Marketing – Page 4 – Velocity Media

25 August 2014

Three ways to be more compelling in your sales and marketing

Your ability to compel your customers, readers and followers to read on, act or buy, directly determines your leads, conversions and business profits.

So how do you become more compelling in your sales and marketing? Here are three ways to get you started.

1. Keep a little mystery

In the same way you wouldn’t tell your entire life story in the first few dates with someone, don’t feel you need to inform your potential customer, reader or follower of every facet of your business, industry or topic in the first few touch points. Leave a little mystery by informing them slowly.

Mystery leaves your potential customers wanting more, providing of course that you give away the right details to begin with. To use mystery effectively you need to know who you are targeting and what key selling points will most appeal to them.

Infomercials and your answer to the common question “so what do you do?” are great places to practice a little business mystery.

2. Offer information teasers

Key information like statistics, industry insights, inside secrets, usability tips, and handy hints on areas your target audience are interested in can spark interest and get them to take a level of action like giving over their contact details to you.

Knowledge is power, and in this day and age it is our most valuable commodity – not to mention our biggest point of difference. Sharing relevant and interesting information builds your credibility and positions you as an expert in your field, giving potential customers the confidence in doing business with you.

The trick here though, is in knowing how much of your knowledge to give away, as it will depend on the action you need a potential customer to take. Being a ‘teaser’ your information should be limited, but at the same time it needs to be enough to build trust and leave potential customers, followers or readers feeling like you’ve given them real value.

Always keep some information under lock and key for your paying customers, or to get potential customers taking bigger steps of trust with you.

Social media, newsletters, website opt-ins, blog posts and advertisements are great places to tease with compelling information.

3. Limit options and choices

While potential customers want to feel like they have a choice in what they do or buy, too much choice can overwhelm your buyer and cause you to lose control in the sales process.

Before you do any sales or marketing you should map out the steps you want to take each customer through. While not all will follow and some will jump ahead, having this planned out allows you to guide potential customers to the decision you want them to take.

In a service-based business it could be having a few core packages, memberships or services with the ability to customise or value-add further should you need too. For online product-based businesses it could be having a clear category headings and links to the most popular products from your home page as opposed to listing all products immediately.

By having limited choices buyers can quickly determine the products or services most relevant to them, or what their next step needs to be without being overwhelmed by information. It also means you can use sneaky call to action tips to help boost your conversions.

Keep in mind that too much information or too many choices can stall the buying process and even drive them to a competitor who keeps choices simple. This is particularly important for websites and sales meetings.

What are some ways you can be more compelling in your sales, marketing and copywriting?

Amanda

21 July 2014

How to identify what your customers love about you

While you know exactly what you love about your business and what you think are your biggest selling points – do you really know what your customer’s value and love about you?

More often than not business owners are selling what they want to sell rather than selling what their customers want to buy. To make sure you’re not one of them, here are four quick checks to ensure you’re not assuming what your customers want, but rather listening to what they value.

1. It’s in their frustrations

If you want to know what your customers and potential customers value, look at the common frustrations and stereotypes of your industry. What do people groan and complain about? What are the common bad experiences?

Now that you know what people don’t appreciate, list the opposite and you will start to see what your customers and potential customers will really want.

2. It’s in their objections

Don’t be put off by objections, objections are your potential customers way of voicing their concern and when handled right they give you the opportunity to make a more personalised sales pitch to get them over the line.

Though in saying this it is important to pay attention to them and make a note of the objections that keep coming up. Is there something that your customers and potential customers need that you aren’t providing? Are there benefits or features that you aren’t promoting that you should be?

Through objections your potential customers will tell you what is important to them, what they need to know and give you insight into how they make their buying decisions.

3. It’s in their testimonials

Look over the testimonials you’ve received from your past and current customers. What have they praised you for? What have they valued? What are the common themes through all of them?

Chances are that the key features, benefits and results that your past and current customers loved are also the same features, benefits and results that will appeal to your future customers.

4. It’s in their introductions

Referrals and introductions are also a great way to gain insight into what your customers and business associates value about you. More often than not when someone introduces you in business they will lead with what they see to be your biggest point of difference, key area of expertise or your top benefits.

So the next time someone introduces or refers you, don’t just focus on the new contact, focus on what they have said to get the new contact interested and wanting to talk to you.

When all else fails remember you can ask!

Amanda

14 July 2014

Three ways to gain more clarity in business

Every minute of every day our brains are filled with thoughts, from client deadlines, to-do’s, calls, meetings, appointments and ideas, to errands, the friends we need to call, the family commitments we have for the week, the things we’ve forgotten to do but still need to do, and on it goes.

With so much action going on all the time, it can become almost impossible to focus on the task at hand. To help you be more clear and precise, here are three ways to gain more clarity in business.

1. Go back to basics

It is easy to get distracted in business. From the regular interruptions of phone, email and social media, to watching what competitors are doing, listening to every bit of customer feedback and innovating products and services to meet market demand and grow, we can lose sight of what we want to achieve in the day, week, month, year and beyond.

When this happens it’s important to go back to basics. Look at the key markets you are targeting. Have they changed or do they need to change? Profile your current and ideal customers, remembering that your market should be an inch wide (targeted and specific) and a mile deep (lots of interested customers).

Then look over your points of difference, your key messages, your brand positioning, your business SWOT, the ‘why’ you do what you do and what you want to achieve. These business and marketing basics will give you more clarity on your business and help you establish the direction you want and need to take.

2. Simplify

By over complicating tasks and processes, failing to reduce wastes and inefficiencies and refusing to give up control and delegate or outsource, we leave ourselves bogged down in task overload and unable to see beyond our own to-do list.

With complication being the enemy of clarity and creativity, look to simplify. As you go about your day always be asking, “Is there any easier or quicker way to be doing this?” By simplifying, you’ll reduce the time and money spent, and give yourself more brainpower to prioritise and focus on what you really need to be doing.

3. Purge your thoughts

If you are becoming increasingly distracted by thoughts going a million miles an hour, take 5-10 minutes to write down everything that is running through your head.

As tempting as it can be, this is not the time to develop your ideas further or put them into action. You are simply purging your thoughts and ideas to increase your focus and clarity, with the added bonus of providing a point of reference for later.

What are your tricks for gaining more clarity?

Amanda

8 July 2014

Four tips to push past the point of no inspiration

We’ve all felt the frustration of staring at a blank computer screen or piece of paper when it needs to be full of ideas or content.

In a time where our intellectual property is so highly valued, it is important for us to be able to come up with new ideas, innovations and content at the drop of a hat even when inspiration is no where to be found.

So how do you keep your creative juices and ideas flowing? Here are four tips to help you push past the point of no inspiration.

1. Break it down and plan

While it can save time going from idea right through to completion in one go, don’t feel pressured to do this every time. Break your task into stages.

Even the simple step of writing down what you need to do, what you want to achieve by it and the framework of how you are going to do it can be enough to get you going. For example, if it is a blog post you need to write, determine your audience, set the topic, write down the main points you want to cover and what you want your reader to know and do by the end of it.

If it is a proposal or pitch you need to produce, briefly outline your target audience, their current frustrations, how you can make it better (with proof) and what they need to do to act.

Starting is often the hardest part but by taking the small step of planning you not only give yourself more clarity around the project, you save time and make completing the task far easier.

2. You don’t need to have it all figured out immediately

We often put so much pressure on ourselves to have everything figured out from the start, but ideas are a work in progress.

If you feel you are stumbling over a word, sentence, section, page or particular task mark where you are up to and move onto the next word, sentence, section and so on. Don’t get so bogged down in perfecting your work that you stop making progress. Remember no one needs to see the planning or working version of your task except you.

3. Eliminate all of your distractions

Give yourself every opportunity to focus on the task at hand. This means turning your phone onto do not disturb, unplugging from the Internet and bringing order to your workspace.

Many of our thoughts can be silenced by the noise and distractions that fill our daily work day. By eliminating those distractions you give yourself the opportunity to think and focus.

4. Step away to move forward

Sometimes the best plan of action is to give yourself some space from the task at hand. The longer you are in a stressed state the longer your ideas and thoughts will be stifled. To break the cycle you need to change your state.

Get some fresh air, change your work environment, run on the spot or take a break, do something that will relax you and ease your stress. While you can think you don’t have time, this will clear your mind and get your ideas flowing again.

If you would like help with your copywriting or content marketing, I would be happy to help.

How do you push past the point of no inspiration?

Amanda

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

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