Category: Promotion

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.

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!

Three Steps to Create a Successful Product Launch

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Have you ever launched a new product or service and wondered why no one bought it? You’re looking at competitors and thinking, wow, I did all that. How can they be successful when I’m not?

Well, there are two things to consider: either they are lying or the answer is in their messaging. Getting a message heard is harder now than ever before but it still can be done, let me show you how.

Below, we’ve got three essential steps that you can take to make a big splash when launching your new product or service. Let’s take a walk on a marketing journey, so you can see exactly how to use them and how they can affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaign.

Step #1 Define your Unique Selling Proposition for Your Product Launch

Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) by taking time to ask yourself questions from your clients’ perspective. What would it take to get your attention? What needs do you need to be met? What objections could come up? What are the promises you want to be fulfilled?

Viewing your product/service launch with a customer-first approach means you’re really looking at the full competitive landscape and how your company falls into everything that is available to our ideal customer.

If you already have a following, you could ask direct questions to your existing base by creating a poll on social media, asking survey questions in your email newsletter, or by calling directly and asking your clients what they would like to see or use that can help them solve pain points in their personal or business life. 

Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start putting together a plan to meet your clients’ needs. 

So many people had questions about creating their unique USPs, we built a series of videos dedicated to the process. Watch videos 1-7 in my Chaos to Calm Business Academy to learn how >>

Step #2 Develop an Effective Sales Plan Before Launch

To develop an effective sales plan, you’ll want to take the following steps. 

  1. Put together a headline that gets immediate attention.
  2. Share the benefits of your products and services by speaking from the customers’ perspective.
  3. Identify the specific needs met by your offer.
  4. Share your sales proposition by telling customers what you don’t do or how you’re different than anyone else selling what you sell.
  5. Motivate buyers with a call to action by making it easy to do business with you. This offer should be backed by a guarantee or no-risk entry point.

When you put together what makes your products and services unique, you can compel customers to buy. You need to answer a question, solve a problem, or feed an obsession. Provide them with all the information they need to make an informed and confident decision. If they don’t feel a strong want for your product, they won’t buy it. 

Step #3 Use a World-class Marketing Perspective for Your Product Launch

Research Phase:
To develop a world-class marketing perspective, you must take the time to study what does work. Keep a marketing journal and write down your innovative ideas. Take screenshots of quality ads as you find them so you have a folder of proven concepts when you go to create your own.

Development Phase:
Now, as you develop your materials, you’ll want to make sure your marketing fits the company image, service, and quality. Do you need to hire a designer or will the piece turn out well using a self-design tool like Canva? Search for quality images that represent your company and the people it serves. Who is or isn’t represented in those images? Offer more information in your marketing than anyone else. The more information you offer, the more products/services you’ll sell. Develop all your ads, campaigns, and sales materials with attention to compelling and factual information.

Testing Phase:
When out in public, watch how consumers behave in different situations and how they consider their purchases. Watch for when you say something that catches a person’s attention and, maybe more importantly, when did you “fire hose” them and lose their attention? Improve on your best marketing areas and drop what isn’t working.

A great marketing plan can only get better. So continue fine-tuning and refining your marketing based on testing results and feedback. Continuously test markets, ads, and marketing techniques.

By using these techniques, you can put your name out there to the world and become one of the top brands in your industry. You can’t lose when the reward is directly related to your product or service; so why not get started today with a low-cost monthly membership to my Chaos to Calm e-Learning Marketing system?

 

Lessons I learned from the Kardashians

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

  1. You may be asking yourself, “Why is she mentioning the Kardashians on her business website?” I promise, it fits in beautifully with the subject of shameless self-promotion. Love it or hate it — entrepreneuriship is all about self-promotion.

Consider some of the celebrities we all know like the Kardashians: Oprah, Drew Barrymore, Gwyneth Paltrow, and LeBron James, to name a few. They’re all natural promoters of what they have to offer the world.

Here are lessons I learned from the Kardashians:

  • Position. Position yourself around people who can make a difference in your life. Ask yourself, “Who can I meet today who will make a difference in my success?” Maybe go a step further and remind yourself by writing it in big, bold letters on your bathroom mirror.

Also, consider:
– Who can help me meet my goals?
– Is it a prospective customer/client? A colleague with contacts? An association with key members who may become prospects?

Don’t settle into interacting with the people who are the easiest to access. You need to reach outside your comfort zone and there you’ll find a wealth of new connections that can facilitate great success.

  • Style. No, this doesn’t mean you need to wear CHANEL to bring in more business (though let’s be honest, look at this bag! W.A.N.T.). What this really means is differentiate yourself from competitors. What makes you memorable with customers? If you meet people and they don’t remember you once you leave the room, you have a problem. Consider subtle changes to your:
    – Business cards
    – Company messaging
    – And, tighten up your elevator pitch to make a bigger impact.

  • Repetition. This is the third trait of natural promoters. You can’t say it once and leave it at that. Successful self-promoters say it as many times as they need to until they get a response, then they say it again. You may have to make multiple impressions on those you are networking with in order to build brand awareness. Repetition directly impacts positioning. Once you find people to network with, reach out and find hundreds more who can help with your success.