Thursday, June 5, 2008

What You Say and How You Say it Can Make or Break Your Business

Author: Beryl Powell

In a conversation, your response to the question “What do you do?” will determine if the conversation continues. The first paragraph on your web site determines if a visitor will stay to learn more about you or leave.

The marketing messages you deliver to your audience should clearly state the results your clients will achieve by working with you, and distinguish you as the solution to their problems. Your marketing messages should also show your uniqueness.

There are six messages you must have in your marketing arsenal:

* Tagline – a few words that sets your perceived image.

* Elevator Speech – a 3.5 second message that tells what you help your clients achieve.

* Compelling Marketing Message – your main message that speaks directly to your target market; it shows you understand their problems and are the perfect solution to solve their problem.

* Your Story – a statement that tells your ideal client what drives you to do what you do and why you are choice they should choose to solve their problems.

* A Reason to Buy Now – a statement that tells your ideal client why they should buy what you are selling, and why they should buy now instead of later.

* Call to Action – a statement that tells your listener or reader the actions to take so they can take advantage of what you are offering.

Each marketing message should be able to be delivered individually, and as one conversation.

Your marketing messages should come from the client’s point of view and highlight the value you provide to the client,so when you create your messages use words that focus on the client’s problems and the solutions they are looking for. Start by asking yourself a few questions like:

* What do you help your clients achieve?

* What value do you bring to your client’s business?

* What or how do your services allow your client to exist, perform or behave?

* If your client was telling one of their clients about you and your business, what do want them to say?

* What impact do your services have on your client’s business and life?.

About the Author:

© 2008 Beryl Powell, Small Business Advisor, helps Solopreneurs live the lifestyle of their dreams by providing innovative business and marketing tactics, strategies and resources to help you build your business to sustain your lifestyle. Get a free copy of her OperateItRight Success Kit at www.OperateItRight.com


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What You Say and How You Say it Can Make or Break Your Business

Author: Beryl Powell

In a conversation, your response to the question “What do you do?” will determine if the conversation continues. The first paragraph on your web site determines if a visitor will stay to learn more about you or leave.

The marketing messages you deliver to your audience should clearly state the results your clients will achieve by working with you, and distinguish you as the solution to their problems. Your marketing messages should also show your uniqueness.

There are six messages you must have in your marketing arsenal:

* Tagline – a few words that sets your perceived image.

* Elevator Speech – a 3.5 second message that tells what you help your clients achieve.

* Compelling Marketing Message – your main message that speaks directly to your target market; it shows you understand their problems and are the perfect solution to solve their problem.

* Your Story – a statement that tells your ideal client what drives you to do what you do and why you are choice they should choose to solve their problems.

* A Reason to Buy Now – a statement that tells your ideal client why they should buy what you are selling, and why they should buy now instead of later.

* Call to Action – a statement that tells your listener or reader the actions to take so they can take advantage of what you are offering.

Each marketing message should be able to be delivered individually, and as one conversation.

Your marketing messages should come from the client’s point of view and highlight the value you provide to the client,so when you create your messages use words that focus on the client’s problems and the solutions they are looking for. Start by asking yourself a few questions like:

* What do you help your clients achieve?

* What value do you bring to your client’s business?

* What or how do your services allow your client to exist, perform or behave?

* If your client was telling one of their clients about you and your business, what do want them to say?

* What impact do your services have on your client’s business and life?.

About the Author:

© 2008 Beryl Powell, Small Business Advisor, helps Solopreneurs live the lifestyle of their dreams by providing innovative business and marketing tactics, strategies and resources to help you build your business to sustain your lifestyle. Get a free copy of her OperateItRight Success Kit at www.OperateItRight.com


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If You Want Your Marketing to be a Remarkable Success, Adopt These 2 Invaluable Tippps

Author: Daniel St-jean

First, let me share with you a definition of marketing I found on Wikipedia: “Marketing is a societal process which discerns consumers' wants, focusing on a product or service to fulfill those wants, attempting to move the consumers toward the products or services offered.” (aka selling)

That sounds about right. Let me follow that with a brilliant observation from Donald Cooper, one of America’s top professional speaker and corporate trainer: “We are all human beings selling something to other human beings. How damn complicated should that actually be?”

Apparently, complicated enough. The facts are: businesspeople are selling all the time, and consumers are buying all the time. The question is: are they buying YOUR products, services, subscription, business opportunity, expertise, concepts or ideas? If not, WHY NOT? Well, I don’t have ALL the answers to that last question, but I have some.

My signature says I’m a “BizzBooster” and an Internet Marketing Advisor. That’s true. My wife (the other BizzBooster) and I teach businesspeople how to boost their business, particularly on the Internet. We are teachers.

To be effective teachers, we need to be good students. We are. We study marketing 24/7 (pretty much) and we make good notes of the harmful mistakes people make in their marketing strategies for the purpose of teaching our customers and clients how to avoid those mistakes in order to boost their business.

By “boosting their business”, we mean making things easier, saving time, saving money, beating the competition, generating more leads, prospects and customers, making more sales, more money, and ultimately, more profit!

If those are results you aspire to in your business, read on because the 2 marketing tips (we call them TIPPPS™) I will talk about here will help you avoid two of the god-awful mistakes we observe all the time that cause businesspeople to fail—or at least underachieve. I promise you that marketing any business successfully will be a lot easier when you apply those 2 expert TIPPPS™ Thoughts Ideas Principles & Practices for Professional Success).

Here’s the first TIPPPS™: “Everything people do, they do either out of their need to avoid/reduce pain, and/or their desire to gain/increase pleasure.”

Or as Jeremy Bentham once wrote, “Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure; they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.”

It is crucial for the success of your marketing endeavors that you understand the pain and pleasure motivators, and how to use that knowledge when designing marketing material, of any kind.

Most people in marketing and psychology agree that the first motivator – pain – is more powerful than the second. For example: Joe will be quite willing to work 50 or even 60 hours a week in his business so he can buy the BMW he’s been dreaming about (aka pleasure).

Now, imagine that Joe needs to make a lot of money in order to keep the IRS from seizing his store and his house and throwing him and his family out on the street (pain). Joe will be willing to work a LOT harder (80 hours a week?) to avoid that pain than he would be to gain the pleasure of owning a fancy car.

People will do things to avoid pain they would not even consider if it were merely to gain some pleasure. What that means to you is that to get the maximum results from your marketing materials, you should use what is known as the AIDA formula: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – where the word Interest features pain and problems.

With that in mind, “most” of your marketing should follow along the easy path of answering these questions:

1-Are you getting ATTENTION with your opening?

2-Are you stating a problem (pain) your prospect is INTERESTED in?

3-Are you offering a solution your prospect DESIRES?

4-Are you asking your prospect to take ACTION?

Of course, I had to use the word “most” above because there are instances where it’s all about pleasure; dance classes, cooking courses and piano lessons are 3 examples.

Back to AIDA: If you sell products that help people who suffer from sore feet (for example), the best opening to get attention would probably be “Sore Feet?” (pain) as opposed to “Want foot relief?” (pleasure).

Bottom line, walk in your customers’ shoes for a while (pun intended), find out what his “pain” is, what his problems are, use that to get his attention, and then present your product or service as THE solution that will rid him of that pain and you will do exceedingly well. For Internet marketers, remember that the vast majority of people go online to find a solution to a problem. Focus on solving that problem and you’ll smile all the way to the (virtual) bank.

In other words (and this is the second TIPPPS™): “To have success, it is necessary that you bait the hook to suit the fish.”

I don’t mean any disrespect to shoppers, leads, prospects and customers by using the word “fish” This is actually a recommendation from Dale Carnegie in his famous book How To Win Friends And Influence People.

Here’s what he said: “I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found out that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm in front of the fish and said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to have that?’

Why not use the same common sense approach when fishing for people? When someone asked Lloyd George, then Great Britain’s Prime Minister how he managed to stay in power, he replied that if his staying on top might be attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.

The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.”

And as was pointed out earlier, what people want more than pleasure are ways, methods, strategies, tools, products and services that will help them avoid pain or at least reduce it. Bait your marketing “hook” with a solution, and the “fish” will bite.

I hope the “knowledge” you gleaned from this article will be helpful. Remember though that knowledge is power ONLY when it’s combined with ACTION! If you think the TIPPPS™ above are valuable, DO something with them, and seek out more of them.

Daniel G. St-Jean, BB, IMA, AMA

(BizzBooster, Internet Marketing Advisor, Article Marketing Alchemist)

P.S.: This article was inspired by a very informative and enlightening 5,500-word article which you can read by following the link listed in the Resource Box.

About the Author:

Daniel G. St-Jean and Laurel R. Simmons are better known as The BizzBoosters. With 50 years of business experience between them, they are fully equipped to help anyone who runs a business from home market themselves and their business more effectively. Visit their user-friendly website at http://www.the-best-help-for-home-business-success.com


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If You Want Your Marketing to be a Remarkable Success, Adopt These 2 Invaluable Tippps

Author: Daniel St-jean

First, let me share with you a definition of marketing I found on Wikipedia: “Marketing is a societal process which discerns consumers' wants, focusing on a product or service to fulfill those wants, attempting to move the consumers toward the products or services offered.” (aka selling)

That sounds about right. Let me follow that with a brilliant observation from Donald Cooper, one of America’s top professional speaker and corporate trainer: “We are all human beings selling something to other human beings. How damn complicated should that actually be?”

Apparently, complicated enough. The facts are: businesspeople are selling all the time, and consumers are buying all the time. The question is: are they buying YOUR products, services, subscription, business opportunity, expertise, concepts or ideas? If not, WHY NOT? Well, I don’t have ALL the answers to that last question, but I have some.

My signature says I’m a “BizzBooster” and an Internet Marketing Advisor. That’s true. My wife (the other BizzBooster) and I teach businesspeople how to boost their business, particularly on the Internet. We are teachers.

To be effective teachers, we need to be good students. We are. We study marketing 24/7 (pretty much) and we make good notes of the harmful mistakes people make in their marketing strategies for the purpose of teaching our customers and clients how to avoid those mistakes in order to boost their business.

By “boosting their business”, we mean making things easier, saving time, saving money, beating the competition, generating more leads, prospects and customers, making more sales, more money, and ultimately, more profit!

If those are results you aspire to in your business, read on because the 2 marketing tips (we call them TIPPPS™) I will talk about here will help you avoid two of the god-awful mistakes we observe all the time that cause businesspeople to fail—or at least underachieve. I promise you that marketing any business successfully will be a lot easier when you apply those 2 expert TIPPPS™ Thoughts Ideas Principles & Practices for Professional Success).

Here’s the first TIPPPS™: “Everything people do, they do either out of their need to avoid/reduce pain, and/or their desire to gain/increase pleasure.”

Or as Jeremy Bentham once wrote, “Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure; they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.”

It is crucial for the success of your marketing endeavors that you understand the pain and pleasure motivators, and how to use that knowledge when designing marketing material, of any kind.

Most people in marketing and psychology agree that the first motivator – pain – is more powerful than the second. For example: Joe will be quite willing to work 50 or even 60 hours a week in his business so he can buy the BMW he’s been dreaming about (aka pleasure).

Now, imagine that Joe needs to make a lot of money in order to keep the IRS from seizing his store and his house and throwing him and his family out on the street (pain). Joe will be willing to work a LOT harder (80 hours a week?) to avoid that pain than he would be to gain the pleasure of owning a fancy car.

People will do things to avoid pain they would not even consider if it were merely to gain some pleasure. What that means to you is that to get the maximum results from your marketing materials, you should use what is known as the AIDA formula: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – where the word Interest features pain and problems.

With that in mind, “most” of your marketing should follow along the easy path of answering these questions:

1-Are you getting ATTENTION with your opening?

2-Are you stating a problem (pain) your prospect is INTERESTED in?

3-Are you offering a solution your prospect DESIRES?

4-Are you asking your prospect to take ACTION?

Of course, I had to use the word “most” above because there are instances where it’s all about pleasure; dance classes, cooking courses and piano lessons are 3 examples.

Back to AIDA: If you sell products that help people who suffer from sore feet (for example), the best opening to get attention would probably be “Sore Feet?” (pain) as opposed to “Want foot relief?” (pleasure).

Bottom line, walk in your customers’ shoes for a while (pun intended), find out what his “pain” is, what his problems are, use that to get his attention, and then present your product or service as THE solution that will rid him of that pain and you will do exceedingly well. For Internet marketers, remember that the vast majority of people go online to find a solution to a problem. Focus on solving that problem and you’ll smile all the way to the (virtual) bank.

In other words (and this is the second TIPPPS™): “To have success, it is necessary that you bait the hook to suit the fish.”

I don’t mean any disrespect to shoppers, leads, prospects and customers by using the word “fish” This is actually a recommendation from Dale Carnegie in his famous book How To Win Friends And Influence People.

Here’s what he said: “I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found out that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm in front of the fish and said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to have that?’

Why not use the same common sense approach when fishing for people? When someone asked Lloyd George, then Great Britain’s Prime Minister how he managed to stay in power, he replied that if his staying on top might be attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.

The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.”

And as was pointed out earlier, what people want more than pleasure are ways, methods, strategies, tools, products and services that will help them avoid pain or at least reduce it. Bait your marketing “hook” with a solution, and the “fish” will bite.

I hope the “knowledge” you gleaned from this article will be helpful. Remember though that knowledge is power ONLY when it’s combined with ACTION! If you think the TIPPPS™ above are valuable, DO something with them, and seek out more of them.

Daniel G. St-Jean, BB, IMA, AMA

(BizzBooster, Internet Marketing Advisor, Article Marketing Alchemist)

P.S.: This article was inspired by a very informative and enlightening 5,500-word article which you can read by following the link listed in the Resource Box.

About the Author:

Daniel G. St-Jean and Laurel R. Simmons are better known as The BizzBoosters. With 50 years of business experience between them, they are fully equipped to help anyone who runs a business from home market themselves and their business more effectively. Visit their user-friendly website at http://www.the-best-help-for-home-business-success.com


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Telemarketing - a Few Tips to Get it Right

Author: Tony Savour

Telemarketing is a worldwide proven method to gaining more sales effectively and efficiently. It involves the process of calling up potential prospects and trying to sell them your product or service. As well as contacting new potential clients it is a method of contacting your existing customers and selling them other or new products or services that you offer.

Telemarketing is the next stage in your sales campaign after you have generated leads (not covered in this article) and the effectiveness depends on how you and your staff hold yourselves on the phone and how you come across. A major factor in telemarketing is how you come across to the prospect on the phone because a lazy rude telemarketer will never make it in the industry.

Right now let's get on to some tips that will help you increase your sales and potentially maximize your telemarketing campaign.

Firstly when you make a call to a prospect you have very little time to grab their attention and give them a good impression to keep them on the line. If you want to make a good impression you will need to plan your calls carefully and get yourself prepared to take on the challenge. You will need to be nice and friendly and enthusiastic on the phone and give the pitch of a lifetime every time. You need to keep the prospects interest and try to get them involved, this is how telemarketing work..

Try and keep your office and/or desk tidy and clean so as to not distract you from the call you are making, also try and make sure that it doesn’t have anything from your lunch break on or magazines etc as these may not seem distracting but can really put you off course. Telemarketing can be tiring work so you will not want to be distracted as it can completely throw you off.

Before you start you are going to need a script for you to read off of each time, you can experiment with these and change them to find out which one has the best effect of prospects. The good thing about scripts is that you can always change them and it is always good to not read directly from the script but to work off of it and expand it as you go, this way you will be able to work out the best telemarketing method for you.

Also remember that you should not be practising or warming up on real prospects as these can result in petty sale losses which should not have occurred. If you really need to warm up and prepare yourself which you most likely will, the best way of doing this is to get somebody to run through the script with you or play the role of a prospect before you start your rounds. Telemarketing can be a harsh business where prospects can be rude or aggressive down the phone to you, if this occurs you must be able to control yourself and handle the matter professionally, so always be prepared for any outcome.

Always keep records of your daily calls and make sure that write down who you called and whether successful or not as from these results you can see prospect patterns which you will be able to work from in future to enhance your sales.

Also the last tip for this article is to make sure that you ask questions to the prospect to try and find out what the want and then offer your products or services accordingly. If you try to tell the prospect what they need and try to force the product or service you can pretty much guarantee no sale is going to happen.

I hope that these tips have helped you and that you use the effectively.

About the Author:

Click for more Telemarketing services and information


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Telemarketing - a Few Tips to Get it Right

Author: Tony Savour

Telemarketing is a worldwide proven method to gaining more sales effectively and efficiently. It involves the process of calling up potential prospects and trying to sell them your product or service. As well as contacting new potential clients it is a method of contacting your existing customers and selling them other or new products or services that you offer.

Telemarketing is the next stage in your sales campaign after you have generated leads (not covered in this article) and the effectiveness depends on how you and your staff hold yourselves on the phone and how you come across. A major factor in telemarketing is how you come across to the prospect on the phone because a lazy rude telemarketer will never make it in the industry.

Right now let's get on to some tips that will help you increase your sales and potentially maximize your telemarketing campaign.

Firstly when you make a call to a prospect you have very little time to grab their attention and give them a good impression to keep them on the line. If you want to make a good impression you will need to plan your calls carefully and get yourself prepared to take on the challenge. You will need to be nice and friendly and enthusiastic on the phone and give the pitch of a lifetime every time. You need to keep the prospects interest and try to get them involved, this is how telemarketing work..

Try and keep your office and/or desk tidy and clean so as to not distract you from the call you are making, also try and make sure that it doesn’t have anything from your lunch break on or magazines etc as these may not seem distracting but can really put you off course. Telemarketing can be tiring work so you will not want to be distracted as it can completely throw you off.

Before you start you are going to need a script for you to read off of each time, you can experiment with these and change them to find out which one has the best effect of prospects. The good thing about scripts is that you can always change them and it is always good to not read directly from the script but to work off of it and expand it as you go, this way you will be able to work out the best telemarketing method for you.

Also remember that you should not be practising or warming up on real prospects as these can result in petty sale losses which should not have occurred. If you really need to warm up and prepare yourself which you most likely will, the best way of doing this is to get somebody to run through the script with you or play the role of a prospect before you start your rounds. Telemarketing can be a harsh business where prospects can be rude or aggressive down the phone to you, if this occurs you must be able to control yourself and handle the matter professionally, so always be prepared for any outcome.

Always keep records of your daily calls and make sure that write down who you called and whether successful or not as from these results you can see prospect patterns which you will be able to work from in future to enhance your sales.

Also the last tip for this article is to make sure that you ask questions to the prospect to try and find out what the want and then offer your products or services accordingly. If you try to tell the prospect what they need and try to force the product or service you can pretty much guarantee no sale is going to happen.

I hope that these tips have helped you and that you use the effectively.

About the Author:

Click for more Telemarketing services and information


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No More Retreat. We Must Admit to Advertising’s Failure!

Author: Paul Ashby

The £500,000 Honda waste of money on “live” television advertising is perhaps, the final straw in the acceptance of advertising as a means of “communicating” with consumers.

Our unwillingness to admit to the huge failings of advertising are reflected in our business institutions suffering from a loss of nerve to admit that advertising has become a total travesty, and amount to a national moral funk. We have let advertising standards fall in almost everything and especially in understanding the true meaning of the word communication.

Our claims that “advertising works” reflect an unwillingness to look rather more closely at the “evidence” touted by the various bodies representing advertising (and media) self interest!

It would appear that sometimes a decision taken by Media/Agency/Client is so lacking in common sense that the only appropriate reaction is to bang one’s head against a brick wall. However a blinkered advertising campaign, such as Hondas’, is so bad that the outcome can be truly toxic. There are more and more grotesque examples of such decisions, decisions lacking in any knowledge of the communications process, emerging as advertisers try to cut through the clutter, attract consumers’ attention etc.

I guarantee that the £500,000 could have been far more effectively spent with total accountability. All is revealed in my book “Television killed advertising” out end September.

Advertising people don’t understand the real world, they don’t understand the meaning of the word “communication”, and with the decision to split the creative role and the media role, there has been a proliferation of “experts” who still don’t understand communication. Between them issues forth a startling amount of opinions as to what constitutes “good” advertising, never for once realising that there is no such thing. Advertising people are subhuman living in a fantasy world in which communications can be controlled by “creativity” and supposedly sophisticated readership/viewing habits can instruct customers to read./watch their advertisements...they don't of course! The world we live in is vastly different from the world they think we live in.

Perhaps the change to reality is already starting! “US retailer quits TV for instore promotions”! Although only a casuist would draw hard and fast conclusions from such sparse data, it isn't good news for the US TV industry that a major retailer like Gap boosted its bottom line after quitting the medium in favour of instore merchandising for several successive quarters.

The switch trimmed 18% off the firm's marketing expenditure during its most recent quarter, contributing to a 40% year-on-year leap in profits.


So…no more retreat, let us rediscover the true meaning of communication and then start to provide our clients with the sort of marketing communication they deserve in the 21st Century.

Advertising has set no standards for the effective, accountable marketing communication of products/services matched only by the total lack of relentless curiosity! The history of advertising is also one of constant rejection towards anything that questioned the supremacy of advertising, despite the fact that the alternative on offer was substantially more effective and less expensive than advertising itself.

1. In a nutshell: marketing as we know it is a construct of the last century or so. Markets, on the other hand, have been around for thousands of years.
2. Interactive communication is not the same as online/digital. Truly interactive is "letting customers into the heart of your business"
3. In markets (as opposed to marketing) the sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence. The rest was conversation and relationship.
4."Listen. Measure. Respond."
5. "Why" is more important than "how".
6. At the farmer’s market, the farmers let you taste the fruit. How can your customers "taste your fruit"?

So let us define Interactive Marketing communication. Interaction can be defined simply as straightforward communication between two parties. Presently we are in danger of losing the real meaning of interaction, as we tend to focus discussions on the emerging technologies and neglect the communication process itself.

With an understanding of the real meaning of Interactive Communication, existing media can be made interactive, and subsequently far more cost effective.
Interactive Marketing Communication turns passive advertising into active advertising and actually alters behaviour during the communication and learning process.


In my book “Television killed advertising” to be published end September 2008, I detail just how much more effective
Interactive communication is when compared to conventional advertising and details the results of a research investment in excess of £5 m.

About the Author:

Having invested over $10 million in independent research, Paul Ashby is ideally suited to present the case for the widespread use of interactive marketing communication. The research investment has proved conclusively that one exposure to an interactive "event" is far more effective in all key measurements, than traditional advertising. Paul made this investment because his company, Effective . Accountable . Communication is predicated on being totally accountable to its Clients. You can contact Paul at: paul.ashby@yahoo.com
Discover more on http://interactivetelevisionorinteractivetv.blogspot.com


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