Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

OK I have to say it...

Here's the deal, people - ASK your next coach, guru, teacher, or mentor the following questions based on the subject you're enrolling to learn.

For example...

1. Speaker marketing coach:

• How many times a year do you speak FOR MONEY? 
• At what fee? 
• Who are five of your most recent paid speaking clients?

2. Book marketing coach:

• Is your book self-published or with a major publisher? 
• How many books have you sold? 
• If you claim "bestseller" status - what lists and for how long were you on the list? 
• Where is your book TODAY in amazon sales rank (less than 25,000 is good)

3. Group coaching/online course creation guru:

• How many group coaching programs or courses have you run? 
• Since when have you been filling your own groups? 
• What's your average enrollment? 
• At what price point? 
• Can you show me the sales page for three of your recent programs?

4. Infoproduct coach:

• How many infoproducts do you currently sell? 
• What's your monthly sales volume on your top 2-3 products? 
• Can you show me the sales pages for several of your products?

5. Private Coaching guru:

• How many private coaching clients do YOU currently work with? 
• What are your coaching packages and fees? 
• Do you charge by the hour? (It's a BIG red flag if they say yes!) 
• What percentage of your coaching business is repeat and referral? 
• What's the average amount of time and money that clients spend with you?

6. Marketing/business growth coach:

• How long have you been running your business? 
• Do you have other sources of income besides this business? 
• What are they? 
• What are the typical outcomes clients get from working with you? 
• Have you DONE what I want to do - or do you just teach it? 
• How many clients have you worked with? 
• What separates your successful clients from your not-so-successful ones? 
• Then check out their recommendations on Linkedin and their client testimonials on their website (how specific are they? how many? how credible? Full attribution with person's name, company, position, etc?)

There are a lot of people out there who LOOK like they have it going on - pitching their "Million Dollar" this and "Million Dollar" that...

Sad to say, a LOT of it is smoke and mirrors. Motivation, inspiration, pretty websites, great photos of smiling, jubilant bootcamp or retreat attendees, a big social media footprint, great looking videos...

But scratch the surface and the gold glitter starts to flake off in big chunks as you realize you've just been taken for a ride by a very pretty or handsome con artist and suddenly, you're out a few thousand dollars (or a lot more) with nothing to show for it except that empty feeling in the pit of your stomach that you're not any closer to achieving your goals for your business, your bank account, or your lifestyle.

Don't follow the herd - you're not a lemming or a sheep.

Find the people who are the REAL DEAL, who only preach what they themselves practice, invest wisely, and choose carefully.

That is all. Rant ends here.

And next time - we'll tackle the rant of the CLIENT who does not do. (That rant might be even juicier than this one, don't you agree?)

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!

As a speaker, consultant, thought-leading executive or entrepreneur, you may have heard about the importance of building an audience for your work... Sounds great. 

But pleasing a nice audience is nowhere as important as developing a market of true buyers for your expertise. 

Here are 17 vital differences between a market and an audience.

You can spend YEARS attracting and serving an audience that is NOT your market. And that's just sad, painful, and frustrating. 

These are as pernicious as they are deceptive. 

WHICH of these has been holding you back - confusing you - or set you to wondering how come you're not making more money as a speaker, consultant, or solo professional?

Let's go down the list... 

1. An audience listens - A market pays attention
2. An audience wants entertainment - A market wants to solve problems
3. An audience values an experience - A market values expertise
4. An audience wants to watch - A market wants to act
5. An audience wants information - A market wants implementation
6. An audience reacts - A market responds
7. An audience wants their questions answered - A market wants their answers questioned
8. An audience wants you to be popular - A market wants you to be right
9. An audience asks “What can you do?” - A market asks “What’s next?” and “What else?”
10. An audience says, “Great show!” - A market says, “Great job!”
11. An audience tells their friends - A market tells their boss
12. An audience buys your book - A market reads your book
13. An audience likes your ideas - A market implements your ideas
14. An audience wants your autograph - A market wants to give you their signature (on checks!)
15. An audience applauds - A market refers
16. An audience says, “Thank you” - A market says, “Thank goodness!”

And finally - most important of all - read this next one as often as you need to...

17. An audience will HEAR you - A market will PAY you (well, often, and gladly)

Highly successful professional speakers, consultants, and experts not only build an audience - they develop a hungry market of true buyers who are ready, willing, and eager to invest in their value, ideas, products, services, and programs. 

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!

What. 

Matters. 

Most. 

Every single day. 

Focus on it.

Refocus on it. 

Repeat it. Reinforce it. Review it. 

Remind yourself.

Think, strategize, and DO accordingly. 

Here's to an amazing, prosperous, and successful year for you, your family, your business and your bank account!

===

p.s. Want to make sure your year is focused on what matters most?

Download your copy of the Do It! Marketing Manifesto for free right here.

If you want to make the next 12 months more successful, more profitable, and more productive than the last 12 months, these ten strategies are for you.

By the way, this list isn’t just for a new calendar year – you can revisit this list at any time and create a real turning point in your business if you’re willing to reboot, reinvigorate, and reimagine your business success.

1. List the three most important objectives for your business over the next year. These should be critical “big picture” accomplishments that will lead to profits and future achievement.
2. For each objective listed above, identify your responsibility in achieving the objective. WHAT will you do? HOW will you do it? WHEN will you do it?
3. Be crystal clear in separating strategies (how and why items) from tactics (what and when items) and use “Verb-noun-date” format to create specific action steps and put them on your calendar.
4. Don’t think of the year as a whole. Break it down to monthly metrics and put quarterly goal-planning reviews on your calendar so you can adjust the dials on your plan, measure results, and take a strategic look at your marketing, sales, and business development activities every 90 days while keeping a close eye on results (profits, clients, projects, revenue) every 30 days.
5. Don’t go it alone. Remember, lone wolves starve to death. Think of partners, allies, referral sources, influencers and joint venture partners who can help you leapfrog over obstacles and who are a great supplement and complement to your own products and services. Contact them and build (or grow) your relationship with them so you can collaborate more closely – starting right now.
6. Write down a list of professional development goals for the next 12 months. What do you want to learn, do, or become as a business owner? Go to conferences? Gain additional certifications or professional designations? Speak more? Get more articles published? Be specific and put these activities on your calendar so you make sure they happen.
7. Write down a list of personal goals for the next 12 months. What do you want to accomplish for yourself and how would you like to grow personally? Spend more time with your partner? Stay connected with your kids as they grow up and/or pursue their college or post-college adventures? Dig deeper into a special hobby or sport? Drop 10 pounds? Run a 5K? More golf? More vacation time? Where? When? With whom? Map it out to make it happen!
8. Don’t get distracted. Shiny object syndrome has a powerful pull on most entrepreneurs and business owners. Stay focused on the big picture goals you set in Step 1 above – and then relentlessly ask yourself for every new idea, initiative or project, “Does this support one of my three goals? If so, how?” And don’t let yourself off the hook as easily as you might have done in the past. If it’s a no, it’s a no. Metaphorically speaking, stop opening up hot dog stands in the parking lot and redouble your efforts to make your gourmet restaurant thrive!
9. Live out of your calendar, not your inbox. Plan your day – what MUST get done and WHEN? Chunk your day down into blocks and assign specific tasks to those blocks – Phone calls, emails, client tasks, whatever it is YOU want to do that will move you closer to your GOALS. Keep that calendar under your nose. All day. Make it your default screen. Hide, minimize or (gasp) close your email until “check email” pops up on your calendar.
10. Breathe. Relax. You got this. Any time you’re creating an inflection point in your business, it can be scary. You’re letting go of the old – letting go of what no longer works or what no longer serves you well. And you’re embracing the new – the untried, the uncomfortable, perhaps even what seems risky. But the biggest risks of all are stagnation, arrogance, or complacency. Remember: a bend in the road is never a dead end… unless you fail to turn.

Ready to rock your 2015?

Grab your free copy of the Do It! Marketing Manifesto and get ready to go, go, GO!!!

Smart marketing is all about helping you generate MORE leads, BETTER prospects, and BIGGER sales. That also happens to be the purpose of this cheeky, powerful little manifesto. Grab yours here. 

Welcome to the 2014 Do It! Marketing Master Class Series

Here's where you'll get some of the smartest marketing advice from top marketers and entrepreneurs who share their best success secrets via in-depth interrogation-style interviews with yours truly... 

My special guest this week... 

Alyson Lex - Copywriting and Direct Marketing Expert

If you’re ready to make your marketing work for you, consistently, over and over and over again…  then Alyson is your go-to person. She's a master of developing sales funnels that work. From architecture to products to copy that converts, Alyson takes you from “I don’t know” or “This doesn’t work” or even “I’m not having any FUN with this!” to “My Marketing ROCKS!” Listen in as we talk about strategy, marketing, copywriting, and sharpening your message and your methods...

Download this Master Class (mp3) now. 

Share this with your pals, link to it from your own blog, tell 17 friends, go nuts and have fun! 

Please leave a comment below with your own experiences or questions about direct marketing, copywriting or anything else we talked about (including having a really cool name that matches your profession perfectly!!)

As a speaker, consultant, thought-leading executive or entrepreneur, you may have heard about the importance of building an audience for your work... Sounds great. 

Here are 17 vital differences between a market and an audience.

You can spend YEARS attracting and serving an audience that is NOT your market. And that's just sad, painful, and frustrating. 

These are as pernicious as they are deceptive. 

WHICH of these has been holding you back - confusing you - or set you to wondering how come you're not making more money?

Let's go down the list... 

1. An audience listens - A market pays attention
2. An audience wants entertainment - A market wants to solve problems
3. An audience values an experience - A market values expertise
4. An audience wants to watch - A market wants to act
5. An audience wants information - A market wants implementation
6. An audience reacts - A market responds
7. An audience wants their questions answered - A market wants their answers questioned
8. An audience wants you to be popular - A market wants you to be right
9. An audience asks “What can you do?” - A market asks “What’s next?” and “What else?”
10. An audience says, “Great show!” - A market says, “Great job!”
11. An audience tells their friends - A market tells their boss
12. An audience buys your book - A market reads your book
13. An audience likes your ideas - A market implements your ideas
14. An audience wants your autograph - A market wants to give you their signature
15. An audience applauds - A market refers
16. An audience says, “Thank you” - A market says, “Thank goodness!”

and finally - most important of all - read this next one as often as you need to...

17. An audience will HEAR you - A market will PAY you (well, often, and gladly)

Expert marketers not only build an audience - they develop a market for their value, ideas, products, services, and programs.

Want to apply for your Speaker Strategy Call to see how you can IMPLEMENT some of these concepts right away? Apply for your call here.

There are four things that you need to focus on in your professional service marketing, four levels if you will.

1. We can't do them all.
2. We can't even prioritize or figure out how to start to think about them.
3. We can't even distinguish which is what and why and how it might work for us.

So let's unpack this for your business...

Let's talk about level one, strategy.

A strategy is a big picture area of your business.

It could be a marketing-focused strategy. It could be a sales-focused strategy. It could be a financial strategy.

Let’s say you come across someone who tells you Twitter is an amazing marketing platform and you’re really missing out if your business is not on Twitter.

He's using it and it fits his business beautifully, of course and you respect this person and you admire their successful business. And now you’re thinking, "Oh man, it's all about Twitter Twitter, Twitter. This guy built his business on Twitter, so I can probably build my business on Twitter."

Well, all right, let's back that up and analyze that as far as the four levels of marketing.

Internet marketing is the strategy. Internet marketing is the big umbrella over Twitter. So you ask yourself, to what extent am I going to use an Internet marketing strategy in the sales and marketing and business development aspect of my business?

Internet marketing is the strategy.

The set of tactics under that would be social media. There's a lot going on via the internet, folks, that's not social media.

For example, search engine optimization, your website, the structure of your web presence, blogging, email marketing, dozens of internet marketing strategies. Social media happens to be one bucket under that, so social media is the tactic.

An initiative would be "I'm going to start using Twitter." This is level three now.

I'm going to start using Twitter. I'm going to start understanding it. I might read a book. I might go to some websites, I’m going to grab a copy of Twitter 101 or Using Twitter for business, all those fabulous resources that are out there for free. I'm going to become educated on that -- on that initiative.

Now, the action step - here's level four, the action step always takes the form of verb, noun, date.

• Set up my Twitter account by Wednesday.
• Load my first 30 tweets in Hootsuite by Friday.
• Find 100 influential people to follow in my industry by Monday.

Those are action steps. And the action step can also go on your calendar.

So this approach really takes it down to "What am I doing today?"

What's on my priority to-do list today? Not what's on my to-do list because your to-do list could be 50 things, but what are my top three most important things that I need to do based on the strategies I've selected, based on the tactics that I’ve chosen, based on the initiatives that I've designed, what are the action steps to put on my calendar and get it done?

So let’s follow this through with a complete example -- let's say I'm in the insurance business. (I'm not but let's say YOU are!)

You're selling into the insurance marketplace, insurance companies and insurance agents, general agents, insurance associations, insurance publications, and you’re looking to become a dominant resource in that world.

Your action step would be "I want to follow 300 insurance industry folks on Twitter by April 13th." That's your action step.

Does that fit into an initiative? Yes. The initiative is aggressively grow my Twitter following targeted to the insurance industry.

Does that fall in to a tactic? Yes, it does. It falls in to the social media tactic or set of tactics.

Does that fall under a strategy that I decided to use? Yes, it falls in to my internet marketing strategy.

So right there, just unpacking those four levels, you've got some "A-ha" moments, some insights you can use to start to filter and sort all of your old ideas, old notes, all of those conference sessions that you may have gone to, all of those tactics and tools and light bulb moments, all those nuggets and sound bites that you may have swirling around in your head or on your “someday, maybe list.”

If you start to sort them in to these four levels; strategy, tactic, initiative and action step – you’ll get a much clearer blueprint for ALL your marketing going forward this month, next month and next year!

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!

You're about to meet one of my favorite people and a super-smart sales guru... My sales speaker pal, Mark Hunter.

Pull up a chair, grab a coffee and join us as we talk about High Profit Selling and the secrets of how YOU can sell smarter. 

Good selling is all about GETTING clients and great selling is all about GETTING profits, so it makes perfect sense that Mark is an expert in both!

Get ready to take some notes on how Mark's brilliant ideas apply to YOUR business...

Get "real deal" insights on sales that will blow the competition away. See how many valuable nuggets YOU can implement in your business - right NOW!

What do you think? Please leave a comment below and let's discuss...

Welcome to our carefully chosen list of thought leadership marketing tools. We use these tools here at Do It! Marketing World HQ and highly recommend them to our clients and partners.

Good news: Many of these tools are free. A few are not. Almost all come with a risk-free "try before you buy" option to make sure you love them as much as we do. Please note that if you decide to make a purchase, I may (and probably will) receive a small commission. This commission is at no extra cost to you, and in fact, MOST of these links contain special discounts, free trials, or bonuses only available through these links.

With that said, please dig in and take full advantage of these hand-selected resources. They will help your business thrive, scale and grow -- just as they have helped ours!

Email Marketing: ConstantContact | Aweber | PopupDomination

Shopping Cart: KickstartCart | Infusionsoft

Social Media: Tweetadder

Online Audio/E-learning: AudioAcrobat | JigsawBox | Ruzuku

Graphics: Pixabay | ReciteThis | PicMonkey | MyECoverMaker

Webinar/Screen Sharing: Screenr | StealthSeminar | AnyMeeting

Ecommerce: PayPal | Clickbank | Infusionsoft

Landing Pages: LeadPages | Unbounce | LaunchRock

Website Builder: Strikingly

I see broke people...

Here's a reimagined scene from one of my favorite movies, The Sixth Sense...

As a business owner, entrepreneur, or service professional, see if any of this sounds familiar to YOU - and if so, please share your experiences and advice in the COMMENTS area below...

COLE

I want to tell you my secret now.

Malcolm blinks very slowly

MALCOLM

Okay.

Cole takes an eternal pause. A silent tension engulfs them both

COLE

...I see people.

Malcolm just gazes quietly.

COLE

I see broke people...

MALCOLM

In your dreams?

Cole shakes his head, "No."

MALCOLM

When you're awake?

Cole nods, "Yes."

MALCOLM

Broke people, like beggars?

COLE

No, walking around, like business owners... They can't see each other. Some of them don't know they're broke.

MALCOLM

They don't know they're broke?

Malcolm becomes completely motionless. Works to hide his shock. He and Cole stare at each other a long time.

COLE

They tell me stories... how they used to land big clients without doing any marketing... how they wasted a fortune on a fancy PR firm... how they went into credit card debt to pay for a get-rich-quick internet marketing seminar...

Malcolm's words are extra-controlled. Revealing nothing.

MALCOLM

How often do you see them?

COLE

All the time. They're everywhere.

You won't tell anyone my secret, right?

MALCOLM

...No.

COLE

Will you stay here till I fall asleep?

Malcolm nods, "Yes." Cole pulls the covers up to his chin and turns to the window in the room. Malcolm is very still and stares at Cole.

MALCOLM'S EYES -- slowly turn and survey the room. They find nothing. Malcolm returns to watching Cole.

COLE'S EYES LOOK AROUND THE ROOM WARILY... WE MOVE IN ON THEM -- TILL HIS EYES FILL THE FRAME.

And then we see what he's staring at. Through Cole's hospital room window we look across onto a run-down housing project.

Rows of small offices are visible. In the windows are broke business owners... SOME OLD, SOME YOUNG... SOME ARE DRESSED IN MODERN NEW CLOTHES... SOME WASH THEIR NEW CARS...

p.s. If you want to STOP seeing broke people and build your marketing, sales, and business development muscles, we still have a few open seats for the Simple Marketing Success 10-Week Virtual Bootcamp experience that starts October 8, 2013. Let me know you're interested (email or call me 610.716.5984) and I'll forward you the application materials and program guidelines right away.