Who is Your Customer Anyway?
By Denise M. Michaels
Marketing is an essential part of being an entrepreneur and yet I’m always surprised by how many people say, “I love what I do, I love my product but I hate getting out there and marketing it.” In many cases people tell me that they start a business for a couple reasons: 1) because they want to get away from a job, and 2) because they are in love with the product or service they offer. I have never heard anyone say, “I started my business because I love selling and marketing.”
Here are some quick tips that can help you as you traverse this brave new world:
1) Don’t try to guess what will appeal to customers, ask. Stop talking about your product and start asking what people need and want to solve problems. Listen to the words they use. Look at the stories and the scenarios that occur that people get tripped up with and you can help with your product. When you talk about your product or service instead of their issues it’s like someone trying to stuff a square peg into a round hole. It doesn’t fit and never will.
2) Stop being in love with your product or service and start falling in love with your customer. I’m not talking about providing good customer service. I assume you already do that. What I mean is approach your potential customers with the same or a greater level of fascination and interest as you do your product or service. Your interest in the product or service is really “employee-type” behavior and not “entrepreneur-type” behavior. I believe part of the reason so many people do this is because the product can not reject them like a customer can. Stop seeing a “no” as a rejection and start seeing it as an opportunity to learn and grow.
3) Create a profile of your “ideal customer.” Keep notes on the people who buy from you happily and are a pleasure to serve. What are the characteristics of these people that appeal to you? What do you like about them? What are their core values? What’s of vital importance in their life? What do you know about them demographically? Age group? Gender? Income range? Where do they live? Educational level? Keep paying attention to what shows up and create a marketing messages that appeals to all these factors on an emotional level.
About the Author:
Denise Michaels’ mission is supporting women to live their dreams. Her “Testosterone-Free Marketing” strategies help women see how past conditioning often dis-empowers them from achieving all that they deserve.
Why Are You Doing Everything Yourself?
by Alexandria K. Brown, “The E-zine Queen”
If you would rather listen to this article, you can do so here.
When I coach my entrepreneur clients, one problem I often see is that they’re not taking enough time to market and grow their business.
It’s not that they don’t understand the value of those efforts, or they don’t want to make the time. It’s that they’re simply trying to do too much by themselves. They’re so busy running their business that they’re not working ON their business.
Are You Spending All Your Time on the Little Stuff?
Owning your own business requires wearing a lot of hats. But it seems that when many people leave their jobs to “go solo,” they think they must work completely solo as well. They insist on doing everything themselves — even tasks they know darn well they’re not good at.
They try in vain to design their own Web sites and brochures, write their own sales copy, process their own orders, manage their own mailing list, personally respond to every customer call and e-mail, ship their own products, and more. Pretty soon they’re running around like that proverbial headless chicken.
What eventually happens is their love for their work— the reason they started their own business in the first place— drowns in a flood of administrative trivia. Suddenly one morning they wake up feeling burnt out and without that positive, creative energy they used to have.
When this happened to me a few years ago, I was lucky to learn about virtual assistants (VAs). VAs are freelancers who take care of all that “busy work” for entrepreneurs like us. Because VAs are independent themselves, they work on an as-needed basis from their own homes or offices, saving you the cost and hassle of hiring a regular office assistant.
I now have two VAs — Liz, who lives in Boston, and June, who lives in Georgia. And I can’t live without them!
What Could YOU Delegate to a VA?
During next week, keep a log of all your activities. Then sit down and review it. Decide which activities are truly ones that only you can do and which you can delegate.
For example, here are some of the tasks I delegate to my VAs:
And I don’t stop there. Liz and June have also been happy to help me with personal stuff like researching vacations, purchasing client gifts, and reminding me of birthdays and other important dates. Thanks to these two amazing gals, I save my time and energy only for my “genius work.”
Worried You Don’t Have the Budget?
The good news is you’re not hiring your VA full time. A VA only charges you for the hours she actually works. Although VA rates may be more than you’d pay an administrative employee (usually $30-50 per hour), you don’t have the added expenses of employee benefits, office space, and equipment. You’re also getting someone who has years of experience, who loves what she does, who already has her own desk, chair, computer, software, fax, phone, stapler, and pens, and who’s ready to leap in and start work as soon as you are.
Keep in mind that having a VA will IMMENSELY free up your time to focus on the stuff that matters: marketing and growing your business, developing bold new product ideas and income streams, and servicing your larger clients. You’ll think much bigger and will have much more creative energy.
Look for a VA That Matches Your Needs
If you’re looking for a long-term partner who is committed to helping you succeed (and I was), look for someone who’s graduated from a VA training program such as AssistU (www.AssistU.com). That’s where I found both Liz and June, and I highly recommend it. Another resource is the International Virtual Assistants Association. (www.ivaa.org)
Don’t wait until it’s too late! Most of my clients put off hiring a VA until they “hit the wall.” Things like overdue bills, a messy office, late projects, and unreturned phone calls add up until their business almost collapses.
Take action NOW and at least learn more about getting some help. It will be a big relief, I promise!
(c) 2003 Alexandria K. Brown
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexandria K. Brown, “The E-zine Queen,” is author of the award-winning manual, “Boost Business With Your Own E-zine.” To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at http://www.ezinequeen.com.
Permalink 3 CommentsThe Top 10 Ways NOT to Attract New Clients
Now You Can Listen to This Post…
They say marketing has a bad name. But I maintain that NOT marketing has a much worse name. If you’re a self-employed professional service business owner interested in attracting new clients, are you still committing any of the 10 deadly sins listed below?
——————————————————————————–
10. Make sure nobody can really understand what business you’re in. Use buzz words and industry jargon. Never share the results of what you do or mention how you’ve helped your clients. Make people really work to figure out how you can help them.
9. Talk only about features and processes in your marketing materials. Don’t include any benefits or case studies of successful clients you’ve worked with. Throw in lots of impressive industry jargon and don’t worry about professional design or paper. Using 20# copy paper is fine.
8. Put up a quick-and-dirty website with most of the pages still under construction. Make sure to design it yourself and make it look as amateurish as possible. Of course, obscure navigation, huge graphics files and pages that lead nowhere will keep ‘em coming back.
7. Forget about spell check and proofreading. People don’t care about typos or if you spell their name wrong. Whip out every e-mail as fast as you possibly can. And never put a signature line on your email, let alone a subject line that means anything.
6. Don’t ever network. Make sure nobody ever gets to meet you in person and learn who you are and what you can do for them. And if you do happen to show up at a networking event, make sure to sit in a corner with a beer and lots of hors d’oeuvres, away from pesky prospective clients.
5. Don’t write any articles or do any talks demonstrating to the world that you’re an expert and really know your stuff. Make sure to keep all of that a big secret. Also never share one bit of your expertise with anyone unless they pay you first.
4. Don’t ask questions when meeting with a new prospective client. Just give them a long, detailed presentation on all the technical aspects of your work. If they don’t understand you, they probably wouldn’t be a good client anyway.
3. Do substandard work as long as you think you can get away with it. Strive for mediocrity and make sure your clients pay for it through the nose. Why should you work so hard when they end up making so much money from your expertise?
2. Don’t return phone calls - ever. Just wait for them to call you back. If they really need your assistance, they’ll keep trying until they catch you in. And when they do reach you, make sure to sound impatient and too busy to help them.
1. Disappear. Once you’ve completed a project, make sure they never hear from you again. Heck if they really need you, they’ll call. But don’t make it too easy by ever giving them your business card or putting your name in the yellow pages. You don’t want to look like you’re begging. Have some dignity, for goodness sake!
“By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit Robert’s web site at http://www.actionplan.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses.”
Permalink 6 CommentsPR Power: How to Write a Killer Press Release
I’m what we in the business (the “business” being journalism) call a poacher turned gamekeeper — that is, a journalist turned press officer. As a reporter I spent a huge part of my day sifting through a slush pile of press releases, all sent out by eager business owners desperate to get some publicity for their latest project. As a press officer, I was the one writing the press releases and trying desperately to get them published.
Quite apart from leaving me with some pretty good conversation openers, it left me with a good understanding of what kind of story makes the news, and what kind of press release gets filed straight under “bin”. Here’s how to make sure your press release is one of the good ones…
1. Get your story straight
Before you even think about writing a press release, you need to make sure you have the right story. The fact that you’ve just started a business isn’t a good story. Trust me on this. At the last newspaper I worked on, I lost count of the number of press releases we received, which basically boiled down to, “Hey! Guess what! I started a business!” Well, so did a lot of people. If you want your press release to work, you’re going to have to find an “angle” that your target publication will be interested in. There are various different ways to do this:
2. Writing your press release
First things first, remember it’s a press release you’re writing, not a novel. Of course, you want to make sure you get all of the relevant facts across, but try to do it concisely. It’s worth bearing in mind that the newspaper will probably re-word your release to make it fit their style or the space available in any case, so don’t worry too much if you’re not exactly Stephen King. Focus on your main points. Tell the reader:
These are the building blocks of any story: as long as you get these down, you’re off to a good start. And speaking of starts…
3. Get your opening paragraph right
It’s a sad fact of life that editors are overworked individuals, and their time is precious. If the opening paragraph of your press release doesn’t grab them, they probably won’t bother to read the rest. In newspaper journalism, the convention is to make the opening paragraph short and snappy, and to use it to sum up the story as best you can.
4. Use quotes
Quotes are more interesting to read than straight text, and if you don’t include some, the journalist who receives your press release will have to find them for herself. Including a few ready-made quotes in your press release will reduce the amount of work the reporter has to do, and that will give your release a better chance of being used.
5. Include your contact information
No matter how hard you try to get it right, there will inevitably be some small point which the journalist writing your story will want to clarify, and to do that, they’ll need to be able to contact you. Making things easier on the journalist, makes it easier for them to give your business some publicity.
6. Follow up!
If your press release doesn’t appear in the very next issue of the newspaper you send it to, don’t panic! Sometimes it can take a few weeks for a release which isn’t time-sensitive to appear, but it doesn’t hurt to give the paper a quick call to make sure they received it, just don’t go overboard and take up too much of their precious time…
Permalink 18 CommentsAs a sequel to Seth’s eBook, Knock Knock, Who’s There goes more into detail on blogs. I’ve added it to the “Reading for Your Journey” library as well as posted it to the resources section on Valley Virtual Assistants.
Permalink 4 Comments