Business Tips Guides

Bad marketing is worse than no marketing at all. On top of that, it is incredibly expensive! What exactly is bad marketing? Here are six common marketing blunders that need to be avoided and eliminated:

1. Impatience ranks at the top of the list. Hard-working, well-meaning business owners often sabotage their own marketing efforts when they expect instant gratification from their advertising. INSTANT and RESULTS simply do not go together. Give your advertising messages a chance to breathe!

2. Ego ranks at the top of the list along with impatience. This personality flaw surfaces when a business owner or manager who is an expert in one or more areas (finance, real estate, law, vehicles, etc.) ASSUMES that their personal expertise in whatever automatically transfers to marketing. It rarely does.

Ego-centered business owners and managers often design their own ads, write their own ad copy, and create their own websites . . . usually based on their personal opinions and tastes rather than those of their prospects and customers. You often see these people pitching their own products on TV, radio or in print. Sometimes they connect with their audience. Most often they do not.

3. Next in line are those time-worn axioms, word of mouth and everyone already knows all about us! No one can control what comes out of other the mouths of your customers and in reality, darn few people have ever heard of you or your business. You need to constantly tell them and never rely on them to tell others.

4. Another personality defect that can do major harm to your business is the belief that you already render the finest service or sell the best product possible. Lose these kinds of thoughts immediately. There is always room to improve.

5. Add conceit to the list of personality blemishes that can do serious damage to the marketing efforts in your company. I call it the big-me-little-you disease found in those who practice rudeness and bluster.

If you have someone on your team that is a carrier, know that they are turning people off faster than anything you can do on the marketing side to turn them on. If you cannot change an ego maniac, furlough them to practice their arrogance elsewhere.

6. Majoring in minors ranks high on the list of marketing impediments. Yes, you do need to know a lot about your product and service but you need to know the most about your prospects and customers . . . Not just as a group but as individuals. If you plan to make it on todays Main Street, you better be well along on constantly collecting personal data about your typical customer.

Talk with them. Listen to them. Reward them for filling out simple questionnaires. Visit THEIR websites (great way to get personal insights!). Meet them where they live and where they hang out. Make yourself available to them.

If any of the above sounds weird to you, step back from your alligator pond and carefully examine your present marketing strategy and the people who carry it out.

Get out of the past and get in touch with the future: information about your prospects and customers.
A small customer-centered business knows what their target market likes, what they read, what they watch and listen to, what excites them, what turns them off, where they shop, how they perceive your business . . . tiny details that make the difference between a one-time buyer and a lifelong customer.

Information is king in the business climate today. If you are not in the customer information collection game, change your strategy and get started. While you are at it, be 100% certain you and your team are not making any of the Bad Marketing Blunders listed above.

Bob Schumacher books and articles give entrepreneurs a clear coffee-shop English perspective on how to steer their business or profession into the top 20% who achieve 80% of the business and profits. Visit http://www.20do80.com for a complete directory of his articles and books.

I just finished up my business plan for 2009 (and if you haven’t updated your 2009 plan yet, I urge you to get started soon!) and I’m working with several clients to update their plans also.

One of the roadblocks many of my clients run into is the difficulty of setting concrete goals and objectives. It’s easy to say “I want to earn $350,000 in 2009″ but breaking that down into actionable steps is where most of my clients struggle.

I use a very simple system with my clients that has proven to be successful. It’s not unique; in fact, I think many goals setting programs teach a very similar approach.

But I want to share it with you today anyway so that hopefully you can get started planning for 2009 while this information is still fresh in your mind.

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals - that’s the idea that all of your goals need to be:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

Problem is, most goal authorities advise that your goals should be a little lofty - they should “scare” you just a little bit. So it can be difficult to determine whether your “scary” goal fits into the SMART category.

Here’s how I work through this with my clients - let’s take the $350,000 annual income as an example:

First, we break that goal into its smallest parts. So a $350,000 annual income would become a $6,731 weekly income. I’m using 52 weeks a year to make the math quick, and I’m factoring gross income, not net.

You’ll need to adjust for vacation time and taxes, if you’d like.

Now we run through the SMART system. Is $6,731 weekly income specific? Seems pretty specific to me. And it’s definitely measurable (numbers make great goals since they are so easy to measure).

Sure the goal is attainable. Plenty of people are currently earning $6,731 each week, so we know it can be done.

I’ve heard it said before that there are no unattainable goals, only unattainable timeframes. Which brings us to the next criteria - and here is where most of my clients struggle…

Is a weekly income of six thousand plus realistic? Obviously, this is going to be subjective, but here’s a good rule of thumb that I like to use: Take a look at your current income and add 20%.

By making several very easy tweaks to the current operations and marketing program, most entrepreneurs can realistically expect to increase their income by 20%. So, if you’re earning $5,609 per week in 2008, you can realistically earn $6,731 in 2009.

But what if you’re not earning $5,609 right now? What if you’re only earning $4,000 each week? Here’s where it gets a bit tricky.

To go from $4,000 to $6,731 would require more than a 68% increase in your current income. By making “normal” changes, you can expect a 20% increase - so how would you earn a 68% increase?

Here’s a formula that I’ve found to work in most cases: for every 20% increase in income, you need a 20% across the board increase in successful marketing activities.

For your 68% increase, you need to do almost 70% more of what you’re successfully doing now (successfully doing is the key here.)

So, if you currently attribute a sizable portion of our website traffic to article marketing, and you’re currently distributing 20 articles each week, you now need to distribute 34 articles each week.

And if a good portion of your prospects are coming from your speaking engagements, and you’re speaking twice each week, you’ll need almost 4 speaking engagements each week.

If you are now selling 50 info-products each week, you’ll need to sell 85 info-products in 2009.

And on and on and on. Run these numbers for all of your successful marketing activities and decide whether or not they’re realistic.

If you haven’t been keeping good track and measuring along the way, it might take some time to look back through the year and figure out what was actually working for you. But don’t skip this step!

There’s no point in increasing unsuccessful activities. If you’ve sent out 20 articles each week and saw no traffic from them, why would you waste your time sending 34 articles?

Keep in mind, we’re looking at income only here. This does not take into account expenses and profits. Don’t be surprised to find that an income increase actually reduces profits as your expenses go up also.

You need to run an entire cash flow and P&L projection in order to verify that your goal is actually desirable.

Hope this helps as your put your 2009 plan in place. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to business and marketing plans.

Don’t forget your mission and vision statements, your target market profile, your marketing message, etc. My fill-in-the-blanks guide can help you put it all together.

Now, go find some more clients!

Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis marketing consultant who works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. She offers several whitepapers, free reports and checklists, including her FREE Can-Spam checklist and FREE email pre-flight checklist to ensure your emails get delivered, get opened and get read. Download your copies at http://www.ModernImage.com.

If you are an Internet marketer or you make money online, you know there is a new program, service, or website coming out almost every single hour boasting about how you can make millions of dollars without working for even a second. Now, most of the time (sorry to burst your bubble) this are schemes or scams. If you make money online you’re going to have to do at least some work, even if the program is automated, you are still going to have to set it up, or read the e-book it comes with, or advertise, or “watch” the program (computers make mistakes). But, don’t be getting all disappointed on me yet, there are ways to make money online that are legit, in fact I can name 50 ways right now off the top of my head. What I’m going to do is make a list below of three products I have either had really good luck with or that I know are legit and do work. Some of these are generators, some are systems, some are just plain old programs, but they do work, so pay attention!

Fortune Makers Biz -
This most definitely is a money system, but its one that works, or so I hear anyway. People all over the place are raving about how well this program works and how easy it is. It’s absolutely incredible. With this program there are no e-books, no software, no pills, potions or lotions. It is what it says it is. A money making system. Another great thing about this system is there are two optional upgrades you can choose from, both are awesome, but of course one is better than the other! So what exactly are they selling on this site? It’s a luxury resort membership club backed by a full service travel agency that offers high end luxury travel at private member-only rates, as well as access to owner based timeshare resort properties. Hopefully by now most of us know what popular and what unpopular things to sell online are. Travel equals money maker!

The Rich Jerk -
This guy really is a… jerk and that’s putting it nicely. However, he does have a program that works. And if you can get over his arrogance and lack of manners, you too could be making the money everyone else is with his system. It’s easy, as he says. He hardest part is the selling but, if you know how to sell, if you have a great product to sell, and you know what to say, you can be a great salesperson! This system comes with a free website, plus some advice from RJ himself about how to get people to buy the things your selling on the free site. Pretty simple stuff, price isn’t bad either, check it out for yourself and see what I mean!

My Great Empire -
This is a site related to the GDI system, now I have never personally tried the GDI system but, I know of friends who have and it has worked for them, so don’t count this site out just yet. Go take a look at it and at least sign up for the free information. Building a massive action driven GDI team beneath you has never been easier. Not only will you notice a much higher opt in ratio, but an increased GDI sign up ratio as well. Every opt in you get through your MyGreatEmpire affiliate link, will receive approximately 12 followup emails in a period of 30 days. This is a website made for users that want to receive opt-in leads with the system.

This author is a HUGE fan of Fortunes To Be Made