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Category Archives: marketing

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Target Surfing

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To know the importance of having a website for your business is one thing. Knowing the purpose behind having a Web presence is a whole other thing.

If your business is already up and running, you’ll have to cater your strategies to what you already have in place, particularly in terms of your pre-existing customer base. That means getting them to fill out cards in your physical business, or otherwise enticing them to your website with special offers. Then follow-up emails. We’re still talking basic marketing and backend selling–making money on those who are the easiest to sell to–those you’ve sold to before.

But if you’re still unsure of what kind of business you’d like to create, take a good, long look at creating an online business.

What works in your favor is that the easiest way to make money online is to focus on a specific market, find a product that they want, and give it to them. Searching for your best prospects online isn’t that much different than offline.

How do you do this? The same way you look for anything else online: surf. Just type it in–for example, maybe you have a passion for scuba diving that you’d like to turn into a business. You find all the news groups, forums, and websites regarding scuba diving. Is there anything that they’re talking about a lot? Any patterns where something is wanted but not easy to find?

That’s how you find your target market. It may take you a day, a week, a month, maybe longer. It depends on what your market is and what you’re trying to find, but whatever the niche, there’s a large enough market that’s relatively easy to get to. You know where they are, and after some research you’ll know that they want something specifically. All the gamers are hanging out in one market. All the sports nuts are hanging out in one market. All the people that are interested in holistic medicine are hanging out in one market. All the doctors are hanging out in one market. It’s easier to get people than you might think.

Try getting those people through the local newspaper. If 20,000 people view your ad (theoretically), you’d be doing great to get 10 of them to show interest. Online, you can go right to where all of your target market hangs out. Your target market is sitting right in front of you.

There are tons of people who know enough about the money-making potential of the Web and ask, "So what do I sell online? What’s going to be a hot seller?" It’s the most common and most fatal mistake.

You never decide on the product. You find an easy, targetable market, find out what they want, and you give it to them. It’s the easiest method in the world. You have an instantaneously successful business. It is a no-brainer. It doesn’t take any smarts to figure that out.

Anybody out there discovered the power of doing business online recently (I know you’re there)? What did you find frustrating, or powerful, or even profound? Did you incorporate a Web presence into an existing business? What have been your greatest learnings? We want to hear from you!!!

https://bit.ly/UltimateInternetBootcamp

https://bit.ly/ClickAndBeFree

Staying On Track

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Your business is you. It’s you creating something that wasn’t there before; with material results from your intentions, your energy, your essence, whatever it may happen to be at that time. The science of growing it simply means having prepared leadership, development, producers, and administration. As the process evolves, so do your systems for solving frustrations and focusing on those critical factors that matter most.

This is your rich-making vehicle. Like any car, you’ve got a gas gauge, a speedometer, oil gauge–all the key things you need to know quickly and conveniently if this thing is running properly. You need the same things in your business.

You need the ability to track what’s important. There’s what is quantifiable and easy to count–like sales–but there are also subjective things where opinions are measured, when the ‘qualifiable’ becomes quantifiable.

One issue that’s gained tons of traction over the last couple of years is going green–especially in businesses–from "cloud" computing to energy consumption’s impact on the bottom line.

Some people couldn’t care less about the plight of the pelicans in an endangered eco-system (a shame, for sure), but when you can quantify how switching over to energy-efficient equipment can save thousands of dollars, politics goes out the window. Saving the planet is on the same track as the bottom-line.

Also consider, though, the marketing appeal of being able to sincerely tell your market you support green initiatives. Again, the subjective can become countable in response rates.

Put a scale in and it. Customer satisfaction; employee satisfaction–you measure benchmarks, time frames, the ranges you’d like to be in, or what high/low thresholds would signify danger-zones. They sound complicated, but they’re really not.

How many sales calls and closes per hour would you like to see? You look at what your sales are per month and compare. Too low? Too high (maybe there’s something else not being considered if it’s too good to be true)?

You want the salesperson that follows a script, makes the calls and closes the ratio that they should be closing. That can be copied, duplicated, and most importantly, tracked. If the oil pressure in your vehicle is too high, you’ve got a problem. If it’s too low, you’ve also got a problem. You want to be in between, yes? What are your operating ranges for your critical success factors?

It might be that you’re willing to spend a certain amount of money per employee depending on their role in your business’ structure. If you’re paying your marketing guy $30,000 more than you really intended, there isn’t going to be much speculation on why your profits aren’t where you want them to be. Like getting a speeding ticket, you had this gauge that you weren’t paying attention to and you exceeded the operating range.

There are things you can count on and physically look at; things you can measure; and real accurate data that you can track–not guess. They’re documented. It could be in a manual you pass out to all employees, or one that you’ve got linked up online.

It takes consistency, predictability, and tracking–systems that can be operated by someone with a base-line level of skill. When you can duplicate that, you’re on track to financial freedom.

Putting a Face on Frustration

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When we get frustrated by our conditions, we inevitably end up becoming frustrated with ourselves. It can take us over and we tend to run with it. It can creep into every aspect of our lives, from how we relate to the people around us, to how it will impact our business.

If the frustration builds for too long, pretty soon we might forget altogether what the hell we were frustrated at in the first place, yes?

This happens in business all the time, especially when, in the early stages of the business, cash flow can fluctuate maddeningly, which then leads to all other kinds of frustrations from payroll to profits.

There’s an energy attached to frustration that sucks the life out of your business, and if you’re not dealing with this as a business owner, it’s only going to go downhill from there.

Moving back away from whatever the problem is, step one toward a solution is simply being able to classify your frustrations. Is it with your team? Your results? A process that doesn’t seem to flow efficiently?

Some typical early-stage business frustrations include time (there never seems to be enough of it), feeling like you’re too bogged down with menial detail-work instead of bigger-picture tasks, or relying on people to get things done that don’t follow through. Just to name a few.

This is where the importance of systemizing your business processes plays a huge role. First you name your frustration, and then you develop the system to address it.

So if you’re having problems with freeing up your time yet ensuring that essential tasks still get done, then the real problem is the absence of a system that will hire the right people rather than you doing it all yourself. That way, not only is your time freed up, but the right people will also help micro-manage the way processes continue to develop and flow.

The good news is that frustrations within your business are fairly easy to identify and deal with, though they may take time. Inner frustrations, on the other hand, not only take more time and energy to deal with, but may also be harder to identify in the first place. You could be mad at yourself because you’ve done something poorly for so long, and you get frustrated about not seeming able to turn the corner. Or worse, you externalize that frustration toward everybody else—the customers, the suppliers, the vendors, the client; everybody but yourself.

We know the power of blueprints, so we won’t address that here.

When it comes to outer frustrations that we can identify, though, the questions are much simpler. What’s my frustration? What’s the gap in the system? What system is missing altogether?
If your frustrations begin with ‘I’, it’s about you. It’s inner directed. If it’s about ‘them’ or ‘those people’ or ‘those lousy clients’ or ‘those suppliers’ or ‘that lousy machinery’ or ‘that way’ of doing something, it can then be addressed systematically and objectively.

What do you think? Have you experienced similar or even different kinds of frustrations, and how did you address them? Did systemizing play a role? The Millionaire Mind Community wants to hear from you!

Register for a Millionaire Mind Intensive near you HERE

Narrow It Down

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When it comes to generating the momentum of market presence, you want to cast the widest net possible that makes sense to your niche, and then be more discerning about who you’re spending time on later in the process.

The top producers, though, have learned to cast a smaller net that catches bigger fish. Chet Holmes, one of the top sales producers in the country today—the guy turns bad sales around in struggling companies unbelievably—said, “There’re always a smaller number of best buyers rather than all buyers.”

What the hell does that mean? It just means narrow down who you’re targeting to prospects that—although smaller in number—would bring in much more revenue than all the small fish combined. Linking with these big fish would not only save you time and energy, but could be great ways to affiliate, partner with, and otherwise make marketing and sales easier than fishing on your own.

You’re a real estate broker in your town. Who are you going to in order to start generating leads? Who are you targeting before you start sending out direct mail to every household in the town? Who, if you were famous among them, would drive so many referrals to you that you couldn’t even handle it all?

You’re looking for the most influential people who have access to the same types of prospects you want, and you’re pounding them relentlessly. That would be the people who live in the most expensive homes in your town. You make this a must in your marketing budget.

Pick the dream prospects! It’s the most cost effective method of building your business without spending a lot of money.

These select people looking at your face in the mail once a month, every month may not need you now, but when they do, they know like clockwork that your flyer’s coming in the mail. Commission on one expensive house sold could more than make up for the marketing budget on that strategy. When it comes to high-end real estate in that area, you’d be at the top of those people’s minds, even when most of the time they weren’t thinking about you.

Even when we’re talking about in-store client relations, we still want to be narrowing down what we want out of each interaction, so it’s still a mindset of quality of interaction versus number of interactions. How could you get one customer to buy more than just the item they came it looking for? Or a number of more expensive items?

How can you make the first point of contact more interesting right from the first or second sentence or with the first thing you show them? How can you make it more attractive, more appealing, and more exciting?

Get clear on your objectives. Most people are not strategic. They don’t think like, ‘How many things do I want to accomplish with the buyer?’ It changes the whole quality of the interaction when you start thinking strategically.

The more narrow and focused your objectives, the more impact you will have right from the very beginning, and the quicker and faster you’ll grow with less effort. The biggest element is persistence, patience and commitment to really seeing this strategy through.

Give us your opinions, comments or stories. The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!!!

Service and Presentation Equals Millions

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Writer’s get writers block. Baseball hitters have slumps. Markets have down days.

The idea behind “funks” is that we’ll eventually come out of them, yes? But what we can we say for those people who aren’t making excuses about lack of financial growth; who have a burning desire to get off the treadmill and take control of their financial life by deciding to start a business, but have no idea what they’d do?

We can start drawing parameters around the question by realizing that in business, you either have a product, a service or an idea that you’re selling. Some potential business people might think, “Great, I don’t have a product. I don’t have two thousand of something sitting on a shelf somewhere in a warehouse ready to be shipped out and sold.”

Or they might be saying to themselves, “I don’t have a product but, but I do have an idea for a service, but how they heck do I do that enough to make a lot of money?”

As a matter of fact, every year there are over 375,000 different patents submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A fraction of those patents turn into something lucrative. The vast majority don’t because they are lacking a crucial element: Presentation!

You can have the greatest product, service, or idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate it in a way that gets others to want what you have—or if you can’t create the need for what you have—then nothing’s going to happen.

Before we can truly understand how to effectively make our presentation, we have to first understand why people buy anything in the first place. If we understand that, then we’re in a much better position to come up with that product, service, or idea and present it.

There’s only one reason why people buy; whether it be from television, from across a desk, in a department store, or on the telephone. People buy based on emotion and they justify it with the facts later!

Not that the facts aren’t important. Facts are very, very important, but they provide the information while emotion provides the interpretation.

When we’re buying a car, sure gas mileage matters, but there’re plenty of cars that have that covered. You’re gauging how you feel in that seat, the new car smell, and the compliments you’ll get. How those car payments will be made you figure out later. It’s primarily about how you feel about the purchase.

When you’re sending out your message about your product, service or idea on the informational level, you’re not doing anything wrong but you’re never going to make a real connection. You’re always going to miss making that strong, important, effective, emotional association.

We’re not talking about manipulation, either. I think it’s a basic instinct of all human beings to want to help other people. So when we’re thinking of what we’re going to do to make millions, whatever it is you have to be thinking, “How do I effectively help others with what I have?” Not just how you’re going to make your car payments or mortgage.

When you are selling something you are doing something to somebody, but when you’re helping you’re doing something for somebody. Service and presentation will keep you in business.

What do you think? We want to hear from you!!!

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