Category Archives: Business Planning

by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success

Don’t leave it up to the event organizers to publicize your upcoming appearances. When you book an engagement, write a press release and upload it to the many free online press release distribution sites. Every release increases the number of places your name shows up in search engine results, and those links can help drive traffic to your site. Then Tweet the links to your releases, post them to the Social Bookmarking sites, and add them to your other web sites and social media pages.

You may also want to create a blog just for your news releases, and a separate blog for your upcoming appearances and have both feed into your web site and other social media pages. It makes it easy and inexpensive for you to add to your releases and events without requiring a designer’s help, it keeps your schedule and news prominent and fresh on your sites, and it makes your effort and links to triple duty.

When you’re working the local media in the city where you’ll be speaking, don’t overlook locally-based Internet radio shows, event posting sites tied to the newspaper or ZIP code that allow you to upload the event announcement, and the load-your-own-news option now available on my online newspapers and TV/radio sites. You could cut your own inexpensive Video News Release (VNR) with a friend playing the anchor and a digital video recorder and make it look like a TV interview, then upload it. (Note: The intent is to create an informative item in a news-like format, not to mislead the viewer to believe that they are watching a clip from an actual news show. Always attribute your company as the producer in the clip credits.)

Use your social media to find new ideas for events and bookings. Set Google Alerts not only for your own name, book titles and company name, but use it to see what your competitors are doing. Add the names of the top five speakers in your topic/industry and see where they’re speaking. That may give you new ideas for the local or regional chapters of the same organizations, or for a presentation that is similar but not repetitive to pitch to that group next year. If you subscribe to sites like eSpeaker.com or other online speakers bureaus, be sure to use the forums and member profiles to make your own connection to other speakers. Introduce yourself and forge alliances where you both share research, contacts and tips about events. You can also use Facebook and LinkedIn to do the same with the speakers you meet at the conferences and events you attend. Remember? Social media offers a great chance to wow event planners before they ever pick up the phone.

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by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success

I’ve seen all kinds of estimates on how much a marketing budget should be. Usually, the estimate is just enough to cover the products or services the person doing the estimate wants to sell.

An industry standard that’s been around for a long time is 5% of revenue. The idea behind making your marketing budget a percentage of your revenue is that marketing costs are funds you are reinvesting into the company, and should be tied to how well the company is doing, if not you better do something else like buying NFT. In the real world, I’ve seen companies spend far less and far more than 5% and get results that met their definition of success. What matters most is that you spend the budget you do have wisely.

A zero budget won’t keep you in business long, and it certainly won’t help you grow. If you truly have no cash, you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and put sweat equity to work. If this describes your situation, how many hours can you put into doing marketing? Write it down, and put a dollar estimate of your hourly rate next to it. That’s what you’re really spending.

If you’re already spending money and you’re comfortable with that level of investment, make sure that you’ve prioritized your budget in line with your prioritized goals. Put the biggest chunk of money where you’ll get the best return or achieve the biggest goal. (This becomes a great way to say “no” without guilt to one of those “fabulous” marketing opportunities a salesman presents to you.)

If you’re willing to invest more to achieve your goals faster, or because you know that growth requires more resources, then determine a dollar amount you can spend and divide it among your prioritized goals. Budgeting money doesn’t obligate you to spend it, but it does give you a tool to prioritize new opportunities and it may free you to investigate options you might not have considered before you knew what was available to spend.

Remember that your marketing efforts must be accounted for in your budget either in dollars or in time spent. As you budget your time to complete other projects, be sure to allow for your marketing investment.

Setting a budget also creates one way to measure effectiveness. Over time, you’ll want to ask yourself whether a particular marketing method is earning its keep. Knowing what you’ve budgeted for it compared to the value of how it contributes to achieving your goal comes in handy when you need to decide what to keep and what to change.

The “Irresistible Difference”

Before we leave the nitty-gritty if your business plan, there’s one item left we need to talk about, your “Irresistible Difference.”

What I call your Transformational Value is how you address your prospect’s Problem/Pain/Fear and overcome his Ego/Money objection. Your Irresistible Difference is what draws a prospect to you and your company as opposed to your competitors.

Your Irresistible Difference should tap directly into who your best prospect/customer is. It should fit that customer like their favorite pair of jeans, not only covering what’s necessary, but making them feel wonderful as well.

Think about your best customer’s qualities. What can you provide in your service, package or delivery that will meet their need as well as their unspoken desire? For some customers, convenience is king. For others, it’s value, or reliability, or exceptional knowledge. Not only will you gain some good insights into powerful marketing copy by looking for the Irresistible Difference, but you’ll also get some great ideas for where to find your best prospects and how to reach them.

For example, customers who prize value may join online communities dedicated to saving money. Those could be great places for you to participate through chat, forum posts and blogs because your audience is already there. A brand-conscious customer may place more than the usual value in being a member of professional and alumni associations and participating at a higher-than-average level. You might find those groups particularly useful to your marketing strategy because they tap into qualities the prospect prizes.

Your Irresistible Difference demonstrates how well you understand the quality the prospect values through where you market (including your choice of social media sites and the type of content you share), how you structure your product/service, how you deliver your product, and how you position your company in the marketplace.

As you become aware of the Irresistible Difference you offer to your different target audiences, make a note of it so you won’t forget to put its power to work for you.

by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success

Where does social media come in? Social media offers a conversational, low-pressure way to remain in the forefront of a prospect’s awareness with “touches” on a subject where there’s interest but no trigger for an immediate purchase. It can also keep your company in touch with current customers so that when add-ons or upgrades become necessary, you’re first in line for the business.

The key here is not to view social media as a way to provide a barrage of “buy now” messages. Instead, think of how you can engage the prospect in a conversation about whatever product or service you sell, with the immediate focus on offering helpful information related to the Problem/Pain/Fear.

Some great examples of this are tips, how-to videos, short audios, links to interesting resources like articles, white papers, blog posts or longer videos, interviews and Question/Answer sessions. Social media sites like Facebook make it easy for you to share multi-media content and have a two-way conversation about the topic in a format that reveals your company’s personality and lets you share your Real Story in a no-pressure environment. Twitter is a great way to provide tips, ask questions, share links to related resources, comment on headlines related to your product or service and even do surveys.

While you usually can’t close a sale before the customer has experienced a trigger point, once you’ve established a relationship, you have the chance to educate the prospect about that trigger point. Perhaps the best time to buy a new piece of equipment isn’t when the old equipment falls apart. Perhaps there are trade-in advantages or depreciation advantages to buying on a shorter purchase cycle. Maybe you can point out benefits that deal so much better with the Problem/Pain/Fear than the old product that the prospect decides to buy sooner rather than later. You’ve altered the trigger point through education, and because your company provided the information in an ongoing relationship, you’re likely to be first in line to get the sale.

When someone subscribes to your blog, Facebook page update, Twitter feed, they’re agreeing to get updates (information) from you on a regular basis. If you share information that speaks to his or her needs, every update does double duty; it reminds the prospect about you (a touch) while it provides useful information (deepening your relationship). Social media makes it easier and less expensive (and less intrusive) than ever before to stay in contact as touches prepare for a trigger.

Using a “touch” strategy keeps you visible by providing useful information your targeted audience wants and needs without sales pressure. What content can you offer to provide 30 valuable touches?

by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success

Modern marketing wisdom holds that in today’s advertising-saturated world, it takes at least seven to 30 “touches” or reminders before a consumer takes action. Although that may seem like a lot when you first hear it, if you think about how you act when you’re the consumer, it begins to make sense.

Your social media sites can account for several of those 30 touches. But to be effective, you need to think about how touches become transactions.

Touches and trigger points

We manage to ignore tens of thousands of advertising messages every day, mostly because they promote products we aren’t currently interested in buying. The key phrase there is “currently.” When you realize you need a product or service, all of a sudden, you tune into the messages related to the product/service that you had been screening out.

The situation that changes everything is a trigger point. It’s an event that moves you from someone who hasn’t thought about making a purchase or who has been casually window shopping to someone who needs to buy right now. The seller usually can’t change the trigger point (although they try to influence it with sales and specials), but you can make sure you’re making enough touches so that when a triggering event moves a prospect from looker to buyer, he or she thinks about your company.

Let’s use a car purchase as an example. If your car is reasonably new and in good working order, you may not be thinking at all about buying a new car. You probably tune out car ads, emails from dealerships, or radio commercials about great specials. Or maybe you’ve been thinking about buying a new car—sometime. You might be casually reading car ads, going out to dealer web sites, paying some attention to commercials, even slowing down when you pass the dealer’s lot for a good look. But for now, it’s all still window shopping.

Then a triggering event occurs. Your existing car is in an accident, and it will cost more to fix it than it’s worth. All of a sudden, you’re in the market for a new car, and you need it right now.

Until that triggering event happened, there wasn’t much the car dealers could do to hurry up your purchase. You bought the car based on your schedule of when you needed one, not on the dealer’s schedule of when he wanted to sell one. Business owners often forget that it’s the customers’ need that drives the purchase cycle more than it is driven by sales and specials. But there’s a very important thing to remember: When a customer moves from shopper to buyer, the company that has made the most marketing touches is first in line to get his business.

Go back to the car example. When that prospect was window shopping, the dealership with the best web site, or the showroom that was polite about a test drive without a commitment is likely to be the first place that prospect goes when he or she moves from shopper to buyer. Those “touches” pay off in top of mind awareness.