Small Business Marketing Blog - Strategies That Increase Sales

Get More Referrals With This Free E-Course

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

ReferralTipsDid you resolve to generate more business from referrals this year? If so, you will want to grab this free e-course, 5 Tips For Successful Referral Marketing.

The e-course consists of five lessons, delivered via email, that will show you some proven techniques for generating high quality referrals on a consistent basis.

Here is a quick outline of what you will learn:

  • How to get referrals even if you are just starting out or when you are trying to break into a new market or industry
  • How to increase referrals while providing value to your community
  • The six components of a fully functioning referral marketing system
  • 5 real life examples of successful referral systems
  • One referral tactic that could become your core point of differentiation

The course is completely free. I’m not going to try to sell you anything at the end of the course. I’m not even going to automatically add you to a mailing list (I will invite you to my newsletter, but it will be up to you).

So go grab your 5 Tips For Successful Referral Marketing and start generating more business today.

Comments (0)
Categories : Marketing, Referral Marketing
Tags : ,

Marketing Between the Sale and Delivery

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

easybuttonLast week I participated in a conversation on Facebook about a topic that I that I think a lot of business owners face, so I thought I would share it here.

The gist of the conversation had to do with the fact no matter how clearly we try to spell out the terms and conditions of our services, most people don’t read them before finalizing their purchase. The frustration comes when something happens that surprises the customer causing them to complain, even though it was clearly outlined in the terms and conditions.

While we can’t please everyone 100% of the time, I think marketing can help reduce this frustration and improve the overall buying experience with something I’ll call, for lack of a better term, marketing between the sale and delivery.

When we think of marketing as a synonym for selling, then marketing between the sale and delivery may seem inappropriate for addressing this situation – particularly in a B2B setting.

If we think of marketing as education, communication, and expectation setting, then I believe marketing has a lot to offer in addressing the issue outlined above. We worked hard to create expectations via marketing before the sale; we need to continue setting and managing expectations after the sale.

“But I already outlined exactly what will happen and what they should expect.” you say. I’m sure you have, but just like other forms of marketing, communication, and education, you message is more effective when delivered more than once and using different media.

It is important to remember that when someone buys your product or service, they have a lot of other things going on in their life. I’m sure you are a busy person – let me ask you a question. Would you rather have another project put on your plate or have 2 items added to your action list for today? Most people that I know would opt for the 2 action items; they don’t have time for another “project”, even if they don’t know that that entails.

Are you giving your new customer a project? If you give me a 3 page document of terms and conditions, you’ve given me a project. I need to ready it, figure out what I need to do, figure out what order to do them in, schedule them, and complete them.

Regular readers here know that I like to talk about the difference between being efficient and effective. Documenting a list or terms and conditions and including them in an information packet that is given to the customer at the time of the sale is an example of being efficient. Taking the time, before, during, and after the sale to make sure the customer knows exactly what to expect and what is expected of them is being effective. Being effective will get you more repeat businesses and more referrals.

You can still be efficient. Many of the marketing technologies you used to make the sale (i.e. email marketing, mobile marketing, direct mail, etc.) can also be used after the sale. Use these tools to deliver information in small, bite-sized chunks of information that people can quickly consume and act upon. Rather than giving me a project, give me a task, complete with a deadline and the resources I need to complete the task. Wow, you made it super easy for me to get that done, thank you.

In Duct Tape Marketing, we are fond of saying that if you want to get business from referrals you need a referable business. Use the time between the sale and delivery to separate yourself from your competitors and become a business that people love to refer.

Comments (0)
Categories : Marketing, Referral Marketing
Tags :

Create Professional Business Plans with LivePlan

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

[Quick disclosure – Palo Alto Software, the makers of LivePlan, also make Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing, which I re-sell as part of my business. I don’t sell LivePlan or make any money from LivePlan – I just like the folks at Palo Alto and think they make great products]

Our friends at Palo Alto software continue to work on making it easier for business owners to create and maintain professional business plans with their latest offering, LivePlan.

Live plan is delivered as a web application, so rather than having to buy and install software on your computer, you can access your business plan from any computer with an internet connection. No more worrying about whether you have Mac or PC compatible software.

Another great benefit of being web based, one which I think is particularly important for business planning, is it makes collaboration much easier. You work with your peers, employees, and advisors all in one place. No more sending plans back and forth via email and wasting time making sure you have the latest version. LivePlan allows you to set various permission levels, so you can control who sees what.

You can also add as many guests (people who can read but not edit the plan) as you like for free. Guests do not count as a user for licensing purposes. Invitations can even be sent from your smartphone, so you can invite your advisors on the fly.

Just like Business Plan Pro, LivePlan comes with hundreds of sample plans that you can use as a starting point for creating your own plan.

The basic subscription is $19.95/mo which includes 2 users and 3 active plans. Updgrade options are available if you need additional users and/or active plans.

Here is a short video overview of LivePlan

For more information, visit the LivePlan website.

Comments (2)
Categories : Software, Uncategorized
Tags : ,

2 Tips That Guarantee Success In Blogging

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Success in bloggingThe blogosphere is chock full of advice on how to blog, what to blog about, and how to make sure you blog is successful. Heck, I’ve created several of those types of posts here, here, here, and here, just to point out a few.

Everyone will have different reasons for blogging and therefore will have their own ideas of what constitutes a successful blog. After writing on this blog for 6 years and helping other small business owners get their blogs up and running, I believe that following 2 pieces of advice will guarantee that your business will benefit from your blog and you will never run out of things to write about. Those two pieces of advice are:

  1. Make a commitment to continuous learning and improvement
  2. Teach (share) what you learn with others

Commit to continuous learning\improvement

“What if I run out of things to write about?” is a concern I often hear from small business owners. However, I’ve yet to run into anyone who is worried that they will soon run out of new things to learn. Use your blog as an excuse to carve out time to learn something new each and every week.

Share what you learn with others

One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else. When you know you will teach something, it often makes you ask questions and study things in more depth, increasing your learning. Teaching helps you commit things to your long term memory. It increases your knowledge. Sharing what you learn through your blog can also provide great conversation starters at networking events or meeting with prospects and customers.

Even if no one ever reads your blog (don’t worry, they will) you will greatly benefit from your blog if you follow these two pieces of advice.

Question – How would your business be different if you learn 52 new things this year?

Comments (0)
Categories : Marketing
Tags :

Marketing Momentum

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

markting momentumIn sports and business, we like to talk about momentum or the “Big Mo”, the idea that once we get things moving in the right direction it is easier to keep moving, move faster, and do so with less effort.

How do we create momentum in our marketing? The key to building momentum is consistency. One of the best ways to build consistency is to live by a marketing calendar. By sticking to a planned routine of regularly scheduled marketing activities (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) you can build a marketing system that grows your business and leaves your inconsistent competitors behind.

What does the opposite of momentum look like? Let’s look at referrals as an example. Many business owners will begin a new year by resolving to attend more networking events in the hopes of receiving more business from referrals. They often start out with a flurry of activity – joining new groups, scheduling lots of appointments, going to lunches and after hour events, etc.

By the middle or end of the first quarter, it is very common for one of two scenarios to arise that breaks our marketing momentum and sabotages our marketing success.

Sometimes we experience success relatively early out of the gate. We get some business from referrals and then we stop our networking activities to “do the work”.

In the second scenario, success doesn’t come immediately, so we quit right before our efforts are ready to pan out. We don’t meet anyone at the first few networking events so we stop attending – only to decide to “try again” months later.

This stop and start progress kills progress in any endeavor, not just marketing. When we break our marketing rhythm, we kill our momentum. Reviving that momentum takes an enormous amount of energy and time. Worse yet, we are spending that time and effort just to get back to where we were rather than making further progress.

Plan, Do, Review, Improve

Once you have set your goals use your calendar to plan the marketing behaviors that will help you attain them. Write these behaviors on you calendar as action items and do them. Use your calendar as a review tool in order to make sure you stay on track and hold yourself accountable. Don’t use your calendar to beat yourself up by highlighting your failures, commit to continuous improvement – track what you need to do, hold yourself accountable, measure the results and adjust (improve) accordingly.

Consistency Over Quantity

Pick a few marketing activities, do them well, and do them consistently, and watch your business grow in 2012.

 

photo credit: Emil Manolov via Flickr

Comments (0)
Categories : Marketing, Marketing Plan
Tags :

LinkedIn – Why I Want To Talk Before I Link To You

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

linkedIn

LinkedIn is the first online social networking site that I joined and it is still  my favorite. I have met a lot of great people on LinkedIn and worked on some interesting (and paying) projects because of the relationships that started on LinkedIn.

Today I thought I would share some thoughts on how I approach making new connections on LinkedIn. One quick note – I’m not trying to say that my way is the “right way”, this is just that I use. It has evolved over time and is effective for me – your mileage may vary.

I want to talk to people before I connect with them on LinkedIn. I guess I’ve always assumed that if you are on LinkedIn, you have something you would like to accomplish by being there. I’d like to know how I can help you accomplish that goal.

This has pretty much been my “policy” ever since I joined LinkedIn back in March of 2004. It used to be that in the beginning, I was an early adopter, so I was the one inviting my contacts to LinkedIn (and explaining what it was). As LinkedIn has become more popular, I have received more invitations from people I don’t know.

When someone I’ve never met invites me to connect on LinkedIn, I send them a note that looks like this:

Thank you for the invitation to connect. I make an effort to know my LinkedIn connections so I can do a better job referring them, would you be open to having a brief phone call sometime in the next 2 weeks to chat?

Afternoons typically work best, but you can see my schedule and set up a time here – https://tungle.me/billbrelsford

If you send me your number, I’ll be happy to call you.

Bill Brelsford
913.962.9261

To be clear, I like meeting “strangers” on LinkedIn. I am always open to meeting new people, I just want to know 1) how I can help them and 2) how they may be able to help other people in my network.

I want to have a conversation for a number of reasons. First, I’m not particularly good at remembering names, companies, or titles without any context. I am very good at remembering conversations and stories. If I can’t remember you, I can’t refer you or refer people to you.

On a similar note, if we have a conversation, I put notes about that conversation into my CRM system. After I think “I talked to someone about 6 months ago who I think may be able to help you” I go to my CRM to find the name. I then go to LinkedIn to see if anything has changed in that persons professional life before I make an introduction.

Again, if I don’t know much about you, I can’t help you. Not only can I not help you, I’m doing a a disservice to the people that I do know. How many times have you asked someone for an introduction to one of their LinkedIn connections only to hear “Oh, I don’t really know that person, we’re just connected on LinkedIn.”? If I have to give that answer, I feel like not only have I wasted that person’s time, but I have probably discouraged them from asking me for help again – when I would be able to help them.

Of course, I haven’t had the opportunity to do business or personally experience the service of everyone that I am connected to in LinkedIn. That’s not any different from the connections I have in “real life” – people I know from chambers of commerce and other networking groups.

But if I talk to someone, I try to learn about what they do and how they really help their customers. I get a sense of what type of a person they are – would I want to work with them? These are things I would share with you if you asked me if I knew someone or not – whether I had met them online or offline.

And if I invite you to meet and you don’t respond, or you miss our appointment and don’t follow up, well I’ve still learned something, haven’t I?

That’s what works for me when it comes to managing LinkedIn connection requests – what works for you?

P.S. – Feel free to connect with me – www.linkedin.com/in/billbrelsford

Comments (5)
Categories : Marketing, social media marketing
Tags : ,

Marketing Catalyst Online Marketing Resource Center

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Regular visitors here know that I my job is to help business owners consistently attract their ideal customers by installing the Duct Tape Marketing system in their business. The Marketing Catalyst is one of the main ways we do this (the other is our Managed Marketing programs).

Recently we added a new online marketing resource center to the Marketing Catalyst program. The resource center is a private website that hosts all of the course outlines, workbooks, audio, and video files as well as links to external resources – everything we use when helping customers implement the Duct Tape Marketing system in their business.

Having these resources online provides a number of advantages over the previous, paper based resources we offered. Using multimedia, we can cater to the way you like to learn. The online resources are much easier to update – an important feature in today’s rapidly changing marketing world. Having the resources online also makes it easier for you to share with your employees and co-workers and keep them informed about your businesses marketing goals and plans.

Another nice feature of having these resources online is it makes it easier for me to show you what the program is like by offering you a free trial. The free trial gives you full access to Session #1. You can also see the outline for the other sessions in the program, giving you a feel for what you will accomplish in the overall program. To get your free trial, simply click on this link.

For more information about Duct Tape Marketing and the Marketing Catalyst program, watch this short video featuring John Jantsch, the founder of Duct Tape Marketing.

Please contact me if you have any questions or need help accessing your free trial.

Comments (0)
Categories : Marketing, Marketing Plan
Tags : , , ,

Marketing Courage–Knowing When To Say No

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

No_signLast night I attended a networking event during which I was asked what the biggest mistake I see when working with people on their marketing plans and strategy. My response was “not knowing who to say NO to”.

My response may sound just like another way of saying “you have to have a clear picture of your ideal customer” but I believe there is a significant difference. I believe that having a clear picture of who you don’t work with (and sticking to your guns) is a good indication of whether you are putting your marketing strategy into practice and just nodding along with marketing theory and platitudes you hear and read.

One of our goals in marketing, particularly B2B marketing, is to become known as the “go to” resource for a particular domain – a particular type of customer who is facing a particular type of problem. In order to achieve that goal we need abandon the “all things to all people” attitude and narrow our focus.

Knowing who to say no to will help you narrow your focus. Many business owners view their ideal customer profile as a wish list rather than as a focusing tool. They think “this is who I will keep an eye out for, but in the meantime I’ll take any work I can get”. This approach can actually make it more difficult to serve an ideal customer once they find you.

I think saying “No” becomes easier the more you believe in the value of the service you provide. Some of this has to do with a sense of mission but some of it also has to do with charging a price that is reflective of the value you provide – something I think many professionals struggle with, but that’s another post for another day.

Knowing who to say “No” to, having a plan for identifying them as well as a plan for telling them “No” (i.e. having someone to refer them to) and having the courage to follow through with the “No” is a difficult but essential part of taking your marketing and your business to the next level.

Do you know who you will be saying “No” to in 2012?

Comments (0)
Categories : Marketing, Marketing Strategy
Tags :

Marketing Strategy – Channels vs. Function

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Strategy-ChessMarketing strategy before tactics – if you have visited this blog before, or have heard any of my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Consultants speak, then I am sure you are familiar with this concept.

But how do you know if you are focusing too much on tactics and not enough on strategy? I think you can tell a lot by the starting point your choose and the questions you ask when you begin working on your marketing plan.

When we focus on tactics we tend to focus on marketing channels, ways to “get our message out there”. You can tell if you are focused on tactics if you start your marketing plan by creating a list like this:

  • social media
  • direct mail
  • advertising- online and offline
  • PR
  • Video
  • email marketing

When we focus on tactics, there is a tendency to stress efficiency over effectiveness. “How many different ways can I blast out my message?” becomes the primary question we try to answer.

However, when we focus on marketing strategy, we tend to focus on function – the purpose or goal we are trying to achieve. When we focus on function, we start working on our marketing plan by creating a list like this:

  • How to I find new customers?
  • How do I keep more of my existing customers?
  • How do I get more referrals?
  • Can I re-activate or re-engage my former customers?

When we focus on function, we start by thinking about the customer. What do the need? What motivates them? How do they make decisions? How can I provide what they are looking for?

When we focus on our marketing strategy, we begin with function and then decide on the appropriate channels to help our ideal customers find what they need.

Don’t mistake a list of tactics and channels for a marketing strategy. Focus on the needs of your customers and the goals of your business first and let the tactics follow.

Comments (1)
Categories : Marketing Strategy
Tags :

3 Tips To Avoid The Mobile Trash Can

Monday, November 21st, 2011

trashcanMany of us try to keep our email inboxes under control by periodically checking them using a phone or other mobile device. Many people are using their smart phones as their primary “computer”; they do not have a laptop or other computer at home. As this trend continues, marketers need to pay attention to the details about their messages if they want to reach their target audience. Here are three tips to help you keep your messages out of the mobile trash can:

  1. Create crystal clear subject lines – When people use their phones to quickly check their email, they are often quickly scanning to decide whether to delete or save for later reading. If they don’t recognize you or they can’t tell why they should read your message from the subject line, chances are your message is going in the delete pile. Stay out of the trash bin by writing subject lines.
  2. Create plain text and HTML email versions. While most devices render HTML well, some email clients default to displaying plain text. Make sure your emails are easy to read in either format. Most email marketing programs, like the ones you use to send out email newsletters, make it easy to create a text version of the “pretty” version of your message.
  3. Write descriptive alt text - Alternative text is the text that displays in when your image doesn’t render. Many people will not display images on their mobile devices, so make sure to include descriptive text that communicates the same message you are trying to convey with your image. Don’t forget the alt text for your email header (if you are using one).
Comments (0)
Categories : Marketing
Tags : ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »
Subscribe to Small Business Marketing Consultant

Get the latest updates delivered via email

Marketing Got You Frustrated?

Small Business Marketing System Overview

Watch this short video to learn how a grow your business by installing a marketing system.


Get Your Free Marketing Report

Top B2B Blog List

Duct Tape Marketing Consultant

Small Business Marketing Newsletter

Small Business Marketing Newsletter

Explore

Connect Socially

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn email