While that was an amazing movie, and I usually love the concept of building first in your mind, as a marketer I have to warn you that it may bite you in the butt!

I was recently talking to one of my mastermind buddies, Natasha Allrich, about this very concept.  We were sharing the programs we were providing, and I told her about one I had done earlier in the year that truthfully, didn’t get the results I wanted.

Natasha asked one powerful question….

“Did you ask your market what THEY wanted, or did you just create a program based on what YOU wanted?”

OK, she busted me!  That is exactly where I went wrong.  I loved my concept, wrote killer copy, threw in loads of value….but never did the research to see if the offering and price point were what my fun lovin’ business owner types would want.

Have you ever made this mistake?  More than likely, yes.  We all do.

The secret is to go to your ideal clients and have them tell you what they would pay for.

I want to give you some tips on how to survey your audience.

1.  Online Survey – I use www.SurveyMonkey.com – Super easy and very low tech!  Make it short, but ask a few questions about price, content, and how to best deliver the program.  Example, would they like a day time workshop live or an evening virtual teleseminar?

2.  Pick up the darn phone – Calling your old (and ideal) clients about what they would want is a great strategy.  You have to stay away from folks who aren’t your market.  Example, your brother the plumber doesn’t get to tell you that you are charging too much….unless you are serving plumbers, that is!

3.  The power of social media – using Twitter or LinkedIn polls to get answers is another effective way.  You are getting access to way more people that you probably have in your neighborhood, so this is a no cost and easy way to gain some valuable information.

4.  Offer an incentive – you can add something to your newsletter or survey that if folks take a few minutes of their time, you will gift them with xyz.  It could be a free report, a $25 off coupon, entered into a drawing for a session with you, etc.

5.  Make sure you keep it short – no one is going to answer 47 questions.  But if you can come up with 3-5 questions that will get you the info you need, you are probably going to be able to get some good answers.

And finally…I’m gonna ask, because I’m not making the same mistake again!

Can I get your two cents?  I have a quick 3 question survey that I’d love you to answer to help me better design my 90 Day Marketing Makeover Program.  You can grab that here:

http://bit.ly/8gkwb

If you fill it out and email me telling me that you read this on the blog, I’ll enter your name into a drawing for a strategy session which is valued at $297 – cuz I REALLY appreciate you taking the time!

Now go out there and start asking your market what THEY want.

Blessings!

I can see it now…..

A room full of grizzly looking, sleep deprived entrepreneurs sitting around wondering what happened to their dreams of success.

One by one they start to share their stories:

“Hi, I’m Amy.  I am an email addict.”  I sit down to work on the projects that would make me money, but every time that email alert pops in, I’m bouncing to check on who could have possibly contacted me.  So by the end of the day, I’m drained, overwhelmed, and have accomplished nothing!.”

Next is Dave, who has the tell tale dark circles under his eyes.  “Hi I’m Dave, and my life has become unmanageable as a result of the distraction of email.  My problem is that I can’t sleep until I know every email is done, sent, or responded to.  Its freaky…in fact, if I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, or can’t sleep, I will head straight to my computer to finish off the email that came in when I was away.  And can I share my biggest shame?  I secretly get a little bummed when it’s about one in the morning and I hit the send/receive button and nothing comes.  I’m a mess.”

But the saddest one of all is Ray, who sits in the corner, barely able to hold his head up.  “Hi, my story is sort of similar but it’s not just email that’s causing me to get off track and waste hours and hours and hours.  Mine is that damn Facebook and Twitter.  In the old days I’d give myself about thirty minutes to ’surf the web’ as we used to call it back then, but with the inventions like Tweetdeck, I’m screwed!  Now it takes all the energy I can muster to get anything done.  And you want to know the worst part of it?  As a coach, when I’m supposed to be listening to my clients on the phone, I secretly pop in and check on the tweets while I should be listening to them.  They are paying me good money, and I can’t even be present because I’m so addicted to distractions.  What they heck should I do?”

Now obviously this is a fictitious “12-Step meeting for email addicts” but many of you will read your own story in the three characters above.

The fist thing I want you to know is that you are probably (unfortunately) among the norm.  We love distractions!  Our cell phones have alarms, our Outlook tasks pop in to alert us, we get reminders of teleclasses, and all sorts of things that intrude on our space.  So what’s a ‘focus challenged’ entrepreneur to do about all this?  I have a few suggestions below.

1.  Turn off the email alert -yes….in Outlook you can stop the function that tells you every time an email pops in.  You may notice a huge void, but that’s the goal!

2.  Discover the cost of being interrupted constantly – I recently got ’spanked’ by my VA.  OK, not literally, but she scolded me because I haven’t yet contacted all the affiliates I need to promote my upcoming Happy in Business Mastermind program.  See I can tell myself the story that I’m so busy, but the reality is that the distraction of email/social media probably cost me at least a weeks worth of work in connecting with people that I need to.

3.  Schedule chunks of time for distractions – Give yourself certain hours where you’ll be on Facebook, certain times you’ll tweet, and certain times you will check your email.  It really is about discipline.   Have you planned your time?  Do you set up a schedule the night before of what needs to be accomplished, or do you just jump on the computer and just start responding to emails?  That is the kiss of death for any hope of productivity, so START NOW.  The deal is that you control your time, and not other people’s calls, requests, or emails.  Think like a singulary focused million dollar business owner.  Would they ‘twitter’ their time away?  Probably not.

4.  Purge, purge, purge -  Do you really need 67 ezine subscriptions?  Take one whole week and everything that you would be tempted to say, “I’ll get to this later” GET RID OF!!!! You can always re-subscribe, but the enormity of getting hundred and hundred of emails a day leads to overwhelm.  (Don’t want to hurt someones feelings by unsubscribing?  Here’s a trick – set up a message rule in Outlook to send their email directly to the delete folder.  That way you don’t have to see it, and they don’t have to know you left their list.)

5. Have an assistant handle your email -This is where I am.  And truthfully, I am FIGHTING this one!  Because I admit that I’m like a crazy email junkie- the more the better in my book.  But I know what it costs me in terms of productivity.  So next week my inbox will be managed by Renee, my ass-kicking VA.  Actually the email won’t even come in to my Inbox.  It may take a few weeks to sort out, but she’ll only send me the high priority items, and the rest will be handled.  Out of sight, out of mind is the key.  Why did I finally surrender here?  Because I know that I will be so much better of a business owner when I’m not distracted and hitting that send/receive button every five minutes.  I’ll be able to do my weekly newsletter, write more articles, and gosh…maybe even have a life.  What a beautiful thing!

Those are my five tips.  Shoot me an email and let me know if you have any other ideas.  (And yeah, I’ll tell Renee to deliver that one to me!)

Blessings,

Marketing Mistakes #2 -Thinking You Have to Spend Tons of Money

If you have been following me awhile, you know I’m going to start with the thing between your ears!  Yep, your mindset.  If you feel confident in your products or service, then you have half the battle won.  So many times people don’t feel like they have enough, are enough, know enough, so the “I need better marketing materials” thought is usually a smoke screen to cover up these faulty beliefs.  Years ago, when I suffered from this very challenge, a wise coach told me, YOU ARE FULLY COOKED!  He meant that I had enough, right where I was, to start my business.  So my little pretties….if you have any trace of this going on, you gotta ‘flip the script’ as they say and just commit to taking the actions necessary to get out there.

But, what if it wasn’t as hard as you thought to get your name in front of the right prospects?  Read below to discover some marketing mistakes that you can correct instantly for better results.  Check yourself to see if you are making these mistakes -

I can’t move forward unless I have the perfect website -I can’t tell you how many times people have said that they can’t really get any clients until they have a killer website.  I knew of someone who spent $5,000 on a site, cards, brochures, and all the bells and whistles and had never got a client!  She loved the creative design process, but was stuck in fear about really getting out there to promote the work she did. The moula that she put into that puppy would have been much better spent had she pounded the pavement or used that three grand to invest in some marketing coaching!

If you do get a site, don’t do all the fancy stuff with moving parts   If you need a site, you can do it a couple of different way.  You can go to www.GoDaddy.com and get your domain name there, as well as their WebSite Tonight.  You can do your own 5 page site (using their templates) for about very cheap.

And maybe you don’t even need a site at all.  If you want something that is up in cyberland with your info, a website is good.  Want something you can change content regularly with ease?

TRY BLOGGING!  It looks just like a website, and you can add content to it daily.  You can do it yourself for free just by going to www.wordpress.com.  It’s super easy, but I do suggest that you get a blogging expert to help you customize it or add in the applications.  I use Dave Barnhart of www.BusinessBloggingPros.com.

But I need a high quality, fancy brochure -You are a small business owner!  Sure, in corporate America the big marketing campaign is a must, but if you are waiting to launch your product/service because you don’t have tons of $$ to spend, you are in for treat, dear reader!  Here are some ideas to get you started….

Get it out of your head that if you don’t have the 30 page brochure like BMW does, or the website that does everything except your laundry.

Need cards, flyers or brochures – Just google online printing and you’ll find a ton of resources.

Need graphic design?  Go to www.crowdspring.com.  It’s a very cool space where you name your price, post your project, and designers will bid on it.  You keep it if you like it, and get a chance to see everyone’s work.

Following up will cost me way too much . Many times business owners make the mistake of always trying to get new prospects in their funnel, but completely ignore the ones they have!  This is probably the biggest mistake and the easiest to correct.  In addition to the email/auto-responder campaign that you should have, there are a couple of other ways to stay ‘top of mind.’

Send out Cards.  This is the easiest way to market yourself by doing killer follow up.  For less than a buck you can go online, pick a card, type in the address you want it to go to, create whatever you want it to say, and hit the send button.  The part I love it that you can send one card, or create a campaign to send tons of cards…all in a few minutes.  The cards are real cards, not just the e-cards.  You can use my link to check it out at www.sendoutcards.com/5407.

Voice Broadcast – I love this one!  Having just lived through the elections in November, you probably notice that you were getting tons of calls from your candidates.  Heck, Bill Clinton even called me!  Oh, he called you too?  Does that mean I’m not special to our ex-prez?  What it means is that Bill and all the others got a list of phone numbers, had it loaded in, and recorded a message to be broadcast.  It’s so easy.  I use www.voiceshot.com and it cost twelve cents a call.  I have used it to announce upcoming events, or to thank folks for coming.  If you have something you are marketing, do consider doing a voice broadcast because it’s different from email, and people will remember it.

So what did we learn today, class?  That Bill Clinton didn’t make 2 million personal calls?  Yes, that and the fact that it’s much easier than you think to get out there and market your business!  Pick one or two of the suggestions and let me know how you are doing with them!

Stay in action, and focus on the good!

Spray and Pray? You know what I mean. Maybe you pump out an email blast to get people to sign up for your program, then create a flyer you are leaving around town, then go to a few networking events to generate some buzz….then you pray like heck that someone shows up!

What’s the problem with that?  Well, for starters, if you are scattered and jumping all around with different marketing pieces, you have no idea what did or didn’t work.  Remember the old days when Chrysler rolled out about three new cars a year?  The whole town came out, there was a parade and it was a BIG DEAL!

Fast forward about 50 years and now we are slammed with information, new ideas/products, and constant s-t-i-m-u-l-a-t-i-o-n.  So while 6 years ago having the newsletter you sent out was a great idea and got lots of visibility, there is now so much competing for the ‘brain space’ of your market, that very often just doing a single mailing or marketing piece will fall on deaf ears.  Or empty wallets, whatever the metaphor you are playing with here.

You may have heard it said that it takes seven to nine exposures before someone says, “Hey…maybe I’ll give him a call.”  This means that one email blast is not a marketing campaign!

The antidote to Spray and Pray is the Plan and Persevere Method.

1. Be in it for the long haul. Marketing isn’t a one shot deal. Everything is related to everything else and builds on the relationships you are potentially creating with your market. Come up with a marketing plan so each piece you do is connected to the rest of it. This is the biggest mistake I see my clients make. At the beginning, you need to strategize and follow the plan. If you give up after one or two marketing activities, you could be stopping just before you are going to strike gold.

2. Don’t be invisible. Since you probably aren’t going to be knocking on potential clients doors and doing the old Candy-gram* thing…you need to get creative.  Both direct and indirect marketing method need to be included. Most people will rely on only one or the other. A common mistake I see is that business owners are often afraid of sending too many emails, so will pull back and only come up with a brochure and business card.

Let me say this up front….you will get some people cranky if you step up your marketing efforts. There will be unsubscribe requests to your list, but that’s okay. Good marketing also serves to repel the folks who aren’t a good fit for you, so if you are fearful of offending people, just take some deep breaths and know that you are here to serve a particular market…and the more you contact that market, the more you can support them.

Next, you will want to come up with a plan to include both direct and indirect marketing. For example….you will want to include an online ezine, blogs, and be submitting articles to the online portals, as well as mailing post cards, print newsletters, or other advertising. Those are the indirect methods. Meaning, they can’t touch you, or experience you live. Good ideas for direct methods are where people get to see or hear you, so more trust is established. It’s just a heck of a lot easier to have people believe you when they can hear your voice or see you live.

You can do either speaking engagements, teleseminars, or use video/audio in your email or website to accomplish this. Coaching challenge: You will want to pick three or four marketing ‘channels’ which your market will respond to. (You may be able to do some research to discover which ones your market prefers!)

3. Create a marketing calendar. This way you won’t be tempted to give up.  Grab your planner, Outlook, or your Post-It notes.  Whatever you use to organize your time.  Make a day each month that you will dedicate to marketing.  There is the creation of your project and the implementation as well.  For example, if you are going to have a newsletter sent on the 10th of the month, you may need to get your booty sitting down and creating it by the 3rd of the month!  And you know what I’m going to tell you, my busy business owners………..OUTSOURCE! Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to do it all yourself because truthfully, you can’t and you won’t! Get yourself a great assistant (either live or virtual) and have most of this stuff done for you. As Nike would say – Just Do It. You’ll thank me later.

4.  Systematize or suffer.  You may have heard talk about how you need to have systems in place.  Well you don’t really, unless that is, you want to have insanity in its place.  You get to choose!  What I mean by systems is that with the newsletter example, you have a template already created, you have the format down, you have the VA or other administrative assistant primed and ready, so all you need to do is create content.  No reason to reinvent the wheel.  For each marketing piece you do, create a file detailing all the steps you went through.  Yes, there will be more work up front, but in the end, you can hand the file off while you are sitting on a beach somewhere.  That’s my hope for you!

5.  Don’t guess, test! That’s the biggie in marketing.  How do you know what works if you don’t test?  You may need to have a “How did you find us” question, or some other way to capture that info.  Test your marketing pieces on your target market, and not your husband, wife, friend or neighbor!  If they aren’t your market, their opinions don’t count.  There are way too many ‘dream stealers’ out there who don’t get what you do and can’t really be a good resource for your questions.  Find a group of your target market and ask them if you can run by some marketing pieces with them. You can incent them with freebie stuff, but very often people LOVE to help and give their opinion. Just gotta ask.

Do research to determine what your market responds to.  How do you find these????  Check out discussion boards by Googling in your content ideas, or send your clients a survey.  I’ll give you an example of why testing is important…One of my clients recently wanted to conduct teleseminars for her market to highlight some classes she wants to offer.  She was getting advice from a speaker friend of hers in how to do this, but when we poked around a bit, we discovered that while the speakers market dig teleseminars, this may be a really foreign concept to my clients market. It would have flopped for her, so we got from her market how they best would like to receive the information.

6.  Be Real or Be Broke.  So many people try to ‘be professional’ that they end up being bland.  It’s your quirks that make you unique!  Be creative…don’t be afraid to show them who you are, and then people will know you are real and when you are real, you are approachable.  Folks want real.  They want to know that you have warts and wacky kids and that sometimes you may not want to get out of bed in the morning.  Show them who you are and you’ll have a much better connection….and a better chance at serving them with your business.

By the way….Does anyone under thirty know what a Candy-gram is? 

“Don’t Have a Dog You Can’t Pick Up…Or A Business Too Big to Manage”
by Therese Skelly

After his recent near death experience and a VERY expensive surgery, I had to take my eleven year old dog Colby back to the vet to get his sutures out. He had eaten a stuffed Easter egg (which didn’t pass through!) so ended up having to have it removed which left an 8 inch incision in his stomach.

On Saturday morning as I was ready to get him in my van, I discovered that no matter what I did, he wasn’t going in. I’d lift, push, cajole, and basically tried everything I could do, but my 80 pound elderly, weak-in-the-hips pooch would just slide under the vehicle. It occurred to me that one of us was gonna get hurt, so I did what every smart business owner would do….I called in reinforcements! OK, the ‘muscle’ in this case was my ex who lives about a mile away. (Yeah, we have that cool kind of relationship….) One quick phone call and in a few minutes the ex popped over and said canine was comfortably in the seat on the way to the v et.

Support = success!

Now why in the world would I share this story about my geriatric dog and my need to call for help? Because it’s the perfect entrepreneur’s dilemma!

I had a ‘project’ I needed to do but didn’t have the resources to make it happen on my own. The theme for this article is to encourage you to see who can do the ‘heavy lifting’ and help you out in areas where you need some more support.

Below is my four-step process for embracing this really important principle in your business.

Step #1: Open your eyes! Take a look around at your business and where you either loose energy (bookkeeping maybe?) or where you are chronically overwhelmed, or when you know that if you just had a few key pieces in place….you’d really be able to take off. Sometimes it will be letting someone do the tasks for you, or maybe it’s the need you have to learn a new skill. For me it was social media. I knew that I wanted to jump on the latest relationship/networking building trend, but didn’t have a clue where to start. What would it be for you? Make a list…………

Step #2: Visualize! The next step is to allow yourself to imagine what would be possible if you had this piece in place. This is where the fun is. If you could design it EXACTLY how you wanted, how would it look/feel/be? My best learning style is having someone talk me through the process, because I am an auditory learner. So the perfect solution to my social media desire was to have someone go through step-by-step all the bells and whistles. I had even signed up for a couple of teleseminars with the ‘experts’ but didn’t use them as the PERFECT design in my mind was a one on one relationship with someone who would just tailor my learning. Your turn…dream big! What would you love to see in terms of support.

Step #3: Strategize! Now where do you find this person? There are two ways of doing it. The first is the ‘inner game’ way of just harnessing energy. Part of the ‘magic’ is if you just set the intention, the Universe conspires to support you. (Anyone ever watched The Secret?)

The next way is to do some research about who is out there that could ‘fill the bill’ for you in this area.

The magic for me came when I attended my coach Kendall Summerhawk’s Brand Authenticity Money and Meaning workshop in May. There I found my perfect solution! I had already known and was friends with Mary Pat Kavanaugh, but after spending three days with her, we really connected and decided that we could support each other. Guess what she specializes in? You got it….social media! She’s like the FaceBook Queen!

Now it’s your turn…after putting out the intention, create a list of where you could find the support you need and a list of who you could go to for help finding it. Don’t forget the power of your network. Ask others who they know.

Step #4: Realize! Now that you have found that perfect person, how is it going to work? What has to happen for you to put them on your team? Maybe you just need an advisory board or possibly a peer run mastermind. In either case, explore what’s the win-win for all parties involved. In my case, Mary Pat is mentoring me in FaceBook, and I help her by coaching her on her business growth and strategies that she can easily implement. < /o:p>

If you need to pay for some new team members, do a calculation about how much business you’ll need to bring in to cover the new cash outlay. Truthfully, many entrepreneurs get themselves stuck in the trap of “I can’t afford to pay anyone to help, but I’m so busy doing so much administrative stuff, that I can’t earn more money either.” If you find yourself in that conundrum, ask yourself the following questions -

1. What’s the minimum investment I’d need to make to move forward? (Example, if you can only spend $500/month…what could that money buy you?)

2. How long would it take for me (with the new people in place) to begin to see a return on my investment?

3. What is it costing me to NOT have these additional resources? This could be in time, money, or just stress! Be honest here.

I’d encourage you to follow the four-step process and email me to share who your ideal support people are and how you are going about getting them because you deserve it!

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEBSITE? Please do! Feel free to reprint this article on your website, own newsletter or message boards as long as you include the following resource information:

©2008 Therese Skelly. Discover a simple, yet surprising secret to getting unstuck in your small business by visiting www.AcceleratingYourSuccess.com and requesting a free copy of the audio, Master Your Mindset to Be the Master of Your Business.