Posts Tagged marketing

Marketers and savvy small business owners know the power of word-of-mouth. By being a remarkable resource to people and being a person people like, people refer those that fit into that category to their friends and family. It can create a big chain of referrals that’ll buy your products and services, and it’s what has helped some small businesses profit off of just this method marketing alone.

Online is more beneficial for any business for your messages can easily be passed along from one of your Facebook friends to theirs, or Followers on Twitter can Retweet your messages to their followers. With businesses understanding the power of their messages going viral, it becomes a challenge to make sure your messages stand out.

Below are some tips to make sure your messages are always being passed along to other social media users:

Keep your messages personal- Some businesses haven’t fully gotten the concept of writing about topics besides their products and promotions. When promoting just products and services on social media or email, it turns off prospects. Online users will delete you, or if they have time, speak down on your company to other people. That’s not the kind of viral effect you want. Make sure you put personal touch in all of your messages. Talk about subjects not always business related, but related to your industry or your personal life.

Talk to and connect with your friends and followers- Whether you’re adding friends or people are adding you, take the initiative to talk to them first. Most of the time, people don’t communicate at all with new connections. Don’t wait for people to message you first. You’ll be waiting forever. Respond to people’s tweets and wall posts to get them to communicate back with you. Build a relationship with the people online. People help those that they know, like and trust.

Support your friends and followers- For those people you have built a relationship with online, see how you can help one another out. If your friends post messages they want others to read, be sure to help them out by reposting the content onto your wall. Refer your friends to the right direction to areas they need help in. The goal is to become a valuable resource. When people see you’re helping them out, they’ll want to help you out.

Following these tips will help you and your messages to go viral. People online will start talking about your products and services, and before you know it you’ll be obtaining several leads, and most importantly, more sales.

When you look at the big corporations like Sony, Microsoft, Warner Bros., or Apple, one can only wonder how they have become globally successful today. They all have their own innovative line of products or services that consumers can’t wait to get their hands on. They may have the big budgets to create massive marketing campaigns, but they still do what they’ve done before they got big, they form alliances with other businesses.

Sony, for example, partnered up with IBM and Toshiba to research and develop the cell processor, which is the powerhouse of their Playstation 3 consoles. Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating systems are installed and run in PC’s made by several manufacturers like Compaq, Sony, and Dell. In a recent Volvo commercial, they used the movie Twilight Eclipse in the front end to promote their car, knowing the Twilight was a huge success in the box office.

The reason big corporations are able to create innovative products and saturate the market with their marketing campaigns is because they know the power of partnering up with other companies. Small businesses need to also take full grasp of this method of business building. It’s never a good idea to be a lone wolf in business.

Finding the right companies to ally with will involve you taking part in networking events, networking groups, or through researching the Internet or through newspapers and magazines.

Partnerships doesn’t mean you have to merge your business with another, but it means you can ally with companies to develop and implement marketing campaigns, or offer bundle packages and split the money between camps. Partnerships can save you a lot of money, time and can lead to your business reaching growth at a faster rate than it would if you were on your own.

Can you imagine how many small businesses would be successful if they formed alliances with other companies? The possibilities are pretty endless. Be creative and have fun with it. Share ideas and always be open to feedback and suggestions from other businesses you ally with. You’ll be surprised of what you can learn from other people of other companies.

As a small business owner, one of the number one factors you’ll encounter is how you’ll get your products or services out to the masses. You want to make sure you have your marketing plan down, so that business will come to you. If you don’t know much about how marketing works, you’re always able to learn more about it yourself, or learn from the experts.

That’s why Katrina Sawa, a marketing coach in Sacramento, is successful today. She’s helped small businesses achieve success achieve success through teaching them the importance of marketing and how to effectively implement it in order to build their business. In this interview, she explains how you should be in the business of marketing yourself, why every small business owner should be using social media, how to generate profits no matter the economic situation, and more.

Sheldon Alexander: In your words define what marketing is and how it’s beneficial for a business to implement it.

Katrina Sawa: Marketing is the most crucial part of your business. You should be in the business of marketing, not in the business of selling your products or services. I don’t care whether you like marketing or sale or not. If you are in business for yourself, you’re in business for marketing.

SA: It’s not about the product or service it’s about how you market it right?

KS: It is yeah. You want to learn everything you can to market it the right way. Things change. Markets change. Things that work will change. Things that worked two years ago aren’t working today.

SA: How do you think small business owners can prepare for the ever-changing market?

KS: They got to keep up with what’s going on right now. If you’re not keeping up with the Internet or the social media right now, then you have to do something about that. Whether you do it yourself, you delegate someone in your company to do it or hire a expert to do the work for you, it still has to get done. Don’t ignore it. Most people tend to ignore it, thinking they don’t need social media for their business. Their products or services or client are different. That’s not true. Everybody is on social media. If you don’t maximize on using this profit generating method, then you’re missing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars every single year.

SA: That’s true. Social media is evolving big time. Even giant corporations are using social media, and are generating profits on that marketing method alone, aside from all the advertising they do.

KS: Small businesses don’t even need to spend money on advertising that much anymore. Times have changed. There are still things you may need to do if you have a brick and mortar location. But if you’re using advertising, you better be taking prospects to your website from those ads now instead of just having a phone number in the ad. That’s not going to work.

SA: You’re right about that. Social media is here now, and businesses can market with little to no cost now. With millions of potential customers on social media, small business owners can jump in and take a small portion of the market share.

KS: The problem is though that people will latch on the free things often and only focus on the free things, when you still need to do some of the paid things too. Even with the free things, you have to have a strategy in place to market and sell your products. You can’t expect to just jump online and talk to your friends and expect to get business that way. Like I just got a couple of clients recently on Facebook. The reason was because I was interacting in a positive, win-win, and a sales and marketing oriented way.

SA: Throughout your experience in helping clients build their businesses, what are some of the things that they struggle with in growing their business?

KS: They don’t know where to spend their time. They don’t know what to invest their hard earned dollars on. Or they don’t invest in anything at all that they need to be investing in like upgrading their website, or hiring an assistant to to handle some work for you, or purchasing the right software automation, purchasing a shopping cart program for their website. Whatever it is, there are certain things that you need to be investing in. That way, you can further achieve your business and personal goals. But unfortunately, people base their decisions on what;s on their check books than where they want to go in life. If you want to be a $100,000 business, but you’re only making $20,000 currently, you must make decisions based on if you were already that $100,000 business.

SA: That’s true. People want $1 million dollars but don’t want $1 million dollar problems. The more money you want to make, the more problems you’ll face, and the more wise you must be in solving problems. And I would say an assistant is definitely key in building your business. Wouldn’t you agree?

KS: Most definitely. It’s crucial in order for you to build your business. If you want to make $80,000+ monthly as a entrepreneur, or even if you are a current small business owner with a group of employees, and you’re making a few hundred grand already, how much of that are you taking home? If you look at that, and don’t have the right people in place to help build your business from the start, in order to help you implement the marketing campaigns, to help you with the follow ups, to help you with social media or to upgrade your website, or anything else that needs to be done to build your business, you’ll never make the kind of money you really want to make.

SA: I totally agree with you on that. You gotta make the adjustments where adjustments are needed.

KS: Yeah, and it’s hard to figure those things out on your own. At times, you may not see what’s right in front of you. That’s why people hire me or other people as their business or marketing coaches. I hire my own coaches because I can’t see all the holes of my business myself sometimes, and may not see every opportunity that’s right in front of me.

SA: Some small business owners may see marketing as an expense, but in reality it’s an investment. In your view, how much percentage wise should small business owners take out of their total revenue to put into marketing and why?

KS: Well there used to be a formula to calculate that when I was in advertising class, and that was 10 years ago. It used to be about 3%-6%. But not that doesn’t matter. You need to put back as much money as you can for the right places to get you going further. It’s not a matter of budgeting a certain percentage of money anymore. It’s about budgeting a percentage, but also looking out for other opportunities that are ahead, and not limiting yourself from taking advantage of those. Like for example, if there’s a huge event that you must become a exhibitor, and it’s $5,000 but it’s out of your budget. But you have to be there because everyone in your target market is going to be there, you better buck up and find out how you’ll get that $5,000. Don’t make that an excuse that you don’t have $5,000 and that’s why you’ll not go there. You need to be flexible.

SA: A majority of small business owners use social media for the wrong reason. They primarily use it to promote their products or services, which can turn off prospects. Name a few ways social media should be properly used to obtain leads and sales.

KS: The number one thing is you need to interact, you got to get personal, and you got to create a win-win situation, and you got to give. You got to give of yourself. Give content, give answers, give solutions in your posts and responses. Put a call to action in your P.S. Line. You just have to interact. Don’t just sit there and add a bunch of friends and not talk to them. You need some type of system to where when you someone to your friends list, you send them a message thanking them for adding you, or you post on their wall. You become a fan on their fan page and post over there. And then when they respond back you need to continue the conversation. It’s about continuing the conversation and figuring out what their problems are. I don’t tell them anything what I do, or how I can help, or what my products are services are until I find out what they need, if they need anything that I can help them with. Like they may need a virtual assistant, and I’ll just refer them to one. From me just helping them, I usually them hey I also have a website with a lot of free resources that they can sign up for, and then they usually opt in onto my list.

SA: So basically you lead first with helping them with a referral or anything of value that will help them out. And then you propose to them that they should view your information as well.

KS: Yes. You just pull them into your funnel. You got to have ways for them to get into your funnel. So you got to have a website where they can opt into your funnel. Your website should have a opt in box where you can input their name and email address to get onto your list. You must offer something for free for them opting in. You should have valuable resources on your website. You also need to have simple ways for prospects to follow you. That means telling them they can follow you on Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook.

SA: We are at a time now where information marketing is the best way to market yourself and build credibility for prospects to learn more about you and your business. How can small business owners make their content unique that stands out and helps them generate sales?

KS: Well you gotta create your own signature system or your own unique branding system. Something that is unique to use. Something that will separate you from the rest. Like I have my own Jump Start Your Marketing System. It’s a very systematic approach to how to start, grow, and market your business. Other marketers may have their own systems. You can give a talk, and then turn it into a free report. Then you can slim it down to the basic components, then fluff it up into a home study program that you can teach, then you can have a whole tele-series on your system. You can even have a whole live event. You can do so much when having your own unique branded system. I teach people how to do that, and even pull it out of you. Because sometimes we are already doing it, it’s just we don’t know what it looks like.

SA: What can small business owners do during this tough economy to generate continuous sales from their existing customers?

KS: First of all you want to stop thinking that it’s a tough economy. 90% of people that I know had their best year last year. You got to not think in your head that it’s a tough economy. You’re just talking to the wrong people that don’t want to buy from you. You need to talk to different types of people. You don’t need to discount your rates. In fact, you can even charge more and there are people that would be willing to pay it. You just aren’t talking to the right people through the right mediums, and you’re not marketing in the right ways. Things have changed, which is why I have said that you got to keep up with the pace of what’s going on, otherwise you’re going in get lost in the shuffle. It’s about changing your whole mindset around. The economy does not determine your business success.

SA: Do you have any other comments you would like to say to inspire readers looking to grow their business?

KS: Yes you really want to learn more. You don’t want to learn too much to the point that you’re not implementing. You want to learn and implement, learn and implement. It’s about continuous learning, and continuously taking the right action. If you don’t know what to do, you need to reach out to someone that can tell you or show you what you need to do. Whether if it’s a coach or if it’s a program, or a local business center or networking group, you need to invest your time and money to make that happen. This is how I developed a six-figure business, and I wouldn’t have got to where I did if I didn’t hire the coaches and staff to help me along the way. There’s just no way. Because I didn’t know how to change my business the way that I did, and leverage my time and expertise to really make this the kind of business that it is.

For more information on how to JumpStart your small business with creative ideas and a clear Action Plan to reach your unique target market and goals and for an opportunity to talk with Katrina Sawa in a complimentary Strategy Session, go grab your 3 Free Gifts online now at http://www.JumpStartYourMarketing.com/gifts.

Once you obtain a customer, don’t let them out of your sight. Unfortunately, that’s what most small business owners do. Most businesses forget the customer once they make a sale and move on to the next person. Conducting business this way will do nothing but hurt your business in the long run.

When customers purchase your product, you should continue to build a relationship with them. The reason being is that you want them to continue raving about your products and purchasing your products, even if competitors offer new products that are better than yours. Below are three tips to keeping customers loyal:

Follow up with new buyers in two days after they purchase- If a person purchases your product or service, the connection between you and that new customer has just begun. Follow up with them by calling them to see how they liked their new product or service. If it was a product that’s being shipped to them, call to ask if they received their product yet. Check with them to see if they have any questions and to see if their product is in good condition.

Continue sending customers follow up letters/calls- Continue to follow up with your customers every couple of months or so. Update them of everything your company is doing. Find out more about your customers. Find out some of the things they enjoy in their personal lives. Be creative and find ways that you can even offer something of value that’s relevant to your best customers.

Survey your customers- Provide a questionnaire to your customers regarding satisfaction of your products or services. Keep it short so customers aren’t overwhelmed. You can use the answers you receive from your customers to strengthen areas of your business and your products or services. This way, you can rest assure your customers may never leave you.

Continue to stay consistent in staying connected to your customers. If you have to, hire a staff that focuses on customer satisfaction.  Customer satisfaction and loyalty will generate profits for your business.

Many large corporations know that in order for them to stay in business and keep sales high, they have to offer something that competitors are not. One example is Subway, who has been offering their 5$ foot long sandwich deal for the last two years. The result is that they’ve stole customers from competitors like Quiznos, and have expanded through opening up more stores in Sacramento and across the U.S.

Small businesses should also be offering something exclusive that other competitors are not offering. This makes customers feel like they’re getting something valuable that’s worth more than the price they paid. This will also drive customers to your store instead of your competitors, especially if you’re offering products similar to your competition.

Here are a few tips you should keep in mind when getting started on creating your exclusive offers:

Research your competition- Check out if they’re offering any kind of exclusive offerings. You can check out through visiting their website or through their ads. You can also try getting someone you know to call their office to get info about their offerings. Then upon gathering the data, you can provide something that is of more value to the customer than their offering.

Survey your existing customers- Find out what your current customers may see worth their money.  Chances are what your current customers will buy from your exclusive offer your target market will as well. Provide a short survey they can answer within a 15-30 minute period, and then gather the data to use towards developing your exclusive offer campaign.

Market your exclusive offer tremendously- Be confident that what you’re offering to buyers is worth every penny they pay for it, and that it’s only offered through you and no one else. You should have all your marketing materials like displays and banners ready to push your offer to the extreme. Then in time, new customers will be purchasing your offerings through consistently keeping your offerings in their minds.

Remember, exclusive offers set you apart from the competition, has the potential to steal customers from your competitors, and are a great way to show value to buyers.

As I have posted yesterday on my Twitter page, I am now a part of the online publishing company Examiner. They are one of the fastest growing online companies primarily because of how they allow people to publish their own work and get paid for it.

I am on their team as a Sacramento Small Business Examiner. Though I’ll be posting content primarily directed toward the people in the local Sacramento area, I’ll also be posting content that people around the world will be able to see and subscribe to. Even some of my content I post mainly for the local Sacramento area the general public around the world can use to implement into their businesses.

Whatever small business you have, whether it’s a cleaning business or a network marketing business, I’ll be post business building, marketing, and sales tips and strategies, as well as news and interviews of small business owners from time to time. To support my new position as an Examiner, I like everyone reading this blog post to subscribe to my page, and visit it often as everyone can. Leave comments of my articles as well of how you liked or disliked the content.

To view, comment and subscribe to my Examiner page, Click on this link.

There are many books out there that can show you ways of marketing your offerings. However, none of the books out there can provide you the basic fundamental methods of marketing like the book Guerrilla Marketing. Written by Jay Conrad Levison and published since 1983, this book alone has revolutionized the way small businesses market. The book was updated in 2007 to include more methods of marketing related to today’s trends.

This book is not meant for large corporations that have the big budgets, this book is for small business owners who have a small budget and have the ambition to get their products and services out there to the public. This book is for small business owners looking to minimize their marketing spending and instead use tactics and strategies to maximize prospect’s consent and gain profits. Who wouldn’t want to profit off of low cost, highly effective marketing methods?

In the book there are 200 methods of marketing your offerings, which include flyers, brochures, email marketing, canvassing, and TV commercials. From reading each method that’s mentioned in the book you’ll find several “Oh wow I would had never thought of that” tips and strategies to using each method effectively. It’s so good you’ll want to reread the book over again, and it’ll open your eyes further to the world of marketing in a new way.

I read the book two years ago. This was when I thought I knew it all when it came to marketing. After reading the book, I found out that I could never know enough when it comes to marketing.  It’s a forever learning process, and it’s also an art you have to work consistently on to perfect.

If you’re looking to learn more of how to market your products and services sufficiently without spending tons of money, you have to read this book. It’s worth every cent of its asking price. To purchase this book, Click Here.

When you have a few success driven individuals that you’ve personally sponsored onto your team, don’t ever leave them out of your sight. Do everything you can to help the people you sponsor to succeed. There’s nothing like sponsoring ten people and none of them perform. I don’t know about you, but if I had to compromise time or money in a situation like that, it would be money.

Think about it. Let me give you an example. Why would you spend 8-12 hours a day working hard to sponsor ten people within a month’s period, make $1,000 as a result form all ten sponsors, then spend 10 hours daily concentrating on telling your downline what to do for 3 months only to find out they weren’t producing anything, and they quit? Time is more valuable than money. A lot of network marketers chase their prospects and do hard selling to get them a part of their team. It’s not worth it, especially since this isn’t a sales job.

Remember, network marketing is a business, so treat it like a business, not a sales job. If you treat it like a sales job, you’re reputation will go down the drain, for your downline will be mad at you for suckering them into joining your team. You want to be a mentor for your downline to come to for help. You also want to teach them the most effective methods of marketing and communication. As your downline builds, the level of responsibility you have for your team should increase.

Here are three tips you should implement in order to build a downline that’s profitable.

Track the progress of your downline- Depending on the MLM home based business you’re a part of, your back office should have database management system you can use to track the results of your downline. Help your downline set goals on how many people they should talk to, invite, sell products to, sponsor, and even personal goals. Help them stay motivated in reaching their goals.

Encourage and inspire them- Life is tough. There’s many negative distractions that keep people from focusing on work. Always be that positive role model. Give them words of encouragement. If you know their goals, remind them of those goals and why they’re in MLM on your team. This way, they’ll stay consistent in producing and you’ll steadily see your business grow.

Always be there to help when you’re needed- Most network marketers, especially those that are making tremendous amounts of money, tend to ignore or forget about the newcomers, and in turn leave them out in the cold for them to build their business on their own. Don’t fall into that category. Always lend a helping hand to your downline. It’s true that some people you’ll help more than others, especially those who are more serious and are superstars. But even those who are struggling and maybe off and on, help them out whenever needed.

The third tip is especially important. I can tell you that in my experience I’ve had upline members who were no help. I was left trying to build my business on my own. But the main problem is, when you’re told to invite people on three-way calls with your mentor, and your mentor doesn’t answer the phone when they were supposed to, that leaves a bad impression and creates a missed opportunity.

With my team The Self Made Millionaires, I have mentors there that will help any downline member out with whatever they need in regards of building their MLM home based business. They said no matter if a person has been with us for 5 weeks, 10 months, or 3 years, they’re there to help no matter what. It just depends on how a downline member paces himself or herself.

When you are a business owner, you know that you have to talk to several people throughout the day and find out which ones are worth your time and who will buy. No matter how good you are doing in getting profits, customers, and people to join your team, there are obstacles that you face. One of those situations you may face, but many don’t realize it, includes constantly being overworked.

You can be working countless hours on building your MLM home based business, but find yourself hitting your head on the wall. The reason why is because this is a business where you are working hard on getting the right people to purchase your products and also join your team, while also going through the fear and objections you face in order to get the results you want. If you think the people who are making millions right now in network marketing have had it easy and never had any challenges, you’re sadly mistaking.

You can be making more money than what you can do with from network marketing, but still feel miserable on the inside. Why is that? Sometimes the people you try to conduct business with are the circumstance. Most of people in this world don’t take action, are insecure, and don’t have huge goals. So when you talk to people who would rather settle with mediocrity than excellence, it can frustrate you cause of the time you’re trying to spend telling people of a financial opportunity you know that’s excellent but they don’t care about. People will frustrate you; upset you, waste your time, hurt your feelings, and won’t come through for you when you need them to. Tough world isn’t it.

Network marketing is a people business. Even if you build a giant organization, don’t expect to be exempt from people. You’ll still be working hard to build your business depending on your goals, and you’ll always build it the same way, through talking to people and training your downline to duplicate results. And when your organization gets bigger, new challenges will arise that you’ll need to be ready for.

The purpose of this post is to influence you to not focus on people all the time. In network marketing you’ll come across thousands of people, and most of them won’t join your primary opportunity. When you focus on the many “No’s” you receive from people, it’ll cause your stomach to turn, and possibly throw in the towel. Instead, you should focus on where you’re headed in the future. You are a part of MLM because you want to do things that you can enjoy that you couldn’t do when working at a job constantly. The ultimate reward you get for working hard is freedom. Wherever you see yourself in the future, capture that in your mind, and you’ll feel peaceful in the process. It’ll overcome the many “No’s” that you get, cause you know you’ll be in a better place in your life than now.

I just came upon this site recently when researching some good MLM articles. This site is called the Distributor Rights Association, an organization that’s devoted to help distributors and independent contractors succeed in MLM and when doing business with other companies.

In October of last year the organization held a Distributor Rights Convention in Las Vegas that offered training on various topics, including the domination of social media and how to best exploit that method of marketing to optimize financial results. By checking out their webpage, you’ll find out the positive testimonials from the people who attended that convention. DRA knows the powerful methods of marketing that network marketers should use today, and is willing to teach those that are a part of their organization to best implement them for maximum results.

In general, the DRA wants to teach network marketers and contractors their rights and how to stay protected in business. Although there is a lot of income potential in network marketing, it doesn’t come without its downsides. Depending on what network marketing company you’re a part of, you can fall victim to a lot of different things, including the company’s option to terminate you at anytime or the company’s option to take your pay at anytime. To find out more on any network marketing company beyond just its line of products and compensation plan, ask for the company’s policies and procedures from any MLM recruiter or your upline and read it thoroughly.

From looking at the DRA benefits, you will know the laws in MLM, which they update regularly.  Learning the legal aspect of business is very important and often overlooked. You’ll also get updates on training and the chance to form true relationships with other distributors. What you will also get, most importantly, is a chance for you to be hear. DRA encourages people to be the voice of the future of MLM, and to be a leader of the MLM industry.

For more information on the Distributor Rights Association, visit www.mlm-dra.org.