Archive for November, 2008

Want to know the idea behind the Mega Networking & Referral Event?

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It is true … we are going to limit the opportunities at the Mega Networking & Referral Events. That is why it is critical you are registered on our Priority Notification List. Those who are will have the first chance at available seats for the event.

The video explains all:

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Please make sure you are on our Priority Notification List
http://www.MegaNetworkingEvent.com

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Claude Hopkins is a man who knew a thing or two about Advertising …

He was one of the legendary Copywriters and Advertising men at the turn of the last century. To this day his book ‘Scientific Advertising’ is considered one of the great classics in marketing and is a must read for all marketers.

So what made Claude so great?

Well many things really … but one thing that really stood out for me is his ability to explain the not so obvious in his marketing materials.

Often what he included in his advertisments were things that were not obvious to the customer … but plainly obvious to the company making the product or service. In fact in most cases the company in question simply ignored many of the key selling features of their product or service simply because they overlooked them as being to obvious.

For example … Claude was asked to come and consult to Schiltz Beer company. Take a look at one of his Ads for Schiltz:

In this Ad Hopkins goes to some length to describe the process of manufacturing of Schiltz Beer. He uses language like … ‘All beer is cooled in a plate glass rooms, in filtered air’ to describe the purity of the beer. What he is doing in essence is describing the not so obvious process of how beer is manufactured to the end customer. Remember that to the Schiltz beer company this was just there standard everyday process so it was very obvious to them.

Now when he first proposed to the owners of Schlitz Beer that he describe the process they went through they exclaimed that this approach would not work as this is how all beer manufacturers make beer.

As Claude pointed out though … while that may be the case (ie all beer manufacturers follow the same process) no one was pointing this out to the customer. In other words … no one was using this to their advantage.

So in a series of Ads Claude highlighted the exact process used by Schlitz beer and naturally sales of this beer went through the roof. Schlitz beer remained number one for a decade as a result. Simply by pointing out and explaining the process they were able to dominate their market.

Naturally a number of the other beer manufacturers tried to play catch up. They used the same process so they tried to market the same story but they had lost the first to market advantage. To the end consumer it sounded a bit like me-too-ism.

So what is it that you do in your business that is obvious to you … but may not be obvious to your target market? What is common amongst your competitors … yet if you explained it in your marketing might give you a first to market advantage?

People love to understand the process you will take them through. This is especially true with professional services. If you take the time to lay out your process or step-by-step system to them it helps your prospective client to feel a level of comfort that they are in safe hands.

Right now I can almost assure you that your competitors are not marketing the obvious for your industry. Why don’t you decide to the be the first to do so and gain a first to market advantage?

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Get your copy of The Attraction Marketing System for just $497 by going here www.TheAttractionMarketingSystem.com

Popularity: 12% [?]

What a crazy few weeks it has been on world financial market …

We have never seen market conditions quite like the ones we have right now. This is new territory for a lot of small business owners. It now seems almost certain that we are headed for global recession so now is the time to prepare yourself.

The good news is that recession does not necessarily spell doom and gloom for small business. In fact histroy shows that many small business owners not only survive but go on to thriving during recession.

The choice of course is yours. If you bury your head in the sand and ignore all the warning signs then you may find your business in hot water later on. On the other hand, if you put in place a few simple strategies starting today then you can achieve great things while your competitors suffer.

Here are 5 keys to surviving and thriving the recession:

1/ Income Streams – The first area you will want to address is how you earn your income in your business. When times are good and money just flows to you we rarely think about HOW we earn the money. Heading into recession it is best to have a clear understanding of your income streams and how to improve them.

Firstly you will want to develop additional income streams in your business. If you provide a service then productise your knowledge and develop products around that service. If you currently sell products then add a service component to your business.

You may also want to look at diversifying your business into other related areas in order to create additional income streams. A Financial Planning client of mine has recently added an Accounting & Tax business, and a Mortgage Brokerage business. This makes sense as they can cross promote each other.

Next you want to look at how you can increase your prices so that the average dollar value of a client is higher than it currently is. Do this before we are in deep recession. Look for ways to increase the value of the product or service you offer.

Lastly look at the way you charge for your products or services. Explore ways you can develop continuity income (ie Income that is recurring each month), putting clients on longer term contracts, or expanding the range of products or services through bundling.

2/ Greater Visibility – It is critical that you do not reduce your marketing efforts and lose visibility. This is a common mistake made by many small business owners … when cash flow tightens they look to cut costs. So they slash their marketing budgets and immediately lose visibility.

They key to doing well in recession is to increase the visibility you have in your market place. You want to use as many visibility strategies as you can to get noticed by your target market. The good new is that many of these visibility strategies are free!

You want to sit down at the start of each month and map out which visibility strategies you will use for that month. Then put them into your calendar and take action. Make them a priority as visibility in your target market is what drives your marketing funnel.

In The Attraction Marketing System I go through the various visibility strategies in detail for you.

3/ Leverage Your Marketing Assets – Every small business already has marketing assest that they have worked hard to develop but are not fully using. That has been okay in the growing economy we have had however you can not afford to be so inefficient in the future.

So you want to sit down and look at all of your existing marketing assests and relationships and ask yourself how you can use this better. How can you leverage your existing assets into greater marketing opportunities? How can you utilise the coming recession as a marketing opportunity? Take a look at the picture above for an example of how one hot dog vendor is doing this.

Here is a big clue … the largest marketing asset you probably have is your existing client base. So explore ideas on how you can better leverage your existing clients. It always amazes me how many small business owners are always looking for ways to find new clients yet they never talk to their past ones.

4/ Expand TOMA – Now more than ever it is critical to have a systematic approach to developing TOMA. This stands for Top Of Mind Awareness. You need a system to imprint you and your business in the minds of your customers, past customers, prospective customers, business contacts, and target market.

My golden rule in business is to never let anyone forget you. Problem is … in a world where we are overwhelmed with marketing messages and our attention is fragmented it is harder than ever to get people to remember you. That is why I say again you must have a SYSTEM to create TOMA.

The very best system I have come across to do this is Send Out Cards. Watch the Referral Movie to find out why and take it for a test run.

5/ Adherence To Marketing System – The last thing you must have is a well thought out marketing system. During the boom markets of the last 10 years most small business owners have not had to think about marketing. There was just so much business that they received enough to make a good living. Well that is about to change.

It is my opinion that you simply must put into place right now a marketing system that ATTRACTS new prospective clients to you, enables you to develop a relationshop of trust with them, allows them to pre-sell themselves on you, creates TOMA, and systematically leads them to wanting to do business with YOU.

Without such a system then the future is uncertain. Your ability to win new clients in the coming years may be questionable.

So there are 5 key ideas for you to go to work on today. By preparing yourself today for the coming recession you will be in a much better position to prosper while your competitors are hit hard..

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Get your copy of The Attraction Marketing System for just $497 by going here www.TheAttractionMarketingSystem.com

Popularity: 13% [?]

If you are in Small Business or are an Entrepreneur then you will want to join us for the worlds first ever “Mega Networking & Referral Event”. There has never been an event quite like this one.

At the event we are giving you 10 different opportunities for you to promote your business. You will have the chance to:

* Meet New Business Contacts
* Generate Referrals
* Identify & Establish New Joint Venture Partnerships
* Attract New Clients
* Plus … You will hear from leading Australian Business Growth Specialists

To place yourself on the Priority Notification List and be the first to hear all of the details when we officially launch head over to:

http://www.MegaNetworkingEvent.com

Popularity: 98% [?]

Well there were so many lessons learnt at the recent InfoMarketing Summit put on by Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer. So many in fact it will take me a week to go through all of my notes and compile the results …

For now though let me share with you three key lessons that really resonated with me:

1/ Stop Selling and Start Giving – This is a lesson that I learnt from many of the speakers at the event. The first key speaker to bring this up was the legendary underground Internet marketer Eben Pagan. Eben is a young guy doing $20 million a year in sales on the Internet with all of his staff being 100% virtual. In other words … he has no office full of staff!

Eben attributed much of his success to the the philosophy of giving first. His belief is that the more you are prepared to give away of information the more you will attract potential clients to you. Now here was the real kicker … Eben says give away your best and most valuable information (or expertise, advice, coaching or consulting) if you want to grow a massive business. Why? When people see how much you are prepared to give away the more they want to find out what else is there.

Its worked for Eban … hes doing $20 million a year in online sales.

The second person to really bring this message home to me was Fabienne Fredrickson. Fabienne took her business from around $200,000 a year to over a million in one year by applying effective marketing strategies.

What was the key for her?

Giving away great valuable information. Instead of giving away digital downloadable information she switched to giving away a FREE Audio CD posted in the mail. This one simple shift of giving more grew her database from 5,000 to 12,000. There is definite truth that the size of the database that you have a relationship with is directly proportional to your income.

Now many people will resist this idea. Giving away a free CD is going to cost you at least $2 or $3 per CD. So there are some keys to how you monetise this strategy which I will be sharing with our Inner Circle members.

Interestingly … one of the speakers at the even just tried the old sell sell sell model. She gave very little content and what she did give was gimmicky at best … and guess what? Her back of room sales were terrible. On the other hand Eben Pagan gave huge amounts of value in his talk and created a flood of sales after.

2/ Frequency & Consistency Of Contact – In marketing the InfoMarketing Summit Dan Kennedy made mention of the fact that they had built in 101 marketing touches about the event. They started the campaign more than 6 months out and frequently and consistently touched their database in a variety of ways about the event.

He also revealed that there are more than 700 email messages preloaded into his autoresponder system. So if you get onto one of their databases you will hear from them virtually every day until you buy and become a customer or you die, or unsubscribe.

The contact from Dan Kennedy’s company is defintiely frequent and consistent. As a result they are always at the front of your mind. As a Gold + member of Dan’s coaching group I am constantly reminded of the value he brings to the relationship. He is frequent in contact and prolific in his marketing … hhhmmm I wonder if that is why he gets about in his private company jet.

Now many people who are busy building a database fail to consistently and frequently keep in touch and market to them. This is a mistake … when you do get around to contacting them they will have either forgotten you, forgotten your message, or simply lost interest. You should never let this happen.

Ok … so you are probably thinking that you don’t want to market to your database to much in case you offend them and they leave, or unsubscribe or even worse … complain, right? Well if you are thinking that then you are correct. Some will leave, unsubscribe and call you bad names. Its a small percentage and truth is these people will probably never become clients anyway. So focus on the other 98%.

The other 98% will start to feel more closely bonded to you and will start to percieve you as the answer to their problems.

So increase the frequency and consistency of contact with your database.

3/ 100 leads or 100 ways – Again I was reminded of the importance of having multiple lead generation sources. Most people rely on just one or two ways to generate leads. This is okay BUT you are probably missing out on many more leads you could have got.

Dan often explains that most people he comes across are looking for one way to generate 100 new customers. He explains to them that he doesn’t know one way to generate 100 customers but he probably knows 100 ways to generate one new customer.

The point is … you need to implement many more lead generation sources into your business. You need to have multiple ways to attract clients. Do not rely on the one or two you currently have. Exand them and keep adding new approaches to lead generation.

Well this is just a small sample of what we will be covering in our Inner Circle members webinar on the 17th October. If you want to learn more then please take up your last real chance to get a $1 30 day trial.

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Get your copy of The Attraction Marketing System for just $497 by going here www.TheAttractionMarketingSystem.com

Popularity: 10% [?]

Every small business owner knows this one simple truth …

Referrals are the best source of new business.

How different would your business be if you had created a steady stream of referrals? How easy would your business life be if practically every day you received a new referral that was highly qualified and ready to business with you?

I can imagine you are sitting their salivating at the very thought of it, right?

The great thing about referrals is that they generally come to you ready to do business with you. Refered clients are typically the easiest to deal with and often the most profitable clients as well.

The usual business cycle of taking a prospect though the Know you, Like you and Trust you phases is fast tracked when someone is referred to you. And you want to know the best thing about referred clients?

Referred clients are the most likely to refer others to you!

The fact that they were referred to you means that they are far more likely to refer others to you as well. So when you create some momentum of referred business you can really get on a roll with new referred clients coming to you faster than you can handle.

So by now you are probably wondering … how do you create a stream of referrals?

The most effective way I know of is to focus on building TOMA.

TOMA = Top Of Mind Awareness.

The goal in business should be to create TOMA with as many people as you possibly can. That is why the acquisition of a database of your prospective clients is critical … it gives you the opportunity to create TOMA with them.

When you create TOMA within your target market what you are in effect doing is owning the mind space of your target market for your business category. So when a small business owner thinks they need help with marketing the only person they can think of is Rod Moore.

Now TOMA is even more powerful than that.

Consider this scenario … Lets say Bob has been on my database for a few months and each week reads my Attraction Marketing Newsletter. At this point he has not had a need for my services however over the last few months we have develop strong TOMA with Bob.

Then one weekend Bob is out playing golf with a group of friends on the weekend. One of them Steve is a Financial Planner who is going on and on about how his income has dropped due to the share market volatility. Steve mentions that he really needs to ramp up his marketing.

Instantly out of his unconscious mind Bob thinks of that Rod Moore guy who does the Attraction Marketing … and because people love to give referrals he mentions my name.

Now okay … that is a made up example … but you get my point right? The more people you can own the mindspace of the greater the chance of you receiving referrals.

So what if there was an easy way to create TOMA that led to a steady stream of referrals?

What if there was a simple system that actually generated referrals like you have never seen before in your business? Would that get your attention?

For years sales trainers and the like have told us of the power of sending hand written thank you notes and cards. They have said that if you send just two cards a day then within a short period of time you will generate a flood of new referrals.

In fact I know one professional speaker here in Australia who has used the hand written card technique to great effect. Last I heard she had won speaker of the year which is testimony to her consistent use of hand writtern cards.

So why do hand written cards work?

Well because of the effort taken to write them out. People appreciate the fact that you have taken time out of your day to send them a card of thanks. It seperates you from the vast majority who will not take the time. So you are more likley to be remembered and appreciated.

Now if you are sitting there thinking that you send emails and that should get the same result then think again. Emails are too easily ignored and easily deleted. There is not the same level of committment to send an email as there is to go and select just the right card, write a personal message, stick it in an envelope, place a stamp on it and post it.

People appreciate receiving hand written cards of thanks and more likely to remember you!

I remember twenty years ago when I first got into sales. I was sitting in the audience listening to Tom Hopkins (Master Sales Trainer) talking about this very idea. Just send two hand written cards a day he said. I remember thinking what a great idea and resolving to do what Tom suggested.

Lasted about a week

The truth is while sending out hand written cards is a great idea that will defintiely create TOMA and stimulate referrals … the effort involved was just to great. So I stopped doing it.

Recently though I have come across a solution to this very problem. It is the ultimate TOMA System which I have just started using and I can see huge potential. In fact I want you to watch this movie on generating referrals.

It is titled the Referral Movie and you can view it here www.TOMASystem.com

You will learn about how you can create TOMA with your target market, stimulate more REFERRALS than you can handle … and best of all … automate the whole process.

Everybody in small business should be using this amazing system if they want more referrals.

Popularity: 6% [?]