Small Business Marketing Strategies

80-20 Baby!

By Christian

80-20-rule-saves-you-time — The 80-20 Rule saves you loads of time. It amazes me how few business owners use it!

We’ve most likely all heard of the Pareto principle. The law of 80-20. Also known as the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity. It means that very few things are responsible for most of what we see out there. Of course, we see this in business every day. There are the top performers in any business who seem to attract all the success, and then there’s everyone else. Why are some of us highly effective while others of us struggle to get even small results? There are answers.

Do What Works

The 80-20 rule is not just an observation of how the world works, it’s also a business strategy. It’s a strategy very few of us follow. If I had to guess, I’d guess that 20% of business owners follow it, and they’re the ones who get 80% of the results. Oddly enough, following the 80-20 rule puts you into it’s favor. Test it and see how it works for you.

To get the results of a high achiever you must do what works. You must do what gets results. This seems logical enough, right? Yet when you look closely, so few of us follow this basic business principle. We do some things that work, and we also do a lot of other things that don’t work. Have you ever had a day where you spent running around like a crazy person, and at the end of the day you’re exhausted, yet you didn’t accomplish hardly anything? That’s what I’m talking about! That’s not effective. That’s what it feels like when you spend time on the 80% of crap that only gets 20% of the results. We’ve all done it.

I see businesses all the time that have a lot going for them, but they’re so bogged down in minutia that they can barely function. It they simply stripped themselves free of all the junk that’s wasting their time and did more of what worked, they would explode. As we all know, working hard is not the key. We’re in agreement on that, right? It’s about getting results. Sometimes you need to push yourself, and there is value in that, but at the end of the day, the world doesn’t care if you’re exhausted or not…it only wants to know if you’ve made a difference. That’s all that matters.

A Few Examples of 80% Time Wasting in Action

Are you spending time working with clients that beat the crap out of you every day?
Are you doing more jobs for customers who haven’t paid you for the first job?
Are you spending time on the phone working old leads that never call you back?
Are you still spending $1500 a month on that print ad? How many calls is it bringing in? Have you checked?
Are you allowing yourself to be interrupted with calls throughout the day to deal with mundane stuff that doesn’t grow your business?
Are you checking your email 20 times a day?
Do your agents, salespeople, employees, etc have to go through you for every single little thing? Do you have to approve, for example, an order for more post-it notes before it can be taken care of?

The preceding are all examples of 80% stuff…the stuff that only gets a small result, if any. Yet it requires the bulk of our time. What would happen (I know it’s a radical idea!) if you just stopped doing it? What would happen if you empowered your people to make decisions on their own (maybe if you can’t trust em to order post-it notes, they shouldn’t be working for you)? What would happen if you just spent your time focusing on building and streamlining your business? What if you took all those old leads that never call you, and you just put them on a responder campaign?

Would the world implode? Not likely. In fact, those horrible clients that beat you up would probably stop working with you. How nice would THAT be? I bet the post-its would get ordered just fine, don’t you think?

Can you imagine how much time could be freed up? Can you imagine how many resources could be freed up…if you only freed them up? What are you doing now that’s not getting results?

A Proposed Solution

I propose simply stopping the stuff in your business that you’ve been grinding away at, that’s not producing a discernible, meaningful result. Instead, focus on the 20% that’s getting the results. Do more of THAT, and nothing else. It’s easy to think more sales, more systems, more ads, more, more, more is always the answer. But the fact is that no matter how many people you hire, if they’re working on stuff that sucks, you’re wasting your money. More isn’t always better. Sometimes simply focusing on the 20% will let you see where your business is REALLY at. Maybe you’ll see you actually have enough time to enjoy yourself a bit…or start another business with all the time you save. What do you think?

Why Simple Blogs are Better for Business

By Christian

simple-blogs-rock — When it comes to business blogging, simple rules. Keep it simple. You'll have more fun, and your success will come as a result of that 🙂

When it comes to so many things in life, we over-complicate. Wouldn’t you agree? Don’t you think we do this with blogging as well? We make it way too hard.

We run too many plugins
We push ourselves to post more often than we really want to
We spend too much time on our blog
We concentrate too much on our design
We spend too much time trying to “get traffic” than in just “talking to people”

Look if your blog isn’t fun, you’re not going to stick with it. And that means you’re not going to be successful. Pick a simple topic that you love, and stick with it for the long haul. Here are some principles that will help you simplify and love every minute you spend building your blog.

Plugins are a beautiful thing. That said, run a handful of them. After 10-15 plugins, give serious consideration to simply cutting yourself off. You don’t need more. You really, really don’t.
Blogging should not take all day. In fact, it shouldn’t take too long at all. If you’re new, and you’re spending more than a couple hours a WEEK on your blog, you’re spending too much time on it.
Design matters. It does. But it doesn’t make or break your site. If you think your blog needs to be snazzy to be successful…if you think the perfect layout matters to the point that it will affect the success of your blog…if you think readers really give a damn about ANYTHING other than content, take a look at this very successful blog and get back to me with your thoughts.
Traffic matters. That said, it doesn’t matter nearly as much as you may think. I haven’t checked my analytics in weeks. I’m growing. That’s what matters. It may seem odd that I’ll spout the gospel of traffic not mattering and then later on launch a tutorial on how to get more traffic. Is this hypocrisy? I don’t think so. I just like to put things in perspective. You need traffic, but should you spend more than a few hours here and there on “traffic generating” techniques? I really don’t think so.

If all you want is traffic, just buy a bunch of pop-under hits for $100. Done. You’ll have a hundred thousand visitors a month overnight, and it will translate ZERO to your bottom line of course. Traffic matters, but we spend WAY too much time on SEO and traffic generation. We don’t need more traffic, we need GOOD traffic, and that comes via social networking. Just talk to people. Talk to people, and the traffic will come.

If you’re looking for your blog to blow your business up over night, you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you want to build a powerful community that supports you through thick and thin, that grows your base slow and steady over time, that opens up new income streams and gives you a considerable creative outlet, then blogging is your man. Do it, but take it for what it is. It’s really very simple. Let it be fun, and it will pay you handsomely in the long run 🙂

How to Turn WordPress into Your Unfair Advantage (a primer on business blogging)

By Christian

blogging-to-do-list — It's no secret blogging should be on your "to do" list for 2010!

If you run a business, it’s no longer a secret that you should also be running a business blog. When it comes to social media for business, your blog is most often the most valuable component of your marketing strategy. The most favored platform for a business blog is WordPress. There are a number of reasons for that, but for today, I want to help you turn your WordPress blog into a marketing tool that literally gives you an UNFAIR ADVANTAGE, one that will utterly destroy the competition. Sound good? 😉

Why Most Blogs Fail

First, let me preface this article with an explanation as to why most blogs fail. It’s important, because it’s true. Most blogs do fail to get results. There is a great reason for this, and the reason is because most bloggers spend the majority of their time doing the wrong things…things that don’t grow their blog.

They tweak their design.
They try out a million different themes.
They try out a million different plugins.
They constantly tweak their SEO (search engine optimization).
They spend too many hours writing content.

Candidly, all these things SOUND important, but they’re not. Design, SEO and content certainly have their place. Don’t get me wrong; they’re important, and they shouldn’t be ignored. But they should represent the SMALLEST investment of your time.

Most bloggers do the opposite. They spend the majority of their time on things that don’t grow their blog.

Then what happens? They give up out of desperation. They work for months and get no results. They wonder why blogging is so difficult. They wonder why other bloggers get tons of traffic and make money with their site, while they languish in obscurity.

A Blogging Success Secret

Here’s a blogging success secret for you. Setting up your design and SEO are just Step 1! Yet ironically, most bloggers spend a TON of time on this. The idea is that if your blog is so beautiful, so awesome, so optimized…then people will be drawn to it. Unfortunately this doesn’t work! Most bloggers never get past step 1. The spin their wheels endlessly here. It’s no wonder they never get the results they want!

Time is Your Greatest Asset

time-for-blogging — If we had all the time in the world, we could afford to do everything. It's not the case. As it stands, to get we results...we have to DECIDE we're only going to do what gets RESULTS. Not just what makes sense or what's fun 🙂

Would you agree that time is your greatest asset? If so, then we need to make the best use of it we possibly can, correct? So let’s do that. Let’s make a COMMITMENT that we’re going to spend the majority of our time on things that actually build our blog and make it successful. How does that sound? You with me? If so, then take these 3 steps to turn your WordPress blog into an unfair advantage for your business!

Build Your Blog: Step 1

OK, so Step 1 is getting the design out of the way. You need a great looking, highly optimized, very customizable design right out of the gate. Get the sucker set up, so you never have to think about it again! Get it set up right in the first place, and you’ll never have to spend tons of time on your design. It will always look sweet, so you don’t have the “I have an ugly blog” baggage weighing on your shoulders. Your burden will be light, because your blog will look great, just as you want it. This way you’ll have all the time in the world to focus on building your blog and bringing traffic in.

How to get an awesome looking blog quickly

There are a few ways to do it. One, you can bite the bullet and simply hire a designer. Many may try to advise against this when you’re first getting started. For a personal blog, I would agree. But if this is a business, I think it’s a fair option. Custom blog designs aren’t as expensive as you may think. If you’re looking for something very professional and simple, no one should charge you more than a thousand bucks, and you will likely be able to get a fantastic, custom blog set up for just a few hundred bucks.

I offer these services for clients, and there are also a number of other professionals who do this. A couple I like are:

Kinetic Knowledge
G2WebMedia

This is a way to get a great design right out of the gate. It’s fast, easy and inexpensive.

If you’re comfortable doing a little work yourself, another way to get a fantastic design right out of the gate is to install the Headway theme. Honestly, I’ve road tested a bazillion (yes that’s right, I counted!) free WordPress themes, and here’s the bottom line…you get what you pay for. Even most professional themes require a good amount of coding and expertise to truly personalize them.

The Headway theme for WordPress is the most flexible, optimized and powerful theme on the planet right now, and I don’t say that lightly. If you’re 100% comfortable with coding and web design, then you should probably just put your own design together. But if you’re not a coder, then Headway will give you total control over the look and feel of your site. Headway is a search-optimized monster, and it gives you total control in that regard as well. As far as the design of your site, you have complete control via a point and click interface. A monkey can work this thing!

Install Headway, and you’ll be up and running in just a few minutes. Spend an afternoon with it, and your blog will be decked to the nines.

If you have any doubts as to why I am an affiliate for Headway, I encourage you to take notice of the theme I’m running on this very website (and several others) at this very moment. That’s right. It’s Headway. I don’t sell anything to you that I wouldn’t use myself!

Build Your Blog: Step 2

Use your blog well, and it will pay you handsomely! Now that we’re no longer stuck on Step 1, we can move on two Step 2, where we can actually start targeting what will make your blog grow!

Make a list of keywords that apply to your business. For simple, fast results, I recommend going to adwords.google.com. Click on “get keyword ideas”. There are a number of tools you can use for keyword research. This is simply the most common. It’s powerful, and it’s free! The market where I personally started in business was real estate, so let’s use that as an example.

On the Get Keyword Ideas page, type in “Miami Florida real estate”. You’ll get a screen like this one:

Grab a list of keywords that you feel are particularly relevant for your business. Don’t just go with the highest traffic keywords. That’s tempting. Instead, focus on keywords that are the most relevant for what you actually do. Make a list of 5-10. Then, do a Google search for those keywords. Find forums and blogs that are already in existence, catering to these niches. Set up profiles and start reading and talking to the people there.

Additionally, set up profiles on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Spend time there, meet people. Join in the conversation. There are already a lot of groups and ongoing discussions that are relevant to your business. Jump in and talk to people! Don’t be overly promotional. Just talk. Real talk is what wins here.

What the heck does this have to do with building my blog?

You may wonder what this has to do with building your blog. After all, how can spending time on OTHER PEOPLE’S sites help out YOUR SITE? The answer is, it does a TON to help your site. That leads me into Step 3. This is the good stuff!

Build Your Blog: Step 3

Don’t overlook the power of Step 3 because of its simplicity! This is where you can truly obtain the unfair advantage, because you’ll be doing the work that most everyone else wants to skip. Remember, just because it’s SIMPLE, doesn’t mean it’s EASY! Building anything of consequence…something that truly wins over your market, is hard work. But is it worth it? You bet. Does it pay well? Oh, yes!

So, what is the BEST use of your time when it comes to building a fantastically profitable blog? The answer to this question, as I’ve mentioned, is deceptively simple. It all comes down to using the tool skillfully, for its intended purpose. And what is a blog’s intended purpose? A blog is made for talking to people. So, talk to people! Sounds simple, right? Yet when we look at the facts, few bloggers do actually this. They tweak, they tool around, they try out new plugins, they buy expensive “systems” to “drive traffic” to their blog, they do everything under the sun to try to find a quick and easy way to make their blog successful. It’s such a shame, really!

Is social networking (i.e. “talking to people”) really the key to making your blog successful? Well, yes actually! How so, you ask? Well, the cool, convenient thing about social media is that nearly everything you do easily links back to your blog. Your profile, your forum signature, your blog comments…they all link back to your site. So when people check you out and want more information, it’s easy for them to stop by. It’s important to understand you can’t MAKE someone stop by, but if they like you and want more information about you, they will!

As you connect with more and more people on their home turf, more and more people will come out to your blog. If you’re engaging people in legitimate conversation and actually have something to talk about (you do, trust me), then they will almost always want to know more about you. It’s a natural part of human interaction. How many times have you met someone new and they’ve NOT asked “so what do you do?” If people meet you and like you, they will want to know more about you. And they will come to your blog.

Blogging Success is Counter-intuitive

It’s a little counter-intuitive, isn’t it? You’d think to build a successful blog that you should spend a lot of time on your blog. But that’s not the case. You should in fact spend very little time on your blog! Hard to believe? You can spend all the time you want on your blog, but until there’s a large readership, there’s not a lot to do there! You want readers, right? Well, then go talk to them!

When you’re first starting your blog, you should not have to spend more than a couple hours a WEEK on your blog. And that should be spent on writing content. All the rest of your time should be spent networking and talking to people. See, there are already thousands of people out there who should be reading your blog. Don’t wait for them to find you…go find them 😉

The principles of building a successful online operation are fairly simple wouldn’t you agree? I suppose I could make it a lot more complicated if you want, but the bottom line is that it all comes down to work. Spend time on the right things, and you will get the result. We all have the same amount of time in the day. Where you get the unfair advantage is when you decide you’re not going to look for shortcuts. While everyone else is spinning their wheels, you will be busy spending time on leveraged and effective things that actually get results. Tools like Headway make it possible to put the stupid busy work behind you, so you can concentrate on building your business. Get the ball rolling now!

I hope this basic primer on blogging helps you build your business this year. If you have any questions, I am at your service!

How to Screw Up Your Business Forever

By Christian

coca-cola-marketing — Some large companies like Coca-Cola understand the value of social marketing and the demise of interruption marketing. They're adjusting. Some are just not.

Seth Godin just wrote a great little article on good marketing practices and how to build trust. If you’re not a subscriber to Seth Godin’s blog, it’s not much of a stretch for me to recommend him. Go do that right now. That said, this most recent post was particularly relevant to me right now, and I wanted to share what it means to me, because I think it will help you approach your business marketing from a more powerful angle.

See, it’s hard work to build a business the right way, and it’s really easy to screw everything up overnight.

You want your marketing to work, right? You want it to bring in sales…that’s the whole point, correct? Think carefully about your answer. Do you just want sales, or do you want a specific type of sale? I’d like to submit that you DON’T just want to make more sales. You want to grow your business, and the two are not necessarily the same! If you’re taking your business down a dangerous path, it can result in short term gains. It can produce sales for you. But there’s a high price to pay. That’s what Seth’s post (in my mind) addressed so well.

Powerful Lessons from Everyday Life

Seth’s post was about how he just set up a computer for a friend of his, and he was struck by how many marketing messages are implanted in that process these days. I just recently had to do this a few times, and my own laptop needed a new drive, so I had to reinstall my OS and all that jazz. Man, it’s a mess to say the least. And it puts you face to face with (in my opinion), some of the worst marketing strategies out there right now. The kind of marketing that can really cause a consumer to loathe you. Why do so many companies shoot themselves in the foot like this?

The whole process of setting up a computer now forces you through these dialogs where you have to respond to number of marketing messages. Do you want to install a free trial of Norton anti-virus? Do you want to install Yahoo Toolbar? My HP machine comes hardwired with a trial version of Microsoft Office 2007, as an example. The list goes on and on. After you set up the computer, you have to go in and spend half an hour UN-installing a bunch of crap that is there for the specific purpose of selling you something.

What really jazzes me up about this is that most of the people out there aren’t even aware of the fact that their new computers are set up to be living, breathing marketing machines, designed specifically to upsell you on a number of different tools and gadgets from the day you log on for the first time!

Where does all this come from?

It comes from companies who believe sales are all that matters.
It comes from companies who don’t understand that consumers don’t want to be forced into things, that they don’t like being tricked.
It comes from companies who honestly think sales produced through trickery and manipulation are just as good as any other type of sale. Maybe even better.

Sales is Essential, But Not Everything

If you read Next Level regularly at all, you know my message…you HAVE to learn to sell. And that’s what I help clients with…online sales tactics that bring in results. However, it’s not a standalone skill. You can’t just sell, at any cost…no matter what. You have to help people. You have to actually care about how you’re selling to, or it all just turns into a mess really fast. I argue you don’t just want ANY type of sale…you want HAPPY sales, HAPPY customers. You want clients that are going to refer their friends to you.

Does manipulation produce those kinds of results? No, it doesn’t. When will companies turn the corner here and start actually caring about the people they sell to? Any thoughts on this? What type of results and long term effects do you think this type of sales tactics has on a company’s image? What steps do you take to make sure your sales come in through reasonable and honest means?

6 Beginner Business Questions for Sean D’Souza of PsychoTactics

By Christian

If you’re new in business or want to take your business to the next level this coming year, I think you’ll find a lot of value in this audio interview I’m posting here. Check it out at the end of this post and let me know what you think! It’s all about how to get the results you really want from your business.

I have to admit one of the coolest things about running a blog is getting to meet and talk with a number of awesome people on a regular basis. Surely the value of learning from the top people in your field is invaluable. Wouldn’t you agree?

I got a chance to interview Sean D’Souza of PsychoTactics recently, and the result was profoundly valuable. I had 6 simple beginner business questions for him, and my main goal was to address some of the biggest issues a lot of new business owners have when they’re first getting started.

I know a lot of you are new in business or wanting to take your business to the next level this coming year, and this time of year has a lot to do with planning and anticipating what we need to do to get the results we want to achieve. I hope you find this interview valuable and helpful in that regard. I know you will! I’d love your comments, and please share this with anyone you think could benefit from it!

Getting Results from Your Business

Getting past the misconceptions and focusing on what gets RESULTS…that’s what I hope to be able to provide you by doing this interview. Why interview Sean for this purpose? Have you READ his blog? If you’re not familiar with PsychoTactics, you need to go there right now. He’s one of the few bloggers out there that really focuses on sales and marketing in a unique and powerful way. It’s not just how to get traffic. It’s about how to sell. How to create value. How to build excitement and create a unique experience for your customers. This is good stuff!

In any case, I asked Sean these 6 questions:

What are the primary benefits you enjoy from running your own business?
What are the biggest challenges you deal with regularly running your business?
What would you tell someone who doesn’t know what business to start or who wonders if they have what it takes to be successful?
Do you consider entrepreneurship more of an innate quality or a learned skill?
What advice would you give to someone who wants to make money fast or build their business very quickly?
Do you think running a business is something anyone can do?

My hope is that by getting direct, candid answers about these business concerns from an established professional, you’ll see the value of what we talk about here on Next Level Blogger and apply these principles to your business with enthusiasm and tenacity.

Here’s a Candid 30+ Minute Interview on the Real Way to Build a Business!

What’s it going to take t0 blow your business up and get it to where you want it to be? No B.S. No sales pitch…just the reality. What’s it going to take…really? Sean took my questions and turned it into a 30+ minute audio response, which was totally awesome! I honestly was surprised how much work he put into his responses by putting together an entire audio presentation. Blew my mind 😉

In any case, I recommend giving his responses a listen. His candor and helpful advice may surprise you. Indeed, I concur with everything he says here.

Oh and by the way, if you’re not already subscribed to Next Level Blogger, please do so in the next few days, because I’ll be delivering a download of this interview for free to all email subscribers. That way you’ll be able to take it with you, listen on your ipod or whatever best suits you. Thanks, and please let me know what you think of the interview! If it’s too long for you right now; definitely bookmark this and come back. There are some serious jewels of wisdom in this audio!

[media id=1 width=320 height=50]