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Funnel Into The Market Of Success

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Beyond the funhouse mirrors of what people think it means to run a successful business, at the end of the day there’s a science to it, like most everything else.

The definition of a scientific formula is something that has been developed, tested, then tested again and again by geniuses compared to most of us. The benefit we get is those formulas can now be used successfully by just about anybody who applies them. We’re surrounded by formulas that we can simply follow. It may have taken them years to develop, but now we can use them with just a little effort.

There are formulas for business success. Some of them need to be applied before you invest your first dollar into any enterprise. The businesses that fail are the ones that fail to specialize, differentiate, and segment their core customers.

Specialization means you specialize in a particular product or service; a particular market area; a particular industry or geographical area. You target this like a marksman. What do you specialize in? What is your focus?

The next part of successful marketing is differentiation. Every act of professional selling is differentiation; that is, identifying your area of excellence. Specialization focuses on who you’re targeting and what the product is going to be. Differentiation takes it a step further—how are you going to deliver that product and/or service differently than the other businesses your customers could be going to? What are you going to be excellent at? What is it about your product or service that makes it better or superior to anything or anyone else?

If you want to earn the highest possible income, it’s worth taking a week, a month, a year—as long as it takes—to excel in a particular area because that’s where all the money is. Real money is not for the average, the mediocre, the well meaning or the hopeful. It’s for people who are really good at what they do.

Segmentation is deciding who your best customers are based on what you sell, what you specialize in, what you’re already good, and who can most benefit the fastest from what it is you sell. These are the customers that are the easiest to sell to. You focus single-mindedly on them. You identify the 20% of customers who can account for 80% of your sales.

Wave a magic wand and imagine your perfect customer. As silly as it may sound, it is actually the most appropriate analogy to make. Your perfect customer is literally on the verge of buying, all you have to do is meet them, and they’ll take it right out of your hand. Who is that person?

Now by the time they are arriving at your door, you already know what they need because you’ve focused on your specialization, differentiation, and segmentation. You begin talking about your product or service, showing them that all things considered yours is the best choice. You answer their objections or hesitations, close the sale, and get re-sales and referrals from them. Marketing Success 101.

You do this prospecting so you don’t spend a single minute talking with people who are not good prospects. Your job is to identify the people who are most likely to buy, and then connect with them immediately with a benefit that they want now. All you have to do is prove that you can deliver.

Why It’s So Important to Know Your Marketing Thumbprint

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So you’ve found your small pond, your niche—or “nitch.” You’ve identified how you’re going to be that unique fish, how your colors and your dorsal fin designs and fish eyes are going to hypnotize everybody else in the pool. Awesome!
But you have to be responsible enough to know that just because you stand out somehow doesn’t mean you’re going to stand out the right way. The right way is attracting the right people, and the right people are the ones that you’ve identified as those whose need you can serve with your product or service with the least amount of convincing.
What are their characteristics? The marketing term is demographics: age, sex, ethnicity, geography, education, marital status, kids, no kids, income—those are the main pieces. But there are also more psychological traits—what your market likes, dislikes, considers most important, their lifestyle preferences, etc.
Once you know who you’re talking to, what’s your message? What is it that you want to tell them? You must answer the two key questions that they’re always asking: Why should I buy this, and why should I buy this from you?
Your message of who you are, what you do, and why those in that market should buy from you over everyone else must be very direct, definite, and sharp so that it can cut through all the clutter in the mind of the customer. That’s where you have to stand out!
One of the ways to stand out is to have a “nitch” as I like to call it (because it rhymes with what? Rich!) or uniqueness about you: your unique selling proposition or ‘USP’. One of the biggest mistakes between a person who is a so-so marketer and a person who’s a fantastic marketer is that the fantastic marketer works with a single USP, not ten! The ten of them can be part of your features and benefits.
But of all of those USPs there’s only going to be one thing that you want sharp as a knife to get right through and say, ‘This is why you deal with me. This is what we do that nobody else does’. To create the very best USP you need to know that target customer and create it according to them. What do your specific customers want? What would really serve them?
Take a look at your thumb. Go on, nobody’s looking, don’t worry. Nobody has a thumb print like that. It’s absolutely true, yes? That’s what your business has got to look like.
Some people put their USP in their tag line. It’s a good idea. Your USP must be customer oriented; of benefit specifically to your target group. Now do you understand why it’s so important to know who that target group is? And why I go on and on about marketing, and why you love it? 
Now it’s your turn! Give me your feedback on unique selling propositions and marketing thumbprints. Who do you think executes the most effective USPs in the market today? What makes them so good? What are your thoughts or experiences on advertising and marketing?
Look for more marketing tips next week.

So you’ve found your small pond, your niche—or “nitch.”

Great!

You’ve identified how you’re going to be that unique fish, how your colors and your dorsal fin designs and fish eyes are going to hypnotize everybody else in the pool.

Awesome!

But you have to be responsible enough to know that just because you stand out with your marketing somehow doesn’t mean you’re going to stand out the right way.


The Right Way Is Attracting The Right People

And the right people are the ones that you’ve identified as:

People whose need you can serve with your product or service with the least amount of convincing.

What are their characteristics?

The marketing term is demographics — Age, sex, ethnicity, geography, education, marital status, kids, no kids, income, etc.

But there are also more psychological traits —What your market likes, dislikes, considers most important, their lifestyle preferences, etc.

Once you know who you’re talking to, define what your message is. What is it that you want to tell them? You must answer the two key questions that they’re always asking:

  1. Why should I buy this, and…
  2. Why should I buy this from you?

Your message of who you are, what you do, and why those in that market should buy from you over everyone else must be very direct, definite, and sharp so that it can cut through all the clutter in the mind of the customer.

That’s where you have to stand out!

One of the ways to stand out is to have a “nitch” as I like to call it (because it rhymes with what? Rich!) or in other words, your specific uniqueness about you and/or your product:

Your unique selling proposition, or USP.


Your USP Is Your Marketing Thumbprint

Take a look at your thumb. Go on, nobody’s looking, don’t worry. Nobody has a thumb print like that. It’s absolutely true, yes?

That’s what your business has got to look like.

A fantastic marketer works with a single USP — a single thumbprint — that targets a specific need you can serve with your product. 

Not several USPs. Just one. The others can just be part of your features and benefits.

Your one USP has got to be specific, relevant, and as sharp as a knife to fully communicate:

“This is why you deal with me. And this is what we do that nobody else does.”

To create the very best USP you need to know that target customer and create it according to them.

What do your specific customers want? What would really serve them? Your USP must be customer oriented — of benefit specifically to your target group.

Now you understand why it’s so important to know who your target demographic is and why I go on and on about marketing, and why you should love it too 🙂

And now you also understand that attracting the right people to your business AND getting them to buy will ultimately determine your success, mediocrity or failure.

So because this information is SO important, I created this free web class, The 500 Million Dollar Secret, to elaborate on this lesson more and show you how to approach your marketing in a simple way that will make you rich.

I know for some people marketing can be intimidating – whether you’re just starting out or you’re a seasoned business owner. But it doesn’t have to be.

Click here to register for the class and select a date and time that works best for you. See you there!

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Now it’s your turn! Give me your feedback on unique selling propositions and marketing thumbprints. Who do you think executes the most effective USPs in the market today? What makes them so good? What are your thoughts or experiences on advertising and marketing?

For Your Freedom,

Opportunities Might Be Your Enemies

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There are so many sayings we say—most of the time without thinking about it—that make absolutely no sense. Yet we say them out of habit and routine, not realizing just how silly we sound.

For example: “Harv, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” Well, what the hell’s the point in having the cake then?

Or how about this one: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Well, isn’t that exactly what the Trojans should’ve done?

The point here is that success building requires a lot of deprogramming from so many common beliefs and assumptions we’ve come to take for granted as true, even though a lot of the time it’s the exact opposite. We learned last week that a viable way to jumpstart an enterprise is to buy your product by selling it first.

Let’s take a look at another Rule of Opposites: Put all your eggs in one basket.

Most people will tell you otherwise. Why? Because if you put all of your eggs in one basket and something happens—like dropping it—you’ll lose everything. But I have a solution for that; take bloody good care of that basket!

We already know that no one’s reaching the next level without taking risks, yes? But the way we’ve come to think about our eggs and baskets is fear-based; fear of losing.

This truth is already established—if you want to be rich, you’ve got to be great at something. And to be great at something, you’ve got to focus on that something. For goodness sakes that’s where you put all of your eggs!

Rich people are focused. Poor people scatter their energies. Everything is one thing. It’s hard enough to make it in one business let alone divvying it up into dozens of different places!

‘But Harv—I’m constantly coming across great opportunities!’ This brings me to another Rule of Opposites:

Opportunities can be obstacles!

Opportunities can be obstacles if they take your focus away from what’s in front of you right now. That takes your time because you entertain them, maybe do some research and find out a bit more, and there you go again.

If you’ve got something semi-decent growing, put the blinders on and go for it. Not one person ever got wealthy to begin with in more than one business at a time. One business. One basket.

So you’ll have to choose, but then the next question is, ‘How do I choose?’ Look, pick one. It doesn’t matter because it’s the habit that’s the problem. Pick one to focus on. Worse comes to worse, even if you do mediocre with it, you can always let that one go when it’s finally done and get something going that does work—eventually without you. Then you can diversify and add more.

Choose one and get freaking good at it. Got it? I’m not saying you can’t buy real estate on the side. I’m just saying watch out. Every minute you do the other one you are losing time and energy that could have gone into your one basket.

There’re a lot of opportunities within your business. Make sure you’re doing well with one thing. First get rich and then you have the opportunity to go into other things. Get rich first!

Now it’s your turn! Can you identify one new opportunity within your business right now?  Will you take action and explore it ASAP?  Share your thoughts below and let me know if putting “all your eggs in one basket” just might be a lucrative opportunity for you.

How to Be More Than Just Interesting

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Stand OutAs you might have noticed in recent blogs, I’ve been talking about some of the actual aspects of business rather than the mind of the millionaire side. The concepts of both the tactics of business and the psychological prerequisites can’t be summed up in a few pages of blogging.

However, your feedback has been great as usual. I’m thrilled to see some of you exchanging questions and ideas on these really complex subjects, so I thought I’d keep it going by focusing on marketing a little bit more—something that’s so easy to know is a necessary thing to get right, but not always so easy to execute effectively.

Last week we looked at making clear, concise statements in a marketing message. To go into some more detail, there are four basic elements that make a message highly effective: attention, interest, desire, and action. If you cover those four elements, you’ll build success more than most others.

For now let’s focus on interest because gaining a prospective customer’s interest will play a huge part in the other three elements. Interest has to come at the beginning of the message. If you don’t hook them immediately after you’ve got their attention, they’re gone.

So what gets people’s interest? That one’s easy enough: pleasure and pain. No matter what we’re doing in life, it has to do with either finding ways to increase pleasure or avoid pain. These are mind-based motivators with some emotional elements attached as well.

A pleasure-based opening for a marketing message is actually very simple. You’re capturing interest based on a positive benefit. For example: “Get ripped fast!” The message: get in shape. The benefit: it can happen quickly.

You definitely want to point out benefits, but research shows that messages about how to avoid pain have a much more profound effect on sales than the pleasurable benefits of your product or service. Pain-based marketing can triple a business’s income. Pain-based messages identify a problem and then offer remedies. It’s the problem-solution opening.

There are three types of problem-solution openings:

  1. You-based
  2. Me-based
  3. Them- or People-based problem

An example of the You-based opening: Do you have [fill in the blank] problems? What you’re implying in just a few words is that if the prospective customer had been looking, they’d have already found a solution by now. Your solution could be just that more appealing.

The Me-Based opening tells your own story or that of your client’s. Telling the story of how I went from one failed business to another, then becoming a millionaire adds credibility—“I’ve been where you are.”

 

The Them-based problem-solution creates an instant line of connection whereby you ask the prospective customer a question and they can identify with it immediately, kind of like Seinfeld doing a stand-up about common things that everybody can identify with yet may not think about too often. For example: “You know how so many people today are stressed about their retirement savings? Well there’s an amazing informational product out there that’s helping thousands of people right now…”

As an exercise, write five openings for a marketing message: pleasure-based; pain-avoidance-based; You-based; Me-based story; Their problem (“You know how …?”).  One great place to start is with your headlines—because if you can get your reader to notice you via your headline, you’re success rate of capturing their attention to actually read your message skyrockets.

Here’s a great resource to help you become a master at crafting headlines: https://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/

Anyone can come up with dozens of these messages, but your challenge is to be more than just interesting. Be absolutely convincing. Be creative, effective, productive, and then be rich!

Tell me your thoughts.  Have you had great success with crafting messages that work?  Let us all know your strategies.  Have you struggled in this area?  Share your challenges here and let our online community support you and give you ideas to move you in the right direction.

 

Have You Looked at Your Marketing Lately? (Here’s Why You Should)

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Without effective marketing, how will enough people get to know you, your business or your product in order to buy from you in the first place?

It’s basic, but there’s never a shortage of examples of bad marketing.

Here’s part of the reason why…

Think about a time when you were in a conversation with someone and it seemed to just go on and on. You want to be polite, but you’re losing interest. You find yourself drifting and daydreaming. Eventually, you’re just looking for a way out!

Is it because the other person doesn’t have anything of value to say?

Not necessarily, because a good communicator can make almost anything sound interesting. Not only that, a really good communicator makes the other party want to hear or experience more.

A lot of the time, we lose interest because the other person goes off on tangents and we’re really not sure of what they’re talking about. If we can’t identify what their point is, then how can we respond?


Here Are Some Elements You Need To Pay Attention To For Your Marketing Strategy:

1. Have A Clear Message

Like an engaging conversation, having a clear message is the first crucial element of effective marketing.

The difference is that in marketing you have even less time to capture your prospect’s interest.

Get to the point! Otherwise — like a boring conversation — bad marketing makes people turn the channel, change the station, flip the page, or navigate to a different website.

2. Articulate What You Do

One of the most essential skills you can have is a way to articulate what you do in a powerful, clear, concise and attractive manner.

Clarity is important because it leads to power, both yours and your customers’. It lets them understand exactly what it is you can do for them, and gives them the feeling of being empowered in making the choice to go with you because your message spoke to their needs.

3. Create Your Sound Bite

And the presentation doesn’t have to be award-winning.

Here’s a great example:

Think about that commercial for “HeadOn,” the headache pain reliever. It would just say the same thing over and over, “HeadOn, apply directly to the forehead.”

Most people found that commercial really annoying, yes? Well, it was SO effective, it made $6.5 million in sales in 2006, and as it turns out, the stuff hasn’t even been proven to really work!

What your business needs is a sound bite, a short message said over and over again throughout your marketing material and communications.

These can be in your brochures, online promotions, sales presentations, media appearances, etc. Having a product that actually does what you say it’s going to do, obviously, would do nothing but even better things for your business.

4. Take Action

The formula for success is easy.

First, you learn and then you do, then you learn some more, then you do more. You complete this cycle over and over and over again.

So if you’re not familiar with the top three points of this lesson, then I want to invite you to join me on my upcoming free web class, The 500 Million Dollar Secret, where I’m going to walk you through several exercises to help you complete these areas of your marketing strategy and give you exactly what you need to get rich in business. Good or good?!

Click here to register for the class and select a date and time that works best for you. See you there!

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How about your experiences with marketing? Any success stories? Things that didn’t work so well? How has social media marketing changed the game for you?

Let us know how marketing did or did not work for you and what we can all learn by leaving a comment below.

For Your Freedom,

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