Author: Amanda Bedell

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.

How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your New Business

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

When you think of marketing, your mind may slingshot to social media. While this is one aspect of marketing, there are many other elements to digital marketing that you need to know before you jump right into social media. It’s important to design your digital marketing around a plan so that you’re spending less time, in the long run, working and posting your digital marketing than you are in the other aspects of your business.

 

Marketing Plan Step #1: Build a Website

Make sure to have your own website with your domain name. No one else can pull your information off the internet when you have your own website and domain name. You also have control over all your content. Make sure not to mistake having a social media page as your “website.” Your content or entire page can be pulled down at any moment, with no recourse, leaving you to start all over with a new site.

 

Marketing Plan Step #2: Choose an Email Service

While there are many email services out there today, Convertkit is one of our favorites for creators. Start with an email service that gives you a free account, then add the emails you have from prospects. Start with three to five tags, which are categories that you can set up to identify your email subscribers. A few categories that are good to start with are: clients, prospects or leads, and workshops (if you offer a free workshop). Whatever works for your business, categorize your email subscribers so that when you have an email campaign in the future, it’s easy to develop a targeted campaign right to the avatar you want to send them to.

 

Marketing Plan Step #3: Design a Lead Magnet

What is a lead magnet? A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer that is typically easy for you to generate and doesn’t use more of your time when your potential client takes you up on the offer. A lead magnet is a way to collect the email addresses of potential clients interested in what you offer.

Examples of freebie lead magnets are: ebooks, a mini-online course, a video series dropped via email, or a newsletter. Take one of the most common questions you get in your business and give them that information in your lead magnet. If you’re not sure what’s popular in your niche right now, take some time to do a Google search to find out what’s hot and trending online. 

 

Marketing Plan Step #4: Create Content Pillars

Content pillars are themes that you want to build your content around. For example, if you’re a florist, weddings, proms, and holidays are three content pillars you can build your content around. Create a theme for one to three months of content and build all of your marketing content, both print and digital, around the same theme. In doing this, you are continually reminding your followers about the service you offer. 

Why do you want to build your content around pillars? 

Because nowadays, in marketing, it takes up to 15 impressions for people to buy from you with all of the content they see on social media, email, and video. With that many impressions needed before someone considers buying, you need to think long-term for your digital (and traditional) marketing efforts.

When you’re building your marketing plan and content, remember that your plan doesn’t have to be perfect! Start small and see what works. Your first plan may be an email once a month, social media three days a week, and adding one blog to your website each month. Once you have a groove and are comfortable, start adding more content to your marketing!

Business Pitfalls to Avoid When You’re an Entrepreneur

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

When you’re starting a business, especially as a first-time entrepreneur, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of building your business, such as making your new website, your new company branding, and creating business cards. However, many new entrepreneurs fail to plan, which is why 80% of start-ups fail in their first year. To avoid failing in your new business, you’ll want to make a plan after you come up with your new business idea and before you start to make your new logo. This way, you can avoid many of the pitfalls that new businesses make when they start out.

 

Start Your Business with a Business Plan

The first mistake many business owners make is to start a business without a plan. 

Ignore market testing and push on with an inaccurate plan. When you lay out a plan for your business, you have steps to take that will make your business grow more rapidly and run smoothly. 

You can purchase many business planning books if you’re unsure where to start when building a business plan. Start by reading through one to three books. Find takeaways that appeal to you and use those for your personalized business plan. 

 

Make Sure to Recognize the Problem and the Solution for Your New Business

Your new business is exciting, and you’re ready to go! However, do you know the problem you’re solving for your new potential clients? If not, then you need to step back and figure out what the problem is that you’re solving and if this is a problem that people are looking for a solution to. You can find out by surveying people online to see if your services or products offer a solution that people are looking for. If so, does your product or service offer many of the features that consumers or other businesses are looking for? These questions need to be answered before you start investing in a logo or a website.

 

Build Your Own Website with a Domain Name that You Own for Your Business

Many people feel the need to be on social media, even more so than having their own website. This is a huge mistake to make when you’re a business owner! Why? Because a social marketing platform can take down your social media page without warning, leaving you without a site or a place for your clients to contact you. Even if you’re a brick-and-mortar store, this can hurt your business. Think of the many hours of time you’ve spent on your social media page (as your only source of an online website) that’s lost because someone on the social media platform didn’t like your content. That’s not a chance any business owner should take!

Make sure you have your own website with a domain name that you’ve purchased. Gandi is a great site to purchase your domain name from, which you can migrate to any platform on which you’re building your website. Whether you’re using a drop-and-drag website or an online marketplace, you want to own your domain so that you can control your content 24/7.

 

Build Your Email List After You Have Your Website Built

Many people mistake building their social media channels and completely ignoring their email list. Did you know that your email list is the BEST marketing tool out there? Even though it’s one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, sending messages out to your email list regularly is the best way to get in front of your ideal audience.

Make sure to know the basics, who your audience is, and do the legwork of data collecting to find out if your business idea is a needed asset to consumers or businesses. Once you’ve achieved that goal, then start your logo, branding, website, and email list.

Four Essential Keys to Marketing Success Part II

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

When it comes to marketing, you need to have some essential components in place to make your efforts result in an effective strategy that turns into business profits. So, if you haven’t read our last blog, go back and read about our first two essentials to marketing strategy, then read this week’s post to find out more about how to effectively market your business.

 

Marketing Essential #3: Avoid Marketing Pitfalls

As a business owner who wears many hats, you may not have the time to comb through all the information about digital marketing to familiarize yourself with what to do. In short, there are several significant mistakes you can make when marketing. Here is a summary of the major marketing pitfalls many businesses fall into. You should avoid them when running your business. To learn more, visit our blog to read more about these pitfalls.

The first mistake many business owners make is to start a business without a plan. 

For most, a passion they adore will become a business. That’s not to say that passion is bad, but you have to do the marketing to find out if you have a market for your product or service. 

Secondly, business owners don’t completely answer why people should use them over their competition. Don’t try to be full-service or solve everyone’s problems; that’s not realistic. Instead, you need to find your why and how it’s different from your competition.

Third, some business owners overlook the needs of their prospective customers and clients. They believe they know why they buy; however, there may be an underlying reason that the business owner doesn’t know about. Surveying your potential client base is key to finding out what they want or need that you’re offering. 

Next, many business owners fail to diversify their marketing options and fail to get market opinions on their offers. You’re missing out if you only use social media and don’t have a website! In addition, your business needs a Google My Business listing so you can collect reviews so others can understand what services you offer and the quality of your services.

 

Marketing Essential #4: Use a World-Class Marketing Perspective

A world-class marketing perspective is essential, especially if you want to attract customers and clients worldwide. Attracting global clients can be accomplished with several techniques and activities, such as using a marketing journal, a digital marketing plan, and creating content pillars for your marketing. 

Using these techniques, you can put your name out there in the digital world. With consistent content marketing, your business can become one of the top brands in your industry!

Four Essential Keys to Marketing Success Part I

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Marketing is a word that scares many business owners but is a necessity to bring in new clients. Whether creating digital or traditional marketing, you can always repurpose or reuse your content. However, use these guidelines to create a successful and reusable marketing campaign that you can duplicate with minor adjustments – making less work for your small business in the long run!

 

Four Essential Keys to Marketing Success

While there are many details to successful marketing, we’ll be going through the four essential keys to a successful and reusable marketing campaign. Once you have these basics down, you can use them every year, making minor changes for new ideas you have to add to your marketing campaign. 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.

 

Marketing Essential #1: Define Your Unique Selling Proposition

Your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, is the perspective your clients who hire you will have about your business. To find out your USP, take the time to ask yourself questions from the perspective of your current favorite customers and clients. What gets their attention? What needs are you meeting? Which pain points are you solving for your clients? What promises are you fulfilling for the people you provide a product or service to? Why are they hiring your services? Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start putting together a plan to meet the needs and wants of prospective clients.  

Next, take a look at the USP of your competitors. Then, utilize the components of the USP they are using to help you develop your unique USP. Your focused USP is what you are “promising” your customers and clients. Your unique selling proposition will set you apart from your competition and distinguish what you do and who you serve as a small business.

 

Marketing Essential #2: Putting an Effective Sales Offer to Work

You’ll want to take the time to develop an effective sales plan for your business or platform. If you don’t plan, your marketing efforts could be as effective as throwing spaghetti against a wall, hoping your efforts will pay off. Often, a good marketing plan will not only give you a sense of satisfaction. Still, it will pay off in more income and profitability for your company. Check out our weekly blog for a future post about how to create an effective sales plan and for more detail on the steps to take when making a sales plan for your business.

With a sales plan, you’ll combine what makes your products and services unique and stand out among your competitors. Your sales plans should compel customers to buy. The plan you come up with should make them feel they need to buy, even if the product doesn’t cover a basic need. Your sales pitch should answer a question, solve a problem or feed an obsession with your ideal client.

 

In your sales pitch and plan, you’ll want to provide your lead with all the information they need to make an informed and confident decision. When you do, you’ll be sure to land the sale and make a new customer! 

 

Check back for this series on marketing essentials, as we will post part II at the end of this month! 

Strategic Steps to Take For Business Growth

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Strategic Steps to Take For Small Business Growth

The first step to creating a more profitable business is to consider the 80/20 or pareto principle. This rule states that 20% of your actions result in 80% of your results. This is true, no matter what vertical or category your small business falls into. Now, consider this. If you multiply the 80/20 rule by 4; it states that only 1% of what you do generates 50% of your business income. Imagine what would happen to your business if you found that 1% activity and focused on it relentlessly. Would you agree you would have one profitable business?  

Let Me Hold Up A Magnifying Glass To What Makes Up That 20%

The five elements of business that make up the 20% of activities that are making you the most money in your small business are leads, conversions, transactions, pricing, and profit. When you look at these components that make up your 20%, seek out one action item in each area. Focus on your best lead generation effort, tighten up your conversion rate, add value to create another point of sale for your customer, examine your pricing structure, and audit your costs; if the cost is not making you money, get rid of it. That’s just a few options out of literally hundreds of strategies. Even a small shift of 1-3% can make a big difference to your bottom line. Would you like to see how compounding works, visit my free Profit Simulator >>

How to Make the Right Marketing Decisions for Your Business

Okay, so we know that we all HATE being sold to but we do LOVE to buy stuff! Each time we purchase anything, we are looking to either solve a problem, create certainty, or have a meaningful experience.

With more than 10,000 messages per day bombarding consumers online, how do you get your message to stand out among your competitors with your marketing?

You’ll need to find your voice and narrow down what you’re saying to your prospects with focused messages. To break through the noise and create a message so compelling it’s like a dog whistle to your superstar client or customer, you’ll want to get down to the fundamentals of what your message is for your business (also known as your market dominating position or unique selling proposition). Really, what separates you from everyone else selling what you sell? Besides examining the inside of your company or its services you also need to know who your target customer is for your business. 

Your Target Customer is More than Just Demographics

Instead of looking at typical demographics such as age and gender, I coach companies to dig deeper and find out more about their ideal customers. When you’re only marketing based on common demographics, you’re only scratching the surface. Instead, I want you to think about the process people go through when they buy anything. The buyer’s journey is where 99% of prospects that consider buying what you sell are in the investigative stage. They are considering reasons to buy a product/service and overcoming objections to the purchase. It’s not until the very last 1% that they are considering WHO to buy from. 

To dive beyond simple demographics and create this compelling message, we need to tap into the emotional reason for your customer to buy. 

How Do You Know What Your Superstar Client Looks Like?

To identify your superstar clients/customers, you need to do nothing but look at your most loyal customer or the easiest clients you work with. You know the ones, who jumped at your offer, are excited to become customers, love what you do… really in their eyes, you do no wrong. The relationship is fluid… you’ll hear me say, in Changing the Sales Game Podcast, “If you feel goosebumps talking to someone, they are close to your ideal client.”

To find out more steps you can take to grow your small business, listen to my interview with Connie Whitman here >>

 

How to Bring in New Customers with Incentives

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

While offering incentives to new clients to generate business isn’t a new concept, it is a process that has worked in the past and still works today. Even in a digital world, incentivizing your offerings gives your client base more ways to buy from you and more reasons to purchase your services.

There are several ways to turn a prospect into a customer. Look through these types of incentives and choose an incentive that works for your vertical and speaks to you. If you’re not interested in creating a specific type of incentive, you won’t follow through. In business, the fortune is in the follow-up, including creating, publishing, and utilizing any of the incentives you choose from this list!

 

Incentive #1 Offer a special price for a beta test

Beta tests are soft launches to test out the idea of a product or service. In a beta test, you can get feedback from your testers on what you’re offering. This way, you can improve upon your original creation and put more marketing dollars and time behind a better product or service when you launch.

 

Incentive #2 Offer affiliate commissions

Offering an affiliate commission is common to have others refer you for work. When others refer you, you kick back a percent of the sale to them as a “thank-you” for the paid referral.

 

Incentive #3 Free or inexpensive first product to build trust

Lead magnets, newsletters, and other freebies are a great way to get people onto your email list. Once you have them on your email list, you can sell a low-cost entry-level product to them, such as an ebook. In addition, you can also offer a low-cost ebook as a direct sell on your website.

 

Incentive #4 Package deals and bundling products or services

Bundling packages for your clients to get a better deal is a great way to upsell or get your clients to purchase from you. When you bundle, you can show the savings they get by purchasing the bundled product. In addition, the package price clearly shows how much they are spending, so they don’t have to continually purchase an add-on product.

 

Incentive #5: Trade-up or upgrades

Offering a trade-up or trade-in is a great way to get your client to buy from you or purchase the next-level product. You can offer these in any vertical, and they make for a great upsell incentive.

Incentives are an excellent way to persuade your followers to buy from you, regardless of your vertical. First, decide which one best fits your business and start there. Then you can see what works the best. When you find the incentive that takes off, utilize that specific incentive in your marketing to optimize your sales!