Category: Education

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!

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.

Are you ready for the next phase of your business?

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

My business was running me.

If you’re anything like I was, your business is running you. The everyday struggles of a bakery employing 15 people and non-stop production almost killed me. I was beyond exhausted and wasn’t sure where to turn.

When I went searching for support, I was overwhelmed by the amount of tactical “solutions” recommended to get my business to the next phase. It seemed like everything was surface-level. I didn’t want the latest marketing trend, a social media calendar, or prompts for content, or dead-end financial management support.

I say this often, “You don’t know what you don’t know until you know what you didn’t know.” I know now that I needed someone outside my business to help me see beyond the day-to-day. A person with the financial know-how to examine and question current systems — someone that could get us beyond what I already knew. 

Does this resonate with you? Maybe you feel stuck and aren’t sure how to get to the next level. Or your business is growing but relies on you 24/7, and you don’t know how much longer you can take it.

Download my Profit Jolt book and we’ll also share a link to an email training series on how to build a profitable business. We’ll get you off the “hamster wheel” so your passion can fuel the world.

Let’s take care of you and your business.

Hiring – shift from filling a job to growing with a person

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Like many, my first jobs were in the restaurant industry. Over time, I went from fast food worker to hostess, then to server and bartender. I rarely held a job longer than one year until I was 23 years old. 

This being my background — at my core — I know why employee development is not a top priority for owners or managers in high-turnover, entry-level jobs.

In 2012, when I launched my bakery  I was determined to have a food business that centered around people’s growth. I knew my employees wouldn’t be with me forever, but while they were, I wanted them to feel valued and heard, to have a sense of purpose. My bakery was just one step in their life-long adventure. I sincerely wanted my employees to grow up and out of my business and into higher-paying jobs.

My rationale was that if I created an ecosystem that values people, they would help my business both in the short and long term. Let me provide a few examples of how:

  • valued employees give better customer service thus they affect your conversion rate and number of transactions
  • positive morale increases productivity
  • turnover negatively affects your profitability
  • post-employment you have a loyal customer
  • post-employment you have a trusted referral source

At the base of growing this people-forward work environment was CliftonStrengths (previously StrengthsFinder). A friend of mine introduced me to CliftonStrengths and since then, I’ve spent more time working on what I love and more time hiring people to work in areas I don’t love. 

I grew my team from one employee to 15 and the fundamental reason why I implemented this in my business was to have a common language for us all.  Here’s a sample of what I gained from implementing CliftonStrengths in a bakery setting:

  • A common language to talk about strengths/blind spots (weaknesses).
  • A deep understanding of my own talents and how to leverage the talents of my team to minimize my blind spots.
  • A focus on coaching the employee on how their talents fit into their job and how to leverage the talents of the team to support their blind spots.
  • Knowing how to thoughtfully reward an individual for their work.
  • Developing a growth-focused relationship with employees.
  • Lower turnover rate even in a high-turnover industry.

And believe it or not, there’s much more!

From there, we can create a process around employee onboarding and check-ins that support employee development professionally and personally. All these systems save you money, increase your business’s capacity for growth, and will set-up your company as the desired place to work in your industry.

This all starts with you. Let’s dig in!

Educate your customers

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

You may be thinking to yourself, “Educate them about what?”

Entrepreneur and documentary filmmaker, Jia Wertz, says it better than I ever could in the opening sentence of her Forbes article, “Majority of customers visit your website or your brick-and-mortar only one time. Think about that.”

She goes on to explain that we’re spending all that money to get people in and we get one shot. Consider this, many businesses focus solely on attracting new customers, but I encourage you to spend a good chunk of your time retaining current and former customers. I know it feels like a no-brainer but so few businesses create a system to bring back people who already know you and have bought from you.

Take the time to market and sell new products to your old customers and less time trying to sell old products to new customers and you will see a drastic change in your sales, customer quality, and branding position.

Here are key elements to use to retain your current customers:

  • Stay in contact: This means by phone, email, e-newsletter, in-person, and by carrier pigeon if you have must (lol)!
  • Post-Purchase Assurance: This means you need to follow up with customers. They need to feel supported for what they purchased. How many times have you purchased a product, then felt completely abandoned? Something as simple as a ‘Thank You’ note with your contact or customer service information can go a long way in retaining a great customer.
  • Deals & Guarantees: Always offer your current customers the best deals and guarantees you have. Show them you appreciate their business or even come up with a club specifically to reward loyal customers. You can also do this with a preferred pricing option.
  • Integrity: Using good business practices and simply upholding integrity, dignity, and honesty go a long way with customers. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of swindling with substandard product out there, and the safer and more confident you make your customers feel, the more they will trust you. That makes for an amazingly supportive and loyal customer.

There are three cornerstone ideas to a successful business:

  1. Quality product/service
  2. Offering useful products/services that solve a problem for or enhance the life of a customer
  3. Offer content your customers find interesting

Use this approach of educating your customers and offering them real information and insight and you will be rewarded with loyalty and success.

Stop wasting all your time on new prospects while your current customers fall by the wayside.

Legendary business strategist, Jay Abraham says, “Your best prospects are your existing customers. If you’ve been putting all your marketing efforts into acquiring new customers, stop and diverts some of your resources into reselling, upselling, cross-selling to those same customers. In every way possible – through package inserts, regular mailings, special offers – stay in touch with those customers and get them used to buying from you.”

Remember, you can access free support by signing up for our training videos. The videos can help you harness techniques to educate your customers and watch their lifetime value go up and your revenues pay off many-fold.