Marketing and Procrastination:  3 Ways to Avoid this Potentially Deadly Combo

Many entrepreneurs procrastinate on one thing or another in the course of running their business, so if you find yourself doing this, you’re far from alone. However, when it comes to small business marketing, procrastination can lead to a lull between clients, which is bad for the health of your bottom line. Here are some ways to prevent this situation from occurring.

Create Marketing Goals & Use a Marketing System

You may have heard of the S.M.A.R.T. formula for setting goals.  Your goals should be:

S=Specific: General goals are harder to meet.
M=Measurable: How will you know when you’ve reached your goal?
A=Achievable: If your goal is too lofty, you’ll sap your will to achieve it.
R=Realistic: Make sure it’s something you can reasonably expect to attain while still pushing your boundaries.
T=Timed: It must have a firm target date.

The S.M.A.R.T. formula sets out the basics for creating effective goals.  A successful small business marketing system will include a goal setting process and provide you with both structure and the tools you need to turn your marketing goals and ideas in to productive action. In particular, a system for following up with potential clients is crucial to your overall marketing success. If you don’t have such a system, and you don’t know where to start, a business coach may be able to help.

Hold Yourself Accountable

As an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to keep your eye on the ball. There’s no one there to nudge you back on track should you start to stray. You may need someone who’s there to do exactly that – to help you to remain focused on your goals and on the “big picture”.

One way to do this is to hire a business coach. He or she can help you avoid the costly pitfalls associated with procrastination. The fact that you’re paying them for their time is an additional incentive for you to make the most of it, so when they ask you how you’re doing on your goals, you don’t want to be making excuses as to why they haven’t been reached yet. Business coaches can help you in any number of ways, but for entrepreneurs who have a tendency to procrastinate, holding you accountable might be the most valuable. Eventually, they can help you to find the root cause of this procrastination and work with you to eliminate it.

Outsource Your Small Business Marketing Tasks

Nowadays, marketing your business online can be a full-time job. If you don’t already have someone helping you with things such as blog posts, social media marketing, shopping cart maintenance, press releases and things of that sort, you owe it to yourself and your business to get some help now. This will leave you free to do what you went into business to do in the first place, and, if done correctly, can put your small business marketing system on autopilot.

Of course, every business is different, so your marketing requirements may be more or less involved than these common types of online marketing, but once you can leave the implementation to your support team, you’ll be amazed at the difference in your productivity and profits.

Clear, effective goals, a proven small business marketing system, a coach looking out for your best interests, and a dedicated marketing support team can take your business to new heights in a relatively short amount of time. Instead of procrastinating, you’ll find yourself constantly striving to achieve your goals and move your business forward.

Copyright, Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All rights reserved.

5 Strategies to Generate a Stream of Referrals

You may already know that referral marketing (word-of-mouth) is a powerful and cost effective way to grow your small business. Many entrepreneurs face the challenge of how to get referrals. Getting referrals should be thought of as a marketing system and not a one-time activity you do when need to generate sales.

A referral marketing system is a “viral marketing” strategy. Viral marketing encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s influence and exposure.

Your referral plan should answer the following questions:

1.  WHO would be a good referral? Do you know who your ideal client is?

2. WHEN are you going to ask for referrals – at the beginning or throughout the relationship? Do you have a system for testimonials?

3. WHY should someone refer you? If you don’t know what makes you unique why should anyone else? How will you handle clients that won’t refer you?

4. HOW do you receive referrals? Do you make it easy for others to refer you? Do you have a system in place to thank referrers?

5. WHAT is your process to turn each referral into a client?

A Referral Mindset

The foundation to building your business with referrals is the mindset you bring to your marketing efforts. One of the ways to creating a success-based mindset is the mindset of service. You should look to provide value to prospects each time you come in contact with them. You must believe that you have the skills and knowledge that can help others and be generous in sharing your expertise with others. Always do more than is expected of you. When you shift into this mindset of service instead of focusing on ‘closing the sale’, you will be more successful.  Get started with these 5 referral strategies:

Referral Strategy # 1 – Team 100

Each month, identify 10 professionals who serve the same target market that you do (not direct competitors!) or that sell complimentary products/services to your offering. Send a letter informing them about your services and that you would like to develop a referral relationship with them. Within 10 months, you would have contacted 100 people and created a network to generate a stream of referrals. Feel free to go at a quicker pace of course!

Referral Strategy # 2 – Get the Word Out!

Include a request for referrals on all your marketing materials and on every piece of communication: letters, invoices, quotes, faxes, emails, ezines etc. Some ideas are:  We appreciate referrals We thrive on referrals We gladly accept referrals Thanks for your referrals We crave referrals By referral only (you do not accept any clients unless they are referred to you)

Referral Strategy # 3 – Offer a Reward

Clients may refer you if they are happy with your service, even if you do not offer a reward. However, offering a reward can speed up the process! Rewards must have value such that clients want to get them.  One way to do this is to send them a list of options so that they have a choice. A reward of $25.00 is usually acceptable. Offer this in the form of a gift certificate (ie. Amazon) or a discount coupon for your services or for your information products (ie. e-books, ecourses).

Referral Strategy # 4 – Give them Tools

Often we ask others to talk about our services but we don’t give them any tools to help them. Make it easy for your clients to refer you. You can send them three business cards and brochures. Add a “With Compliments” slip and write “For when you are talking with work colleagues or friends…”. If you prefer doing this by email, send them a short introductory message that includes their testimonial, along with your brochure and a link to your website. Send this message at least 4 times throughout the year.

Referral Strategy # 5 – Help a Worthy Cause

By offering to help a worthy cause, you can increase referrals and at the same time improve your community. You can donate a percentage of all business acquired by referral to a non-profit agency. Non-profit agencies can become strong referral partners because if they benefit from referring clients, they may be highly motivated to provide referrals to you.

Copyright, Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All rights reserved.

Focus is what successful entrepreneurs use to maximize their business growth while maintaining their work-life balance. Most solopreneurs are able to focus to a certain degree but start to lose focus as their business grows around them. Overcoming three distinct blocks can help solopreneurs who may be spinning their wheels increase their focus and take their business to the next level.

There are three major blocks that prevent solopreneurs from taking their business from where it stands now to a level that will give you them the success and peace of mind they went into business to achieve.

When Doing Too Much is Not Enough

If you’re a solopreneur, then by definition, you’ve gotten to where you are by doing things yourself. It’s your talent at your particular business that has allowed you to succeed to this point. But as your business grew, you no doubt found yourself spending most of your time on activities unrelated to the core of your business.

Imagine if you could spend the bulk of your time on your Power Skills ™  -  the things you love doing that utilize your greatest strengths. The 80/20 rule states that 20% of your business activities bring you 80% of your results. Ideally, you’d like to spend 80% of your time directly achieving results for your business.

Look at your to-do list and categorize each task as either something that is your Power Skills™ , something that is a side effect of your success -administration or something that helps grow your business – marketing. As you go through your list, you’ll probably find that more than half of the items fall into the last two categories.  These tasks that  take up valuable time and aren’t related to your  Power Skills ™ should be eliminated or outsourced.

Stay in Rhythm

Everyone has their own unique rhythms – times of day when they work best, times when they like to exercise, times when they need to relax. If your business forces you to work counter to your natural rhythms, it can be a drain on your productivity, not to mention your mood.

The first step toward working within your natural rhythms is to make a list. Are you a morning person? Do you need time after lunch to mellow out before you get back to work? Writing everything down will give you a thorough understanding of how your internal clock works and how it effects your work habits.

Now it’s time to rework your daily schedule to coincide with your rhythms. Don’t be afraid to change your routine, even to the point of asking clients if they mind a change in meeting time, for the sake of your rhythms. You’ll be rewarded by increased productivity and a brighter outlook.

Personalize your Workweek

Your workweek doesn’t have to be all work. In fact, for most people, it’s impossible to prevent some personal and family activities from encroaching on their workweek. So why not schedule these activities so they don’t constantly compete with your business?

If you have family obligations that are continuously pushed aside in favor of those of your business, add these activities to your calendar so that your business activities don’t step on them again.  You’ll eventually realize that creating a time for family obligations actually helps focus the rest of your day and week.

If you exercise on a regular basis, plug those times into your calendar, keeping in mind your natural rhythms.

The combination of delegating your non-core tasks, scheduling your business around your rhythms and integrating personal and family time into your workweek will enable your to focus more firmly upon your Power Skills™. At the same time, you’ll be able to approach each day in a more organized manner and with more energy to produce the results you want.

Copyright 2010, Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All Rights Reserved.

Online Shopping Cart
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Offering “free-reprint” articles to targeted audiences is one of the most effective and low-cost methods to become a recognized expert on the internet, establish credibility and generate long-term targeted traffic to your website. Well-written, informational articles are always in great demand by thousands of publishers and editors of websites, newsgroups, blogs and e-zines who rely heavily on providing innovative and fresh content to their readership and to attract search engines and site visitors.

Unfortunately, many  entrepreneurs who market their services with articles are making serious mistakes that result in their articles not being published and not getting targeted prospects to their website.  There are 4 factors that determine the success of any article:

*  the preparation you do before you write an article
*  the content of your article
*  the format of your article (“article mechanics”)
*  how you optimize and distribute your article

Let’s take a look at what the most common article marketing mistakes are and how you can avoid them.

Article Marketing Mistake #1 – Not Being Clear on the Reason to Write Articles

The primary reason to write an article is to inform your audience. If your article is not written with this purpose in mind, few people will want to read your article and you will fail to see all the benefits of promoting your article. Generating links by submitting your article to hundreds of sites will help to boost your search engine ranking but if you’d like to get people to read what is in your article, and then click through to your site, the solution is to produce better content.

Article Marketing Mistake #2 – Failure to Plan for Your Audience

Who are you writing for? You want only the people who are interested in reading your article and in the services you have to offer. You’re not writing for every person browsing on the internet. Ask yourself these basic questions about your target audience:

*   What kind of information are they searching for when they go online?
*   Do they have any problems related to what you have to offer?
*   What is their occupation, sex, age, etc.?

Then strategically choose the title and keywords of your article (more about this in Mistake #7). Did you know that the title determines as much as 95% of the success of your article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate back to your website? In fact, the first 3-5 words of your title are the most important. Then begin planning the content to make sure your article provides useful information or addresses a problem with a solution.

Article Marketing Mistake # 3 – Publishing Content That Publishers Don’t Want

If you want article marketing to work for you, write articles that publishers would want to publish. They will not publish your article unless it contains quality content that will give their readers value. You will also have to adhere to publication rules in order to have your article approved and listed. Rules include the use of self-serving links, unique content, the use of HTML, article length, keyword anchor text, resource boxes and affiliate links.

Article Marketing Mistake # 4 – Not Writing with Personality

In delivering your information, make it engaging and entertaining. Use your sense of humor if you have it. Put a little of your personality into your writing so that readers will feel a connection with you. When making a buying decision for professional services, the number one factor prospects consider is how much they know, like and trust you.

Article Marketing Mistake # 5- Too Much Sales Hype

Article marketing isn’t about selling – it’s about pre-selling. No one will publish an article that reads like a sales letter.  You get to promote yourself in your Resource Box at the end of the article where you include your name, brief professional information, your unique selling proposition (USP) and a call to action with links to your website.

Article Marketing Mistake # 6 – Failing to Maximize the Promotional Opportunities of Article Marketing

In order to maximize the benefits of article marketing, it makes good business sense to optimize your articles so the search engines can list the website associated with your article on the search engine results pages.  You will get free and targeted traffic from these listings! Include keywords in the title and content of your article and create metatags for your article pages. You can also include anchor text links in your resource box (the words you click on when you click a link).

Please note: there are best practices concerning these techniques so I recommend that you consult a professional to help you.

Article Marketing Mistake # 7 – Not Distributing Their Articles for Maximum Exposure

Many entrepreneurs don’t know the top sites to target for maximum exposure. They often end up submitting their articles to over-hyped and under-maintained sites. Moreover, article submission is very time consuming and tedious so they do a few submissions but not enough volume to give them the exposure on the internet they need.

So my recommendation is don’t just start writing. Plan ahead and write strategically to increase your article marketing success. The choice is yours – you can get a little exposure from increased link backs, or for a little extra work, enjoy massive exposure. If you have passion for a subject and can explain things like you would to a friend over a cup of coffee, you can write articles people will want to read. Just do a bit of planning first.

To write or not to write?  That isn’t the question. The questions that you must be able to answer are: What’s in it for the reader?  What’s in it for the publisher? Does my article provide value? Savvy entrepreneurs generate thousands of dollars from Article Marketing each year. So can you!

So many entrepreneurs struggle to create a successful home-based business – going through times of plenty, and times of drought. Only about 18% of entrepreneurs are extremely successful. Want to know a small business success secret?  Successful entrepreneurs make the best use of resources to accomplish more with less effort – they use the principle of leverage.

Small business resources that entrepreneurs can leverage include knowledge, expertise, time, human resources, systems and technology. The result of leverage is a turn-key business that can “run itself”, generate more profits with less stress, and allow for the freedom to enjoy prosperity.

A great way to leverage technology is to automate and simplify your sales and marketing with an online professional shopping cart. This small business success secret allows you to put your small home-based business on autopilot, exposing hidden profit sources. Using an online shopping cart is the fastest and most flexible way to do business online, without expensive and complicated software.

The shopping cart small business success secret will grow your online business by leaps and bounds when you:

* Use custom forms and opt-in boxes to collect names and email addresses of website visitors
* Keep in touch with your customers 24/7
* Maintain accurate contact information of your clients and prospects
* Automate product sales and purchases
* Send personal automatic email responses (auto responders) to inquiries, registrations, purchases, and to follow up with prospects
* Deliver scheduled, informative emails, newsletters and promotional messages to your mailing list
* Set up multiple affiliate programs for others to market your business
* Track the success of your ads and emails
* Test and track your website links
* Use questionnaires to discover customer needs

Statistics show that you need to contact a prospective customer 7-9 times, before they remember your business. Many entrepreneurs stop at only 2-3 follow-ups and are losing 70-80% of their sales! The online shopping cart will help you follow-up easily and effortlessly with autoresponders.

It is easy to believe that doing already contracted work is more important than marketing, but you must have marketing systems in place to generate sales consistently. You want a successful home-based business, not the feast-or-famine rollercoaster that many home-based business entrepreneurs experience. Even if you are doing well now, keep looking toward the future and how to further take advantage of this small business success secret.

Several online shopping cart companies offer similar services, but at the very minimum, you want to ensure the program you choose:

* Offers support services
* Offers free tools
* Is easy and accessible
* Is simple to setup, even for a novice
* Offers multiple packages
* Offers a NO RISK trial period

Here’s how to get started with an online shopping cart:

1) Identify your marketing and sales goals.

2) Determine what products and services to sell on the internet.

3) Sign up for an online shopping cart and discover how you can easily use its internet marketing tools to achieve your goals.

4) Get the help of an e-Commerce Virtual Assistant or Shopping Cart Strategist who has the technical cart skills and strategic expertise to effectively market your business online.

The online shopping cart technology and its small business resources are essential to any successful home-based business. Implement this small business success secret to develop a consistently thriving business that is easy to manage, achieve your marketing goals with ease and skyrocket your sales.

Copyright, Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All rights reserved.

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Ever wondered how some entrepreneurs have all the business they need, while others struggle with only a few clients? Entrepreneurs pay a lot of attention to the mechanics of marketing — attending workshops, seminars, teleclasses, reading books and surfing the internet to gain as much knowledge as they can. With my own clients, I often discover that they already know about many marketing techniques, but what they seem to lack is the “attitude” that is necessary to make their marketing a success.

Attitude can be defined as a feeling or emotion toward a fact or state. It is an underlying inclination to respond to something either favorably or unfavorably. Our attitudes (thoughts and beliefs) determine the actions we take and ultimately the results we get. Probably more than anything else in your life, the ability to master your attitude is what controls your measure of success.

Let’s look at some common attitudes toward small business marketing and business development that create barriers to success and some possible solutions. See if any of them apply to you.

1. I don’t have time for marketing. This attitude results in the “feast or famine life” that many entrepreneurs have experienced. At times, they have all the business they can handle but when they have finished servicing these clients they have no more business. This happens because during their prosperity they didn’t do any marketing activities to generate leads. It’s easy to believe that doing already contracted work is more important than marketing, but you would be surprised the difference it will make if you spend only two hours per week consistently on your marketing systems.

2. My small business marketing isn’t working. This attitude results in demotivating entrepreneurs to the point that they give up on marketing. While it may be true that they aren’t using the most effective small business marketing systems, strategies or tactics, sometimes the real problem is they are not putting in the effort that is needed for success. For example, let’s say you need one new client a month. Did you know that it takes 30 prospects to get just one presentation, and it takes three presentations to get one new client? Do the math; are you doing enough marketing to get 30 prospects?

3. Marketing is for people selling products. This attitude causes entrepreneurs to ignore small business marketing completely with deadly results – no clients! Marketing is effective for both products and professional services. However, marketing a service business is not the same as marketing a product because services are intangible. People will only do business with you if they know, like or trust you. Without having one of these factors in place, getting the business will be an almost impossible task.

4. If prospects don’t respond to my marketing, it’s because they’re not interested. Many entrepreneurs follow up with prospects only once; and if they don’t hear back from them, they assume prospects aren’t interested and stop following up. This attitude stems from a lack of understanding of the psychological buying sequence prospects go through before making the final decision to buy. This attitude results in a potential loss of 70 percent or more of their sales!

In reality, there can actually be a variety of reasons why prospects haven’t responded to your small business marketing offer yet. Here are some reasons why they may not have contacted you yet. There are many more!

1. They didn’t see your offer in the first place.
2. They had to respond to a family or other emergency.
3. They have questions and need more information.
4. They wanted to respond but forgot.
5. They may have more pressing priorities right now.
6. They didn’t understand your offer.
7. Their problem (that you are offering a solution to) is not serious enough yet to take action.
8. They don’t trust you yet.
9. They don’t have the money yet to contract your services.
10. Your small business marketing offer was not compelling enough for them to take action.
11. They don’t know you well enough yet.
12. They might not be interested in anything you have to offer.

As you can see, not being interested in what you are offering is just one of many possible reasons that your prospects may not buy from you right away. Some people may be ready to buy now, others may be ready in a few weeks, and some may not be ready for six or more months.

So in order to generate the most clients and sales, it’s important that you are top of mind in your prospects’ minds when they are finally ready to buy. You achieve this by following up by phone or email. Statistics say that you have to contact a prospect approx 7-9 times before they will remember you. So, just this simple shift in your attitude can make all the difference in your business development and small business marketing success.

When you shift your attitudes about marketing that may have blocked your success and you get serious about marketing in a focused, consistent way, you will begin to get results in unexpected places. According to CJ Hayden, Business Coach and author of the Get Clients Now!TM book, “This marketing phenomenon is so common that [she] has named it the Persistence Effect. Don’t worry about why it works; just know that it works. And don’t confuse the Persistence Effect with magical thinking. Just creating a positive intention for something doesn’t have this kind of payoff. You have to do something about it.”

Copyright 2006, Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All rights reserved.

Ask me about a proven system to get all the clients you want: http://www.bizsuccesspartner.com/contact-us

Let me ask you a simple question. If you could discover a way to reach your target market faster, get more clients, reduce your marketing costs, increase your income and have fun at the same time, would you be interested?

Due to the explosion of the Internet and modern technology over the past few years, marketing for solo-entrepreneurs has moved more and more into the virtual (online) world. Entrepreneurs all over the world have made the Internet their vehicle to deliver and market their services to dominate their market.

Here are the top seven reasons why you must “virtualize” your marketing:

1. To establish credibility and an expert reputation - There are millions of small businesses vying for attention. To stand out in a crowd you need to be “top of the mind” so that when someone has a need they think of you or someone recommends you to them. A great way to do this is to write and distribute your free reprint articles to hundreds of online directories, ezine publishers and webmasters eager for fresh content. This is an excellent strategy to drive traffic to your website.

2. To maintain visibility by keeping in touch – A starting point is to create an ezine (electronic newsletter). Ezines are an excellent and inexpensive online marketing tool to help you create and nurture client relationships. It gives you a way to continuously stay in touch with your existing and potential customers. If you provide quality information and publish on a regular basis, you will build credibility and trust which will grow your business. An ezine can also increase your income potential through advertising and promotion of your services and products.

3. To communicate your marketing message more effectively - When marketing in a virtual world, your messages need to be concise and you need to get the attention of your prospects quickly. For example, learning how to create an effective website will help you define your image, identity and brand and your uniqueness. Crafting taglines, headlines and even email subject lines will help you hone in on your target market and speak their language.

4. To avoid expensive marketing mistakes - Virtual marketing allows you to test, track and analyze the effectiveness of your efforts. Many marketing ‘gurus’ will tell you that they failed many times and that failing was the key to their success. They learned what didn’t work and what did and then focused on the things that were working. With online marketing, tracking is very easy and you can find out the answers to questions like: Which audiences are interested in and qualified for what you offer? Which ad is creating the most subscribers, referrals, downloads? Which campaigns are losing money and should be dumped? How many visitors viewed my website and where are they from? Which email signature is working? What are my ezine readers interested in?

5. To create multiple streams of income – By promoting your business via virtual mediums you can create residual income that can create financial freedom for you. Did you know that there are things your clients want to buy from you that you aren’t selling them yet? Some examples are virtual speaking (teleclasses, webinars); selling information products on your website (ecourses, ebooks, audio files). You can automate the sale of your information products and earn money while you sleep!

6. Sell more by email and phone - You don’t have to meet with prospects to close the sale anymore. As we have seen in this article, there are several components of virtual marketing. Your clear marketing messages, excellent website, virtual talks, online articles and your ezine pave the way to warming up a prospect. The only thing that will be left to do is to convert a warm prospect to a paying client – and that can be done over the phone!

7. To grow your business exponentially with viral marketing - On the Internet ‘word-of-mouth’ is known as viral marketing. Viral marketing encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s influence and exposure. Some examples are giving away valuable information like an article, report or ebook for free to attract attention; email marketing; placing your message in existing communication between people (online networks); online affiliate and referral programs.

Need another reason?

Virtualize your marketing because it’s fun! Do you enjoy marketing? How does the thought of marketing make you feel? Unfortunately, many people don’t enjoy marketing and get overwhelmed by it. They don’t get the results they hope for and therefore find it hard to do. Without bringing a spirit of “play” to your marketing efforts, marketing will seem difficult. Having a spirit of “play” means that you approach marketing as an adventure, a great opportunity to discover and learn, you feel challenged by the risk and just being in the moment of it all.

A few things could prevent you from having this spirit. You may have preconceived notions about what marketing is or what it should be. Some think marketing is about manipulating people, stretching the truth and overcoming objections to which you may not know how to respond. But in fact, marketing is simple. It’s about sharing value with others and in that process, discovering your uniqueness and the difference you can make in the lives of others.

You went into business for it to be profitable, right? And as a small business entrepreneur everything seems to demand your attention: administration, marketing, bookkeeping, customer relations – it never ends! It just makes good business sense to market more effectively and have fun at the same time. Get started with Virtual Marketing today!

Copyright 2006 Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All Rights Reserved.

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