Business – Page 7 – Velocity Media

16 June 2014

Four questions to make the New Financial Year more profitable and productive

With the end of financial year fast approaching, it’s an opportune time to pause and take a moment to step back from the day-to-day running of your business and regroup, refocus, and realign with your greater vision and goals.

Not sure where to start? Here are four questions that will help you start the New Financial Year off more profitably and productively.

What has worked?

When you look back over the last year look at what has worked well. From sales and marketing strategies to systems and procedures, what has generated the most results or made the most difference in your business?

These are strategies and tasks you want to give priority to. You might even want to plan to invest more time, money and resources in these areas to grow them further and generate more return in the next half of this year.

What hasn’t worked?

When you look back over the last year look at what hasn’t worked. This is an important opportunity to learn from mistakes and hindsight.

What sales and marketing strategies haven’t worked? What products or services aren’t selling? What business relationships aren’t profitable or working? What have you learnt from the challenges you’ve had over the last six months?

What could be done better?

Before you rid your business of everything that didn’t work, it is important to ask “why” it didn’t. Are there still opportunities to be had if done right or better?

When you look at what has worked, are there opportunities to make it even better, faster, bigger or more effective? Always be looking for areas to improve.

What is your market telling you?

This is perhaps the most important question. Over the last year, what has your market been telling you?

What products and services are the most popular? Who is buying from you? Why are they buying from you? Why do they need and want your products or services? Why are they coming to you and not someone else? Are they responding to some marketing messages better than others?

What feedback have you received? If you’ve had complaints, have they been addressed in your business and with the customer/s?

Have you had more new customers than this time last year? Have you had more repeat customers than this time last year? Has your average customer transaction price increased from this time last year? Why?

Answering these questions will give you greater clarity on what you need and want to achieve, where you need to focus your efforts, how you can be more strategic and targeted with your marketing and how you can measure your success.

Here’s to a happy and profitable New Financial Year!

Amanda

16 June 2014

Six questions to position your brand effectively in the mind of your customers

How your customers and potential customers perceive your brand directly impacts your bottom line. So how do you make sure you position your brand effectively in the mind of your customers?

Here are six questions to help you ensure your brand is more engaging and appealing to your customers, now and in the future.

1. What do you want your brand to stand for?

Work out what your brand stands for, what the purpose of your business is – beyond making profit and what you’re passionate about. What is your vision? What difference do you want to make in the world? What do you believe in? What problems are you solving? Do you have a cause?

When you know who you are as a brand, you not only communicate better with your customers and potential customers, you appear to be more authentic. The decisions and actions you take as a business owner can also be considered more carefully to ensure you stay true to what you stand for.

2. Where do you want to be in the market place?

Determine where you want your brand to sit within your market. Do you want to be the luxury, expensive brand of your industry, the cheaper alternative or somewhere in the middle? Do you want to be seen to be more exclusive to a certain group or available to the masses? Are you the optional extra or the essential?

3. What do you want to be known for?

When your customers and potential customers talk about your business or give you a testimonial, what do you want them to say? When someone sees or hears your business name what do you want their first thoughts to be?

Is it your results, professionalism, creativity or innovation? Is it your consistency, quality, simplicity or availability? Choose what you want to be known for and determine what products and services you need to offer, what actions you need to take and customer interactions you need to have in order to achieve it.

4. What personality do you want your brand to have?

Your brand’s personality describes the way your brand thinks, speaks, acts and reacts, which then gets reflected in your social media, blogs, marketing messages and your day-to-day communication with your customers, suppliers and business associates.

Do you want your brand to be humorous or more serious? Relaxed or professional? Enthusiastic or refined? Elegant or cheap? Young or old? Inspiring or more factual and realistic? Innovative or predictable? Choose what human characteristics you want your brand to have in order to make it more relatable and engaging to your customers and potential customers.

5. What emotions do you want to spark?

A brand, by definition is a collection of thoughts and feelings about your experiences with it. When you create the right emotional affiliation with your brand, you increase awareness, sales and retention.

For this reason, it is important to work out what emotions you want your customers and potential customers to associate with your brand. Is it safety and security? Love and passion? Awe and wonder? Confidence and trust? Hope, excitement or happiness?

Keep in mind that this is different to how you will appeal to your customers through your marketing, as you will normally use more negative emotions like frustration, fear or guilt in order to motivate them to act.

6. What do your customers want from you?

Once you have answered all of these questions from your perspective, answer them from your customers’ perspective. What do they need and want? What are they looking for from you and from your industry? What do they prioritise as most important?

While you may own your business, your customers are the ones who keep you in business, so always make sure your brand is aligned with what they want.

How did you go about positioning your brand in the market place? Are you happy with where you are or is it time to make some adjustments?

Amanda

9 June 2014

How to become a market leader (not a competitor follower)

In business it can be easy to get distracted by what your competitors are doing. When they bring out new products or services, branch out into new markets or change their course of action you can be tempted to do the same.

But when you change the way you do business or take an alternate course of action because of what your competitors are doing, they become the leader and you become the follower and you’ll always be one step behind.

So to prevent you from taking actions you may not have taken if it wasn’t for feeling threatened, here are three tips to ensure you remain a leader in your own business not a follower of someone else’s.

1. Stay focused on your customers, not your competitors

The best and quickest way to grow your business and expand your market share is to stay focused on your customer not your competitors.

The more you can get inside your customers head, the more relevant and targeted you can make your products, services and marketing. Give your customers what they want and they will not only keep coming back, they will also refer more people to you.

So be a leader, find opportunities to be different, stay focused on what your customer wants and continually value-add and innovate to give it to them. Do this and you won’t have to worry about your competitors. They on the other hand will have a lot to worry about with you!

2. Anticipate needs and trends

A true market leader will not just meet current customer needs and wants, they’ll also anticipate future needs, wants and trends.

Look for patterns that are forming, frustrations that are growing, trends and technology that are going to impact how you provide and deliver your products and services or how you customer will use them, and watch for what no one else is doing. Most importantly listen to what your customers are saying – and not saying.

If you are taking these market-leading actions yourself, you’ll have no reason to follow what your competitors are doing, you’ll already be on it.

3. Play on your strengths

Each business has it’s own strengths. It could be your knowledge, specialist staff, results, your high quality products and services, your level of customer service and follow up, your creativity and ideas, your industry experience, your client base, your large budget, your size and infrastructure, your available resources, your website and quality of content, your entrepreneurial thinking, or your agility.

Whatever your strengths are, use them to your best advantage. Too often we focus on other peoples strengths and our weaknesses. But for a competitive advantage in business you need to be focused on your competitors’ weaknesses and developing your strengths.

How do you ensure you are leading not following?

Amanda

1 June 2014

How to make more sales through less talking

When so much emphasis is put on what we say to promote our business, how we say it and when we say it, it can be easy to forget that sometimes the best sales strategy is to talk less and listen more.

So to remind you, here are five tips to help you make more sales by doing less talking.

1. Give only enough information to spark interest

One of the biggest mistakes business owners and professionals make when networking, selling or talking about their business is to try and jump from introduction to sale.

When someone asks “what do you do?” or you need to give an overview of your business, your goal should not be to try and make your listener understand every facet of your business, but rather give them just enough information to pique curiosity so they want to know more.

2. Get people asking questions

One of the benefits of giving just enough information is that it will inevitably lead to a question, giving you the opportunity to share a little more with their permission.

But perhaps the greatest benefit is that their questions will give you insight into their level of interest, understanding of what you do and their current needs, allowing you to hone your approach and deliver more relevant information to the person you are talking to.

3. Only answer the questions that have been asked of you

To keep people engaged you need to keep a level of mystery. One way to do this is to only answer the question you’ve been asked and not give any more information. This way they need to keep asking questions to find out more.

Keep in mind though that there is a right and wrong way to do this. You want people to be intrigued not frustrated. To avoid the latter make sure you give real information and value in your answers, but at the same time keep some information guarded so they want to know more.

4. Let silence be your friend

So many people find silence uncomfortable and rush to fill it with as many words and questions as they can get out – but don’t let this be you.

I’ve seen this happen so many times at sales meetings, pitches and networking events and you’ve no doubt seen it to. A business owner or professional, thinking that silence means they haven’t related well with you, you haven’t understood their point or that you are wavering in interest, talks more, trying to convince you of their value. But the only thing it convinces you of is their desperation.

There is power in pausing, so embrace it. If anyone is going to fill the space with conversation let it be your potential customer so you can learn more about them.

If you are someone who struggles with this and you feel you do need to say something, then ask a question. It could be as simple as “did that answer your question?” or a more targeted, thought provoking question that can prove your value or expertise.

5. Listen!

As it has been said, there is a reason we have two ears and one mouth. Listening is the most powerful role to be in, particularly when you are selling – and we are all selling something. It is here that you pick up frustrations, needs, queues and opportunities and get to ask more strategic questions in order to position your business as a solution in a personalised way which is key.

So pay attention to the questions they ask, the responses they give and the experiences and frustrations they share. This is the information that will help you add more value, lead to more opportunities and bigger deals, and help you close more sales so keep those ears open!

I am always happy to create website content or press releases that can do the talking for you.

Amanda

25 May 2014

Five ways to make your marketing more strategic

Too often businesses take an unplanned approach to their marketing, either following the crowd or acting on a hunch they decide to “try it and see”. But it’s the fastest way to blow your marketing budget.

True marketing magic happens when the right product or service, with the right message meets the right people, at the right time, on the right marketing platform. Though, to do that you need a strategy, and you need to test and measure your results.

So stop doing what you think you should be doing, what the company down the road is doing or what you heard would be good to try and start strategising the best way to create the marketing magic for your business. Here are five tips to get you started.

1. Qualify your marketing efforts

In order to make the most of your marketing campaign and investment you need to:

Check there is a need for your products or services
Craft messages that are relevant and emotionally engaging with the audience that have the need
Ensure the platform or strategy you use will reach a large amount of the audience you are targeting

When you start to evaluate your marketing efforts, strategies and opportunities even on this simple criteria, by asking is it relevant and targeted to your audience and reaching a high percentage of those you are targeting, you can quickly protect your budget from marketing strategies that “everyone is doing” and start to see what to say yes to and try, and what to say no to or stop.

2. Know the purpose

Whatever marketing or advertising you do, there needs to be a clear purpose for it. You need to know what you want someone to do after reading or hearing the specific message you have created, as this will impact the call to action you use.

Is it to call you? Go to your website? Sign up to the mailing list? Buy immediately? Once you know what you need them to do, you can then make sure your copy, call to action and incentive all work together to make it happen.

3. Ensure there are real benefits or an opportunity to get a return

It sounds obvious, but many marketing campaigns have been done under the guise of “increasing brand awareness” (sponsorship can be an ideal example of this) which is fine if you have brand awareness to start with, have a large marketing budget to play with or if it’s a highly relevant and targeted opportunity, but it’s impact is very hard to measure.

Whatever you look to invest your marketing dollars in, there needs to be real benefits and return. So, to use the sponsorship example, find a way to proactively reach your audience in a measurable way like sponsoring a prize and getting the business cards of those who enter.

4. Test your message on a smaller campaign

Before you embark on a larger marketing or advertising campaign test your headline and message on a smaller one.

It could be through a focus group, survey, Facebook advertising campaign, a Google Adwords advertisement or a smaller mail out to test and measure the results. Better to find out a message doesn’t work on a small scale with a small investment rather than a large one.

5. Don’t confuse persistence with foolishness

While you need to allocate a set amount of time to tell if a product, message, platform or strategy is working, you don’t want to keep wasting time, money and effort on something that isn’t.

To prevent this from happening, set a cap or measurement on your efforts. It could be a time limit, or a set amount of mail outs you do to in order to test the product or service, message or platform to see if it is getting a response.

As entrepreneurs we need to be mindful that sometimes business ideas, products or services and marketing campaigns don’t work the way we think, want or hoped they would.

When this is the case, it is important for your business and your bottom line to stop instead of persisting, put it down to education and move on to the next project, idea or strategy.

How do you ensure your marketing is strategic?

Amanda

19 May 2014

Why you need to be a shameless self-promoter

When it comes to self-promotion and marketing there tends to be two kinds of business owners, those who are their brand and those who hide behind their brand. But, in order to create a truly successful business you need a balance of both.

So here are three reasons you need to become a shameless self-promoter, and for those who want to run a mile at the thought of being more in the spotlight, how you can do it while still being somewhat in the background.

1. People need a personal connection

To create a valuable business that you can sell one day (it’s good to have the option) you need to build a powerful brand that isn’t solely dependent on you. But at the same time to create that marketing momentum there needs to be a face, someone they can connect to, a person that embodies the expertise, experience and personality of the brand to build trust and relationships with potential customers.

Now that doesn’t mean your face needs to be on everything, you just be an expert in your own right. If you are not comfortable with being on video, getting up to speak or having your photo everywhere, consider writing, blogging or being active via social media to build your profile that way.

Doing this will also help secure your future, when you have your own profile it is easier to launch new projects, businesses or causes because people know you outside your brand.

2. Your business won’t grow by you playing small

We each have a contribution to make, in life and in business. We have the power to make a difference and impact lives. But playing down your talents and abilities, staying small and hiding in the background doesn’t help you serve your purpose.

Many business owners shy away from talking about their skills and experience as they don’t want to seem egotistical or boastful, knowing this can be damaging to their reputation and relationships. But you don’t need to be arrogant in order to establish your value, and what these business owners also forget is that being too humble and underselling themselves can also damage their business and stunt their growth.

Would you buy off someone who was unsure of themselves and downplaying their abilities? I know I wouldn’t.

Own your skills and talents and have confidence in your abilities to deliver for your customers. Your confidence will in turn grow your customers and potential customers confidence in you leading to more sales and more opportunities to help people.

3. If you deliver a better product or service you have an obligation to tell your customer about it

There are so many people out there who are ready and waiting to take advantage of people with below average products and services, or grand promises they can’t or have no intention of keeping.

That is why you have an obligation to let your customers and potential customers know about you. If you provide higher quality products or services, have more experience or offer more value you owe it to them to try and help them.

Self-promotion doesn’t need to be boastful, salesy or cheesy, and you certainly don’t need to put your head on the side of a bus if you don’t want to.

But in order to generate more publicity for your business and attract and convert more customers you do need to step out of the shadows and build your own profile up too.

By doing so you will find that as your own profile grows so will your business simply because people will want to be involved in what you are doing.

Amanda

12 May 2014

Six tips to create a more customer-focused business

If you want to create a real competitive edge in your business start focusing on your customers. It sounds obviously simple, but the fact is most businesses continue to focus on what value they can get as opposed to what value they can give.

But when you start to focus on your customers and what they want and need, you create better products and services, generate more business opportunities and sales, develop more loyal customers and increase your referrals.

So to ensure you are reaping the benefits and profits of giving value, here are six tips to help you create a more customer-focused business.

1. Stay connected to the needs of your customers

Your business success is directly determined by how connected you are with your customer and their needs. As a business owner it can be easy to fall into the trap of offering, stocking or doing what you want instead of considering what your customers want, but it’s one of the fastest way to limit your growth.

To refocus yourself and remain connected to your customer you need to be constantly asking questions, both of your customers and of yourself. Questions like what do my customers want from my product, service, business or industry? What are their current frustrations or complaints and how can they be improved or solved?

2. Anticipate future needs and trends

While meeting your customers current needs is important, in order to future proof your business and really establish your point of difference you also need to anticipate their future needs.

Ask yourself, what will my customers want from my products or services in three, five or ten years? What new trends or technologies are going to impact on how they use my products or services? What is not yet being offered that would benefit my customers?

3. Write your marketing from your customer’s perspective

“You” is one of the most powerful marketing words you can use. Not only does it help your reader connect with you when the read or hear your content, when you continually write from the angle of “you” instead of “we” you stay in the mind of your customer and can more easily identify and anticipate their needs and wants.

You start to uncover what is important to them, what they value most and what part of your products and services will most appeal to them.

4. See your customer as a friend not a sale

One of the smartest things you can do in your business is to stop selling and start serving. When you change your approach from “how much can I get out of you” to “how can I help you” your customer’s guard comes down, they relax and start to open up to you.

When you add value to them and appear to be looking out for their best interests, they become more receptive to what you are saying, value your opinion and are more likely to see you as a trusted expert who can help them, increasing the likelihood of you making the sale.

5. Stay in regular contact

To build a relationship with your customers you need to stay in regular contact with them, but not just through newsletters and email marketing, genuine, personal contact. Talk to them to see how they are going. Keep in touch in a way that makes them feel valued.

Be proactive, your existing customers are the easiest sales you will ever make so make sure you look after them and take an interest.

6. Always add value

One of your goals in business should be to give your customers what they can’t get anywhere else, or in a way they can’t get anywhere else.

It could be as simple as taking the time to answer all of their questions, giving them an added bonus, sending them a book, resource or opportunity that you know they would benefit from, or having their favourite coffee and snack when they come to meet you.

Always be looking at how you could be adding value to each of your customers in order to make their experience with you even more memorable.

How do you stay customer focused in your business?

Amanda

5 May 2014

Are you in search of the information ‘holy grail’?

We live in an age where we have so much knowledge at our fingertips. But with so many sources of information on every topic you could hope for, you can soon find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of professional and personal development in search of the information ‘holy grail’ that will truly transform your business and give you more time, money, freedom and happiness.

But knowledge only gains it’s power once it is implemented and the only way you’ll ever be able to transform your business is to start taking action now. So to ensure you don’t become the person who has “heard it all before” but actioned nothing, here are four tips to put what you learn into action.

1. Develop a filter

With so much information available, you need to set boundaries. Work out the topics you need or want to learn more about and only search out, read or listen to those topics. Resist the urge to go off course and multi-task your reading and research.

Only once you feel you have mastered that topic or have what you need to put it into action should you move onto another area. Make the implementation of knowledge your goal, instead of just knowledge gain.

2. Write down what resonates with you

There is a reason why they made us write so many notes in school, it helps us commit what we’ve learned to memory and it provides an easy point of reference when we need to revise it.

So the next time you are reading a book or blog post, listening to a podcast or watching a You-Tube video, keep a notebook beside you (preferably the same notebook each time) and write down the information, ideas and tips you want to implement or remember. This ensures you go beyond the head nodding stage and actually do something with it – even if it is to provide a point of reference for later.

3. Share what you have learned

Whenever you hear or read something that was valuable to you, tell someone else who will benefit. When you start sharing or teaching what you have learned you naturally increase your level of understanding on the topic and more importantly the practical application of it.

But not only that, by adding value you gain more credibility and goodwill with those you tell (as well as benefit from their knowledge and experience on the topic) and you create a level of accountability when it comes to you putting it into action.

4. Make a plan of action

So once you have heard a ‘great tip’ about generating publicity, minimising your tax, increasing your sales conversions, public speaking, making your business more efficient or whatever it may be, make a plan to put it into action.

Is there some way you can start implementing or actioning it in your business today or in the next week, fortnight or month? Could you send out a media release with the tips you have read, make an appointment with your accountant, write a new sales script, volunteer to speak at a networking event or implement new business systems?

It doesn’t have to be massive action, just any action, because this where the true learning lies.

How are you going to start putting your knowledge into action?

Amanda

26 April 2014

Three ways to drive your customers to act

One of the easiest and most frustrating things for a consumer to do is put off buying your product or service until later. It could be that they’ll buy when they have more money, when they are more established, when they feel they are ready for it, after they compare what else is out there, or any number of justifications – often based around procrastination, fear or refusing to leave their comfort zone, that stops them from taking action with you now.

It can be frustrating, and not just because you haven’t closed the sale, but also because you know that your product or service could really help them, if only they would let it. So how do you create a sense of urgency to move them past their justifications? Here are three ways to drive your potential customers to act.

1. Scarcity

Scarcity marketing appeals to your potential customer’s fear of missing out, and refers to any limitation placed on a product or service in order to increase sales by applying pressure to act immediately. It could be due to limited availability or a time based deadline that is linked to a discount or bonus for acting within a short window of time.

The whole reason scarcity works well is because it forces action, especially when there is significant value offered. If you really want it you need to act immediately, how can you afford to wait if the reduced price, bonus, product, service or package will no longer be offered?

2. Competition

Within all of us is a healthy sense of competition. We want to be the first, to win, to be the leader, to be part of the ‘exclusive group’, to achieve our goals faster and receive the recognition and status that brings. Often appealing to the desire to be the best, the first and get in when others miss out can be quite effective in the sales process.

Of course this sense of competition comes from a place of ego, so the effectiveness can depend on how much your potential customer needs recognition, how driven they are by status and how competitive they are to what you are comparing them to. Competition can also be accentuated by scarcity. By offering limited places, you are giving them the chance to win over someone else.

3. Taking the sale away

As the old saying goes, “people want what they can’t have”. With this in mind if you take the sale away by mirroring their justifications, taking out desired features to make it cheaper or making it appear that your customer base is an exclusive group where customers are chosen like an interview process (where you make the decision not them), can actually make them want your product or service more.

Often when a potential customer senses that you won’t sell them what they want or need they will become more proactive in their pursuit and not only sell themselves on why they want it, but also sell you on why you should have them as a customer.

A word of warning though…

While all of these motivators work, they also tend to be what we despise most in salespeople – right? That is why they need to be handled with care and done with the right approach. You need to be focused on what is best for your customer, what they want and need, as opposed to just closing the sale, and sometimes that can mean walking away. This is the key difference between the annoying, arrogant pushy salesperson and the friend that is gently guiding because they want what is best for you.

“But isn’t this manipulative?” you might ask. It can be yes, especially when it is used in a pushy, sales driven way. Perhaps it is just the marketer in me, but I strongly believe that if you have a product or service that could genuinely help someone, whether it makes their lives easier, saves or makes them money, gives them more time, helps them grow their business, or gets them to achieve their goals faster, you have a responsibility to share that in a way your potential customers understand, see the value and are compelled to act – don’t you?

Amanda

7 April 2014

Six tips for quick, easy and effective content marketing

While we know how important content marketing is when it comes to generating interest and sales and have the best intentions of keeping our blogs and social media updated, the time investment can often cause these tasks to sneak further and further down our list of priorities.

Thankfully though there are ways you can minimise the amount of time you spend while still gaining all of benefits, like these six tips for quick, easy and effective content marketing.

1. Know your purpose

Most businesses get on social media and start blogging because they have heard they should be doing it. While this is true for the most part, when you don’t know why you are doing it, what you want to achieve by it or who you are targeting, you can end up using the wrong platforms, share information that isn’t relevant or engaging to readers and ultimately waste valuable time.

By working out the purpose of your content you uncover what information you should share and write about, provide a level of consistency with your writing and are more likely to increase both your readership and sales through targeted, relevant content and calls to action.

2. Theme your content

If you find you are wasting time wondering what you should write about or share, look at theming your content around a certain topic or area of specialty.

For example you could theme it by the day on social media like I do with “Marketing Monday” where I only share marketing tips that day, or you could have an extended theme over a week, fortnight or month that also carries through on your blog depending on what your readers are interested in.

3. Write status updates and blogs in advance

A lot of time can be wasted in researching, brainstorming and writing daily status updates and last minute blogs. While some days you might know exactly what to write, other days you can hit a creative block and struggle to come up with something informative or entertaining to share, causing undue stress and wasting precious time stuck in writers block.

To make your life easier, set aside a day or half day to write up a month’s worth of blogs and social media updates so you are always at least one month ahead. This way you have the ability to be spontaneous if there is a blog or update you want to share that strikes during a moment of inspiration, and have the benefit of high quality information going up on a consistent basis.

4. Take advantage of inspiration

When a moment of inspiration does strike, briefly jot down your idea and an outline of the post and keep thinking of more topics. Often we get stuck writing the post from start to finish, which can lead to missing more content ideas. Instead use your moment of creativity to think of more topics and tips to share.

Should there be a post that comes before the one you just thought of? Should there be one after? Have their been any questions about your industry or area of expertise that would make a good post? Could one tip be turned into several?

Often starting is the hardest part so when your ideas do start flowing give yourself permission to keep brainstorming.

5. Allocate set times for social media monitoring

Social media when left open can be one of our biggest productivity killers. To avoid the temptation and make your social media time more effective and targeted, allocate set times throughout the day to update your status, participate in the conversation and monitor your engagement.

If you find you keep slipping down the rabbit hole of social media memes, updates and information set an alarm so you can keep yourself in check.

6. Schedule updates

With consistency being so important, scheduling your content can be a great way to ensure you have regular content being published regardless of how busy your schedule is, or whether you are in the office or away.

Scheduling can also help you minimise the time you spend on content marketing platforms being able to upload in one hit and avoid the distraction of constant social media checking.

Do you have any tips for effective and efficient content marketing?

Amanda

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