3 pillars of progress

Have you heard of the 3 pillars of progress?

They are related mainly to business success, but I think they are also relevant to your marketing, so I thought I would share them with you.

They are:

1. Strategy – have a good one that will get you to where you want to go. With marketing, you need to select your strategy based on whether you’ll be aiming your marketing at existing clients or new ones; and promoting your existing services or new ones. Choosing the wrong strategy will take you in the wrong direction and cost you money, so choose carefully.
2. Laser focus – once you’ve got your strategy, whatever you are focused on, give it your full attention and don’t get distracted. Plan and prioritise what needs to be done. This definitely applies to your marketing, because you need to plan and prioritise your marketing and then stick at it, with laser focus, until you get it done.
3. Integration – be 100% aligned with where you’re going and what you want to do. Your marketing also needs to be completely integrated. All your messages need to be pulling in the same direction, to give you an even better return than they will on their own.

How can you build your business with the 3 pillars of (marketing) progress?

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!

The secrets of marketing

The secrets of marketing

There are a number of secrets to great marketing. You don’t need to spend lots of time and money trying to work out what’s best for your business, because other people have already done the trial and error. You can learn from them and save your business a fortune.

One of the secrets is that as ad hoc marketing doesn’t work. Ad hoc marketing is where you pay for one advert in a special magazine supplement, because the salesman told you the magazine will be sent to thousands of your target client. But it’s going to people who haven’t asked to receive it and who won’t actively use the supplement to search for your services. They might not even know that they need your services and solutions. The salesman also told you that he could give you a great price for last minute space, so you paid it without checking your marketing budget, or making sure that the magazine would be read by your ideal clients – the people who really want to work with you.

Another big secret of great marketing is that you need to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t work. This means that you have to measure all your marketing activities. If you keep plugging away at a particular marketing tactic, even though it’s not working – not bringing you the enquiries or new clients that you want – then you should stop doing it. If you’ve run the same advert in the paper for three months and it hasn’t done what the salesman promised, then either stop doing it, or change the advert – the wording, the size and/or the position. When you’ve been going a particular networking meeting for six months and you’ve not met any of your ideal clients (and the people who have met don’t know any of them either) then it’s time to stop going and try out a different group, or a different message.

So measure your marketing and you’ll be able to do more of what works and get more from your marketing budget.

How well do you do the little things?

Chantal

At a recent networking presentation, a wise man suggested that we should focus on doing the little things well. When you do, you’ll make a great impression and keep your clients really happy. So what are the little things? Here’s an example I’ve just experienced.

Last week my car needed some work done on the back breaks. While it was at the garage I asked them to check out what might be a slow puncture in two of the tyres. They kindly looked at them and didn’t find a problem, so bought the car back. When I said I was sure there was a problem, the garage said to bring the car back in and they’d have another look, free of charge.

So a day or so later I stopped off at the garage – no appointment – and asked them for a second opinion. One of the mechanics came straight out and checked all my tyres. Eventually he found the problem and suggestion a simple solution. OK, so it cost me a few quid to replace some tyres, but since one of them wasn’t going to get as far as the MOT in two months, I didn’t mind. They had all the tyres in stock and changed the ones that needed to be changed. They even put the spare back in its holder under the car, without being asked. The service was fast and cheerful. I wasn’t charged for the time spent changing the tyres – just the cost of the tyres. Nothing was too much trouble and I was back in the office in no time.

That’s how my local garage focuses on doing the little things well. What are the little things in your business and how do you make sure you do them well?

Need some inspiration? Create a new vision for your business!

Chantal

Running a business takes up a lot of time and energy. There’s a lot to do and a lot to think about. Sometimes you might find that you start to lose energy or enthusiasm for what you do. So how do you find your focus? How do you inject some inspiration into what you do, to help you keep driving your business forward?

The answer could be to create a new vision and mission for your business. A vision is what your business is really about – a sentence that says exactly what you do and who you do it for. It’s a statement that everyone in your business buys into and believes in; it’s a statement that is developed by everyone in your business. Your mission is how you do what you do – another line or two that explains to everyone both inside and outside your business, exactly how you achieve your vision.

At Appletree we recently spent half a day with Joolz Lewis, the Corporate Hippy, creating a new vision and mission for the business. We first talked about what inspires us all about working at Appletree. We all shared our thoughts on why we love coming into work every day. Then we got creative! Joolz gave us a pile of magazines, lots of coloured paper and pens, some lovely things to cut out stick down and some scissors and glue for cutting out and sticking down! She asked us all to create a ‘picture’ of how we saw the business in 5 years time. The results were all very different and surprising – we have some very talented artists at Appletree! Some of the results are shown here.

   

Next, one at a time, we talked through our creations to the rest of the team. As we did, Joolz wrote down the key messages that appeared. There were a number of themes that came up across the whole team – which shows that we are all already pulling in the same direction. From those key words and ideas, she helped us to create our new vision and mission. And here they are.

Our Vision – Appletree supports and drives growth for service-based companies that are committed to building their businesses

Our Mission – We do this by being trusted advisers, delivering creative, integrated marketing solutions that achieve our clients’ objectives

Two simple lines that explain what we do, who we do it for and how we achieve it – simple! And to us, it’s really inspiring! It’s given us focus, because we now have three strategic priorities for this year, which came out of the process. They are:

• To build a strong reputation for providing innovative and dynamic marketing solutions (so that we can add those two words to our mission by the end of this 2011)
• To increase our average client size (so we can deliver each client a wider mix of marketing solutions, all integrated and working together)
• To identify and develop strategic partnerships (so that we can deliver innovative, dynamic and integrated marketing solutions to those larger clients)

It’s going to be a busy year, but at least we know where we’re going and what we can to achieve during the year. Watch this space for news and developments!

When you have both a vision and a mission for your business, you will find your focus. You’ll be able to inject masses of inspiration into your business and fill it with energy and enthusiasm.

Do you have a vision and a mission for your business this year?

10 steps to succeed in online marketing

Alice

There are many examples of online marketing throughout the internet for all of us to see, and plenty of posts and articles from gurus and experts all saying how wonderful their versions are. So I have added my tuppence-worth to the fray to let you know what I think of this subject!

1. Understand exactly what marketing is. This may sound pretentious, but marketing should not be confused with selling. It’s important to know that marketing is all about nurturing relationships with your customers and also having the chance to spread your expertise to gain trust and credibility. Once your potential customer has really got to know you and your company, only then will they make the move to do business with you.

2. Understand how important customers are. It really is worth doing some marketing analysis on your customers’ profiles, activities, buying habits, lifestyles – not to mention their needs and wants. This means you’ll be able to provide effective solutions to their problems, as well as placing your marketing exactly where your customers hang out, saving time, energy and money. And when you write copy, always present it within the customers’ point of view, to make them think you really care about them and want to help them.

3. Do you have a proper focus? It’s not worth setting up a marketing campaign without a suitable end in sight. Lots of people happily spend time marketing their business and then wonder why nothing comes of it. If you aim your marketing towards a goal, not only will it be more focused in its approach, but it will help towards measuring your results and analysing whether you are going down the correct route, being cost-worthy and productive, as well as achieving what you set out to do.

4. The importance of keywords. Search engines thrive on both keywords and links. Concentrating on the former, performing adequate research into which keywords are effective, relevant and up-to-date, plus knowing how and where to use them correctly, could make or break your online marketing.  Successful search engine optimisation may be considered a ‘black art’, but even small amounts performed appropriately is better than messy misunderstandings in large scale operations.

5. Content is king/queen. A well known phrase which can be interpreted in many ways. What you write about should always be relevant to both you and your customers. It should be focused on your customers’ desires, or aimed at filling a niche gap in the market, or promote your service/product within your customers’ point of view. It should be entertaining, educational and enterprising. It should pander to the needs of both humans and search engine spiders, to both be read and interact with the internet. It should not mention your company to say how wonderful it is!

6. Be aware of social media use. Rapidly rising in online marketing use, this phenomenon should not be ignored. Blogs are, of course, the hub of social networking, as well as all your online marketing activities, as everything can be directed back to them and thence outwards! But social media is not necessarily somewhere to dump material hoping it will be read and acted upon, it depends on social interaction and sharing with like-minded and relevant contacts. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are facilities to collect a following and post notifications of what you are doing, whereas other social media such as StumbleUpon, Delicious, Mixx, Digg, Reddit and the like, rely on a voting system to promote your blog posts virally around the web. If you aren’t interested in what others are doing, how can they therefore be interested in you?

7. Gathering leads into lists. For some online marketers this is key. If you are able to collect a relevant and focused list of likely leads for you to market to, people who have willingly given their permission to receive information from you each month so that they can keep in touch with what you are saying, thinking or doing, being the first to know of any events or promotions you are creating, this is an extremely important source of marketing value. Email newsletters are big news because of their cost-worthiness in communication, and flexibility of use and transmission, and as long as they are used appropriately with the required focus, they are a very effective online marketing tool.

8. Using calls to action. Oh, how many times do I see online marketing with inappropriate or neglected call to actions! If you don’t tell your customers what to do, they won’t do it! And where you place these call to actions is also important: multiple mentions, within landing or squeeze pages within your website, with incentives and time-dependency, in postscripts at the end of communications – this little, much forgotten element of marketing could make all the difference towards success or failure. And the squeeze pages I mentioned before – another excellent marketing tool that when used appropriately can contribute much towards the benefits of online marketing.

9. How well are you performing? It’s no good undertaking a marketing campaign without knowing how well you are doing. Google Analytics for both your website and blog are vital to measure performance and analyse the correct procedure for future projects. Understand who is responding, why you got the responses you did, how to get more online visibility, what can you do to increase your conversions – all this is related to many of the points I mentioned above, plus a coherent understanding and focused appreciation to enhance your online marketing.

10. Nothing will happen overnight. Ignore all those marketing gurus who promise untold immediate wealth as soon as you sign up to their programmes. Online marketing is hard work, and you need to be in it for the long term. Many customers will read your newsletter and blog for years before they decide to take action, during which time they have been convinced of your expertise, have learned what you can do for them, and have formed a favourable opinion of you and your business to make the initial approach. If you show genuine interest in them (mainly through social networking) and gain a sizeable following of relevant, like-minded prospective customers, regularly communicating with them through your newsletter and providing them with valuable information that truly helps them, only then will your online marketing activities start to bear fruit.

How to get ROI through social networking

Alice

Social media is an online method of networking, which is, by its nature, a long term activity. It’s the word ‘networking’ that should give you a clue, which, as every veteran networker will tell you, is all about forming relationships, gaining trust, building your reputation and raising your expertise status within your industry or niche.

Novices and sceptics of social networking often ask about how do you get a ROI (return on investment) within this activity. This is because they have failed to understand the concept of ‘networking’, and have mixed it up with ‘sales’, which it definitely isn’t. It’s also a more relaxed form of marketing, spread over the long term, with any results (or ROI) materialising as you become more successful and expert at it, and when people learn more about what you do and the kind of person you are.

If you are canny, and provide plenty of examples and case-studies within your articles and blog posts, showing through online activity what you’re like and what you can produce, what you’ve done for others and examples of their success, you will build up an extensive list of followers, friends and connections, which all aid towards sharing and extending your audience and therefore your business’s visibility.

Two more things to consider: 1) it’s adviseable to have a proper focus for your social networking, and 2) it cannot succeed through short, intensive burst of activity with long periods of slack in between. Networking works best through long-term drip-feed marketing strategies over a period of time, with consistency having more effect than sporadic quantity. 

Social networking works best with a sociable focus in mind. Forget all your business processes for a little while and concentrate on recognition of those you are following by showing an interest in them, remembering your past conversations and their activities, with plenty of altruism which can go a long way. And it’s certainly worth your while taking the trouble to learn the etiquette of your chosen form of social networking, as each are different for their own reasons, and one method may not work or be appreciated within another.

Now your business mind can clock back into action, and start meausuring your activities (discreetly) to see how you are improving and how much your activies are noted, shared, actioned and talked about. Use the focus you have chosen wisely and remember not to sell, and eventually, if you do all of that, you’ll get your ROI.

Don’t get a dog and then bark yourself

Alice

 

This concept arose from a question I saw in a LinkedIn Group about small businesses wearing too many hats. It also may have been sparked off by Chantal’s last post about the mistakes learned while establishing her business. 

When you own a business you want everything to happen at once, brilliant results to start coming in immediately and your coffers to start to swell. Reality is that everything takes an eternity to happen, hiccups and unforeseen scenarios hinder progress, horrible spectres loom in the distance and money simply disappears down a bottomless hole. 

Well, that’s just my disillusioned reaction as a failed business woman. But since working for Chantal I have been able to watch and learn from the sidelines. Chantal didn’t get where she is today without letting go. She let go of when she realised she couldn’t do everything herself. She realised that she needed to outsource, and eventually, when the time was right, to hire. She needed to concentrate on the areas she knew she was good at, and use people to do the other stuff she knew they could do better. 

In other words, use dogs to bark for you, as they are better at barking because they are dogs and that’s what they do. 

So take a good look at the marketing of your business. How good are you at it and how well is it performing? Which bits do you enjoy, and what do you hate most? Would you rather just do the enjoyable bits and not have to worry about the rest? What would you like to concentrate on, but feel you haven’t got the time or the expertise to accomplish it properly? 

So why not get a dog to bark for you?

5 top tips for writing adverts

Alice

During a recession one of the main marketing activities to suffer is advertising. This is not surprising, as most adverts fail because the people that write and/or design them don’t understand the psychology of their customers and how they think or react. This statement may cause many tempers to rise or collars to become suddenly warm, but when I looked at a local magazine that regularly plops through my letterbox, stuffed to the gills with adverts from tradesmen and services all plying their wares in the vain hope that someone, somewhere, might bite, I sighed deeply, as only two adverts in the entire publication had any chance of success.

There are many factors that experts have up their sleeves that make advertising successful, and those that know these nuggets of information are certainly the more richer because of them. Adverts on the telly are far more sophisticated than printed versions, especially as they cost so much more, but there are certain elements that ring true in all adverts that ‘work’ that I can share with you.

1. How well known are you really? Only extremely well-known brands such as Coca Cola and Harrods can advertise with just their name or logo. One ad I saw, which I knew would fail, comprised of a beautiful woman wearing an alternative to bra-straps, accompanied with only the brand name and the URL. I knew this wasn’t well known enough for people to understand, recognise or even react to it, and the URL itself was almost obscure in its positioning and size. There was no description or even any factor that could make that ad succeed, yet the owner was especially proud of it.

2. Don’t put your logo at the top. Most of the ads in that magazine did this. And why not? – I hear you say. This is a mind-set of businesses that needs to be reversed: the customer is much more important than your business, so you should be addressing them first and putting your business details, logo, business name and contact details, at the bottom of the ad.  You need to put the focus of your advert at the top, with carefully composed headlines to capture your customers’ attention, to make them think they are the most important and that you really care about them.

3. Work with your customers’ problems. Do marketing research to find out what your customers need or, ideally, want. Work on the pain your customers experience by acknowledging it, empathising with it, and providing the solution for it. Again this is working on the concept that the customer comes first, and having established the problem and then the solution, you need to work on the benefits your customers will gain by buying your product or taking up your service. Forget your business’s features: 25 years’ worth of experience may not cut the ice if that experience cannot be proven to be any good; why not turn that feature into a benefit, such as the fact that over 500 people have been helped to success within the firm’s 25 years of existence – this has far more impact, especially if they say they can do the same for you!

4. Does your advert have a focus? Raising brand awareness is all very well, and so many of that doorstep magazine’s ads were doing just this, but a page of four adverts for plumbers all saying virtually the same thing will make it very hard for you to choose between them. But what if one of them focused on installing kitchens as a speciality? Having a niche in which you can perform to an exemplary standard is much better than doing everything just so-so. Grow a reputation as “the kitchen-plumber”, and you can mention later you also do bathrooms and central heating systems. And offering special deals, such as on call-out fees, could also be a draw as long as it’s cost effective, both to you and your customers.

5. Finally, say it loud and proud. Having banged on before about putting your business details at the bottom of the ad, don’t forget that you’ve got to make them clear. Provide a call to action to incite a response, such as a code to quote for a discount (measurable), an early bird offer before a certain date (timed incentive), or even a command that they call this number (‘please’ sounds desperate), made large and noticeable so the customer doesn’t waste time searching for it before they lose interest. This also goes for any other details, such as a URL for a special landing webpage specifically designed for that ad, so you can provide more information (such as testimonials) that cannot be fitted within your advertising space, and allows them to either pay online or email you to make an appointment.

There’s so much more than bunging up your logo, stating your profession, having a reasonably relevant picture and half-heartedly adding in your contact details somewhere as an afterthought when it comes to designing an advert. What does yours look like?

Having a niche is not limiting yourself

Alice

I got a flat tyre last week. After it was duly changed by my husband (he did offer!) I had the task of sourcing a replacement.

There are countless garages that sell tyres. I approached the company that had provided my previous tyres, but found the payment methods online totally unsuitable, inefficient and inflexible (in spite of offering a large discount to pay online), plus they were unable to deliver for two weeks!

Don’t get me started on poor customer service. It was useless ringing up to complain, as the person on the other end of the phone hadn’t got a clue about inadequate shopping cart systems on websites, and neither did they understand about their dire tyre outsource system that could not deliver within a reasonable period of time.

So I turned to the trusty directories to find an alternative. Just Tyres is an outfit I usually overlooked, with no real apparent reason, but this time I gave them a try.

They do exactly what they say on the tin. They supply and fit just tyres. Because they are so focused on one aspect of the market, they were able to efficiently collect payment online, allow us to select the tyre we needed, immediately source said tyre, have it ready for me at my convenience, wait for me to get there through the terrible afternoon traffic, quickly strip the old tyre from the axil, and replace the new tyre at lightening speed.

No fuss, prompt delivery, efficient processes and excellent customer service. There wasn’t anything else to clutter up their performance. Their focus on delivering one product as best as they could in as efficient manner as possible was paramount. Now if their marketing was better they could become the top of their industry, outstripping their competitors through product, process and eventually price, not to mention convenience (a highly neglected factor many businesses choose to ignore).

Excellent service in just one niche will enable you to increase your efficiency, status, expertise, credibility, trustworthiness, relationship with customers, perfect your processes, maintain your reputation – whereas an outfit that offers everything under the sun is bound to suffer, since where is their focus?