Author: Amanda Bedell

Who is Your Target Audience?

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Some business owners feel that they need to sell their product or service to everyone – anyone and everyone listening. While that may make sense to some, think about your last purchase. Do you believe that everyone in your family, town, city, or state purchased the same product as you? If they purchased the same product or service, did they also purchase it for the same exact reason?

 

Why You Want to Have a Targeted Audience

This is why you need to figure out who your ideal avatar is for your business. If you waste time trying to target everyone, you’re targeting no one. It’s like the business owner who hands out business cards in a circle to everyone they meet. Almost no one calls that person because they don’t know what they are about or who they serve. This is how you’ll distinguish your company from your competitors’ services – even if you do the same service. Targeting a specific demographic of who you serve is vital to having a marketing plan that is effective for both your time and money.

 

Who Should You Target?

The most important aspect of marketing is to know who your ideal client is and why they are your ideal client. Is your ideal client a mom of four who is strapped for time or is it a single woman who has more free time on her hands? These are important elements of your ideal avatar you’ll want to know so you can target your marketing.

What are their purchasing habits? Are they buying products or services from Instagram or do they hangout on Facebook? You need to know who has influence over purchasing, who does the actual buying, and how they buy. 

 

Ask Your Audience What They Want

Figure out a way to get in front of your ideal audience before you spend money on an ad campaign or a new website. Poll them via email, a phone call, or on social media. Ask them questions that will help you refine your website, your products, or your services. Your name needs to be at the top of their list to buy from so they go to you first. But you need to know why your name is there, and polling your ideal clients is the best way to find out. 

 

Use Your Avatar’s Lingo

Advertising to millennials is a different game than advertising to Gen Z or zoomers. You need to learn your avatar’s unique language and communication methods. These can include buzzwords and even the nicknames they have for their pets.

How to Efficiently Run Your Business in 2023

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Each business is a living, breathing entity in and of itself and will pass through stages as it grows and prospers. Today I’m going to talk about the life cycle of a business and how to get the most out of each cycle while extending your business’s lifespan. Let’s talk about each of your business cycles, what they mean, and how you can grow and expand your business’ lifespan within each life cycle.

 

Infancy Stage of Your Business

This is generally considered the technician’s phase, which is the owner. At this point, the relationship between the business and the owner is that of a parent and a new baby. An impenetrable bond is necessary to determine the path your business will follow. And remember to never drop your baby.  

The key in the stage of infancy is to know your business must grow to flourish. Although the most exciting stage, this stage, like human babies, is fleeting and will go by very quickly. You’ll have the most passion for your business in this phase and be very excited, but always remember to create a plan of action with a goal at the end so you can keep your business stamina going throughout the other three stages of your business.

 

Your Business in Its Adolescence

In this stage, you need to start bringing your support staff together to delegate to and allow growth to happen. The first line of defense is your technical person, who needs to bring a certain level of technical experience. This cycle really belongs to the manager, though. Next, the planning stage needs to start, and a relationship should be built with the entrepreneur to plan for the future. 

There’s a point in every business when business explodes and becomes chaotic, also known as growing pains. It’s a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. You are faced with several choices at this point in your journey:

  • Avoid growth and stay small
  • Go broke
  • Push forward into the next cycle

Business Maturity

The last cycle is maturity, which doesn’t mean the end of your business. Your passion for growth must continue for your business to succeed. You need to keep an entrepreneurial perspective to push your business forward. 

You can see how all four of these cycles are connected and depend on a strong foundation for your business to succeed. All three of your key roles (the technician, manager, and entrepreneur I mentioned in my previous post) must work together to work through these cycles.

If you’re having trouble putting together your business life cycles and figuring out which of the key roles you fit into, schedule a time to connect with Amanda at BusinessGrowthDemo.

The Importance of Having Support Staff in Your Small Business in 2023

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

As a small business owner, you know every detail to keep your business running smoothly. As we hire staff, there’s not only a mindset shift but a skill set upgrade many of us must undergo.

My clients often tell me one of two things when discussing hiring support. Either they jump in and tell me about the sales executive or fractional CFO they want to hire… or they are on the opposite side of the spectrum and say they can’t afford to hire help.

For both of these types of entrepreneurs, I give the same advice. Let’s track your time. Seriously.

It seems so simple, yet no one does it, and here’s why: it’s a lot! When you track your time in 15-minute increments for two weeks, you get the data you need to decide who that next hire is. Group together tasks outside your zone of genius and hire someone else to do it.

With this data, you can assign a budget to your new hire. Things to think about before gathering the job description are:

  • How will this generate revenue for your business? 
  • What is the learning curve? How much training time can you expect to get someone up to speed?
  • Realistically think about the time it will take you to train this new employee. 
  • As you train a new employee, your productivity will decrease for a short time. When will you break even on the new hire?

Once we have our roadmap, we can discover who we need to hire.

 

Hiring a Virtual Assistant

You can hire several types of support staff in your business, and most people start with a VA or virtual assistant. A VA can provide a variety of tasks for your business, depending on the skills of the VA. To find a good VA:

  1. List the skills you need based on your assessment of the time outlined above coupled with your most significant business need right now.
  2. Write up a job description.
  3. Look for someone who can fill that slot and provide quality support in a timely fashion.

 

Finding a Technician

When hiring a technician, you’re looking for a person who is an expert and a “doer.” Consider hiring a technician for your business for several reasons.

A technician is a trained and skilled professional with expertise in a specific field or area of work. Hiring a technician can bring in someone with the knowledge and skills to handle a wide range of tasks and responsibilities related to your business.

In addition, a technician can help improve efficiency and productivity by completing tasks quickly and accurately. This can free up time and resources for you and your team to focus on more critical duties and responsibilities.

They can also help ensure that work is completed to a high standard, improving the quality of your products or services and helping boost customer satisfaction.

A technician may also have access to specialized equipment and tools necessary for specific tasks. Hiring a technician can bring in someone with the equipment and expertise to handle these tasks effectively.

Hiring a technician can sometimes be more cost-effective than completing specific tasks in-house. For example, suppose you need to repair or maintain specialized equipment. Hiring a technician with the necessary skills and experience may be more cost-effective than trying to train someone on your team.

Hiring a technician can benefit your business, including expertise, efficiency, quality, specialized equipment, and cost-effectiveness.

 

Onboarding a Manager for Your Small Business

As you grow, there’s simply a point where you can’t do it all. This person takes over the day-to-day and works to fix problems by learning from past mistakes. They are on the practical side of the business.

Consider hiring this essential position for your small business to build a solid foundation for your business to grow beyond you. Finding the right people for this role takes time and a complete mindset shift as you relinquish some control over the company and instill trust in people to allow them to do their jobs. 

If you’re like me and got the entrepreneurial bug, you know this journey has highs and lows. During the high times (this is what makes entrepreneurship so addicting), it’s like you can do no wrong, everything is smooth, and you’re hitting sales goals. It feels so great!

Then, there are the lows. The less than anticipated revenue, staff doesn’t show up, you made a wrong decision, or you can’t get a day off, so your mental health suffers… you know those times. It feels like nothing will go right. During these times, you need someone in your corner who knows the business from all angles. And hint, this isn’t your life partner (wink). 

Remember, BCC Business Consulting is here to partner with you and help you through processes that will get you to a place where you run your business, not the other way around. 

 

Start with my Profit Jolt workbook, where you can work through eight processes to bring in more revenue and profit into your business >> https://www.chaostocalm.xyz/profitjolt

Five Marketing Pitfalls to Avoid When Planning Your Digital Marketing for 2023

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Do you feel like marketing is a mystical creature that some people have seen, but every time you try to find it, it doesn’t show up for you?

Many small business owners feel this way because no matter how hard they try, or how much money they spend, marketing doesn’t work for them.

Unfortunately, this is compounded by the availability of not-so-good marketing advice, especially when you’re a newbie or not familiar with how SEO works.

 

Digital Marketing Basics to Know

There are basics of digital marketing you’ll want to understand before you jump into planning your marketing for the year. First, you’ll want to list your digital marketing assets, such as your website, blog, email list, and social media platforms. Next, you’ll want to create a digital marketing planner to map out what you will do for the month and year. Then you need to create content pillars or themes you’re going to talk about for the month ahead.

 

Avoid the Marketing Pitfalls

Especially if you’re new to entrepreneurship or digital marketing, you’ll want to avoid marketing pitfalls to skip wasting time and effort on marketing tactics that won’t work. Here are the five biggest marketing mistakes you’ll want to avoid in 2023.

 

Marketing Pitfall #1: Forgetting Set Goals for Your Business

You’ll want to establish a goal first before you start marketing. Depending on your niche and lane, your goal could be client or product oriented. You may also have a sales goal. Whatever your profession, think of a relatively easy goal to achieve and write it down. Make sure your goal has a due date. If your goal is big, break your bigger goal down into micro-goals, so you have smaller checkpoints along the way to see if you’re on track to reaching your goal. If you’re not, you can scale back or decide to take a different marketing route to achieve your goal.

 

Marketing Pitfall #2: Marketing without a Plan

Many people will randomly post on Instagram, create a blog, or send out email marketing without any type of plan. Without a plan, you’re basically throwing mud against a wall, hoping it will stick. You want to create a plan with a theme for your monthly marketing, even if it’s simple. Make all your digital marketing content around that theme so you can track your data and see what’s working.

 

Marketing Pitfall #3: Assuming the Needs of Your Ideal Client or Customer

You may assume you know what your customer wants, but is it true? The only way to find out for sure is to create a survey asking your potential clients and leads what their biggest pain points are for them in their business. Then you can formulate a plan to help solve what they need.

 

Marketing Pitfall #4: Using Social Media to Sell

While social media platforms are a great way to showcase your products, your team, you, and your company culture, you’ll rarely sell your products on social media unless you’re specifically running an ad. Instead, use social media to familiarize your clients with your products, how they can solve their pain points, and show your brand personality so they make an emotional connection to you and your business.

 

Marketing Pitfall #5: Failing to Use Email Marketing

Email marketing, although it’s been around for a long time, is still the best way to market to your fans and leads. While email marketing is very popular, it’s also one of the few ways you can get your client’s undivided attention. First, showcase your products or services, educate your avatar, and include a freebie to download to show your appreciation. Then, make sure you choose a platform, such as Convertkit, to upload your clients’ emails and start sending them emails regularly.

 

When planning your marketing, and you want to be successful, make sure to avoid these marketing pitfalls. Then, think through your marketing for 2023 and devise a plan that makes your marketing a big success!

 

Three Essential Marketing Components for a Reusable Marketing Plan in 2023

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Marketing campaigns can be exhausting to think about, let alone create each month. Then you need to come up with marketing content, create the copy, and post or schedule your marketing content. If you want to simplify the process and spend less time planning and implementing your marketing, consider these five essential marketing components reusable each month for your digital marketing plan in 2023.

 

Let’s review the five essential keys to a successful and reusable marketing campaign launch. We’ll go through each of these, so you can see exactly how to use them and how they all affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaign. Once you have these basics down, you can use them repeatedly.

 

Essential Marketing Component #1: Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Take the time to ask yourself some questions from the perspective of the customers/clients. What would it take to get your attention? What needs do you have that need to be met? What are the promises you want to be fulfilled?

Once you know the answers to these questions, you can develop a plan to meet these needs. Then look at what USP your competitors use to help you develop your USP. Your USP is what you are “promising” your customers/clients. This is what’s going to set you apart from your competition.

 

Essential Marketing Component #2: Put a compelling sales offer to work

When marketing, ensure that your prospects have all the information they need to make an informed and confident decision. Buyer’s remorse can quickly tarnish your reputation and slow your business growth. To develop an effective sales plan, you need to:

  1. Put together an attention-grabbing headline
  2. Share the benefits of your products and services, speaking from the customers’ perspective
  3. Identify the specific needs met by your products or services
  4. Share your specific sales proposition
  5. Motivate with a call to action

 

Essential Marketing Component #3: Build Your Customer Base

To generate leads and prospects, you’ll want to tap into a repeatable action that your ideal avatar can buy into when they see your offer online. Some ideas for building your customer base include:

  • creating a lead magnet with a free offer to your prospective leads
  • Build your database with a contest on social media or email
  • Create a consistent email marketing campaign

 

Block out time each month to make a formidable marketing plan. It doesn’t have to be complicated – you can start with simple, easy-to-use steps for your marketing plan; however, you’ll want to start. No matter how small your digital footprint is, start with what you have and build out your digital marketing from there. 

How to Keep Your Clients Satisfied and Generate More Leads

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

If your customers aren’t satisfied, you’ve wasted all your marketing resources and the chance of a positive word-of-mouth advertising, Google review, or client referral. Instead, you can satisfy your clients by ensuring you provide them with the basics. Find out what you can do to keep your clients returning for more of your products and services!

 

Provide Quality Products and Services

In today’s world, having the ability to hire cheap labor from overseas can seem like a daunting challenge for anyone in the services industry. However, providing high-quality customer service and services gives you an edge over others who cannot compete with a higher-quality product. Your clients will come back for more when you provide a superior product or service. Even though your service or product may be pricier, you can provide your clients with time-saving services that they value and appreciate.

 

Give an Informative Sales Experience

Don’t just sell when you’re trying to sell – educate! Giving your potential and current clients the ability to learn from you, the expert, is a great way to build trust and competence with your lead or client. Educate and give them value, so they can see the expert thinking you can provide their business.

 

Offer a Guarantee

While some services may not be able to offer guarantees, if you can, this is a great way to ensure that your client will have a good experience. You can offer another or repeat your service and make what’s wrong right for your client. Keeping your clients satisfied with your work is important to uphold a good standing in your community and among your clients.

 

Generate More Leads

To generate more business, there are a couple of simple techniques which you can employ in your business.

  • Build your database with a contest
  • Email your clients with educational articles, discounts, or other incentives
  • Offer a free online course, e-book, or another incentive for people to join your email list

 

As long as the reward is directly related to your product or service, you can get more people interested in your business by generating excitement around you, your product, and your services. So why not get started today?

Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs Part III

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Here we are! The last in my series of marketing tips for entrepreneurs! 

If you haven’t read through the last two blogs, grab those takeaways here Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs Part I and here Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs Part II.

Now, the most important piece is this: of all these tips, what is ONE thing you can use to grow your client base this week? Send me a note of what you decide on so I can keep you accountable.

 

Create a Great Marketing Plan

A great marketing plan doesn’t need to be complicated. I understand marketing can be elusive and a little intimidating. But, I promise that you don’t need fancy technology or an all-in-one solutions…. You can start simple and you can start manual.

Pick up a regular paper calendar. Decide how many days per week you want content to be posted. Remember, you can start small! There’s no need to create content every day of the week or send out multiple emails. Maybe it’s simply dedicating 1 hour a week to social media, posting twice a week, and an email one time a month. 

Once you know what content you want to begin with, simply take that calendar and color code days of the week. Each color represents a pillar from your content pillars document. (If you haven’t received my content pillars template, email me and I’ll send it to you, for free!). 

Remember starting small is OK; you can always build on your marketing plan when you get into the habit of consistently creating content for your business. Fine-tune and refine your marketing plan based on your data and feedback.

 

Make Sure Your Marketing Fits Your Branding

There’s nothing worse than hiring a marketing company for your mountain-town vacation rental for them to post a picture of a couple walking along a beach! Ensure your social media, newsletter, lead magnets, and blog content have the same look and feel. The voice and style should make your brand recognizable among all your platforms. And, you’ll want to ensure your marketing and advertising fit your company image, products, services, and quality.

 

Review Your Current Marketing Plan

Remember the 80/20 rule? For business, the principle states that 20% of what you do is generating 80% of your income (revenue). With this lens, review your current marketing plan. What is bringing in clients? What isn’t? Make a plan to improve on the things that are working and drop the ares that aren’t. You don’t want to be spending money on marketing that isn’t giving you a good ROI (return on investment).

 

Educate Your Clients and Leads with Value-Driven Content

People don’t buy because of your fancy logo or cute tag line. If your materials aren’t addressing the problem your prospect has that they don’t want and doesn’t provide a result that alleviates the pain they are in, the marketing simply won’t work. Rather than pushing your company name and bio out to prospects, consider develop all your ads, campaigns, and sales materials with attention to compelling and factual information that solves pain points for your readers. Don’t worry about giving away too much information – when you’re in service of your audience, the right customers will be attracted to you.

Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs Part II

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

In Part I of Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs, I shared 5 ways to increase your sales through small changes to your marketing. And that was just the beginning! As you adjust your marketing plan, take a look at these additional tips to ensure your marketing is optimized for more sales. 

 

I challenge you to start working on just one of these tips for 30-days straight and record your results. Let me know what happens! I’d love to hear your results And, if you have any questions, I’m always just an email away! 

 

Work on the Front Lines

Step down a notch and work on the front lines with your sales and customer service staff. Find out what they are doing, what’s working for them, and what needs to change to improve their work environment or the process they are doing. Get feedback on how they enjoy their job, and make an effort to improve their job, if possible. Take notes to show them you are authentically concerned about how they feel in their work environment. A happy employee stays with you!

 

Show Appreciation to Your Staff

Too often, we get caught up in the day-to-day dealings of our small businesses. A great way to show your workers and staff that you care about them is by appreciating their work. Continuously acknowledging your staff, vendors and customers is an excellent way to increase productivity, mood, and satisfaction. Sending them a hand-written card goes a long way! Everyone works and shops better when they feel appreciated.

 

Get Feedback from Staff and Clients

Always listen to feedback from employees and customers, even if you don’t like the feedback. Follow up and ask them why they feel the way they do so you understand their perspective. Chances are that if they have a complaint or compliment, someone else will likely also share their concerns. Ask them what they would do to change the situation and see if you can take steps to better or continue what’s doing well in your company.

 

Test and Use Data Analytics

Continuously test markets, ads, and marketing techniques. This is the only way to stay successful and know what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not. Using Google Analytics, social media stats, and other data to see what’s working and utilize those actions repeatedly to duplicate your success.

 

Educate Your Clients

Offer more information in your marketing with your blog and social media. The more information you offer, the more products and services you sell. When you educate your clients or leads, they will understand why they need your services.

Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs Part I

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Being an entrepreneur means wearing many hats, so to speak – you’ll need to do several jobs when you’re a solopreneur. You may also have a virtual assistant to help you with some of your daily tasks. But, you’re still doing the lion’s share of the work. You’ll need to know how to manage your time and prioritize your task list to stay focused and work efficiently towards your marketing goals.

Here are tips for entrepreneurs, both new and seasoned, that can assist you in your daily workflow. See which of these resonate with you, and choose one to make your daily habit until our next blog comes out with part two. This blog will give you more marketing tips to incorporate into your business life.

 

Tip #1 Keep a Business Journal

Keep a business journal, write down trends and your daily tasks, and write down future tasks. A business journal is a great way to keep all your business notes in one place without stick note overload. Make sure to date and label all your work so you can reference what you’ve written down at a later date.

 

Tip #2 Find Out What Marketing Tactics are Paying Off

Look at what’s working and what’s not working in your marketing. If your email newsletter is doing great, focus more energy on your newsletter. What are you doing on social media? If that’s not going well, try another digital marketing channel, such as a landing page or lead magnet. You could also create videos on YouTube. Set a time to review your marketing efforts and where you’re spending to see what’s attracting the most attention and dollars back to your business.

 

Tip #3 Order From Your Own Company

Order from your own company or become a client under a different name. Analyze the process of ordering, shipping, online store, customer service, and the product itself. This will show you areas for improvement in the customer experience.

 

Tip #4 Make Note of What Gets Your Attention in Other Ads

Read quality ads and keep a list of the specific topics or ideas that made the ad stand out in your business journal. Then, try incorporating these aspects into your business if they work with your platform.

 

Tip #5 Watch other Consumers

When out in public, watch how consumers behave in different situations and how they consider their purchases. For example, see what brands they are gravitating towards and which ones they buy. Then, look at what they are considering. You can also invite your clients to a virtual meeting to see what they like and don’t like about your product, packaging, and other aspects of your marketing. This type of research will help you understand what your client is looking for and assist you in which direction to go, resulting in a positive outcome for your marketing!

How to Develop an Effective Sales Plan

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

If you’re a small business owner, it can feel like everything is important. So much falls on your shoulders. To streamline and focus on the things that matter, consider the 80/20 rule. You may know the 80/20 rule from dieting where you can each have chocolate or have ice cream 20% of the time… however, it also relates to business in that 20% of what you do each day generates 80% of your business.

What makes up that 20% of your business, you might ask?

It’s these 5 areas: foundations, leads, conversions, transactions, and profits. Each section has strategies where small improvements can make HUGE changes. 

Now, if you’re looking at your business and you’re having trouble closing sales, it would be a good time to look at strategies to increase your conversions. To do so, I would suggest starting with your sales process and developing a sales plan. 

Let’s take a look at what that means. 

 

What is a Sales Plan?

A sales plan is a blueprint to set specific sales goals. Whether you’re a solopreneur or have a team, you can use this plan to review goals on a consistent weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly time periods.

When you have a sales plan, you can compare your profit and loss sheet and your gross income to see how close you are to reaching your goals each month. With a sales plan, you can tweak and change your activities to match and meet your monthly sales goals. In addition, a sales plan helps you and your sales team stay on task and focused on achieving your sales goals. 

 

Why is a Sales Plan Important?

A sales plan is critical to help a business drive sales and navigate risks. You can easily see where your business is financially and project where you can reach with client income for the next month to end-of-year. For your sales plan to be effective, you should include realistic goals and break down your goals into mini-goals to build those small wins. 

Your sales plan is an integral part of your business and a vital tool to track your sales, future expectations, commission structure, and the next move you want to make in your business. Sales plans can also drive your digital marketing campaign and show you which campaigns are making the biggest splash and what part of your digital marketing you may want to ditch.

 

How to Create a Sales Plan for Your Business

This doesn’t need to be a lengthy document. Sales plans come in all shapes and sizes. For some companies a one-page sales plan with bulleted items will work well while others may need to dive more into process and give more detail. The first thing you’ll want to do is determine the focus:  

  • Revenue-based: if you’re looking to grow your revenue, you’ll want a plan that has detailed information on sales forecasting and conversion and close rates. 
  • Target Market: when selling to markets that are extremely different, you’ll want different plans that include sales strategies that reach the markets differently.
  • New Product: a launch sales plan would include a product value proposition and new sales materials that help the team sell this product. It may also include strategic partnerships and community or grassroots efforts.

 

Regardless of what it looks like, you’ll want to:

 

  • Define your sales goals and milestones of success, including sales matrics that matter most to you (for example, conversion time, conversion rate, customer lifetime value, retention rates, annual or monthly recurring revenue). Include specific targets and deadlines.
  • Clearly define the target customer or niche. Here, you’ll want to understand your market to better serve them. How do they like to be reached (by phone, email, mail, text, in-person), where do they hang out already?, what/who do they already trust?, what are their buying habits?
  • Map out your customer journey and how your sales process matches (touches) your customers as they progress through the process. Consider authentic touchpoints at each stage including awarenes > interest > consideration > intent > purchase > post-sale
  • Organize your sales team (even if it’s just you!). Are people working alone or together? The sales process needs to match the customer journey.
  • Understand your sales tools. How are you tracking leads, documenting process, assuring engagement, and tracking success?
  • Build a prospect list through google search, chamber of commerce member lists, LinkedIn profiles, networking events and meetups, etc.
  • Adjust your plan as needed! Just because you have a great sales plan written down doesn’t mean it will work as intended. Continued learning and updating what works and what doesn’t is a key to a successful sales plan. So don’t let this thing gather dust! Use it and revise it.