Ten Ways to Get Your Marketing Unstuck - Article by C.J. Hayden
Have you ever found yourself knowing exactly what you need to do about marketing your business… and then not doing it? You are not alone. Many self-employed professionals find that the hardest part of marketing isn’t figuring out what to do. What’s hard is actually doing it.

Hidden Profits in Other Companies’ Websites - Article by Frank Traditi
I love to look at company websites. There’s a great deal of value to be found from web surfing that you just can’t get from many other places. You can become educated, entertained, smart, motivated, or even happy. Heck, you might even get all of that from one website!

What You Are Marketing Is Yourself - Article by C.J. Hayden
“Call us today and change your life,” proclaimed the hot pink flyer on the bulletin board. It was signed “Sunrise Hypnotherapy” with a phone number and a blind email address. No practitioner’s name appeared anywhere on the flyer.

Automation is Not a Four-Letter Word - Article by Joan Friedlander
In recent years the purpose of automation has shifted from increasing productivity and reducing costs, to broader issues, such as increasing quality and flexibility. ~ Wikipedia

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Technorati : 28-day plan, Answer Center, Get Clients NOW, Marketing, Professionals

Here is my normal follow-up after my first comment:

Our experience is that a system will always outperform any other approach. Building a plan on where you are is one of the most important processes that you can do. Then we can define your objectives; develop strategies to achieve them, and then institute tactics to carry out your strategies. If your objectives are not being met, your strategies and tactics may need to be changed. But without a baseline and a plan to work from, the process and achievements are only arbitrary.

Systems do not complicate your life, they make it easier. The secret to any good system is how well it can be tailored to what you need NOW. The system is developed and implemented around your needs, not the other way around. An effective marketing process spans from lead generation through sales closure. Pick one area at a time and make a commitment to improve that. You might have a long list, but you have to start somewhere and before too long you’ll have dramatically improved."

As an example, most businesses have no marketing, nor sales process whatsoever. Too often you think of marketing as manipulative tricks to get prospects to notice and respond. The truth is marketing is a process of presenting real value in an attractive, competent and compelling manner. In the marketing process you need to have questions prepared, value points outlined, and an understanding of exactly when to listen and when to ask for action. When a prospect says, "I’ll think about it," they really mean, "You blew it."

So tell me, do you need a SYSTEM, Or do you need to think about it?

Technorati : Duct Tape Marketing , Marketing Funnel. Marketing Plan , Marketing System

Presenters will need to be available to discuss their storyboards on both days of the summit (October 14 & 15) during the morning and afternoon refreshment breaks. This is an excellent method to gain recognition for your process improvement initiatives, at the largest networking event of the year for practitioners, leading experts and senior executives involved with achieving process and business excellence.

The authors of all the accepted storyboard presentations will receive a 30% discount to attend the summit off the full Summit price, and a prize will be presented to the winning poster presentation at the event. Please note, discounts cannot be applied retrospectively, if you have already registered. Download the Summit brochure to view the full program.

In order to be considered, please email an abstract of your presentation proposal to me, claire.arpa@wcbf.com. Abstracts should be up to 250 words in length, outlining the project covered. The deadline for submitting abstracts is Friday August 21, 2009. All applicants will be informed if their storyboard has been accepted by Friday September 4, 2009.

Further details regarding the required format of storyboard presentations will be given to successful presenters. A Storyboard will be approximately 4ft wide and 3 ft high, displayed on tabletops alongside the exhibition.

Technorati : Business Improvement, Conference, Lean, Six Sigma, WCBF

It is quite frequent that in a recession, you become under-staffed. Especially when people start doing jobs they are not accustomed too. The important thing you must remember, busy or not don’t forget your customer. In a down economy having a well thought out DMP can be very cost effective. Example: If you have extra staff and you can remove some of the higher cost sections of the program, direct mail for example, and replace it with a telemarketing campaign. Of course, if you have less staff, you may choose an additional step in your e-mail campaign.

From the SwiftPage folks: “Communicating with your customers in a relevant and timely manner is critical in keeping and creating business. Some marketing approaches allow for a “one size fits all” response to each customer regardless of their interaction with your company. For instance, your customer gets the same response whether they requested more information, filled out a survey or purchased a product or service. This generic communication fails to provide useful information and make key connections with clients as they move through the customer cycle.

Often times you may have a specific series of communications laid out for each type of client, like prospect vs. customer. Profiling your audience and sending specific messages to people based on where they are in the purchase cycle will yield greater results than generic messaging. However, it can be tricky to manage these communications as your clients move from one stage to the next. Manually determining who should be receiving which set of messages and when, often times makes this type of relevant and focused communication impossible.”

In most Drip Marketing, you send information based on the customers response to a particular action. It is highly efficient way of marketing especially if the program is based on an exact reaction of the customer. A quality Drip program is not a basic auto-responder series. It should be set-up so that if someone shows interest such as a click-thru to a whitepaper, that there is the desired response to that action. On the other hand, if an e-mail is send out and there was not a click, they would receive a totally different response. That is where a Drip Marketing Program can be so beneficial.

Technorati : ACT, Customers, Drip Marketing, Swiftpage

· What can you Combine?

· What can you Adapt?

· What can you Modify or Magnify?

· Can you Put to other uses?

· What can you Eliminate or reduce?

· What can you Reverse/Rearrange?

So what would you reverse? This is only a subtle difference to most, but it really is a different mindset. How about sending information based on the customers actions? Let’s say that they attend a certain trade show, win a particular bid, follow a certain group of people or buy a certain product. There are so many ways, especially if we are monitoring their actions on the web that would enable us to get leading indicators about our own product.

What are those triggering points that would cause you to react? Go back to the SCAMPER formula for a few ideas? What is combined with your product? What is eliminated by your product? I encourage you to take a close look at your DMP and figure out how you SCAMPER your DMP and get that drip going a different direction!

Technorati : Drip Marketing, Marketing Funnel, SCAMPER, Swiftpage

1. Set preliminary budget based on tasks decided upon.

2. Estimate competitors’ budget and adjust accordingly.

3. Prepare budget document with rationale of expenses.

4. Use percentage of Sales

The most common method is using percentage of sales. However, what happens if sales go down? The problem you are trying to correct already has less money to begin with. However, it is used time and time again. When using that method, I think many look simply at the industry norm, which is a certain percentage. Take that percentage times your annual revenue. For example:

Annual sales = $1,000,000

Marketing % = 7%

Annual Exp = $70,000

Monthly Exp = $5,800

After that simply take that number and split it up between, what we call the Lead Generation trio: Advertising, PR and Referrals. Even that is probably not that true, because we seldom count referral and PR into our budget. I typically see a calendar with the major promotions scheduled out for about 90 to 180 days and the next 30 to 60 days completed with the smaller promotions. There will be a mix of radio, print, TV, direct mail, displays, etc., most directed at gaining new customers. In recent years, there have been better efforts at extending into our existing customers and tailoring efforts in maintaining them. Further steps have been made towards specific referrals programs developed. They have proven to be highly successful. I would like to take you a step further.

In previous conversations, I have alluded to the Duct Tape Marketing method of Know, Like, Trust, etc and in fact developed my Lean Marketing House with this column being the pillars of the house. But what if you took your budget and developed around this pillar. Take your marketing dollars and define what you are willing to spend to get a customer to know you, like you, trust you, etc. The easiest way to start is to use your past six months. I think it might be quite alarming to see where the money has been spent.

Do you think the same marketing dollars should be spent on getting to know a customer instead of trying to get someone to repeat or refer? Once, you capture a person, learn how many dollars are being spent trying to get them to like and trust you. Or do you leave it to chance?

Technorati : , Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Budget, Planning, System

You pay a significant amount for a sales call, why not reinforce it. If you are making a sales call, maybe even introducing a new line what would you think about this scenario?

Day 1: Send an email out asking for an appointment and to introduce a new line of interest.

Day 3: Call to set appointment a week in advance, minimum.

Day 5: Send e-mail confirming time of appointment, people attending and that a postcard will be arriving soon.

Day 6: Drop postcard in mail that has a link for a download on the new product. You will know if they download it.

Day 9: Send e-mail with appointment confirmation and introduction to a webinar on this subject several weeks away.

Day 10: Sales Call explaining whitepaper on "How it would apply to their business" and "How the Next Webinar might assist them."

Day 12: Send survey which will enable you to channel them as a cold, warm, hot lead.

Now, this is where you will channel the prospect into the drip program that you choose. Let’s say you have a Hot, Warm or Cold prospect. This will determine the ready-made program that you have.

The cold needs more nurturing or maybe not even need the new product. We drop him into a program that emphasizes the applications, testimonials, and maybe a little more glamorous look of the product or service. We will stretch this program out over a 90-day period with a little less frequent personal contact.

The warm prospect seems to be interested but has no need that will accelerate the purchase decision. We combine some of the items above with educational information, charts, graphs that demonstrate the savings and more practical applications of the product/service. Follow-up in person or through a phone call and try to move them into a presentation. The presentation could be a webinar, download or in person. A survey follows that will demonstrate where they need to stay segmented.

The hot prospect can see the opportunity but still needs to justify expenses. We also need to accelerate the learning curve of others in the organization. We put them on the testimonial track and start pounding home the saving s of the product. This particular program weighs heavily on personal contact, video and demonstration. A survey follows that will demonstrate where they need to stay segmented.

We have not tried to be very specific but just tried to demonstrate the ability to segment your prospects effectively and maximize your sales person’s time and efforts. All of these functions can practically be handled automatically and/or by an inside person. The sales person is in complete control of what the prospect is receiving, the window they have to call and the follow-up necessary. Sounds like a plan?

Technorati : Swiftpage , act , channel management , drip , drip marketing , duct tape marketing

What do you do when you get a new lead for your business? Do you have an automated system that kicks in that will give you the best opportunity to nurture and develop that lead into a solid prospect? Or, increase your conversion rate? However you obtain new leads, it is important to follow-through with them and in a consistent way. This is Drip Marketing technology. With a Drip system you can send series of correspondence walking them through the marketing funnel, addressing questions and promoting the benefits of your offering. You can also use this technology to tell you who has interacted most with your emails so that you can follow-up and close business with your most interested prospects.

Let me start with a basic example of a program to solicit someone to an event that can be completely automated.

Day 1: Receive introduction to a perspective client through some type of venue: Ex: Trade Show

Day 3: Introduction Email - This initial email introduces you and sends him an invitation to download a white-paper of some type that has particular value to this client.

Day 4: The person downloads the white-paper triggering a campaign for the particular download. If he does not, he is activated into a call list for follow-up.

Day 8: Another e-mail introducing him to the event and offer a registration.

Day 10: Call to discuss the white-paper and the upcoming event but you have a script ready based on whether he has registered or not for workshop.

Day 14: Postcard sent discussing the needs being addressed at the event and other ways that you may interact with the client.

Day 21: Survey sent if registered for event to find the most important issues facing them regarding your topic. If non-registered, e-mail will include a breakdown of event with testimonials from past participants.

Day 27: A follow-up call to insure participation and give last call warning if non-registered.

Day 28: Follow-up e-mail if non-registered.

Day 30: Event

The best part of Drip Marketing is that you can create any type of series ahead of time that is segmented specifically for each type of prospect. You just need to set the system up once and then gain trust by inserting new leads into a campaign suited exactly to their current needs. Let Drip Marketing handle the manual tasks. If you find better ways that work or acquire new tools and tips, you can simply insert them. The key is that a system is followed allowing you to measure your success and improve upon them.

A Category with similar subject matter: Marketing Funnel.

A press release on this subject.

Technorati : act, drip, drip-marketing, swiftpage, system