Today, I’d like to discuss the various types of support staff you require and why they are crucial.

There are essentially three key roles that need to be filled to set your business up for success:

• The Technician
• The Manager
• The Entrepreneur

All of these roles must be performed simultaneously by individuals with the right talents. It’s all about finding the right balance.

The Technician

This individual represents the present and handles all the physical aspects of the business building process. They are the “doer” and typically the most visible person in the entire operation.

The Manager

This person represents the past and works to address issues by learning from past mistakes. They are responsible for the practical aspects of the business and oversee the planning and assembly of the business.

The Entrepreneur

This person represents the future and envisions the direction for the business. They are responsible for the creative aspects of the business and continually explore ways to enhance products/services, business image, branding, and more.

All three of these roles are essential for the success of any business. To establish a solid foundation from the start, you must put in extra effort to find the right individuals to fill these roles. Of course, you need to be one of these key individuals, but make sure you choose the role that aligns with your skills and talents, rather than simply what you THINK you should be doing.

This process may be challenging for you because you will need to relinquish some control over the business and place trust in people to let them do their jobs.

Remember, our business coaches can guide you through the entire process and teach you how to avoid falling victim to e-myths when you take our FREE test drive.

We will go through the 5 essential keys to a successful and reusable marketing campaign launch. Once you have these basics down, you can use them repeatedly.

The 5 essential keys are:

• Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• Put an effective sales offer to work
• Avoid the marketing pitfalls
• Use a world-class marketing perspective
• Get results!

We’ll go through each of these so you can see how to use them and how they affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaign.

Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Take the time to ask yourself some questions from the perspective of your customers/clients. What would it take to get their attention? What needs do they have that need to be met? What are the promises they want fulfilled?

Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start putting together a plan to meet these needs. Then, take a look at the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) your competitors are using to help you develop your own. Your USP is the promise you make to your customers/clients. It’s what will set you apart from your competition.

Put an effective sales offer to work

To develop an effective sales plan, you need to:

1. Put together a headline that gets immediate attention.
2. Share the benefits of your products/services, speaking from the customers’ perspective.
3. Identify the specific needs met by your products/services.
4. Make it easy to do business with you by offering guarantees.
5. Share your specific sales proposition.
6. Walk your customers/clients through how they should respond and act.
7. Motivate with a call to action.

What all this means is that you must assemble what makes your products/services special and compel customers to make a purchase. If they don’t feel like they NEED your product, they won’t buy. You must address a question, solve a problem, or satisfy an obsession.

You need to provide them with all the information necessary for an informed and confident decision. Buyer’s remorse is one of the worst outcomes.

Avoid the marketing pitfalls

There are 5 major marketing pitfalls many businesses fall into and you should avoid:

• Ignore market testing and push on with an inaccurate plan.
• Include incomplete information or reasons in their marketing plan.
• Fail to notice the needs of their prospective customers/clients.
• Fail to diversify their marketing options.
• Fail to get market opinions on their offers.

These are all areas to avoid. If you’ve been working through these lessons, steering clear of these pitfalls should feel easy and natural.

Use a world-class marketing perspective

A world-class marketing perspective is crucial, especially if you aim to attract customers/clients from around the world.

You can do this a number of different techniques and activities:

1. Keep a marketing journal and jot down any innovative ideas you come across.
2. Keep encouraging your marketing department, or yourself, to try new things and discard what isn’t working.
3. Place an order from your own company using a different name and analyze the entire process, including ordering, shipping, the online store, customer service, and the product itself. This will reveal areas for improvement in the customer experience.
4. Read every quality ad you can find and keep a file for future ideas to consider.
5. When out in public, watch how consumers behave in different situations and how they consider their purchases.
6. Step down a notch or two and work on the front lines with your sales and customer service staff.
7. Continuously acknowledge your staff, vendors and customers. Everyone works and shops better when they feel appreciated.
8. Always listen to feedback from employees and customers.
9. Continuously test markets, ads, and marketing techniques. This is the only way to remain successful and understand what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not.
10. Offer more information in your marketing than anyone else. The more information you offer, the more products/services you’ll sell.
11. A great marketing plan can always improve. Continue to fine-tune and refine your marketing plan based on testing results and feedback.
12. Maintain classiness in your marketing. Ensure that your marketing and advertising align with your company image, products, services, and quality.
13. Improve your best marketing areas and drop those that aren’t working.
14. Focus on what you say, not how you say it. The best marketing ideas naturally evolve into the best marketing.
15. Develop all your ads, campaigns and sales materials with an attention to compelling and factual information.

By using these techniques you can put your name out there to the world and become one of the top brands in your industry.

Get results!

The last area we will discuss is having the most satisfied customers. If your customers aren’t satisfied, you’ve wasted all your marketing resources and any chance of positive word-of-mouth advertising.

You can satisfy your customers by:

• Providing quality products/services
• Providing high quality customer service
• Providing a low-pressure, highly informative sales experience
• Taking all the risk away with a great guarantee

To generate more business there are a couple of simple techniques that work every time:

• Build your database with a contest.
• Do regular mailings with sales, discounts, or other incentives.
• Find other creative ways to keep your current customers coming back for more.

“As long as the reward is directly related to your product or service, you can’t lose. Why not get started today? It’s so simple, it’s so seldom done, and it’s so profitable. And that’s the bottom line.” – Jay Abraham

It’s so simple! So, why aren’t you starting today? We can assist you in creating a great marketing plan that will yield results. Give our FREE test drive a try and discover the tools and resources built by some of the biggest names in the marketing world.

There are three key areas of public relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.

The key to public relations lies in:

• Public relation or publicity
• Merchandising
• Promotions

With a solid plan in place that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.

Public relations encompass all forms of media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines, and more holds equal power. Online marketing is just as, if not more, important than traditional media.

Here are the steps to get noticed by the media:

1. Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.
2. Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to is interested in reading it.
3. Format your press release professionally. For press releases, include a dateline, place the most important information at the top, provide facts and figures, and conclude with contact details, including the names of contacts and how to reach them. Print the press release on your letterhead.
4. Send your press release to all television and radio stations, both local and metro newspapers, national newspapers, industry magazines, and any other form of media that reaches your target market. Don’t forget to include relevant blogs, ezines, press release submission sites, and industry professionals.

More importantly than having a perfect press release is ensuring that you have addressed the needs of your target market in the products or services you offer and have made that clear in the press release. If you provide people with a solution to a problem, a way to avoid a problem, and an opportunity to enhance their lives, the media and the public will be interested.

If you have a connection (or the ability to get a connection) with a celebrity, this can practically guarantee you’ll get attention. Make sure you are offered newsworthy information, and then follow up with media outlets to make sure they are publicizing that information.

“One of the most powerful techniques every business should use is free publicity. As the name implies, there is no cost, just the time and effort required to attract attention to your business.” – Jay Abraham

Our FREE test drive can demonstrate how to create effective press releases. Learn from the pros and craft the perfect press releases for your business.

Today you’ll learn how to use direct mail marketing and, yes, telemarketing to your full advantage. I know, the word “telemarketing” might as well be four letters, but there is a way to help customers feel like they are getting personal attention and keep them from blocking your number!

With the success that direct mail marketing has achieved and the availability of computers, they can be used as powerful marketing tools for your success. Telemarketing is best suited for high-priced, high-margin products and services.

Here are the key steps to putting together a highly effective direct mail marketing program:

1. List all benefits customers will get from the purchase of your products and services.
2. Pick the single most powerful benefit out of that list.
3. Create a captivating headline based on that specific benefit. Remember to evoke emotion and fulfill the desire for youth, wealth, desirability, popularity, or success.
4. Develop a sales letter using the headline you created to grab attention, provide information and motivate customers to act.
5. Put together supplementary items, such as a brochure, order form, reply envelope or note that encourages them to read the letter.
6. Rent or purchase a mailing list.
7. Compare cost of mailing vs. cost per order.
8. Continue to test and refine your direct mail marketing plan.

You can see how direct mail marketing can help you find a local or even country-wide target market to send letters or postcards to and draw in new clientele and customers. Fine-tuning your marketing campaign will bring better results and therefore lower the overall cost of the campaign.

To be successful in telemarketing you need to:

• Put together a plan, so you know exactly what you want to accomplish during the call.
• Develop a list of topics to discuss and the questions you want to present around these topics.
• Input verbiage checking to see if you are calling at a good time.
• Include enough questions to keep the conversation interesting, but not too many to sound like you are interrogating.
• Start with broad questions and narrow your focus as the conversation continues.
• Offer feedback to show them you are paying attention and appreciate their time.
• Don’t insult their intelligence or manipulate them.
• Listen first, talk second.
• Be relaxed and conversational.

Telemarketing doesn’t have to be the trauma it’s made out to be. You can put together an honest, personal and effective telemarketing campaign that is endearing, informative and gets the job done. Think of how you would want to be treated on a marketing call. Ask your friends and family what they hate most about the telemarketing calls they get and work hard to craft your plan in a better way.

“When selling by telephone, you have approximately thirty seconds to convince the customer to listen to you. You need an opening statement that captures their attention, conveys who you are, what you want and why the prospect should listen.” – Jay Abraham

It’s easy to see how direct mail marketing and telemarketing can positively affect your business by bringing in new customers and increasing the level of awareness about your products, services and company branding. Our FREE test drive offers the resources and tools you need to work through these processes and put together the best marketing plan you can.

There are 5 major components to good advertising copy (The order of these is essential to success):

• Command Attention
• Showcase Benefits of Products/Services
• Prove the Benefits
• Persuade People to Embrace the Benefits
• Call to Action

Advertising is sales in print, so you need to think about the unique benefits your products/services offer and showcase them in a persuasive way. Emphasize results, not just features.

Let’s take a minute to talk about each of these components:

Command Attention:

This is usually accomplished with the headline. You need an attention-getter that makes people want to learn more about your products/services. The best headlines provide a vivid portrayal of the benefits or demonstrate how your products/services can solve a problem. The headline serves as an advertisement for the advertisement.

Showcase Benefits:

You must showcase the benefits of your products and services and, more importantly, demonstrate how they will solve or prevent a problem. Your audience needs to understand what’s in it for them. Include useful, factual, and clear information to precisely illustrate the benefits and how they will assist the customer.

Offer Proof:

This is where you demonstrate what the advertisement is offering. You must establish that you have a method to deliver. Include information that builds credibility and highlights past performance.

Persuade:

You need to provide compelling reasons for your potential customers to purchase your products/services. Employ a hard-sell approach and create a sense of scarcity. This will prompt your potential customers to feel the urgency to act now, which leads to the last component.

Call to Action:

You need to compel your potential customers to take action. Encourage them to visit your site, sign up for your newsletter, make a purchase, or contact you about your services – in short, you want them to do something. Offer a freebie, booklet, sample, product, bonus, demo, consultation, limited-time price – the list is extensive. There are numerous ways to excite potential customers about ordering and make them feel like they’re getting an amazing deal.

Good advertisements incorporate all of these components, and they are not complete without any of them. You can sit down and consider each of these components individually, then determine the best way to combine them for maximum effectiveness. We can assist you with this as well. Give our FREE test drive a try to learn how to create excellent advertisements with insights from some of the best professionals in the industry.