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Archive for Small Business Marketing

10 Tips For A Successful Tradeshow

By Bill · Comments (0)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Yesterday I mentioned that the Small Business Expo is coming up in a couple of week, so today I thought I would post some helpful hints for getting the most out of your tradeshow booth.

Before the show

  1. Prepare 3-6 questions that will stimulate thought and encourage conversation. Think like a journalist – ask open ended questions that begin with who, what, where, when, why or how.
  2. Think of incentives for people to give you their contact information
  3. Promote your attendance at the show
  4. Set measurable goals for the show

At the show

  1. Keep notes of your conversations
  2. Listen twice as much as you talk
  3. Break out of your comfort zone – don't spend all of you time talking to people you already know.
  4. Ask permission to add people to your mailing list. Just because you have their business card, doesn't mean you have permission to start spamming them.

After the show

  1. Follow up, follow up, follow up
  2. Evaluate the show based on your goals. What lessons did you learn? What will you do differently next time? Write it down.

What are you favorite tips for having a successful tradeshow? Leave them in the comments below.

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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What is the most effective way to market my practice?

By Bill · Comments (1)
Thursday, October 29th, 2009

I hear this question and see it posted on web sites all the time. The ensuing discussion typically revolves around various tools and tactics that can be used in a marketing campaign – everything from jingle generators, to online advertising, to good old word of mouth.

Any one of these tactics may end up being successful, but it depends – and that’s the problem. Too often we look at a tool as the answer without first developing a marketing strategy. Simply put, your marketing strategy is the combination of your Ideal Customer profile and your Core Message.

I find that this idea of starting from a strategy makes sense to people on an intellectual level, but often gets short shrift at implementation time. It’s easier to skip over the hard, somewhat abstract, work of fully developing a strategy and jump right into “doing something”.

But in order to successfully implement a particular tactic, we must answer several questions – here are a few:

  1. Who should I talk to?
  2. What should I say?
  3. What should I offer?
  4. Where should I say it?

If you have a well developed strategy, these questions are easy to answer. When you don’t, something like this happens:

  1. You make a draft
  2. You ask a couple people if they like it (without thought to whether or not they fit your ideal customer profile)
  3. You try it once
  4. You wait
  5. You get frustrated because you spent a lot of money and “marketing doesn’t work”.

Spend some time working on marketing strategy and you will create more successful marketing campaigns.

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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3 Tips To Help Your Associates Be Better Marketers

By Bill · Comments (1)
Monday, October 12th, 2009

Many professional service firm employees struggle when their responsibilities are expanded to include marketing and sales activities. Here are three common mistakes that may be holding your associates back:

1. Share your marketing plan early and often. – I believe you should share your marketing strategy, your Ideal Client Profile and your Core Message, before hiring a new associate. Your marketing strategy outlines who you serve and how you do it differently than everyone else who claims to do what you do. Hiring the right people plays a big part in fulfilling the expectations you set via marketing.

One of the benefits of having a written marketing plan is the ability to share it with others. We can’t get everyone singing from the same hymnal if the hymnal only exists in the partners’ heads.

2. If you still use timesheets, teach (and reward) the importance of non-billable hours. The focus on billable hours, particularly for new and young associates, can be detrimental to a firm’s long term success. We can talk until we are blue in the face about “marketing is everyone’s job” or “it’s all about the relationship”, but, if at the end of the day the measuring stick is billable hours, then why wouldn’t an associate stay behind a desk, nose to the grindstone?

3. Stop trying to teach associates how to sell benefits to clients. Trying to teach selling benefits puts the focus on the firm when it should be on the needs of the client. Teach active listening. Practice asking open ended questions. Teach the importance of asking follow up questions in order to get to the root of the issue. Learning to listen, probe, diagnose, and share third party stories are the keys to selling professional services.

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Categories : Marketing
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Marketing Speaker

By Bill · Comments (0)
Monday, October 5th, 2009

Warning – You are approaching a shameless, self promoting post

A few folk have noticed my updates on various social media sites regarding some speaking events I have done recently and have asked what the heck I speak about ; )  So I have updated my website to include a page describing what I do as a marketing speaker.

If you are looking for a speaker for your company, association, or networking group, give me a holler and we can figure how I may be able to help you out.

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Categories : Marketing, Misc.
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Success = Behavior + Attitude + Technique

By Bill · Comments (2)
Monday, October 5th, 2009

John Jantsch has a nice post today about changing your behaviors (or creating new habits) to become successful at marketing.

His post reminded me of a concept that I learned from my friends at Sandler Sales Training called the Success Triangle. I believe is so important to this idea of developing habits for success that I have started including it in all of my presentations.

Success TriangleThe Success Triangle tells us that to achieve success we have to focus on all three areas of the triangle – Behaviors, Attitudes, and Techniques.

We often talk about marketing or lead generation techniques. Techniques are important, but techniques alone are rarely the key to success – whether we are talking about marketing or anything else.

The most important part of this triangle is probably behaviors. This is where having a coach and tools to track your progress are very helpful. If you don’t do the day to day activities, it doesn’t matter how many techniques I give you or how wonderful the Duct Tape Marketing System is, you won’t get results if you don’t do the behaviors.

Attitude is important because is tends to drive the other two components. If you have the attitude that “marketing doesn’t work”, you won’t try the techniques and you won’t do the behaviors. Rather than focusing on what won’t work, focus on what you are willing to try, do, or say.

If you are not happy with the results of any part of your marketing system, review the success triangle to help you figure out which area(s) you need to address, Behaviours, Techniques, or Attitude, in order to improve your results.

By the way, I am a big fan of the Sandler Sales System and highly recommend them.

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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Being Known Is Not Enough

By Bill · Comments (0)
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

In Duct Tape Marketing, we define marketing as getting someone, with a particular need, to Know, Like, and Trust us. I think the "Know" portion of this definition is often viewed as just "getting our name out there" and is often used to rationalize some of our activities. It allows us to check "do marketing" off of our to do list.

Being known is only a first step. In order to take your business or practice to the next level, you have to be known for something particular. Our business cannot be all things to all people.

Deciding to become known for something particular can be scary. We must define the types of prospects we don't serve. This feeling that we may be losing business (that we never had) can make us feel uneasy.

As you become more successful, you will attract more prospects to your business that do not meet your Ideal Client Profile. It is important that your marketing system includes a mechanism to deal with this situation. Have you identified strategic referral partner who may be able to help these folks better than you can? This can be a great way to create a win-win-win situation that allows the prospect to find someone who can serve their needs while continuing to build your reputation as a trusted advisor.

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Categories : Marketing
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Marketing Is A Conversation

By Bill · Comments (0)
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

In my e-book, Saying the Wrong Thing Louder Doesn't Make It Right, I talked about how one of the reasons referrals and face-to-face meetings work for marketing professional services when other forms of marketing fail is because we are conversational in the former but often turn to corporate-speak in the latter. Over the weekend, I was reading some David Maister's Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy . David is much smarter and a better writer than I am and he makes this point much better than I did. David tells us that in order to win a client's business, we must have a conversation and he outlines the following characteristics of a conversation:

  • It's person to person; not role to role. People use normal language, not "corporate-speak"
  • Both sides talk, and what one says is dependent upon what the other has just said.
  • Both parties are engaged in joint problem solving; neither is trying to win or prevail
  • It's designed to allow people with different views to learn from one another

Take a close look at the list above. When you go on a sales call or are speaking to generate leads, are you having a conversation? Or are you "telling"?

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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Social Media In a B2B Setting

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (1)
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

"Social media isn't appropriate for me, because my company is B2B" (business to business). I have heard this objection several times in the past couple of weeks, so I thought I would create a short post about my opinions on this subject.

I don't believe that businesses don't do business with other businesses. People do businesss with people. People are social beings. We like to connect, get the inside track, use our knowledge to help and\or impress others. Our primary tool for accomplishing these tasks is our conversations with others. Social media give us a new set of tools to start and participate in conversations. Technology helps us have these conversations more easily and sometimes provides access to conversation we wouldn't have without it.

If people do business with other peoples, and social media helps us have better conversations, then I think the answer to whether or not social media makes sense in a B2B environment is a resounding yes!

If you are struggling with the idea of how social media plays a part in your business, think about these questions:

  • If someone came to your office and started asking questions, would you ignore them?
  • While hanging out at your favorite golf course, one of your playing partners tells you about her friend who has a terrible problem. Fixing that problem is what you do for a liviing. Will you offer to help?
  • When you are looking for help, would you prefer the opinion of someone you have "met" before, the salesperson, or a total stranger?
  • If you heard someone complaining about the terrible service they received from your competitor, would you offer to help? 

The conversations will take place whether you participate or not. The question is, will you?

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Categories : Marketing, social media marketing
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Referral Marketing – Managing Your Activities

By Bill · Comments (7)
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coach Joe Dager recently had a nice post about using the marketing hourglass to determine your marketing constraint. In his post, Joe discusses the importance of knowing your conversion rates and what they tell you about the effectiveness of your marketing system.

As I was reading Joe's post, I was reminded of a lesson from my Sandler Sales Training course:

Never manage your numbers, manage your behavior.

Let's look at referrals as an example. When we look at it realistically, we don't have any control over when and where someone gives us a referral. There are lots of activities (behaviors) that we can do to encourage people to send us referrals, but we don't have any control.

What the Sandler rule above means (at least to me) is that rather than focusing on "getting" 5 referrals this week, I need to focus on activities that will improve my chances of receiving them. These activities may include:

  • asking for referrals
  • providing referrals to others
  • working with customers to send out endorsement letters
  • requesting endorsements on LinkedIn

These are all things that I can control. If I have a system in place to track my behaviors and the results of those behaviors, I will understand the conversion rates that Joe posted about, and I can adjust my behaviors accordingly.

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Categories : Marketing, Referral Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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Inbound Marketing Cookbook

By Bill · Comments (0)
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Inbound marketing activities are those activites that help you "get found" by people looking for your products or services. Like any marketing tactic, inbound marketing activities are most effective when they are done consistently and systematically. Using a marketing cookbook is a great way to help you stay on track (and avoid becoming overwhelmed) with your inbound marketing activities.

Your inbound marketing cookbook contains your "recipe for success". It is a list of your daily and\or weekly goals that help you achieve your longer term goal becoming known as the go to person in your field of expertise.

To get started on your cookbook, select marketing activities that, when done on a consistent basis, will help you get found. These activities may include (but are not limited to) things like:

  • Optimizing pages on your website for certain keywords
  • Creating posts on your blog
  • Leaving comments on other blogs
  • Answering questions on LinkedIn
  • Contribute to a conversation on Twitter
  • Create whitepapers, e-books, and other great content to give away on your web site
  • Record a podcast
  • Update your Facebook fan page

Once you have selected your activities, set some goals related to how often you will do those activities. Which ones do you think you can commit to daily, weekly, or monthly?

Once you have set your goals write them down and track your progress. You don't need anything fancy for this. I use a weekly sheet that has my various marketing and sales activity goals on it. I use a simple hash mark to indicate when I have completed a task for that day.

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing
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