How can you use the Law of Attraction in your business?

Do you use the Law of Attraction in your business, to get the clients, staff and suppliers you want? If you ever find yourself using words like ‘coincidence’ or ‘serendipity’ or saying that good things just seem to happen, then you are probably already using the Law of Attraction without realising it.

Some years ago I was introduced to a book called Attracting Perfect Customers by Stacey Hall. It showed me how to find perfect clients – the ones you really want to work with – and I’ve been using the techniques in my business and with many of my clients, very successfully.

Recently I learnt how to take the Law of Attraction even further in business, when I heard Michael Losier speak. He’s from Canada and has written a book called The Law of Attraction. He said that the Law of Attraction works because the words we use determine the results we get. A collection of words, put together in a string, becomes a thought. A thought becomes a vibe – a feeling or mood – which can be either positive or negative. Vibes become results – either positive or negative. So if you look at the results you’re getting and you don’t like them (because they’re negative), the way to change them is by changing the vibes you give off, which you do by changing your thoughts, which you do by changing the words you use. Michael says there are three words we need to take out of our vocabulary, to help us create positive results. They are:

• Don’t
• Not
• No

So instead of saying “I don’t want an overdraft,” or “I don’t want to work with a certain type of client,” we can think about what we do want. “I want a parking space right outside that shop,” or “I want to earn £X this month.”

According to Michael, there are just three steps to creating attraction and getting what you want. They are:

1. Identify what you desire
2. Give your desires attention
3. Allow it to happen

The third step is the most important and is probably the hardest to do; yet the speed at which the Law of Attraction will create what you want is in direct proportion to how much you allow.

Make sense? If not, get hold of a copy of Michael’s book! He’s not in the UK much, but is running some workshops in London this weekend (9-11 September) and you can find out more at www.MichaelLosier.com. He’s a really entertaining speaker and you’ll learn loads about how to create whatever you want in your business!

15 Ways to Give your Business an Unfair Advantage – Part one

 Here are some great tips I read recently in Real Business Magazine. Parts two and three to follow soon!

1. Keep your customers happy – at all cost

“Start with the customer. What makes your proposition better than anyone else’s?” asks Simon Calver, chief executive of LoveFilm. He says LoveFilm’s brand is built around three core principles – range, value and convenience – which is hard-wired into every LoveFilm employee’s brain. It seems to work: today the movie rental firm has 1.6 million subscribers across the UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. “Make your customers love you by offering them the best customer service you possibly can. The customer is always king.”

2. Go into partnership

Sometimes being an entrepreneur isn’t about doing it all yourself – it’s about finding the right partners to grow your business. Take Specsavers, which has a 42 per cent market share in the UK. The company operates a franchise model, where the stores are split in a 50/50 joint venture basis between Specsavers and the individual optician: “All of our optometrists have a guaranteed salary and the loans they put into the business are usually paid back by the company within three years. “ explains founder Dame May Perkins. “The structure of these partnerships hasn’t changed in the past 27 years.” Share the profits, share the risk.

3. Measure everything

“There’s always talk about how entrepreneurs are big risk takers. But, in fact, when you’re running your own business, you make sure the way you roll the dice is in your favour,” explains LoveFilm’s Calver. “Every move is calculated. Entrepreneurs are actually far more analytical and focussed than many big corporates.” For example, with more than 500 marketing campaigns on at any moment, LoveFilm measures “absolutely everything” it can, to keep on top of its spend.

4. Encourage reviews and recommendations

“Reviews are becoming huge – 73 per cent of all shoppers check with other consumers or friends before purchasing from an unknown brand,” says Andy Phillipps, Reevoo’s chairman. “Business owners consistently underestimate just how willing consumers are to write reviews. If asked, 15% will review products and services without any incentive at all.” Just look at LoveFilm: its customers have generated 80 million film ratings and written 843,000 member reviews, helping LoveFilm to promote the most relevant titles.

5. Make your idea actually happen

“Too many people walk away from a good idea and blame it on something like the recession. But to be successful, you have to stay really determined,” says Richard Harpin, the boss of  insurance and maintenance giant  Homeserve. “When people come to you and ask whether you’ve thought of ‘this’ or ‘that’, don’t get distracted. Have a single-minded focus.” He adds that while you can work on developing other parts of the business simultaneously, you have to keep true to your original goals – and never give up. “Develop other products, channels and markets but keep it true to your vision. There’s always light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t just walk away when things don’t go as planned.”

Where do your clients hang out?

When you know who your ideal clients are – the people that you really want to work with, who will love working with you – to get your marketing message to them, you need to think about where they hang out. When you know this, you can put your marketing messages in places where they will see them and respond to them. If you just splash your messages everywhere, your prospective clients will see them, but so will hundreds of other people that you don’t want to work with, so most of your effort and money will be wasted. Putting your messages in places where your prospects won’t see them will waste your effort and money too.

To figure out where your clients hang out, think about who your perfect clients are and what makes them tick. Combine these with the products and services that you want to provide and you’ll get a picture of who these people are and where they hang out.

For example, if you provide weight loss advice to people who want to get fitter and live a healthier lifestyle, leaving a brochure in a pub won’t bring you many enquiries – if any. You will have more success if you leave that same brochure in a doctor’s surgery.

If you specialize in helping women become more successful and assertive at work, promoting your business in magazines aimed at men will be a waste of time.

For ideal clients over a certain age, will they see your message on the internet? More and more people are going online, regardless of their age, but you still need to know where on the internet they spend time. What other products and services are they looking for? Which websites do they visit?

 Where do your clients hang out? Make a list of everywhere your clients ‘could’ spend time and another list of places where they don’t hang out. For instance, your clients might hang out at industry specific networking events, but not at trade exhibitions. Once you’ve got your list, make sure you only put your marketing messages in places where your clients hang out and you will save yourself a lot of time and effort.

Six ways to keep your customers and get them to spend more.

“Loyalty marketing” is based on the idea of cultivating and nurturing strong relationships with customers and clients to encourage loyalty over time. Businesses who adopt this are more likely to result in business growth and success. It is said that it costs up to 10 times as much to win a new customer than to keep an existing one.

What is new in loyalty marketing?
Clever ways to encourage customer loyalty have been developed by top brands. The good news is smaller businesses can replicate these approaches.

1. Offering discounts
Using direct marketing techniques through mail, email and now SMS texting, it is possible to direct exclusive discount offers to your existing customers. Here are some tips:

• To make your discounts truly exclusive, use promotion codes for redeeming online or printed vouchers.
• Using cash values on your vouchers will give them high perceived value. 
• If using e-promotions, ensure you create a “landing zone” dedicated to your promotion so customers can quickly click through and select your best offers.
• Vouchers can be delivered to customers via SMS text. Find out more about mobile commerce – vouchering and crediting from the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IABUK) website.
• Does your business depend on walk-in traffic from the street – e.g., a restaurant, bar, hair and beauty salon, coffee shop, car oil change stop? You could consider location-based marketing: using mobile networks to offer customers discounts and offers through their smartphones. (This approach tends to be used by younger, tech savvy people who pass on good deals to others through their networks). Find out more about the benefits of offering discounts through location-based mobile marketing at the IABUK website.

2. Loyalty cards
Encourage your customer to come back for more with point systems or cards that can be stamped to collect free gifts and complementary items. Find out more about structuring effective loyalty programmes at the CRM Trends website.

3. Hospitality
Stores can send out exclusive invitations for loyalty card members to take advantage of a pre-sale or pre-season shopping evening. Add value with fashion shows, demonstrations and complimentary glasses of champagne.

Extending hospitality to a customer or client has traditionally been one of the most effective ways of cementing a relationship and making a confident statement about your business. However, some organisations have strict rules about what their staff can or cannot accept. The advent of the bribery act (see our regulation page on the Bribery Act 2011) means that policies deeming what is “proportionate and reasonable” hospitality may be tightened.

4. First impressions are lasting
Identify what is the first thing that people come into contact with when approaching your business, and make it as attractive and approachable as it can be. Is it you, yourself, or your business card? Is it your answer phone message or your website/email response to their web enquiry? It could be your van, your front door or your shop window. Make it sparkle and make your customer feel really welcome.    

5. Reciprocal discounts
You could team up with some business associates or approach related businesses to offer your customers a quid pro quo deal. For example, if you provide lessons in a sport or other skill you could arrange for your students to get discounts at a favoured supplier of their specialist equipment. In return, the stores could refer its customers to you for discounts on lessons.  

6. Say thanks with a card or note
Once you have a new customer’s details it is tempting to get them onto your sales contact database for sales offers. If they first received a courteous personal note or card thanking them for their business, think how much more receptive they would be to your follow-up sales messages.

Who to focus on
If you have a large customer base it may be profitable to focus loyalty offers and rewards on those customers with the highest potential lifetime value to improve profitability. Use our interactive tool to identify the customers most valuable to your business.

What’s your marketing strategy?

Last week I wrote about setting goals for your business and marketing. Once you’ve done that, you then need to plan how you’re going to get to your goals – the strategies you’re going to use.

Whatever sort of journey you’re on, you need to work out the best way of getting to your destination. Will you drive or take the train? How will you get to the station and if you drive there, where will you leave your car? There are lots of options to consider and you need to select the most appropriate, which will be based on your starting point and your destination.

There are four main strategies you can consider, when deciding how to get to your destination. Unlike with an actual journey, you can use more than one of the strategies. In fact you could use all four of them in combination, if appropriate, to help you reach your goals.

Why do you need a strategy? For the very same reason that you set goals your marketing and your business. You could just set off and try lots of different marketing activities, in the hope that they will take you to your goals – a bit like just turning up at a bus stop and hoping that one of the buses that stops there is going your way (and assuming that buses still stop there!) Or you could plan the best approach and only spend your valuable time and money on what you know will work. Having a strategy and following it is much cheaper in the long run than the scatter gun approach to marketing.

The four strategies are based on your clients – current ones and potential ones – and your products and services – existing ones and new ones you can develop.  There are four ways in which you can combine these elements, giving the following four strategies:

1. Sell more existing services to your existing clients
2. Sell new services to your existing clients
3. Sell existing services to new clients
4. Sell new services to new clients

Many people overlook the first strategy, yet it is usually the easiest and most cost effetive one to use. Number four is usually the most expensive and risky, although it can provide the greatest returns. Start at number one and once you’re sure you’ve done all you can there, move on to the next one. Each one needs a different type of marketing, so getting clear on what you want to achieve will help  you get there.

Click here to read last week’s blog about the starting point of your journey.

Don’t sell me X, sell me Y

What do you really sell? If you’re a Marketing Consultant, do you really sell Marketing Consultancy? Is that what people actually buy from you?

Here’s an exercise you can use to get a fresh look on what you really sell. Ask people at a networking meeting, your clients or your staff for alternatives to what you actually provide. When I did this at a recent event, I said “Don’t sell me Marketing Consultancy, sell me …” and here are some of the suggestions I received:

… new clients

… introductions

… help with developing my community

… more business

… lovely customers.

Get the idea? So if you’re an Accountant, don’t sell me accountancy – sell me financial security. If you’re a catering company, don’t sell me catering – sell me an event that boosts my reputation. If you’re a career coach, don’t sell me career coaching – sell me my dream job!

If you need some suggestions for what you really sell, get in touch and I’ll send you some ideas.

Where is your business going?

When you first set out on a journey with a map, you need to know where you are. If you don’t know where you’re starting from, you can’t work out the best route to your destination and you can’t determine how long it’s going to take you to get there.

If you’re putting together a Marketing Plan for your business, the first thing you need to think about is where your business is now. Knowing where you are at the start of this journey will help you plan the best route to your goals. It will also help you set your goals so that you can see the distance you’ve got to travel between where you are now and where you want to be. You might think that you’d like to take on 100 new clients in the next twelve months, charging each one £1000 per day for consulting or coaching. However, if you’ve only got two clients right now and you’re only charging £300 per day, you’ll have a lot of work to do to reach your goal. (If that’s the goal you really want to aim for, that’s great and knowing your starting point will help you plan the most effective way of getting there.)

So what is your business? What resources do you have to deliver what you do to your clients? How long have you been doing what you do and what sort of reputation and experience do you have?

You also need to think about the products and services that you currently provide and be clear on what you offer, to help you decide the best direction to take. Are you delivering what your clients actually want and doing what you really want to do? Is there a demand for what you want to offer or are you doing something you think people might want?

Who are your clients? What sort of people and businesses do you work for? Where are they and why do they need your help?

Finally, what about your competitors? Do you know who your main competitors are and what they do? How much do they charge and what makes you different from them?

There’s a lot for you to think about when you start creating a Marketing Plan for your business, but get really clear on where you are now and it will be easier to decide where to go and how best to get there.

How to build your brand through social media

Alice

First, let’s get outside the concept that a brand is your logo, and establish that it’s also your customer service and your attitude to those who buy or do business with you.

And when you’re dealing with social media, it’s the ‘attitude’ part that becomes important. When analysing this medium, half of its name needs to be properly considered: ‘social’. This concept should not be ignored or forgotten.

So to use social media for brand awareness, you need to be sure what aspect of your brand is most effective in attracting your customers. Do some marketing research to find out what makes it attractive, and how it relates to their problems, needs and lifestyles.

Then you need to start communicating with people, and that’s were social media comes in. Even before you start broadcasting about your brand, amass a following. Do this by being friendly, interested, chatty, funny, educational, informative, helpful, showing empathy – whatever is needed to draw attention to yourself.

Social media works by being interested in what others are doing. In other words, by being sociable. Remember you need to work at it – friendships are not one-minute wonders, they take time, and gradually your followers will get to know you, like you and eventually trust you, and when they feel they can ask you anything or tell you their latest story, then that’s half the battle won.

Then you start broadcasting about your brand, and answer anybody who responds to it. This is not an exercise in selling – far from it!  Social media does not tolerate selling tactics. This is when you start to share stuff that is interesting, helpful, useful and beneficial to your friends. Notice I said friends, not customers – if your friends like what you are offering them, then eventually they will become customers, or refer you to others who are more likely to become customers.

Because you’ve gained the trust from your followers, they are then more likely to notice you, your business and your brand. You haven’t forced anything at them, you’ve allowed them to find out about you at their own pace, even if what you are offering them isn’t suitable for them. That doesn’t matter, they can easily become advocates on your behalf, and don’t forget a ‘warm’ referral is much more effective than a ‘cold’ call.

By becoming known as a helpful resource within your brand or business, all accomplished by being purely ‘sociable’, you are far more likely to be remembered, recommended and referred to, and who knows who might pick up on various aspects of your ‘sociability’, if you’re recognised as an expert in your field, it can only provide chances to expose your brand even further…

Can blogs and newsletters exist side by side?

Alice

I’m often asked if blogs and e-newsletters can exist side by side. In my mind it is imperative, because to me visibility on the internet is paramount, and the more places you can publish your message the better. Worries about overlapping should be waved aside, as different people read different forms of media, so if you wish to increase your audience as much as possible, post your message everywhere!

What should come first, the blog or the newsletter? This appears to be like the chicken and egg question, but in reality it depends on you, your customers and your business. What product or service are you providing? Where will your customers congregate? How internet savvy are they? What is your subject matter? How easy do you find writing? How much have you got to say?

Newsletters are relatively easy to accomplish as you can get away with publishing only once a month, but they have the disadvantage of not being interactive. They will get read (hopefully), digested, maybe archived and then the reader will pass on. Only rarely will any bother to respond.

Whereas a blog has the advantage of your post always being visible, even if it has been superceded in the timeline or newsroll. There are archive processes in the form of categories for later research capabilities, and each post has its permalink to publish in later posts or elsewhere. Because blogs are interactive you will more likely get a response, even immediately, which adds to the conversation and interest factor from search engines.

And can newsletters and blogs interact? There is no reason why you cannot republish your newsletter article as a blog, if it is short enough. If not, then dividing it up into smaller sections as a series will certainly help increase your visitor ratings, as readers will want to come back to find out the next installments. That would certainly overcome the ever-ending question: “What do I write about?” and “Help, do I really need to contribute something so often?” You’ll probably find you’ll be able to say more in your posts about your newsletter’s subject, giving you a chance to elaborate and explain the subject more succinctly and in a fuller capacity.

Who cares about customers?

Chantal

As I walked into the shop, the assistant didn’t acknowledge me, as she was busy talking to her friend on the other side of the counter.

I started looking for a birthday card and caught a few snatches of their conversation. They were both talking, but not really to each other. Each one had their own agenda for the conversation – things they wanted to say – so they weren’t actually listening to each other.

Another customer walked up to the counter to pay for some cards. The assistant carried on her conversation with her friend, only speaking briefly to her customer to tell her how much she owed her. She did at least say thank you when the money was handed over, but she didn’t look at her customer. She was too busy giving her opinion to her friend.

I walked round the shop until I found a suitable card – about 5 minutes in all – and when I approached the counter, the assistant’s friend finally said, “Well I mustn’t keep you and it was nice to talk.” With that she left, leaving the assistant to give me her undivided attention. I was glad her friend had gone, because otherwise I’d have been tempted to say something to either or both of them. I only spent a few pounds in the shop, but that doesn’t mean I want to be ignored or treated like an inconvenience.

How difficult is it to pay attention to a customer, when they only need a couple of minutes of your time? If you only have a few minutes, how do you want your customers to remember you? For the wonderful way in which you made them feel, which leaves them wanting to come back again and again; or like they were intruding on your life and should never darken your door again?