Tag: marketing plan

This is how to Guarantee a rockin’ Q4

This is how to Guarantee a rockin’ Q4

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Hello fellow rockstars,

I’m jumping in to talk about why this is the perfect time to start the 90-day Jumpstart. Why on earth would you do a program in the middle of the summer as we’re exiting a pandemic?

It’s natural for some businesses to slow down during the summer — pandemic or not. After talking to businesses in a variety of industries, it was clear to us this is the optimal time to embark on the 90-day Jumpstart.

We have one goal: to make Q4, rockin’ for you!

This summer, get everything lined up:

  • Hone in on marketing messaging that directly speaks to your ideal customer and market position systems using the three marketing fundamentals and the marketing equation.
  • Attract employees and onboard them in a way that you can rely on them during your most valuable season
  • Create efficiencies and systems that enable you to take Q4 and run with it.
  • We are exiting a pandemic. Yes! We need you to take care of yourself right now. Get out, enjoy friends and family safely, take a vacation… but, I want to see you participating and working ON your business rather than do it. I have a vision of someone logging in from a beach. Wouldn’t that be so cool?

What is the structure of the 90-day Jumpstart?

The reason why the program is structured the way it is, comes from an experience I had in 2017 when I was a part of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses (10KSB) program. It’s kind of like an accelerated MBA where they pair you up with businesses that have at least $150,000 in revenue and four or more employees. To say this program was life-changing for me is an understatement. It was so awesome to be surrounded by entrepreneurs that had the same issues that I did. All of our businesses were in different stages and different industries but experiencing the same things. The camaraderie that developed was amazing.

I made my big life choice of leaving my bakery business based on a relationship that I had with someone in my 10KSB class. They asked me, “why was I hanging on so tight to the business when you have so much more to do?” My point in sharing that is that these deep relationships could stick with you for a lifetime.

As a business owner, I know that it can get really lonely, especially when you’re working day-to-day with managing employees and you — we all — need someone to listen to us, to help us see blind spots, and support us through challenging choices. That’s why 90-day Jumpstart is structured in a very intimate way where we have, at most, eight people in each cohort. So go ahead, click on the 90-day Jumpstart link and fill out the application if this at all interests you at all. The next step is you and I sitting down (virtually) and talking for 30 minutes about your business — and it’s free.

If the summer one doesn’t work for you, still fill out an application if this feels like a fit. We offer the program year-round and can stay in touch when the next cohort is available. There’s nothing more that I love than to hear about what you are doing. The passion fellow business owners have for their businesses, customers, and employees are so cool to me.

I look forward to speaking with you! Thank you for jumping in, considering the possibilities of upgrading your lifestyle by sustainably growing your business, and creating the life you want.

Let’s dig in!

5 Strategies You Will Master By Signing Up For The 90-day Jumpstart

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

90-DAY JUMPSTART 

Are you asking yourself, why aren’t more customers buying from me? You invested in social media or a shiny new website but aren’t seeing conversions? Learn why your marketing doesn’t work and, more importantly, how to fix it NOW.

WHAT: 90-day Jumpstart is a structured virtual program where you will learn, practice, and implement a number of strategies that begin to grow your business immediately. Best of all, you’ll continue to see these strategies pay off for years to come.

After taking this course, you will never again ask yourself what you need to do and how to do it to increase sales, increase cash flows, increase efficiencies, or how to grow and attract dedicated staff.

Past participants have experienced 2x, 5x and even 15x growth in the first year these strategies were put in place.

HOW: You might be asking yourself, how is this possible?! You’ve likely been trying to get more customers forever but nothing sticks and you feel like you’re on a hamster wheel creating content with little to no engagement. Or, you’re getting engagement but not seeing sales. At the base of the 90-day Jumpstart, you’ll learn these strategies:

  1. Position your business in a league of its own
  2. Attract your soul-mate customer or client
  3. Attract and retain your ideal employees
  4. Increase your number of transactions
  5. Decrease your costs

WHO: Business owners in business a minimum of 2 years and generate $50,000 – $1.3M in revenue a year.

WHEN: The next cohort starts

Are you in? If it’s a hell yes! Fill out the application here >>

If you’d like to see more information, learn more here >>

Kick start your marketing

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

In Reid Hoffman’s podcast Masters of Scale, he interviewed Brian Chesky from Airbnb and they talked about something that has stuck with me since I heard the segment in 2017, “If you want your company to truly scale, you have to do things that don’t scale.”

Today, I’d like to share three things I did to get (and keep) my first customers.

  1. Meet your customers in person: You must meet with customers/clients in person whenever possible. I understand that is challenging but remember the potential connections in-person meetings cultivate, otherwise, there’s always Zoom or Skype. You will learn so many valuable insights from this person’s attention that will carry you and your company to the future.
  2. Follow-up letter: When was the last time you got a piece of mail that was unexpectedly delightful? It’s been a minute for me (read: never). Your first customers want to feel valued and respected. Consider taking a moment to send a follow-up letter personalized with what you talked about and to thank them for taking the time to meet with you.
  3. Phone call: I hear you! No one calls anyone anymore. But, use the phone to share an article or something that triggered you to think of them, and that customer will be loyal forever.

A word of caution: None of these tactics will work if you don’t have a quality product or service to back you up.

Here are the key steps for putting together your start-up marketing tools:

  • Research potential customers, buyers, competitors, and their preferred methods of distribution.
  • Talk to potential customers! Surveys, polls, prototypes – take a hard look at your product from a customer’s perspective and see what it needs to be successful.
  • Follow up with your 3-step process from above.
  • Develop systems for contact follow-through, quality control standards, and customer service.
  • Keep lines of communication open with customers and build on your current relationship, possibly increasing future purchases.

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” — Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company.

I hope this lesson helps you put together a start-up marketing plan that can sustain and grow your business far into the future. The tools offered in our free training videos offer more of these strategies.

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.