Author: Amanda Bedell

How to Get Free PR for Your Business

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

One of the most powerful techniques every business should use is free publicity. As the name implies, you are spending your time and effort to attract attention to your business. Unfortunately, PR, or public relations, is highly untapped for many business owners. However, you can educate the public and gather leads and prospects through free public relations advertising locally, regionally, and nationally.

There are different media avenues in public relations you can use to boost your advertising results and your paid advertising. With a solid plan that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to using public relations in the best way possible. Find out how you can leverage free public relations to bring more business to your company!

 

Public Relations in the Media

Public relations include many different forms of media. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines and podcasts are all powerful tools that you can utilize to get more awareness of your business. You can use the following steps to get noticed by the media.

  1. Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.
  2. Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to is interested in reading your story.
  3. Put your press release in professional formatting. With press releases, you need a dateline, the most essential information at the top, facts, figures, and wrap it up with contact details, including who and how. Print the press release on your letterhead.
  4. Send your press release to all television and radio stations, local and metro newspapers, national newspapers, industry magazines, and any other form of media that reaches your target market. Don’t forget to include relevant blogs, ezines, press release submission sites, and industry professionals.

Make sure that the needs of your target market are addressed and made clear in your press release. When you provide consumers with a solution to a problem, a way to avoid a problem, and an opportunity to enhance their life, the media and public will be interested in your story.

Suppose you have a connection, or the ability to get a connection with a celebrity or an influencer. In that case, that can also garnish attention to your brand. Make sure you offer newsworthy information and then follow up with media outlets to make sure they are publicizing your information.

BCC Business Consulting can show you how to put together press releases that work!

Hive | Eight Soft Skills for Leaders to Cultivate in a Company

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

When you want to grow and scale your business, one of the key factors to making sure your growth goes off without too many hitches is to have a team with the right soft skills. Because job skills can be taught, those skills, although a necessity, can be learned by the person you hire for your team. Soft skills such as working with a team, organization, and the ability to grow your emotional intelligence, are all workplace skills that are innate to a person and are much harder to instill. Therefore, you’ll need to find team members who already come with the soft skills your company needs to grow.

But which soft skills should you look for when vetting and hiring new team members? Take note of these specific soft skills to determine which ones matter the most to your company if you’re looking to fast-track growth and significant results for your business.

 

Emotional Intelligence for Relationship Building on Your Team

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, be empathetic with, and manage emotions for yourself and to be conscious of the emotional welfare of the people on your team. A key relationship-building skill in the workplace, having emotional intelligence is essential for your team members if you’re looking for rapid company growth.

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, can help your team stay mindful of rising anxiety levels during growth phases. This is vital for being aware of when to address elevated stress levels to keep morale, engagement, and productivity at an optimal balance. In addition, being mindful of your team’s morale is essential to retaining staff, especially when you’re on the path to company growth. 

Using your own EQ can also help you regulate your own emotions. As a leader, you need to understand when and how to keep your emotions in check. In addition, you’ll need to know when to leave your home stress at home and when and how to check your emotions at the door, so you can be there for your team.

 

Seeking Innovation and Growth Opportunities for Your Company 

Opportunity and innovation are at the forefront when looking to advance your company quickly. So keep an eye out for this crucial management skill for rapid growth. You’ll want your new team member to have the ability to notice gaps and use them to give your company an advantage, says Raven Waterman. “Leaders who can innovate by taking existing solutions and creating new or improved ones position their teams to proactively address their target market’s needs,” she says.

You’ll want to look into allocating and scheduling time to reflect and think critically about your team’s tasks and if the tasks they are doing will ultimately put your business on the path to hitting your yearly goals. “When leaders spot gaps, they can identify potential opportunities within their industry. However, they should avoid chasing every new idea and instead hone in on specific ones aligned with the team’s core values and mission.”

 

Cultivating Trust within Your Team

All leaders should be aware that their reports are looking for respect and an opportunity to learn and grow. When you cultivate trust with team members, they’ll give you their best work. So, when your team is at its best, you can do your job as CEO and focus on the bigger picture.

If team members are hired into a rapid growth company, they most likely have entrepreneurial skills and thrive on being a part of something bigger than themselves. Therefore, trusting the people you hire and fostering an environment where celebrating trying new things and ‘failing fast’ is essential to your team moving forward with considerable momentum. On the other hand, suppose trust isn’t a key component of your team. In that case, you’ll see a significant amount of time and resources wasted on meetings, micromanaging, checking up on tasks, and other “busy work” that leads to wasted time, money, and energy.

 

Tap into the Individual’s Strengths on Your Team

The most efficient teams know each other’s strengths and how to leverage them to accomplish team objectives quicker. To know and understand which strengths your team members have, the best place to start is to utilize CliftonStrengths, an hour-long assessment that helps you understand and make the most of your strengths in the workplace.

So get to know each of your team members and understand their unique strengths. Next, think of ways to combine each individual’s strengths in your team into collective wins. Finally, you can delegate the projects to the individual or group of people best suited for the task.

 

The Key Management Skill of Effective Delegation 

Speaking of which, effective delegation is a crucial management skill for scaling your business. And while wearing many hats is commonplace for a small business owner to sit, keeping that position in your company will not lead to the growth of your business – only to burnout. Growth means more work that needs to be accomplished on time, and managers need to have their mental energy in check. As a company CEO, you can focus on guiding your company’s growth and evaluating your progress to see how close you are to reaching your business goals. Understanding and implementing which tasks to assign to specific team members so they are accomplished correctly and in a timely manner allows you to be focused on the big picture rather than wasting time taking care of other tasks in your business that can easily be delegated to another team member.

 

The Ability to Create SMART Goals for Your Business

Smart goal-setting goes hand in hand with delegation. And as one of the most critical soft skills for leaders, using those SMART goals gives you a path to success. Once you have your SMART goals in place (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound), you can break down your big goal into smaller, more tangible steps that team members can work toward. Looking at the smaller steps that will lead to the outcome you want to achieve in a timely manner is crucial for scaling operations.”

 

Why Strong Communication Skills are Essential for Your Team

Add strong communication skills to your list of essential team-management skills because you’ll need them to navigate fast-paced growth. When you can communicate changes to your team, your team will work with less stress and anxiety. The result will allow development without damaging the company culture and the mental health of your employees.

Leaders need to understand their team’s readiness and ability to navigate change. If a leader sees growth and change as a positive aspect of the company, the team will follow suit. For your team to share your vision as a leader, you’ll want to share your vision and anticipate and respond to your team’s concerns as a continued, regular part of the growth process of your company.

In addition, you’ll want to have clearly defined expectations and communicate those expectations to your team. In a high-growth environment, it’s vital for leaders to clearly define where their job ends and the team picks up.

There’s a tendency to act quickly and step on toes in an early-stage, high-growth company. Instead, make sure to formulate and have detailed, clear roles and responsibilities and clear communication, which are all key elements for efficient and productive growth in your company.

 

Listening to the Concerns of Your Team

When you want someone to know how much you care, let them know you care about them! Listening to your team’s concerns, even if you can’t remedy them right away, is one of the most effective soft skills a leader can consistently implement in the work environment. 

Because listening skills are an underrated aspect of effective communication, you’ll want to make these a priority on your list and be aware of how much you’re listening to your team. Having good listening skills is vital if you want to drive rapid growth because you can find valuable information that can change your growth trajectory by being a good listener. Innovation and crucial information come from the front lines of your team, and listening to them is the best way to find out what needs to be done to move your team forward.

Give people the time and space to give feedback on how their jobs are done. Allow the freedom to experiment with different ways of implementing tasks, even if these new activities or processes take more time. Because the next thing you know, you’ll have an aha moment that leads to a game-changing innovation for your team. You could also solve a problem that was holding your growth back for your company!

Three Key Elements to Turn Prospects into Long Term Customers

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Your prospects may come from many different sources, such as your website, Google My Business reviews, or email newsletter. You’ll want to have several ways to gather prospects and leads; however, if your leads don’t turn into clients, your money on acquiring that prospect can burn up quickly.

Once you have a customer, you’ll want to retain them in your business. The best ROI on the money you’ve invested in your prospect is to continue to sell your product or services with them over a period of time. If you want to turn prospects into long-term customers and retain them for future marketing, you’ll need to know the three key elements to draw them in and seal the deal. 

 

To Obtain Prospects, You Want to Be Inviting

People like friendly faces, so be sure to smile and address your prospect’s pain points. Make sure to listen to their concerns, and don’t sell them on a service or product that doesn’t fix their issues or problems. 

You’ll want to be perceptive, look at their body language, pick up on visual cues, and talk through their challenges. Ease them in your conversation, so they feel welcomed and comfortable talking to you. 

 

Educate Your Prospects and Be Informative

The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded buyer’s remorse. Often, buyers have remorse because they weren’t sure exactly what they purchased or what services they were buying in a package. 

If you educate your prospects and give them time to ask you questions, you can avoid buyer’s remorse from your clients. Make sure that you offer a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims.

In addition to educating prospective clients on the details of what they will be getting when they work with you, you can also offer them guarantees to sweeten the deal! First, you can offer a refund in a specific period if they don’t see results and have completed all the work necessary for them to have results. Second, you can offer them a bonus they can keep even if they return the product they purchased from your company. These money-back offers to a prospect can build trust in your client relationship, just for offering these options on your services.

 

Show Your Prospects You’re Enjoyable to Work With 

The third and most crucial element is to be enjoyable! Have a positive attitude, and when your client comes upon a challenge that they can’t overcome on their own, make sure to offer support. When your client sees that you care about them, they will be your client forever! 

You can use these elements and other ideas to find what works the best for your business and target market. Then, by making your product or service inviting, easy, informative, inspiring, and their experience enjoyable, you’ll loft your company above your competition.

 

Need help with figuring out the best strategy for converting prospects into customers? 

Use my simple Strategic Plan template and learn the exact formula that helped me grow my retail business from $389k to over $2.2 million annually. https://simple-strategic-plan.com/go

Her First Million 5-Day Focus Give Me Just 60-Minutes A Day… And Over The 5 Days, You’ll Walk Away With A 7-Figure Framework And, More Importantly, You’ll Know How to Use It To Calm the Chaos Of Growth So Revenues & Profits Soar https://5-dayfocus.com/go

How to Hire and Work with a Virtual Assistant for Your Business

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

So many entrepreneurs wear the 18 hats necessary for running their solo entrepreneurship. And while that’s fine at the start of your business, at some point, you’ll want to hire someone before you burn out and your new company goes down in a pile of flaming mess!

 

Hire a VA to Become More Profitable

I hired a virtual assistant, or VA, for BCC Business Consulting when I started to feel more like Chief Inbox Email Excavator. Instead of swimming in profits, getting new leads, and great reviews, I felt like I was drowning in emails. Like many business owners, I wanted to focus on the type of work that inspired me to begin my consulting career. Instead, however, I found myself on a never-ending hamster wheel of administrative tasks. Without changing my day-to-day operations, I knew that I’d never experience the exponential growth I envisioned for my business.                            

Even though I had devised proven systems in my business, I was hesitant to add another person to the mix. However, when I found the Linq Consulting Solutions Virtual Assistant Matchmaking program, I realized this would be the solution to finding and hiring a qualified VA match for my business.

I signed up for a consultation. Together with Riah and the Linq team, I created a list of goals that a potential VA would enable me to achieve. Within weeks of our initial conversation, the Linq team had screened and passed along a catalog of impressive, skilled women ready to help out with the work I needed to be done so I could move into my CEO position.                 

Riah and her team take all the stress out of finding the perfect match quickly and easily. I wish I could have hired every candidate I interviewed. They were qualified and eager to grow my company. The highlight of my experience was definitely how quick the process was! It was fantastic to have a qualified candidate hired in under a month.        

 

Hiring a VA as the Start to Building a Company Team                                          

Linq’s work didn’t stop once I selected my VA match. Helen, my new VA, was more than happy to spend the time needed to review my goals, find out what I needed her to accomplish, and the method of communication to create a harmonious workflow.

I felt supported when I onboarded an out-of-country employee and set expectations on what I should offload. Plus, my assistant takes tasks and runs with them! I don’t have to teach her – she just does it!     

The Linq VA Matchmaking System is solid. My VA Helen is professional, friendly, and flexible. I appreciate her experience with a larger company because she’s helping me build systems that will allow us to scale. She’s helping me build this company from the ground up.                              

With the help of my new virtual assistant, Helen, I can escape my inbox. In addition, I now have time to automate other time-consuming processes such as lead generation. Finally, with so much time freed up by my VA, I can commit to the most essential part of my business – working on my business to scale and grow to become more profitable!

How to Find Leads for Your Small Business

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

We all know that if we want to gain more profits and keep our company moving forward and growing, we need to acquire new leads. But, unfortunately, as much as we work to keep our current clients, there’s always attrition. So, to keep the money flowing and to be able to build our business, we have to have a strategy on how to acquire new leads.

 

Find Leads through the Creation of Educational Ads

Most successful businesses use a series of information-based ads that build emotion and include a call to action. These are much more effective than standard company branding advertisements because they educate your potential client on the services you provide, what the consumer should look for in a product, and shows your lead that you are an expert in the field. 

Educating your leads can be in many forms. For example, some companies have a YouTube channel that features videos that inform the consumer on a specific subject or vertical. You can also create weekly or bi-weekly blog posts to show leads and people who visit your website that you understand the business that you have chosen. 

Another way to educate new leads is through the ever-growing popularity of a podcast. Podcasts give you an advantage over other types of education because, with a podcast, people are hearing your voice, and that builds trust. Once you build trust, it’s easy to sell your product or service to your lead.

 

Create an Effective Ad Campaign to Generate Leads for Your Business

If you think that you’ll have to create an expensive and extensive ad campaign – think again! An effective ad campaign doesn’t have to have a considerable budget to succeed. It does, however, have to address the pain points of your leads and have a well-thought-out advertising process or sales funnel to move your prospect from lead to customer. 

Here are five ideas you can implement today to execute a professional, effective ad campaign.

 

Idea #1 The Prospect Report

Put together a short report that you’ll automatically send to prospects when they contact you. This can include a brief description of your business, what you specialize in, and what sets you apart from your competition. Information that you can consist of is case studies, samples, or other proof of your success, such as data or client testimonials.

 

Idea #2 Create an Email Newsletter

Consider newsletters to educate and inform customers about your industry and the services offered. For example, you can feature team members, your most recent blog post, or an educational video in your email. Video email marketing is a highly effective way to tell your message to your followers!

 

Idea #3 Offer a Free Webinar

Offer a free seminar, webinar, or other lecture to build awareness of your business, but make sure you make the information pertinent to your target market and find respected and known speakers in the industry. In addition, create public clinics for the general public to come along and discuss what they need that’s free and approachable. 

You can also organize seminars your customers and clients can pay to attend by putting together a high-perception value package. In addition, you can approach large companies and offer to give seminars to their employees, investors, or management. You can then talk to the firm manager who may need your services and negotiate a deal to be their exclusive expert in your field.

Develop a weekend or destination seminar for customers and clients so they can invite their friends, who are your new prospects. This gives you an action-packed weekend with the most important people. Still, it also gives them a tax-deductible business adventure.

Lastly, once you have a seminar or webinar, you can take your seminar, speech, or webinar and turn it into written, video, or audio from an online course, member site program, audio, or video program.

 

Idea #4 Incentivize Your Product or Service

Make offers to target markets or target market businesses to pay them for referrals or shared databases. Create incentives such as frequent purchasing benefits, loyalty programs, and referral programs to those who bring you new leads and prospects. For example, you can create an affiliate program and give a specific dollar amount, gift, or percentage of the money you make from the candidate to the person who brought you the lead.

 

Idea #5 Networking and Building Relationships

When you network and build relationships, you build trust among the business owners of your community. There are many different networking opportunities that you can take advantage of today.

Get involved in your community or donate to local charitable events. Join your local Chamber of Commerce and attend the networking and events throughout the year. Find out about local, state, or regional professional associations for even more networking opportunities.

There are many ways to get your name out there in a way that feels personal to your potential customers and clients. Choose one of the ways mentioned above that feels comfortable to you, and start with that activity. Always test different versions of your ads and activities to find the avenue that brings in the most leads and clients for the best ROI.

And while effective advertising must be used to get your name out to the public. If your name is not familiar to people, they will not come to you.

 

If you’re hitting a wall with your marketing strategy, take a look at the Profit Jolt Workbook to gain clarity in your storm >> Profit Jolt Workbook

McMinnville Business Mastery Lunch & Learn

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

EVER FELT LIKE MARKETING, STAFFING, AND GROWING YOUR BUSINESS WAS LIKE NAVIGATING A DIFFICULT MAZE?

What if you could follow a proven and time-tested roadmap that provides you the EXACT steps to more cash flow and freedom?

At my Business Mastery Lunch & Learn events, join area business owners as we tackle the business challenges of the day. In each session, walk away with no-cost strategies that can be implemented immediately.

Lunch and beverages are provided but registration is required.

To register for an upcoming event, click on the date you want to attend:

January 25 – Topic: Finding & Keeping Employees

(POSTPONED) February 8 – Topic: Position Your Business for a Bank Loan

February 22 – Topic: Exit Your Way – Grow with the Exit In Mind

March 8 – Topic: Pricing Workshop (details coming soon)

March 22 – Topic: No Cost Conversions & Sales Strategies (details coming soon)

Past events included Non-traditional Ways to Find & Keep Superstar Employees, No-cost Lead Generation Strategies, Increase Conversions and Sales With Small Tweaks, and more!

What these events aren’t:

NOT a disguised sales pitch

NOT a boring presentation about buying ads that don’t result in new customers anyways

NOT a place for me to listen to my own voice for a whole 90-minutes 🙂

 

What you will get is:

REAL strategies that you can implement yourself

INSPIRATION that can only come from being in a room with like-minded business owners doing the same work at the same time

The PEACE OF MIND knowing that you’re focusing on the business activities that really make a difference so you can work smarter rather than harder.

30 Ways to Effectively Market Your Business

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

A step-by-step guide to creating and executing a successful advertising campaign

Have you spent thousands of dollars on radio or Facebook ads and seen zero sales from the advertising spend? Maybe you’ve been burned by a marketing consultant that promises the world only to fail to deliver results… today, I want to lift the veil on how to create a successful advertising campaign. 

To do that, first, we must understand why people buy products or services. Every purchase is an emotional response. People always buy a higher emotional state. They’re buying for one of three reasons

  1. to solve a problem or stop pain
  2. an experience that feels good 
  3. for certainty 

To develop emotion and a call to action, the majority of successful professionals use a succession of information-based commercials. What we find is that information-based advertising is much more effective compared to usual brand-based advertisements.

Here, I want to share with you that the principles used to put together high-impact (and oftentimes, high-priced) ads can be adapted to fit your needs and offer you similar results. 

Here are some ideas for creating and executing a successful advertising campaign:

  1. Put together a short report that you’ll automatically send to prospects when they contact you. This should include a short description of your business and what you specialize in. Don’t forget to include case studies, samples, or other proof of your success.

  2. Develop value-oriented “yellow page” like ads.

  3. Consider newsletters as a way of educating and informing customers about your industry and the services offered.

  4. Offer a free lecture or webinar to raise awareness of your business, but make sure the content is relevant to your target market and that the presenters are well-known in the field.

  5. Buy an existing business, improve marketing and grow this new business faster than a “from scratch” business.

  6. Always test different versions of your ads to determine which ones are the most effective.

  7. Use direct mail marketing to grow your business.

  8. Put together a database of previous customers and send them new information.

  9. Offer incentives such as frequent purchasing benefits, loyalty programs, or referral programs.

  10. Approach large firms who may need your services and negotiate a deal to be their exclusive expert in your field.

  11. Offer a 24-hour information line with a regularly updated recorded message. Make this available to all current and prospective customers/clients.

  12. Donate time or materials to local charities to show support in your area.

  13. Offer public clinics for the general public to come along and discuss what they need that’s free and approachable.

  14. Organize seminars your customers/clients can pay to attend by putting together a high-perception value package.

  15. Approach local newspapers by offering to write a weekly column about your area of expertise. Don’t ask for a payment, just a byline, and bio.

  16. Develop a weekend or other destination seminar for customers/clients, not only does this give you an action-packed weekend with the most important people, it gives them a tax-deductible business adventure.

  17. Take a good seminar and turn it into written form as a home study, member site program, audio, or video program.

  18. Approach large companies and offer to give seminars to their employees, investors, or management.

  19. Be proactive with your marketing plan.

  20. Trade for your marketing. Offer products or services instead of payment.

  21. Be willing to bring in new clients, even if at an initial loss because it will likely pay off later.

  22. Adjust your marketing budget to maximize the potential income from them for the following year, and try to postpone advertising costs for the following year to offset your expenses.

  23. Make offers to target markets or target market businesses to pay them for referrals or shared databases.

  24. Offer loaner products to replace equipment that’s being repaired or refurbished.

  25. Give away something free to everyone who brings in a print version of your advertisement. This is a great way to see which ads are giving you the most bang for your buck.

  26. Continually consider what new products/services you can offer to current customers/clients.

  27. Develop a mail order division of your company.

  28. Offer a proposition to your competitors to trade customers/clients you were both unsuccessful in selling to.

  29. Use different marketing tactics as an excuse to attract new customers/clients with new offers and goodies.

  30. Offer a “you-pick-a-price” program. This is especially good for products you just can’t seem to sell.

So now you have it: 30 ways to market to other professionals and businesses. Other great ways to get your name out there for little or no money are as follows:

  • Get engaged in your community-volunteer, donate to local events, etc.

  • Join your local Chamber of Commerce and attend networking and other activities throughout the year.

  • Join local, state, or regional professional associates for further networking opportunities.

  • Become a board member of a local organization.

Advertising should never be your only method of marketing strategy, there are numerous ways to get your name out there in a way that feels personal to potential customers/clients.

 

“Many companies have forgotten they sell to actual people. Humans care about the entire experience, not just the marketing or sales or service. To really win in the modern age, you must solve for humans.” – Dharmesh Shah, CTO & Co-founder of Hubspot.

 

If you’re not sure where you start with your marketing plan or how to reach out to your local community, competitors, customers/clients, and others who could influence your business in a highly positive way try our GUIDED TOUR to experience the tools and resources we have to boost your business to the next level and beyond.

5 Ways to Stop a Consumer in Their Tracks (and look at your product instead of someone else’s)

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

In order of importance here are the five major components to great advertising copy: 

  • Command Attention
  • Showcase Benefits of Products/Services
  • Prove the Benefits
  • Persuade People to Embrace the Benefits
  • Call to Action

Advertising is sales; so you’ll need to think about the unique benefits your products/services offer and showcase them in a persuasive way. In short, you need to emphasize results, not features.

Let’s take a minute to talk about each of these components:

  1. Command Attention: This is usually accomplished with the headline. You need an attention-getter that makes people want to know more about your products/services. The best headlines give a vivid portrayal of the benefits or show how a problem can be solved with your products/services. The headline is the advertisement for the advertisement.
  2. Showcase Benefits: You have to showcase the benefits of your products and services and, more importantly, show how they solve or surmount an obstacle.. Customers need to know what’s in it for them. Include useful, factual, and clear information to show precisely what the benefits are and how they are going to work.
  3. Offer Proof: This is where you prove what the advertisement is offering. You need to establish you have a method to deliver. Consider information that establishes credibility and past performance.
  4. Persuade: Add compelling reasons for your potential customers to purchase your products/services. Use a hard-sell approach and create scarcity. This motivates your potential customers to act now, not delay and risk losing an opportunity. Which leads into the last component.
  5. Call to Action: You need to compel your potential customers to do something. They need to check out your site, sign up for your newsletter, purchase your products, contact you about services—something.  Offer a freebie like a booklet, sample, product, bonus, demo, consult, limited-time price, etc.

Download my free workbook, Profit Jolt for actionable strategies you can implement now.

What is Direct Response Marketing?

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Direct Response Marketing is a method designed to spark a direct response by encouraging your target person to take a specific action. 

Most people love this because they get an opportunity to be heard, and business owners love it because they willingly raise their hands and express interest in what’s being offered.

Direct response marketing doesn’t use new tactics, it’s simply a way of communicating. Familiar avenues are: 

  • Social media ads
  • Direct mail
  • Print ads
  • Radio and TV ads
  • Coupons or other incentives
  • Telemarketing

“I honestly don’t think you’ll ever find a safer, lower-risk, higher-profit method of increasing your business or profession than direct-response marketing,” said Jay Abraham, one of the world’s highest-paid marketing consultants and strategic business problem solver. 

Some of the advantages of direct marketing are:

  • You can activate it during lulls in business
  • Empowering you to create deeper and more impactful relationships with customers
  • A great way to upsell and cross-sell to current customers
  • Low-cost way to generate new business
  • Offers measurable results
  • Reach outside your local area for new business with a fresh campaign
  • Use it to leverage introductory small sales into large sales
  • A cost-effective way to reach target markets
  • Use it to evaluate and increase the effectiveness of your sales force

Direct response marketing is one of the best ways to launch your business and reach out to everyone in your target market. Our GUIDED TOUR can help you put together a great direct response marketing plan and get you on your way to heightened success. Let’s dig in!

Equitable decision-making

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Becoming intimate with your personal values and business ethics can guide you in times of crisis; those times when you don’t know where else to turn.

I realized that inclusion was a defining value of mine after completing a series of leadership workshops years ago. During a problem-solving exercise, taking in the moment, I scanned the room. We’ve all been in a situation just like this — there’s “that group” of 3-4 loud individuals debating what to do, opinions and ideas are coming from everywhere. It can be chaotic, especially for team members that don’t tend to speak up.

My sights landed on a person at the other end of the room, her body language suggested that she was slightly disengaged. I noticed a sigh and eye roll. “I bet she knows the answer,” I thought to myself. I quietly snuck over to get her read on the situation. After warming up, she offered the answer in a nonchalant manner. In my head, I exclaimed, “I knew it! She did know the answer!” I gently encouraged her to find the courage to speak up. If she didn’t interject at a workshop like this, when would she?…

As managers in organizations, how does this resonate with you?

How would the inclusion of voices that might not easily be heard shift the trajectory of your organization?

What I do know is this: “we don’t know what we don’t know until we know what we didn’t know.” Including employees at all levels of the organization will uncover hidden profitability gems. Now — more than ever — your business could depend on it for survival.

Here are some lessons I learned that day:

  • As the owner of my business, I need to watch and listen. Louder individuals have the confidence to speak up but there is genius behind those that are quiet.
  • Examine your process: how do we make decision-making inclusive in our organization? Are voices from all areas of the organization being considered and if so, do people feel comfortable sharing opinions? How can I engage with those who may be resistant to expressing themselves?
  • Marginalized voices are less likely to share opinions due to a number of things like peer pushback or judgment, stereotypes, and systemic racism that I may not even see or know about.
  • Having diverse voices at the table is step one; but are those voices cultivated, encouraged, and amplified in my workplace?

I hear this all the time, “But Amanda, at my business we have to make decisions quickly. I don’t have time for this.”

I’m not going to say there’s a quick way to build inclusion into how you do business. Especially if people have been burned in the past. But, there are ways to start, and putting in that effort will pay off over time.

Here are some ways to start integrating inclusion into your company processes:

  • Random anonymous surveys and send out frequently. From the results, there is transparency of findings, swift actions are taken, and excitement and accountability at all levels for improving the workplace dynamics.

  • Know your team and celebrate uniqueness. Know what makes each team member tick and encourage them to contribute in a way that is comfortable for them. For example, some people need brainstorming sessions to ideate while others need quiet time.

  • Explore bringing in a common language. I used CliftonStrengths in my business. It was a way for our team to know where each other’s talents were and how to ask for help. As a manager, it helped me identify pockets of talent and where (and how) to bridge any gaps.

Having used CliftonStrengths in my food business for years, I know from experience that it is a powerful communication tool to improve workplace culture. I wrote about this experience in this previous post >>

I’m now a certified CliftonStrengths coach who can implement this in your organization. Let’s dig in!