Marketing your small business or service firm can be frustrating – particularly if you don’t have a marketing system in place. This brief video outlines how you can get rid of that frustration and systematically attract your ideal customers.
Archive for duct tape marketing
By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Friday,
January
27th,
2012
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Tags : duct tape marketing, marketing system
By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
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.
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Categories : Marketing, Marketing Plan
Have you had a chance to read the book Start with Why (Amazon affiliate link) by Simon Sinek? The big idea from this book is people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. The book explains how the part of our brain that is responsible for decision making is different from the part of the brain that is responsible for language and the challenges that presents when we try to aspire others to take action.
In Duct Tape Marketing, we are always talking about the principle of “strategy before tactics”. I find that while most business owners agree with this concept on an intellectual level, they often struggle with putting it into practice. I believe the ideas in Simon’s book line up perfectly with this principle – first we have to be clear about our WHY. With a crystal clear WHY, almost any tactic can be successful.
If you have taken the time to really think about your ideal customers, I’m willing to bet that once you got past the typical demographics (industry, geography, revenue, etc.) you will find indications that your best customers share one or more of your beliefs. They like what you stand for. You both value your relationship. As marketers, we sometimes muddy this up by calling it your Core Difference or some other name but it’s really just your WHY.
We marketers are also fond of saying “marketing is everyone’s job”. What if we replaced that with “everyone should understand and be able to communicate our WHY”? What effect would that have on your business? Would it change more than marketing? I think so.
If you haven’t had a chance to read Simon’s book, I highly recommend it. Start your marketing with WHY, find customers who believe what you believe and work together so that everyone can succeed.
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By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Monday,
February
7th,
2011
Last week, I held a webinar about the Duct Tape Marketing 7 Steps to Marketing Success. My voice was a little scratchy as I was fighting off a cold – hopefully it’s not too distracting. The webinar is just shy of 1 hr in length.
If you are viewing this via email or RSS reader, you may need to click here to view the 7 Steps to Marketing Success webinar recording.
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Categories : Marketing Plan, Uncategorized
One of great things about being part of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network is that we have a a number of great partners to help you implement the tactical components of your marketing strategy. One of those partners is Pixability. Pixability makes it dead simple for add high quality video to your marketing mix.
John Jantsch, founder of Duct Tape Marketing, will be teaming up with our friends at Pixability to present a free webinar in which he will discuss how to:
- identify your target clients
- produce marketing materials that educate
- create your core marketing message and use video to promote it
- use videos on your website that generate leads 24/7
This free webinar will start on January 19th at 12:30 EST. Register NOW: http://bit.ly/eH8oBb
Pixability will also be giving two businesses a ‘video makeover’. If you would like your company’s video to be shown, please submit a link to your video to yelena@pixability.com.
If you have questions about how you might use video to grow your business in 2011, feel free to give me a call at 913.962.9261.
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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
In Duct Tape Marketing, we often talk about the importance of “living by a calendar”. One of the main points of this advice is that creating a marketing system is not something that is accomplished over a long weekend. Rather, it takes a steady, consistent approach to create and maintain your marketing system.
When I’m working with customers, we generally discuss two broad ways to use a calendar to help us build a marketing system – 1) using monthly themes and 2) setting appointments with ourselves.
Setting a monthly theme
Many people find it helpful to pick a theme for a particular month and work on the project(s) they need to complete for that theme. For example, you could designate September as “website month”. Projects could include:
- Creating your site if you don’t have one
- Adding a blog to your site
- Adding and opt-in newsletter signup form
- Working on getting inbound links to your website
Setting regular appointment with yourself
The second way you should use your marketing calendar is to make appointments with yourself to work on your marketing. These appointments should be treated as if they were appointments with your most important customer. That means no rescheduling at the last minute, no interruptions, no reading email during the meeting, etc.
How often should you have these meetings? Ideally, I think you should schedule one meeting per week to work on your marketing. Some people prefer an every other week schedule. In my experience, people who try to have only one meeting per month struggle to make significant progress on their marketing system.
How long should the meeting be? Pick a duration that works best for you. For me, that tends to be about 90 minutes.
Consistency is the key
By using your calendar to schedule and keep your regular marketing appointments, you will soon have a marketing system in place that will help attract more of your ideal customers.
How do you make sure you set aside enough time to work on your marketing system?
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Categories : Marketing Plan, Marketing Strategy
Many businesses still don’t have a web site, rendering them virtually invisible to potential customers.
For a couple of years now, I (and other Duct Tape Marketing coaches) have been referencing research from the Kelsey Group that showed 70% of US adults use the internet as an information source when shopping for local goods and services. Now, updated research indicates that number is as high as 90%.
Last year, 1 & 1 Internet conducted a survey of of 1,800 small and medium sized business. That survey revealed that 2 out of 5 of those businesses did not have a website. By the way, of those SMBs that did have a website, 83 percent report that their website was essential to their company’s success.
Let’s summarize, and generalize a bit. Almost all of your potential customers search the internet for local goods and services before they buy. Only a little more than half of local businesses have a chance of showing up in that search. I say a chance because it is important to do the work to make sure your site is showing up in the search results for the way your customers search. It seems to me that those businesses who have a website optimized for local search enjoy a distinct competitive advantage.
Which side of the playground does your business have to line up on – the visible or the invisible?
Have an invisible website?
If you have a website but your not showing up in local search results, check out the Local Search Engine Profile
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Today is the first day of the 2010 Make-A-Referral Week. Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time. The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the impact of a simple action that could blossom into millions of dollars in new business.
One of the educational programs related to Make-A-Referral Week will be John Jantsch's session on Building A Referral Engine. John's session is scheduled for Wed, Mar 10, 2010 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM CST.
As you make referrals, be sure to update the Referral Counter page.
Do you need referrals for your business? Drop me an email or leave a comment below telling me who you would like to meet and I'll do my best to connect you with someone in my network.
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Categories : Marketing, Referral Marketing
(disclosure – I am an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach)
Although referrals are the marketing cornerstone for most accounting, law, and other professional service firms, many still struggle to create a system that consistently generates high quality referrals.
In the follow up book to his best selling Duct Tape Marketing Book, John Jantsch reveals a systematic approach to consistently generating a steady flow of business from referrals.
The book is already generating high praise from industry experts. You can read what they have to say and watch a short video of John explaining why he wrote this book here.
I'll be posting more about the book and how the lessons it contains apply to professional service firms just as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.
The book is scheduled to be released in May. You can pre-order from Amazon here
Comments (3)
Categories : Marketing, Referral Marketing
Steve Yastrow has a nice guest post on the Tom Peters blog where he explains that your external brand can never be stronger than your internal brand.
Or, put another way, what your customers think of you will never be better than what your employees think of you. Or for soloists, what you think of yourself. As Steve says, it’s impossible to fake out your customers.
I think this is another reason why, in Duct Tape Marketing, we are always talking about the need to narrow your focus in terms of the types of clients that you serve. When we specialize in helping a specific group of people, or people with a specific problem, we gain valuable experience in that domain. That experience helps us feel better about ourselves, which customers and prospects pick up on. They, in turn, feel better about dealing with you.
Contrast that with a typical “ya, we can do that too” attitude. Internally, we may have some doubts. Or, we may complete the project, but not feel like we put our best foot forward. Either way, we don’t feel as good about our performance and our prospects and customers pick up on that as well.
I also like Steve’s post because is implies that while you cannot control your brand, you are accountable for it and can influence it by your personal actions. Both positively and negatively.
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Small Business Marketing Consultant - Kansas City
Copyright © 2012 All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2012 All Rights Reserved