Advertising and Marketing blog

Marketing expert and author, Geoffrey Moore, has a useful
fill-in-the-blank method for creating a theme and
positioning statement for your business. I prefer to use
his same system for creating clarity for myself in what I’m
selling, creating an elevator or introduction speech, and
also material for my website, brochures and business card.

Using this same method for each niche I have also keeps me
focused and on target for where I am going and what comes
first. I know it will do the same for you. As a public
speaker, I also like to use the same exercise to create a
one-line message for each workshop or engagement. This way
the participants and I start from the same page. I like to
say it provides the tree trunk that all the branches stem
from.

This exercise is designed to be simple and achievable in 15
minutes. However, if this seems somewhat daunting, see if
your beliefs are still in the clouds of wanting to deliver
too much to too many to soon. If this is the case, there is
a great book I recommend that will support you in narrowing
down: Niche and Grow Rich, by Jennifer and Peter Sander.
This book will support you understanding the market place
you want to enter and in narrowing your thoughts.

Exercise

For ___________________________
(Hints: Who is your target customer, your niche? Is there
a geographic relevance? If so, add it. Examples: Seniors,
women business owners, teens between 13 and 18. If a
specific geographic area: Writers in the Washington DC
metro area.)

Who ___________________________
(Hints: This is where you qualify your target customer and
time of need. Examples: Who are obese. Who are 62 and
older. Who own a business. Who are in high school and take
music.)

Our product/service is ____________________________
(Hints: What is your product or the service? Our product
is a line of workshops. Our service is training. Our
service is executive coaching. Our service is training or
engineering or accounting.)

That provides ______________________________
(Hints: What are your key features of this product/service?
What are the major benefits of this product or service?
What are the tradeoffs? That provides shortcuts (software
training) at a discount/premium price. That contains no
chemicals. That contains no hidden costs. That contains
no markups. That contains life support.)

Unlike ____________________________________
(Hints: Who are your competitors? What are the products
not serving the needs of this particular niche? Unlike
other retail sellers, which have…. Unlike store-bought
goods, these…. Unlike other coaches…. Unlike other
workshops….)

Our product/service _______________________________
(Hints: Your product/service serves this niche by doing
what? Our product/service helps this group increase their
personal leadership skills. Our product/service helps this
group overcome…. Our product/service helps this group
reap the rewards of….

Taking This Forward

Once you have completed this exercise, whether it is for
your overall business theme or better yet a narrower one,
you can move this information forward into all your
marketing information.

Create a paragraph with this information, then edit and
refine the language so that it fits your customer’s reading
style. This is especially important if your style is
different. Each word you use has an energy attached to it.
This energy either detracts or attracts customers.

Catherine Franz is a Master Life and Business Coach, well-known international speaker and author, living in Northern Virginia. She lives and breathes attraction, prosperity and abundance. http://www.AbundanceCenter.com

With so much money invested on innefective advertising, it’s time to look at some good old fashioned ways of generating new business. One tried and tested way is by referral.

Here are three reasons why referrals are so valuable

1. Customers who refer are more likely to stay with you and as a result, spend more, adding to their lifetime value.

2. Referrals are more likely to become customers. Why? Because they have been recommended to you by someone they trust and who in turn, trusts you.

3. Referrals who become clients are likely in turn to generate referrals because they understand the process.

What’s the best way to generate referrals?

You have to earn them! You have to treat your customers as friends. The result is that they will want to introduce you to people they know who in turn can do business with you.

It’s back to that Trust thing again isn’t it? By showing you care about them and about their lives, your level of trusts increase. Remember the three things people think about before doing business with someone?

1. Do I like the?
2. Do I respect them?
3. Can I trust them?

By taking the time to develop relationships, trust increases, as does the likelihood of referrals.

By delivering a high standard of service in an appropriate professional environment or fashion, you are demonstrating your professional competence. The combination of this and your capacity to develop relationship will in turn earn you the right to ask for referrals.

I guarantee that if you did nothing else but began asking your customers for referrals on a regular basis you would instantly see an increase in referrals coming into your business.

The best time to ask for a referral is when a customer gives you a compliment or expresses any kind of gratitude towards you or your business. Tell them that your purpose in asking is to build your business. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

In fact, a client who really likes you will actually feel honoured that you have asked for their help.

Don’t be afraid to tell your clients whom they should be thinking of as referrals (i.e. people under a lot of stress, people who are health conscious, people in pain) – be specific. You get what you ask for!

OK, so now you’ve gained sufficient trust and respect to ask for referrals, what do you do when you start getting them?
Simple. Make a fuss of them by means of reward and recognition. Just as with children and dogs, rewarding good behaviour makes certain that the behaviour is rewarded.

Do it publicly, too. Create a Referral Recognition wall in your reception area. Put the names of people you’ve rewarded up there. Run a referral incentive program that rewards more for more referrals.

Remember we’re talking about the cost of client acquisition and retention here. Far better to pay for the client after they’ve spent than to gamble on attracting them!

With a Reward for Referral program, your costs are a fixed item for every new client, too, making budgeting far easier.

Ask yourself this question: Do I currently know my exact cost of customer aquisition? If the answer was “no” you should look closely at a referral reward program.

About the author:
James Yuille is a sales and marketing consultant and trainer with over 32 years experience. He is based in Brisbane, Australia.
His free weekly sales and marketing newsletter provides topical information for business owners and salespeople. Find out more at http://www.jamesyuille.com

The most important aspect of being an entrepreneur or small business owner is self-marketing. Self marketing, in itself, is a full time job. And, for a bootstrapped entrepreneur it is a full-time job even more so. Luckily, there are plenty of entrepreneur resources to help you through it to self-market yourself, the best and most popular being the Guerrilla Marketing series of books by Jay Conrad Levinson. Guerrilla Marketing is defined by Wikipedia as an “unconventional way of performing marketing activities (primarily promotion) on a very low budget.”

When entrepreneurs deal with self-marketing on a low budget they must realize that there is not one golden technique that they could perform that will draw loads of new business their way. New entrepreneurs and small business owners must perform a variety of marketing activities because no one marketing tactic on its own will be enough. That is why self-marketing is a full time job.

With that in mind, here are just a few self-marketing techniques that a new entrepreneur should do. If you are a new entrepreneur, don’t do just one. Do them all and more.

• Article Writing: Write expert articles in your area of expertise and submit them to article directories. The most important directory you can submit to is EzineArticles.com. At the bottom of each article that you write you can include a link to your website (if you have one), your business phone number, or an email address. The most important thing to realize with articles is that most people will find your article via a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. And, most of the search engines will give you a ranking based on the title of the article. You must make the title keyword rich; use words that you think people searching for your services will type into the search box. Don’t write just one article; write plenty.
• Internet Sales Leads: You can purchase executive contact names and phone numbers from leads list companies like InfoUSA and D&B. Or you can receive free B2B and B2C sales leads from Trade-Pals.com. There is a TradePals category for most business professionals like accountants, advertising & marketing professionals, insurance brokers, real estate brokers, lawyers, engineers, website designers, sales consultants, motivational speakers, financial planners, and writers, for example. When creating a profile remember that, just like EzineArticles.com, most people will find your profile via a search engine so it is important to create a descriptive profile, especially the “brief overview of services” section.
• Free Publicity: Free publicity could be the best advertising that you and your business could receive. The media’s reach is wide and far. You could try meeting with editors of local newspapers or even news stations. You could send relevant press releases, as long as they are newsworthy. Don’t believe the hype that a press release can get you instant publicity. You must realize that the media receive thousands of press releases daily; they don’t even read most of them. But again, you must try everything when self-marketing yourself including writing a press release. There are online press release services like PRWeb.com and Send2Press.com.
• Business Networking: Business networking could be an inexpensive way to learn from other entrepreneurs, to make business contacts, or to receive business referrals. You could join your local Chamber of Commerce or your local BNI (Business Networking International) chapter. As well, there are online business networking websites such as Ryze.com and LinkedIn.com.

Visit Tino Buntic’s TradePals to receive qualified sales leads without cold calling or prospecting – for free! TradePals provides B2B and B2C sales leads to business professionals in major cities across The U.S. and Canada, including Albuquerque, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Detroit, Vancouver, Quebec City, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Ottawa, St Louis, Baltimore, Edmonton, Houston, Dallas, and Las Vegas.