Attitude

You’ve heard it before… Attitude is everything. Well, it certainly can’t hurt. Wouldn’t your rather be running a business with these fun lovers who know how to take a break and have some fun? Or, you can always work with me, the slave-driver

Seriously now, its best to take someone who is in a funk and move them off the front line until their attitude shifts. Or, just send them home. It’s not worth the loss in sales. Your customers’ lives are hectic enough. Wouldn’t you prefer to be around someone who is spreading liquid sunshine? So would your customers.

Teamwork

What a great opportunity to learn how to take turns, share and work together toward a common goal. I watched seven little girls divide up tasks themselves. Each found a way to contribute. One sat behind the lemonade pitcher and poured the lemonade in the cups. Another collected money. Another shouted into the microphone. One held the menu. One held the sign. One wrote on the sidewalk. Another served the cookies. And each provided assistance to the others. Wow, I couldn’t have orchestrated it if you paid me. What made it work? They all shared the same vision and a desire to have fun and make some money. It didn’t matter how they got there and who did what. They shared responsibilities. They kept moving forward to their goal.

What would your business be like if everyone worked like that? What would it take to get there? Can everyone on your team buy into the vision and strive for the goal?

Goal Setting

On Sunday my middle daughter took a break from the lemonade stand to play with a friend who stopped by. She was very disappointed that she wasn’t going to get any money for the time she was away. She immediately said “How much money do I need to make to go to Build-A-Bear Workshop?” When I told her she stayed focused all the rest of the day and never left the stand. Once she had achieved her financial goal (at about 6:30pm) she said “Okay, mom, I’m done. We can close up now”.

Without a goal, she never even would have sat at that lemonade stand. But her sisters were earning money to go to “Build-A-Bear” and heck if she was going to be left behind.

Give yourself something to shoot for. Give yourself a goal. Without a clear picture of where you want to go, you may never get there. but if you know that you want to go to Build-A-Bear tomorrow morning, you’ll walk all the way around the park until you find enough people to buy that lemonade.

I have a friend who excels at Network Marketing. I once asked him what is the key success factor for someone in your business. You know what he said? “Hunger. You’ve got to really want to succeed.” Do you have the hunger? What will it take for you to get it?

I once had the hunger and I achieved great things. Then I lost the hunger and I lost the things. I rediscovered the hunger in a new place. One that is sustainable. Is your hunger sustainable and can it be met while achieving a balanced life?

Life Balance

The second lesson my daughters learned from this is that if you don’t participate, you don’t share in the rewards. You need to contribute and do your share to share in the results. You need to do the activity. When my youngest daughter took a break to run in the sprinkler, she knew full well that she wasn’t going to get paid for the hour she played, and she was okay with that. She had already earned enough to go to “Build-A-Bear” and its was time to play.

As you can see from the video above, a quick run through the sprinkler is refreshes the attitude. Make sure you plan time for replenishing your soul. How can you take a “run through the sprinkler” today?

Activity

If you want to achieve your goals, you have to do the activity. You don’t necessarily have to “work” in terms of putting a lot of labor and pain with it. You can choose to have fun or to be cranky, but you do have to do the steps to sell the lemonade. You will have more fun and more success if you have a good attitude, but without staffing the stand, you won’t sell any lemonade.

My husband has this great quote that he taped to his computer. It says “If all you do is sit around and visualize, the men in white overalls will come and take away your furniture.” I know a lot of personal growth classes teach you just need to visualize, but its only part of the equation. You actually need to do activity to support you vision.

While activity gives you results, it’s activity with a positive attitude that gives you success.

Activity + Positive Attitude = Success!

Have you planned to balance your goals and activities with some attitude refreshing fun? Make room for that creative down time. It’s in those quiet moments that brilliance comes to you.

What are some of your favorite stories of those non-working moments when something brilliant comes to you?

• Marketing Communications: could be an AD agency or just a graphic artist, copywriter and web designer. The Ad agency would also have a creative director that oversees the other 3 specialists. They create your identity, logo, brochures, website, packaging, ads (both online and off) and most materials. Can also create email newsletters. A direct marketing specialist would also fall into this category.
• Web site: web designer works on the visual representation, web developer handles ecommerce, community forums and other functionality, SEO expert gets your chosen keywords emphasized,
• Social Media: blog/community manager oversees blog content and responds to community members (blogger could also be in a different dept. like PR). Twitter and forum communicator.
• PR: gets feature articles written, product placements, press tours, press kits, press releases, speaker placement, quotes,and more.
• Event Marketing: identifies, schedules and prioritizes marketing events, creates booths, demos, etc.
• Channel Marketing: work with resellers, OEM, Affiliate managers and Evangelists: who get 3^rd parties to sell your products or services or use them in their own products
• Business Development & Sales – works directly with key customer accounts to close a sale.

This is most of the major categories of specialists. The ones you need to work with can vary depending on your type of business.

What other marketing specialists have you used?

The more you do it the better you get. You also need to be consistent at both in order to see the full effects. And the long-term effects are better than the short-term gain of a single effort.

Marketing isn’t just a one time thing. You can’t just send out a direct mail piece or one email and think you’ve done your marketing. Think Campaign. Or, think like you’re  training for a 5K race and then another and another.  You have to do it over and over and over again to see the cumulative benefits. You need a strategy that ensures that all efforts build upon previous efforts. You train, your race. You plan, you launch.

It takes training and practice to get good at exercise and it takes the same to get good at marketing.

I was an All-American swimmer in High School and college. I was an athlete most of my life. Then I had 3 kids in 2 years and formal exercise completely stopped. Yeah, I chased 3 toddlers and carried twins around in car seats and pushed 3 kids in a double stroller. But formal exercise ceased and I felt it.

After 5 years of non-fitness, I recently have been able to carve out time to start exercising again. But for the first time in my life, I approached it from a different perspective. I was sympathetic, understanding and patient (not one of my strong traits). I knew better than to push too hard in the beginning. I thought, anything I do is better than where I have been. So I started out slow. 20 minutes 3 days a week. Missed a week due to sickness, but gave myself permission to rest. Then, I got right back at it.

Well, 3 months later and I can actually complete the pre-set program on the treadmill. I’ve even picked up a hand weight or two. You see, I didn’t beat myself up when I got bad results (unusual for me). I didn’t beat myself up when I needed to rest (again, out of character). But, I just reminded myself that I would start up when it was right for me and complimented myself for taking such good care of myself.

This encouraged me to get back on that treadmill and get going again. And now I’m feeling the cumulative effects.

It’s just like that with your business and marketing. Sometimes you make mistakes. Sometimes campaigns don’t give you quite the right results. But you learn from them, you make adjustments and you try again. Give yourself permission to be imperfect. Give yourself credit for keeping at it.

It’s been like that with my business too. Everyday I work at it. I progress what seems like a breadcrumb in the overall plan. Each day I may not see significant results, but when I can look back and see how far I’ve come cumulative in the last 6 months, I can smile.

Have you exercised your marketing muscles today? Have you scheduled time to plan and practice your marketing?

Do you automate the marketing of your blog posts? Here’s what I’ve done.

My blog posts are relevant to small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to market their business better. As such, I have them automatically posted to places that small business owners can find them such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more. I have spent some time automating this process so I can focus on the creation of content and not the marketing of it. Here are the methods and tools I used to automate the updates of my blog posts.

Twitter

I have two twitter accounts; the first, @expertmktgcoach, I tweet each post once, and the second, @debzimmer, I use to repeat the tweets throughout the day.

I use Hootsuite to import the RSS feed from my blog to twitter. This sends out one tweet per account. With Hootsuite, I can also schedule tweets on that second account so that the tweet reoccurs throughout the day.

LinkedIn

My blog headline posts to my LinkedIn status using Hootsuite. Hootsuite also sends the status to Ping.fm which updates numerous other sites that I visit less often.

My blog is then imported into my LinkedIn Profile using the LinkedIn WordPress Application.

Facebook

I use Facebook Notes to import my RSS feed into my Facebook Page. This creates a duplicate copy of my blog on Facebook. I can also use Hootsuite to import the headlines into my wall on my personal Facebook profile or public page.

Social Bookmarking

Using the WordPress Plugin tool for OnlyWire, my posts are automatically bookmarked to numerous bookmarking sites with which I have accounts. It creates bookmarks at more bookmarking sites than I can reach through Ping.fm. Ping.fm reaches other social media sites that OnlyWire doesn’t, such as Plaxo.

RSS Reader

I use Feedburner for those who want to get my blog posts in an RSS reader format.

Kindle

If you are a Kindle user, you can read my blog by subscribing through the Amazon Kindle Store.

SEO

Each post I write is search engine optimized. I use a number of tools including WordPress plugins to assist me with search engine optimization.

Email

There’s one more automation tool I’m considering but haven’t yet implemented. I see that AWebber is now integrated with Feedburner and can send the RSS feeds in email to your subscriber base. I think that sounds way cool. I just wish the tools I currently use offered that service.

That’s all I’ve got on blog marketing automation. Do you have any tools or systems you use that you particularly like?

Businesses like to think they make logical choices so the information you provide must be backed up with facts and figures and data. The business wants to know you understand their issues and have a rock solid plan to resolve them. The “how” you are going to do it is important. The resources involved, time, etc. play into the decision. Testimonials help.

Consumers also like to think they are making logical decisions but they need less data and more stories. The stories are laden with how lives are transformed. They want to know that you connect with them on a personal level and understand their pain. Consumers are not as concerned about the process; they just want the pain to go away. Fix it now.

What other ways can you think of that makes marketing to a consumer different from marketing to a business?

My kids love that movie. And who wouldn’t? Isn’t if fun to make all the characters at the museum come to life? It turns the traditional museum on its side.

Yesterday I chaperoned my daughter’s class on a field trip to The Museum of Nature and Science. It got me thinking. What caught me by surprise was the complete lack of marketing. We rode a generic school bus, entered through the school bus entrance and packed our own lunches. There were no ticket sales, no up-sells and no gift shops as part of the experience. There were no characters, no trinkets and no souvenirs.

It was also very static. The animals were stuffed. There was no background music. It was, well, educational.

Remember, the best marketers observe their customers and learn from them.

In every exhibit, the kids I chaperoned were drawn to things that were dynamic. The buttons that made sound, the buttons that lit things up, the buttons the made things move. The flipcharts with information, they flipped and flipped and flipped. They couldn’t read, they just flipped.

The most popular spot in the museum was the traveling exhibit about health. Why? It was completely dynamic and interactive. It was, quite frankly, fun.

This all got me thinking. If I were to monetize the museum and be responsible for increasing the revenue it generated, how would I do that?

Ah. I’d make it “A Night at the Museum“, coupled with some Disneyland.

How could you do that?

At the dinosaur exhibit, I’d have someone dressed up in a dinosaur costume. I’d have dinosaur sounds in the background and music to set a mood. Each static exhibit would have a button for kids to push to make a sound, make some lights or make something move. I’d add something that lets kids “Jump like a dinosaur” or “run like a dinosaur”. Something that let them compare their own abilities to that of a particular type of dinosaur. I’d have a computer set up where they can touch a dinosaur in the picture and a story would play about that type of dinosaur.

The kids need to touch things! They need to move! They have the most fun when screaming.

Does going to a place where everything is behind a piece of glass sound appealing to this audience? Does being someplace they need to be quiet sound like it meets the needs of the target customer? Ok, so I’ve assumed that museums are for teaching children. Maybe they were designed for adults who want to get out for some quiet time. No, that’s who designed them, not who they want to attend them.

OK, let’s get back to making this place fun. Notice I’ve made the assumption that fun=profits. That’s because if its fun, we will go back more. And the more we visit the more we spend.

I’d have a souvenir cart inside the dinosaur exhibit or right outside. It would sell dinosaur bones, dinosaur stuffed animals, dinosaur puzzles and games. Everything dinosaur.

Having one central gift shop makes it sooooo easy to walk past. Having the gift cart that interrupts the flow of traffic, grabs your attention and pulls you in is much more effective. Having all that stuff right in front where you kids can touch it is so tantalizing. You’re sure to increase conversions. Hit them while the emotion is still high, right as they are walking out of the exhibit.

In the exhibits where the animals are stuffed, why not add a volunteer dressed up in the traditional attire of that local? I’d like to see the volunteer in the Botswana exhibit, wouldn’t you? Again, let’s bring those exhibits to life with music and lighting. Get the kids interacting. How about a spear throwing activity in the Botswana exhibit? And, put a souvenir cart inside or right outside the exhibit.

My favorite is the Egyptian exhibit. I’d love a volunteer dressed up like Cleopatra. How about a video game where you kill the Egyptians with your sword? Or an area where you build your own pyramid? Of course, my girls would love the souvenir cart filled with sparkling jewels. Like I said, hit them while their hot!

Ok, that sounds like fun to me. I’d go visit more often with my kids.

The more we visit the more we spend.

If you were given the task of monetizing the museum by increasing revenue and attendance, what would you do? How would you market it? How would you design the product to appeal to the target audience?

Why do people line up at 5 am, 3am or even 1 am to get the Black Friday Deals? What possesses people to stay up all night and wait in line in 30 degree weather? I personally classify this as insanity. Yet people all over America do it. Why?

When I was at Microsoft, we were able to create that same frenzy around a product launch. There was always a big launch event every time a new product or service was released. And, people would wait in line for that item, and frenzy was created.

I had colleagues that used to say, “We don’t do sustaining marketing. We launch products!” but what did they mean by this? What does Black Friday have in common with these “Product launches”?

Let’s take a look…

It all begins with the psychology of scarcity. People have some sort of innate reaction to the fear of losing access to something they desire. As an item or opportunity becomes less available, we lose our personal control over that item. The desire to preserve our freedom of choice and maintain control makes us desire that item even more than before.

So, if we limit the quantity, have a time deadline, or create a perceived competition for the item, that item becomes more attractive to us because we think we can’t have it. Our need for control takes over and we wait in line in zero degree weather at 5 in the morning to get it. And there you have one of the primary driving forces behind Black Friday.

Scarcity: Specific Deadline

To apply this in your own business you need to create a compelling reason why a customer can only have access to a particular item by a specific deadline or they will lose the opportunity. This is often portrayed as “Act Now while supplies last.” And “Offer ends Dec. 23rd”. Black Friday Deals are usually only available one day only.

Scarcity: Lost Advantages

A second method of creating a Black Friday-like scarcity is to point out what people will lose if they don’t take advantage of an opportunity. To do this you would identify for them their “lost advantages”, rather than focusing on the benefits they gain. What are they going to lose out on?

Scarcity: Competition

A third method of using scarcity to drive sales in your business would be to create the perception that if you doesn’t do this thing then someone else will and one will lose their chance of doing it. For example, “we only take the first 50 people”, or “Limited supplies available”. This suggests that their will be competition to get those spots and if you don’t act quickly, you will lose your chance to participate. Again, these are common techniques used to create a Black Friday Sales Frenzy.

Scarcity is a powerful tool of persuasion. Once you are aware of it, you can use it to improve your sales in your own business and even create your own version of a Black Friday Sales Frenzy.

Most people think that Black Friday is the hugest shopping day of the year. And, well, it may be if you are one of the large national retail chains that has a big budget to promote large loss leading discounts to hundreds of thousands of people. But, if you are a small local retail shop, it’s one of the quietest days of the year. Why? because everyone is out at the mall, chasing the deal. The consumer doesn’t actually get around to shopping local, until the last week or two of the month.

How do you compete?

As a small business owner, you DON’T! At least not head-on. So instead of going after the Black-Friday shopper, try an alternative.

There are a lot of customers that don’t like the crowds and rush of mall shopping. Send email or a personal invitation to your best customers and invite them for a private shopping event. Or, host a customer appreciation holiday event. Offer hot cider, hot cocoa and holiday cookies while they shop.

How do you add value to their shopping experience? What can you offer that the big chains can’t? Personalized service for one. A flexible and intimate shopping experience is another. Focus on your strengths and add a holiday twist.

Always go back and evaluate what your customer wants. Why do they shop with you? Focus on the customer and giving them the ultimate shopping experience.

And Happy Thanksgiving to you.

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The marketing mix describes the way you use the primary marketing tools to achieve your company's objectives. Those tools are known as The 4 P's or 5P's of Marketing. The 5 P's are in an intentional, tactical way to meet the needs of a customer. Just like an artist combines the principles and elements of design in each piece of their work, the expert Marketer manipulates the elements of the marketing mix to best meet the needs of their customer and achieve the company objectives. Let's explain what those elements are…

The 5 P's of Marketing

1) Product:

The product is the actual goods or services offered by the company and how it meets the end-user's needs and wants.

2) Price:

The process and strategy for setting the price for a product or service. This includes discounts, or non-monetary fees (time, energy, or attention.)

3) Place (or distribution):

• The channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online, direct mail, retail)
• Which geographic region
• Which Industry
• Which segment (Kids, Moms, Men, Business Owners, CIO's)
• How the product gets to the customer
• How the selling environment affects the sale

4) Promotion:

This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling.

5) People:

How do people affect the perceived value of the product or service.  People that influence that value can include employees, management, and consumers. For every product or service that you offer, you should write down what these 5P's are for that product. You will see that the marketing mix will vary by product or service, but there are some elements you will keep consistent across your brand.

A marketing strategy is a process that enables you to optimize your resources (time, money, people, etc) and focus them on the best way to generate sales and achieve a sustainable advantage. An effective marketing strategy defines how you will attract prospects, engage customers and overcome competitors.

The marketing strategy is the underpinnings of the marketing plan which includes the tactics used to implement the strategy. The strategy is dynamic and interactive. It can change and evolve in real time based on changes in the company goals, competitor actions, or customer responses.

In a corporation, there is typically someone responsible for overseeing the entire marketing strategy for a product or business unit. There are then sub-groups responsible for a given tactical area such as advertising, distribution channels, internet and public relations. Each of these specialists then develops the detailed tactical plans for their area of expertise.

In a small business, it is usually the owner or maybe one marketing person responsible for the entire marketing strategy and implementation. As you can image, this gets very overwhelming. How do you begin?

The marketing strategy is where you define who your customers are (the customer segments), which ones you want to work with (your target), and the benefits you have to offer them (the positioning). As a small business owner, you want to identify the target customer that brings you the most joy and personal fulfillment to work with. That’s why you are in business for yourself, right? Don’t you want to be happy, have freedom and control your destiny? If so, you need to find the customer that is the best match for you and then talk directly to them.

Customer Segmentation

Customer Segmentation is when you divide the market into discrete customer groups that share similar traits. There are four basic ways to segment the market. They are based on psychographic, demographic, geographic or physiographic data. When you segment your customers, you want the division to be meaningful and measurable.

The Target Customer

Now that you know all you can about your customers, you need to identify which of these segments you are going to target. To do this, you will need to determine the profit potential of each segment by analyzing the potential revenue vs. costs of selling to that customer. As an entrepreneur, your costs also entail your time, effort and personal fulfillment. Which segments are easier for you personally to work with? Which ones will bring you the greatest joy? Profitability isn’t always measured in dollars.

Positioning

Positioning is the perception your customer has of you, your company or your product/service in relation to their perceptions of your direct competitors.

To effectively position your product or service, you need to know what makes your customer tick. What problems do they have that you can solve? How can you/your product help them better than anyone else? What makes your solution uniquely better than anyone else’s? Be sure to tweak your product/service and pricing to best meet the needs of your customer.

Now that you know who you are going to talk to and what you are going to say, you need to move to the next step in your planning process. The next step would be to clarify how you are going to deliver your message and where. This leads you out of the strategy phase and into the tactical phase of your marketing plan.