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Maketing tips

by Rashon Shaw Marketing

Top Marketing Tips

For 17 years, I have been helping small and medium sized business owners to make massively more sales than ever before.

Here are my Top Marketing Tips, which anyone can use to help them achieve better sales results. If you want great marketing tips delivered for free to your inbox, click here.

1. Throw that old marketing guide in the bin!

If you want to avoid wasting stacks of money and missing countless sales opportunities, throw your old marketing guides and audio programs in the recycling bin!

You need to know what works today; where even the smallest business can advertise itself to millions online for less than the cost of a one-off trade journal advert – AND – where you can mail a million potential clients in a few hours for just pennies.

2. Content marketing – Learn how to use content to market your business!

Content marketing works. In fact, it works REALLY well. In 2011, I generated almost £140,000 in fees from this blog, exclusively through Content Marketing.

You may or may not be familiar with the phrase “Content Marketing”, yet you visit content marketing sites every time you access the Internet. When you visit news sites, entertainment sites of blogs like this, which offer business advice, you are visiting a site that uses content to market itself. Content Marketing can successfully be used to market any type of business and it is unbeatable when it comes to attracting new clients, sales leads, inquiries and subscribers.

Briefly, here’s how Content Marketing works:

You build and market a website and fill it with FREE information that has real value to your prospective clients, whilst offering them the opportunity to purchase goods, services (or both), which are closely linked to the information you give away.

For instance, on this blog I provide thousands of marketing ideas and regular, valuable, free marketing advice. People read the information, use the ideas and share what they find here with their friends. Then, some of those people see the quality of my information and decide to hire me, when they need expert marketing help. Others buy my audio program and last year alone, those incomes were close to £140,000. That income was all thanks to inquiries and product sales I achieved, through Content Marketing.

Over the past 17 years, I have spoken about Content Marketing to thousands of people. The most common question they ask is a version of this:

“Hang on Jim. If I freely give all this valuable Content Marketing information away, surely people will simply do the job themselves?”

I answer by explaining that there are 3 groups of people (in general), who will read your Content Marketing; blog posts, newsletters and social networking updates etc.

These are:

The first group is small. They are what I call serial freebie seekers. These people never ever pay for professional help. They were never prospective clients, so you lose nothing.
The second group is the largest. These people will try and do something themselves, but will hire professional help if they are not getting the results they need. They value genuine expertise.
The third group is the smallest. These are the rare people, who value their time and also ‘get’ that by hiring an expert to do something correctly for them, it works out a lot less expensive, the results are better and things happen faster.

In short: No one in the first group was going to spend a dime with you anyway. You lost nothing by giving them free information. Some of the people in the second group will use your information and have a go at doing the job for themselves, whilst others in the group will see that they need expert help, and some of those people will hire you. With the third group, if you demonstrate through your Content Marketing that you truly are an expert in your field, you become massively more likely to get a call from them when they need help. They already know all about you and your work. They trust you.

Content Marketing is a huge subject, which I cover here on the blog regularly. If you want to make sure you never miss a post, click here and get future posts delivered direct to your inbox, for FREE.

3. Email marketing – start using email marketing NOW!

It’s a fact: Email marketing is extremely cost effective and one of the most powerful marketing tool available to small businesses. This is because it provides predictable results and costs little or nothing to use.

Here are just a few things for you to consider, before you start using email marketing.

I strongly recommend that you build your own email database, rather than buy one from one of those list broking companies. The best way to start building your subscriber list, is to ask all your existing clients and contacts if you can have their email address. Never just add people to your email list. You need permission, otherwise they will regard your emails as spam. Then, ask if you can contact them from time to time via email with a newsletter or special offers or announcements. This will get you your initial list and give you something to get started with.

You also need to have an email sign-up box on your website. This needs to be easy to read and positioned in an uncluttered area of your site, which everyone will see. I offer a free email version of this blog, which people sent to them and the sign up box is clearly positioned on the top right of the site. This position works extremely well and people use it all day every day.

If you are asking people to subscribe to your newsletter, I also suggest you offer them something of genuine value, in return for joining your subscriber list. For example, when I was writing my newsletter, I used to offer a free ebook. I also advise that you only ask for people to give you their email address and not their whole life story. Every additional piece of information you ask for, will reduce your sign-up numbers. It’s also really important to let people know you will never, ever pass on their email details to anyone. I built a newsletter readership of over 20,000 targeted subscribers using that approach.

I also recommend you only send one email message every 7 to 14 days. That’s what I did with my newsletter, because people hate being inundated with information; even if it’s great information! As a direct result of not bombarding people with emails, people looked forward to receiving them and very few people asked to be removed from my subscriber list.

Finally, (and this is very important) you must ask your readers to forward your emails on to their contacts. If the content is good enough, they will – but never assume anything, always ask them. Include a message at the end of every newsletter, which says; “if you have had this email forwarded to you by a friend and you would like to receive a regular copy, you can join our readership here.” (Then link from that text, to the newsletter sign up page on your site.)

I also recommend you learn and abide by the rules governing email marketing in your country.

4. Build a well-connected network

One of the biggest myths in business is that you must have a large network if you want to succeed. In fact, you need just 5 or 10 people to begin with, as I explain here.

The reality is that the size of your network is not what’s important. It’s the influence of the people within your network that counts.

IF MY NETWORK has 1000 people BUT they lack influence, it will have a commercial value of close to zero.
IF YOUR NETWORK has just 10 people BUT they are motivated and have real influence, it will have a massive commercial value to you.

Stop wasting your time swapping business cards at networking events. The people attending these events are there to sell to you, not to buy from you and very, very few well-connected people waste their time attending them. None of the influential people I know or have met over my 25 years in marketing, network at these events. The best networkers have discovered out that the way to get connected to the right people, is to deliberately target them.

Here’s a suggestion: Draw up a list of the 30 most influential people in your marketplace. These people could include high quality prospective clients or maybe influential introducers; introducers are people who can recommend you to lots of buyers. Then, put a plan together that will allow you to EARN their attention. This targeted approach takes time, but the rewards are enormous. Don’t believe me? Okay – Think how different your business would look, of you had already done this, and you could now pick up the phone and talk to the most influential people in your industry! It’s a game-changer.

5. Internet marketing – start taking your website seriously

Most small businesses are unaware that they could receive stacks of high quality enquiries, leads, phone calls and sales from interested prospective clients; if only they had a professionally designed website that has been search engine optimised by a proven SEO expert.

When a website is professionally optimised, it’s like moving a little shop from an unused dirt road in the middle of nowhere and relocating it BANG IN THE MIDDLE of Oxford Street or 5th Avenue.

Something else you need to know: Almost everyone now uses the Internet to ‘check out’ a potential service provider; before deciding whether to do business with them or not! That includes the people YOU market your services to. So, what is your website ‘telling’ them about your business?

Your website is a unique part of you marketing in one really important respect: it alone has the power to either kill or to supercharge the response rates of all your OTHER marketing activities. So, if you send a mailshot for example, be aware that the people that were interested in what you offered will visit your website BEFORE deciding to contact you (or not!) This means the quality and content of your website has to encourage people to completely trust you and see you in a wholly professional light.

If your marketing hasn’t generated the response rates you hoped for, remember, the people who ‘were’ going to contact you visited your website first. What kind of message did it give them?

6. Match your fees to your promises

You cannot promise the marketplace a high quality service and yet charge a bargain-basement fee! If you do, you will send people a mixed-message and it will lose you business every time.

Everyone knows that quality never comes cheap; that if something looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true! Make your services as valuable to the marketplace as possible and then charge accordingly.

Here are 3 articles, which show you how to sell your services to the best potential clients, for the highest fees:

How to attract the best clients and the highest fees – Part 1.

How to attract the best clients and the highest fees – Part 2.

How to attract the best clients and the highest fees – Part 3.

7. Use ‘attraction marketing’ and not pursuit marketing

I am sure you will have noticed what happens whenever a beautiful woman or a handsome man walks into a crowded room or a bar? People look at them. In fact, some people will actually walk over to them and offer them a drink or strike up a conversation with them. The reason we call these kind of physically striking people ‘attractive’ is that they literally attract the attention and also the interest of other people.

So, you might be wondering at this point, what this has to do with you and your marketing? The most successful businesses ALL use the same power of attraction I just highlighted, in order to attract sales, clients readers or customers. The most successfully marketed businesses gain the attention and interest of potential clients by making themselves attractive.

For example
I rely exclusively on attraction marketing for 100% of my sales income. How? Simple: People find this blog ‘attractive’, so they recommend and forward it to their contacts, their colleagues and their friends. This, in turn, helps me attract more people. These new people then do the same etc, etc…

Without spending anything on ANY form of advertising, (pay-per-click, affiliate marketing or anything else), there are now millions of people who know all about my ability to help them produce great sales results.

So, whenever my readers decide that they want someone to help them make more sales, guess what? Yes, they give me a call or send me an email. I attract clients rather than pursue them, which is great because people HATE being chased or pursued. Spend a day doing cold-calling and you will learn very quickly just how much people HATE being pursued.

Most businesses get it the wrong way around. They choose to ‘pursue’ new clients and even though people are not responding to their letters, emails or calls; they just keep on grinding away regardless.

8. Do some competitor research

It’s impossible to effectively sell or market your services unless you have researched your competitors. You need to know what offers, guarantees, prices or fees you are selling against, in order to make YOUR offering the most attractive to potential clients.

In my experience, business owners often assume that the service they offer to potential clients is superb, when in reality it’s pretty average, when compared to what their competitors are offering. One of the reasons for this, is that a key way service providers gather feedback on their competitors, is when they speak with former clients of their competitors. An accountant, for example, speaking with the disgruntled, former client of one of her competitors is likely to get a very biased, worst case scenario view.

The key is to find out what you’re really up against and THEN BEAT IT by adding massive value.

9. Joint Ventures

Sometimes known as a J.V, a Joint Venture is where you and another business or person get together to (usually) cross-market your services. The key to Joint Venture success, is to find someone credible, who offers a non-conflicting product or service to the exact same profile of person or business as you do.

So, if you sell recruitment services to the hospitality industry and they sell employee benefits packages to the hospitality industry – BINGO! They can include one of your flyers or letters in one of their mailings and you can do the same for them; everybody wins. Avoid doing a Joint Venture with anyone who contacts you via email, unless of course you know them or can check them out. If in doubt, leave it.

10 Endorsed Relationships

An endorsed relationship is similar to a joint venture – But with a massive difference: The person you do the venture with actually gives you their professional or personal endorsement. This is marketing gold dust.

For example: Rather than just slipping one of YOUR marketing flyers in with one of THEIR client mailings (as they would in a Joint Venture), they actually write to their clients and give you their full endorsement.

An endorsed relationship is one of the most powerful marketing tools on the planet. I have seen endorsed mail shots and emails return a 90% positive response rate.

11. Don’t mistake movement for progress

I have worked with thousands of businesspeople and found something amazing. The owners of under performing businesses almost always work just as hard, and sometimes even harder, than the owners of successful ones. At first glance, this doesn’t seem to make sense – until you dig a little deeper and realise that the reason their hard work is getting them nowhere, is that they mistake movement for progress.

In other words, they work hard and put in a huge number of hours, doing the wrong things! A well written advertisement, placed in the wrong section of the wrong publication will still fail, no matter how hard you work at it.

They think that the harder they work, the more successful they will be; as if rowing a boat with all your strength in the wrong direction, will still magically get you to the right destination.

If you find yourself working hard on your marketing and NOT getting the sales results you want, STOP! Make sure you are doing the right things, then ensure you are doing them correctly. If you are not already doing any of the above marketing activities – give them a go because we already know they work extremely well. That’s a great place to start.

Finally

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