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The top 3 strategies for your business to survive and thrive in the new digital economy.

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Digital is a dirty word for some, an exciting word for other small business owners. Either way, you have to know a little bit about it and if all you know is the below three tips, you’ve got it made.

1. Get customers into YOUR marketing system – not just “fans” on someone else’s:

Make sure that your marketing process drives fans from places like Facebook into a marketing sequence that you control – like an email marketing auto-responder for prospects, then one for your customer list.

2. Make regular offers to your existing customers:

A customer is the most valuable asset a business has – not finding what else you can offer them is a near-criminal waste of business resources and disservice for your clients.

3. Automate the followup:

A simple sequence of emails educating your customer on a product or service that would complement their purchase is one of the most effective ways of making a sale.

via The top 3 strategies for your business to survive and thrive in the new digital economy..

Marketing books written 80 years ago are still relevant even in the digital age. How can that be? Well, marketing and selling are based on human emotions and reactions. That hasn’t fundamentally changed much over the years. So make sure you have a strategy that appeals to the right target with the right message and simply utilise digital means as one new channel to disseminate that message and to keep the communication with your community alive and well.

Need more chicken soup for your biz? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk!

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The Stupefying Simple Way to Pick Your Niche

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40.77 Stupefied

It’s easy to pick your niche            (Photo credit: eelx)

 

Tough nut to crack

Picking a niche has been the bane of every entrepreneur’s existence. If you are a small business owner and recognise that to grow your business, you need to focus your marketing efforts on 1 target market (WHO) and talk to them about only 1 product or service (WHAT), then you might still be struggling with HOW to pick them.Here’s a simple and proven technique I’ve devised to decide for once and for all, what your niche is.

Criteria

There are really only 3 basic things you need to consider in picking a niche:

  1. Fit for you—your personal preference, skill set, experience and background
  2. Fit for the income you want—how many of this group x how much price you would charge per person
  3. Access—your ability to reach your target and how accessible they are to you in large numbers

Rate Them

Give each niche combo of 1 WHO and 1 WHAT a score of desirability from 1-10. 10 Being the best fit.  Then, choose the niche combo with the highest rating to base your marketing plan on.

Example

Here’s the exercise I actually went through for my own business when I left my full time marketing job exactly 1 year ago this month!

  1.  Fit for your personality, skill set, experience, background and preference
  • Leadership coaching to CEOs:  Score 8/10
  • Marketing to entrepreneurs:  Score  10/10

2.   Ability to generate the revenue you want

  • Leadership coaching to CEOs:  Score 10/10
  • Marketing to entrepreneurs:  Score 8/10

3.   Access

  • Leadership coaching to CEOs:  Score 2/10
  • Marketing to entrepreneurs:  Score 10/10

Total Scores

  • Leadership coaching to CEOs: 20
  • Marketing to entrepreneurs: 28

I guess by now you know that I teach marketing to entrepreneurs and have been very successful with my niche. I’m living proof that this stupefying simple way to pick your niche works!

You too can do this simple exercise and move on towards the light where your marketing plan and consequently more clients await.

Need more chicken soup for your biz? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk!

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7 Simple Ways to Relieve Stress Now

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stressed and worried (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just got back from a weekend away and it’s now back to work Monday. I must admit I feel ALOT better about Mondays since I started my business growth coaching practice full-time. However, stress comes in all forms. Positive stress, son having tantrum stress, parents not getting younger stress. You name it! Here in this article I read this morning, were surefire ways to relieve some right now:

1. Count your breath.  Counting the length of your inhale and exhale and gradually lengthening how long you take to exhale will help counter this stress response.

2. Sing it out. If sitting quietly and counting your breaths sounds impossible or unappealing, you can sing or hum to achieve a similar effect.

3. Drink more water. When your hydration level drops by even 2 percent, your ability to do simple math and make decisions is disrupted.

4. Do a body scan. Redirecting your focus away from your worries and toward your physical body for a minute or two can help alleviate stress.

5. Keep vacation photos handy.  When you feel stressed, look at an image for a moment, close your eyes and try to imagine all the sensations you were feeling in that place–what you saw, smelled, felt, heard and tasted.

6. Create a ritual. Instead of rushing to grab a cup of coffee or scarfing a snack, make a ritual of it, says Puddicombe.

7. Laugh out loud. Humor is the opposite of stress, according to John Morreall, president of Williamsburg, Va.-based Humorworks, which focuses on using humor in team-building exercises and other workplace activities.

via 7 Simple Ways to Relieve Stress Now.

If you’re not stressed and you’re growing your small business, I want to meet you! I have so much positive stress right now from experiencing the highs of my first group program launch, to helping my clients market their own very first events, I can barely see straight. I will be using at least 6 of these 7 tips today and that’s a promise to myself!

Need more chicken soup for your biz? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk!

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5 Reasons People Unfollow You on Twitter

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As a complete Twitter novice who nevertheless helps people grow their business, I loved this article about the no-no’s of using it. I was pretty much responsible for 2 of the 5. Yikes! Take a look if you’re guilty too…

1. Every tweet is about your product or service.

I know there are consultants out there earnestly telling their clients to “stay on message” at all times. For a 30-second television interview, that might make sense. In social media, it’s a terrible idea. Retweet someone else once in a while. Tell me about what you’re reading.

2. Your tweets aren’t in English.

If I can’t understand your tweets, there’s no reason to have them in my stream.

3. Your tweets are in English, but I still can’t understand them.

Consider this tweet from earlier today: “RT @ScLoHo: RT @awelfle: @AmyL_Bishop @douglaskarr and what about @scloho? #solomo #yolo #BIN2012 //Yeah Doug?

If all or most of your tweets are full of abbreviations and inside messages, only insiders are likely to follow you. Of course, that may be what you want.

4. All your tweets are conversations.

You probably know that a tweet beginning with the @ symbol appears only in the stream of that user, plus any other users who follow you both. If all of them(your tweets) are things like, “@Someone, great seeing you last night!” “@OtherSomeone, That’s a great idea–let me know how it goes!” and so on, I can’t tell what you really tweet about. I’m likely to move on.

5. Your tweets are all lists of @names.

The long list of people you want to shout out is cluttering up my Twitter stream. I want it to be full of fun and useful information instead.

If you want to make me happy, retweet something I tweeted. If I haven’t tweeted anything worth repeating, then why are you telling others to follow me?

via 5 Reasons People Unfollow You on Twitter.

When you’re learning a new language in a new country, you stumble and make mistakes so in the land of Twitter, I’m a proponent of just getting out there. If nothing else, enjoy having the unprecedented access to the thoughts and actions of your heroes and mentors.

Need more chicken soup for your biz? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk!

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5 Tips to Help Your Marketing Messages Sing

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A New Guinea Singing Dog, singing.

A New Guinea Singing Dog, singing. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marketing– that often feared and sometimes hated dirty word. It really only means getting in front of people who need your help desperately and telling them that you can help them. How do you do it effectively, here’s an article with some very valid points:

1. Clarify thoughts.  Can you describe your product or service clearly and succinctly? What qualities differentiate your offerings from others in the industry? How will customers benefit?

2. Energize descriptions. Pinpoint the specific advantages of products and services, and convey a sense of urgency: “Save time and money now!”

3. Create snapshots. Phrases like “family owned and operated” or “dedicated to giving back to the community” will help clients connect with your humanity and commitment.

4. Simplify sentences.  Make your thoughts easy to digest by using words that readers recognize, like “giant,” rather than chasing them to a dictionary to define “behemoth.”

5. Refine drafts. Simplify and polish every word to help the essence of your company, identity and message rise to the top.

If everyone who needed your help knew that you understood their pain immediately and deeply and could help, wouldn’t they be running after you and not the other way around? If your ‘marketing message’ could sing like that, wouldn’t you be singing a different tune?
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