Marketing is key to business success - what is your #1 marketing tip?

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  Do you have a mission statement?  If so, what is it and how
  does it help/assist you with your business success?

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I’m about to state the obvious - the key to success for any business, is your clients, your customers, those people who do business with you. And most people will start working with you, or buy something from you because of a service or product you provide that solves a challenge or problem for them. But it is the experience that they get from working with you that will keep them there, and will turn them into raving fans.

The above statement is something that I believe in, and is something that I tell my mentor clients as well as my business building blocks members whenever I can. It’s something that I want to live up to for my readers of this newsletter as well. Reading the results of the survey has really helped me better understand the needs that you have, the challenges that you are facing, and how I can support you in your business growth.

I’ve been where a lot of you are currently at, a new-start up – struggling to understand how to best market your services to your ideal clients, wondering where the next client was coming from, and thinking about where you could actually find these clients. At the five-year plus stage, when my business was growing, I wasn’t sure what my next step would be. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted or needed to do to take my business to that next level that would allow it to grow and develop into what it is today. But at each stage, I was supported by mentors and colleagues who would listen to my questions and concerns, and provide me with the information I needed to keep moving forward.

To give you a snapshot of what you have been telling me from the survey, the following areas are where you would like to see improvements:

· Knowing how to market your product or services - 73.3%
· Getting new customers or clients – 60%
· Taking your business to the next level – 53.3%
· Professional development programs – 40%
· Pricing of products and services – 33.3%
· Achieving work/life balance – 33.3%

You would like further support, ideas and information on:
· Sales,
· Marketing,
· Networking,
· Building strong referrals,
· Understanding clients/customers better,
· Social media, and
· Staying motivated and being supported, to name but a few.

Many of you stated that you would love to work with me, but don’t have the budget to work with me one on one in my Fast Track Success Program. That is okay. Over the next few weeks, I will be letting you know about a group-mentoring program I will be offering to support those of you hungry to move forward. This program will be open to only five business owners and it will be very cost effective. So if you want to know more, or reserve your spot NOW, email me at deb@debpilgrim.com with ‘group-mentoring’ in the subject line, so that you are the first to hear about it.

I am also pulling together leaders within the areas of sales, social media, networking, personal development, internet marketing, web design, client retention, and client satisfaction, to run content-rich programs for you. Most of these will sit within the mentoring programs, and my Business Building Blocks monthly membership calls, but I will also be running some free webinars to support my Biz Booster readers. These experts are also excited to be sharing their information within the article section of Biz Booster as well.

My commitment is to support you in building the business you desire. Please keep talking to me, and sending your questions through via email and I will continue to support you. There are so many great resources out there that I am committed to bring to you the best of this information. I do hope to hear from you soon.
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Yesterday I was skimming through the news headlines on the home page of Ninemsn, when I came across a heading that looked familiar. The heading was “Four steps to regaining self-belief”. The reason that it was familiar was because it was the title of the article I had written for Flying Solo, which has been released last Friday (2nd Sept) on the Flying Solo website.

My curiosity was piqued, and I clicked onto the heading to take a look and see what this article was about. Well, you can imagine my surprise, when I began reading the article and realised that it was in fact my article from Flying Solo. Who would have known that Ninemsn would pick up my article in Flying Solo?

Who is Ninemsn? Well, I’ve taken this directly from their site: “Ninemsn is Australia’s largest online content publisher with 10.3 million people (March ’10) visiting the site each month – reaching 69 per cent of the online population.” To reach a possible 10.3 million people, all it cost me was my time, and knowledge and I want to let you know that it is something that you can do as well.

I encourage most of my mentoring clients to write articles, as it is a great way to establish credibility with clients and prospective clients. To get started, why not use some of the following ideas.

1. Look at some of the issues and challenges your clients are facing at the moment. Write an article discussing these challenges and ways that you would solve them. Put together a tip sheet, a top ten list, or you could us this information to write an article of interest around these challenges. Aim to have the word count in your article at a minimum of 300 words and I would say no longer than 1200 words.

2. Once written, use my ‘rule of three’. By this I mean, post your article in a minimum of three places. One would be your newsletter, a second place could be your blog, and then after that you could try article directories, industry magazines (both online and hard copy), ask your joint venture partners if they would like to use it, and forums to name a few.

There are a number of free article directories out there that you can use to place your articles, a couple that I use are: Ezinearticles; Articlesbase and Selfgrowth.

Research industry magazines, and find the email address of the editor. Write to the editor, letting them know that you have attached an article for their consideration. If it's an editor that I haven’t been in contact with before, I will let them know the current word count, and if this was an article of interest, that I would be happy to increase the word count if they required. Editors that I currently have a relationship with, I will forward them my current articles, tell them that if they would like to use these articles, then I will increase the content to reach their required word count. I find that different magazines have different word count requirements.

3. Track your articles. You can do this by using google alerts to see where your articles are being place. If you place your articles on your blog, make sure that readers are able to forward your articles on as well to all the social media outlets. On my blog site, I use a service called ‘addthis’ and each week I receive an update of what articles have been forwarded, to where, and if there has been any click backs. If an article is being published in one of the magazines I currently write for, I have a specific landing page dedicated to each magazine, so that I can track how many people have gone from reading my article to checking out my website.

There are a number of added benefits of article writing; one is that it is free publicity, especially if your article is picked up for a newspaper article. Media mentions do position you as an expert in your industry and one of the things that I have learnt from my colleagues in PR, is that television/radio producers will scourer the print papers for stories. It also adds weight to your website when you include your media profile, and you could get paid for writing and this does happen – read the next paragraph!

Last year I was working with a mentoring client, who works within the health and wellness industry, her focus with clients is helping them to understand the missing link between mindset, your thoughts and weight loss. In one of our calls, I mentioned to her that I thought it was time for her to begin writing articles and submitting them to various industry magazines. This suggestion was meant with a very firm “No, this is something that I don’t feel I can do.” I explained the reasons that I thought this would benefit her business, and that all it would take was her time and knowledge. She still wasn’t interested, so I decided to let the conversation go at this time. Over the next few months, I would bring the conversation back to article writing and finally she agreed to write her first article. Well, fast forward 12 months and not only is she published in various leading print magazines here in Australia, but she is being paid to write for a health and fitness magazine in the UK. It’s something that she never imagined was possible.

Now matter what you do, it’s time for you to give writing a try, and who knows where you may end up! If you do currently write articles for your newsletters or blog, challenge yourself to make contact with industry magazines, and see what you can have published. I would love to hear what happens for you, so let me know…. Tweet

They turned towards each other, bowed and then the whistle blew – it was time to focus on the task at hand. Concentration was high and the competition had begun, the Dojo was quiet.

A block here, a punch there, another block, there’s a grunt, a kick, another block.

Oh, there’s Mum, I’ll just give her a quick wave, and smile for Dad while I'm at it. I’ll just take a quick look at the other competitors waiting for their turn, there’s my friend Seb, quick smile to him as he waits his turn.

Okay, gotta remember to concentrate back on the competition. Another block, a punch, the whistle blows. It’s all over.

Well that’s how I imagined it sounded in the mind of my five year old, Laura, who was competing in her very first Karate competition on the weekend. What’s a girl (or boy) to do - there was lots happening, not only the competition but there were judges, participants and of course the crowd cheering on the competitors.

Fast forward to Monday, and I was reminded of Laura’s competition when listening to a colleague who was telling me about all these amazing projects she had in the pipeline. She was doing this, doing that, and wondering why things were slipping between her fingers. Her core business was suffering and she was wondering why her new products and services were not flying off the shelf, so to speak.

It sounded as if she was stuck in the second/third of Laura’s competition! Pull together a quick program here, a workshop there, and oh I better remember to focus on what my main business is before the whistle blows.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for pulling together programs, workshops or whatever you need to support your clients' needs. But….

Check for demand. If you are hearing from a few clients that they need something specific – great – but what real need is there? If I am going to take the time, energy and resources to create a program, or add a product or service that will provide solutions to a specific problem, then I want to know that prospects and clients will be knocking down my email to either attend or buy it.

I’m going to test for the demand, and I have to say, this is something that I have learnt the value of over the past year from working with MaryEllen Tribby - ‘Never launch a product by using the “I Know Best” approach’. It’s just not going to work.

Does it fit who you are? And by this I mean your brand. You’ve spent the time identifying your ideal clients, working out the benefits you provide, and you’ve established yourself as the expert or go-to-person for a specific problem or service. Now you want to do a 180 and provide a product or service that really has nothing to do with your core business or your style.

Stop, breathe and remember that you don’t need to be all things to all people. Don’t get caught in the second/third of Laura’s karate competition. Develop new products and services, but do the due diligences to make sure they are best for you, your brand, and your clients. Tweet