Marketing 101

  Entrepreneurial Conversations……?? Some people are born entrepreneurs. They open their first lemonade stand at nine, and by the age of eleven, have franchises in three neighborhoods and half the fifth grade on the payroll. These are entrepreneurs who make millions and then cash out to do it all over again. They can’t help it. They love the chase. Others enter the entrepreneurial space backed by an affluent upbringing. Well-heeled and well-educated, they hatched their business plans and then make the rounds of their dad’s network of friends for funding. They were born into the golden circle of networking. Then, there’s the rest of us. We are the entrepreneurs who stumbled into the space without the benefits of either our rich dads or a supernatural sixth sense. We are the folks who always thought we worked for someone else but it just didn’t turn out that way. We are the “accidental” entrepreneurs. And we have a “secret”. It’s conversation that starts a business. It’s conversatio...

Understanding What Content Marketing Is If you’ve made the decision to use content to promote your business, and you’re ready to get started, you can now start to build brand awareness, develop relationships and boost your profits in amazing ways. Content marketing encompasses all forms of content that add value to consumers, thereby directly or indirectly promoting a business, brand, product, or service. Content marketing occurs both online and offline, but the free and simple tools of the social Web have opened up the ability for companies of all sizes to compete alongside one another, not for market share but for voice and influence. Marketing a business using content isn’t a new concept, however, it has evolved in recent years to mean far more than creating a company brochure filled with promotional messages and images. Today, content marketing focuses on creating content that is meaningful and useful to consumers with promotional taking a backseat, to adding value, particularly a...

  Creating Buyer Personas For Maximum ROI Most businesses have multiple buyer personas, with each one describing in detail what drives them to buy their product or service. For example, the person’s age, location, job title, goals, and challenges face. Buyer personas are key to ongoing marketing success. Understanding all these is just one piece of the puzzle to developing an effective marketing funnel. To develop buyer personas, you can interview customers, prospects, and your competitors’ customers. You can check this out with your sales team, customer service representatives, or anyone else in your company that has direct contact with your customers to get more information about their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You can also conduct surveys with your current and prospective customers online, by phone, or by mail. As you interact with them, ask as many open-ended questions as you can. The secret to creating effective buyer personas is diving into conversations. From t...

  The Way To Get Cooperation I am sure you have much more faith in ideas that you discover for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter. If so, isn’t it bad judgment to try to ram your opinions down the throats of other people? Isn’t it wiser to make suggestions — and let the other person think out the conclusion? Mr. Tan, sales manager in an automobile showroom, suddenly found himself confronted with the necessity of injecting enthusiasm into a discouraged and disorganized group of automobile salespeople. Calling a sales meeting, he urged his people to tell him exactly what they expected from him. As they talked, he wrote their ideas on the blackboard. He then said, “I‘ll give you all these qualities you expect from me. Now, I want you to tell me what I have a right to expect from you.” The replies came quick and fast: loyalty, honesty, initiative, optimism, teamwork, and eight hours a day of enthusiastic work. The meeting ended with new courage, and new i...

Email Marketing — What Are The Rules And Law As an email marketer ,  you need to comply with laws that were put in place to protect consumers. While it is tempting to buy a list of email addresses and start sending messages to everyone on that list, this may not be a good idea for a few reasons. Firstly, you may be breaking the law, and secondly, you may be hurting your chances of your future messages getting into people’s email inboxes. The bottom line is, that your action as an email marketer can affect the deliverability of your email today and in the future. The vast majority of email doesn’t make it to the inboxes. Return Path’s 2020 Email Deliverability Benchmark Report revealed that 17% of emails that people have opted-in to receive emails never make it to their inbox. This means that about one-fifth of the people don’t get to see the message that asked to receive. So following the written or unwritten laws of email marketing is critical to securing a positive return o...

  Get The Other Person Saying “Yes, Yes” In talking with people, don’t begin by discussing the things on which you differ. Begin by emphasizing — and keep on emphasizing — the things on which you agree. Keep emphasizing if possible that you both striving for the same and that your only difference is one of method and not of purpose. Get the other person saying “Yes, yes” at the onset. Keep your opponent, if possible, from saying “No”. A “No” response is the most difficult handicap to overcome. When you said “No”, all your pride demands that you remain consistent with yourself. You may later feel that the “No” was ill-advised, nevertheless, there is your precious pride to consider. Once having said a thing, you feel you must stick to it. Hence, it is of the very greatest importance that a person is started in the affirmative direction. The skillful speaker gets, at the onset, a number of “yes” responses. This set the psychological process of the listeners moving in the affirmative d...

  Better Ways Of Handling Complaints Most people trying to win others to their way of thinking do too much talking themselves. Let the other people talk themselves out. They know more about their business and problems than you do. So ask questions. Let them tell you a few things. If you disagree with them you may be tempted to interrupt. But don’t. It is dangerous. They won’t pay attention to you while they still have a lot of ideas and crying out for expression and attention. So listen patiently and with an open mind. Be sincere about it. Encourage them to express their ideas fully. One of the largest automobile assemblers in Thailand was negotiating for a year’s requirement of upholstery fabrics. Three important manufacturers had worked up the samples for presentation. All these have been inspected by the executives of the motor company and notices had been sent to each manufacturer stating, on a certain day, a representative from each supplier would be given an opportunity to ma...

  Why You Must Have A Marketing Funnel If you have a business, then you probably have funnels in place and you don’t even realize it. If you have a website, you already have a funnel. That’s because funnels aren’t just for marketing although they overlap with marketing in some ways. So let’s explore what a funnel really is. A marketing funnel is visually represented by the same type of funnel used in cooking or automotive work. It’s a conical object with a large hole at the top and a small hole at the bottom. An example is a funnel used to pour oil from a container into the oil compartment of your car. And a marketing funnel would do the same thing- to ensure every person completes a specific task. However, this is not always the case. The entire customer list will enter the funnel at the top but unlike the funnel used in cooking or in automotive work, not everyone from the customer lists makes it to the bottom. You end up losing people along the way but your goal is to get as many...