Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for the ‘Small Business Marketing’ Category

Picture this image of two boys playing in a garden, trying to catch some birds.

One of the boys rushes around frantically with a net trying to catch the birds. Every time he gets close, the birds fly away. There’s lots of squawking, and feathers flying. The other boy stands quietly, holding out some birdseed.

One boy is trying very hard, and is probably exhausted, while the other hardly seems to be working at all.

Which one will get the results he’s looking for?

Instinctively you know it’s the boy with the birdseed who will be more effective, and a lot less sweaty.

When it comes to marketing and trying to attract clients, you want to act more like that second boy. Unfortunately, though, most people tend to act more like the first.

A lot of the things you might be doing, that are considered to be traditional marketing techniques, might actually be counterproductive. You could well be chasing people away.

Effective marketing techniques used on the wrong market will only provoke resistance, and build defensiveness. You could be running after people, figuratively speaking, with barrages of email, rounds of cold calls and direct mailings, and quite possibly be achieving the exact opposite of what you want.

For example, no matter how effective cold-calling may be for me or someone else, if you detest doing it, your negativity will prevent it from being effective for you.

Even if you are using marketing techniques that are proven to attract clients, if you do them with the negative energy of chasing – if you give off the sense that you are giving simply in order to get – you will end up like the boy who is chasing the birds. Tired and without any bird in the hand.

You want to break down the barriers between you and your prospective clients, not create more of them.

Make sure that the things you are doing marketing-wise, both online and offline, will attract clients to your business. Doing what everyone says is the right thing, but doing it with the wrong energy, won’t produce results.  Do the things that feel right to you. That will bring the positive energy into your marketing, and your clients will feel it.

You’ll know when you’re being a client magnet because it will feel easy. It should feel enjoyable, and you will have an abundance of clients.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Individuals look at products all day – on television, in newspapers, and in magazines – but unless you can find a way to make your product or your service appeal to the needs of those viewers, your efforts will score little more than halfhearted viewership.

I’m often approached by business owners wondering how they can make their businesses visible to as many people as possible. My immediate response is always, “Have you first thought about what your audience wants?”

You cannot convince prospects to want what you have to offer simply by being visible. You must quench a thirst. You must satisfy a need.

Here’s an example that I often use to illustrate this point:

A dog food conglomerate recently found itself, despite being a leader in the promotion category, losing market share. Puzzled by this turn of events, the company’s new chairman called a mandatory meeting of every salesperson, marketer, and researcher within the corporation. His face reddened, his fist pounded…someone needed to figure out where they were going wrong. Did more money need to be committed to promotion? Were they reaching the wrong audience with their marketing efforts?

The seasoned business men and women were unable to muster the courage that it took to voice the root of the problem. But one young tenderfoot intern had the audacity to announce, “Mr. Chairman, the dogs don’t like the food.”

The dog food company’s audience was hungry for a better tasting food, not a new promotion approach. No number of banner ads, coupon offers, or endearing commercials would resurrect what had been lost to taste. This mistake bore the sole responsibility for the market share loss. More PR, advertising, promoting, and marketing would prove to be bottomless money pits for the already declining dog food shares.

If you find yourself in a situation such as this, or if you simply want to avoid falling into a similar situation, consider the following:

Get to know your end user. Do the grunt work and the research that it takes to really get to know your consumer. When you know that person, you can better solve his or her problems.

Promotion is important, but try not to be sidetracked with becoming visibly dominant too early in the game. You must have the goods to back up all of the hype. You must be able to deliver on promises, or customers will not return.

Remind your consumer about their problem, and how you are going to solve it.

You can’t market the unmarketable. Ignoring substandard products or services that don’t solve a real, modern-day problem can never end well. It can be difficult, but often, business owners need to back up and reroute from their original product vision.

Find the value in what you’re offering. If the biggest selling point doesn’t appeal to your ideal customer, then nip and tuck that product or service until it satisfies a wish, a want, or even better yet, a necessity.

When you’re honest about your product, like the young dog food business intern, you tackle the root of a problem that has the potential to rear up and cause havoc in your business.

Promotion is tedious. It not only takes large amounts of your time, but it can seem like an Olympic-level sport. It’s expensive; and if it’s embarked upon too soon, it can seem fruitless, leaving business owners exhausted and disheartened.

I’ll always believe that your product is ultimately your biggest selling point…not brightly colored ads or once-in-a-lifetime deals. It can take a while to learn this. Even some of the most successful business owners had to learn the hard way.

I don’t want to see misplaced promotion negatively affect your bottom line or your energy level. Find a need. Quench a thirst. And do it all with your product – not empty claims. This is literally your first step to success.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

In your quest for a million dollars, would you rather get:

A) get $10 from 100,000 clients,

B) $100,000 from 10 clients, or

C) $1,000,000 from 1 client?

If you’ve chosen option C, one single transaction, congratulations for having great business sense. But for the sake of practicality, let’s use the first two choices for a model of quantity versus quality.

You know that no single person can provide a service that’s perfect for every potential customer. To further that sentiment, I’d like to suggest that no person can serve 100,000 customers as well as they can serve 10 customers.

It’s simple math that results in the same $1,000,000 answer for both options A and B, but you, the business owner, benefit most from choice B.

It’s no secret that valuable time is squandered when you have to exhaust yourself chasing a large number of clients. Wouldn’t it be magnificent to be able to sit, give your attention to a few clients, and make the same, or more, money?

Consider the chain of benefits: More focus on individual clients leads to better results for those few clients; those clients will offer better testimonials; and those satisfaction ratings will attract more high paying, high quality clients. This a circular effect of good business.

Of course, your next question is, “How?”

Scoring those lucrative client relationships starts where all good business does – in the early planning stages, even before lead generation.

Think big before you attract clients. You can’t skip this step, because if you do, you’ll end up attracting small-fry clients, and when you present them with the top-quality, top-priced program, you’ll fall flat.

Here’s an example to explain: you’re selling a top-notch software program targeted at high-end, complicated tax processing. If you market to general accountants, you might be netting prospects that do anything from A-B-C accounting services to intricate, full time gigs with top corporations. There’s no doubt that you’ll strike out with the majority of your audience. Accountants that make their living on Joe Smith’s bread-and-butter will have no interest in a high-end product like yours. Instead, back up and find a creative way to market to only those accountants serving the best-of-the-best, super-corporations. They will be willing to pay what you’re asking. They’ve been around for long enough to see the value in it, and are successful enough to be able to pay for it.

When asking for the big bucks, keep these things in mind:

• Before you bring people to your website, before you send out your newsletter, consider the caliber of your product or service, and match it to the caliber of client that would be most likely to spend the kind of money you’re asking for. Do the research required to find these people, rather than spending time generating dead-end leads.

• Consider your prospects’ mindsets. Do they have cheeseburger budgets and milkshake level businesses? Or do they have filet mignon budgets and crème-brulee-level companies? Which would you rather have? Know that fast food customers won’t have the money, or the taste, for expensive steaks.

• Don’t make quality an afterthought, or you’ll have attracted prospects in vain. Aim high, and your prospects won’t bat an eye at your price revelations.

Don’t assume that high paying clients are high maintenance. Often, they’re more understanding and less demanding. They have the experience that it takes to understand the ins and outs of the business world. They understand your challenges, and are more likely to allow you the freedom to run with your expertise.

Low-paying clients are often new to the business world, and may either indirectly (or directly) look to you for advice beyond the scope of your work, or spend too much time highlighting insignificant details.

Don’t be intimidated by the lucrative account. Be drawn to it. Recognize it for the gold mine that it is – and for the quality that it can create for your business.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Picture it:  an administrative assistant, who is responsible for sorting the postal mail, brings the daily delivery to her desk for opening and distribution.  As she shuffles through the pile of promotional mailings, invoices, payments, and correspondence from customers (she can recognize most types of mail by the envelopes that they’re in), she comes upon something peculiar.

It’s not flat; there’s no way that it could have traveled seamlessly through a postage meter.  It contains more than paper.  It’s got depth!  She tries to determine what’s inside by squeezing the envelope in the area of the biggest bulge.  With that, she hears the unmistakable sound of a duck, “Quack!”  What in the world?…

Of course, the office employee opens the lumpy envelope first.  In it, she finds a cute-as-a-button rubber duck that quacks every time she squeezes him.  The letter that accompanies the duck is from an insurance company that is conducting a promotion for new customers.  The little quacking duck is a perfect likeness of the insurance company’s mascot.

The woman gives the duck a prominent place on her desk.  He makes her smile.  She makes him quack when coworkers walk past, making them smile.  When she knocks him over with a paperweight or telephone receiver, she sees the name and phone number of the insurance company on his bottom.  And most importantly (for the insurance company), she remembers their business name every time she glances at the duck, prompting her to not only recommend the insurance company to her boss, but to her company’s own clients.

The power of lumpy mail is two-fold:

• First, lumpy mail begs to be opened.  Can you imagine yourself throwing away a piece of lumpy mail?  Surely, you’d be wondering what was in there, and might even resort to fishing it back out of the trash to satisfy your curiosity.

• Secondly, the item in the envelope that’s responsible for its lumpiness will stay with your target for as long as they choose, effectively giving your company’s name a front seat in that target’s mind.

Many times, business owners focus on the letter that’s enclosed in their direct mail envelopes; when, in fact, their focus would be better placed on actually getting that envelope opened.  And it doesn’t matter who opens it…even if a gatekeeper at a large corporation is intrigued enough to set to it with a letter opener, your correspondence has a greater chance of completing its voyage to the decision maker’s desk.

Emails cost nothing to send.  But with direct mail, you’re paying for paper, envelopes, ink, and postage.  Unless people are opening those direct mailings, your spending is in vain.  Even with a conservative mailing list, you can spend hundreds, or thousands, of dollars in the blink of an eye.

Because you’re investing so much more in direct mail, high response rates are more than desirable.  Direct mail experts site 1 or 2 percent response rates to direct mailings as satisfactory, even impressive.  But if you want extraordinary response rates to your direct mailings, a lumpy mail endeavor could result in response rates as high as 25 percent.  That means that, even if your budget is so tight that you can only afford to send out 10 pieces of lumpy mail, you can expect a response from 2 or 3 of your recipients.

So lump it up!  Mix up the mail bag.  Make mail interesting again.  Maybe you haven’t the budget for big bulk mailing…but there’s nothing stopping an honest shot at some lucrative lumpiness.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Michael Dunlop is the successful young entrepreneur behind such blog sites as www.RetireAt21.com and www.IncomeDiary.com. His sites have upwards of 200,000 visitors each month.

How does he do it?

In his words, “It’s all about creative content.”

When you post a blog with unique content or present standard content in a creative and engaging way, you attract more people. The people who are attracted to your content will then link to it or tweet about it. This is what’s called link bait or tweet bait.

For example, Michael posted “the top earning websites in the world.” He listed what each site earned in the last year, and then broke that down to how much they made in a second. When people see that Google made $691 a second, it catches their attention and they link to his site or tweet the information.

This strategy can work in any niche. Whatever your area of expertise, you can post lists of top earners or “10 best …” Those readers who already follow you will share the information with their network, attracting even more people to your blog.

To save you the time of researching these types of lists, you can use a service such as www.TaskUs.com, which will do the work for you. They will provide you with all the information you need, which you can then copy and paste to your blog. For a reasonable fee, you can see a return that is worth thousands.

You can also post lists that reflect your own personal opinion. For instance, you might post a list of people who have influenced you in your career, or the top ten reasons why it’s great to work in your field.

Since a list of the best of anything is really subjective, some readers might disagree with your choices. Don’t be upset if that happens. It means that they are paying attention to you. The more comments that people post, the more conversation you’ll generate.

The point is to be creative. People are drawn to lists because they present interesting tidbits of information that are easily shared. David Letterman discovered that years ago – his nightly top ten lists have long been shared around the world.

When you offer creative content in the form of link bait or tweet bait, you will begin to attract more readers to your blog. As the number of people linking to your site increases, so does your internet ranking. And it happens instantly. So start thinking creatively about some lists that will give your readers information that they simply can’t wait to share.

Operating your own business requires an intensity and creative energy someone employed in a regular job can’t comprehend. Because that’s true, you may have reached a point when you need to start hiring people to help get things done. Here’s a strategy for hiring the right people for the tasks that get in the way of growing your business.

You may have been handling the details of your personal and professional lives on your own for so long that you don’t recognize when it’s time to start outsourcing. Let me give you an example of how outsourcing one routine task could free you to focus on building your business.

Let’s say your favorite dry cleaning firm is an hour round trip from your office. What could you be doing in that hour that creates more business, instead? When you multiply the time away from business tasks times your standard business fees, you begin to understand why delegating that kind of routine task can improve your bottom line.

Maybe your routine tasks are business related—answering phones, shuffling through email or making travel arrangements. Whatever it is that’s keeping you from actually focusing on finding new customers or creating products, it may be time to let someone else do it.

Your greatest need may be as simple as being able to rest once in awhile.  You maybe trapped in the cycle of working long hours, late into the night and every weekend. Wouldn’t it be more productive to work with a team and have them take over tasks that don’t require your personal attention, and actually balance work and rest?

Finding the right team to take over things that keep you distracted from work can make a huge difference. Decide what kind of help would do the most good right now. Do you need a personal assistant to handle dry cleaning pickup and delivery or a virtual assistant to schedule your newsletter?

For each business owner, it’s something different. But at some point, it isn’t optional if you want your business to grow. Insisting on doing everything yourself is a sure-fire way to keep your business small.

Finding skilled team members to lighten your load can surprise you in another way. You’re going to find there are things you simply aren’t suited for; for instance, you might slog through ironing your own clothes but why focus all that effort on something that can be outsourced to someone who does it well?

So consider where your team would do the most good. Decide what can be outsourced and then find people with the right skills, whether virtual or local. Remember, it doesn’t matter if the team member who posts articles to your website is in Australia or anywhere else in the world, so long as they do a great job and free you to do the things you need to do.

You want to outsource tasks to free up time, to grow your business or simply to get enough rest.  Start thinking about hiring a team to support you in your business. What kinds of things would make your life simpler, allow you to focus on your business or find some balance?

Once that’s clear in your mind, you’ll know who to look for and what kind of skills they need.  Then you’ll be on your way to building a great team. And that team will make all the difference in your life, your business and your peace of mind.

There’s little point in driving people to your website if you’re not able to capture their business once they get there. So, before you try to draw the crowd, make sure the fundamentals are in place.

There are three foundational things that you need in place before you try to get your business name in front of potential clients.

•    A List Manager.

Because I didn’t have a list manager when I first started, I had to manually send out the free report I had offered to a hundred people. You don’t want to do that. A list manager is your database – the place where you store all the names you’re going to collect – and it enables you to handle the “subscribes” and “unsubscribes” automatically. You don’t have to spend any time on it, or hire an assistant to do it.

Some examples of list managers are 1ShoppingCart.com, Total Business Cart, Constant Contact and  AWeber.

•    An Ethical Bribe

What are you offering that is interesting and enticing to the clients you want? You need to present something so tempting that people will be eager to hand over their name, their email address, possibly even their mailing address.

Consider using a free report, a teleseminar, or an audio. These can all work very well in helping to build your list. If you don’t think you have enough expertise, consider interviewing an expert, and use that as your giveaway.

Spend some time thinking about what that enticement is going to be. Make sure your offer is congruent with the people you want to attract. What will have those clients flocking to you?

For example, high-end marketing clients probably won’t be interested in a program titled “Marketing on a Shoestring.” Psychologically, you’re going to attract the cheapskates with that title, when what you really want are the money people. So make sure your pitch fits the people you’re pitching to.

•    A Squeeze Page

It used to be enough to have a box on your website that says, “Sign up here for our free newsletter.” These days, you will find that less than 10% of people who visit the page actually sign up.

A squeeze page is a standalone page that has one goal – to get people to join your list.

For example, use a squeeze page to promote a teleseminar. That page will contain the teleseminar topic, the details about the teleseminar, and a box where people can sign up. There is no navigation bar leading to another section of the website. There is no other information.

Here’s an example of one of my squeeze pages:
www.clientmagnets.com/steppingup

I’ve found that about 70% of visitors say yes, compared to the 10% who click on that box somewhere in the corner of your website. This is where you will capture the person’s details.

Once you have these fundamentals in place, you can begin to focus on the promotional things you need to drive traffic to your site.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

What is the purpose of a sales page?

Too often, we misunderstand the purpose of the sales page itself, and consider it to be a simple finish line.  We concentrate on getting prospects to the sales page, but forget about the importance of getting them through the sales page.

The fact is, that about fifty percent of sales are lost at the ordering stage.  If prospects still have misgivings or unanswered questions after reading through your opt-in page, they’re likely to bail out.  Or, if your sales page is too complicated, they’re not likely to invest the energy into deciphering it.

Consider what improving your sales page can mean for your business plan – you can increase your conversion rate by fifty percent without sinking more money into marketing, and without working to drive more traffic to your site.

People could be turning away from your sales page right now.  That means that your best course of action would be to improve your sales-in page immediately – before you adjust marketing, revamp a homepage scroll, or optimize your site for the search engines.  Really…stop the presses and analyze your sale page.

Here are the major points you’ll need to get started:

• Make it possible for people to purchase your product any time of the day, any day of the year. Don’t complicate the system with preliminary phone calls or e-mails.  Make it easy for prospects to pay with PayPal or their credit cards, without the need for making contact with you.  Making purchasing possible while a prospect’s motivation is high is important for strengthening your sales page conversion rate.  You can give your visitors the option of placing an order by phone (some people still feel uneasy about using credit cards online), but don’t make that their primary option.

• Keep it super-simple. You can’t take anything for granted – including your prospects’ levels of literacy.  Maybe English is their second language, or maybe extensive vocabulary and complex sentences scare them away.  Ask a ten-year-old child to read and comprehend your sales page.  If the child can’t grasp it, then simplify it.

• A testimonial will go a long way toward that final click. Including the words (and maybe a photo) of someone who experienced great success or satisfaction with your product or service can help to seal other deals.

• Title your order form/page in a non-threatening way. Acceptance Form, Registration Form, and No Risk Acceptance Form are some good examples of headlines that reassure.

• The text on your order page should be written in your prospect’s voice. For example, “Yes, Dr. White, I’m ready to start enjoying the benefits of XYZ Fiber today.”

• When you involve your prospect in the ordering process, they take ownership, they feel responsible and in control, and they’re less likely to jump overboard.  Utilize things like check boxes and drop-down menus to make them feel that they have invested in the process, and you’ll contribute to higher conversion.

• If you’re offering any kind of a guarantee or return policy, the order form is the perfect place to reinstate that offer. It’s a good idea to write this part in the prospect’s words also.  For example, “I understand that if I am not completely satisfied, I can return…”

• Set up an autoresponder to send out an e-mail immediately following a customer’s order. In the e-mail, reinforce the wonderful decision that they’ve made.  Include an additional testimonial, and convey the confidence that you feel in their ability to experience the same success and/or satisfaction.

When designing your sales page and order form, put yourself in your prospects’ shoes.  Try to understand that money-spending is a fragile decision for a major portion of the population, and that it’s your job to instill buying confidence, erase misgivings, and answer questions.  You can’t be there…but you can take the action that gets the transaction…with a first-rate sales page!

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Are you trying to be all things to all people in your business? Or, even in your personal life, for that matter? If you are, your head is probably spinning, trying to figure out exactly who you are and exactly what your expertise is.

You may think it’s easier for you to offer a general selection of services.  The broader your area of expertise, the more clients you think you’ll attract. However, quite the opposite is true. When you stand up and declare your specialty, clients will view you with confidence and place greater value on your knowledge and skills.

You can make this happen on purpose, or if you really take notice, you might see a trend regarding the clients you attract. For example, one client of mine is a coach and a mom who wasn’t specific about her audience or her specialty. In her words, “When I started out, nothing really happened.”

In her case, she started attracting clients who were moms. She was a mom herself and other moms could relate to some of the scenarios she presented in her business. Her niche more or less found her, but she realized it and focused her business around that niche.

Now she’s known as an expert. Journalists cite her as a source for articles, which results in lots of PR for her company. And now, she has clients calling her who aren’t even moms, asking her if she would consider working with them.

That’s a nice situation to be in – people asking if you’ll take them on as a client.

Being recognized as an expert rather than a generalist can make a tremendous difference in your business. No one is going to hand you a “certified expert” certificate. The secret of being an expert is having the guts to appoint yourself as one.

You aren’t claiming knowledge and expertise that you don’t have. You just need to take the step and say, “I am now an authority on…” or, “I specialize in…”  It’s amazing how quickly things can organize themselves around that.

The fact of the matter is that you probably do know a lot of facts and figures about your particular area. You notice similar problems or situations that come up over and over, and you learn how to address and solve them. Because you look for that information, you do become an expert.

Each step leads to the next step. Once you recognize these recurring topics, you are familiar with the environment that leads to them. So, if you were to write an article, or speak to a potential client, the specific phrases and language you use will resonate with them because they have also used them repeatedly.

That person will get the feeling that you really understand what they’re going through. That’s what clients ultimately want, and that’s what you can give them by specializing.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

How to align your SPECIALISM with a hungry reachable niche who WANT what you offer.

This is both art and science and in this call you’ll meet Pete Bennett who will show you insider secrets for locating your hungry crowd online and small tweaks you can make immediately to generate a flood of new traffic and sales.

It’s My Next “MARKETING* MASTERMIND Call…”

Tuesday, 30th March, 2010

8:00pm UK Time (3pm EASTERN, 12 noon PACIFIC)

TOPIC:  *Finding Your Hungry Crowd*

This call is FREE for my hundreds of Marketing Mastermind and Stepping UP! members. They also get the CD and transcript of this call at no extra charge, plus a ton of other member benefits – such as access to our online members forum.

Not a member?  Then join the Marketing Mastermind Group today so you can take advantage of this call and all the other member goodies each and every month.

http://bit.ly/SellingSuccess

I look forward to “meeting” you on the call.

Best Wishes

Bernadette Doyle
www.clientmagnets.com

PS – Even if you can’t make the call, all Mastermind members receive a FREE CD of the call as well as a digital version of the audio and transcript! Take advantage now.

http://bit.ly/SellingSuccess