Increase Sales Blog

Posts Tagged ‘marketing action plan’

Just having a blog and posting daily will not secure you all the Internet traffic necessary to increase sales unless you are already well known.  Web 2.0 allows you to leave comments on other sites and this is called microblogging.  There are public sites such as other blogs,  Twitter and Facebook and then not so public sites such as LinkedIn.

Currently, Twitter has an estimated 26 million monthly users (Exact Target) which means this is a smaller social media site (14.6%).  According to Facebook statistics, there are over 500 million active users with 50% of all users logged on at any one time. These numbers alone suggest microblogging is a viable and a necessary 21st century marketing activity.

To maximize your efforts requires you to be organized and disciplined. Of course if you are a single office/home office entrepreneur or even a small business owner with a 1 to 50 employees you may not be able to devote the time necessary to leverage this “free” marketing strategy. Sales Coaching Tip:  The reason free is in quotes is because it is not free since it requires time and time costs money.

Recently, I have constructed an Excel File where I have listed the various blogs I have encountered. Actually in one LinkedIn discussion group, the BLog Zone, there have been several hundred blogs listed ranging in genre from retail to self improvement to continuous process improvement to politics.  What I do is to quickly determine if this is a viable blog, and then list (each in a separate column) the:

• Date found
• Blog’s title
• URL
• Blog’s owner or author
• Main genre
• Sub top
• Alexa ranking
• Compete ranking
• Date Visited with comment
• Notes

Sales Coaching Tip:  Viable answers this question: Will this blog attract my potential target market?

When I have a few moments, I can quickly glance as to what blogs I have not recently visited.  When I visit a blog and leave a comment, all I do is change the date visited.  Since my goal is to use my time wisely, I always attempt to leave a comment unless the blog has not been recently updated.  I will make of note of this in the Note Column on the Excel file to ensure the quality use of my time.

By taking note of the Alexa.com ranking, I am looking to link to those blogs that have a better Alexa ranking. This is only a trending tool. However if I can find sites with better Alexa.com rankings than mine, this does help my overall SEO rankings.

Additionally, through my marketing calendar, I have a commitment to invest 30 minutes each day on various social media sites.  This time is usually scheduled early in the morning so that it does not interfere with actual production activities such as making calls, returning calls, face to face business event networking or emails and scheduled appointments, consulting or coaching sessions.

When real people not those self serving marketers make real and doable comments on my blog, I will immediately note their blogs within this file and travel over to their sites.  Fortunately, I have always been able to find at least one posting where I can leave a  comment. And since my overall marketing action plan is one based on educating not selling, my comments do provide possible insight and value.

Another solution is to hire someone to engage in micro-blogging. I recently executed this strategy by hiring a college person who understands the world of Web 2.0.  This can be a very affordable marketing strategy and if you have a larger marketing budget you can engage a full fledged marketing firm.

Microblogging can increase your own knowledge, bring traffic to your site, establish new relationships and increase sales. Just make sure you have defined your goals along with your target market. Revisit your marketing action  plan and make those course corrections so that you can secure a positive return on all of your investments of time, energy, money and emotions.

Self promotion is really tricky especially when you are engaged in education based marketing.  The purpose of marketing is fundamental (no matter the media platform) and that is to attract attention specific to your target market and to build a relationship with those potential and qualified customers (a.k.a. prospects).

There are many ways for self promotion or what some may call “tooting your own horn”  including:

• Speaking
• Article marketing
• Writing for business journals or newspapers
• Blogging
• Micro-blogging
• Direct mail
• Paid advertisements
• Business to business networking events
• Teleconferences

Simply speaking all marketing is self promotion.  The key difference is when you start to sell your products or services.  Some may refer to this as “selling from the stage” when they hear a speaker.

Unfortunately it appears with the explosion of social media as a marketing platform some believe that if you do not interact with them, then you are not social and therefore all of your marketing messages no matter the medium are all about you.  That is partially true because in marketing your messages are directed to your target market or key centers of influence.  You make those determinations through your research using the Internet and specific sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

The difference between self promotion and self serving selling is every time you post something you are trying to sell your product or service.  Providing information that is content rich is not selling however sending a direct message such as the one I described in this sales article is in my opinion totally self serving. The goal is to educate and demonstrate you are an expert in whatever industry you represent.

Of course, in some instances, you can promote others by referring to their articles or blogs (such as the case with the anchor text link to education based marketing in this posting), marking them as a favorite or even re-posting their micro-blogs as in Twitter.  This would suggest their comments have value to others and especially if those others are your target market. Again, this comes back to your  marketing action plan where you have integrated the various message delivering and receiving platforms.

Respective to marketing there still remains a significant lack of knowledge and this is especially true about self promotion.   Far too many people are engaged in spraying and praying their actions with the hope that something will stick or worse yet “Do not know what they do not know and think they know everything” as noted in Gordon’s Learning Ladder of Level I being unconsciously incompetent.

Bottom line, self promotion is part of marketing because why would you be directly promoting someone else unless you are a marketing firm hired to promote others? Why would you direct messages to people not clearly your target market? Do those actions increase sales and put dollars in your piggy bank? Of course not!

If you are not selling and are providing information that creates value to your potential target market, then you engaged in the first two steps of the sales process. Of course, there always will be those who may be offended by your efforts and  as noted marketing expert Roy B. Williams has said “If people aren’t complaining about your ads (refer to the bullets above), you must be doing something wrong.”

To reach your potential customers (a.k.a. prospects) demands some sort of communication within the marketplace where you solicit your products and services. There are many definitions for this specific type of business communication however I prefer the one I shared in Be the Red Jacket (page 36):

Marketing is both a strategy (thought) and a tactic (action) to create constant awareness and promotion of your products and services with the desired results of having potential customers (also known as prospects):

• Consider your products and services
• Become your clients or customers

The beginning of marketing resides in research to understand what is happening in the marketplace:

• From economic trends to Internet keyword searches
• Who are your most likely customers (demographics)
• How do they make those buying decisions (psychographics), etc.

Once this information is gathered then some innovative leaders will jump into creating a goal driven marketing action plan. However that may be a bit premature.

What would happen if instead an executive marketing summary would be created similar to the executive summary in your overall strategic growth action plan?  Executive business coaching tip:  Without a written, goal driven strategic action plan you are playing the role of Captain Wing It instead of Captain Focus It.

Robert Middleton explains this concept in many of his marketing workshops.  This document essentially summarizes the core positioning statement.  The outcome is a foundation for a cohesive message in all of your marketing which further enhances your branding.

Theodore Hesburgh is quoted as “You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” Your executive marketing summary helps to make sure your marketing message is on tune and encourages people to connect with you to learn more about your products and services.

P.S. Confusion abounds in business – Read this week’s business column.

Trend analysis has been around for a very long time.  By tracking trends from weather  such as with the Farmer’s Almanac to the U.S. economic growth to business results, management in those organizations can begin to determine if they are securing the results they are seeking over a specific course of time. This is considered seeing from the 30,000 foot perspective.

For example, Alexa.com is an online trending tool that helps to determine from your traffic relative to other sites and can measure these trends over a period of time.This Internet marketing site can create a firestorm of controversy depending upon what Internet marketing or Search Engine Optimization expert one listens to and more importantly believes.

Site Sell provides a fairly easy and reasonable argument as to the pros and cons of this tool. SEO Pitfall shares another viewpoint, but does agree this tool has some value and is not totally worthless.

Sales statistics from each location to each individual salesperson can also be utilized to identify trends. The data is then analyzed to determine specific trends such as seasonal ones.

In the book, The Ultimate Question, the author uses a specific formula to determine customer loyalty.  Again, this formula can help to pin point specific loyal customers from which data can be extrapolated into a trend analysis.

Unfortunately, many in business  management including small business owners (SBO), entrepreneurs, C-Level executives  and even the single office/home office independent contractors cannot see the trends because they have failed to invest the time to work On their business as Michael Gerber detailed in his book the The E-Myth Revisited.

Trend analysis may require some split testing to determine what the data is really telling you. For example, my education based marketing action plan includes article marketing. During the last 30 days, I refrained from submitting any new articles to , Evan Carmichael and Sales Gravy so that I can better analyze increased traffic to my website compared to the previous 30 days when I submitted almost 70 articles. Now for the next 30 days, I will submit approximately another 70 articles. Then I will review the data to see any trends. Sales Training Coaching Tip: I know from reading the statistics from my Control Panel (CPanel) within my website that a significant amount of visitors come from these three sites.

If you truly wish to be the Red jacket and stay ahead of the flow, you must have a pretty good idea where the flow is going.  Trend analysis is just the tool to help you. Sales Coaching Tip: Excel or a similar spreadsheet program is a great software tool to help you collect and analyze this information.

Facebook is getting a lot of press these days. Now my knowledge of this social media site is far less than my daughter’s as my marketing concentration has been in other social media sites such as LinkedIn.  Eventually, I will get to Facebook by third quarter of this year.

However that lack of participation does not keep me from reading a lot about this site’s social media statistics which are exploding such as:

• 400 million users
• 50% log on every day
• 130 friends is the average for each user
• 100 million users access this site through their mobile phones

More and more people are looking at Facebook has an opportunity to expand their businesses. Recently, Perry Marshall released some research on the success of Facebook ads specific to cost savings. HubSpot just posted 10 top questions businesses have asked them about this highly traffic social media portal.

From all the data, maybe now is the time to revisit your marketing action plan and determine if you should be integrating this Web 2.0 site into future marketing goals.

Social medial ,in an article by John Timpane, is suggested to be a significant contributor to the recent PR and executive leadership nightmare caused by a Rolling Stone magazine article that lead to the resignation of General. McChrystal.

Web 2.0 has expanded the dynamics of traditional public relations within the information highway from the one way street with no intersections to now a two way street with multiple intersections. These bloggers and authors have wrested control of the traffic lights away from the traditional traffic keepers (think media editors and reporters).

Possibly this is why some so dislike these individuals because this new platform has created incredible freedom for anyone who has access to a computer and the Internet. Of course with this new freedom comes responsibilities including truth and integrity all important business ethics.

Now those in executive leadership positions must wrestle how to handle these PR prairie fires. With time being  a limited resource, staying ahead of these potential public relations disasters can consume a lot of resources that could be better deployed elsewhere.

There have been some new tools on the market to help monitor what is being said along with some already established ones such as Twitter and Facebook. Alerts be them from Google to others such as:

• B Net
• All Business
• Smart Briefs

All can help to reduce the impact of these PR prairie fires.

Executive leadership may also wish to consider developing a strategic marketing action plan as to minimize their limited resources of time, energy, money and emotions.  Social media and its influence is here to stay and now is the time for those in executive leadership positions to take proactive measures unless they wish to be swept away in the fires or be left with the smoldering damages.

Marketing, measurements and metrics remind me of the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and her fellow companions are walking through the forest saying “Lions and tiger and bears, Oh my!” The impression the viewer received was that at any moment a lion, tiger or bear could jump out and gobble Dorothy and her companions up.

Credit: Equineink.com

In attracting attention to your products or services, your budget can quickly be gobbled up by ineffective marketing strategies and tactics. This is why it is so critical to invest the time to construct the following:

• Core positioning statement based upon market research
• Specific demographics and psychographics
• Executive marketing summary
• Written marketing action plan that is goal driven
• Specific measurements and metrics to be validate effectiveness of all actions

A recent report from Omniture revealed some interesting statistics about the results of measuring marketing ROI – return on investment. The majority of those surveyed believe marketing ROI is important, but  only 1/3 of those have a process in place to do that. Also social media is being used by almost 70% of those surveyed and well over half have no way to measure its impact.

Online marketing is far easier to measure than other types because with the correct tools you can see the traffic to specific pages and if there is an auto-responder actually capture additional:

• Critical contact information
• Confirm demographics
• Discover new psychographics

There are many free tools to keep the lions and tigers and bears from gobbling up your hard earned profits. Remember all marketing dollars come from your profits.  Some of these tools are free and are available at sites such as:

• Alexa.com
• Compete.com
• HubSpot.com
• Klout.com

Of course there are many more because each day another tool appears to be tracking another online statistic. By returning to your marketing action plan you can determine if you need other measurements or metrics for calculating your marketing ROI. Remember, as the old saying goes:

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.”

So to be the red jacket in a sea of gray suits, it is absolutely necessary to determine what marketing actions you will take, how will you measure those actions and what metrics will be measured. Otherwise you may be joining Dorothy and her friends fearful of all those lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!

Yesterday, on May 7, 2010, I achieved another written marketing goal. This goal was not on my marketing action plan for 2010, but was added in late first quarter when I saw another opportunity to receive free publicity, gain credibility while still adhering to my education based marketing approach.

If you are unfamiliar with education based marketing, this is 100% opposite of the traditional sales or product based marketing. TV commercials, radio spots, newspaper and Internet banner advertising are examples of sales or product based marketing. The product or service are highlighted first and there is little to no discussion as to how this product or service truly benefits you and YOUR SPECIFIC needs. Of course there may be some general discussion such as fuel economy if it is a car advertisement, but what is important to you or how will this truly benefit you and your needs is not identified. Sales Training Coaching Tip: At business networking events, these are the folks who spew price, product and even proposal within the first 5 minutes.

In education based marketing, your goal is to educate first and sell second. You provide information, resources and overall demonstrate you are a guru in your field of expertise. Sales Training Coaching Tip: At business networking events, these are the folks who demonstrate a real interest in you and may ask you simply “How can I help you?”

Now back to the recently achieved marketing goal. When your business is just one of millions internationally or hundreds locally, getting attention is truly difficult. Being ahead of the flow specific to your marketing and sales goals is absolutely without a doubt essential to your bottom line success. After all business is all about making money. For without money you cannot paid your bills and realize your other personal dreams.

One of my primary tactics (actions) within my marketing action plan is article marketing. This action was started in April of 2005 and now I have written over 2,000 articles between different article directory sites, this blog, my weekly business advice column and several journals including NBiz.com.

Earlier this year at one of my primary article directory sites, EzineArticles.com, I noticed a new feature that being a case study. This new feature highlighted specific authors. Wow, what an incredible opportunity my little marketing brain thought. Since this site has incredible traffic, this could only enhance current marketing efforts and best yet it was 100% free. So I wrote a goal to be a highlighted author within the first 20 case studies in late March of 2010.

Then about 3 weeks later, I received an email asking me if I would like to be one of their case studies author? You betcha was my quick response. Emails were exchanged and yesterday, May 7, 2010 I was the third case study featured. As of this morning, there were several comments in the blog. All were very positive.

The purpose of this post is to highlight the importance of written goals and thinking positively. For me when goals are written down, there is higher top of mind awareness. I believe this creates positive energy and attracts others to you. Given that Ezine at that time had over 250,000 authors, being selected as the third case study required a lot of positive energy.

If you wish to increase sales or achieve what other results you want, then write down your marketing and sales goals along with customer loyalty, innovation, financials and management and leadership. Monitor them and review then on a weekly basis. By taking this action, you can be the Red Jacket in a sea of Gray Suits.

Marketing is all about getting attention and developing a relationship.  Then you can determine if this person is truly a qualified potential customer.

Getting attention is not easy especially in the global marketplace. However, a recent post at EZ Local by D. Mckenzie suggested a great strategy to enhance your marketing efforts and that is to create a Facebook Fan Page for your small business.

With Google and Facebook holding the first two Internet search positions, it just makes common sense to take this action. I recently created one for my business, ADVANCED SYSTEMS. I am still working on securing fans, but at least I have taken the first step. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Google searches and indexes Facebook pages.

Since Facebook is free along with many other sites such as social media to article marketing, then the only expenditure is your time and your expertise. Whatever marketing action you take should be aligned to your overall strategic business plan and specifically to your marketing action plan within that document.

Finally, remember, your website must be search engine friendly. No matter what type of Internet marketing you are engaged in, unless your site is user friendly you may be turning off potential customers or clients. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Do not be fooled by firms who say they are experts in SEO. Use Alexa.com to determine the company’s Internet ranking. From my experience, very few firms are below 500,000. This sales blog is currently ranked below 312,000. The goal is to be 100,000 or less.

P.S. If you are within the Chicagoland area, Northwest and North Central Indiana, you may find this workshop on Internet Marketing of interest.

Social media sites and customer service are being monitored by retail businesses.  Customer complaints to comments are being monitored according to a report released by Forrester. One of the interesting customer service facts was the continued disconnect between customer support and actual customer strategy. In other words, there is a belief that meeting customers’ needs is very important, but the actual execution of that belief continues to face critical challenges.

To meet this challenge, about 1 out of 4 retailers will be offering interactive chat (think Word Press 2.0). Social media sites will take an even greater presence in these marketing action plans.

What this means for any business is understanding the impact of the Internet and how your site must truly be user friendly as well as found on the web. When your website turns people off after you send them there, you are only widening that gaps between brand marketing, execution and customer loyalty.

Unfortunately, many small business owners have ineffective web sites in spite of paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for search engine friendly sites. Today it is critical for small business owners to sales professionals to understand some Internet basics specific to search engine optimization (SEO) as well as how to write better marketing copy before they make the jump into social media as they expand their branding further and further into cyberspace.

Then within the customer loyalty plan, specific goals will probably need to be written as to how to monitor what is being said about your business on the web through social media and other interactive web sites.  Today being ahead of the flow is necessary especially if you wish to thrive in the years to come.