Small Business Strategy Tip - The Power of Buzz Marketing

Buzz Marketing is best defined as word of mouth. Much like Viral Marketing where the objective is to get people talking to other people about their experience you provided as a marketer, the big difference is the part where you get people talking is generally done off line. If you’re standing outside a movie theater and shouting about your product and maybe dressed up as your product guess what is going to happen? People are going to start talking to one another. Regardless if you tell another person there is some crazy man or woman outside shouting about something the goal has been met once one person tells another.

The best BM (Buzz Marketing) campaigns are those that do not come off as marketing campaigns. Ambient Marketing is loosely based on BM where you are simply there and making your presence known. Every Guerilla Marketing (GM) tactic contains elements of another GM tactic but each is different and used in a different way. If you’re thinking BM may not be the best approach to get traffic to your website or offline store then you are really underestimating the power of BM. By nature people are curious and gossipy. Why not let the most basic of human instincts do your marketing for you?

One of the draw backs to this particular GM tactic is that if you are a shy or quiet person then this may not be best for you as it generally involves making a mockery of yourself or at least being in a public place and doing something that will get people talking.

That is okay though. With the Internet you don’t have to be seen by anyone. You just have to do something to get people talking. Since VM (viral marketing) and BM are so close to each other on a principle level, you can start a VM campaign and reap the benefits of word of mouth. Refer to the VM section for a great way to get people talking about whatever it is you want them to.
Of course most BM campaigns don’t require you to make a mockery of yourself. A great BM tactic is to place fliers, business cards and or signs all around your town, city and or state. When one person sees the message you have 1% better chances of them telling another person.

When a hundred people see your message, grab your card or whatever you want them to do you have a 100% better chance of them telling just one other person which would be 100 people telling 100 people.

Are you starting to see how this could be great for your business? I thought so. Even if they don’t tell anyone, someone is still finding out about you. Buzz is best but just being is fine too.

Thus far, not one of these Guerilla Marketing tactics is going to cost you more than $20, often, it’ll be much less than that and the results will linger for a long while. The key to GM is to combine tactics since even when you combine five or ten GM tactics you’re still nowhere near the cost of say a TV or newspaper commercial that just blends the surroundings (not to be confused with Ambient Marketing although it contains AM elements).

People for the most part have grown to ignore commercials. How often do you actually leave the TV on the same channel when a commercial that doesn’t interest you comes on? Not very often. The people making the commercial you are ignoring could have just as easily and for less money (if any money) could have used a GM tactic that was sure to get your attention and at least get you to check out what they are promoting.

The next GM method I am going to speak about may require a little money and may be reserved for bigger companies or more established companies but it’s a great way to get people’s attention and works wonders for smaller or startup companies. Remember I said GM is not about money but time and effort but this particular tactic as I said may cost a little money but it’s well worth it compared to traditional marketing methods.

Business Strategy Coach -To Blog or Not To Blog...What is the Answer?

Many people are getting into blogging for several
reasons. You might have heard it somewhere recently
but it actually started more than a decade ago from
its mother, the online diary. Back then, these kinds
of diaries are used by people to record and share
accounts of their personal lives. Although blogging
still uses that same concept, it has now evolved into
several categories and usage.

Nowadays, blogging is synonymous to online marketing.
Bloggers not only publish contents reflecting their
moods for the day or sharing what they have done for
the past few weeks but also advertise and create a
sturdy communication with their audience. More so,
through the use of blogging, people are now able to
find an alternative in making money. Blogging is an
excellent opportunity for generating income.

The Blog

Before you even start to create you own blog. It is
necessary to know what blog really is. The term blog
is actually derived from the word Weblog or Web log.
Back in the days, around the late 1990’s, these Web
logs are utilized by users to track updates and
references to other resources online. They served as
journals, which made them useful as a publishing tool
for the user’s stream of consciousness. Of course, the
readers can still comment and share their thoughts on
just abut anything under the sun.

Technically, blogs are also known as CMS or Content
Management Systems. Being a CMS, blogs allow the
writers to easily publish to a specific Web site and
manage the content without the need of having to deal
with the program code. Publishing software also
provides users with a GUI or Graphical User Interface
for easy pointing and clicking of their articles.
Through the use of easy-to-do procedures, you can
perform configuration and set up, which can ease your
job as a blogger since the tool can automatically
organize your published articles the next time you
publish.

The Advantage of Blogging

The main question is; why should you start blogging?
The first thing you need to know is that blogging can
enhance and support your online communications.
However, you must first understand the outcome of your
blog that you desire in order to attain success. The
main reason why you should start blogging, is that it
can be both an excellent outlet for your frustrations
or excitement and profitable at the same time.

It does not mean that if you are not into blogging,
you should not blog. Being in a business, especially
those with dealings on the Internet, requires you to
establish a clientele that are actually interested
with your services. Blogs can do this easily due to
its accessibility and being an excellent medium for
marketing that it is, blogs are essential for
businesses.

More so, if you are handling a business, there is good
chance that your competition is blogging about their
products and services. This is an easy method for you
to examine the competition and what their clients’
preferences are. Additionally, blogs can create strong
customer relationships since your target market can
easily and directly communicate with the authority
within your business.

This kind of opportunity is hard to resist since a
strong customer relationship can eventually lead to
lasting trust to your product and services; hence,
eventual increase in your revenue.

Business Strategy Coach -Time Management and Managing your Energy: Myth or Not?

“What the mind has set to achieve, the body has yet to immortalize”. The body, mind and spirit has to be ready to take on daily activities such as work. There are many things we want to do and achieve in life. Everyday is considered another day of working hard to achieve something. It can get so overwhelming most of the times especially when we a have a lot of things going but it’s all a matter of how we will be able to cope up and work it out. Being able to manage yourself, play an important role behind getting things done as well as managing your energy in order to keep up.

We can get burned both mentally and physically. Working more hours than regular can drain you mentally thus consuming your energy to function more. Mentally draining yourself makes work even achievable in a more extended time frame because you just don’t have the energy to do it “now” anymore.

Literally, time management means managing time itself. Can you manage time? You can’t. You can’t stop the clock and resume it when you want to resume your work. In a literal point of view that remains a myth. What you can do though is manage yourself to keep up with time. The things you set out to do can be achieved in a timely manner if have a time frame to finish it and it is important that you have to energy to do so.

In order to manage your time and energy you have to do first things first. You must learn to prioritize what work needs to be done and do it without dilly-dallying. Doing so does not help in achieving work on time. It only extends it further more. Managing your time and energy work hand in hand.

Focus on your work and avoid distractions. If you focus on your work, chances are you will be able to finish ahead of schedule thus saving your energy for other activities that you might want to indulge in.

Keep your health up to speed at all times. The mind and body can only do as much when you are in good health and condition. Live healthy, eat healthy and exercise on your free time to keep your spirit on a higher level. Conditioning your mind, body and spirit and keeping a good balance on these aspects can definitely keep the ball rolling for you.

Time management would just remain a myth, a figure of your imagination if you don’t start and learn to manage yourself and your time. You have to put things in practice and in action. Prioritize, focus, and guard your health in order to manage your time and energy to get things done.

7 Steps to Powerful Online Seminars

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

For many businesses, particularly service oriented businesses, getting up in front of a group of prospects with the opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise is one of the best lead conversion opportunities going.
Holding workshops and seminars live and in person has long been an effective tool. The web makes this tool even more powerful and more affordable as it allow you to conduct online versions of seminars that don’t require you to rent a room or your prospects to leave their homes and offices.
Online seminars are a marketing tool every business should consider adding to the mix. Below are seven steps to consider to make your online seminars pay.
1) Get sponsored
Before you go too far down the seminar path consider getting sponsors to join you. This doesn’t have to be some big name corporate deal, give strategic partners the opportunity to join you in promoting your educational sessions for the right to call themselves a sponsor. Round-up prizes from related businesses that want the exposure their prize garners in your promotion. Free stuff drives enrollment!
2) Educate, don’t sell
Make certain that your “free” session is packed with content so good people would pay for it. That’s the expectation these days. If you create seminars that are basically veiled sales presentations, you won’t reap the benefits of this expertise play and people won’t come back or tell friends about your great seminars. There’s a time and place for the sales pitch, but only after you’ve established trust through sharing valuable information. People are OK with a “here’s the sales pitch” at the end of a presentation that was time well spent.
Consider creating a series of events and promoting them together. This can help build momentum and allow you to build a loyal following.
3) Pick your platform
There are dozens of online platforms for hosting your web seminars but choose your platform with some considerations in mind.
• Free may not be the best option if you are using this tactic to demonstrate how professional your business is.
• Look for a tool that offers some interaction tools such as polling, questions, chat, even video
• Make sure your chosen tool can handle the numbers you plan to enroll
• Be certain you can easily record your sessions for future marketing use
• Look for ease of use and follow-up reminder email automation
GoToWebinar (a sponsor of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast), Acrobat Connect and WebEx all offer the features above
4) Cause interaction
Use the functionality of your online webinar tool to get the audience involved. Polls are a great way to take the temperature of your audience and the results can make for both interesting discussion during your session and follow-up discussion in another form of content such as a blog post. With small groups you may want to allow video or audio chat, but it’s always a good idea to take questions from the attendees. Most platforms also allow you to conduct a survey at some point in your presentation. This is a nice way to end a presentation to get feedback from the audience and even let them vote on other topics they would like to hear in the future.
5) Create a backchannel
Lots of people attend webinars these days and share information they hear with their followers on Twitter. It’s become common practice to create a hashtag for your events so people who attend or those that don’t have an easy way to collect all of the comments made by listeners. Some presenters go as far as having an assistant monitor and tweet during the presentation to keep the conversation lively and accurate. This free PowerPoint Twitter Tool allows you to create tweets and have them posted automatically during your presentation.
6) Have bonus content
Because there is so much free information out there online the expectations for what you provide as free package have grown. In addition to the event itself consider creating a PDF workbook or collection of blog posts from yourself, related bloggers or strategic partners and delivering that document along with your follow-up. This gives you another reason to reach out and remind your attendees about the great content and gently about the products and services you offer.
7) Promote the archive
Use your chosen platform to record your presentation. Upload your recorded session to a video host such as Vimeo or YouTube and embed the video in a web page surrounded by additional resources and further reading links related to the topic. This is a great way to use the session for future marketing efforts and create the kind of page and content that search engines love. Consider using a service like CastingWords to transcribe the session, combine three or four session with video, transcript, resources and your collection of blog post PDF and you’ve just created a product that you can sell!
Handling all the moving parts of setting up, promoting, running and archiving live events can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but the long term payoff in terms of expertise, content, and trust building is worth every bit of it.

Business Strategy Coach - Maximize Your Time for Results

It's a busy world out there. We all have to keep up with the demands of daily living. Juggle everything here and there. Just like an executive running around keeping up with meetings and deadlines at work but can still spend quality time with the family or a college student keeping up with academics but still has to work after school to pay his tuition. Everybody seem to be busy with a lot of things and at the end of the day, a good rest is what we all need.

What is admirable though, is how each of us are able to keep up. At how an executive can still spend quality time with the family after a long day at work, or a working college student still having the time to do research after a long day in school and work. How are they able to do all these altogether, one after the other? This is where time management comes in. It's keeping the balance between work and life itself.

Time management is a matter of prioritizing what work needs to be done first and how you are able to finish it at a given time. Scheduling is very important. Let me share some time management tips that has worked for me:

1. Learn to Prioritize. It is important that you know which work has to be done first and what needs to be done. Learn to dissect and be able to point out what aspect needs urgent attention.

2. Set out a Plan. Having a plan pretty much gives you an idea of where you are going. It's like having a blueprint of your house. You see where everything is located so you know the directions on how to get there.

3. Organize. Schedule, and set a Time Frame. Some people work well with a print out itinerary in front of them and having a specified "begin" and "end" task guide makes it more easy and organized. It is important to keep track of your schedule in order to keep the balance.

4. Make valuable time out of Idle or free Time. This is bonus time that you can make use of. Sometimes we tend to finish ahead of schedule so, we get to have some more extra time. Make valuable use of it. Spend more time with family or maybe just have some time with yourself. After all, everybody needs a little bit of pampering after a hard day's work. It's not bad to reward yourself once in awhile, isn't it?

Time management means getting the work done and not anything else other than what needs to be done. Learn to balance your work and life. Managing your time wisely makes the workload uncomplicated. It only gets complicated and overwhelming when things pile up. And when this happens you loose track of managing your time. It's as easy as one, two and three. Priortize, set out a plan, schedule, and get it done. And you might just be amazed at how you will be able to get some more free time to do other things.

Business Strategy #7 - Discipline + Focus = Success

Focus and Discipline are two of the most important qualities an athlete has to have in order to be on top of the game. The Olympics was first established by the ancient Greeks with the idea of putting together a sporting event every four years to compete in various fields such as javelin, running, wrestling and boxing. It became a world sporting event in 1896. Since then, it has been celebrated every four years in different host countries.

The Olympics has become a venue for sportsmanship, comaraderie and goodwill among athletes and nations of the world. An athlete works hard on his training to be on the lead, with the common goal of winning the gold and gain recognition. With this in mind, athletes have remained focus and disciplined. This has become the driving forces that motivates them to go an extra mile at what they do.
An athlete’s discipline can be compared to a thriving business owner. They do not wait for things to happen; they thrive to make things happen. Success does not come to you….you go for it!

One does not become a good athlete overnight. It takes a lot of learning, training, practice, and most importantly discipline and focus. It would take years to master great athleticism not to mention going through a lot of competition in order the reach the ultimate dream of participating in the Olympics. If an athlete’s ultimate goal is the Olympics, an entrepreneur’s goal is to become profitable, add value and be successful.

The road that leads to the Olympics does not happen at a blink of an eye, so does your way to success. It’s a challenging road out there. It takes many years to become an overnight success. Just like the focused and disciplined Olympian, you have to set your mind on continuously improving your craft and continuously learn and find ways to be the expert in your field. Competition is tough out there and the way to stay on top of, is to remain focused at all times. Everything in life has to be worked on. It’s not a game of chance or pure luck. Remember, success does not come to you but work your way to success!

Business Success Strategy #10 - Hustle While You Wait

"Everything comes to those who hustle while they wait" -Thomas Edison

Thomas A. Edison was one of the most prolific inventors of all time. His inventions continue to shape our daily lives decades after his death in 1931. He fundamentally changed our lives by giving us indoor lighting, records, movies, batteries, and hundreds of other objects we have come to believe we can’t live without. He patented over 1,000 objects during his life. His advice to “hustle” while you wait gives us some insight into how he became a legend.

Many people who dream of changing their lives are in a “waiting” time in their lives. For financial or personal reasons they are not yet able to leave their current jobs, move to their preferred geographical area, or start that business they dream of. During these waiting times you can do much to lay the foundation for your dreams. Here are some ideas that can get you started as you begin to move towards a life you compose rather than one you fell into:

*Research your dream job or business. Learn all that you can about it. You can easily become an expert about any topic in 3-6 months. Read, search the web, interview people who already work in the field, and do all that you can to learn about the history, trends and topics that are important in your field. When the time comes to move forward, you will have a solid knowledge base.

*Develop your network. Meet others who are in your chosen field. Nothing leads to success faster than having a solid support network in place. Don’t fear competition; just meet as many people as you can in that field. This networking will help you understand what it takes to succeed and give you the support you need to make those first steps. Nothing increases learning faster than having a mentor who can show you the way. You will increase your confidence and your learning pace, and you may even get “lucky” and find a job or your first client.

*Lay the groundwork. Write your business plan. Draft a press release. Outline your book. Learn how to design web pages. Any progress is movement forward and that momentum can help propel you towards the life of your dreams. As you develop skills and create the platform for your new life, new ideas and opportunities will come your way.

No matter where you are in developing the life of your dreams, you can “hustle” while you wait. Even if you have no idea what you want yet, you can create a foundation that will support your new life. No effort is wasted. The skills and knowledge you gain will fit into your new life in some way.

As I searched for my dream and mission I researched dozens of topics. I am consistently amazed at how many of those “dead ends” have helped me to develop my current business. Learning how to edit, write copy, design web pages, develop content, create podcast, research, and even golf have all helped me to build a stronger foundation for my roles as a business coach and business growth strategist. Don’t wait for the perfect time to arrive, begin today to move forward and the universe will meet you with more opportunities than you can now imagine.