Want To Increase Sales? There’s almost limitless methods for doing so.

Be in front of your audience when they need you.

That’s it. That’s the key to increasing your sales. Think about it, when you’re at a restaurant, do you care with the bathroom is? Not til you need it, right? Or an ATM. You likely pass dozens of them every day and don’t notice them, right? But what happens when you’re out of cash? Every ATM comes into focus. What’s more, you might scurry to find one.

So many small business owners don’t consider this when they market their business. They work hard on their vision and business plan. Then they focus on their offer and how best to communicate that offer to a target market. Ideally, they’re wanting to position themselves as an expert in a select niche market.

But no one cares that you’re an expert until they need an expert. In other words, no one cares that you can solve a set a problems until they are faced with those set of problems. Then, they go out and look for a solution.

As a business owner, you want to find the most effective ways to get your business, your expertise, your solutions in front of people when they need it.

I know what you thinking…how do I know when people need what I have to offer?

The simple answer is, well, you don’t. But you can spend time identifying a clear niche in which to spend your marketing efforts (and budget). And you can use search engines, forums, social media (blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc) and your website to make yourself more visible to people as a whole. The more people know what you do, the more potential for your work to passed on to someone who needs it.

For instance, you can use SEO and SEM to target specific key phrases that people may be searching for when they’re looking to solve their problem. But be specific and highly targeted. If you train poodles, you likely aren’t going to get much return for optimizing your site for dog trainers. But if you optimize your site for poodle trainers in New England, now you have a specfic niche you’re targeting. And when people need their poodle trained, and live in New England, you’ll likely get found.

Same is true with social media. Use your blog and profiles on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, among others, to establish your expertise. Then openly share with people who you are, what you do and who you do it for. If they don’t need your services, they may know someone who does.

And there’s other approaches as well – forums, blog commenting, article submission, etc. The list goes on. Just remember that you want to present your expertise at the time when people most need it. If you allow that to be your guiding light, you won’t be marketing in the dark. And more people will buy – today, even.

Are you targeting your audience at the times they need you most? If so, how’s that working for you? And if not, why not? Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Troy Holden on Flickr)

Many small business owners focus on creating the best products and services based on their skills, knowledge and abilities. Then they go out and find people who need or want what they have to offer. Sometimes it works and you build a successful business around it.

But more often, especially, it seems, with small business owners in either service-based business or who are just starting out, it doesn’t work. They create services, for instance, that they would want or that they believe other people would need. They build some structure around their ideas, create a marketing message, build a website and off they go – feeling like they’re going to change the world.

Then reality sets in. Few people visit their website. Fewer, yet, contact them about their offerings. If they don’t get discouraged and give up, they often go looking for either a business coach, or take courses in marketing and copy writing. In turn they get sold the idea that if they were just clearer in their marketing message, people would flock to their business.

Now that’s true, to some degree. The the clearer your messaging and the better your copy writing, the better your overall marketing can be. So it’s not a poor plan to use a business coach (some consider me one, so I can’t knock it), or focus on your copy writing. But that doesn’t always relate to selling more of your services and making more money.

What’s missing is your audience.

Now when you take a good marketing or copy writing course you should get plenty about identifying the demographics and psychographics of your audience – and that’s good. You likely get as well a hefty dose of customer-focused writing – and that’s certainly helpful. It’s just both are premature.

The question so few small business owners ask themselves is – what do the people in my target audience know they need? Let me repeat that – what do they know they need? That’s the key to marketing – finding out what they know they need. Not just what they need, but what they know they need (I’m repeating this on purpose).

So is there any reason not to develop your services and products around what your audience knows they need?

How would meeting your audience where they are change your business?

Let’s talk about it!

(note: image from Sidereal on Flickr)

Think about it…you put up a few pages of text on a website and you have the potential for a business. People can view your site, read your copy and decide if they want to work with you. And blogs make it even more magical. You can easily write more content and your visitors can engage you and create conversation – increasing the possibilities that they might work with you.

Yet while the internet is magical, for many it provides false hope. So many business owners and service providers believe that simply having a website or blog alone will generate more clients. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Launching a blog or website – on its own – may not change your business at all.

This might seem odd to say, but it’s true. For your website to successfully promote your business, generate leads and help you get more clients, you need people to find it. You need people to use, to read the content and to engage you through it. Ultimately, you need people to visit your website that you have designed your services to help.

But before you roll your eyes with the usual, ‘of course,’ consider something – consider how! How will people find your website? More importantly, how will the ‘right’ people – the people you’re in business to serve – find your website? 

The simple answer is to reach beyond your website. What I mean is don’t rest on just having a website or publishing to a blog. Use them. Use them by thinking of website not as a destination that everyone should visit. Instead think of your website (and blog) as a hub for your business.

As a hub, you website should be thought of as a central part of your business marketing strategy. And just like the hub of a wheel needs spokes to work effectively, you need spokes off your business hub to make your website work effectively. The spokes? Your efforts. Your spokes are the things that you’re doing on the internet that lead back to your hub.

In other words, for your website hub, to be successful in promoting your business, you have to reach out beyond the hub with spokes out into the internet. And this can happen in any number of ways. You can utilize social media like Twitter or Facebook, publish articles to article banks like EzineArticles or interact with people in forums. Really, there are hundreds of ways to reach out beyond your website. I’m even doing a teleclass on the subject - 220 Ways to Reach Out With Your Website to Get More Traffic & Build Your Business.

What’s important, however, isn’t so much how you reach out beyond your website. What’s important is that you actually do it. In other words, for your website to produce more clients, you need to be doing things that engage people on the internet and bring them back to your hub. That’s what the spokes do – they lead back to the hub.

So what are the spokes to your business hub website? What are you doing each day to actively lead people back to your website?

Just as interesting, how are you using your website or blog as the hub for your business?

Let’s talk about it!

note: image from ***Karen on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Marketing your business is a really good idea, don’t get me wrong. However you choose to do it, marketing is a vital part of your business. As a matter of fact, marketing your services is something I teach my clients to do more effectively every day.

Yet I find that there’s a hole in the thinking that “all you need to do is effectively market your business.”

You also need to sell!

Now I know that for some marketing covers selling just as it covers distribution and delivery. Yet I so often see marketing gurus focusing all their time on the preliminary aspects of marketing – clarity of message, target audience, demographics, psychographics, methodology, etc. Seldom do I see marketing coaches get into the specifics of selling.

But more importantly, so seldom does the average business owner see selling as a part of marketing. More often than not, they believe that if they communicate their offer effectively that people will just buy their service. For instance, the majority of the service providers I’ve run into – either as prospects and clients or through a large network of friends, associates and partners I offer help or advice too – see the importance in communicating their offer. And they understand what systems they want in place once the prospects enters their funnel.

But what they seldom focus on is the conversion process – when the prospective client becomes an actual, paying client. That’s where selling comes in.

What many don’t consider is that while there’s a process for marketing, there’s also a process for converting; for selling. And while there’s numerous, effective processes and methods for both marketing and for sales, neither make a successful business on their own. It’s hard to sell your services if you don’t draw prospective clients in through your marketing. Just as you’re not guaranteed a large number of prospects converting to clients without clearly knowing how you sell to them.

To drive the point home consider if I told you, “An effective marketing campaign should lead to increased sales and more clients.” Without a hitch, you’d agree, right? I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it – the better your marketing the more you sell and the more clients you have.

Well, effective marketing is like having a bus drop off thirsty people in your driveway. They’ve searched, they’ve found you and they’ve journeyed to your home because they trust you can satisfy their thirst. But just because they’re standing in your driveway doesn’t mean they’ll get to drink. Some will, sure. But many will just stand there waiting for some guidance. Selling is guiding those thirsty people to the well in your backyard, hoisting the bucket from the well, pouring them a cup of fresh water and handing to them to drink.

In other words, selling is a process as well. It’s the process of guiding the people your marketing brings to your business into becoming clients. So how you sell your business, how you convert your prospects, is something you need to consider in order to get more client, increase your business and generate more money.

So, how does your marketing process differ from your sales process? Does it? And if you’re getting people to engage your business, how could you more effectively sell to them?

Let’s hear your thoughts!

(note: image from Ward_ on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Now, three years later, she’s struggling to get enough clients. She seems to get just enough clients to keep afloat. However she’s not fully replaced what she made at her day job.

Yet, she’s self-employed. She runs her own business. Or does she?

That’s the question I asked Susan when she called me last week. She told me she wasn’t getting any new clients and that her leads have pretty much dried up. She’s committed to her business, but not sure how much longer she can run in the red since she’s financing her business with her credit cards.

I asked Susan, “So, if you had to think about it this way – are you employed or unemployed? In other words, are you working or not?”

At first she insisted that she was employed – self-employed at that. She has some clients. She just doesn’t have enough and she doesn’t know what to do.

So when I asked her why she wasn’t getting more leads she gave me the same tired answer that the media is banging away on – it must be the economy. She felt that “the economy was keeping people from contacting her and taking her programs.”

Of course the economy is adjusting itself from the overblown, over indulgent corporate abuses. That’s why we keep hearing about layoffs and buyouts. But in truth the economy isn’t affecting us small business owners too much, really. But that’s another story.

So I asked Susan to consider, just for a moment, what she might be doing differently if she was unemployed rather than self employed. Without even a breath she said, “Well, I’d be out there looking for a job.”

EXACTLY!

Getting out there to look for a job is exactly what she – or any of us – would do. We’d be reading ads, searching the web, making calls, scheduling meetings and following up appointments. But wait a minute…isn’t that what we would be doing with our business as well?

Another way to put it – isn’t that the same process we would go through in marketing out business? We’d promote our offer, generate new leads, schedule appointments, and followup with prospects. In other words – we’d be actively engaged in marketing and selling our products and services.

In short order, Susan got it. She remembers the days of looking for work. And she could see, almost immediately, that in having a business she always had to be looking for work. She always had to be generating new leads and working those leads into hiring her.

And that’s the truth with running a small business – you’re always looking for work. Remember, you’re only self-employed if you’re actually employed by your business.

Did you ever think the secret to succeeding in your business would be act as though your unemployed?

If so, what tactics are you finding the most successful in finding more clients? And if not, how do you think your business could improve – even grow – if you treated yourself as being unemployed?

(note: image from nogger on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Yet if you run a small, independent business, the economy has far less impact on your business than you think. So you’re likely not facing the doomsday that’s being talked about with every newscast and editorial.

Unless you believe you are. But remember, as a service provider, you have much more opportunity in these times than corporations do.

You see, all this talk about financial meltdowns, depressions, and layoffs are mostly affecting corporations – at least at this point. Sure, job losses and home foreclosures are bad things. I, for one, don’t want to see my friends and their families suffer. But there are millions of us out out here who aren’t working for corporations. And most of us aren’t serving corporations either. Our clients are other small business owners, other service providers and the like.

What this means is that you’re much less affected by what you’re hearing about on the news than the guy working for Ford or GM. As an independent business owner, your job is secure if you make it that way. Even if you’re, say, a corporate coach who’s working with large companies, you can still have a great deal of control over how successful your business is – and especially in troubled economic times like these.

The key is to first not get scared. Turn off the TV, stop listening to analysis on the radio and just pass by those articles in the newspaper. In other words – stop buying into all the titillating stories about how we’re heading for a depression worse than the 30’s. We may be – and I’m not saying don’t pay attention to what’s happening. Just stop listening to all the scare tactics that keep you from focusing on the growth of your business.

Everyone with half a business sense knows that it’s during an economic downturn that you have great potential to increase revenue and grow your business. But you have to have a strategy for doing so. And the strategy often means looking at your business, your customers and clients and your revenue model with fresh eyes. See the changing market for its benefits. For instance, there’s less money being loaned right now by banks – so don’t rely on borrowed money. And remember that a good portion of your competition does. Tighten your own belt a bit to stay out of debt – but don’t tighten your spending to the point of loosing business.

I ranting now, I know. But the thing to realize is that during a repressed economy like the one we’re facing now there are tons of opportunities – if you choose to see them. Be bold in looking for them. Be bold in taking them on. And be bold in knowing that you have a chance to grow your business while many others are shrinking.

Just be smart. This is not a time to overextend your business. And it’s not a time to take risks that bet the farm like you may have in the past when a loan could bail you out. Be smart – meaning evaluate everything you’re doing in your business. Look for places your can be more productive and more efficient. Look at your costs and make sure you’re getting a return on what you’re spending.

And more than anything, evaluate your market. Not only yours, but others as well. Begin thinking of your business from the point of view of your audience. What are they likely dealing with in these times? How can your business help them get through? Look for opportunities inside the problems people are facing. And attach your business solutions to those problems. Then get out there and let people know that you can help them solve the problems they face.

In other words…define and refine your niche market and how you’re positioned to the people in your niche market. Be bold, yet be smart. Find the new opportunities and be bold in claiming them. Yet be smart in how you go about it. Think it, plan it, do it and measure your results. Then do it again. And you’ll find your business growing – while others fade.

How are you dealing with this economic crisis? What will you do if it gets worse? Are you positioning your business to take advantage of the downturn? How?

Let’s talk about it…

And if you need help clarifying your niche, positioning yourself effectively, or figuring out how to grow your business right now, then you’re welcome to a free consultation with me where we can talk about how to solve the problems you’re facing in your business.

(note: image from fabiogis50 AWAY TILL 2/11 on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Let’s talk about it

I work with business owners all the time who aren’t sure about what they want, what they’re doing or where they’re going. Nothing wrong with that at all. After all, unless your expertise is in small business development or marketing, there’s little reason to think you’d have a solid understanding of how to structure and grow a business.

Yet one thing that thatseems to set successful small business owners apart from those who aren’t is their mindset.

Business is all about creating your space in the market place – in your niche market, that is – and working hard to inform people how what you sell can help them. The thing is, if you’re wishy-washy you’ll get wishy-washy responses. Just as if you’re pointed, certain and clear in what you offer your clients, your clients will often be clear and pointed in what they want from you.

That’s why being uncertain about how you’re positioned within your niche market leads to uncertain, and often lackluster, results. Little focus means little results. And what other positioning in your niche market is there than being considered the best in your market space? Do you hear any of your clients say, “I’m working with Dawud because he’s the 12th best business advisor in his field?” Of course not. People always want to feel they’re working with the best. And usually they are – the best for them.

So I’ve never understood having a business unless your intent was to be the best in a market space. And that means that you set out from the beginning to dominate the market. It doesn’t always mean you reach your goal, of course, of being the top-dog in a niche market. But that’s not the point.

The point is your mindset. Do you go after the people who can serve in your niche market or do you sit back and let them come to you? Do you work hard to develop relationships that help establish your expertise and grow your business or do you sort of stay within your comfortable group of peers who will never be clients? And do you set out to be the best in your highly specific, targeted niche market or do you reserve yourself to having a business that doesn’t create the lifestyle you want?

It’s all in the mindset. Set out to be seen as the best in your niche market and you will be – at least by those who you bring into your business. And that means you have to dominate your niche. How else can you grow and maintain a successful business?

As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” So what we believe is what we end up creating.

Love to hear your thoughts on how you’re dominating your niche market? Or are you at all trying to dominate your niche? And if not, why not?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Danius! on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

How do you define success in your business? It’s a question I ask every client – and most of the prospects I ever speak with.

The interesting thing for me is how often the people I speak with don’t have a specific answer. Sure, we can come up with just about anything on the fly. Yet it’s not difficult to tell the difference between established, well-thought-through business goals and those that we sort of find when we need to talk about such things.

Having a way to measure the success of your business, however, is one of the most vital parts of running a business.

It doesn’t matter whether your business is selling products, providing services or selling ad space on your blog – it does you good to have a clear idea of your goals. And, hence, a clear definition of what success looks like for your business.

All my clients use the web in some form these days. So often I hear success measured in visits to their website or page rank in Google. Sure, those are measurable results. But I, as a business advisor, would never consider those to be metrics used to define success of your business.

Let’s think about it for a minute…

You can have a page rank of 6 in Google and get 1000 unique visitors a day to your website or blog. That’s good, right? And most of us would be happy with numbers like this, right? Heck, the way Google’s playing around with page rank these days, I’d be happy to get back to a 6.

Yet, your page rank doesn’t equal income. Nor do any of those visitors guarantee a dime of revenue. Sure, if your website is selling ad space, you might get bits of cash for impressions. And you may be able to get a little higher ad rates with traffic and page rank higher. But you’re certainly not going to make a living on that alone.

And so these aren’t very solid metrics to use for defining your business success. Don’t believe me, ask around and see. Personally, I know more than a dozen bloggers who have highly successful blogs – more successful than mine in terms of traffic, page rank, back links and Technorati rating – who aren’t making enough money to cover their monthly expenses, let alone turn a profit. A couple are good friends that I’m trying to help out.

The point is you want to define the success of your business based on what you’ve set it up to do – make money. That doesn’t mean that you only measure by your bank statement at month’s end or by your bottom line accounts receivable versus accounts payable. There’s more to it than that.

For instance, take whatever you’re doing currently to market your business and track responses from your marketing efforts. Let’s say that one of your goals is to spend some time commenting in forums to drive targeted traffic back to your site that you can convert into leads. It’s a clear goal and something that can be easily measured using basic website statistics. Measuring your success might look something like this:

You posted 50 times in the forum last month. From those posts, you got 41 referring links from the forum to your website. From those visitors 11 commented on a blog post (leaving their email address with you), 6 subscribed to your newsletter and 1 contacted you directly with a question. You can then decide whether those 50 forum posts were worth the effort (I’d say yes, depending on what the commenters and newsletter subscribers do over the next few months).

You see, the idea here is that you set metrics that relate to your business goals. The month of forum posts may or may not directly result in revenue that month. But it’s not always about revenue. To make money you need leads and so the work you did in the forum could have been about generating leads – which you did. Now you just have to create the next metric for converting those leads into paying clients.

Measuring your success isn’t difficult. It just takes a little strategy, planning and forethought. And on the web, tracking results is incredibly easy. You just have to know what you’re tracking – and why. Then you can adjust your efforts for the next round of lead generating activities. That’s how successful business owners use the web.

How are you measuring your business success on the web? Are you at all? If not, why not? Would it change if you had someone to help you (I know someone, personally)?

All-in-all, how do you know if you’re successful with your marketing efforts?

(note: image from victor_nuno on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Things are so bad here in Michigan, the state with the worst economy in the nation, that General Motors is talking about buying Chrysler – the Big Three become the Big Two.

So are these such terrible time economically? For some, yes. For others, and I’m not talking about the extremely wealthy, no. But that’s not how it’s being talked about. If you just pay attention to all the Henny Pennys writing for newspapers, magazine and the web and listen to their banter on TV and radio, our economic sky is falling.

Now I’m not going to say that the U.S. economy is all good and well. Truthfully, it hasn’t been for at least two, maybe three or four, decades. At least since the early 70’s we’ve been loaning out our future and falsely inflating our economy. Just look at how housing prices and the cost of goods has risen since 1980. All this goes to say that we are, collectively, in an economic crisis here in the U.S.

But does that mean you are facing an economic crisis? Is your business suffering in the same way that Lehman Brothers or Washington Mutual Bank have? I don’t think so. These institutions are part of the reason the economy is where it is. You, on the other hand, are the reason there’s some soundness in the economy.

You see, small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy now. Can we compete with Walmart, Ford or Pepsi – no. But we don’t need to either.

I have a number of close friends that work for large corporations. Most of them are scared they’ll loose their job because of the economic conditions. But the other side of the coin is that I have a large number friends who are self-employed or own small businesses who are doing quite well – and plan to continue that way.

The difference? When you work for a large corporation you’re at the whim of Board and Shareholder decisions. These companies need to make huge sums of money to meet their massive expenses – including your salary and benefits. Ultimately, you have almost no control over any part of that how the company chooses to use it’s resources.

It’s in economic times like these that the small business owner and those who are self-employed have an advantage. The first advantage is that your revenue needs and the size of your expenses are much, much smaller than large corporations. Second, and perhaps most importantly, you have the flexibility to change strategies to fit the economic times. And third, you have direct control over the decisions and direction of your company.

Being self-employed or running a small business gives you advantages just not possible for larger corporations. Hence, if you’re smart, you can actually grow your business in times like these. Here’s a few suggestions on how:

• Redefine and refine your niche market
  Even in great economic times, refining your niche can be the key to a lackluster business and an explosive one. Get clear on what problems you really solve for people with your products and services and make sure you’re offering them to the people who KNOW they want them.
• Position yourself correctly
  Positioning is simple – what does your market believe you do. You can have the best products and services in the world and have a niche all to yourself. But if you can’t clearly communicate to that niche what you can actually do for them, in ways they understand and want, then you’ll likely find yourself struggling.
• Spend less money and more time on marketing
  If you need to cut back on expenses, consider reducing your ad dollars. But only do this if you have a plan to replace what you’re spending in dollars with what you’ll be spending in time. For instance, word-of-mouth marketing is far more powerful than any ad, and can cost very little. Start with your current and past customers.
• Look for opportunities
  There are opportunities for business all around you. By opening your mind – along with your eyes and ears – to new possibilities, you can reach into new markets or segments of your niche in ways that can make your more successful. Remember, being small, you can often turn on a dime.
• Ask for referrals
  I mentioned above that word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing you’ll ever use. So massage it along a bit by asking your most satisfied customer to refer you other people they know you can help. A good start is to ‘coach’ them a bit in how to share their story of working with you to the friends and colleagues they feel could benefit from working with you.
• Give something away for free
  I don’t mean give away your services, I mean create something of value – a report, a workbook, an audio series, etc – and pass it around. It’s a great way to find yourself in front of new people who your materials can help. And if you knock their socks off with what’s giving for free you’ll have them thinking, “If (s)he gives that much for free, what will I get when I’m paying them?”
• Get some help
  Sometimes the best money you’ll ever spend is contracting with someone who can help you make your business more solvent in times like these. Often a fresh perspective from someone who can help guide your ship can make all the difference between success and closing.

These are but a few ideas for growing your small business in tough economic times. Just remember, there are other folks out there that are doing just fine too. Some of them are looking for your solution to their problem. They just don’t know it yet. Help them learn it.

But please, don’t get lost in the media storm of fear. What they’re mostly talking about is corporations. Sure, it trickles down to all of us at some point. Yet it’s possible to come out ahead when times get tough. The biggest thing you need to do is tighten up the reigns a bit and focus on even greater clarity. And if you’re like most don’t expect to do it alone. Get help.

So tell me, how is the economy affecting your business? Is it hurting or helping – and why do you think it’s the case? More importantly, what do are you doing about it?

Let’s talk…

(note: image from brentbat on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Sure, it’s possible to create a viral marketing strategy. And it’s certainly possible to know what viral marketing is and, theoretically, how to use it.

But can you just simply create a viral response in some formulated or calculated way? Or is viral marketing something that happens as a result of a little solid word-of-mouth marketing and a little luck?

Well, according to Ze Frank, we don’t just go get ourselves a viral marketing experience. Rather it’s something that sort of organically happens based on, first, word-of-mouth marketing and then, second, by way of having chosen the right thing at the right time with the right audience. In other words, viral is not something we can just go get.

And if anyone would know, it would be Ze Frank. He distributed video that went massively viral – making him an overnight star on the web. Subsequently, he went on to create ‘The Show‘ where he used video to experiment with all types of ways to get a message out over the web.

Here, my friend and word-of-mouth marketing guru Andy Sernovitz interviews Ze Frank at a conference a couple of years ago. In this short, 3 minute video, you can get a glimpse into the ideas of someone who has been fortunate enough to have had a true viral marketing effect – over and over again. And if you want more, Ze Frank’s talk at TED, What’s so funny about the web, a few years ago is almost legendary.

from the video: Ze Frank: “…I would say viral is not (even) a tool. Viral just defines a particular way that traffic builds. And I think that if you do have something that goes viral it’s really great to understand that that’s happening and respond to it in a very, very particular way. But I really think looking at the growth as it happens is an important thing. “

Andy: “…so viral’s an adjective that describes what happens. It’s not a noun that you want to get you some of.”

Ze Frank: “Yeah, I want me a viral.”

I keep wondering if viral isn’t something that we see and measure while it’s happening and then evaluate and learn from when it’s passed rather than planning for and making happen. If so, would that make it more a result and less a strategy?

from the caption in the photo above:

24% of marketers have run a viral marketing campaign, but many struggle to get the expected buzz.

So what do you think? Is it possible to set out specifically to create a viral marketing effect or is it something that happens from luck?

And if you’ve ever had a viral push, how did it begin, how did it build and what was the result. More importantly, did it go the way you planned it?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Will Lion on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Unless…they need what you do. It’s inside their need that your audience may, possibly, perhaps, give some of their valuable time learning about what you do.

As a business owner and marketer, you’ve probably heard the adage that the customer is always asking, “What’s in it for me?” Many people focus on trying to understand how the customer will see this question in your products and services. And they’re right, of course.

Yet before you customer ever gets to that question, you first need to capture their attention. And there’s lots of ways, of course, to capture people’s attention. You can use glitz or shock or humor or any number of other techniques. And often you can get attention on what’s shocking, but you don’t get attention on what you’re selling.

To get attention on what you’re selling you have to solve a problem for your audience. You have to display, quickly, that you understand where your potential customer is at, what they’re facing and how their problem is affecting their life or their business. If they’re really ready to solve the problem – and if you’re communicating your understanding of their problem in way they can identify with – you can get them to look further in your message for the solution. And it’s the solution that they’re buying.

Yet most businesses don’t approach it this way. Google just about any search phrase you like. In the results click through to the businesses that come up.. Read their home page or sales page and see who they’re talking too. Are they reporting what they do or are they engaging their audience in their problem?

For those getting front page results in Google, it matters less. They’re going to get the traffic and convert sales anyhow just because they’re found. But for the rest of us who don’t have first page Google results, we need to compete by first showing our audience that we understand their problems. Only then will they ask – ‘what’s in it for me?’ and spend their time learning about our business.

Are you positioning your business as solving problems for your audience? Or do you try to sell to them by teaching them how well you can help them? Which ever you use, why have you chosen that approach?

And more importantly, what sort of response are you getting from your approach?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Sunspring on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Think about it for a second: you find something you do well and offer it to people who you believe need it. That’s it. That’s all you have to do to have a semi-successful business. Doesn’t matter whether you’re selling toothbrush holders or marketing advise. It basically comes down to what you do well and who needs it.

Most small businesses get this – at least partly. They almost always understand the ‘what’ part of the equation They know what they do. And they can go into great detail explaining it to you. But most forget the second part of the equation – the ‘who’ part.

Who is so important that I’ll go out on a limb and say that if you’re not focused, highly focused on who – that is who needs what you have – then you’re likely not very successful. Moreover, if you have been successful without focusing on who, then you’re lucky. And luck means one of two things – either your business will dry up or you’re only getting a tiny portion of what could be an enormous business. Either way, the solution is to focus on who – who does your business serve?

So let’s look at a couple of different approaches to how we might go about finding who:

1. You can ask a question like, “who is it that needs what you have to offer?” Ligitimate question, right? You sit down and consider where the people are who need what you have. You might ask friends or colleagues. You might even hire a marketing expert to help you ‘find them.’ You can take this approach and you can be fairly successful. Though I have to say there are more obstacles to finding out what your audience really needs. Not to mention the time you spend trying to find the people who need what you got, can be daunting.
2. Another option is you can ask people what they need. If you’re clear on what you can offer, then find out what people need. You do this by asking them directly. Find people who might be among your target audience and ask them a few questions about what they believe they need. On the web you can do this easily with a short survey. Drive people to the survey and capture the results. People will almost always tell you what they need. Then, adjust your offer so that you’re meeting them where their need is.

The second option is the one that saves time, effort and resources. It helps you position your business to create more sales faster and for a more sustainable time. Knowing what your audience actually wants creates a familiarity between you and your prospective customer by them feeling as though they’re needs are understood a bit by your business.

Marketing has always been about placing what you do in front of the person that needs it when they’re in a position to buy. You can give yourself a leg up on the process by finding out what people need – from their own mouths. Doing so, you remove a large portion of the guess work. And then, you can truly deliver the product or service that they know they need.

How have you learned what your audience wants? Have you asked them directly? If so, how has this changed your development process?

And if you’re not asking your audience directly for what they need, what’s one thing  you can do today to begin?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from anyjazz65 on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Walk through any supermarket here in the U.S and you’ll find tons of choices. Want a simple can of soup, you have to wade through 15 different brands of chicken noodle. Or toothpaste, or cereal, or ice cream. Heck, we even have to make a choice between ketchup brands.

Now choice may be good. I know I appreciate having a choice of certain things I need, use or enjoy. And I know I’d be upset if someone took away Breyer’s ice cream and made me buy from only one brand.

Yet, according to Barry Schwartz, choice is a paradox. While it’s great to have options, he’s observed that options often lead to bad decisions, dissatisfaction in what’s been chosen or a paralysis to taking action. As Barry observes:

“…maximizers want the best. The problem that needs to be solved is what’s the best jeans, the best restaurant, the best place to go on vacation, the best marital partner – everything. Yet that requires a search of all possibilities which is…impossible.”

“satisficers aren’t looking for the best, they’re looking for good enough and good enough can be very good, it doesn’t mean people have no standards. But it means they don’t feel the need to do an exhaustive search. They just keep looking until they find one thing that meets their criteria and then they choose it.”

Consider that’s been said here: that while choice may be a good thing, it’s not always the best thing. It’s being suggested that people are tired of so many choices and that it can even paralyze them from making decisions.

So think about it from the point of marketing your specific products and services to your specific target audience. When they visit your website, what do they see? What choices do they have to make? Are there too many? Could it be that in an effort to show people everything we do that we paralyze them from taking action on something they need?

Further, how could you offer your prospects fewer choices and still grow your business?

What are you thoughts? Let’s talk about it.

And if you have a story about being overwhelmed by choice, please toss it in the coversation.

(note: image from ::: Billie / PartsnPieces ::: on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Yet I’m always surprised how many small business owners miss this. Somewhere in all their efforts to develop their business plan and marketing strategy they seem to forget that it’s about the people.

Maybe it’s using terms like target audience or niche market that somehow dehumanizes their thoughts, I’m unsure. Or perhaps it’s the way we think about business in general as being a cold, cut-throat world where business owners are always trying to gain an upper hand on the competition. I know it’s hard to see people when we’re thinking like that.

Yet successful businesses have something in common – people; people buying their products and services. It’s people who make the decision to buy. It’s people who use what we sell. It’s people who give us valuable feedback on how to do it better. And we shouldn’t forget that it’s people who are our best marketers.

All of this being true, why are more business owners not putting the people they sell too first? Why are they not spending time getting to know what the people they can serve want? And perhaps more importantly, why don’t small business owners spend more time learning how to communicate with the people who make up their target market?

Is it fear? Or is it that we never learned solid people skills in the first place?

Or could it be that we enter into a mindset around business that tells us that we can’t be ourselves; that being human makes us unprofessional?

One thing’s for certainly, it’s healthy relationships that lead to healthy business. So why don’t more small businesses get it?

You can guess by all the questions that I’d love to hear what you have to say on this one. I have my own theories that I’ll bring out in the conversation in the comment box.

(note: image from RyanDianna on Flickr)

But did you know that word of mouth marketing can be illegal?

According to Andy Sernovitz there’s a new bill (pdf) being introduced in the U.K. which will make some marketing practices illegal. The bill is meant to stop false and misleading marketing practices. Of course, word of mouth marketing could easily fit into that category if marketers were deceptive about their campaigns.

So what makes word of mouth marketing illegal?

In Andy’s post he lists a few examples where the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has made this clear. And from what I read in the U.K.’s new bill (pdf), it seems to agree.

• Asking buzzers to recommend your product with disclosing that they are part of a campaign or are receiving an incentive.
• Falsely representing your employees as consumers.
• Asking buzzers to claim they like your product when they don’t or have never tried it.

Now I, personally, don’t know anyone who’s doing these things purposely to promote their business through word of mouth. Yet to me it seems like there might be a gray area here. Gray in the sense of what we, as business owners feel is deceptive versus what consumers would feel is deceptive.

Please hear me clearly, I’m not talking about lying to yourself so you can scam the public. I’m talking about places where we might not realize we’re bending the truth in order to gain an advantage. When we talk about blogging, one of the things that comes to mind where this could happen is with being paid for posts.

Think about it, if someone wants to pay you either to write a post on a topic or to review a product, couldn’t that skew your judgement a bit? I’d like to think it wouldn’t skew mine. Yet it’s because I know it’s possible that I post very few ads on my blog. And you’ve never seen a product review that I’ve been paid for. It’s likely you won’t – at least not on this site (though I have a secondary blog in development where you may see my wife and I do product reviews, etc).

Do I think that we shouldn’t be paid for our writing? Of course not. I just think it’s important to keep the blogging crede in the forefront of our minds whenever we are paid for writing posts or reviews – be authentic, be transparent.

In Andy’s post he lists a few points from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s Ethics Codes that can help us stay honest without ourselves and our consumers:

• Honesty of Relationship: You say who you’re speaking for
• Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe
• Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity

And if you have any questions about the ethics of a campaign you’re either wanting to begin or are being pitched, use the WOMMA’s 20 questions to identify any potential trouble spots.

So what are your thoughts? When do you feel word of mouth marketing crosses into the gray areas of deception?

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a deceptive campaign? What was that like?

(note: image from macmiester on Flickr)

John had worked at some sort of job since he was nine. He had a paper route, then three. When he was eleven he started mowing lawns for neighbors. That quickly grew to raking leaves and shoveling snow.

John never much liked school and so as many of his friends went off to college after graduation, John landed a job with Ford assembling dashboard parts on the assembly line. Good work – and great pay – for a eighteen year-old.

Now, at thirty-four John found himself out of work. John hadn’t married yet – though he was dating the woman who would become his wife. And living a simple life in a modest house he managed to sock away a nice little nest egg.

It wasn’t money that drew John to look for work a few weeks after being laid off. He just wanted to be doing something.

He started by dropping fliers in his neighbor’s mailbox offering handyman services, lawn maintenance and landscaping. Here and there the phone would ring and he’d get odd jobs doing work for people. And soon he was back mowing lawns every week. Since most of his neighbors had mowers, he often used theirs – saving himself the trip with his own.

John took great pride in mowing lawns – as he learned to when he was a young boy. His lines were symetrical and straight as an arrow. He could even manuver around trees in a way that didn’t curve the cut lines the mower left on the lawn – something he’d worked out the summer he was fourteen.

And when John was finished with the mower, he cleaned thoroughly, filled the gas tank, checked the oil and put it back neatly in his neighbor’s garage. Then he’d leave a little note of some sort, thanking his neighbors for giving him something to do while he was laid off and letting them know that he’d only be available until the plant called him back.

Every week the phone would ring and someone new would ask John to mow their lawn. A the next week another; some weeks two or three people would call. Each one John would manicure their lawn as he cut it, clean the mower, place it back and leave a small note of thanks.

This went on for a few months until John realized that he was back running a lawn service business just as he was when he was a boy. In three months he had gone from cutting his neighbor’s lawn to cutting the lawns of 28 people a week. And at $20 a lawn, he was making a nice bit of change. He wondered how he’d done so well with no effort at all.

It was mild Sunday afternoon and John was sanding the deck off the back of his house when he heard two of his neighbors taking. As he went over to say hi he heard them mention his name and his lawn mowing. He paused for a moment wondering if he’d done something wrong. Quite the contrary.

You see, John gave meaning to mowing a lawn. He cared about how the lawn looked more than how quickly he could get it done. He took such care as to clean, fuel and replace the mower. And they talked about those little notes he left.

John paused and thought. Every lawn he was mowing was because one neighbor talked with another. He’d done nothing to get 28 lawns except put his caring and pride in his work. He wondered what could happen if he started a professional lawn service with the same intentions.

John was never called back to Ford. But today he runs a lawn service. He works from April to November and then takes most of the winter off to spend with his wife and their newborn son. Everyone who works for him is asked to take pride in their work. John’s taught them how to mow straight lines and how to make that special curve around a tree. And when every job is completed, a small note is left that meaningfully thanks the customer for their business.

Last year, John had a waiting list – both for crew members and for customers. He’s thinking about expanding this year. Funny thing is, he still doesn’t market himself. He doesn’t even have a website I can link you too. All his business has been through word-of-mouth.

John’s care for his customers brought meaning to something as simple and mundane as mowing a lawn. In the meaning came the way for John to make money. The beautiful thing is that he focuses on making meaning and lets the money follow. Great lesson for any of us buiness owners.

Make meaning with your business and the money will follow.

Are you making meaning with your business? I’d love to know how.

And if don’t feel like you are, what’s one thing you can do to add meaning to the work you do?

(note: image from Sarcas on Flickr)

Neither had I. But since hearing Seth Godin speak about his book, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches you When to Quit (and When to Stick), last year it’s constantly been on my mind.

In The Dip, Seth suggests that all successful people know one thing before they become successful – they know when to quit. They know when to recognize when what they’re doing isn’t going to generate success. So what do successful people do? They quit. They quit doing what’s not leading them toward success so they can put their efforts into things that can lead to success.

As with Seth’s usual approach, he uses The Dip to talk about how to become the best in the world. This seems to be his new way of saying do something remarkable. But the core message is the same – be great to those who think you’re great. In other words – find your niche and become known as being great to those who you interact and work with.

So how do you know if you’re doing something you should quit? Well, according to Seth you need to know when your business is in The Dip – “the long slog between starting and mastery.” It’s in The Dip that you decide whether it’s worth the effort and reward of climbing toward success or whether you should quit.

Now this doesn’t mean that if you’re a business coach you need to stop being a business coach. It could, but doesn’t need too. Rather, it means deciding if what you’re doing as a coach, your approach and your marketing, for instance, are going to be worth pushing hard through The Dip. If so, continue. But if not, consider quitting so you can take a different approach.

I’ve been working with this idea of quitting for the better part of a year. What I’ve seen in my own business is that I’m much more focused toward what will bring me greater success. Now, when I find myself in a dip whose slog isn’t worth the effort, I quit. Which means I quit a lot. And I’m more successful because of it.

I’m sure not everything you’re doing in your business is worth the slog. So have you ever considering quitting? Why or why not?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Gabba Gabba Hey on Flickr)

Doesn’t matter whether you sell products or pitch a service – you probably want more clients, customers, buyers, patrons, consumers, subscribers, users, etc. Doesn’t matter what you call them – you’d like more.

After all, doesn’t more subscribers equal more people to market too? More patrons mean increasing sales? And increased sales equals more revenue. Isn’t that how it works?

Most of us know that. Yet many business owners set their focus too strongly on increasing revenue. They spend their time, their energy and their resources focused on making more money. And so they become like a hamster running around the wheel of trying to increase their profits – often, getting nowhere.

But what if you took some of that time to build relationships with your clients and customers? What if you took some time to build relationships with some of your leads? Better yet, what if you spent some time and resources to build relationships with other business owners? Businesses that compliment yours in one way or another. Or grew relationships with other business owners you have other interests in common with? What could happen?

What could happen is that you find yourself with more work than you can imagine.

As I’ve said now for years – people do business with people, not businesses. So business, ultimately, is about relationships. So when you focus on the relationships in and around your business, you’re paying into the greatest resource you have at your disposal – people.

It’s people who…

• …are your clients, customers and patrons
• …are your leads and prospects
• …are paying for your products and services
• …you’re in business to serve
• …tell their friends about you
• …become return customers
• …refer you business
• …use and evaluate your products and services
• …write reviews of your products and services
• …want to partner with you on future projects
• …whose problems your business can solve
• …read and comment on your blog
• …recommend your site on Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and other social link sites
• …who want to connect with you on Facebook, MyBlogLog and LinkedIn
• …who become your affiliates
• …your business needs
• and finally, it’s people who need what you offer.

So your business is about people. You need people to run your business. And you need people to increase your revenue. So why not focus on creating relationships with people?

How are you focusing on relationships in your business? How has it changed your business?

And what’s one thing you’ve wanted to create to build relationships in your business that you haven’t gotten too yet?

(note: image from edyperesfoto on Flickr)

There’s lots of definitions of positioning because the term is often used along side branding. The definition that I gravitate to is:

Positioning is the space that you wish to occupy in your target audience’s mind, relative to your competitors.

In this short video, Guy Kawasaki talks about positioning and finding your niche. The key, as he suggests is know thyself and know thy niche.

So the key is to clearly identify how you position yourself in your niche. In other words, how do people perceive your products and services.

So, how strong is your position? And how unique is your business? Let’s chat about it.

What’s difficult is getting really clear about who you are, what you do and who you do it for. The problem is, there are tons of approaches for doing this which sometimes leads to confusion. Do I need to write a business plan? What about vision? Etc. The questions are many, but the answer are endless.

Of course, once you’ve answered the questions about your business, you have to ask a whole other series of questions around marketing. What system? What mediums? How best to reach our target audience? Etc. This can lead to even greater confusion, frustration and waste of time and money than the business development quesitons.

This whole process can be really big. That’s why I’m always looking for ways to simplify it. Because, really, developing and growing a business isn’t as hard as we make it. Basically, we need to create a compelling service – one that solves a problem that people need solved. Then, we put our service in front of the people who have the problem. That’s really it.

So it’s really very simple – especially with the internet.

That’s why I was excited when I found Matt Cutts‘ 3-step process to building up a really good site (read: business). Take a watch:

Matt Cutt’s 3-Step Process

1. Create a compelling service – spend the time to create something people can love.
2. Start a blog – get links and engage in conversation.
3. Smart marketing – SEO and have something interesting to say.

Pretty simple, right?

So if I was taking Matt’s 3 steps and putting them in my language, I’d say:

1. Create a service, you love, that solves a problem that needs solving. What are you good at? What do you love? What is the need? Bring these three questions together and you’re on your way.
2. Start a blog – and learn how to use it. First write, and write often. Join in the conversation on other blogs immediately. Learn about linking and link often. And really learn how to use one of the social networking sites. You can get to the others later.
3. Get the word out and be authentic – Matt says if you use WordPress, much of your SEO is handled for you already. I’d say 80%. The other 20% is in the details. So worry less about SEO in the beginning and more about the quality of your content. And have something interesting to say – but say it in your way. Be a real person because it’s people that people want to do business with.

So if it’s this easy, why don’t more of us do it? What gets in the way? And why do we make it so difficult?

What do you think?

(note: image, Joe Walking Up The Steps from hip.kids on Flickr)