Marketing Small Business Expert Articles
Selling is Not Natural - Market with Soul Instead |
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Selling is Not Natural - Market with Soul Instead Do you find it challenging to discuss your fees or prices with potential clients? Does traditional sales language such as "front end," "back end," "up sell" - even "sell" - make you cringe? If your answer is "Yes," this may be very good and I'll tell you why. But first rest assured that "YOU ARE NOT ALONE." In fact, you are in the majority. Why do you think selling is so hard? It's because selling is not natural - it goes against our desires to be genuine, to connect with others and to create authentic relationships. Don't Worry: You Don't Have to Sell to Succeed There is a key to getting your products and services out to a wider audience that will sky rocket your success. It is something that is 100% natural, more powerful than any sales pitch you could ever master and so effective that it leaves selling in the dust. This key is not even in the same paradigm as selling. And here is an insider's secret - selling is becoming the dinosaur of our age. Before I get to this key, there are three pre-requisites for its effectiveness. Here's the Key You've Been Waiting For The key is Soul Marketing. When you market with soul, the relationship with the person in front of you becomes paramount and you have a desire to contribute to the quality of their life. You become a gift bearer. You offer prospective and current clients your services, products, financial information and agreements. And you offer the gift of your authentic presence and attention. This natural key to success can be measured both in dollars and in soul satisfaction. First, the real reason we are in business is to serve. As entrepreneurs, artists, speakers, writers or CEO's we do that by contributing to the abundance, fulfillment and joy of our clients. Second, we each have a Divine Mission to fulfill. No one else can do what you do the way you do it. You may have the same product or the same service to offer but your way of offering it will be entirely unique. If you know what your Divine Mission is, wonderful. Use this as the lens through which you do everything. If you don't yet know simply follow your passion for now and do what you love, what makes you come alive. You'll always be on the right track if you do. And third, there is a specific population that you are meant to serve. You may have heard this called your target market, your ideal or your choice clients. I call this population "your people." It is "your people" who are ready for your message, your services and/or your products. It is they who will connect with you and for whom you will make the biggest difference. And imagine this - they're looking for you whether they know it or not. They will only find you, and you can only have the impact you are meant to have if they know about you and what you have to offer. A part of your job is to let them know. You were never meant to "sell" your services or products but to offer them in the spirit of love and service. Then There's the Money The money part of the transaction fulfills the universal principle of exchange. You discuss your prices and offer your invoices in the same spirit. It's a natural part of the relationship. Money is simply an exchange for value given. It allows people to invest in themselves and in what matters most to them. And it allows you to care for yourself and get your services and products out to a wider audience - to serve and to have a greater impact. So forget selling! Market with Soul instead by creating relationships - letting people get to know you and what you have to offer. You have a mission; you have a unique message, services and products; and you are meant to serve. Market with Soul and you'll have the time of your life. Step Into Your Greatness and Market with Soul: Succeed in a soul satisfying way, without selling. Reggie Odom CPCC, PCC, founder of Inspired Works, is known as the Passion and Authenticity Coach. She is a lecturer at the Simmons College School of Social Work and faculty member of the National Institute of Whole Health. Reggie is considered a master teacher and unforgettable speaker. She inspires and empowers professionals and solopreneurs to create a passionate, authentic life and business! She can be contacted at (617)524-6153, reggie@reggieodom.com, or you can visit her web site at http://www.reggieodom.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Reggie_Odom |
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Re-Evaluate and Measure Your Marketing Strategy in 10 Steps |
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Re-Evaluate and Measure Your Marketing Strategy in 10 Steps I believe that marketing is more of a science that an art. Every entrepreneur should be on top of their marketing strategy. Here is a list of 10 tips to take charge of your campaign.
Prepare a formal marketing plan - i.e. if you don't have one already. Regardless of the size of your venture, having a thorough marketing plan is a no-brainer. In many instances, entrepreneurs wear more than one hat. A well-written marketing plan can be a practical reference tool to fall back on. Update your marketing plan - This should be a yearly ritual. Often, entrepreneurs and start-up companies have one set of plan that they had written in order to get a loan or to present to a venture capitalist. Upon starting any venture for a year, it is critical to assess your marketing plan and make appropriate changes to the plan. Align marketing strategy with your core business goals - When I write business plans, I dedicate a good portion of my plan for a detail marketing strategy. Marketing strategy or the marketing plan can be a part of the overall business plan. When updating your marketing plan, make sure to align with your core business goals. As we all know, business goals can also change over a period of time. For an instance, if demographics of the buyers who buy from you is changing, the new marketing strategy needs to address that and introduce new marketing means that align with this new target group. Measure the spending - Most successful companies are great marketers by design. Luck can take you only so far. Once in a while, companies get free publicity and create a huge buzz! But, you can't rely on that. For every company that gets a rare easy break, there are thousands that go unnoticed. You need a sustainable marketing plan that can be measured at every step of the way. From the strategic point of view, conduct a detail analysis of your previous year's spending. Create a matrix of each and every marketing campaign conducted and find out the return on the investment made. Based on the hard facts, re-assess the marketing dollars spent and scrap the marketing initiatives that didn't yield results and re-allocate to the ones that worked. Forecast expected return - Forecast expected return for the upcoming quarter. Base your forecast on a thorough research and try to be as thorough as you can. All large corporations have strong forecasting methodologies in place. Right forecasting is the key to scaling an operation. If your business has a dedicated marketing team, forecasting ties in to the accountability of the team. Re-align marketing collaterals - Make all the marketing materials current. There is nothing worse than your pitching a service that is different from the one shown on your brochure. What you pitch needs to align with the current business plan, marketing plan, the company website, and other advertisement campaigns running in parallel. The presentation can be very simple but by all means all the marketing collaterals need to be aligned and convey an uniform message. Execute constant PR campaigns - With the advent of the Internet, running a PR campaign has never been easier. Prepare an electronic Press kit for your company and send it along with other sales material. Send press releases as often as possible. Businesswire is my favorite when it comes to getting exposure to larger media outlets like Forbes and Investor's Business Daily. Business Wire charges between $200 - $500 per release depending on the targeted geographic reach. I am currently exploring some of the online free services like Prfree and Free-press-release. Collaborate with products, clients, strategic partners that strengthen the brand Leverage on satisfied clients to reach to other clients - Get testimonials from satisfied clients to include in your press kit, other marketing materials Establish strong direct response/ market response logistics Jay Maharjan is a management and marketing consultant based out of Los Angeles. Maharjan can be reached via his blog http://4entrepreneur.net Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jay_Maharjan |
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Various Marketing Techniques to Generate Leads |
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Various Marketing Techniques to Generate Leads Lead generation or sales lead is a tough job. To earn the confidence of the ultimate client, a company has to pamper people and try different methodologies to attract their attention to get the desired results. In this article, I am going to talk about top five different approaches meant to effective sales leads. Let us discuss one-by-one in brief: Advertising and Branding Advertising is the most common factor in generating quality leads. This popular form of advertising not only attracts people but also tempt them to go for the offered product or services. In advertising, we use different tools to catch the attention of users and apply them in our day-to-day life. Placing hoardings, distributing pamphlets, advertisements in the newspapers, television, radio and internet also come in advertising and branding. Direct Marketing As it name suggests, direct marketing is a combination of two words, direct and marketing. In this type of marketing, a company tries to hit users by sending them direct message about the products and services. Here, commercial communication is used to attract users. The focus of this form of marketing is to drive purchases that can be attributed to a specific "call-to-action." Internet Marketing Internet marketing or Emarketing is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. This system has many benefits including low costs in distributing information and media to a global audience. Market Research Market research is a systematic process of gathering, recording and analyzing data and information about potential customers, competitors and the market. The purpose of market research is to chalk out a proper business plan to launch a new product or service, fine tune existing products and services, and expand into new markets. Events Organization Event organization like organizing a trade show or participating in exhibitions and others has also proved their worth in generating leads. In this system, a company tries to make a personal relation with its potential clients in order to have a long partnership. Myself webmaster of http://www.manageyourleads.com catering services of sales leads generation, sales lead generation, business leads, lead generation, appointment setting, B2B sales leads, business to business leads in all major industries Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anirban_Bhattacharya |
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Targeted Marketing |
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Targeted Marketing The definition of targeted marketing in its simplest form is marketing a specific product toward a target customer. This could be based on age, location, gender, etc. Targeted marketing has changed the way businesses find customers. In today's business world, a savvy marketer will know that to find the best possible customers depends on well thought out targeted marketing strategies. By using targeted marketing, the business will tailor their marketing efforts to appeal to a particular group of customers. In order to select the target market, a business needs to segment the overall market into key customer subsets whose members share alike demographic needs. This type of marketing is a low-cost method that targets only that specific niche. The ultimate goal is to corner that area of the market by understanding the needs of those customers. By choosing a target market segment for their product instead of trying to sell it to the entire market, a business can find a better use of their promotion dollars. A carefully chosen market plan can reach the right customers with the perfect message. This is not only a better use of money and time; it is also a better use of a businesses production resource by concentrating on a single product. Another benefit to using a targeted marketing plan is that it makes a better use of a company's distribution dollars. This allows the marketers to focus on developing a good working relationship with the sales force. Creating a strong brand identity and targeted marketing plan involves defining and aligning the businesses product or service with their customer's buying needs and habits. Using targeted marketed can be an extremely valuable tool for small businesses since they can often lack the resources to market to the large markets or to maintain a wide range of products for more than one market. By focusing their resources on a certain type of customer, a small business can carve out their own market niche that it can serve better than its larger competitors. A few different factors can be used to find the best customers for your product. First off there is the demographic that is being targeted. This involves the age, gender, religion, race, ethnicity, income, occupation, family size, and social class. Next is the psychographic, which involves the lifestyles, opinions, attitudes, behavior, interests, and perception. Lastly there is the geographic, meaning the zip codes, city, county, state size, climate, urban, terrain, region, rural, suburban, and natural resources. Press Contact: Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Phil_Brown |
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