Category: Small Business Marketing

Would you like to increase your home based business profits by 50% without increasing your marketing budget?

Direct sales opportunity, with the current economic and market situations as they are, is fast gaining ground and popularity as an alternative source of income.  Any direct sales consultant with a home business,  you know that marketing is a fundamental to building any successful direct sales home party business.  Where many a home party plans business owner stumble, struggle and fail is not knowing to whom they are marketing and how to market both online and offline!

You see the common urge in the mlm direct marketing industry is to try and crumb something down the throat of a would be customer.

When you get a potential customer, many will do an immediate sales pitch.  It is unfortunately premature and turns people off! A better method, that any direct sales marketing guru will tell you and a business best practice is the 2 step direct marketing.

Simply put, 2 step direct sales marketing is based on giving something away for free, or at low cost, with the purpose of getting something back in return.  Of course that something is a sale, but beyond that is the relationship.  The idea here is to start small and build.  You want to obliterate concerns before you sell them anything – this is what is termed as pre-selling.

Step 1: Give away something, time, free samples, free demos, a free report, free session of coaching or consulting. 

Step 2: Get their contact information and permission to market to them.  This is called dripping information.  No hard sells please.  In this phase you are building rapport and trust.  Why?  So that you can begin to exert your influence.  Ever heard of the phrase Jump!  How high?  Good, that is the power you will command if your engage in the 2 step process!

So here is the psychology behind it You get a visitor to your site or meet a potential customer/business builder.

What you want to do is get their
1.Attention
2.Permission
3.Interact
4.Trust
5.Influence

You want to craft an irresistible offer, to raise the fever pitch if you will..  In doing so you will get their attention and in effect raise anticipation.
If you place and ad in a paper, mail out a postcard or have a website, the best way to get attention is an irresistible headline.  For example

How To Have “Killer” Sex
At Any Age… Even If
You Don’t Deserve It!

I have a feeling that got your attention and you are headed to google search to figure out if the book exists.  At the time of this writing, I have not yet ascertained the validity nor the existence of the book.

Your attention getting message must be compelling create a compelling giving just enough information about the product to get the prospect to take some sort of action. Invoke curiosity….

Direct Sales Training Tip : Use the useful but incomplete rule…don’t give it all always.  You now what they say, why buy the cow if you can milk it for free?

2. Call to action: There is no point in crafting an irresistible offer only to drop the ball.  People like sheep, must be led every step of the way.

A call  to action is the desired action you would like the potential prospect, client or customer to make.  For example Click Here To Order.  Limitted Time Offer.  While Supplies Last.  Get Your Free Copy Today!

The purpose of the call to action is an exchange of information.  You are capitalizing on their desire to get their hands on what you have in return for their name, phone number, email address and where possible a physical mailing address!  This is called getting people to raise their hand for information.  This is the essence of <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:ga(‘send’, ‘pageview’, ‘/outgoing/article_exit_link/678728’);” href=”http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/”>permission marketing</a>, a term that is associated with Seth Godin, Marketing Demi-god!

Those who raise their hands for information become very hot direct sales leads. These are great business opportunity prospects and an excellent way to build a list.

As every direct sales representative or home party consultant knows, the “fortune is in the follow-up!”  Once the information exchange that was initiated by you is done and you have provided them with the requested information don’t stop there. Now you get into the direct sales marketing relational capital area of things!  You all know of the dismal statistics

“95% OF PEOPLE FAIL WHEN THEY START A BUSINESS WITHOUT A SYSTEM.

95% PERCENT OF PEOPLE ARE SUCCESSFUL WHEN THEY START A BUSINESS WITH A SYSTEM! “
–    Entrepreneur Magazine

This is a direct result of lack of follow up and follow through! 
Contrary to popular opinion, the money is not in the list. If you haven’t heard this before “the money is in the follow-up” so continually follow up. Once you have permission to market to people set up an email marketing campaign! If you don’t have an autoresponder, get one, this is the easiest way to follow up. Send them an email as often as necessary to create a relationship and remind them of your backend product. Don’t just do hard selling here.  I am a strong proponent of direct mail efforts with a combination of email marketing!

2 step direct – marketing  method is a time tested marketing method and will produce targeted prospects for your home based business.  The idea here is work smarter not harder!

Source by Patricia Kagwiria Makhulo

MARKETING 

Media Placement is the science which determines whether a business succeeds or fails.

You can have a great website, domain name, sales page but if no-one knows how to find you then you will fail.

There are lots of ways to Place Media and I will list a few for you.

Emails

Classified ads

Postcards

Pay Per Click Advertising

Direct mail letters

Articles

Radio

Television

It’s all about Marketing and that means Media Placement.

In any business you have to get as many people as possible to see your goods.  Two of the more popular are Emails and Direct Marketing.

Emails should include an introduction and information informing the reader of how this can benefit them.

 A list of the benefits so they can see what is involved and how they specifically benefit from them.

Emails sent out at 7 day intervals appear to have the best return.

A second Email is sent 7 days after the first one and another 7 days after the second.

It has been found that emails sent out on a Friday are much more responsive and the feedback is usually good with lots of enquiring questions.

Personally I believe that during the week family and personal matters are the top priority and the weekend provides more time to relax and do whatever interests you.

Direct Marketing can be applied by using Postcards and also having Flyers printed and then sent out to targeted clients.

Have you ever considered that nearly everywhere you look media placement of advertising is happening? Think about beer mats, coasters with a slogan on them.

Firms advertising on the front and back of clothing and caps that they sell. Marketing is an essential to any business.

I hope you have found this informative and interesting and maybe you now will look at Marketing in a different light.

It doesn’t have to be difficult. It can be fun and that makes it all the more enjoyable.

 William Conway

  a Necessity  for

Source by william conway

Many personal trainers rely solely on referrals and word-of-mouth publicity to drive their business to new heights. Unfortunately, there is too much competition for such passive tactics to work. Personal training marketing requires a number of techniques in order to be successful. With so many fitness professionals looking for new personal trainer marketing avenues, you need to be creative.

Your personal trainer marketing plan needs to be action-oriented and systematic. To start, you need a continuous pipeline of potential clients to take advantage of your personal trainer marketing approach. Your clients must already have a vested interest in you and your abilities. You want them to pursue you, as opposed to you chasing them. You want a personal trainer marketing tactic that is easy to work around.

To advertise yourself as a personal trainer marketing expert, you will need to establish your credentials. Make your clients aware of your field expertise by writing for fitness magazines, newspaper columns, newsletters and online articles. Build up a substantial portfolio of articles so that you can eventually publish them as a self-help book, yet another valuable source of personal trainer marketing. When you promote your book, it will lead to results for you as well.

Another effective personal trainer marketing strategy is to leverage your expertise and use it for public speaking. Contact clubs and other local bodies and offer to give a quick speech on a particular fitness related topic. While most clubs and associations will not pay you for speaking, you will gain valuable experience and build your credentials. Personal trainer marketing is about skills and personality, not just a race to the finish line. Your end results will justify the effort. By speaking at various locations and events, your audience will consider you an expert and will try to get your advice on their fitness problems. Soon, your personal trainer marketing attempts will see the rewards of success. Watch for opportunities that allow you to appear on television or radio shows as a fitness expert. This will help in building up your credentials as an expert and increase your personal trainer marketing abilities.

Consider sending mailers with a twist. Use a personal trainer marketing technique that is smart and effective. Focus on a specific area and send mailers to that area only, along with an offer for a free consultation. Use your marketing skills to generate an automatic response from interested parties. Be generous with before and after pictures, provide plenty of social proof and give the impression of scarcity. Many clients usually respond to limited time offers where they have to make a decision within a certain period of time. The idea is to coax individuals who have not made up their minds to make a conscious decision to work with you and become paid clients.

Such approaches can be easily overdone. Give the impression that you are in demand, but maintain approachability. You have a strike a balance between the two. If clients are not happy with your approach to marketing, your business may suffer.

Source by Nitin Chhoda

Facebook is one of the most widely used websites there is of existence today. In fact, almost 500 million people all over the planet use it every day, making it one of the biggest places online to ever see such heavy traffic. Being an entrepreneur, you need to take advantage of such market. This is why Facebook marketing has been conceived and is now one of the social media marketing techniques most preferred by online business owners in promoting their ventures and selling their goods.

However, business social marketing is not that much of an easy feat. There are a good number of things you will need to remember before you can ensure yourself a hit campaign. Some examples of these are:

1. Never flood your friends’ feeds with repeated promotional posts. If you have something new to sell or say, you should never post it over and over again. This can get you in a lot of trouble. Your posts can be considered as spam, which will surely get you in some situation with the site’s admin. Aside from this, your friends can also hide you from their feeds or delete and block you altogether once they get tired of you saying the same thing repetitively. If you want to draw their attention to something you’ve already posted before, you can repost it in another form or just share the link of your previous post.

2. It’s always easier to get friends instead of “fans”. One of the biggest mistakes some people who try their hands in Facebook marketing commit is by immediately forming their business’ fan page right away. Of course, this can be a great way to promote your business, but there’s only so much you can do with such a page. Plus, getting fans is a lot tougher than by approaching people and inviting them to be your friends. By starting on a personal level, you can find social media marketing a lot more effective, since most users are more interested with actual people and not some venture they don’t really know yet.

3. Buying ads can help you a lot. Advertising on Facebook is one of the best and easiest promotional stints you can ever encounter. Plus, with the possibility of having 500 million people see it easily really makes it a very attractive opportunity.

These three are just the most basic things you need to keep in mind in Facebook marketing. If you manage to pull these three off without any fuss, you’ll most likely get a big chance to make it big online.

Source by Ramvie Santiago

The Power Of Leveraging

Let’s talk about strategic marketing and how it relates to the medical staffing industry.

How can a medical staffing agency create an environment to promote a strategic marketing effort from its staff to increase productivity and profit? The strategic marketing effort needs to transcend old habitual routines. The strategy within the power of leveraging will produce more profitable and larger results than otherwise would. What are the drivers, the path and the basic formulation to begin the power of leveraging to take hold the strategic marketing effort?

Let’s take a journey to illustrate this very important question. Because the question above will be the difference between growing your medical staffing organization verses your organization dying a horrible death.

I have identified and refined these drivers using my experience, actual field research, and the great canons in the field of business growth.

Lets take a look at the primary driver, and let’s examine how this driver directly relates to the medical staffing business.

STRATEGIC MARKETING

It is amazing how many medical staffing agencies are unaware of the power of leverage marketing within this environment. It is so simple, yet so unwisely used. The cost is fixed within your effort, expense, time and opportunity costs.

How? A recruiter or a business development representative (In many cases it’s the same person) whether he or she secures one appointment or twenty a day, It will cost you the same fixed amount. The same fixed amount maintains itself regardless if you or your staff secures one contract or ten a day. The fixed amount stays the same if you secure four new accounts or five a month.

The opportunity cost, effort and expense to place an ad or walk into a hospital whether you secure one account or ten are the same. If you close a new account 10% of the time or 50% of the time the fixed costs are the same. If the contract you secure produces $2,000 a year or $200,000 the initial fixed costs are the same for the new account.

Your costs are the same within your effort, expense and time to run a mailing campaign that may produce 0.5% response or 6% response. It costs you the same to attend trade shows or visit colleges to recruit new candidates whether they convert 2% or 20%. The fixed costs are the same whether you spend $10,000 on your marketing budget to attract 5 clients or 500 clients. The costs are the same to secure new contracts whether you close 1, 5 or 10 out of 100.

I think you get the idea of what I am talking about. Being able to strategically leverage yourself to pull in more per effort spent will increase profitability. The power of leveraging ideally allows you to pull in 1 out of 3 instead 1 out of 20 new accounts. This can dramatically increase the bottom line. The power of leveraging allows you to transform an account from $1,000 a week to $3,000 a week. Getting contracts to increase the number of placements from one shift to three a month. If you can get customers that were not referring anyone to you begin referring five new customers a year is a strategic marketing leverage that will increase growth substantially. This is the power of strategic marketing for medical staffing agencies.

You must recognize and respect the power of strategic marketing and the role it will play in the success of your medical staffing agency.

How do you form a strategic marketing plan?

Create an internal analysis of your current marketing efforts. Make sure to identify all the activities, processes and tasks, and then determine the best avenue to improve upon them. Lets examine how you go about finding them.

1. Find the recruiter or business development representative that has achieved better results than anyone else. If it is you, then identify the areas you have excelled on. Create a modeling effect on those individuals. Apply those skills to everyone in your organization and make sure everyone understands the importance of this new avenue. Write the processes down and use as a blueprint. Don’t horde the information for fear of people stealing your methodology.

2. Find other staffing companies within the same field who have shown success and are better at doing what they do than you. Borrow their success and make it your own.

3. Benchmarking: Go outside your industry, find companies that have proved to be great in there area of expertise. Look at their business practices; how the people interact with clients, what makes them successful. Uncover and refine there business practices, what makes there ads so great? How do they secure appointments? How do they close a deal? What is there presentation style?

You can then adapt, use and apply those processes to your medical staffing agency on a regular basis. Make it a common practice to continually do what works, review what you are doing then make sure it is still working. Review what you are doing and determine what can be added to the strategic marketing plan to leverage your actions. Eliminate the under performing activities and increase the activities that produce the higher returns.

Using the strategic approach to marketing and leveraging your actions will allow your medical staffing agency to grow faster, more effectively and with less effort on your part. The number of clients will grow along with the amount charged per client. The key to generating leveraged revenue lies within the power of strategic marketing.

Recognizing that Strategic Marketing is one of the most important facets of growing your business will allow you to reach upside potential. There are 9 other drivers that relate to the growth, profitability and competitive superiority within Strategic Marketing for your Medical Staffing Agency.

Source by Roy Vera