Category: Small Business

Your Business Doesn’t Stand Out The Way You Think It Does

Posted on by Jason Vilon

Introduction

You’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into your business. You’re proud of it and you have a lot of great things to say about it. That’s why you tell people about it when they ask what you do for a living. But over time, you’ve realized that no one really responds to what you have to say. They nod politely, maybe ask a few questions about your industry or company, but ultimately move on with their lives without ever taking any action based on what you said.

Why does this happen? Because everyone thinks their business is unique, even though most aren’t. So how can you stand out from the crowd of businesses that are just like yours? I’m going to show you some techniques that will help make sure people remember who you are and what makes your business special!

The Hot Button Issue

A hot button issue is a topic that is of particular interest to your audience. It’s an idea or theme that they care about, and will be motivated to act on if you can help them solve their problem.

For example, let’s say you have a cleaning business. Your ideal customer for this type of service is someone who feels overwhelmed by the amount of work keeping their house clean requires. They might not be aware that there are great tools available to make cleaning easier, but if you can show them how much time it could save them (and how much less stressful it would feel), then they’ll probably want to try it out!

So what makes a hot button issue? Anytime someone cares about something so deeply that they’re willing to support people who share those beliefs—whether through buying products made by companies promoting those things or donating money directly toward causes—that’s considered a hot button issue for them at the moment; however long it lasts depends on whether there’s anything new happening with regard to those ideas/beliefs/practices etc.. Examples include: health care reform (now), animal rights activism (then), social justice movements like Black Lives Matter (now).

Benefits, Not Features

What is a benefit?

A benefit is the positive result that a customer receives from using your product or service. For example, if you sell high-end furniture, one of your benefits may be that it’s affordable for most middle class families. Another could be that it lasts longer than other brands on the market. A third might be that it looks great in any room of the house.

Benefits are often intangible (like peace of mind or better health) or hard to measure (like income growth). They’re also sometimes broader than features: although they do include elements related to what makes your business unique, such as specialized training or high-tech equipment, they don’t have much to do with what other businesses are doing at all—which makes them perfect ways to set yourself apart from the competition!

Unique Sales Position

A unique sales position is a compelling, distinctive way to tell your story. It’s what will compel people to buy from you, because they can’t get that same thing anywhere else. You’ve probably heard of the marketing concept of “unique selling proposition” (USP), and this is similar: the idea is to find your USP and use it as your primary marketing message.

But what does that actually mean? How do you define an USP for yourself? And how do you make sure people hear about it in the first place? Here are some tips for creating a unique sales position that sets you apart from the competition:

Market-Dominating Position

As you know, a market-dominating position is one that has the most value for customers and stakeholders. It offers more value than any competitor, so much so that people would rather buy from you than anyone else.

However, many businesses are unaware of their true market-dominating position because they don’t fully understand how to evaluate it. Instead of focusing on what makes their product or service unique and valuable to customers, they focus on what sets them apart from other companies in their industry.

This can be problematic if you aren’t actually different from competitors in meaningful ways—if your products or services aren’t inherently better than those offered by other businesses in your field (or if they’re not perceived as better). In this case, focusing solely on differentiation won’t help you create an advantage over the competition; instead it will just make them look like bad copies of you!

Stop thinking that your business is unique, and actually make it unique.

In the last post, we talked about how to overcome the belief that your business is unique when in reality it’s not. But even if you’ve come to terms with this idea, you may still find yourself wondering what it means for your marketing strategy.

The answer? Finding a unique sales position—a way of differentiating yourself from the competition in an authentic way.

Why? Because there are two main ways that brands can stand out: having better products or being more innovative than everyone else. The former is easier said than done; few companies ever achieve excellence across every aspect of their business (and some don’t even want to). That leaves innovation as our primary route forward.

Conclusion

If your company is going to stand out in a crowded market, you have to do more than just offer a product or service. You need to offer something that no one else can offer. That’s why it’s so important for businesses to make sure they have a unique sales position and market-dominating position in mind when they start working on their marketing strategy.

The Corporate Puzzle

Posted on by Jason Vilon

The 7 specific areas you need to consider in your franchise prototype process:

  • Primary Aim
  • Strategic Objectives
  • Organizational Strategy
  • Management Strategy
  • People Strategy
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Systems Strategy

These 7 areas will fine turn your plan for the ultimate level of success. In this lesson, we are going to cover the first three.

Primary Aim

It’s essential in business development to set goals and see a vision for the future. This needs to go beyond the business and you need to think about what you want out of life. What do you dream about? How do you see your success unfolding? Knowing and understanding these things will give you the momentum to get started and the stamina to see it through. Even take a minute to write them down and tape to your desk for a constant reminder of what you’re aiming for.

Strategic Objectives

These are essential in taking your business from surviving to thriving. These objectives should offer solutions for how to get to your primary aim. There are many things you can use to set strategic objectives, but here are the two most popular:

  1. Money: Setting monetary goals is a great, simple way to see how you are doing at any point in the game. It’s easy to measure and easy to find adjustments to help meet this goal.
  2. Worthy Opportunities: When considering partnerships and other business opportunities, you need to think about whether they will help you reach your primary aim. Those that will are the best opportunities to consider seriously.

The key in setting standards and goals is not to limit you or stress yourself out. You need to find some quantifiable things you can use to measure your progress toward your primary aim. These are just two suggestions, but make sure no matter what you standards you set you are paying attention to the details, as these are one of the biggest keys to your success.

Organizational Strategy

The strength of your organizational structure can make or break your business, so it’s important to take the time to put together a solid structure for your business to grow from. Generally, a company is organized around the roles and responsibilities that need to be taken care of daily and the personalities that need to fulfil those roles. 

No matter what roles and responsibilities you’ve defined for your employees, you must always keep your personal primary aim separate from your company’s primary aim or mission statement. Once you’ve identified the primary aim for your company, it will be easy to set up a position structure that will work.

Don’t forget to put together position contracts. Your employees should sign a statement of their roles and responsibilities. This helps keep them clear for you, the employee and other employees/vendors or other individuals.

You can see how these areas all work together to build a solid structure on which to build your business. If you need help to define any of these areas, you can check out the resources, tools and speak with one of our fantastic coaches during your GUIDED TOUR (linked above).

Direct Response or Bust!

Posted on by Jason Vilon

Direct response marketing is a marketing that demands a direct response from your potential customers. This marketing is used to answer questions, present your branding, products and the reason you do what you do. Customers love this, as it offers them the opportunity for response, whether that be in the way of signing up for a newsletter, posting a comment on your site or blog, or purchasing a product from you.

So, what does direct response marketing look like? Well, it comes in many forms, including:

  • Direct mail
  • Print ads
  • Radio and TV ads
  • Coupons or other incentives
  • Telemarketing

Some advantages of direct marketing are:

  • A great way to use free time during lulls in business
  • Productive way to communicate and empower you to create more relationships
  • Great way to up- and cross-sell to current customers
  • Low-cost way to rustle up new business
  • Used as leverage to turn small sales into large sales
  • Supplement your current marketing program
  • Cost-effective way to reach target markets
  • Offers measurable results
  • Reach outside your local area for new business
  • Increase the effectiveness of your sales force

These are all great things that can come from just taking a few simple steps to putting
together a direct response marketing plan and executing it.

“I honestly don’t think you’ll ever find a safer, lower-risk, higher-profit method of increasing your business or profession than direct-response marketing.” Jay Abraham

Direct response marketing is one of the best ways to launch your business on a large scale and reach out to everyone in your target market whether or not they are in your local area. Our GUIDED TOUR can help you put together a great direct response marketing plan and get you on your way to heightened success.

Kick Start Your Marketing

Posted on by Jason Vilon

Today I’d like to teach you about the three most important start up marketing tools you need to get and keep new customers.

  1. In person: It’s essential you meet with customers/clients in person. This shows you respect them and take the time to work with your clients to give personal attention to each of them.
  2. Follow-up letter: Always take a moment to send a follow-up letter about what you talked about, new agreements or partnerships made and to thank them for taking the time to meet with you. Likewise, you should always send thank-you letters or small gifts to partners you find success with.
  3. Phone call: Use a telephone call to follow up with them to talk again about the matters you talked about in your meeting and offer any assistance you can to help their business run smoothly and more successfully.

None of these will work if you don’t have a quality product/service to back you up!

Here are the key steps for putting together your start-up marketing tools:

  1. Research potential customers, buyers, competitors and their preferred methods of distribution.
  2. Talk to potential customers. Take a hard look at your product from a customer’s perspective and see what it needs to be successful.
  3. Follow up with your 3-step process from above.
  4. Develop systems for contact follow through, quality control standards and customer service.
  5. Develop a post-sale follow up system to keep lines of communication open with your customers and build on your current relationship, which increases future purchases.

“Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” Peter Drucker, management consultant.

Here’s another one I love from an icon:

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company

This lesson has offered you the tools to put together a start-up marketing plan that can be used repeatedly to help your customer base and business grow in a manageable way.

Stop Wasting Your Resources!

Posted on by Jason Vilon

Today you’re going to learn how to find a target market of potential customers, so you aren’t wasting precious resources on blitz marketing. So, the two questions you have to ask yourself are:

  • What do people really want to buy from me?
  • What related products are they already buying?

Once you figure this out, you will know who is more predisposed to purchase your products/services. Then, you find other businesses with the same customer base who you can customer share with. Come up with an incentive and great arrangement to encourage both of your customer bases to shop at both of your stores.

The basic concept is this:
You want to find existing businesses who have the customer profile you are looking for to market your products/services to.
Then strike up a relationship with those business owners to work out an incentive for customers to purchase from both businesses.
As a result, you have an audience to market to and they generate an added value from their current base.
So, how do you figure this out? There is a great formula from Jay Abraham you can follow with outstanding success.

LV = (P x F) x N – MC

Here’s what it all means:

  • LV is the lifetime value of a customer
  • P is the average profit margin from each sale
  • F is the number of times a customer buys each year
  • N is the number of years customers stay with you
  • MC is the marketing cost per customer (total costs/number of customers)

Once you know how much you need to spend to attract a new customer, you will know how much of an incentive you can offer to a business to help attract new customers.

So, here’s your step-by-step process:

  1. Find companies who already have the customer base you are looking for.
  2. Negotiate an incentive for them to share that customer base with you.
  3. Focus your marketing resources on this group of predisposed customers.

If you need help to work through this process, please contact us and we’ll set you up with the most comprehensive system of marketing tools and resources.

Educate Your Customers

Posted on by Jason Vilon

Educate them about what you may be thinking.

Well, consider this: many businesses focus solely on attracting new customers, but you NEED to spend a good chunk of your time keeping current and former customers. These are people you already know to be a good sales potential… they’ve already bought from you!

Take the time to market and sell new products to your old customers and less time trying to sell old products to new customers and you will see a drastic change in your sales, customer quality and branding position.

Here are a couple of key elements used to retain your current customers:

  1. Stay in contact: This means by phone, email, e-newsletter, in person – by pigeon if you have to!
  2. Post-Purchase Assurance: This means you need to follow up with customers. Your customers need to feel like they are being supported for their purchase and with the item they purchased. How many times have you purchased a product, then felt completely abandoned? Something as simple as a “Thank You” note with your contact or customer service information can go a long way in retaining a great customer.
  3. Deals & Guarantees: Always offer your current customers the best deals and guarantees you have. Show them you appreciate their business or even come up with a club specifically to reward loyal customers. You can also do this with a preferred pricing option.
  4. Integrity: Using good business practices and simply upholding integrity, dignity and honesty go along way with customers. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of swindling and crap out there and the safer and more confident you make your customers feel, the more they will trust you and that makes for an amazingly supportive and loyal customer.

There are three cornerstone ideas for a successful business:

  • Quality product/service
  • Offering useful products/services that solve a problem for or enhance the life of a customer
  • Offer subjects your customers find interesting

Use this approach of educating your customers and offering them actual information and insight, and they will reward you with loyalty and success.

Stop wasting all your time on new prospects while your current customers fall by the wayside!

As Jay Abraham says, “Your best prospects are your existing customers. If you’ve been putting all your marketing efforts into acquiring new customers, stop and divert some of your resources into reselling, upselling, cross-selling to those same customers. In every way possible – through package inserts, regular mailings, special offers – stay in touch with those customers and get them used to buying from you.”

So, there it is! Remember, we can help you put together the resources and tools to do exactly that. We can help you educate your customers and you can watch the benefits pay offer many-fold.

Lessons I Learned from Paris Hilton

Posted on by Jason Vilon

Today we’ll talk about shameless self-promotion. That’s right, I said it! Shameless! After all, we are learning from Paris Hilton here.

It’s all about self-promotion! Self-promotion comes in many forms and you can use different tactics to get your name out there. Look at politicians! Talk about self-promotion and in some not so discreet ways, at that. But, seriously, consider some of the major superstars we all know. Madonna, Donald Trump, Howard Stern and Bill Clinton, just to name a few.

We all self promote. Did you raise your hand in class to show the teacher you knew the answer? Of course! That’s self-promotion. This is the kind of self-promotion we are talking about. With dignity, class and the knowledge to back it up. If you self-promote only to prove you don’t really know what you’re talking about, you’re going to lose business.

Natural self-promoters are the former and I want to tell you about the three major traits they have and use to build themselves and their businesses.

  1. The first is position. You need to position yourself around people who can make a difference in your life. You need to do this frequently. You need to wake up every morning and ask yourself “Who can I meet today who will make a difference in my success?” In fact, go a step further, write it in big, bold letters and tape it on your bathroom mirror.

Also consider:

Who can help me meet my goals?

Is it a prospective customer/client? A colleague with contacts? An association with key members who may become prospects?

Don’t settle into interacting with the people who are the easiest to access. You need to reach outside your comfort zone and there you will find a wealth of new connections that will bring you great success.

  1. Now, let’s talk about Style. No, this doesn’t mean you need an Armani suit to bring in more business (though, let’s be honest-it wouldn’t hurt)  What this really means is how are you different from your competitors and others in your industry. What makes you memorable with customers?

If you are meeting a lot of people and they don’t remember you once you leave the room, you have a serious problem! This means you have an opportunity to present yourself in a more memorable way.

There are lots of little subtle changes you can make. Reassess your:

  • Business cards
  • Company message
  • Your picture
  • Your wording

Maybe even, your hairstyle (of course, now we’re back to the expensive suit, but it really works!)

You get the idea. There are lots of little ways you can work on making your image and business more successful. Also, consider how you sound on the phone and how you great people at meetings or other events. Think about your 30-sec elevator speech.

  1. The third trait of natural promoters is repetition. You can’t say it once and leave it at that. Successful self-promoters say it as many times as they need until they get a response. Would you remember a commercial for Coca-Cola if you only saw it once, no! You see it over and over and eventually you head out to the store.

You, also, have to make multiple impressions on those you are networking with in order to build brand awareness. Repetition is in direct connection with positioning. Once you find people to network with, reach out and find hundreds more who can help in your success as well.