Sales & Marketing

Whether you are a business owner, marketing professional or an entrepreneur, your past and present satisfied customers are the key to creating a steady income stream and keeping your cost of sales lower.

Too often we focus our marketing efforts on finding the next new customer.

Do you walk around thinking about stuff you want? Things you need? Or problems you have to find solutions for?

Of course you do. We all do. And so do our prospects.

As marketers, we need to keep this in mind when we craft our sales messages. It's the key that unlocks the door to our prospect's attention in a very crowded marketing arena. The easier we can make it for our prospects and customers to determine whether or not what we offer has value for them, the more success we will have.

What exactly is your service or product and why should I be interested? You have 3 seconds to answer this question. Otherwise, click: lost sales opportunity. Most home pages do a poor job of answering this question. That's why most businesses view their web sites as a cost instead of an investment in the most cost-efficient, productive salesperson they could ever hope to find.

Creating new content for your ezine or website on a regular basis will help you address two key universal marketing objectives.

By putting out a steady stream of helpful information for clients and readers, you not only build credibility while spreading the word about your services and products, you also enjoy the potential benefit of higher rankings with the search engines that are always hungry for fresh content.

When people receive your emails, the first question most of them ask themselves is, WHO is this from? not What is it about ?

But once you get them past the WHO, you face the task of getting your email opened.

Think back to the last time you had educate yourself about a significant purchase. Maybe it was a home theatre system or an insurance policy. You did your homework. Asked the questions.

Remember how comfortable you felt when you finally hit the "buy" button? You had the knowledge you needed to make a sound buying decision.

We can help people feel the same way about our services and products by offering them a free email mini-course.

Here's how you do it:

Had an interesting discussion a few days ago with a client whose business is in an industry that is experiencing fierce "crazy" competition.

I say "crazy" because of the desperate marketing measures many of his competitors are resorting to in an effort to catch the attention of customers who have woken up to the fact that they have a number new options as to where they can find their best value.

Many of the tactics have no strategy behind them, are hastily cobbled together and, will most likely be expensive to administer and ineffective. The business owners who are using them have fallen victim to a common problem.

I have mentioned the importance of hammering home your USP (unique selling proposition) with every marketing message you deliver.

Easy to do if you have been able to clearly identify your USP.

However, many business owners struggle with trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves from their competitors so that potential clients and customers can see the value they offer.

Today's article contains a process you can use to identify (or maybe re-visit) your USP so you can create a sustainable competitive advantage.

In marketing, knowing your prospect's needs, wants, challenges and problems are important keys to selling them. However, you can leave your competitors in the dust by supercharging your marketing with an understanding of what your prospect is experiencing or thinking at the time they are presented with your marketing message.

Each week, I talk to a variety of business owners who know marketing is important but, for a variety of reasons, they haven't taken action to implement some of the marketing strategies and tactics that could have an immediate and dramatic impact on their sales objectives.

Are you in a similar situation? You know your website needs some tweaking. Or that you need some fresh content for the search engines? Or an email marketing system? Or a new sales letter?

These important tasks are starting to pile up and yet, you still haven't done anything about it.

Today's article deals with some of the reasons that could be preventing you from taking action along with some thoughts on how to break up the log jam.

There are an awful lot of businesses out there that sell based solely on what it is they offer clients and customers. Their marketing - website, ads, and sales letters - is jammed with information about the services they offer.

Why is that a problem?

For many business owners, following up with potential clients and customers can be difficult, confusing and time-consuming.

And it can be if you have to rely on a manual follow up system. Trying to keep track of when to phone or follow up by email can overwhelming.

Especially if you have a growing list of potential clients.

This simple and powerful approach can be used on your home page to lower sales resistance and engage qualified prospects who will want to hear your sales proposition.

By making sure your title tags, META descriptors and web pages include a combination of carefully selected key words and phrases; you’ll be taking some very important steps towards seeing your web site rise in the search engine rankings. Combined with additional search engine optimization (SEO) strategies like building links to relevant pages and continually putting fresh content on your web site, your SEO efforts will start to bear fruit in the form of increased visitor traffic.