06/20/2017
Since the 1990’s, we’ve been helping small and medium sized businesses make more money online since the 1990’s. To say I know a lot about online business and marketing is an understatement.
Right now, you may be asking, well Guys, what have you done for me lately? Great question, and here goes… I’m going to share some of my top marketing tips, with you right now.
These marketing tips and ideas can help anyone achieve better sales results, so take a few moments to study them. I hope you find the following marketing tips and ideas useful. More importantly, I hope you do something with them. Let’s get started!
Marketing Tip 1: Throw that old marketing guide in the bin!
My first marketing tip is this: If you want to avoid wasting stacks of money and missing countless sales opportunities, throw your old marketing guides and audio programs in the recycling bin!
You need to know what works today and the marketing landscape changes rapidly.
So, before putting any marketing tips or marketing tactics into place, check the date of the information you are using.
Marketing tip 2: Content marketing – Learn how to use content to market your business!
Content marketing works. In fact, so long as the material you produce is of extremely good quality, Content Marketing can work REALLY well. Last year, I generated over £150,000 in fees and sales from this blog, exclusively through Content Marketing.
You may or may not be familiar with the phrase Content Marketing, yet you visit content marketing sites every time you access the Internet. When you visit news sites, entertainment sites or blogs like this, which offer business advice, you are visiting a site that uses content (useful information) to market itself.
Content Marketing can successfully be used to market any type of business and it is unbeatable when it comes to attracting new clients, sales leads, inquiries and subscribers.
Briefly, here’s how Content Marketing works:
• You create a website, blog, newsletter or podcast, etc. You use it to provide FREE information that has real value to your prospective clients, whilst offering them the opportunity to purchase goods, services (or both), which are closely linked to the information you give away.
For instance, on this blog I provide thousands of marketing ideas and regular, valuable, free marketing advice. People read the information, use the ideas and share what they find here with their friends.
Then, some of those people see the quality of my information and decide to hire me, when they need expert marketing help. Others buy my audio program.
I’ve spoken about Content Marketing with thousands of people. The most common question they ask is a version of this:
“Hang on Mick. If I freely give all this valuable Content Marketing information away, surely people will simply do the job themselves?”
I answer by explaining that there are 3 groups of people, who will read your Content Marketing. Here they are and here is how your Content Marketing works with each group:
1. The first group is small. They are what I call serial freebie seekers. These people never ever pay for professional help. They were never prospective clients, so you lose nothing.
2. The second group is the largest. These people will try and do something themselves, but will hire professional help if they are not getting the results they need. They value genuine expertise.
3. The third group is the smallest. These are the rare people, who value their time and also ‘get’ that by hiring an expert to do something correctly for them, it works out a lot less expensive, the results are better and things happen faster.
Here’s what that means to you:
1. No one in the first group was going to spend a dime with you anyway. You lost nothing by giving them free information.
2. Some of the people in the second group will use your information and have a go at doing the job for themselves, whilst others in the group will see that they need expert help, and some of those people will hire you.
3. With the third group, if you demonstrate through your Content Marketing that you truly are an expert in your field, they will hire you. They already know all about you and your work. They trust you.
Content Marketing Tip: Ignore anyone, who tells you that ANY content will do or that you can automate the process. This is not the case.
If the content someone produces is predictable, poorly thought out junk, it won’t do anything other than make them look bad.
Today, we are starting to see many of the early Content Marketing gurus panic, as Google has become increasingly good at filtering low-value material from their rankings.
Marketing tip 3: Email marketing – Start using email marketing NOW!
Email marketing is extremely cost effective and one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses. This is because it provides predictable results and costs little or nothing to use.
Another huge benefit of email marketing is that unlike Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or any other social network, YOU not only build your network… YOU own it!
Business owners who spent time and money building their page discovered in 2013, that Facebook is showing their posts to just a tiny fraction of their fans. If they want all their Facebook fans to see their posts, they now need to pay Facebook. Facebook owns their network! This change of the rules is a perfect example of why you need to avoid outsourcing your network, to a social network. Email marketing puts you in control and allows you to build an increasingly valuable asset.
Here are just a few things for you to consider, before you start using email marketing.
I strongly recommend that you build your own email database, rather than buy one from one of those list brokering companies.
The best way to start building your subscriber list, is to ask all your existing clients and contacts if you can have their email address. Never just add people to your email list. You need permission, otherwise they will regard your emails as spam.
Then, ask if you can contact them from time to time via email with a newsletter or special offers or announcements. This will get you your initial list and give you something to get started with. So long as you ONLY contact these people with useful information, and make it easy for them to share your newsletter, your list will grow… in size and value.
You also need to have an email sign-up box on your website or blog. This needs to be easy to read and positioned in an uncluttered area of your site, which everyone will see. The subscriber box is clearly positioned on the top right of the site. This position works extremely well and people use it every hour of every day to subscribe.
Be extremely cautious of any marketing expert, who says you need to use annoying pop-up boxes in order to get their reader’s attention. NO YOU DO NOT. It simply shows they have no idea how to optimize their website.
Pop-up boxes are also extremely annoying and tend to generate low quality subscribers. We find that people who happily click on pop-up boxes, tend to click on LOTS of pop-up boxes. As a result, they get hundreds of newsletters sent to them and are unlikely to notice yours.
If you are asking people to subscribe to your newsletter, I also suggest you offer them something of genuine value, in return for joining your subscriber list. For example, when I was writing my newsletter, I used to offer a free ebook. I also advise that you only ask for people to give you their name and email address… not their whole life story.
Note: Every additional piece of information you ask for, will reduce your sign-up numbers.
It’s also really important to let people know you will never, ever pass on their email details to anyone. I built a newsletter readership of over 60,000 targeted subscribers using that approach.
I also recommend you only send one email message every 7 to 14 days. That’s what I did with my newsletter, because people hate being inundated with information, even if it’s great information! As a direct result of not bombarding people with emails, people looked forward to receiving them and very few people asked to be removed from my subscriber list.
Finally, (and this is very important) you must ask your readers to forward your emails on to their contacts. If the content is good enough, they will – but never assume anything, always ask them. Include a message at the end of every newsletter, which says something like this:
“If you have had this email forwarded to you by a friend and you would like to receive a regular copy, you can join our readership here.” (Then link from that text, to the newsletter sign up page on your site.)
I also recommend you learn and abide by the rules governing email marketing in your country.
Bonus: If you want to achieve the very best results possible, always, always invest in expertly written content. It can be the difference between a super-successful campaign and one that generates nothing!
Marketing tip 4: Build a well-connected network
One of the biggest myths in business is that you must have a large network if you want to succeed. In fact, you need just 5 or 10 people to begin with.
The reality is that the size of your network is not what’s important. It’s the influence of the people within your network that counts.
• IF MY NETWORK has 1000 people BUT they lack influence, it will have a commercial value of close to zero.
• IF YOUR NETWORK has just 10 people BUT they are motivated and have real influence, it will have a massive commercial value to you.
(Tip:) Stop wasting your time swapping business cards at networking events. The people attending these events are there to sell to you, not to buy from you and very, very few well-connected people waste their time attending them. None of the influential people I know or have met over my 25 years in marketing, network at these events. The best networkers have discovered out that the way to get connected to the right people, is to deliberately target them.
Here’s a suggestion: Draw up a list of the 30 most influential people in your marketplace. These people could include high quality prospective clients or maybe influential introducers; introducers are people who can recommend you to lots of buyers.
Then, put a plan together that will allow you to EARN their attention. This targeted approach takes time, but the rewards are enormous. Don’t believe me? Okay, think how different your business would look, of you had already done this, and you could now pick up the phone and talk to the most influential people in your industry! It’s a game-changer.
Marketing tip 5: Internet marketing – Start taking your website seriously
Most small businesses are unaware that their website is capable of being a 24/7, lead generating or sales machine.
Your website can generate high quality enquiries, leads, phone calls and sales from interested prospective clients… so long as you do it right.
When a website is professionally designed and marketed, it’s like having a store that is BANG IN THE MIDDLE of Oxford Street or 5th Avenue. Most small business websites are more like stores that are on an unused dirt road in the middle of nowhere. They are outdated and poorly marketed, when they could be so much more valuable to the business owner.
Today, the investment required for a professional looking website or blog is minimal. Yes, you certainly can spend thousands on a website, however, for the vast majority of businesses there’s absolutely no need to spend that kind of money.
This site, for example, is one of the world’s most popular marketing blogs. It’s built on WordPress (which is free) using a blog theme, which cost around $80. There are sites that cost 100 times more, which generate a fraction as many leads. So, you don’t need to spend a fortune, to have a successful, professional website or blog.
Another reason you need to take your website seriously, is that almost everyone now uses the Internet to ‘check out’ a potential service provider. Before deciding whether to do business with a provider or not, the vast majority of people will look for the provider’s website! That includes the people YOU market your services to. So, what is your website ‘telling’ them about your business?
Your website is a unique part of your marketing in one really important respect: it alone has the power to either kill or to supercharge the response rates of all your other marketing activities.
So, if you send a mailshot for example, be aware that the people that were interested in what you offered will visit your website before deciding to contact you (or not!) This means the quality and content of your website has to encourage people to completely trust you and see you in a wholly professional light.
If your marketing hasn’t generated the response rates you hoped for, remember, the people who ‘were’ going to contact you visited your website first. A professional looking and optimized website is essential. It’s as simple as that.
Marketing tip 6: Match your fees to your promises
There is a common mistake, which loses small and medium sized businesses a fortune. It’s simply this:
Their marketing promises a high quality service, BUT they charge a bargain-basement fee. By doing this, they send a mixed message to prospective clients, which loses theme businesses.
Everyone knows that quality never comes cheap. We have been trained from childhood to believe that if something looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true. Promising people a high quality service for a low fee, creates doubt. That’s the last thing you want to happen in the mind of your prospective clients.
Make your services as valuable to the marketplace as possible and then charge accordingly. If you do, your prices will match your promises and you will have made it easier for future clients to trust your marketing message.
Below is just an example of what you can generate with a small stay at home online business.
