Here's another in my series of marketing and business book reviews - but not just any old business books.
Fire starters...
Game changers...
Show stoppers...
Books that will transform the way you think about your work, about your business, and - yes - about your life.
Ready? Take a look...
What do you think? Please leave a COMMENT below to share your experiences with this book, with this author, or with other game changing books that YOU recommend...
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing speaker, marketing strategy, marketing success, thought leadership marketing, marketing book, marketing professional services, trusted advisor marketing, marketing coach, marketing for authors, business book review
For professional services providers, entrepreneurs and thought-leading executives... the #1 dreaded question is, “How much do you charge?”
Especially when it's asked too early, out of context, and before you've established any sort of relationship with the prospect or any sort of value for the project...
In short, if you blow the answer, your prospect is gone.
Some of the answers you're about to get are evergreen, some you can adapt to your own personality, and some you may want to keep in reserve until just the right moment with just the right prospect.
Here we go...
Grab your FREE copy of the Do It! Marketing Manifesto
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!
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing speaker, thought leadership marketing, business coaching, marketing professional services, professional services marketing, trusted advisor marketing, marketing coaching, professional speaker marketing, marketing ideas, marketing strategist, marketing for authors, marketing for consultants, business coach
When it comes to marketing, there are four things that you need to focus on, four levels if you will.
The four levels of marketing are:
When you go to a conference, when you ask your mastermind group for help, even when you start searching the web for answers and resources to grow your business, the number one source of overwhelm is when you've heard a whole bunch of strategies, a whole bunch of tactics, a whole bunch of initiatives, a whole bunch of actions steps and you don’t know the difference.
There are three reasons why this short-circuits your brain:
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, 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."
"If this guy built his business on Twitter, I can probably build my business on Twitter."
Well, let's back up and analyze that as far as the four levels of marketing.
Internet marketing is the strategy. In other words, Internet marketing is the big giant umbrella over Twitter.
The tactic 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.
Now, the action step - here's level four, the action step always takes the form of verb, noun, date.
Those are action steps.
And the action step can also go on your calendar.
So it really takes it down to "What are you doing today?" What's on your priority to-do list today?
Your to-do list could be 50 things, but what are your top three most important things that you need to do based on the strategies you've selected, based on the tactics that you’ve chosen, based on the initiatives that you've designed, what are the action steps to put on your calendar and get it done?
So let’s follow this through with a complete example -- let's say you're in the insurance business.
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 March 1."
Does that fit into an initiative? Yes. The initiative is aggressively grow my Twitter following targeted to the insurance industry.
Does that fit into a tactic? Yes, it does. It fits into the social media set of tactics.
Does that fall under a strategy that you decided to use? Yes, it falls under your internet marketing strategy.
So right there, just unpacking those four levels, you've gotten some insights through which you can 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.
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing speaker, marketing strategy, thought leadership marketing, social media, marketing professional services, trusted advisor marketing, marketing expert, marketing strategist, marketing for authors, marketing for consultants, social media marketing, marketing tips, internet marketing
Cajole convince persuade chase sell beat up interrupt intrude close close again stalk give up
No wonder you're exhausted...
Solve answer enlighten equip fix listen nurture connect engage attract entice invite buy
So much better...
Here are two visual reminders for you.
Please share them, post them, pin them - and most of all, remember to USE them as daily reminders for how YOU engage your own prospects, customers and clients.
Tags: Marketing for speakers, marketing for authors, marketing coach, Marketing 1.0, Marketing 2.0
Thoughts? Ideas? Recommendations? Please use the COMMENTS area below and let's hear from YOU...
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing speaker, marketing strategy, marketing success, marketing for coaches, thought leadership marketing, marketing professional services, professional services marketing, trusted advisor marketing, marketing expert, professional speaker marketing, marketing ideas, marketing strategist, motivational speaker marketing, speaker marketing, marketing consultant, small business marketing, marketing for authors, marketing for consultants, marketing tip
Forget about your cheap company pens...
Trash your company logo coffee mugs...
Your personalized gift strategy is about to get a MAJOR upgrade so that YOU get 100 times more bang for the buck than you're getting now...
And it's all about ONE simple shift...
Watch the video to see how it works - PLUS you'll get three smart examples YOU can model from starting right now...
Tags: Marketing speaker, marketing coach, marketing tips, personalized gifts
What do you think? Please use the COMMENTS area below to share the most meaningful business gifts you've received - or sent!
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing for coaches, thought leadership marketing, word of mouth marketing, small business advertising, marketing professional services, professional services marketing, trusted advisor marketing, marketing professional services firms, small business marketing expert, professional speaker marketing, marketing ideas, motivational speaker marketing, small business marketing, marketing for authors, marketing for consultants, doit marketing, do it marketing
Guest post by Janet Aronica
Creating consistent and helpful blog content is a great way to build community and trust around your brand for your prospects.
It's how you draw the right potential customers to your website.
But cranking out daily content is challenging.
How can you keep the blog post ideas flowing? How can you keep the content fresh and prevent yourself from re-hashing the same old thing?
Here’s a brainstorm of some ideas to get you started, or just keep you going...
1. Do a screencast with Screenr of your product and share it on your blog.
2. Show a step-by-step guide on how to do something in a screencast, how-to video, or show the steps in a series of photos.
3. Create a music video for your company and post it on the blog.
4. Share a cartoon or create an original one.
5. Write a how-to article. Give instructions with screenshots or photos on the steps someone needs to take to do something.
6. Point out common mistakes in your industry and offer solutions on how to fix or avoid them.
7. Offer a list of benefits for doing something.
8. Share a list of some things to avoid.
9. Relate your how-to content to a current event or a celebrity. Example: “Five _____ Lessons from Lady Gaga” or “What the Election Teaches Us About ____”
10. Take the contrarian position – Find someone else’s article that you agree or disagree with. Introduce your blog post with what you specifically agree or disagree with it, and support your argument with a few concise points.
11. Do a weekly or daily links-roundup of relevant news for your community.
12. Find tips in other content, create a list of those tips and give links to those articles as the sources.
13. Share an excerpt from an ebook or white paper with a call to action to download it for the rest of the information.
14. Share an excerpt from an upcoming webinar with a call to action to get the rest of the content in the webinar.
15. Share your slides from a recent presentation.
16. Share conference takeaways.
17. Do a round-up of last year’s/last month’s/last week’s most popular posts.
18. Re-interpret existing content: Collect the top motivational YouTube videos for your audience, top ebooks, top webinars or infographics.
19. Create a Slideshare presentation of new statistics related to your space and share that in a blog post. Tag the Slideshare presentation with relevant keywords for your company to leverage SEO benefits of the platform.
20. Ask a question on Twitter and share the results with a Storify embed.
21. Collect Tweets from a webinar or conference hashtag, show them off with Paper.li (as recommended by FitSmallBusiness.com) and offer your own takeaways in the blog post.
22. Respond to industry research with your own perspective. Offer a fresh angle to spark conversation.
23. Do a survey with Survey Monkey among your community members and create an infographic based on the results.
24. Do a poll of your Twitter community with a Twtpoll or your Facebook community with a Facebook Question and post the results on your blog.
25. Do an in-depth case study about one company, or offer a few examples of how other companies do something successfully.
26. Record an interview with an expert in your field and post it to your blog.
27. Get experts to offer a tip and do a round-up of their recommendations.
28. Feature guest posts from industry experts.
29. Publish responses to frequently asked questions about your industry.
30. Create a list of trends to watch.
31. Compare and contrast: Different products, different approaches, different companies, different people, different places, etc.
32. Do a review of other non-competitive products or services that your community cares about.
33. Be a journalist: Be the first in your space to offer industry takeaways about breaking news.
34. Explain what a current event or topic in the news means for your industry or community. Example: “What ____ Means for ____.” “Why _____ Matters for _____.”
35. De-bunk common myths.
36. Interview your favorite customer.
36. Post a Flickr slideshow of pictures from a recent event.
37. Run a contest and give away something relevant to your community.
38. Ask for guest posts from community members.
39. If you have company news to share, talk about it in a way that makes it about the reader. Example: If someone gets promoted, talk about how why were successful. Inspire your audience.
40. Publish a post relevant to the current season or holiday.
41. Outline the top practical use cases for your product, service etc.
Originally posted by our partners at Hubspot on the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog.
What do you think? How do YOU generate ideas for your blog? Use the COMMENTS area below to share your advice, questions or opinions...
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing speaker, thought leadership marketing, web marketing, marketing professional services, blog, trusted advisor marketing, blogging for business, marketing expert, writing, professional speaker marketing, marketing coach, marketing for authors, marketing for consultants, blogging 101, social media marketing, business blogging, marketing tips, public speaker marketing
As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I've noticed that my clients and audiences are always fascinated by the topic of business blogging - specifically blog writing.
This week, we'll dig into Business Blogging 101 and you'll master the basics of business blogging. So stay tuned and please DO use the COMMENTS area of the blog to share your own blogging advice, insights and recommendations.
Let's dig in...
Simple, really:
1. You are unable to write QUICKLY.
2. You are unwilling to write BRIEFLY.
3. You are inefficient at IDEA CAPTURE.
Notice I didn't include the two biggies that YOU probably think are YOUR problem - 'cuz they're not. These are...
1. Inability to write. (That's a convenient BS lie/excuse)
2. Not having ideas. (That's another convenient - and bigger - BS lie/excuse!)
We'll address all of these business blogging challenges and more in this week's posts. So stay tuned for more Business Blogging 101...
Grab your FREE copy of the Platform Promotion Checklist!
Please use the COMMENTS area below to share YOUR biggest questions, stumbling blocks, or burning issues when it comes to blogging for your business...
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!
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing speaker, marketing strategy, marketing success, thought leadership marketing, social media, marketing professional services, trusted advisor marketing, blogging for business, marketing ideas, marketing strategist, motivational speaker marketing, marketing for authors, blogging 101, marketing tip, social media marketing, business blogging
As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, it makes me mad - like really REALLY mad - when business owners, entrepreneurs and executives responsible for sales and marketing results start to whine about how hard it is to generate leads, cashflow, customers, clients and revenue.
Guess who is NEVER to blame for failing in these scenarios?
Yup - you guessed it: THEM.
I recently read an article in the New York Times about a management consultant whose business - and I quote - "was drying up." In another part of the same article, the writer said that this consultant was "running out of work as a management trainer."
Really? There's no more work to be done? Corporate America is all fixed now? Hmmm... someone should send a press release. That's pretty big news.
"Work drying up" and "running out of work" are both terrific euphemisms for... YOU suck at marketing.
And/or you are unwilling to make changes, get help, partner, delegate, outsource, or innovate.
And ALL of these shortcomings are 100% your own damn fault.
So without further ado, here are the Top 10 Nifty Excuses for Marketing Failure. If you promise to ERASE these from your vocabulary starting immediately, you will be on a much better track to MAKE your numbers, IMPROVE your cashflow, and firmly PLACE responsibility for your failure OR success exactly where it belongs - 100% on YOU.
1. Business is drying up.
2. We're running out of work.
3. The industry has changed.
4. All my old clients have retired or moved on.
5. Our prospects and customers no longer have a budget for what we do.
6. Competition is tougher than ever these days.
7. The economy has had a major impact on our revenues.
8. We're selling sugar - it's a total commodity and our customers know it.
9. All prospects care about is price.
10. It's impossible to get through to anyone anymore - everyone hides behind voicemail and email and we can't even get a first conversation.
Do you know what all 10 of these are?
1. Excuses
2. That rare Japanese mushroom that Guy Kawasaki calls "Bull-Shitake"
Here's what they really mean - if you're interested in decoding them:
1. Business is drying up = Because you suck at marketing and can no longer rely on business that just falls in your lap.
2. We're running out of work = Because you haven't landed a piece of new business in over three years and because of that, your pipeline is as empty as a bead bucket on Mardi Gras.
3. The industry has changed = Because you haven't and it's so unfair that your outdated products, services, and programs are no longer relevant or valuable to today's buyers.
4. All my old clients have retired or moved on = See #2 above.
5. Our prospects and customers no longer have a budget for what we do = See #3 above.
6. Competition is tougher than ever these days = Because your competition has shifted, improved, streamlined, repositioned, repackaged, and innovated their way into your customers' hearts (and wallets) -- while you've been sitting on the sidelines watching the show with popcorn and a megaphone to amplify your whining.
7. The economy has had a major impact on our revenues = Because your successful competitors are saying the same thing -- only in a POSITIVE way -- as they've reinvented their value proposition to be MORE relevant, MORE valuable, and MORE necessary under the current economic climate than ever before. Hmmm... there's a good idea!
8. We're selling sugar - it's a total commodity and our customers know it = Because everything you DO and everything you SAY reinforces that impression. If YOU can't articulate the specific, tangible value of what you do vs. your competition, don't blame your customers. This goes way beyond what you SAY and how you say it - it impacts the very nature of your business, including what you DO and how you do it.
9. All prospects care about is price = Because you've failed to articulate and distinguish your product or service to the point where they know any better. Experts win on value. Generalists die on price. If you look the same, sound the same, and act the same as the competition, then you have only yourself to blame for the endless stream of tire-kickers, price shoppers and broke-ass losers who are wasting your valuable selling time.
10. It's impossible to get through to anyone anymore - everyone hides behind voicemail and email and we can't even get a first conversation = Because you're using old school interruption-style marketing and stupid sales tricks like cold calling and email spam. You need to integrate FOUR WORDS (embedded in the following two rules) into every marketing and sales strategy you deploy: 1. OFFER VALUE. 2. INVITE ENGAGEMENT. Do that -- and you'll get through.
Final word of advice - all of the excuses above can be summarized in one of two ways (both very fixable) - Your business is in trouble because of:
a. Failure to market and sell in new ways that are high-value, immediately relevant and sharply prospect-focused.
b. Failure to adapt, evolve and innovate your own mix of products, services, programs, and solutions.
Zen saying: A bend in the road is never a dead end. Unless you fail to turn.
What do you think? Have I pissed you off? Made you think? Made you money? Please use the COMMENTS area below to share your thoughts...
Tags: marketing speaker, marketing strategy, marketing success, consulting firm marketing, thought leadership marketing, marketing professional services, professional services marketing, trusted advisor marketing, marketing professional services firms, marketing coaching, competitive analysis, professional speaker marketing, marketing coach, marketing strategist, motivational speaker marketing, speaker marketing, marketing consultant, sales and marketing, marketing tips, inbound marketing
As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I get a ton of questions about LinkedIn.
Although I'm no social media expert like my pal Corey Perlman, I have learned a thing or two about the REAL value of using the Skills feature on LinkedIn.
In case you missed it, here's my earlier post with a video that walks you through the REAL value of LinkedIn Skills and how YOU can maximize the connection value of endorsing the Skills of folks in YOUR network.
Below is part 2 of the series: Skills Shaping on LinkedIn showing you how you can decide EXACTLY which Skills are featured are on your profile, and how much you'd like to emphasize each.
After watching this video, you'll discover that YOU are 100% in control when it comes to your LinkedIn Skills: which ones you'd like to feature - and which ones you'd like to turn down or turn off - and why.
That's called "Skills Shaping" and you'll find it VERY handy...
(Hit the "full screen" icon in the lower right for a bigger, sharper video)
Are we connected yet on LinkedIn? If not, I'm happy to put my professional network at your disposal here.
(And if we ARE connected and if you're comfortable doing so, would you be wonderful enough to give some love to the Skills you see on my profile? Thank you in advance for your help.)
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What do you think? Please use the COMMENTS area below to share your experience and opinions about the Skills feature of LinkedIn...
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing speaker, thought leadership marketing, social media, linkedin, linkedin skills, marketing professional services, professional services marketing, trusted advisor marketing, marketing coaching, professional speaker marketing, marketing coach, marketing for authors, marketing tip, social media marketing, inbound marketing, public speaker marketing
Here's another in my series of marketing and business book reviews - but not just any old business books.
Fire starters...
Game changers...
Show stoppers...
Books that will transform the way you think about your work, about your business, and - yes - about your life.
Ready? Take a look...
What do you think? Please leave a COMMENT below to share your experiences with this book, with this author, or with other game changing books that YOU recommend...
Tags: marketing for speakers, marketing speaker, marketing for coaches, thought leadership marketing, marketing book, marketing professional services, professional services marketing, trusted advisor marketing, small business marketing expert, professional speaker marketing, marketing strategist, motivational speaker marketing, small business marketing, marketing for authors, marketing for consultants, sales and marketing, small business marketing coach, business book review
