Marketing

What Is Your Very Most Important Business Message?

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What’s the very most important message to share effectively in your business, the one message that makes the difference between either creating conversations that lead to clients, referrals, and cash; or the message that turns people off entirely?

You’ll find my answer in this video. (Hint: It’s how well you answer the What do you do? question.)

Get this one message right and you open the door to opportunity. Get it wrong and that door can slam in your face.

If you would like to feel more confident and authentic when answering that question, and to improve how people respond to you, I invite you to join my fun and free 5-day challenge, Effortless Elevator Pitch, taking place on October 8-12.

Simply click the following link to join in the excitement, while upgrading your message to a whole new level.

http://EffortlessPitch.com

You will be amazed at what you will accomplish in a short amount of time per day for 5 short days.

I look forward to sharing this adventure with you.

Please feel free to share the link for the challenge with those you know who may also want to speak about what they do in a more engaging and effective way. http://EffortlessPitch.com

Do Your Voicemail Messages Get the Results You Want?

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You may not consider that leaving a voicemail message is public speaking, but it really is.

Think about it for a minute.

You are communicating a message to someone else with the goal of getting a particular result, most often a return phone call.

Do you ever wish that people would be more reliable about responding to you and to your messages?

Here’s the crucial question: Do you actually make it easy for them to do so?

To double check if that is so, I invite you to watch this edition of my Public Speaking Tips & Tricks series.

Along the lines of done is better than perfect, the one thing I would improve in the sample message I share in the video, would be to suggest a specific date and time to meet. That might possibly make it somewhat more likely that someone would actually return your call.

(No wonder people resort to texting as an alternative! The response rate tends to be much higher, even if the message is much less informative.)

Do you have any particular tips or tricks that have worked well for you; or any other topics you would like me to cover in this series? If so, please share them.

 

Why Do We Call It BLACK Friday?

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For people who are ardent shoppers and deal-finders, there is nothing black about the day after Thanksgiving in the United States (and unfortunately now the actual day of Thanksgiving itself) that feels black.

After all, that is the time when bargain-hunters will line up for hours in advance in order to get first crack at various deals in their favorite stores.

I have a relative (who shall forever remain nameless) whose strategy for a favorite store that is open all night, is to arrive at the store hours earlier than the 6:00 am start of Black Friday sales, pick out everything she wants to buy, and then find a place to hang out all night (preferably sitting) with the friend who accompanies her, and then go to check out right at 6:00 am, when the sale prices kick in.

So where does the term Black Friday actually come from, when for dedicated shoppers such as my relative, it’s one of the brightest days of the year?

It’s actually an accounting term. If you have a calculator with two colors of ink, added numbers are in black, and subtracted numbers are in red.

A business that is in debt is said to be in the red. A business that is profitable is said to be in the black.

For retail businesses that are in the red for much of the year, the sales on the day after Thanksgiving are crucial to putting those businesses back in the black; hence the term Black Friday.

So what does all of this have to do with running your own business?

Simply put, would you prefer that your business run in the black for most or all of the year?

If so, then figuring out your marketing calendar for the year, including when you are going to promote your products, and when you are going to make special offers, is something to start planning right now, before next year starts.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to start on the path to a more consistently profitable year:

  1. What worked really well this year ?
  2. Of those items, which ones would it be a good idea to promote again, and possibly upgrade, next year?
  3. Where are the holes in your marketing and profit picture?
  4. What are some of the new items that you can develop to fill those holes?
  5. Working backward from the dates of those promotions, what are the tasks that need to be added to your schedule in order to get the necessary work done without putting yourself under undue stress and pressure?
  6. What help do you need to get those jobs done?
  7. Who are the right people to help you?

If those last two questions gave you a queasy sensation in your stomach, you may perhaps suffer from the do-it-yourself syndrome. I am very familiar with that particular challenge, as I suffer from it myself.

Here are the three things I tell myself when my do-it-yourself  habit tries to reassert itself:

  1. If I don’t get the help I really need, the chances are that the job won’t get done at all.
  2. Delegate is not a dirty word.
  3. Done is better than perfect.

Finally, it’s good to remember Benjamin Franklin’s words of wisdom on this subject:

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!

Do You Know the #3 Worst Possible Marketing Mistake?

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If not making it easy (or even possible) for people to contact you is the #1 worst marketing mistake, and not making it easy (and possible) for you to contact potential clients or customers is the #2 worst marketing mistake, then what could the #3 worst possible marketing mistake be?

Allow me to ask you what might turn out to be some painful questions.

When you get back home or to your office after an event with business cards from potential clients or customers in your pocket or purse, what do you do with them?

  • Do you note the date and place when and where you met each person?
  • Do you write any notes to give you a clue what to say to that person in order to further build the relationship?
  • Do you follow up with the people you met in a timely manner?
  • Or do the cards end up in your probably never pile, unlikely ever to be touched again until you finally decide to throw them out?

So, as you may have already guessed, the #3 worst possible marketing mistake is not to follow up with people you meet, some of whom may well have the potential to become your very best clients or customers.

These days, there are many ways to follow up. Have some fun experimenting and then choosing the one(s) that work best with your desired audience. These methods can include:

  • Invitations to connect on social media, including LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. (depending on where your people like to gather)
  • Phone calls inviting people to continue the conversation with a virtual or actual coffee date
  • Handwritten notes acknowledging that you are glad to have met them
  • Video emails, using platforms such as mailvu.com

All three marketing mistakes are examples of letting opportunities slip through the cracks.

I invite you to take a look at your modus operandi and check out where you need to upgrade your systems; so that you can enjoy the benefits of successfully connecting with your ideal clients and customers.

Both you and your bottom line will be a lot cheerier if you do.

Do You Know the #1 Worst Possible Marketing Mistake – Part 2

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Making it difficult, if not impossible, for people to contact you, is the #1 worst possible marketing mistake. Even when someone wants to contact you, if that person doesn’t have your contact information easily available, it probably means that you have lost a potential client, customer, referral partner, or joint venture partner.

Discovering that fact inspired me to create my number one most important rule of marketing:

ALWAYS make it easy for people to contact you!

In Part 1 of this series, I gave examples of how to avoid this #1 mistake in your written materials, such as reports, transcripts of calls, copies of slides, etc.; as well as how to provide clear contact information in a voicemail message in order to greatly enhance the possibility that someone will actually return your call.

Now comes the trickier part of how to avoid this mistake. It is when you are giving a presentation or a talk, especially to a large group of people.

Here is the very useful suggestion that I learned when I was being a certified as an adult trainer by the head trainer of the Girl Scouts of America.

Give people a written outline of your presentation, with a few key words or phrases included, plus plenty of space for people to fill in blanks and write notes.

This handout gives you the perfect place to provide your contact information for all attendees at the event. The title and your name can be in the header on each page, and your contact information in the footer of each page.

You will enjoy several significant benefits from providing outlines for all attendees at your events:

  • A well-designed outline gives everyone the message that you are a professional and an expert in your field;
  • When people are writing notes about your presentation, they are reinforcing the value of your information in their minds (selling themselves on your value as well);
  • Both filling in blanks in an outline and writing notes make it much easier for your listeners to retain the pertinent points you especially want them to remember;
  • And of course, your contact information on every pages makes it super easy for people interested in your products or services to contact you.

While preparing a professional looking outline and getting it printed takes both thought and time, that investment of thought and time (and printing costs) is an investment in the on-going and ever-increasing success of your business.

When you always make it easy for people to contact you, you may find business dropping happily into your lap, instead of you having to continually go out searching for it. That sure sounds like a good deal to me!

Do You Know the #1 Worst Possible Marketing Mistake? – Part 1

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A number of years ago, I ran across a truly excellent informational piece on the Internet. Since I was too busy to read and absorb it just then, I printed it out so that I could read it at my (laughingly called) leisure, and then contact the author about her excellent work.

When I finally got around to reading the article, I did find it as valuable as I thought it would be; however, when I got to the last page and was invited to contact the author, that invitation consisted of two words: Click here.

Two more useless words were never written! This was especially true  since the author’s name was nowhere to be found in her report. I even reread it to double check.

That is when I created My Number One Most Important Rule of Marketing:

ALWAYS make it easy for people to contact you!

So how does this rule play out in practical terms?

In your written materials:

In your free reports, transcripts of calls, printouts of slides, etc., include a footer on every page that includes your name, email, and phone number. (You can get a Google phone number if you wish to screen out nuisance calls.).

It is very possible that people may only print out the one page of your document that truly interests them. Don’t lose out on potential clients or customers because they are unable to find you after the fact.

When leaving a voicemail message:

Have you ever had the experience of someone leaving you a message in a normal tone of voice and then galloping so fast over the phone number that it was virtually impossible to hear it clearly, let alone write it down, even after listening to it a second or third time?

Or have you ever had to search for a pen and piece of paper upon which to write the name and number of someone you wished to call back?

Here are some guidelines for making it easy for people to get your contact information when you leave a voicemail message.

  1. Begin your message by saying your name and your phone number slowly enough for someone to write them down!
  2. At the conclusion of your message, repeat your name  and your phone number slowly enough for someone to write them down!
  3. The graceful way to do this is to use the word again and simply to say, Again this is (your name) and my phone number is 1  2  3  –  4  5  6 – 7  8  9  0.
  4. The word again alerts the listener to have the pen and paper he or she scurried to find at the ready to write down your contact information, or to confirm that the number originally written down is correct.

You can have materials with copy that resonates strongly with your target audience. You can have the most engaging graphics that immediately grab the attention of your ideal clients, BUT if you don’t make it easy for people to contact you, you will have made the #1 worst possible marketing mistake.

My advice to you? Now that you know about it, never make this mistake!

In my next blog post, I will cover how to avoid this worst possible marketing mistake when giving a talk or presentation. That’s a little trickier.