Planning

  • Top Tips for Advertising

    As with any industry in its day-to-day life, such as advertising and business, there are always tips on how best to deal with situations, how best to approach people depending upon the circumstances and the reason for approaching.  

    For the world of advertising, here are some basic tips that will help you along and help you achieve your desired goal more expediently and effectively.
    Coach showing the right way to follow
    • Find your target audience.  You will have to do some initial research.  For online advertising you’ll want to use an ad tracker, as this will give you an idea of where your ad is going and what industry setting you get the most views from. 

    • Know your competitive edge.  What can you offer that others can’t?  Maybe they can offer the same thing but can you find a different spin or edge to make your product more appealing?  Maybe you can go one step further in offering up just a little bit more.  Maybe you have more experience or knowledge.  There are a lot of ways to form a competitive edge.  Know your market and your competitors and be creative.

    • Establishing your image can be the best or worst thing for you depending on how you project.  If you project a bad image for yourself or your company, then your sales will most definitely not be where you want them to be.  Always be professional.  Be careful of what you say, whether it be on air or in print.  Use a catchy logo and tag line.  Make your image good and consistent so that it becomes recognizable.

    • Spend and make money – many people don’t like this age old adage – You have to spend money to make money.  But it is very true.  You will eventually spend money on advertising, even with free advertising as time alone is money.  
    The more money you spend, generally the better your reach.  You don’t want to lower your effectiveness in sales by cutting corners.  The cheaper and free advertising may be a good short term solution when you’re starting out but eventually you will want to look into different advertising options that may require more money. 

    While most advertising is budgeted, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud with that budget.  All industries have “seasonal” times.  Learn the best times and season for your product or service and during these time increase your budget.  Look at places such as Wal-Mart for back to school or holiday sales – they don’t stay within their set advertising budget.

    Knowing when your high and low sales points are will be will become a cornerstone in determining when to go over budget.  Keep in mind as well that these seasonal times can change according to economy and market changes.

    5-b-pay-attention

    • Know your market; find your niche.  You do not want to advertise in the wrong “community”.  If you want to sell rodeo tickets you don’t go to a baseball game.  Do your research to find your niches.

    • Diversification is a great key to advertising.  You never want to use just one measure of attracting customers.  Generally the wealthiest businesses are the ones that use a many-fold approach in finding new clients and customers.

    • Keep in mind that your product or service will not appeal to everyone, no matter what you do.  If you spend the time and money trying to appeal to everyone, you stand a high risk of losing more than you are gaining.  This is especially so when you are a smaller company.  
    Even the major fast food chains don’t do this.  They have a market and they know who that market is.  

    While these tips don’t sound too difficult, you would be surprised at just how many people struggle with advertising. The key is always to diversify, be persistent and track your results ruthlessly so that you know what’s working and what isn’t. 

    At Strategize Your Success we help entrepreneurs, coaches and small business owners with strategic goal setting, marketing and planning.  We know what struggles you face and offer solutions to help make your business THRIVE. 

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  • 5 Reasons Every Business Owner Should Be Outsourcing

    In most large businesses, employees perform specialized functions.  Secretaries handle all of the filing and related tasks.  Marketing people handle the advertising and public relations.  Accountants keep the books.  Salespeople make the sales.
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    Many small businesses do not have the luxury of being able to hire employees.  So the business owner must handle everything herself.  While this may work out reasonably well in the initial stages, as the business grows it gets more difficult to keep up with it all.  There are some compelling reasons that business owners should consider outsourcing.

    • You can’t learn everything.  No matter how smart you are, you simply can’t.  Even if you could, learning takes time, and there are only a set number of hours in a day.  If you try to learn every minute aspect of the things that need to be done for your business, you’re going to end up disappointed and frustrated.

    • You have a life outside of your business.  Everyone needs time to spend with family and friends, even if they’re running a business.  If we try to tackle everything ourselves, we won’t have time to enjoy the finer things in life.

    • The stress of trying to do it all can adversely affect your health.  There are enough stressors in life that we don’t need to add to them unnecessarily.  But if we put pressure on ourselves to run a business on our own with no help at all, it can really stress us out.  Besides affecting our state of mind, too much stress can cause high blood pressure and put us at risk for many other ailments.

    • People who are trained well in their fields may be able to do a better job.  If you barely know HTML, it would take you quite a while to learn how to make a good-looking and functional website.  An experienced web designer could have your entire website up and running before you were finished learning what you need to know.  In situations such as this, it makes more sense to outsource than to try to do it yourself.

    • Outsourcing can save you money.  Some tasks require special equipment or software.  If you’re not going to need these things in the future, it doesn’t make much sense to buy them for one project.  Hiring someone else that already has what is needed to get the job done is usually more economical.
     
    In many cases, outsourcing makes good business sense.  It allows us to concentrate on the things we’re best at, and it can save us time and money.  So the next time you find yourself with an over abundance of work, consider outsourcing.

    At Strategize Your Success we help entrepreneurs, coaches and small business owners with strategic goal setting, marketing and planning.  We know what struggles you face and offer solutions to help make your business THRIVE. 

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  • Growing a Highly Targeted Social Media Following

    We’ve all seen pages on Facebook with thousands…even millions of followers. We’ve seen the same with Twitter and other social networks. It may seem a little overwhelming if you’re starting with a small following and it may feel like you’re just not going to get anywhere if you don’t have a huge following.4-a-million
    But the truth is, a targeted following is always your best bet. While you should always work toward growing your following, you can still get results from your well-cultivated following. So keeping pushing forward. It’s worth it.

    To get you started, here are some tips for growing your following:

    Invite Your Website Visitors4-b-invitation

    When someone visits your website, one of your main goals (if it’s not for them to buy a product) should be to get them on your email mailing list. That way, you can contact them directly over and over again through your list. But another thing you want new visitors and even regular visitors to do is follow you on social media. Having multiple avenues to communicate with your audience is a good thing and allows you to stay in the mind of your prospects.

    Include buttons on your site that allow your visitors to follow you directly on your main social media networks. While, it may be tempting to offer up a ton of options and include buttons for every social network you’ve joined, do consider these pitfalls:

    – By including too many choices, you decrease your chances of getting your visitor to do anything. The old saying that “the confused mind always says no,” is absolutely true.

    – Add to that, when you include buttons for networks you’re not that active on, you don’t provide a very good experience for your following.

    Instead, keep it focused and limit your follow buttons to the networks where you participate readily. In addition, include invitations to follow you on social media in your blog posts and other content. Don’t just rely on buttons in the side bar…ask them to follow you directly.

    Invite Your Mailing List4-c-email

    Asking your mailing list to follow you in social media gives you yet another way to communicate with your audience. Include follow buttons at the end of your emails, but also mention some of your interesting posts inside the emails you send. For example, if you posted a video you know they will want to see, send them to Facebook to view it. Or if you’re online and are available to chat, start a Hangout on Google. 

    Just one tip…make sure the updates you share are public. While it might make sense to make them private, so people have to follow you to see them, it can be frustrating for your subscribers. After all, your subscribers have ALREADY told you that they’re interested in your stuff and have ALREADY given you their email address. Don’t make them jump through hoops to see your additional content.

    Make Friends in Your Niche

    One of the easiest ways to grow your social networking and online following is by making friends with others in your niche. That effect is even more dramatic when you make connections with influential people in your niche. Always spend time on developing meaningful relationship with like minded people because it has a lot of benefits:

    – You can share one another’s content

    – You can share ideas and give each other advice

    – You can cross-promote products. 

    And we’re talking about meaningful relationships here. Not just simply following someone on Twitter and hoping they’ll notice your @ replies. You need to connect them directly, meet them in person or offer to help them in some way. Real relationships don’t develop through liking someone’s Facebook status, so do the work necessary to grow your network of friends.

    Get Involved an Interact

    Even though liking someone’s video on Facebook isn’t going to make you best friends, interacting regularly with people can help you get noticed. Provide useful commentary on content that is complementary to your niche, get involved and be visible. If people can use you, they are more likely to follow you.

    Of course, balance this with the importants of keeping your schedule and avoiding distraction. Always be very purposeful about your participation and you will reap the benefits.

    Remember, Growing a Following Goes Both Ways4-d-2way

    Remember, that growing a following through SM goes the other way too. Get people to share your content on social media, so you can drive that traffic back to you. Getting that traffic back from social media helps you grow your list and sell your products. 

    Always make it easy for people to share your content. Include sharing buttons on your blog posts, free report download pages and just about anywhere you publish content. The easier it is for people to spread the word, the more likely they are to do it.

    More Advice Coming in the Next Couple of Posts

    Obviously, the most important key to gaining and retaining your following is to be interesting and useful. These are huge topics that deserve some discussion of their own. So we’ll be talking about just that in the next couple of posts. Next up, we’ll examine how to be interesting by understanding your target market and really getting a grasp of who you’re talking to. Then we’ll talk about being useful and providing something unique that others in your niche don’t. When you master that, it’s much easier to grow and nurture your following.

    At Strategize Your Success we help entrepreneurs, coaches and small business owners with strategic goal setting, marketing and planning.  We know what struggles you face and offer solutions to help make your business THRIVE. 


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  • When Business is Slow in Summer: Think Seasonal

    A lot of people tell me that their business slows down in summer. And unless you sell vacation packages, swimming pools and water wings, I suppose it can happen. But here’s the thing…all you need to do is what those travel agents and swimming pool sellers do to get things revved up for summer. No, you don’t have to sell vacations and pools, but you do need to understand what your customers are thinking about in the summer months and cater your marketing to that.

    A few questions to ask yourself:

    What are your customers’ worries and concerns in summer?

    Are they concerned about the safety of their home while they’re away on vacation (perfect for home alarm and monitoring companies)? If you’re in the B2B market, are they worried about having time to get their work done in the summer? Grab a piece of paper and a pen to write down every worry you can think of and how it relates to your business.

    What are they busy doing?

    When you know what your customers are doing and what’s on their minds, you know how to speak to them. With a heat wave going on in a lot of places in North America right now, you know your customers are probably trying to find a way to beat that heat. How can you help them?

    What would they rather be doing?

    While we’d all love to be out lazing about on the beach, most of us probably aren’t. What do your customers really want to be doing, but can’t (but possibly could with the help of your product or services)? 

    Coming up with a summer marketing plan doesn’t require any magic or genius skills, but it does require some thought. Take the time to jot down your answers to the questions above and things become much clearer. When you know what’s on the mind of your customers, it’s much easier to deliver exactly what they want.

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  • Here’s Your Motivation to Keep Business Going This Summer

    Lost and Found: Here’s Your Motivation to Keep Business Going This Summer

    Just a short post for you today because I don’t want to keep you from getting your work done! 

    Summer should be about enjoying yourself, getting outside and hopefully getting away from it all.

    Of course, most of us don’t have the luxury of avoiding work all summer long. Sometimes, we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get busy, but it’s not always easy if you work from home. I’m sure just about any home or Internet business owner can relate, so here are some tips to stay motivated this summer.

    Work hours are your friend: We talked about this in the avoiding distractions post, but it applies here too. When you know when you’re supposed to work, you’re more likely to do it. If you leave your days wide open and think you’ll squeeze work in somewhere, it’s less likely to happen.

    Focus on what you like doing: There’s nothing worse than dreading something on our to-do list. Not only do we procrastinate from getting that one thing done, but it can remove our motivation to do anything at all.

    Always focus on what you’re good at and enjoy. Hire others or take on a partner to do the things you despise, but they enjoy. I’ve never understood why some people love crunching numbers and doing the accounting, but I’m so glad that they do.

    Set summer goals: While you may not be working as hard in the summer as you do other times of the year, do set some goals for yourself. Set daily, weekly and monthly goals. Make them challenging, yet attainable and outline the steps you’re going to take to achieve them.

    Reward yourself: When you accomplish a goal, give yourself a reward. Whether it’s a camping trip, a weekend away or simply an iced tea on the patio, everyone likes to have their work appreciated.

    Appreciate yourself readily!

     Give yourself a break sometimes: As entrepreneurs, we can be pretty hard on ourselves. We try to pack so much in, create ridiculously long to-do lists, but it’s not really necessary.

    Always re-evaluate your work plan and adjust it to make sure you get the most important things done.

    I guess the real lesson here is to know where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.

    Always have a plan, but be prepared to adjust it where necessary.

    Of course, if your motivation has gone down because business has slowed down, we have another problem. We’re going to talk about reviving a slow business in the next post.

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  • How to Focus on Your Business When It’s Time to Focus

    Avoiding Summer Distractions:


    How to Focus on Your Business when it’s Time to Focus

    Summer should be about enjoying yourself, getting outside and hopefully getting away from it all. Of course, most of us don’t have the luxury of avoiding work all summer long. Sometimes, we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get busy, but it’s not always easy if you work from home.

    I’m sure just about any home or Internet business owner can relate. 

    For me, the distractions are the nice weather, having the kids home from school and the desire to just be out camping or even sipping drinks with friends on a patio.

    One of my best friends is a teacher with summers off and she’s always trying to corrupt me! Even though summer can be great fun, I have learned to set my limits and turn off the distractions as needed.

    Here are some tips for you…


    Set your work hours: It’s business organization skills 101, but it’s an important aspect to staying focused. If you set your work hours, not only will you know what’s expected from you, but so will your friends and family. Take out the calendar and figure out what will work for you from week to week, so there is no confusion for anyone, including yourself.

    Reduce your work hours: If you work 5 days a week the rest of the year, you might consider whittling down to 3 or 4 in summer. Even if we have the best intentions, we’ll always find ourselves looking out at the beautiful sunshine, thinking about how we’re like to be out there too. Give yourself a break and just don’t work so much. You can achieve this by cutting down your schedule (for example, don’t blog as much), doing a lot of work ahead of time or hiring some help.

    Plan your work week, in detail: Now, don’t overload yourself with tasks, but make a list of items that absolutely need to get done and put them on your schedule. If you know what you need to do each time, you can motor through those items each day and perhaps you can even knock off early if you complete your list quickly.

    Plan your vacations: Just like you should plan your work hours, plan those vacations ahead of time. Knowing when you’ll be in town and out of town, will help you plan your work better and get all the necessary tasks done before you leave.

    Try multiple short trips away from home: While there shouldn’t be anything stopping you from taking an extended vacation, if it does cause you stress or you don’t have the help you need while you’re gone, try a few short trips. A few days away here and there can be a whole lot of fun and can reduce the overwhelm when you return to your computer.

    Limit social media to down time: While I see the value of social media for business, I think most of us waste a heck of a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter and the like. I’d challenge you to keep your social media usage outside of your work hours and leave it for any downtime you have. Perhaps, while you’re relaxing on the couch in the evening or just soaking up some sun by the pool. Reserve your work time for…well…work.

    If you have kids, get them busy: There’s no reason kids shouldn’t have fun all summer long. Get them involved in summer activities in your local area. Whether it’s summer camp or activities at the local library, there’s always plenty to do. And for goodness sakes, send them OUTSIDE to play often. If your kids are young and need supervision, consider organized activities or swapping babysitting favors with your neighbor. 

    Again, if you have kids, get them involved in the business or their own business: If you can’t always get the kids to entertain themselves, get them busy working with you or on their own business. There are plenty of business tasks that children can handle and what they do will certainly depend on their age and abilities. We’ll be talking more about summer business ideas for kids in a future post too.

    Turn the phone off: If you don’t have to answer calls from clients or customers, turn your phone off while you’re working. That means no text messages or personal emails too. If you do have a business line that you need to answer, don’t give that number to your friend who keeps trying to get you to head to the beach or a patio to sip margaritas.

    Outsource more: I’ll have plenty more tips in future posts, but you’ve got to get help for your business. It doesn’t mean you have to hire employees or people need to come to your house, but running everything yourself means being chained to your business all the time.

    At minimum, you should have a virtual assistant that can help you with administrative tasks, keep you organized and can handle most of your business communication. 

    Keep the fun in summer, but don’t sacrifice fun for productivity. If you’re organized and focused, you can most certainly have both.

    Now, I admit, being focused can’t come without a whole lot of motivation and that’s what we’ll be talking about next. Talk to you again soon.

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