If you have not read all of the previous post, please take the time and do so.

• Decide where you need to focus your marketing
• Decide upon a goal
• Choose no more than three activities to help you reach your goal
• Post your decision in the comment section
• Get ready to ask for advice, give advice and cheer one another along
• Track your progress and provide updates

Why Post your goals and tactics?

Because posting your goals and knowing that others know what you are trying  to accomplish will help you remain motivated to live up to your word. By telling everyone you are going to get involved in the challenge, you will feel obligated to actually do the  things that you say that you are going to do. Do not be afraid, stand up to the challenge and accomplish your goals.

 My Goal for this marketing Challenge:

My goal is to obtain at least 500 rss or email subscribers.

Tactics:
1. Post comments on blogs that my target audience reads
2. Provide guest posts on blogs that my target audience reads
3. Become active in online forums or groups where my target audience hangs out

This is my goal and tactics.

What is your goal and how do you plan to accomplish this goal?

What does closing mean? Closing is the ability to ask for and obtain commitments. This is the essence of closing sales, asking for the sale and obtaining a commitment to receive the sale.

This is where many business owners fail in their ability to close sales, they do not ask for the sale. You cannot wait for the prospect to ask you to close the sale; you have to ask for the sale. Many salespeople are afraid to ask for the sale, afraid they will turn the prospect off or be rejected. You will more likely turn the prospect off by not asking for the sale and if you are rejected it does not mean no entirely, it just could mean no right now.

The key to closing sales is asking the right questions to make sure that you understand what the prospect is looking for and to understand when it is time to close the sale.

Uncovering your prospects needs.

Here are some questions to begin asking to find out what your prospects needs are:

1. Tell me how you currently handle…?

For instance, I am a marketing communications consultant so I would say:

            Can you tell me how you are currently handing your marketing?

1. What are you biggest challenges with your current process?

Can you tell me what your biggest challenges are with your current marketing process?

1. If you could make it, better…How would you like it to work?

If you could make the marketing process better, how would you like it to work?

Once you have asked these questions you can continue asking questions to learn more about your prospects needs and desires.

Questions like:

Tell me more…?

How long have you…?

What happens after you…?

How does that affect…?

You goal is to obtain as much information as possible so that you can offer solutions that match your prospects needs.

Match Your Solution to Your Prospects Needs

It is very important that you match your solutions to your prospects needs. Do you offer solution to areas where your prospects do not see a need even if you see a need in that area of their business? You risk giving the prospect the impression that you are not listening to them or do not value what they are saying.

There are several ways that you can offer solutions to the prospect.

1. Offer a quick and direct solution to their problem.

I understand that you are having a problem tracking the results of your marketing program. I can help you develop a system that tracks the results of your marketing easily and with a small investment of your time.

1. Offer the prospect options.

I understand that you are unable to hire a full service marketing provider and you are willing to do much of the marketing yourself. There are a couple of options that I can offer you to help solve your problem.

1. We can set up a marketing program that you implement and track yourself and consult with you on a monthly basis to make sure that you are on track to reach your goals and make adjustments if necessary.
2. We can set up a marketing program that you implement and I handle the tracking and consult with you to make sure that you are on track and help make adjustments when necessary.

Which of these options sound better to you?

1. Tell a story.

You can tell a story of you helped another client who had a problem similar to your prospects problem. When you tell the story, make sure that you explain the prospects problem, how you provided a solution and the results of the solution. How successful the solution was to the client and give details that show value.

This makes me think of a client who had a very similar problem that you are having. She was marketing her business consistently but did not know which marketing activities were working. After talking with her, I devised a very easy tracking system for her to use where she coded her marketing material and asked customers for the code when they contacted her business. She then listed the prospect under the tracking code. This only took a few minutes out of her day, she was able to see what marketing activities we working, and which were not. Within a few months she was able tell what was working and what she needed to stop doing. Is this something that would be of interest to you?

You have offered a matching solution, now what?

Immediately after you offer a matching solution, ask your prospects some questions. The goal is to find out what your prospect thinks of your solutions and to find out if they have any objections.

What do you think about doing it that way? This gives you a chance to offer a different suggestion if needed.

What do you like most about that option? This will give you a chance to find out what the prospect values most.

Have you ever been involved in that type of situation? This will give the prospect to tell a story of their own and will give you an opportunity to see what they value and to find out if you have diagnosed their problem correctly.

After you have finished diagnosing the prospects problems, do not forget to ask for the sale.

How do you go about closing sales?

Are you ready for the 10-Week Marketing Challenge?

Look out for the next post:

Marketing Challenge Focus – Choosing Your Marketing Focus and Getting Started, Part 7 of a 7 Part Series

 Don’t forget to join the 10-Week Marketing Challenge.

What is Lead Nurturing?

Leads nurturing is contributing to development of your prospects by showing them how your services or products can help solve their problems. You do this by touching and teaching prospects over a period of time, building a relationship as they move through the buying cycle. With each touch point, you are given the opportunity to influence prospects, show them that you understand their problems, have the solution and how you have helped others solve similar problems, which in turns builds credibility and trust.

Lead nurturing is creating content that is targeted, relevant, timely and valuable to the person receiving the content. In order to do this you must understand your company’s’ buying cycle. What stages do prospects go through from becoming interested in what your company has to say to actually purchasing from your company?

Leading nurturing is anticipating your prospects questions and objections and having an answer that is easy for your prospects to find and understand. The goal is to position your business a reliable and consistent source of information. When prospects are ready to buy, you have already built trust, credibility and a relationship with the prospect and the prospect will turn to your business why they are ready to buy.

How do you find out what your prospects need to know?

You can understand what you prospects need to know by listening to the questions that they ask. What type of questions are they posting in forums and groups? What questions do they ask your customer service or sales people? What articles or blog posts are read most often? Create polls and surveys and talk to you current customer and prospects.

When you take the time to listen to prospects, you can develop content that answers the questions that your prospects are asking or objections that they are raising. Prospects ask different questions depending on what stage of the buying cycle they are in and the questions will change as they move along the buying cycle. Providing content that answers prospects questions will help to move prospects along the buying cycle more easily. Tracking prospects as they move along the cycle will also alert you to when the prospect is moving from a warm prospect to a hot prospect.

Turning Warm Prospects into Hot Prospects

You turn warm prospects into hot prospects by educating them. Remember that it really is not about you but about them and their needs. Turning warm prospects into hot prospects is about teaching and guiding them towards making the right decision for their needs. Your goal is to build trust with your prospects.

You can use a variety of tactics to educate and guide your prospects gaining likeability, trust and credibility along the way. The tactics that you employ allow prospects to become familiar with your company and your company’s services or products will benefit them. You can establish expertise in your field, and show customers that you understand their problems and know how to solve them. Articles are an excellent way to educate and guide prospects. You are not using these tactics to sell prospects but to become a trusted advisor, an expert in their eyes.

Here are some other tactics you can use to educate and guide prospects:

Here are some tactics you can use to leverage your lead nurturing content:

Direct mail:
Personal letters, dimensional mailers, promotional items, books, newsletters, press releases, white papers, event invitations, research reports, case studies, how-to guides, success stories, article reprints and third-party articles.

Email:
Personalized one-to-one emails, by-lined articles, blog posts, relevant third party articles, case studies, press releases, white papers, e-newsletters, event invitations, archived events, research reports, blogs, success stories, case studies, how-to guides, videos, podcasts, e-books, special reports, podcasts, videos, e-classes and website content.

Events:
Trade shows, live seminars, webinars, webcasts, executive briefings, workshops, conferences, road shows, speaking engagements, networking, radio call in shows and on demand events.

Online:
RSS or email, blog posts, podcasts, vidcasts, webinars, websites, special reports, research reports, teleclasses, e-classes,  e-books, personalized microsites, how-to guides, wikis, polls, surveys and other multimedia.

Phone:
Develop relationships, share ideas, develop contacts, referrals, personal information and setting up meeting.

This is just a tip of the ice-burg. Your goal is to develop content that is relevant and in a variety of ways that will reach your prospects and teach them. Each tactic used focuses on the prospects interest and needs. By continuing to add relevant educational content to your website or blog, your prospects will return to your site to gain more information, become better informed and become a client.

How do you go about nurturing leads?

Are you ready for the 10-Week Marketing Challenge?

Look out for the next post:

Marketing Challenge Focus –Closing Sales, where I describe the Sale Closing Process and give tips on Closing Sales, Part 6 of a 7 Part Series

 Don’t forget to join the 10-Week Marketing Challenge.

Who is Your Ideal Client?

Begin by understanding who your ideal clients are. Look at your current customers. How much do you know about them? Think about the clients that you working with. Why do you enjoy working with these clients?

Let’s break down the process of creating an ideal profile.

1. Create a list of your ideal clients. Only include clients that you truly find ideal to work with.
2. For each client write town all the things that make them ideal. Include only truly ideal qualities.
3. Create a list of qualities that are most common among your ideal clients.
4. Go back to each individual client profile and write the clients profession, job title, business volume, personal affiliations, trade magazines they read and personal details.
5. Look for the most common professions, titles, business volume, personal affiliations, etc.
6. Take this information and create your ideal client profile.
7. If you don’t have enough information about your ideal clients, get on the phone and ask them some questions.

 Example

Let’s say you are a professional business coach. You have gathered all the information for creating your ideal client profile and your information looks like this:

Ideal Client Profile

Male, age 45-55

Married, average 3 kids

Mid-level Executive – looking to make it into c-level management (This is the problem you help them solve).

Remains in your coaching program an average of 18 months

Looking for ways to stand out in their industry and become known as a leader in their field, (This is how you help them).

Common industries: Financial, banking, insurance.

Members of professional industry associations.

Average income : $75-90,000, looking to move above $125,000 a year.

Average 10-15 years working within their industry.

Average have bachelor’s degrees, many have master’s degrees

Most common departments they work in: Sales, accounting, account services

Once you have developed your ideal client profile, you are now in the position to target others who meet your ideal client’s profile.

Going where your ideal clients hang-out

The next step is to become known and recognized by your targeted ideal clients. Develop a list of places your clients hang out on the internet. What forums do they participate? What associations do they belong? What trade magazines do they read? What blogs do they read?

Once you know where they hang out, it is time to become know to them and show them that you understand their problems and can help them.

10 Ways to Become Recognized by Your Ideal Clients

1. Write Articles – Get articles placed in newsletters and trade magazines that your ideal clients read.
2. Forums – Answer questions that are posted on forums, write articles and start discussions.
3. Freebies – Create a free report, white paper, tip sheet, ebook for members of your ideal clients profile to receive when they sign up for your newsletter.
4. Blog Posts – Offer to write guest posts on the blogs that your ideal clients read and create your own blog.
5. Press Releases – Create eClasses, new services, special reports, ebooks, white papers and submit press releases to the places where your ideal clients hang out. Submit your press releases to trade magazines, online magazines, associations and blogs.
6. Speaking Engagements – Offer to speak or give workshops to local chapters of the associations that your ideal clients attend.
7. Networking – Attend networking events where your ideal clients network, volunteer to serve on committees to become known by members.
8. Advertising – Place ads on websites, blogs, trade magazines, radio and other places where your ideal clients frequent.
9. Radio – Get interviewed on radio shows that your ideal clients listen or host your own internet radio show.

10.  Referrals – Ask your ideal clients to refer others to your business and let them know what type of clients that you are looking for.

When looking to reach your ideal clients remember that it is not about you it is about them. Make sure that you are addressing their needs and concerns.

I am sure that you can think of many other ways to reach your ideal clients and begin building a relationship with them.

Have you developed your ideal client profile?

How do you go about generating quality leads?

Look out for the next post:

Marketing Challenge Focus – Lead Nurturing , where I describe the Lead Nurturing Process and give tips on Lead Nurturing,  Part 5 of a 7 Part Series

 Don’t forget to join the 10-Week Marketing Challenge.

Before you can generate leads or close sales you have to let the world know that your company exists and what services or products you have to offer. When you begin the branding process, you want to decide what you want your company core values. Is your company the fastest, easiest, cheapest, innovative, thought leader? For instance, my branding mantra is helping clients market their businesses easily, efficiently and economically. When I work with my clients to create a marketing plan, my goal is the help them create a plan that they easily implement, create processes that allow them to efficiently execute the program at a cost that is affordable for them. It is not about delving into the latest marketing activity, but choosing activities that work well with their business, personality and time commitment.

Once you have decided what your will company stand for, your core competencies, you can then embark on the adventure of letting the world know that you exist. Making sure that you are consistent with your message and your message is clear.

Here are some ways that you can use to spread the word about your business and build brand awareness.

• Press Releases
• Blogging
• Articles
• Publicity Stunts
• Direct Marketing
• Internet Marketing
• Customer Referrals
• Word of Mouth Marketing
• Contests
• Free reports, tips sheets and ebooks
• Videos
• Podcasts
• eNewsletters
• White Papers
• Speaking Engagements
• Email Signatures
• Promotions
• Tagline
• Facebook Fan Pages
• Twitter

This is just a tip of the iceberg when coming up with ways to get the word out about your business. The goal is to be creative, yet choose marketing activities that work well for your business and not because other people are doing it. Just because twitter is popular, if you don’t have time to constantly send twitter updates, then don’t get involved with twitter. Choose the activities that you enjoy doing and are willing to do for the long-term.

Look out for the next post:

Marketing Challenge Focus –Generating Leads, where I describe the Lead Generating Process and give tips on Generating Leads. Part 4 of a 7 Part Series.

Don’t forget to join the 10-Week Marketing Challenge.

1. Brand Awareness
2. Generating Leads
3. Nurturing Leads
4. Closing Sales

Understanding the meaning of the four marketing areas will help you to decide where your primary focus needs to be during your marketing program. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your business to help you determine where you need to focus your marketing energy.

You should focus your marketing efforts on Brand Awareness if:

• You are brand new in business
• You have been in business for a while and your company’s name is not easily recognizable.
• The focus of your business has changed.

You should focus your marketing efforts on Generating Leads if:

• You have very few leads in your marketing funnel.
• If you have a lot of traffic to your website or blog but they are not requesting more information about your services or products.

You should focus your marketing efforts on Nurturing Leads if:

• You have plenty of leads but you are not following up on the leads.
• You have contacts whom have showed interest but you have not followed up with them.
• You have a large network of contacts that you never discuss business.

You should focus your marketing efforts on Closing Sales if:

• You have nurtured your sales and they are ready to buy but are able to close the sales.
• You are encountering objections that are preventing you from closing sales.
• You are working to close sales with prospects who are not interested in buying your service or products.

Where do you need to focus your marketing activities?

Are you ready for the 10-Week Marketing Challenge?

Look out for the next post:

Marketing Challenge Focus – Building Brand Awareness, where I describe the building Brand Awareness and give tips on building Brand Awareness. Part 3 of a 7 Part Series.

Don’t forget to join the 10-Week Marketing Challenge.

What is the 10-Week Marketing Challenge?

The 10-Week Marketing Challenge is where we focus our marketing activities on one area of our marketing program. The marketing generally breaks down into four areas.

• Brand Awareness
• Lead Generation
• Lead Nurturing
• Closing Sales

At the beginning of the marketing challenge, you will decide upon your goal and the one area where you need to concentrate your marketing activities. Once you have determined your area of focus you will chose no more than three tactics to implement to achieve your goal.

For example:

            I will be focusing on building awareness of my Wordzopolis blog. My goal is to achieve 500 subscribers to my blog. I will then choose no more than three tactics to help me achieve this goal.

How will the process work?

The first week we will choose our goals, our area of focus, and our tactics. I am asking those that choose to participate to post their marketing challenge information in a blog post.

During the 10-Week Marketing Challenge, we will monitor and discuss our progress on the blog. We will ask for suggestions, give advice and cheer one another along during the process. At the end, we will post the results of the challenge, take a short break, and report the process all over again.

How long will the challenges last?

We will wash, rinse and repeat the challenge throughout 2010. At the beginning of each new challenge, you can choose a different area of the marketing funnel to concentrate. If you begin the challenge building awareness and fee you have achieved your goal, then on the second challenge, you may want to focus on generating leads. Where you focus your challenge all depends on what your business needs are.

Are you ready for the 10-Week Marketing Challenge?

What are your thoughts?

Do you have any questions?

I would love to hear from you.

Look out for next week’s post:

The Four Stages of the Marketing Funnel, where I describe the four areas of the marketing funnel. Part 2 of a 7 Part Series

How many of you have bought marketing books that tell you to do a SWOT analysis, and after reading the information, all you can think is huh? Therefore, what do you do, you close the book and decide that marketing is too difficult for you to undertake and you do nothing. You believe that you do not know enough to do it yourself and cannot afford to hire a professional marketer.

The good thing about the internet is that it allows small businesses to market their services inexpensively, the largest cost being a time commitment. Let’s face it; if you are lacking clients, then you have the time available to market your business.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will go through some of the marketing processes available to small business owners. This process will lead up to a 10-week marketing challenge, where we will focus on creating a short-term marketing objective and measure the progress of our marketing activities.

I will admit that creating a long-term marketing plan is ideal, but the process holds many people back. My goal is to help you create short-term marketing goals and tactics that will get you used to marketing your business and help you feel more comfortable creating a long-term marketing plan for your business.

We will begin the 10-week challenge in the middle of October that will run until the end of the year. We will measure the progress along the way; talk about what is working and is not working. Each person will create their own short-term marketing goal and objectives designed to help their business.

At this point, I want you to start thinking about what one thing that you want to achieve by the end of the year. Please be realistic in your goals and focus on only one thing at a time. You can decide that you want to increase company awareness and that this is something that you want to do all until the end of 2010 that is fine. Just break down how you will achieve your goals into 10-week increments.

I also want you to pass this information onto your friends so that they can be prepared to take the challenge. We will post our goals and plans and help one another with ideas and suggestions. Please be ready to fully participate fully in the challenge and look forwards to meeting your goals.

Question:

What is the one thing that you want to achieve market wise by the end of the year?