Archive for the Marketing Category
Social Networking like a Pro
This week, Techie Guru, Vanessa Rothwell, shares her top social networking tips.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you have probably heard of Facebook and Twitter by now. These days you need to be on these sites from a business point of view even if it doesn’t interest you personally. You might think “Do people really care what I’ve had for lunch?” Well no, they don’t – but by sharing about yourself, your insights and experiences, 
people will start to relate to you as a person and therefore be more interested in your products and services. It’s all about building a relationship, and with more than 500 million active users on facebook and 100 million Twitter users, you will most likely find your market on there.
Let’s take a look at 5 tips to start social networking like a “pro”:
- Write interesting status updates
Think about standing out from the crowd – don’t just share what you had for breakfast, share an opinion that gives people an insight into your personality. Keep your status updates positive and interesting and they are more likely to be a conversation starter. - Participate in other peoples conversations
Participating in conversations will help people begin to notice you. Put comments on other people updates on Facebook, or hit reply on twitter to tweet a comment. Add value to what others are saying (it doesn’t need to be about yourself). Even clicking “like” on other statuses, comments, updates will show you appreciate the comment even if you haven’t added anything. The benefit of this is by commenting on a post or just by clicking like, you will be seen by your friend’s friends and so on. - Don’t bombard others with your promotions
Even though Facebook and Twitter are great
business marketing tools, if you appear to be using them for that only you will turn people off as it’s a big social “faux pas” to continually push your promotions in the face of others. Adding a promotion only once every 3 or 4 updates or comments will keep the balance and show you are also there to give value to others. - Build relationships as you add friends
When adding friends especially if you don’t know them personally, write a personal comment to introduce yourself. Ensure you make the comment about them, not yourself, you will be more memorable that way. When accepting friends, adding a comment then will also help with relationship building. - Tag others to get noticed
On twitter and facebook you can tag someone by adding ‘@’ symbol in front of their name, This will appear on their page and in front on their friends which will help your visibility. It’s important
to do this in a controlled rather than random manner as you can also annoy people if you do it wrongly. Making a comment to that person by tagging them is the right way, randomly tagging many people on photos etc is the wrong way. Making it meaningful is the key.
Social networking is fast becoming one of the best and free ways to market your business, get traffic to your website and build your community. By following this simple list of etiquette tips you will make the most of this medium and be on the way to becoming a professional social networker!
Why YOU Need To Network
“Your network is your networth”. In other words, who you hang out is a reflection of where you are right now in terms of career and finance. 
Are your friends and colleagues high achievers, entrepreneurs, millionaires and massively successful people with a vision and a purpose? In short, are they the people you aspire to be?
If not, never fear. It’s never been easier to lift our game and widen our circle of influence.
Expand Your Business
Whatever stage of business you’re at, you can never stop learning. I get so much out of my time in my mastermind group. I discover new tricks or techniques that can save me thousands of dollars or I make a mindset shift that takes me to the next financial level. And I always meet key contacts who I can JV with later down the line. If you’re wondering how to meet these people, then it’s easy:
Never waste a single opportunity.
Talk To People And Tell People Your Purpose
That’s right, every opportunity with people is a chance to communicate your purpose on earth. That person might be able to help you facilitate this goal or they might know someone else who can help you. In my years of training events, I’ve seen countless moments where people were synchronistically connected to the right person at the right time – just because they shared their purpose.
How To Network
Networking is like dating. You don’t want to get too 
heavy too soon, not unless you want to scare them off. The key point to remember, it’s not all about you and what you want. It’s about forming a natural friendship where both of you can offer value to each other. A great way to make a long term contact is to find out what value you can offer them first. Think long term trust not short term grab.
Where To Meet New People
It’s never been easier in this day and age so here’s some suggestions you can follow right now:
- Social Media – Facebook is not just about playing games and chatting to friends, it’s about meeting new people and forming friendships with them online. Just like when you meet someone at an event, don’t bombard them with what you want, offer something to them first.
- Networking Events – a chance to face to face meet new clients. They even do speed networking now so the structure is there in place for you to meet as many people as you can.
- Seminars and Trainings – always take a business
card and make the effort to meet new people, not just stay within your comfort circle. Often they have networking boards, so post your business card on this. - Random – networking is not a setting you have to switch on or off. You always can be networking, in a queue, on an airplane, in the supermarket, on a bus, round a swimming pool. You name it!
Summary
So networking has never been easier and the benefits are priceless. This week, make the commitment to go to at least one networking event and see what rewards you can reap just by rubbing shoulders with people who can help you raise your game.
Scarcity: Making It Work For You
This week’s BTS tip comes from our General Manager, Donna Powell.
- Scarcity creates incentive to buy
- Reward fast action takers
- Be clear on your system to your audience and your crew
Google Insights Tips From Your Online Success
This week’s BTS tip comes from website guru, Vanessa Rothwell and it’s a tip everyone who has an online business should know – how to optimize your website on the internet and make sure it gets thousands of hits!
By Vanessa Rothwell
How Many Hoops Are You Making Your Customers Jump Through?
(Just To Put Money In Your Pocket)
In this article, Shift’s General Manager, Donna Powell, looks at how best you can serve your customers
Warning! The information contained in this article could make you rethink your entire sales systems…
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How Many Hoops Are You Making Your Customers Jump Through? Or in other words, how easy or how difficult is it for your customer to buy your products or services from you? Think about all the purchases you’ve made online You may have encountered a sales system so effortless you were barely even aware you were buying something. Alternatively, you may have stumbled across a sales system so awkward and time-consuming that made it impossible for you to buy anything! Which would you prefer for your business? The Most Successful Companies Do This This is how important sales systems are. There are many different components to a successful sales system and one aspect of these that we’ll look at now is customer service. Sales=Service Well, apart from the product, your customers get something else out of buying from you – this is their customer service experience.
What About Your Business?
Let’s look at an example: If you want to make it easy for customers to buy from you, AND your customers expect it to be easy then do you actually know how easy it is?
If a part of your business goals is to make it easy for people to purchase from you then you will want to think about these things. Summary Look honestly at where you are spending your time. How much more time do you need to put into your sales systems, particularly the customer satisfaction. Why not make a point of looking at your sales systems. Start to shift your focus towards sales. And choose one thing you can start implementing now. |
in the last week, month or even year.
Taking The Confusion Out Of Getting A Website
This post is brought to you courtesy of Vanessa Rothwell from Your Online Success
As a speaker looking to get a website set up to develop an online presence to support your speaking business, here are the important factors you should consider. In this article we are going to take a look at the components of your website.
What type of domain and hosting account do I need?
Every speaker should have a website in their own name just like Joey has www.JoannaMartin.com.au. So if you have not yet got your own name as a domain, I highly recommend you get that registered. This allows people who hear about you, to search for you online and easily find you via your web site.
Also take a look at your audience – Are they only in the country of your residence ie. Australia or the UK? Or do you have an International audience covering the USA and other countries? For the best rankings in Google, you should have a .com.au domain for an Australian audience, a .co.uk for a UK audience, and a .com domain for an international audience.
Similarly with hosting, although there are many cheap hosting accounts in the USA, its better (from the perspective of Google) to host your web site in your home country if you are targeting your audience there. This allows you to be found easier in searches.
What type of website or software do I need?
These days the more dynamic your web site is (more easily changeable), the better success you will have as search engines love new content. One of the best website systems to use is WordPress. It is easy to use and you can get many different plugins (extra pieces of software) that will enhance your website functionality, and many of them are FREE! WordPress is also a blogging software which allows you to write regular articles to engage and build a relationship with your audience.
And Google loves this as it means more content!
Although you can start easily with a blog site on wordpress.com or blogger.com, these sites are not owned by you, and if you don’t comply with their terms in some way, they could easily shut you down, plus you have less control on the website appearance. It is better to have WordPress installed on your own domain and hosting server (available from wordpress.org) which means you own the site and can have customised exactly to your needs.
You also need to look at the purpose of your website and where you are going with it as to how much money you should spend. If you know that you will be building a business around your niche or topic and will be needing your website and the software behind it to fully support your business, you may be better to spend a little more upfront to have a web site that grows with your business, and has all the functionality you need, rather than something that will have limited functions.
What should go on my website?
There are 2 main areas you need to consider when planning out your website:
Design
Your design should be clean and the colours and images should represent what you are about. It should portray the look and feel of your business. As a speaker, on a website with your own name, you might also have a picture of you incorporated in the design. Many people get hung up on wanting to first make sure their branding or logo is created and they have everything perfect before they get started. It is important to just start! You can always update your design or logo at a later stage.
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Content
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when people come to your site, depending on the type of website you are creating, this could be an intro to your business, an opt-in page, or a blogging page. Whatever you have, it needs to be enticing to either get people to take the next step with you or to keep coming back to your site. More on this next week.I hope you have enjoyed this article on Taking The Confusion Out Of Getting A Website. This is only the tip of the iceberg, so if you would like more information please see my free 10-part video series at www.YouronlineSuccess.com.au which comes with a free, no-obligation, 20 minute consultation with me about your needs.
Why You Need A Blog
This week our tip is supplied by website guru, Vanessa Rothwell. Vanessa – or Ness – worked as Shift Speaker Training’s very own in-house Web Developer for 2 years. In fact, she was with Joey and Greg right from the beginning, helping them as they started out in those early days and grew to what they are today. Nowadays, she runs her own business called Your Online Success. Because Ness knows so much about websites, we thought it would be useful to share this knowledge with you:
The Client Appreciation Night
This is a simple, fool-proof way to build your list and make sales. The biggest mistake that most people make is looking outside of their business for profit making. Your current customers will buy again and again if you give them the chance.
One Simple Strategy to Boost Your Profits this Month
Host your own “Client Appreciation Night” to boost sales instantly. This is a really simple way to get started on your own events without risking a lot, and without having a huge monetary outlay. My first client appreciation night I spent $17 on dips and chips and made $795 in sales. On my second such night I spent $350 on the evening and made $10,060 in sales. It’s a great strategy, with great return on investment.
Overall what you will be doing is this:
- Invite your clients along to a value packed evening
- Ask them to bring a friend or two (build your list)
- Deliver great content
- Make an offer on your products and services
How to invite your clients
Send out invitations to a selection of your best clients who you believe will have a high chance of buying new products or service you will be offering.
Prepare the evening
As a client appreciation style night, it’s a good idea to make it a networking focus. So make sure you facilitate a networking style of evening.
FIND A SUITABLE VENUE. PICK A DATE.
Give yourself a good 4-6 weeks to prepare and market, especially if this is your first time.
Make it a fun evening for everyone! A boring “appreciation night” with bad food, low quality information and not so good location/venue will only hurt your reputation. Hit all the right buttons will not only give you the profits that you desired plus you and the audience would have had a fantastic night.
Here’s a checklist of a few things to organize:
- Venue (you can just use your office, or the boardroom of a virtual office or similar- keep it simple!)
- Nametags
- Drinks and nibbles
- Somewhere to sit down for a small presentation
- Order forms
- Handouts for any content
- A “service table” to answer questions about the offer
Your Run Sheet for the Night
Here’s a simple plan for the evening that you could follow:
7:00-7:45: Welcome drinks: make sure you facilitate networking and introduce people to one another. Look to create connections for people.
7:45-7:50: Have an MC introduce you
7:50-8:30: Do your presentation
8:30-9:00: Sales and further networking
Notice it’s really simple. Simple is a great place to start.
What should you teach?
Load your “Appreciation Night” with good quality content – or you will risk losing their trust. Teach your 3-4 step success formula, or your top tips. This is a perfect opportunity to practice your presentation that you’ve been working on.
Now that you have a relaxed, happy and captive audience, it’s time to make an offer on a new product or service that will benefit them! Make sure you follow the formula, and invite action.
Summary
This simple little strategy can be added with little or no drama to any business. It’s a great way of building your relationships with your clients, building your list and when you make an offer you can create and extra few thousand dollars to the bottom line easily! So this week get out there and organize a “Client Appreciation Night”. It’s simple, generous and a great way to boost the bottom line.
Scarcity and Celebrity
- When you are just one amongst very few you can command a far higher price for the service you provide.
- The more specialist you become, the higher your premium.
- Think about narrowing down your topic.
- Or – Narrowing down your niche.
Good Order Form Structure
The Key Main things you need on an order form are:
- Headline
- Key Benefit
- What You Get (Features and Benefits)
- Description of Bonuses
- Summary of Value
- Guarantee
- “YES! I want to become a member!”
- Nuts and Bolts – Name and Address etc
- Continuity Tick Box
- Signature
- Contact Details
In the Blueprint Chapter you will discover:
How to create a magnetic and attractive offer that has people leaping out of their seats to buy from you, without ever looking or feeling "sales-y"...
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