Do This Not That Marketing

Marketing Advice, Grow Your Business

by Leave a Comment

Are You Leveraging the Right Resources to Grow Your Business

When you’re trying to grow your business, the right resources can make all the difference.

Is it time to get serious about growing your business online? Marketing your business with online content is the ultimate way to bring traffic to your website. You can use articles, newsletters, blog posts, social media updates, FAQs and more to help bring traffic. The trick is to use content in a systematic way to grow your business right. Having a lot of followers isn’t indicative of success. Earning money is. So, if you want to grow your business you have to know which resources to leverage.

Content Is Still King

Everything revolves around content. Content is needed for every aspect of your business. If you create information products you need even more content. However, even if you sell other types of product or service you still need a lot of content in order to educate, engage, and encourage your connections to buy from you.

Forms of Content

There are many different forms of content that you can use, such as blog posts on your website, guest posts and articles on other websites, inside print publications and online newsletters. Content can be text, audio or visual in nature. Having a combination of different forms of content will ensure that you reach more of your audience.

Have a Plan of Action

The other key to ensuring that you are leveraging the right resources is to have a plan of action. Don’t just create or have content created without a point of view, voice, and the goals for the content in mind.

Create a Publication Calendar

When you know what content you want to create, it’s important to spell it out in a calendar so that you will do first things first. For instance, if you are launching a new product in three months, you can start whetting the appetite of your list now.

The Email List Is the Most Important

They say the money is in the list, and that’s as true today as it was five years ago. Walt Hampton, the President of the Book Yourself Solid School of Coach Training says if you don’t have a list you don’t have a business. The first time I heard him say that I winced. The reality is that social media marketing hasn’t replaced email marketing; it has created another way to lead people to your email lists. Leverage your social media to build your list.

Develop Incentives to Collect More Email Addresses

The point of your blog posts, social media updates, and even webinars is to provide useful, valuable information to your audience and, in exchange, collect information from your target audience so that you can market to them within your email lists. Host webinars, ask for sign-ups on social media, and incentivize lists with free give-aways or low-cost entry products and services.

All Content Should Work Together

Starting with the product, service or event that you want to promote, work your way back to today to decide the different types of content that you will use to get more email subscribers to whom you can market and promote your wares. Decide what type of content they need to become educated and informed about your products and services so that they will purchase.

Consider Drawing a Workflow

Looking at how all your content works together to bring in buyers as well as encourage the purchase, may help you identify gaps in your content needs. Your content workflow might look like this: Email Subscription Bait > 7-Day ECourse > Webinar > Short Report > Long Report > EBook > Coaching > etc… Seeing it written out should help you decide what you need.

By knowing what your goals are for the content that you create, you’ll be able to use it more efficiently to grow your business far beyond what you thought possible.

by Leave a Comment

Different Types of Critics and Which You Should Ignore

When I was working with my coaching client yesterday, we talked about some of the changes she was making and that fact that good changes can still be hard for some people to deal with.

When it comes to business and being a success in business, you will have to get use to criticism. The right type of criticism can be very helpful and make you better than you thought you could be. On the other hand, if you listen to the wrong kind of criticism, it can actually make things worse.

To that end, it’s important to understand the different types of critics—you need to know who you should listen to and who you should ignore.

There are essentially three types of critics: friendly, indifferent and hostile. Each type of critic has a different agenda and all but one has something good to offer. It’s important to understand and differentiate between these three types of critics so that not only can you quickly identify those whom you should listen to and those who you should ignore, but also so that you can learn to provide criticism yourself in a constructive and useful way.

1. Friendly – People who offer friendly criticism are often your supporters. These people care about you and want you to succeed. They often use criticism to build up the person, not tear them down. They want you to make it in the world and sometimes their ideas are good and sometimes not. You’re more likely to listen to this type of criticism since it comes from known supporters, but remember to ensure that the advice given is fact based or at least reasonable. If you’re not sure, ask someone else what they think. Just because a friend offers criticism doesn’t make it right.

2. Indifferent – People who offer indifferent criticism typically don’t really so much care about hurting your feelings as much as they care about bringing about the truth and facts surrounding an issue. They may be natural objectors who simply like being a sounding board to bring out the different aspects of a situation. They might like to play “devil’s advocate.” It’s important to listen to this type of criticism and also pay attention. Still, you want to use your own good judgment and avoid coming to any hasty conclusions.

3. Hostile – Today, these types of critics are commonly referred to as “trolls.” This type of criticism has no objective reason, or supportive reason. Instead it is designed to demean, attack, control and undermine. You can recognize this type of critic because they are on attack and trying to tear you down. Oddly, you can still benefit from this type of criticism but mostly these are the people you should ignore. If someone is “trolling” you, the best response is almost always no response. If someone is really getting to you, you can always ask your friends what they think. Your supporters and friends will jump in to defend you.

This happened to me last year. Someone that I didn’t know well posted some fairly inflammatory things on Facebook about me (things that weren’t true, by the way). I addressed the issue only a little bit and my friends jumped in and supported me like crazy. As odd as it may sound, seeing my friends and supporters coming to my defense made me almost glad for the troll.

To evaluate criticism, consider the following:

* How true is it? List out the facts of the situation so that you can determine what is really true.

* Should I change it? Some things might be true but they don’t need to be changed because they’re relatively minor or the benefit to them outweighs the cost of changing.

* How can I change it? If some good points have been made, and you decide you want to, what’s the best way to make the change?

* Do I care? If it’s something from a hostile source, do you really care at all what they think?

* How can I make this a positive? Now, how can you take the facts of the criticism and turn it around into a positive? This is my favorite question of all.

In each case you should always listen to the criticism with open eyes and ears without being defensive. Each has its own good and bad points, and while you can ignore the person giving the hostile advice due to their rudeness, do listen to what they say so that you can determine if there is any level of truth. After all, regardless of the reason for the critic to give you advice, as long as there is truth you can profit from it.

I think the most important thing to remember is to be strong, confident in yourself. At the end of the day, whether the criticism is valid or not, it’s important to consider what Teddy Roosevelt said: “It is not the critic who counts….”

by Leave a Comment

Building Long-Lasting Business Relationships

Building RelationshipsI’m scheduled to meet with one of my coaching clients this afternoon. She’s a delightful human being, an entrepreneur with a big heart, and working with her is one of my favorite things I do.

That got me thinking about the nature of business relationships. How the best ones seem to last in a mutually beneficial way. I always tell my colleagues, if it’s not mutually beneficial, it’s not a real relationship, at least not a healthy one. So how do you build a healthy business relationship? Here’s what I think:

* Give Freely – Freely give of yourself to people and they will remember you. Always be thinking, “how can I serve this person?” Zig Ziglar said “you can have everything you want in life if you will just help enough people get what they want.” I think that’s true. And, if you’ve done a good job letting them know what you offer, they’ll come to you when they’re ready. And how do you let them know what you have to offer? My favorite way is what Michael Port calls a “Simple Sales Conversation.” I’ll write more about that soon, but if you have questions, feel free to email me ron@rontester.com.

* Stay Professional – When you’re building relationships, it’s important that you communicate professionally. Whether in person or on social media, you need to keep the things you share business-like, avoiding personal oversharing or inappropriate sharing. And by “professional,” I don’t mean pinging people with sales messages. I mean being careful that you project the image you want your audience to have of you.

One time, I was joking with a friend about something on Facebook, and a mutual friend contacted me and thought that the joking was potentially giving people the wrong impression of me. I hadn’t even thought about it, but when I looked back I could see what she was saying, so I deleted the comments. It’s important that when you’re posting on social media, you’re thinking, “What would the people who are reading this think of me?” If the answer is questionable or less-than-flattering, you should not hit the “publish” button.

* Kill Your Elevator Speech – I don’t like the elevator speech for a whole host of reasons. The best way to share what you do is by having a conversation. That being said, you need to be prepared with a short way of introducing yourself, your business, and what you do for people. Be sure to frame it with the benefits for the client instead of making it all about you.

* Be Honest and Ethical – It can be a dog-eat-dog world out there, and you’ll have to compete with a lot of unethical people. But, keep your own morals and don’t cross those legal and ethical boundaries just to get business. In my area, everyone knows the people that are dishonest or unethical, and we avoid them like the plague. If you gain that reputation for yourself, you will suffer for it in the long run.

* Do What You Say You Will Do – Don’t volunteer to do things you don’t have time to do. If someone asks you to do something and you simply can’t do it due to a time crunch or something, say so. But, when you say you will do it, do it, and do it to the best of your ability.

I learned this the hard way. A couple years ago I volunteered to help someone with a fundraising project I really believed in, but the project turned out to be much bigger and take much more time than I had. Instead of going back to the person and telling them I couldn’t handle it, I just didn’t do the work, at least to the degree it needed to be done. Needless to say, I felt terrible, but I know the person who asked for my help resented that way I didn’t come through for her. That was a painful lesson and I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did.

* Don’t Monopolize Anyone’s Time – We’ve all met the person who talks too much, or the person who doesn’t talk at all, or the person who sticks by one person at an event. Don’t be that person. Instead, learn to converse intelligently and appropriately with a variety of people. Even if it means getting out of your comfort zone, you will build better relationships if you step up and out.

* Be Welcoming – When someone new wants to join a group you belong to, be welcoming and open to them. Sometimes groups can become cliquish, and it can cause serious problems with the group. Not allowing new people in and making them feel like they belong can make a group stagnant.

When I visited one service group for the first time, they looked at me like I was an alien. I didn’t feel welcome at all and it was incredibly awkward. If you want to build good relationships, take the initiative if you’re in a group situation and someone new joins you.

* Listen a Lot – You’ve heard the saying, “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason?” Well, it’s true. Use this as your guide to listen twice as much as you talk. Sometimes talking too much is a sign of nervousness; if you can focus more on what people are saying than what you want to say, you can also calm your nervousness.

Building long-lasting relationships takes time in business and in your personal life. Both have many of the same characteristics for success. Be yourself, be honest, listen, and be helpful. But, don’t overshare or act in an unprofessional manner. If you want business relationships to be fruitful, they have to trust you, so be trustworthy. Tim Sanders says people do business with people they know, like and trust. You can be that person, and the relationships will follow.

If I can be of service to you, please don’t hesitate to email me ron@rontester.com.