Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide – 2nd Edition.
The Referral Engine – Teaching Your Business to Market Itself – by John Jantsch.
Here are a few recent interviews I thought I would share.
As social media and social network sites such as Facebook grow in popularity and utility for business, it’s no wonder that professionals are building businesses around showing other professionals how to get the most bang for their social networking buck.
For a recent episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast I spoke with Mari Smith who has built a following as a relationship marketing specialist and Facebook business coach. We explored many of the ways that business people are finding to connect, engage and actually sell in a social media environment.
I’ve written a great deal in the past about this subject, including my top 10 business applications for Facebook that is one of my most popular posts. This category is not going away and the more people can focus on understanding how to meet marketing objectives through the use of various social media the better.
This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by att.com/onwardsmallbiz. Resources for the small business owner.
As you may know I’ve launched a marketing planning software tool called Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing. The approach we took to create this (with the help of Palo Alto Software) was to make it something completely different from anything out there.
As feedback starts coming in, comments like the below make me think that perhaps we accomplished that goal.
“I love the perspective you’ve added to this software. It’s new, simple, convincing and, most of all, fun. I’ve been working on marketing for the last 15 years and I can tell you that the classic way of developing a marketing plan is really a bore.” ~ Javier G Longo
Go check it out and get $25 off for being such a great Duct Tape Marketing reader!
Google, Yahoo and MSNLive are just itching to get to know more about your website and they are steadily adding tools to make it easier for you to tell them more, learn more and analyze just what’s going on in their world when it comes to your websites.
Time was when figuring out how to get your site listed by the search engines was a mysterious sort of witchcraft (or at least that what some folks wanted you believe.) The search engines want to return the best results they possibly can when people use their engines so it just makes sense for them to make it easier for your content to go through the indexing process as a possible candidate for search engine results.
Google’s newly updated submit center ties together many of the ways you might submit content to Google.
Go visit and consume the content on the following sites and you will gain a great education on how and why to focus more attention on organic search results.
If you provide a service, and you charge for your service by the hour, you’re headed for trouble. You are essentially selling a product with a limited supply. The only way to increase your business is to raise your rates. But even that will catch up with you because at some point the old apples to apples comparison with a competitor will check your growth.
The answer is to sell a result for a fee or sell a package for a fee, much like you might sell a product. See when you sell a product, nobody says “I’m not paying you $5000, it only costs you $10 to make it.” You price it and they decide if they value it enough to buy it.
But, that’s precisely what they say when you charge by the hour isn’t it?. “I’m not paying you $5,000 for that, it only took you 3 hours to do it.” See, the thing is, it may have only taken you three hours to produce this one result but it’s taken your 10 years of your life to get good enough to do it. Don’t think hours, don’t sell hours, don’t devalue your experience and expertise and ability to bring massive results to your customers by selling yourself short.
Have you ever delivered an incredible, six figure kind of result for a customer only to return to the office and fire off a $500 invoice? Have you ever felt a customer back down because they didn’t believe you could actually deliver the results you promised that cheaply?
But how do you get out of the hourly trap? I mean everyone else in your industry is stuck with it, how can you expect to defy it?
The secret to this seemingly cavalier advice lies in putting your energy into forging one of two paths.
1) Build a brand that speaks to a narrow market so thoroughly they are willing to pay a premium to experience it.
2) Create and document results so completely that no one will ever blink when you tell them your fee for the result.
When you begin to think this way it will completely change your view of the world and quite likely allow you to more fully serve your customers while enjoying making what your expertise and unique life experiences are worth.
I had a great conversation with Alan Weiss, a consultant well known for his Million Dollar Consulting series of books and some very strong opinions on this notion of value based fees. You can click on over to listen to our chat or download the interview here.
What is social media? Well, that’s good question and the complete answer could fill pages without really delivering the clarity that a small business marketer might desire.
So here’s the simple definition for the purpose of this blog.
Social media is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value.
In a way the definition doesn’t really matter nearly as much as the application and changing role of marketing in a social media world.
Social media, and by that I’m lumping together blogs, RSS, social search, social networking and bookmarking, presents the marketer with a rich set of new tools to help in the effort to generate new business.
More on that!
Technology and data speed advances have made the use of web meeting technology a no brainer for even the smallest of businesses. In the fast paced world we live in, the ability to get a group of folks together online is such a powerful way to conduct business.
As more and more folks use this technology (and with $4/gl gas) it even starts to make sense for the local business to conduct meetings across town. Think about how many times you have jumped in the car, driven 30 minutes to make a 10 minute presentation, chit chatted for another 20 minutes, jumped back in the car for another 30 minutes and, let’s see – invested 90 minutes in that 10 minute presentation. As you utilize web and other tools such as web collaboration tools and teach your customers to use them as well, your effectiveness and efficiency will soar.
Now, I’m not suggesting that you never venture out and grab some face time, I’m just suggesting you can be smart about employing technology to help you get more done with the same 24 hours everyone has in a day.
Here are some great ways to use webinar or webcast technology
One to one seminar – When you create a webinar or sales presentation using a web technology you can invite someone who calls in to jump online and walk through the archived presentation on the spot.
Peer to peer seminar – Get two or three happy clients to agree to be panel members for a discussion about the problems in their business or industry and gently explain how your business or product is addressing this for them. The key here is transparency. Don’t let your guests sell. Make it a thoughtful, meaningful discussion among peers that you just happened to host.
Live with you – If you’ve got a workshop or seminar you are currently presenting, take it to a teleseminar. Invite clients and prospects to attend via the phone. Create an ongoing series and watch attendance climb.
Interview an expert – You would be surprised at the quality of guests from around the world you can convince to present to your clients and prospects. It’s a win for all involved. You get great content and the presenter may get added exposure for a book or other project with little time investment on their part.
Co-branded panel – Gather up a couple related businesses and put on a panel discussion on a hot topic. Everyone on the panel invites guests and everyone gets exposure.
Sponsored show – Go out and find a sponsor who would like exposure to your audience and allow them to promote in and around your teleseminars. For instance, if you are a CPA with a series of tax savings presentations for small businesses maybe a company that sell tax software would sponsor your sessions. There are lots of businesses out there that want to jump into this kind of marketing but don’t want to do it themselves. Give them the opportunity to help you.
Q and A time – Set a time each week, say Friday at 2 pm and advertise an open line to get your burning questions answered about a topic. Maybe it’s interior design trends, best software tips and trick for business or anything of interest related to your business. You promote the free time, hang out on the line and answer questions when they come in.
Another powerful benefit of systematically presenting information in events of this nature is that you can and should record the events and interviews you conduct and archive them on your website or turn them into an audio CD to distribute through other forms of marketing.
There are many choices for web meetings these days. Let me know what tools you have found and what ones you like and don’t like.
Join me live – Wednesday, Sept 24th Noon CDT – for a conversation with Alan Weiss, author of Million Dollar Consulting. Register here
Anyone who is currently a coach or consultant or who wants to become a coach or consultant can learn a great deal about the industry from one of the biggest names in business consulting.
Alan Weiss is a consultant, speaker and author and CEO of Summit Consulting Group, Inc. He is a 2006 inductee into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame? and the concurrent recipient of the National Speakers Association Council of Peers Award of Excellence, representing the top 1% of professional speakers in the world. His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 25 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill). His newest is The Million Dollar Consulting Toolkit
