Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

Marketing Coach: Grow Your Business with Selective Access

There's an old marketing saying - create services around your products and productize your services. 

This is good advice because it works for big businesses like IBM and it works for smaller businesses - like yours. 

IBM used to be in the computer hardware business... They were struggling and almost went under in the early 1990's when IT hardware was becoming commoditized. Under new CEO Louis Gerstner, they decided they were in the business of solving business problems, not selling boxes. Within a few short years, their services and consulting revenue dwarfed their hardware sales.

For most small and solo professional service providers, our commodity is our time. Yet our value lies in our expertise.

So how YOU package, market and distribute your expertise become central to your lead-generating and revenue-generating success.

And the best way to do that is to implement a model I call "Selective Access."

Imagine you are running a 5-star restaurant. Your flagship offering is a 7-course gourmet dinner. You also offer lunch which is less fancy (and less expensive). And perhaps you have an up-scale catering or to-go division too.

Prices vary depending on the following four factors:

1. Quality and quantity of ingredients

2. Complexity of preparation

3. Level of service

4. Level of access to the dining environment

Put simply - dinner costs more than lunch which costs more than a snack to-go. 

In my own business, I offer 1-on-1 marketing mentoring (dinner), I run group marketing programs several times each year (lunch) and I work with a few people each month via 1-hour pinpoint sessions (just-enough, just-in-time power snacks!)

Plus I occasionally throw in a "happy meal" which is a free high-value session that's open to everyone. 

Now let's turn the spotlight on YOUR business. Think about - or grab a piece of paper and jot down - what the following looks like in your world: 

1. YOUR Flagship investable opportunity: 

2. YOUR Secondary investable opportunity: 

3. YOUR "To-go" offering (high-value, low-risk, fast, affordable)

4. YOUR FREE happy meal (think of this as a high-value "gift" you can offer to folks who might be good prospects.) 

YOU'RE INVITED: The next "happy meal" coming your way is Tuesday 10/30 at 2pm Eastern. It's a zero-cost high-impact Marketing Blueprint Session and you can read about it here. 

Hope you'll join us on 10/30. 

1. Tweet more regularly about resources, tools and ideas that link back to your website. Use tools like Hootsuite, TweetAdder and Buffer.

2. Create short 2-3 minute videos on YouTube and make sure to add titles near the beginning and end of the video inviting viewers to get more resources from your website.

3. Also make sure to optimize your videos' titles, descriptions, tags and use your full url (meaning include the http:// part!) as the first line of your video description so people see it right away without needing to scroll down. Example: Business Card Kung Fu

4. Get to know Pinterest. It is the fastest growing social media site in history and it's also a lot of fun. Visit my free marketing resources page and grab a fresh hot copy of "How to Use Pinterest for Business." Example: http://pinterest.com/marketingexpert/  

5. Slideshare: You know you've got 'em - PowerPoints. PDF's. All kinds of goodies probably littering your hard drive and you're not take advantage of ANY of 'em as marketing assets. But sure enough, you can start a free Slideshare account, upload your favorite 5-6 PPT or PDF documents, optimize the tags, titles and descriptions, and BAM - more web traffic for you. Example: http://www.slideshare.net/doitmarketing

6. Build an about.me page that collects all your important web links and can serve as an online "business card" or switchboard to connect folks to all your social media accounts in one handy place. Example: http://about.me/doitmarketing

7. Build a brand reputation profile on BrandYourself.com. It's a great way to monitor your online reputation AND build Google juice so you are more visible, more findable and more credible to folks searching for your type of product, service or expertise. Example: http://bobgarlick.brandyourself.com/

8. Boost the impact and SEO value of your LinkedIn profile. My pal, LinkedIn guru Viveka Von Rosen has 12 kickass tips for you on 12 Ways to Spice Up Your LinkedIn Profile. Hint: You also totally need to pick up Viveka's book LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day.

9. Blog, baby, blog... Research from our partners at Hubspot proves that businesses that blog twice a week generate 60% more traffic and leads than businesses that blog once a week or less. Not every blog needs to be a novel. Short is good. Medium is good. Long is good. Not blogging regularly is bad. Ya dig?

10. Infographics. Love 'em or hate 'em - they're hotter than a Vegas sidewalk in August. How can you present a simple, visual, and valuable piece of content that your readers, prospects and customers would really appreciate? Example: 12 Home Page Must-Haves. 

11. Post to relevant LinkedIn groups. LinkedIn is THE social network for business. But all I see in your message stream is who you connected with yesterday, who you endorsed as a great accountant, and that you changed your photo (which is great because that brown tie wasn't helping you). Post LINKS to your great content. Post provocative, interesting questions. Post answers in relevant Q&A Discussions. 

12. Don't ignore PR: Do everything you can to put yourself in a position to be quoted, interviewed, linked to, and featured in relevant blogs, articles, publications and newsletters aimed at your target market. If you're not sure where to begin, start with PRLeads.com and PressReleaseSender.com

13. According to my pal Jay Baer of Convince and Convert, text is going away. Everything online is moving to pictures and video. If that's true (and trust Jay - it is), then your two new best friends will be... 

14. Flickr.com: Post pictures of you, your clients, your projects, your meetings, your team, your best work. Don't be shy - Flickr is a great place to strut your stuff in an immediately impactful way. A picture is worth a thousand words, yadda yadda. Here's a great example from my pal Scott Ginsberg.

15. Animoto.com: Video, baby, video. Turn your photos, video clips, and music into stunning video masterpieces to share with everyone. Fast, free, and shockingly easy! You can use these for yourself, your products, your services, your programs and your ideas. You can also export your creations to YouTube and optimize them further there (See point #3 above.) Example: Top 10 Differences Between Girls and Bodacious Women.

16. Don't ignore email marketing. One of the most common reasons you may be losing web traffic is simply because people who know you and like you have forgotten about how awesome you are. Email marketing reminds them. Not sure where to begin? Start with a Constant Contact free trial. 

17. Never Stop Marketing. That's both a mantra and the website of my pal Jeremy Epstein. But my point is... Never stop experimenting. Never stop testing. And only KEEP what works for you and generates results. You can safely toss the rest.

Go about your marketing with a sense of positive skepticism. Just because someone else says a strategy or tactic is great, doesn't mean it's great for YOU. There is no cookie cutter. You are no cookie.  

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to read two closely related ones: 

Marketing Coach: "You Never Know" Will Kill You

Business Coach: 7 Keys to Help You Focus on Strategy Not Tactics

What do you think? 

Use the COMMENTS section below to share your insights, advice and recommendations...

And then leave a comment below with your questions, thoughts, and advice on the ideas above.

Are you a DO IT freak? Welcome to the club!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!

Bad news: You are 9 days into the month and your website traffic is down 43%. 

Worse news: You don't even know about it. 

Why not? 

Because if you're like most small business owners, (non-web) entrepreneurs and independent professionals, you look at your web stats once a month - and almost always when it's too late. 

So the question for you and your organization is - are you looking at your web marketing game plan as a forward-looking fitness program -- or as a backward-looking autopsy?

The autopsy approach sounds like this: "What went wrong? Where did our site visits go? How come opt-ins dropped? Our bounce rate climbed again..." Sigh, worry, fret, fret, fret...

The fitness approach sounds like this: "It's been 10 days since our last blog post, we have to post more regularly - let's put something up this Tuesday and again on Thursday. Where's our SEO score card? I think we dropped back a few places on two of our keywords and it looks like we're back at #1 again for 'Poughkeepsie laundromat' - woo hoo! We need to load some fresh tweets to drive more traffic to our free report because it looks like opt-ins are dropping..."

DANGER: The fit get fitter. And the autopsy people are dead on the table. 

Where do your website stats stand today?

Please leave your insights, advice and recommendations in the COMMENTS section below...

Keywords: Marketing coach, small business marketing coach

I just came across a website that claims to feature the Top 100 "Voices that Shape Opinion" - Grab a quick look here: http://say100.saymedia.com

It reminded me of a few years back when I was attending the 99% Conference and happened to strike up a conversation with Tina Roth Eisenberg, a sorta-cool, sorta-famous-in-that-indie-way designer and blogger. She is one of the Say 100 - http://say100.saymedia.com/design

Three things that made an impression on me when I met Tina:

1. She seemed like a nice, unassuming, down-to-earth person when chatting 1-on-1. She was no big deal to me because I wasn't one of her design groupies and she simply seemed like an interesting person among the 300 or so equally interesting people at the conference...

2. During this 10-minute coffee break, about a dozen people came up to her - interrupting our conversation - with that "Oh my god, it's HER" look on their faces... 

3. She interrupted OUR conversation each and every one of those dozen times to greet her fans - mostly strangers mixed in with one or two seemingly more meaningful acquaintances or friends...

So it became clear to me that among a certain subgroup of this conference, Tina WAS indeed a big deal. 

But she lost some points in my book by trading superficial fandom for the possibility of a new connection - even with a "nobody" like me. 

Truth is - put me in a different room, and among an equally teeny-tiny minority of folks, I am the one who is a big deal. But I make damn sure NEVER to treat a conversation partner the way Tina treated me. 

I've had a 5-minute conversation with a new friend at similar events while two, three or even four people start stacking up in my peripheral vision wanting a word with me. Know what I do? I ignore 'em. Politely but with determined focus, I continue my conversation with the person who was gracious enough to share THEIR time and attention with me. 

I'm a big believer in the notion of "love the one you're with" in a professional networking sense. Do anything else and you seem like a needy, egotistical goober who suffers from false celebrity syndrome (FCS - it's deadly). 

Here's my challenge to YOU - in the rooms where YOU are a "big deal," how do you treat your NEW friends, acquaintances, and networking connections?

Do you NEED to collect on every last drop of all that ego satisfaction?

Or are you willing to put your ego aside and act like a "regular person" when you may - or may not - be considered as such in the real world outside that room? 

If you're truly a big deal - regardless of the scope of that statement for you - are you kind, attentive and humble? Or is that just an act until YOUR fans start lining up and asking you to have their picture taken with you? 

It matters much more than a list of who matters. 

What do YOU think? Please leave your COMMENTS, thoughts and experiences below...

Just posted this 4-minute video on how you can increase your website traffic, leads and blog readership using LinkedIn Groups.

NOTE: You may want to hit the "Full screen" view in the bottom right corner to enhance your viewing experience!

Please leave a COMMENT below about your own advice on using this technique - and your success stories in doing so!

Independent research with over 700 professional services firms proves that the #1 source of business is “Making warm calls to existing clients” – no surprise there.

But the #1 source for generating NEW clients is “Speaking at conferences, seminars and trade shows.” (Wellesley Hills Group, Trends in Professional Services Lead Generation Report)

So if you want to win NEW business from NEW clients, speaking is your most direct path to that goal.

Yet if yours is like the majority of firms, you haven’t yet cracked the code on how to put all the pieces together to make speaking pay off for YOUR partners, YOUR executives and YOUR team to consistently attract YOUR best prospects and clients.

By the time you're done reading this post, you will understand how to unleash the power of 3PR in your firm's business development efforts, including the #1 strategy - speaking.

Question: As a professional services firm principal, managing director, CEO, partner, or practice leader... Is this you?

• "We often get beat up on price because we have no credibility with prospects who've never heard of us before"
• "I'm constantly asked for new marketing tools, brochures and presentations but nothing seems to help"
• "How do I know which marketing strategies and tools will help us close more sales?"
• "There has to be a more systematic way we can market our services"
• "There are so many new ways to reach buyers these days; should we be using social media, blogs, podcasts, video? And do any of those even work in our industry?"

If any of the above statements sound familiar then it makes sense for you to explore the power of 3PR -- Personalized Professional Public Relations. 

3PR is a combination of strategies, tactics and tools designed to help you and your professional services firm accomplish one or more of these seven key business objectives:

1. New Lead Generation
2. Building Credibility and Brand Preference
3. Connecting with Media & Industry Analysts
4. Opportunities to Engage Your Top Talent
5. Management Development
6. Thought-Leading Content Creation
7. Contribution to Your Professional Community

Let's unpack specifically what we mean by 3PR - Personalized Professional Public Relations: 

• Personalized: Your firm is made up of individuals. Each member of your team has specific strengths, capabilities, preferences and personalities that can be leveraged in marketing, positioning, and amplifying the messages your firm wants to impress on your prospects, your clients and your influencers in your target markets.
• Professional: 3PR has one goal - professional exposure for your firm's expertise, products, services, and value proposition. Many professional services firm partners and practice leaders shy away from the spotlight of 3PR saying, "It's not about me." While this is true, it certainly IS about YOU providing value, expertise and guidance to help your target market succeed. 
• Public: Your team may be top-notch with proven expertise that generates amazing results for your clients. However, if you don't make your expertise public, you will suffer what many small and midsized firm principals describe in frustration as "Best Kept Secret Syndrome." 3PR puts your expertise in front of prospects -- exactly where it belongs if you want to generate new business more easily and more often.
• Relations: Stop thinking in terms of "closing the sale" and focus rather on building relationships with your audiences, readers, followers and fans. The content that you share in a typical 3PR campaign is useful, valuable, actionable, specific and insightful. Do this consistently and you'll build trust, likeability and a reputation for excellence. So when a need arises, you and your firm will be on speed dial and your prospects will consider it a serious mistake to hire anyone else. 

Have you ever been rejected out of hand by a prospect who not only doesn't understand what it is you DO but - as a bonus - also told you they already have it taken care of in-house? 

It's like they're saying, "Uh, I don't know what that is, but we already have that here."

This is what I call rejection by ignorance (RBI). And it is one of the most frustrating things you'll run into as a marketing or sales executive - and certainly as an entrepreneurial business owner. 

Quick example from my world - and let's see how this story applies to YOU and YOUR products, services and value proposition...

First, a bit of background to set the context. As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I market and sell to two audiences. 

1. For marketing coaching, I market to speakers, consultants, coaches, and independent experts.

2. For speaking, I market to conferences, associations and various industry groups. 

After reading this post, you will pick up some tools for marketing YOUR products and services better, smarter and faster - and you'll also see how to avoid one of the STUPIDEST sales rejections ever. 

Ready? Strap in - this could get ugly...

Oh, wait...

First, let me share a really good speaker prospecting letter with you. I use this one to get back in touch with speaking clients and also to cross-sell and upsell along the geographic hierarchy (local - state - regional - national) of organizations I've already spoken for.

(All names changed to protect.... well, you know!) Here it is: 

=====
Dear Glenda,

I'm hoping you can help me. I'm trying to get in touch with the person responsible for selecting speakers for your [insert organization name] national conferences for two reasons:

1. To invite them to a conversation with me about exploring our possible fit for your speaker roster in 2013 - I presented an extremely well-received keynote at the regional [insert organization name] last year and would love to do more for [insert organization name].

The conference promo from last year is attached for your reference and the special welcome video I did for your group is here: [Youtube link]

2. If a high-energy, high-content marketing program is not a fit, I can recommend several other outstanding professional speakers to you because of my active involvement and leadership roles within the National Speakers Association.

Please do get back to me and let me know your thoughts.

-- David Newman

[Signature block]
=====

So far, so good. And please DO use this letter template above if you're a speaker, consultant, or a professional who uses speaking to generate leads and revenue for your firm.

(And yes, you're very welcome!)

And now here's where things get stupid...

A very nice person forwarded my note to their national HQ. I got this 3-line email from HQ. Please keep your eye out for the aforementioned RBI - rejection by ignorance.

=====

[Nice person] forwarded your email to me. I work with our conferences and events. Because of our arrangement with [corporate HQ], we do not have marketing speakers on our programs. [Our organization] has their own marketing division and provides the marketing support to all offices in the country, so it is not part of our professional development portfolio.

=====

As best as I can tell, she's telling me, "Uh, we have a department that does that."

That's funny because I've spoken for clients like IBM, Microsoft, TD Bank, Merrill Lynch, and Accenture and I'm pretty sure THEY all have marketing departments too!

By this logic, no Fortune 500 company would hire a sales speaker because:

They have a sales department.

No large organization would hire an outside training company because:

They have a training department.

No multi-national corporation would use a recruiting firm because (say it with me, now):

They have a recruiting department.

So what should YOU do to avoid (or recover from) RBI?

Acknowledge it - love it - embrace it.

Corollary: If you can't market and sell to ignorant people who give you stupid excuses, you're going to have a very brief career in sales.

Oh, damn... was this microphone on?

Back to the show...

The tricky part is you never know when you're going to run into this particular brand of stupidity so I don't recommend doing anything differently up front.

Once RBI rears it's ugly head, your best chance at a recovery is what I call CSI. This stands for Complement and Supplement In-house efforts.

Here's a sample phone conversation or an email reply back to little Susie Creamcheese* at the global HQ of the Moron Corporation above:

=====
Susie,

Thank you for your note. I understand completely.

Most organizations that I work with also have a robust marketing department.

They value the programs we collaborate on precisely because I help them with strategies, tactics and tools that complement and supplement what they're already doing in-house.

I'm attaching a brief overview of the program I'm proposing along with 5 testimonial letters from clients in your industry who have a strong central marketing function AND who had great things to say about the results of our work together.

Worth a 10-minute phone conversation? Let me know either way and thanks in advance for considering it.

-- David Newman
[signature block]
=====

BOO-YAH.

Eat that, Jack.

RBI has met CSI and it's game over.

Hope that was as good for you as it was for me.

* Little Susie Creamcheese is a favorite saying of my speaking colleague, David Yoho. Hire him. He's awesome.

* * Grab this free "Sell More Speaking" web training>> 

You may have already heard about the upcoming Expertise to Empire Bootcamp Webinar Series produced my good friend and National Speakers Association colleague Shari Alexander.

This 6-Session Weekly Bootcamp includes information, materials, and coaching on:   

• How to create your personal Brand that puts your competition to shame
• Strategically navigating the world of Social Media so that it doesn't eat up your life and your productivity while still generating leads 
• The business of Public Speaking; learn what the top speakers are doing in today's market to get gigs and build their list
• The ins and outs of the fast-changing Publishing world. Discover which method of book publishing is right for you. Then put the steps in place to successfully execute the book you've been dreaming of
• Insider secrets of a successful Product Launch. Get more product sales in a shorter period of time with these tested and proven techniques
• Find out what the masters are doing for their Market Research.  Get the edge in your business plan right from the start by implementing these easy and quick techniques

As with most well-marketed, well-delivered programs, naturally you get some nice bonuses in addition to the Early Bird pricing that is now in effect.