small business marketing ideas – Page 9

November 2, 2011

7 Benefits of Focus in Small Business Marketing

Focus is a key component for small business success. When we write about focus in the context of small business, we are talking about your focus on a target market, on specific offerings for that market (products and services) and on specific marketing strategies.

Without focus, you are attempting to be all things to everybody, and that is a recipe for failure.

This article is not about how to decide your focus, that’s another issue. What I am exploring here are seven (7) benefits of focus in the hope of assisting you to build and maintain your own focus.

1. Focus builds commitment

When you decide your focus, you are immediately inspired to action. You suddenly see a way ahead and your goal is seen as achievable. The act of choice – deciding what to do and what not to do – frees up your creative capacity and enables you to move forward. The experience of progress builds commitment to your chosen course of action.

2. Focus saves time

Focus stops you from trying to be everything to everybody. Trying to fulfil everyone’s needs is both time consuming and exhausting. Focus saves you time because it enables you to let go of a lot of things and concentrate on the things that are important.

3. Focus overcomes information overload

In this era of endless information, your focus helps you to decide what to look at and what to avoid. It becomes a benchmark for deciding relevance. For example, I used to focus on affiliate marketing and I would read everything I saw about the subject (a massive area). Now that I have re-focused onto small business marketing, I can let all the affiliate marketing information pass me by.

4. Focus attracts others

When you are focused you demonstrate commitment, enthusiasm and energy – all personal qualities that attract others. Think of someone who is really focused and recall the energy they emit and how much easier it is to be attracted to them and their business In contrast, think of someone who is “all over the place” in their activity. This lack of focus makes it really hard to get on board and get energised by what they do. In fact, this kind of person can actually repel you because they tend to “suck up” your own energy because their energy is so dissipated.

5. Focus develops disciplined energy and enhances productivity

You have to have discipline to focus your energy in the first place. Then, as you grow and maintain your focus, you strengthen your discipline and you begin to develop productive habits. Your deepening focus enables you to ward off distractions, to set priorities and to choose activities that will lead more directly to your small business goals. Focus brings into play the power of concentration.

6. Focus develops expertise and Trusted Authority status

Through your focus, you are better able to increase your knowledge and understanding of your target market and their needs. You feel more committed to use your expertise and core competence to help your customers solve their real, everyday problems. Through this assistance with problem resolution you are able to build your status as a Trusted Authority – one who is not just an expert but who has demonstrated the capacity to use their expertise to help customers solve their problems. So you become the Trusted Authority in your marketplace.

7. Focus creates wealth

Focus enables you to direct your energy and creativity to identifying and meeting your customers’ needs – the foundation for real small business growth and personal wealth. As a friend of mine, Jennifer Ledbetter, often states in the context of small business marketing:

If you are willing to do for a year what others won’t, you can spend a lifetime doing what others CAN’T.

Focus brings multiple rewards. It builds your commitment and develops your Trusted Authority status. Through focusing you save time, overcome information overload and attract others. Focus helps you to develop disciplined energy, to improve your productivity and, in the final analysis, to create wealth.

November 1, 2011

Creating a Free E-Book from Your Articles and Blog Posts

One of the most effective forms of small business marketing is creating and marketing a free e-book. These e-books can be developed very easily by drawing together articles or blog posts that cover a common theme and then organizing them into a logical sequence.

I have recently completed an e-book, “Building a Team through Performance Conversations”, for my own small business. It is available for download via our website at the following URL;

http://www.meritsolutions.com.au/products/

Identify the purpose behind your free e-book

The purpose behind my free e-book is threefold:

create awareness of our business, Merit Solutions Australia
promote our training program
promote a specific training program focused on performance conversations

To achieve these ends, our website address is prominently displayed on the front cover and on the footer of each page. The “about the author” page includes details of our training programs. Reference is made to the performance conversation workshop throughout the text and these references are hyper-linked to the sales page.

The purpose behind your free e-book should drive the length, focus, format and overall design. You can add images, illustrations, diagrams, mindmaps and screenshots to add interest, aid understanding, assist memory retention and facilitate action by the reader. It is important that the images reinforce your content and do not distract from it.

The “Building a Team” e-book is my 6th free e-book and I find that, as with any writing, creating an e-book gets easier every time.

Converting your free e-book to a PDF Document

Typically, e-books are written as Microsoft Word documents in the first instance and then converted to a PDF format. The PDF format enables easy upload and download, retains formatting and facilitates security over your content (you can lock out the facility to highlight and copy).

If you have 2007 or 2010 Microsoft Office, you can save your Word document as a PDF file with clickable links. There are many free PDF converters on the Internet but most of these display hyperlinks that are not clickable, so you lose one of the major advantages of a PDF file.

However, there are paid programs that have all the required features. A low-cost option ($10) that I have used is eWriter Pro. This software has the following features:

You can create your content directly inside the software or just paste it in from your text editor (like MS Word).
You can include active hyperlinks to websites or email (clickable links)
You can password-protect your PDF document (for security purposes)
You can disable the copy/paste function or print function to prevent people thieving your e-book
You can easily insert pictures, footers & text frames
You can include page breaks & automatically add page numbers and footers
You can manage, store and categorize all your ebooks, articles and works-in-progress from within the software.
You can create an unlimited number of full-featured PDF files. No restrictions, no royalties, no 3rd-party ads.

So there is no limitation on how many free e-books you can create and distribute to market your small business and your products and service.

October 31, 2011November 8, 2011

Small Business Marketing Mistakes (1): Outpacing Your Customers

In a recent webinar, Greg Habstritt, creator of the Trusted Authority Formula, identified a number of mistakes in small business marketing made by entrepreneurs and small business owners. He went on to describe a fundamental mistake that many small business owners make – a mistake that he called. “The Field of Dreams Marketing”.

This mistake arises when you assume you know what your market wants and then create a product or service based on these untested assumptions. If you have missed the mark with your assumptions, you find that your sales are poor. This is a very common mistake in small business marketing and I know I have been guilty of this one.

The core problem for small business marketing is that sometimes your knowledge and understanding of the needs of your customers outpaces their own perceptions. You have probably spent a lot of time working with customers, analyzing your market and offering a range of products/services. Out of these interactions, you have identified some recurring, foundational problems. Then based on this knowledge and understanding, you launched a new product/service – but the market did not buy.

Your customers have not arrived at the same conclusions that you have in relation to possible solutions to their problems. There is a mismatch between your perception and theirs about their problems (needs) and possible solutions. Until you demonstrate that you are meeting their needs (as perceived by them), you cannot influence their (buying) behavior.

Sometimes, this mismatch in perception can be addressed by patient re-education – an approach that Greg Habstritt and others adopt for product launches via a progressive series of webinars, videos, workbooks and podcasts. The goal here is ultimately to have your potential customers share the same perception you have about their core problem(s) and possible solutions (reflected in the program/product being launched). Donald Schon (1984), in “The Reflective Practitioner”, described this approach as helping people to “re-frame the problem”.

However, this re-education approach can be very time-consuming and costly and you need an expensive product to make it worthwhile and considerable credibility (Trusted Authority status) to be able to pull it off. More often than not, small business marketers don’t have the funds, patience or time to undertake such re-education. Instead they expend time, money and effort on creating a new product that very few people see the need for – and hence very few sales result again, if any.

A cheaper and more reliable approach is to find out what your customers want – what they perceive their needs to be. This can be achieved by surveys or via discussions with customers (by phone, Skype, face-to-face). The starting point is to find out what their “greatest hurt” is – that is, where they are hurting the most in relation to the potential products and services that you are equipped to offer.

In my studies of organizational psychology (1983 – many years ago), I learned that changes in human behavior are motivated either by a desire for pleasure or desire to reduce pain, the latter being the stronger driver of the two. If you can tap into what is “hurting” your customers, you are better able to create products or services that meet their perceived needs.

Small business marketing options where you have outpaced your customers

Even if you have created a product that “outpaces your customers”, there are some options you can explore to recover from this mistake.

Here are some small business marketing options you could use:

Offer free access to some of your key customers to enable them to gain exposure to what the product has to offer
Undertake market research to ascertain the core issues as perceived by the customers (this may lead to re-naming or re-orienting your product or creating an entirely new product)
Develop a series of products as a marketing funnel leading to the “outpacing” product as the final offering
Develop a re-education program incorporating an e-book, podcasts, workbook and webinars that lead to the “outpacing” product
Design an introductory product that focuses on where the customer experiences “hurt” – and on-sell from this new product
Break the “outpacing” product into separate components that customers can directly relate to.

The solution to remedying this small business marketing mistake may lie in adopting one or more of these options. The ultimate choice of a small business marketing strategy should be grounded in the business vision and business goals.

This discussion highlights one of the core mistakes that you can make in small business marketing and suggests some options for redressing the mistake. It also reinforces the need for market research as a central requirement for small business marketing.

October 29, 2011

How to Use Wizzley to Market Your Small Business Online

Wizzley provides a great platform for you to market your small business, your personal profile and your products and services.

Wizzley is an online writer’s community that incorporates social networking and article writing/article marketing. The writer’s platform is easy to use with a range of modules that can be plugged into an article with a click – the net result is a potentially, very attractive multi-media presentation:

You can embed videos and images and incorporate the RSS feed from your blog. The design options (e.g. two-column presentation, different themes and colors) add to the flexibility of the site for small business owners who want to present their business in the best possible light.

Jimmie, a top author on Wizzley, provides a great exemplar of how a small business, Backermann’s Bakery, can be attractively presented on the site:

http://wizzley.com/backermann-bakery-whiteville-tn/

Jimmie has creatively used the two-column presentation, video, variable-sized images, Google Maps, the duel module and the Amazon affiliate module. Her presentation, with delectable images of baking products, makes you want to visit the Bakery.

Wizzley is a free platform for you to market your small business and present your business and yourself in an attractive light.

October 28, 2011October 28, 2011

Using Flickr Images for Content Creation

Flickr photos are often high quality and make superb images for online content creation such as blog posts, e-books, articles or videos. The following discussion provides some ideas on how to use Flickr for content creation for small business marketing.

1. Check license arrangements

Before you use a Flickr image make sure you check the license agreement. You need to be aware whether or not the image can be remixed (to create a derivative product) and whether or not you can use the image (remixed or not) for commercial use. The ShareAlike component of a license means that, “If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.” The range of licenses looks like this:

Attribution License
Attribution-NoDerivs License
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Attribution-NonCommercial License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
Attribution-ShareAlike License

2. Advise when you have used an image

In all the above licenses, you have to make an attribution to the originator in the form they request – usually a hyperlink to their Flickr site showing their username and photo title. Of late, I have been making the habit of commenting on the photo I use and leaving a link to my blog post or other URL where I have used the image. Often, the originator will respond with some form of appreciation.

3. Be creative in your use of Flickr images (within the terms of the license)

There are endless ways you can use Flickr images. A common way is to integrate them in a PowerPoint presentation and make an attribution list at the end. You could use them within an eBook (abiding by the “fair use” rule). Wizzley, a writer’s community, has a built-in module for displaying Flickr photos which provides a range of options. The most frequent use of Flickr photos is in blog posts and a number of the top bloggers illustrate their posts with Flickr photos.

4. Showcase a photographer via Squidoo

If you come across an outstanding photographer or one who is creating images relevant to your focus/niche, you could build a Squidoo lens to showcase their photography. When I was working towards my 50^th Squidoo lens (GiantSquid) I developed a series of lenses focused on the towns/beaches on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland (the home State for my small business). In the process I came across the stunning photography of BarbaraJH on Flickr. Barbara lives at Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast and at last count had more than 7,700 photos on Flickr with 81 sets. Her photography is exquisite, so I asked her whether she would agree to my building a Squidoo lens to showcase her work. She readily agreed. The lens provides a great insight into the quality of her photography:

http://www.squidoo.com/BarbaraJH-Maroochydore

Barbara’s public comment on seeing the early version of the completed lens was:

Thank you Ron, you’ve made a simply wonderful showcase of my photos, hopefully others will now get to enjoy seeing just a glimpse of the beautiful area in which I live.

Her personal appreciation via email was particularly moving. This is one example of how you can build social equity through your innovative content creation using Flickr. You can imagine that if your small business was located at Maroochydore, illustrating a top Flickr photographer from that area could bring a lot of traffic to your personal profile(s).

Flickr makes it easy for you to create online content with quality illustrations.