and scroll to the botton of that page. You will see a box called 'Post Template'. This is where you need to make your changes.

You can see the result below.

Breakthrough Growth is the blog of JKL Business Growth Solutions. You can see the main site map by clicking on this link.

Using your own small business blog to boost web site popularity

2005-01-10T11:48:00.000Z

The importance of using your blog to increase the Search Engine appeal of your site is now pretty well known. In fact, there is little excuse at the moment for not getting your small business web site listed with both google and yahoo.

Yahoo is particularly interesting. It is actually a directory and not a search engine.

Normally to get your web site listed on yahoo you must submit the site, pay $299 and wait for a human editor to review the site. Now Yahoo places pretty stringent conditions on a site for it to be listed. If you get it wrong and your site is not listed you don't get your money back.

Hmm.

But what has this got to do with blogs? Well, at the moment Yahoo is spidering all blogs that are registered on anyone's personal 'My Yahoo Page'. So all you need to do to get your site listed in Yahoo is:

Create a blog
Make sure the title of the blog contains a high demand keyword phrase pertinent to your site.
Make sure the titles of you first blog posts also contain keywords related to your site.
Write a number of posts that follow normal search engine advice - i.e. Stick to one topic that is defined by the keyword in the title with keywords liberally sprinkled throughout the text
Post links back to the relevant pages on your site
Create a My Yahoo page. Simply click the button on the yahoo.com home page and follow the instructions there.
Now add your RSS/Blog feed to your yahoo page.

Perceived wisdom had been to do this for every page that you wanted to get listed. A better idea seems to be to post a link to your site map, just like this one, on every blog post. Better yet, if you have the option, edit your blog template so that your site map is always included.

JKL Business Growth Solutions - Site Update

2005-01-09T15:18:00.000Z

Update Log

7 January 2005
Wow, it's a new year already. Time for another site update.

This site has been in existence for 10 months. It now consists of 50 pages. There are another 20 waiting for me to load.

Adding a page to the site now takes longer than ever. That is no reflection on
SBI - more the case of more complex intra site linking.

For example, today I added 2 new articles Public Speakng for Small Business Owners and The Importance of Article Writing for small business owners. While each was already written I spent some time checking on the best keywords to use in the headlines. Then I used the
SBI search engine optimisation tool to make sure the pages could score well with the Search Engines. Each page then needed to be linked to the marketing strategies page and the Marketing Articles page.

Each of the articles was then added to the breakthrough growth blog

All in all, about 4 hours work. And then another 15 minutes adding these activities to this record.

Traffic is slowly building. For the last 3 months is has increased by about 30% per month. Heading towards the 1000 unique visitors per month mark.

OK, that's all for now. More pages to add over the weekend.

Effective Public Speaking for Small Business Owners and Managers

2005-01-07T16:31:00.000Z

Effective Public Speaking for Small Business Owners & Managers

Public speaking is comfortably the quickest and easiest way to improve your company visibility, establish yourself as an expert, get you face known and get businesses coming to you. Most small business owners and managers fully recognise this yet even the thought of standing up in public to speak to a room full of strangers can evoke a somewhat nauseous feeling in many people.

Some of the most confident business people often do their best to avoid public speaking. But not taking advantage of every public speaking opportunity is a serious mistake.

If you suffer from serious anxiety about public speaking or any other sales or marketing activity (telemarketing, sales, networking,...) you could be needlessly cutting yourself off from wonderful business development opportunities. Modern techniques have a phenomenal success rate in countering all sorts of anxieties and phobias. Take a look at Seymour Segnit's 24 hour anxiety solutions. You could save yourself an awful lot of stress.

Public speaking is great for your business in two main ways. One- you gain face recognition, and two- it establishes you and your company as the of industry experts.

Let’s start with face recognition. This sounds like a simple thing, but don't discount its importance. Imagine you are at an industry trade show. You are side by side with another company in the exhibition hall. You sell basically the same product. But you are delivering the keynote speech at the conference. Your picture, name and company is on each of the entry-way signs into the conference center.

Which company are attendees at the conference (who, by the way, are qualified prospects) likely to visit?

Odds are they will stop at your stand.

Even people who are just walking by may stop to talk to the person they saw speak at a conference session. Sometimes that's all the edge you need to make that lucrative sale.

The other reason they decide to stop is they recognise you as the industy expert. You must be. How else did you get invited to give the prestigious keynote speech? The prospects assume you know your business or you wouldn’t have been invited to speak at the conference.

This is true regardless of industry. If you are a psychologist with a local practice and people see you speak at a conference, or even at a local Rotary meeting, they will begin to see you as an industry expert. Should the occasion arise for that person to need to visit a psychologist, or to refer a colleague or friend, your name may come to mind simply because they’ve seen you before.

It is important, however, that if you decide to take public speaking engagements, that you deliver a good speech.

The good news is that you don't have to be perfect. In fact, usually public
speakers do not have to be particularly good to be a great success. Your audience
is usually more than half on your side. They want you to do well.

And providing you deliver good, solid content in a professional manner your audience
will leave well satisfied.

But be prepared.

There is nothing worse than letting a prospect see you give a less than well prepared speech. If your lack of preparedness causes you to pause a lot, stumble over sections of presentation, or fumble with slides or other presentational aids, that will give you the air of incompetence just as surely as a well prepared and delivered presentation will give you the air of expertise.

Here are my top 7 tips for preparing presentations.

Choose 3 or 4 key topics - no more.

Make sure your have researched your
content.

Write a script - you may not need
to use it but the act of writing out a script is a great way for getting
you thinking straight.

Structure your speech around your
core topics. Make sure you have a beginning, middle and end.

If you are going to use presentational
aids make sure they are prepared well in advance.

Rehearse - words that look great
on paper often don't flow well when spoken aloud.

Rehearse again.

Just as much as being seen and heard can gain you recognition and business, being
seen and heard giving a poor presentation can lose you business.

So you may want to look into taking a few public speaking courses to brush up on your
skills. A good couple of resources online are: Instant Public Speaking Success
- for those who want to improve the delivery side of speech making, and Michael Green's How to Create & Make a Presentation toolkit . While I have never used either of these resources they get great reviews. Anything from Micheal Green is always top notch and well worth trying.

Public Speaking may well seem like a lot of effort and trouble. It might even cause you enormous personal anxiety. But there is not doubt that it is worth the time and energy it takes any manager or business owner to give public speaking presentations.

There are few better ways to gain recognition for your name, company and to
establish yourself as the obvious expert in your industry.

Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses. His website http://www.jkl-small-business-marketing-solutions.com has been designed to help owner-managers cut through the hype and produce innovative marketing plans that deliver results.

Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

Small Business Marketing Solutions - Site Updates

2004-12-29T21:24:00.000Z

No update for over 2 weeks - yikes I am slipping.

Even with the Christmas break - 2 weeks is much too long between site updates. Not that it means that there has been no activity in that time. There has been quite a bit of subtle (we hope) but significant restructuring going on.

Our aim has been to provide a more consistent structure for the ongoing expansion of the site. We also want to improve some of the search engine optimisation for a few pages.

A new page - Marketing Strategy - has been added. This page should provide a logical hub to access lots of different marketing tactics and techniques. Work is well advanced on content and one supporting article has been added.

The title of the internet marketing page has been changed to 'Marketing Online'. Marketing online is much closer to the ethos of our site - we really don't want to be internet marketers competing with the likes of Ken Evoy, Corey Rudl, Yanik Silver and the like. Marketing online also sports a much better supply demand ratio (the competition is not as fierce :-)

The articles and download page has been split. The Article page is titled 'Marketing Articles' - again a phrase with much improved supply demand ratio.

Articles will remain free to download, copy and redistribute as long as full attribution, including a live link back to this site, is retained.

The downloads page will require registration and log-on to use in future. An offsite auto responder account has been set up with getresponse.com. The flexibility provided is much better than most of the competition and at a keener price.

Visit the marketing strategies page and take a look at the articles and pages accessible from there. The latest update concerns how to get the very most from your attendance at trade shows.

Slightly less positively, the RSS feed has been put on ice until SBI provides a native RSS solution. The work around, while highly functional, required just a little too much work. Most of the updates that would have been posted there will be posted here and in our blog Breakthrough Business Growth.

Wow, all that in 2 weeks of part time work. And much more to come. See you soon.

Make the most from trade shows

2004-12-28T16:25:00.000Z

Get The Most From Exhibiting At Trade Shows

Trade Shows are the perfect way to gain access to qualified buyers in your industry.
Every industry has trade shows; you just need to pick the right one to make sure you get the most from your money.

Pick the Right Show

Start out by researching the shows available to you.

Check with the trade associations for your industry to see what shows they recommend. Get some figures on numbers of people attending in past years. If possible get hold of previous exhibitor and attendee lists. Call a few exhibitors, preferably ones that do not directly compete, and ask what they thought of the show. Call previous delegates. Ask them what they thought and how useful they found their attendance.

When you put your mind to it there are lots of ways of choosing the best possible show for your purposes.

Normally it is better to choose shows with a solid history of three or more years experience. Any less and there might not be enough 'buzz' to make it worthwhile attending.

Plan to Achieve a Return on Your Investment

Location

Once you’ve chosen the show where you’ll pay for exhibit space, there are a number of things you can do to make sure you see a return on your investment (keeping in mind that there are not always hard and fast ROI calculations you can do to determine if your money was well spent; whether you can or not will depend on your product and your industry).

The first main thing is location. Just like in any other form of Real Estate, the location of your exhibit booth is key to your success. Ask for floor plans and traffic patterns so you can book space that is highly visible (but be prepared to pay a higher price for better location).

Once you have the location of your booth space locked down (get it in writing on your signed contract with the organisers), the next most import thing to do is PREPARE.

Prepare To Succeed

This is the fatal mistake most companies make when exhibiting at trade shows. They book space, book flights and hotels and then just show up to stand in the booth. This approach is not going to get you new business. Here are a few areas to concentrate on when preparing for a trade show:

Booth
- Rent or buy (call and talk to the “Decorator” or “Expo Services” company to help you determine which is best for you
- Graphics – what type, how many
- Are there rules that union labor must set up your booth? Ask the Decorator.

Collateral
- What literature do you plan to give away at the show?
- Find out recommended numbers brochures to ship from the trade show coordinating company
- Bring only a few of your most expensive packets…you can always follow up with qualified leads by mailing the more expensive packets when you are back in the office.

Booth Traffic
- Figure out in advance what you’ll do to bring people to your booth
- Give-aways
- Drawings
- Presentations

Staffing
- Do not let your staff sit down. Prospects will not come by a booth where all the trade show staff are sitting, or looking bored, or eating
- Staff the booth with knowledgeable people. This is your chance to get face-to-face with qualified prospects, don’t waste the only chance you might have by staffing your booth with temps.

Lead Collection
- How will you collect leads?
- Order a name scanner from the trade show Expo company
- Bring a bowl to collect business cards
- Consider having a form for prospects to fill out (but be prepared with “promotional items” like pens or stress balls to give the prospects a reason to take the time to fill it out)

Plan Your Follow Up
- All the leads in the world won’t benefit you if you don’t follow up on them within one to three weeks after the trade show.
- If you are sending a trade show follow up mailer, have it printed BEFORE you leave for the show, so it can be mailed upon your return.

Giving thought to these areas before you exhibit at a trade show will ensure that your return is higher than if you simply show up! The trade show Expo Services and the conference hosting company are both great resources. You are paying them to participate in the show, let them help you prepare for it!

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Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses. His website Breakthrough Business Growth has been designed to help owner-managers cut through the hype and produce innovative marketing plans that deliver results.

Copyright 2004 Keith Longmire.

Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

Small business marketing solutions - Feedburner

2004-12-14T13:32:00.000Z

The possibilities of RSS linked to bloggin for my Small Business Marketing solutions site seem endless.

I have just registered the feed with feedburner. Have a look. Let me know what you think.

Site Updates

2004-12-12T13:36:00.000Z

Where does all the time go to?

It's mostly been a week of article production and promotion. Took advantage of the offer from www.ezinearticle.com to post a further 5 articles for free. Ezine articles normally charge quite a bit for the service so it seems like a good deal. Grow your business by getting your customers buying more often is currently featured on ezine articles. The other 4 should follow.

A number of additional links added to the resource and associated businesses pages.

Received the first batch of articles from the outsourced writer this week. They are OK but seem to have been written down to a word limit rather than to address the topic as given. They need some considerable work but watch out for a whole batch of updates in the coming days.

Blog Directories

2004-12-10T10:01:00.000Z

Browsing posts over at Michael Green's How to corp forum I came across a post from Tim Erway. Tim is putting together a directory of blogs. You can contact Tim at through his blog if you are interested in getting your blog listed.

Business Acronyms - the Most Powerful Tools of All Time

2004-12-10T09:52:00.000Z

Six "Honest Business Friends" - They Teach Me All I Know

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
(Rudyard Kipling, from "The Elephant's Child" in Just So Stories).

A few days ago I posted a very simple question on an Internet
Marketing Forum. I knew I would kick myself when I heard the
answer.

And I did.

DNO - "Do Not Open". Obvious really.

What I hadn't expected was to be flamed for being stupid by an,
allegedly, 12 year old MENSA member. While I am old enough and
thick skinned enough to cope with his response it did cause me to
reflect on the nature of learning and Kipling's words. Words that
still provide the basis of my business philosophy today. i.e. If
you don't know, ask.

So I got to thinking. Is there a modern business equivalent to
Kipling's six honest serving-men?

To be fair, Kipling is a bit of a hard act to follow. But that's
not going to stop me…

The Six Most Powerful Business Acronyms of All Time

Here we go - 6 acronyms that have the capacity to transform any
business.

SWOT

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - the most
famous business acronym of all time. SWOT provides a great
framework for brainstorming sessions. Done honestly and openly
your SWOT analysis holds a mirror up to your business that
highlights just what you do well and can exploit, and what you
don’t do well and which your competitors can exploit.

To get started take each term in turn and answer the following
questions:

Strengths:

- What are your businesses core strengths?
- What are you really good at?
- What makes you stand out from your competitors?
- What proprietary tools, technology or process do you
have?
- What do our competitors see as our strengths?
- What do our customers see as our strengths?

Weaknesses:

- What don’t you do well?
- What do you want to improve?
- Where do you lose out to your competitors?
- What don’t your customers like about you?

Opportunities:

- What changes are taking place in your business?
environment Social, Technological, Economic,
Political, Legal, Environmental (STEPLE - another
acronym snuck in there)?
- What do customers want that you could deliver?
- What are your competitors’ weaknesses?
- How else could you exploit your strengths?

Threats:

- What is your competition doing?
- Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems?
- Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your
business?
- Could any of those STEPLE factors threaten your
business?

Use these questions to get started. Remember, you are meant to be
brainstorming - anything goes.

Your SWOT is only the starting point. Your real challenge is to
use it to develop a strategy and plans that turn your weaknesses
into strengths, your threats into opportunities, and to maximise
on the opportunities that are presented.

SMART

If there is one key to turning busy, ineffectual organisations
into models of streamlined efficiency then this is it. Probably
as well known as SWOT, SMART turns goals, objectives and tasks
into concrete deliverables.

More accurately SMART ought to be SMARRRT. There are at least
three equally valid definitions for the R.

OK, the 10 second introduction to working smarter:

SPECIFIC: Be completely clear on the outcome expected of the
goal, objective or task

MEASURABLE: Phrase the statement of what is to be achieved so
that the achievement of that outcome can be clearly measured.

ACHIEVABLE: The idea is to clarify and motivate. There is nothing
more demoralising than carefully constructed, but utterly
impossible, goals.

REALISTIC: Given your current situation: is your goal realistic?
RELEVANT: Is this specific task or goal relevant to the overall
aims of the company or plan?
RESOURCED: Are the relevant time, people, facilities and
equipment available to deliver the desired outcome?

TIME BOUND: Make sure there is a claim time limit on the
completion of the activity.

Properly applied, SMART transforms your business.

WIIFM

"What’s In It For Me?" WIIFM should be at the top of your thoughts
whenever you think about your prospects or customers. But is has
nothing to do with you at all.

To get to the me you must put yourself in your ideal customers
position. Think like that customer. Try to walk a mile (or
several) in their shoes.

Ask yourself:

- What problems plague their lives?
- What are they afraid of?
- What are they angry about?
- Who are they angry with?

Stay in your customers shoes.

Imagine someone is trying to sell you your own product or
service. Ask yourself (repeatedly) - What’s In It For Me? How does
it solve my problems? How does it make my life better?

These are the benefits your product or service must deliver to
your customer.

You should apply this simple principle to every piece of sales
and marketing material you use. Does it call out to what your
customers really want? Is it written in terms of your customers?
viewpoint? Does it promote the benefits?

In short does it tell me - your customer - What’s In It For Me?

AIDA

No, not the Opera. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

AIDA has been in use in advertising for over 100 years. It is
just as valid today for use on the web as it is for crafting
sales letters, brochures, radio broadcasts, your elevator
pitch....

In fact, just about any marketing pitch.

ATTENTION: If you are to sell anything you have first got to get
people’s attention. The normal way of doing this is to use a
benefit Driven Headline. Some famous, proven headlines include:

How to Win Friends and Influence People
101 Ways to Quit Smoking Now
Are You Too Busy To Make Any Money?

Eye movement studies show that 95% of the time people don't read
advertisements. Even worse for marketers, of the 5% of readers
who might read your advertisement - 95% never read beyond the
headline.

You do use headlines in all your advertisements and marketing
materials don't you?

INTEREST: You've got your readers attention. Now you must make
them interested.

This is where all that work thinking like a customer comes into
play.

Don’t mess around. In the first sentence fire your biggest gun.
Hit your readers with the biggest benefit that your product or
service brings to them. Explain how you deliver that benefit and
then hit them again with the next biggest gun you have. And keep
on doing it.

Got more benefits? Good, keep them coming. Marketing copy cannot
be too long only too boring. Keep it interesting, keep firing
your benefits and your message will get read.

DESIRE: You've aroused interest. Now create desire. Make it
impossible for your prospects not to buy.

Make them an irresistible offer. Add some urgency:

- Call now - offer applies to the first 100 customers. -
- We can only keep this price until the end of the month.

Add a no quibbles, iron cast guarantee.

Add free bonuses (Free is the second most powerful word in the
English language).

Use your imagination. Give people a great reason to want to buy
now.

ACTION: You've done the hard work. Your customer is ready to buy.
So make it really easy for them. Tell them exactly what they need
to do right now to make an order:

- Call 01636 605 707 now, ask to speak to Keith and quote
ad001.
- Click this button to place your order now.
- Register for our newsletter by filling in this box now.

Keep it simple. Make it clear and quick to do. The easier it is
to do business with you the more sales you will make.

SWAT

SWAT is not actually an acronym. It is a compaction of the
question so what?

You see, one of the biggest problems that even experienced
copywriters and marketers fall into is being clear on what
benefits their product or service actually delivers to their
customers.

SWAT provides the solution.

Here is how it works:

- Take a piece of paper. Divide it into columns one
headed features and one headed benefits.
- Under the features column list all the features you can
think of.
- Under the benefits column list all the benefits you can
think of. (Don’t worry about neatness there will not be a
one-to-one correspondence between features and benefits)
- Now, get yourself back in your customers’ mindset. Take
each feature in turn and ask yourself SO WHAT?
- And keep on asking the question if the answers you
produce until you can't think of any sensible answer.
- Do this for every feature in your list and then for
every benefit

It is pretty certain that the same benefits will occur many times
over as you run through this exercise. That's fine. These are the
ultimate benefits you have been looking for. These are the
benefits you will 'sell' to your customer.

KISS

KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid needs little introduction. In all
business environments there is a tendency to over elaborate. In
marketing the problem is particularly acute. Marketing is
populated by creative wanabees. There is always another idea to
try. A more eye-catching and creative design. Don’t fall into this
trap.

Remember KISS.

And taking my own advice that's where I am going to leave this
article. Over to you. What do you think are the most powerful
acronyms in use today? Which do you think are the biggest waste
of time. Drop me a line and let me know. I will feature the best
comments and suggestions on the JKL website.

Just keep it clean :)

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Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses.

His website Breakthrough Business Growth has been designed to help owner-managers cut through the hype and produce innovative marketing plans that deliver results.
Copyright 2004 Keith Longmire.
Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

Grow Your Business By Getting Your Customers Buying From You More Often - 35 Ideas to Spark Your Creative Juices

2004-12-10T09:49:00.000Z

Grow Your Business By Getting Your Customers Buying From You More Often - 35 Ideas to Spark Your Creative Juices

There are 3 ways to grow any business. Just 3:

- Get more customers
- Get more from each sale
- Sell to each customer more frequently.

That’s it - everything else boils down to some variation of these 3 activities.

Most owners and managers want to grow their business. Most of them concentrate exclusively on getting more new customers.

Odd really.

There is lots of marketing research that is pretty consistent in pointing out that it costs somewhere between six and twelve times as much to get a new customer as it does to sell to an existing customer.

And once you have a customer it is generally pretty straightforward to get them to buy from you more often.

What’s that?

Your business is different. You sell a one-off product. There’s no way to get customers to buy more often.

Maybe so.

But I don’t think so.

Here are 35 ideas for you to stick in your brainstorming pot, stir for a while, and then see what comes out at the other end.

Customer focus

1. Actively market to your existing customers
2. Listen to your customers - deliver what they want
3. Keep Customers Informed
4. Start A newsletter
5. Superior Customer Service
6. Target Profitable Customers
7. Over deliver On your Promise
8. Priority hot line for most profitable
9. Active Customer Relationship Management

Business Model

10. Target a Specific Niche
11. Look for niches within niches
12. Use Service Contracts
13. Back-End Selling
14. Pre-Sell After First Sale
15. Joint venture marketing

Reward Customers

16. Establish A Frequent Buyers Club And Card
17. Find Out Everything You Can About Customer
18. Competition
19. Previews
20. New Offers Every Week, Month
21. Personal letters
22. Reminder Schedule
23. Outgoing Calls
24. Private Unveilings
25. Master the Art Of Saying Thank You
26. Sell the Experience As Much As The Product

Promotions

27. Statement Stuffers
28. Bag stuffers
29. Discount vouchers
30. Bring A Friend Free
31. Surprise Offers
32. Appeal to the emotions
33. Make Your Customers Feel Guilty
34. Direct Mail
35. Target advertisements for existing customers

Now I hope you have found something in this list to get your creative juices flowing. But I regularly come across businesses that claim to have one shot products. Most recently I had a high class kitchen design and build company telling me that none of these things applied to them.

They build solid wood kitchen units, equipped them with the best possible kitchen equipment and expected the kitchen to last 20 years or more.

Now I don’t know what the figures are like in the rest of the World but in the UK people move home, on average, every 4.7 years. Keep in touch. They just might buy from you again.

And what do you know about your customer. Top of the list is that they want to improve their homes and they will pay good money to get top service. They probably are willing to spend money to improve the rest of their home.

Could you do some joint venture marketing with another, non-competing, home improvement company?

Look around. You will find plenty of other companies that would love to be able to market directly to your customers.

Sure, you are not marketing your own service - but does that matter? If you work a deal with another home improvement company they are certain to pay a commission for each of your customers that buy from them.

Still not convinced?

Contact us - we like a challenge.

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Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses.
His website Breakthrough Business Growth is designed to help owner-managers cut through the hype and produce innovative marketing plans that deliver results.

Copyright 2004 Keith Longmire.

Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

Benefits Or Features - For Everyone Who Has Ever Struggled To Figure Out The Difference - "SWAT Them!"

2004-12-10T09:45:00.000Z

Benefits Or Features - For Everyone Who Has Ever Struggled To Figure Out The Difference - "SWAT Them!"

SWAT is not actually an acronym. It is a compaction of the question "so what?"

You see, one of the biggest problems that even experienced copywriters and marketers fall into is being clear on what benefits their product or service actually delivers to their customers.

SWAT provides the solution.

Here is how it works:

- Take a piece of paper. Divide it into columns one headed features and one headed benefits.
- Under the features column list all the features that come to mind.
- Under the benefits column list all the benefits you deliver. (Don’t worry about neatness there will not be a one-to-one correspondence between features and benefits)
- Now, get yourself back in your customers’ mindset. Take each feature in turn and ask yourself "SO WHAT?"
- And keep on asking the question until you can't think of any sensible, benefit oriented, answer.
- Do this for every feature in your list
- Now go back and repeat the process for every benefit you originally listed

It is pretty certain that the same benefits will occur many times over as you run through this exercise. That's fine. These are the ultimate benefits you have been looking for. These are the benefits you will 'sell' to your customer.

An example

I wear a pretty cheap and tacky diver’s watch. Its features include:

- water proof to 50m (that’s about 164 feet)
- accurate to 1 second per year
- tells the time in 2 time zones
- dual analogue and digital display
- shock proof
- stop watch
- back light
- day, month date function
- 5 year battery life

Now for certain prospects this list of features is pretty powerful on its own. Principally young men who like to dazzle their friends with the latest gadgets and gizmos.

But let's try to figure out some marketable benefits for a wider audience.

"Water proof to 50m"

So what?

You can wear the watch while diving

So what?

You can be sure it is waterproof enough for all day-to-day use

So what?

You can put the watch on and forget it - no matter what you are doing

So what?

Accurate time keeping -anytime, anyplace.

So what?
???

Your thought patterns would obviously be different to mine. But I am now stuck. The question "So What?" doesn't lead me to another statement. No matter. I am pretty happy with the last couple above. Either of them talks to me of the real benefits the watch could bring.

Now I would need to go away and do the same thing for all of the other features. When I first did this exercise I ended up with over 120 benefits (and this for something that is definitely pretty cheap and tacky). I am not going to do that here again.

The benefits that kept repeating were: go anywhere, do anything, super accurate timekeeping.

I was able to produce 30 plus benefit driven headlines. And I had no difficulty in sorting out the benefits from the features.

And all in a little over an hour.

Seems a pity that I don't actually sell watches...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses. His website Breakthrough Business Growth has been designed to help owner-managers cut through the hype and produce innovative marketing plans that deliver results.

Copyright 2004 Keith Longmire.

Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

Grow Your Business By Increasing the Value of Each Sale - 29 Ideas to Spur Your Brain

2004-12-10T09:41:00.000Z

There are 3 ways to grow any business:

- Get more customers
- Get more from each sale
- Sell to each customer more frequently.

That’s it - everything else boils down to some variation of these 3 activities.

Most owners and most managers want to grow their business. Most of them concentrate exclusively on getting more new customers.

Odd really.

There is lots of marketing research that is pretty consistent in pointing out that it costs somewhere between six and twelve times as much to get a new customer as it does to sell to an existing customer.

And once you have a customer it is generally pretty straightforward to get them to spend more each time they buy from you.

What’s that?

Your business is different. There’s no way to get customers to spend more.

Maybe so.

But I don’t think so.

Here are 29 ideas for you to stick in your brainstorming pot, stir for a while, and then see what comes out at the other end.

Price

1. Raise Your Prices

2. Sell Value, Not Price

Sales techniques

3. Up Sell

4. Down-Sell

5. Cross Sell

Add value

6. Back-End Sale

7. Extended Warranties

8. Service Contracts

9. Consult For Your Own Product

Make the sale easy

10. Terms And Financing

11. Set Up An Account

12. Try Before You Buy

13. Work With Pre-Payments

Give more

14. Develop an exclusive product or service

15. Expand Your Product Range

16. First Time Buyer Incentives

17. Concentrate On High Quality Prospects

18. Use Package Deals

19. Sell Bulk

20. Incentive Builders For Big Purchases

21. Offer Greater Variety

Sales force

22. Sales commission structures

23. Set Solid Sales Goals

24. NLP Techniques

25. Sales Scripts

26. Keep In Touch With Customers

Educate your customers

27. Demonstrations

28. Educate your customers - make sure they know your full product range

29. Audio And Visual Demonstrations

Still don’t think you can get more from each transaction with your customers?

Contact us.

We like a challenge.

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Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses.

His website Breakthrough Business Growth has been designed to help owner-managers cut through the hype and produce innovative marketing plans that deliver results.

Copyright 2004 Keith Longmire.

Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.

My Yahoo Site Created

2004-12-08T17:23:00.000Z

Now why is the creation of a my Yahoo home site worthy of mention you might ask.

The answer, until recently, was selling for $97. There is still an ebook on offer for $47.

The real excitement is being able to add the RSS feed to My Yahoo. At the moment, Yahoo is automatically adding any RSS feeds you add to My Yahoo to Yahoos RSS directory. What's even more exciting is that they are then spidering the source site.

Effectively you get added to Yahoo for free - immediately. Beats the $299 paid inclusion service.

RSS Feed on SBI site

2004-12-08T17:01:00.000Z

Get started with blogging one day. RSS feeds the next.

Not just any old RSS feed.

Oh no.

An RSS feed on an SBI site. Even though SBI doesn't support RSS.

Take a look Breakthrough Growth RSS Feed.

If you are new to RSS right click on the link them copy the shortcut. Open up a feedreader - there are plenty of free examples on the net - and paste the link as a new feed. And there you go - hot new content straight from the breakthrough Growth web site.

If you have an SBI site and want to know how to create an RSS feed read Marc Liron's free guide - you don't need to leave your email address even at http://www.my-sbi-journey.com/

4 Steps to Success In Life, Business, The Universe And Everything

2004-12-04T20:36:00.000Z

4 Steps to Success In Life, Business, The Universe And Everything

by Keith Longmire

This article may be copied and used in newsletters or ezines as long as the author and resource boxes are retained in full.

--------------------------------------------------------
Everyone wants to succeed in life. And no one starts a business of any sort, on-line or off-line, wanting to fail.

Yet the sad fact is that 80% of offline and 97% of internet businesses will fail in the first year. 84% of internet businesses will never make any income at all.

So what can you do to ensure your success?

Luckily these four simple (never confuse simple with easy), tried and tested steps dramatically increase your chances.

1. Set Out Your Goals

Success means something different to us all. A self-made businessman worth millions of dollars would be thought successful by most. But if that businessman only rarely sees his family, never gets to play golf and spends all of his time on airplanes or in some exotic sounding (but usually antiseptic) hotel, is that really a success? Would that businessman think his life a success?

Possibly, possibly not.

But if that man had set himself goals for his business, private and social lives he at least has some way of measuring his achievements.

Before starting on any endeavour - set your goals.

Make sure your goals are specific enough that you know when you have achieved them. "I want to make money on the internet" is weak. "I want to make $100,000 next year and $200,000 the year after" is much stronger.

Don't forget to include your private and social goals. Many rich people complain that they have all the freedom that money can buy - but money can't buy the time to enjoy what they have earned.

2. Plan, Plan, Plan

If the number one key to success in retailing is location, location and location, the number one key to success in business is plan, plan, plan.

Remember the 5 Ps success model - Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. (When I was taught this in the military there was a 6th P - for the sake of a mixed audience I have left this out. Use your imagination - you'll guess what it was :-))

If you've done your goal setting you know what you are going to achieve. The point of planning is how you are going to do it. Break each goal down into constituent steps needed for its achievement. For each step decide what, who, where and when it
is to be done.

Be realistic and make sure that every step is achievable in the time set. Be prepared - when you plan-out all that you need to do, the amount of work can be daunting. Better to know this up-front than sale merrily into a venture only to find it is a huge monster that is going to take you a lifetime to kill.

3. Action Counts

I've seen some beautiful plans. Highly researched, well thought out and presented. I'll talk to a business owner and they'll say, "We've got a plan" and pull it out of the bottom draw of a filing cabinet somewhere.

"So, why aren't you using it", I'll ask. Nine times out of 10 the plan was produced to obtain funding. Lot's of really good work is done but once the money is obtained the plan is put to one side and ignored.

Big mistake. Taking action is the only thing that counts.

Every successfull business I have looked at has clear, current business, operational and marketing plans. It doesn't matter whether your business is offline or online. It's taking action that delivers the results.

4. Another 5 'P's to Success

Passion - You have to believe in what you are doing. No where is this more obvious than on the internet. You can spot the 'me-too' advertisers in a second. The people who succeed are the ones in have passion, who truly believe in what they are doing.

Do something that you love.

Push - No matter how good your plan you have to provide a big push to get it moving. Your plan inevitably involves change. Achieving change takes effort. Think of it as if you were trying to move a boulder down a hill. To get that boulder up and moving takes a lot of muscle and effort. Once it is moving though it becomes much easier to keep it moving.

Persistence - Getting started is relatively easy. Afterall, you are all fired up with energy and enthusiasm at that time. Few things worth achieving happen over night. Instead, there will be problems, hold-ups and frustrations. Don't allow yourself to become disillusioned or demotivated. You need persistence.

Patience - Results don't happen instantly. Allied to persistence you will need some patience.

Profit - OK, OK it's trite. But follow the steps here, gear yourself to provide these 5 Ps and you will succeed. In business, profit is a measure of your success.

No one can guarantee your success whether in life or in business.
You can dramatically increase your chances of success through these four simple, very well established principles.

The question is, "WILL YOU"?

----------------------------------------------------

Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions.
JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and
marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses.

His website Breakthrough Growth has been designed to help owner- managers cut through the hype and produce innovative marketing plans that deliver results:

Copyright 2004 Keith Longmire.

Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends. It may be used in your ezine or newsletter as long as this resource box is included intact.. It's a shareware article.

Lots of directory links

2004-12-04T20:30:00.000Z

It's not practical to have a separate entry for each directory listing. This post will be updated as more directories are added.

Listed on blogwise

Also have a blog at bloglines - takes this blog as a feed.

EatonWebb Alexa 90,000 google 6

Feedster No page rank but an Alexa of 11,000. Add the RSS feed and blog will be indexed within 1 to 3 hours

The Blog Directory Page rank 4 Alexa 69,000

Popdex Page Rank 6 Alexs c 39,000

We Blog A Lot

Blog directory listing

2004-12-04T17:32:00.000Z

Listing with blogstreet. Page rank 0f 6 and Alexa ranking of 61,000

Blog Search Engine - Blog Directory, Blog Search, Blog Directories - Add Link

2004-12-04T17:27:00.000Z

And another one. Page Ranks of 5 and Alexa ranking of 43,000. Looks like it should get pretty good traffic :)

Blog Search Engine - Blog Directory, Blog Search, Blog Directories - Add Link

Weblog search engine, blog viewer, blog rating, bloghot/ornot, blog directory

2004-12-04T17:12:00.000Z

Another good looking directory. Page Rank of 6.

Alexa Ranking of 378,000 which is higher than I would like but the site looks good and includes a web based blog reader.

Weblog search engine, blog viewer, blog rating, bloghot/ornot, blog directory

Directory listing

2004-12-04T16:41:00.000Z

There are some great blog directories around. I am concentrating on only listing on directories with Google Page Ranks greater than 5. A Great example is
Blogarama. I will list more as I add this blog.

Getting Started With Blogger

2004-12-04T16:22:00.000Z

OK, my first real post. This blog is to help me learn about blogging. Anyone with any great insights on how to get started quickly - the do's and don'ts - please add comments to this post.

The content of the blog will be a mix of musings, article announcements, news and notification of updates to my web site http://www.jkl-small-business-marketing-solutions.com/

If you have any questions visit http://www.jkl-small-business-marketing-solutions.com/contact.html and post a message there. I will get back to you within 24 hours.

Globe of Blogs

2004-12-04T16:13:00.000Z

Globe of Blogs. First place to register my new blog.