Goals are dreams with deadlines."-Diana Scharf Hunt When clients come to me for marketing help, the first thing I ask is, "What's yourplan?" If I'm greeted with a blank stare, then I know we have work to do! In order to set up a great marketing strategy, you need to write it out in black andwhite. I highly recommend a 12-month plan, which you can set up in your favoritespreadsheet program. Using a computer will allow you to easily move tasks aroundas the months progress, and add new ones as yo More..

30-Minute Marketing

Marketing your small business takes tons of time, years of experience, and lots of money, right? WRONG! Anyone can learn effective marketing techniques that are simple, inexpensive, and best of all, quick! This summer, get in the habit of regularly marketing your biz! The following are some marketing techniques that you can accomplish in 30 minutes or less. Pick a few that appeal to your style. Then, write down each one on your calendar on a specific day you so you WILL accomplish this task. More..

Read more About The Power Of A Story

Is It Time To Revisit Your Marketing Strategy?

Small & Mid Sized Business owners, have you revisited your marketing strategy lately? Your Marketing ROI? Some of you have spent this past year just trying to get by-maintaining the web site, sending out occasional press releases, attending various networking events. Yes, you've endured our slow-to-grow economy, but how far have you deviated from your marketing strategy in order to survive? And to correct your approach, what new marketing programs should you add and what should you do first? Si More..

Direct Mail Marketing Generates Sales Leads: Heres How

1. Personal Unlike an advertisement in a trade publication, which can be read by anyone, your sales letter arrives at your prospect's place of business as a piece of personal communication from your mind to his. Also, unlike any other medium, direct mail can be personalized (Dear Mr. Smith) and customized to each reader ("As an IT manager, you know that . . ."), showing your prospect that you know about him by name and understand his business in particular. 2. Cost effective Advertising by its More..

Direct Mail Response Devices and How to Craft Them

Successful direct mail packages contain three things: an attractive offer, a call to action, and a response device. The offer is the Incentive. The call to action is the Imperative. And the response device is the Instrument. The most well-known reply device is the business reply card. But today it could also be a landing page on a website. To make sure your mailing generates the kind of response you want-and the kind of sales you want-you must have a reply device that is clear, complete, compel More..

Business to Business Direct Mail Sales Letters Need an Offer (and Heres Why)

In direct mail, the offer is the incentive or reward that you dangle in front of your prospects to motivate them to respond to your mailing. In business-to-consumer direct mail, for example, a magazine publisher will offer a yearly subscription to its magazine at 60% off the newsstand price. The discount is the offer. It motivates prospects to subscribe now and save 60%. Offers are vital to the success of your business-to-business (B2B) direct mail campaigns as well. You need to motivate action More..

Direct Mail Sales Letter Mistakes to Avoid

Some companies that use direct mail to sell their products and services are like the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn't there. They repeat the same mistakes, and enjoy the same poor results. Here are their eight most common misdemeanors, and a cure for each. 1. Wrong list The most important part of any direct mail campaign is not the copy. It's not the art direction. And it's not the offer. It's the mailing list. That's why you can mail identical packages to two li More..

Qualify Prospects Using Direct Mail Marketing

When a prospect responds to your lead generation sales letter, how do you know if the prospect is a qualified lead or not? By qualifying them before they respond. At my direct mail lead generation firm, our definition of a qualified lead is someone who meets four criteria: Authority: They have the authority to buy Readiness: They are ready to buy now Budget: They have the budget to buy Need: They need your product or service Anyone who meets some of these criteria but not all is simply a lead More..

Nurture Sales Leads with Direct Mail Marketing

Direct mail is a cost-effective way to make sales and generate leads. But it's also an excellent way to keep your brand name in front of customers, and to nurture leads until they become customers. At my direct mail lead generation firm, our definition of a qualified lead is someone who meets four criteria: Authority: They have the authority to buy Readiness: They are ready to buy now Budget: They have the budget to buy Need: They need your product or service Anyone who meets some of these cr More..

Brochures that Generate Sales Leads (and How to Write Them)

One rule in direct mail is that your letter sells your offer and your brochure sells what you're selling. For example, let's say you mail a classic direct mail package to generate sales leads for your enterprise software product. Your classic package will consist of a #10 mailing envelope, a sales letter, a brochure (perhaps an 8 1/2Ãƒâ€”11 sheet folded twice), a reply device and a #9 return envelope. In this package, your letter sells your offer (which might be anything from a white paper to a More..

Business to Business Direct Mail Offers that Say Free

In direct mail, the offer is the incentive or reward that you dangle in front of your prospects to motivate them to respond to your mailing, either with an order or with a request for more information. Offers follow a "you do this and we'll do that" format. For example: "Place your order before June 3 and we'll reduce your price by 40%" or "Phone now and we'll send you a free demo CD." Here are some examples of offers that businesses use to sell their products and services to other businesses More..

Direct Mail Offers: Eight Steps to Making them Effective

Every direct mail package you drop in the mail should contain an offer. The offer is the incentive or reward that motivates prospects to respond to your mailing, either with an order or with a request for more information. "Subscribe to Hook, Line and Sinker today and save 45% off the newsstand price" is an example of an offer. To be effective, your offers must pass eight tests. Test 1. Is your offer specific? "Visit our website for more information" is not an offer. Your offer must be specific More..

Using Business Cards as Invitations

Business card size works wellfor invitations to special events. What do you visualize when you think about invitations? More than likely you are thinking about a wedding or a party. You may even think about a verbal invitation that is extended to you for a business event. Invitations come in all sizes and shapes and for almost every event. So how can you get your invitation to your business event noticed? Here are three easy steps that may help increase the attendance at your events. First, ne More..

FREE Means MORE Business

Why give freebies? We have all seen freebies at trade shows and we have all probably seen the person that goes from booth to booth collecting as much of it as possible. There is always someone that only goes to get the free stuff, but then again there are also people that go there to learn about new products or services. These people may be genuinely interested in what you have to say. Even if they are, there must be an element of what is in it for them (we call them WIFM - pronounced Whiffem - More..

Business Cards that Make Them CALL

How would you usebusiness cards for gift certificates? I asked at the beginning of this chapter "How many business cards do you need?" and answered that you only need one. Even though this is true when you are trying to form business relationships, it is not true when it comes to promoting your business. Promotion can come in many forms, but using business cards to represent a gift certificate will make it easier for your potential customer not to lose it. You can issue gift certificates for a More..

Do You Know Where Your Email Address is Today?

Having people go to your website is not always easy:remind them with a special business card. Whether you understand it nor not, the web is likely here to stay; those businesses that do not yet have a web presence, or at least email addresses, are likely to get left in the dust. All of your correspondence and especially your business card should contain some reference to your website. If you have gained their interest, people want to know more about what you do. What better way to tell them abo More..

Doing it with Class!

Doctors do it, hair dressers do it,and salespeople can do it too. I have been working with a chiropractor for a few months and when it came time to give me a new appointment, she would use a quarter sheet of paper to check off the appointment time. Inevitably the paper would get lost and not be found when I got home. I suggested to her that she use her business card for a reminder. The patient could write the time and date on the card and then tuck it into their wallet. This method worked so we More..

Read more About Design, Design, Design

Who is Your Perfect Client

When I started my coaching practice I believed that I could coach anyone. My marketing wasn't targeted. Taking a few clients that were "wrong" for me cured me of that. I began to define my "perfect client" and then started to notice flags that told me that someone didn't fit my definition. Have you ever had a premonition that someone wouldn't be a good client for you? Today the person I hired to paint my house dropped by to pick up his check. He asked me about a neighbor to whom he had given a More..

How Important is Your Marketing?

Bob called last week from Phoenix, Arizona with some stunning news about his web site. He first contacted me in the fall of 2003. He had a web site that was helping him generate a healthy income but he sensed he could be doing even better. He wanted to get more visitors to his web site and get more of them to contact him about his retail liquidation services. Are you interested in getting more prospects to your web site and prompting more of them to contact you? Over the two months I worked wi More..

How to Give Your Biz a Boost with a Summer Marketing Makeover

Are you on track for hitting all your business goals for the year? A quick check-up of your promotional efforts can reveal "week spots" and help identify what needs tweaking to give your business a healthy boost in the next few months.Here are five key areas to focus on with your mid-year marketing makeover. 1. Clarify Your Objectives (some prefer to call it goals) Are you clear on where want to end up? If you are thinking this has nothing to do with marketing - think again! You cannot design More..

8 Secrets to Marketing Success

The profits of a business are totally dependent onmarketing. Otherwise few, if any, sales will be generated. But what is marketing anyway? Marketing is doing what it takes to convince enoughcustomers to pay the necessary price for your productsand/or services to produce the desired profits for thebusiness. Let's discuss the 8 Secrets business owners can use togreatly improve their marketing success. Secret #1: Give marketing top priority. The primary reasonany customer chooses to buy your pro More..

How to Turn More Referrals Into Paying Clients

60% of all small business owners, sales and solo-professionals claim that more than half of their new business comes from referrals. Yet when asked about the process they so successfully use to get those referrals and turn them into paying clients, most will have a puzzled, deer-in-the-headlights, stupefied look on their face, and keep quiet.Only a handful of professionals can clearly articulate where their referrals consistently come from and how they turn them into a new business. Those that More..

Are Corporate Awards and Corporate Gifts Beneficial for Your Business?

With the increased challenges that all companies are faced with, many corporations have implemented various initiatives to continue to grow corporate earnings and shareholder value, some have discovered the strategic value of corporate awards and corporate gifts. From the boardroom to the frontlines to the client across the country, corporate awards and gifts offer many benefits to enhance performance. Not only are you showing your appreciation to the employee or customer, you setting a standard More..

How to Put the Profit Producing Power of Couponing to Work for You

Coupons have proven themselves to be highly effective sales tools for every conceivable size and type of business. Because coupons "pull in the business" they have gained remarkable acceptance and popularity among astute marketing managers. A simple explanation for their acceptance by advertisers is their overwhelming acceptance and use by the consuming public. In fact, Advertising Age (the Bible of the advertising industry) reports that 87% of all shoppers use coupons. Another independent mar More..

How To Sell To Howard Stern... Oprah Winfrey... And Paul McCartney!

Do you know what Howard Stern... Oprah Winfrey... and Paul McCartney all have in common? Well, the simple truth is... they're all... "Baby Boomers"! The "Baby Boomer" generation accounts for all of us born between January 1, 1946 and December 31, 1963. Here's a few interesting facts about the baby boomers in general: First, they control 70% of the entire net worth of the United States!Second... they represent 27.5% of the population according to the last census, taken in 2000.And third... on More..

John Kerry, Amazing Direct-Marketer!

If you want to uncover a little secret about how John Kerry and the Democratic party is "building their e-mail list", with literally thousands of qualified leads... then listen closely! I know nothing about John Kerry, and I know even less about his running mate, John Edwards. But, I do know this: They've got one heck of a smart marketing team on their side! Check this out: Before John Kerry revealed who his running mate was going to be, he announced on his web site, if you "signed up" to be More..

Value Proposition is the Key to Success

Value proposition is treated as the standards or service that the organization is planning to offer or deliver to targeted group of customers with the help of some effective strategic planning. In today's multifaceted technologically driven and extreme competitive business atmosphere, the ability to successfully run your business and to have precise and timely insight into the business performance through value proposition, is the key to success. If the value proposition is clearly characteriz More..

Postcard Direct Mail Marketing Works (Its Cheap, Quick, Affordable and More)

Used the right way and with the right audience, postcards often outperform their mailbox "competitors" in money saved and revenue generated (the competitors are sales letters, self-mailers, unaddressed flyers, dimensional mailers and catalogs). Here's why postcards are so effective. QUICK Postcards are quick to produce. You have only two sides to write on, two sides to design. And part of one side is taken up with the address and postal indicia. They are also quick to print and mail. AFFORDABL More..

Hermey Wants To Be A Dentist

December marked the 40th anniversary of the original broadcast of the classic "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer"Ã‚Â©, network television's longest-running, highest-rated holiday special. From my earliest childhood memories, watching Rudolph has been a tradition, one that continues today with my own family. While Rudolph never crosses my mind during the year, a few days before and after the broadcast I'm always saying some of the classic lines to our kids: "His beak is blinkin' like a blinkin' bea More..

Communication Breakdown - Dont Let It Happen To You

Do you have Communication breakdown? How are you communicating with your contacts? We need: Contacts we can send emails to regarding our business opportunities. Contacts we can build up a good working relationship with, similar interests as far as business opportunities go. Contacts we can share how we are going with our business opportunities. Contacts we can trust to be honest with us about what, how, when and why, as we operate our business and opportunities. Contacts we can become fri More..

Timing and the Right Product Will Make Your Dreams Come True

Are you looking to erase your debt, buy that new luxury vehicle, or impress that special person? You can, if the timing is right and you market a product everyone needs! Here's a blueprint that outlines the 6 steps to start earning big money today. Step #1: Find a product everyone needs. I've found the product everyone needs and the timing is perfect. Step #2: Market it on-line. In order to reach millions, the Internet is the only way to go. Step #3: Affiliate. Turn your computer into a cas More..

Marketing Manual Sample Outline

The key to success in any business relies a large part in your ability to market your product or service. Often MBA students spend years studying marketing as it encompasses and relates to nearly all business operations. If you own a small business you know the value of marketing, even if you do not have an MBA or a specialized MBA in Marketing. One thing I found helpful in our company was to thoroughly outline what steps we would take to market our products and services. Our company is a franc More..

Free Publicity for Restaurants

One of the best ways to get a restaurant free publicity is by taking advantage of events and seizing the opportunity. For example, February 5th is Television Weather Persons' Day! Bet you didn't even know such a day existed, but it does, and it can give you free publicity. How? Weather people are the forgotten people at television stations. Deliver one of your specialties at the station. There's a good chance the weather person will be so delighted with the attention, he or she will mention you More..

Effective Use of Promotional Products and Ad Specialties

1. Determine the goals of your promotional products program. Do you want to create awareness? To attract new customers? To reward or provide incentives to existing customers? Remember to determine a means for measuring the results. 2. Plan ahead. At minimum, you'll need two to four weeks for production and delivery of standard products. If you wait until the last minute, your choices will be limited and you may pay more. When creating custom items, it can take 12 weeks or more shipping from ove More..

Top Ten Blunders Exhibitors Make in Expos/Tradeshows

Triple your response from expos by avoiding the top ten blunders at expos.Turn disappointment into sales success! If you are like most exhibitors, you were disappointed from the results at your last expo. There is only one reason for dismal results from an expo and that is not knowing how to maximize the opportunities from an expo/tradeshow. Here are some amazing facts from expos/tradeshows: 1. Most attendees come to an expo because they are seriously researching the vendors and their product More..

Your Plan For Marketing Success

The most important, yet overlooked aspect of marketing is an actual written marketing plan A business simply cannot succeed without marketing. Whether you are a one person business or have 50 employees, you simply must have a marketing plan to succeed. Just as a business plan is a blue print for the overall success of your business, your marketing plan is the blueprint for your marketing success. Marketing without having a clear and user-friendly marketing strategy is like stringing beads witho More..

Creative Emulation

In business we have a number of ways or tools that we use to stimulate improvement. Most of us could recite these in our sleep: ? Brainstorming ? Benchmarking ? Problem solving When these things fail, or we realize that perhaps there are better ways to do these approaches, we do the next likely thing and hire a consultant. (As a consultant, I am glad that people sometimes take this step). Each of these steps can be very valuable and powerful when done correctly. There are methods, approache More..

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