By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

How do you get the attention of your prospective clients?

There are a zillion ways, but in this article I only want to focus on three that really make a difference and that you can apply immediately. 

Whenever I'm marketing anything, I come back to these three ways over and over again. They have never failed me. And you can find a way to integrate all three of them in any kind of promotion for every kind of professional service. 

Not only that, you can do these without hype. You can feel honest and apply these without that icky feeling that sometimes comes with marketing yourself.  

1. Be very specific about your target audience. 

Every year I fill my Marketing Mastery Program with the ideal participants because I am very clear about articulating exactly who my ideal clients are. There is nothing left to chance. 

- They are all self-employed independent professionals who have had some business success but are ready to take their businesses to a whole new level of success and income. 

- They are willing to work very hard and for a long time in order to achieve what they want. Slackers, they ain't.

- They are smart, disciplined, passionate, and are more interested in making a difference than in making money. (But they are at the point where they are tired of not making enough money.) 

- They tend to resist marketing and have struggled with it a great deal, despite the fact that they've attracted some great clients and done many good projects. A large percentage of their business comes from word-of-mouth. 

- In the process of marketing this program every year, I repeat the above information repeatedly, consistently and frequently. And those who apply to the program usually fit this profile exactly. So I'm always working with my ideal clients. 

The question for you is, are you that clear about who your ideal clients are? If not, start creating a "personality profile" of these clients and then communicating that information (as above) in all your promotional materials, online and off. 

2. Be very specific about your promised outcomes

It's easy to be vague about promised outcomes, but that's just laziness. You need to tell your prospective clients exactly what they'll get if they work with you or sign up for your programs or services. 

One way to do this is to imagine the condition of an ideal client before they hire you, and then their condition after they complete working with you. Then communicate this clearly.  Tell your prospects: "I'll help you get from here to there. Now let me spell out exactly what I mean by that." Here are some things that you can include:

- The problems, issues and challenges that will be resolved after your clients complete working with you. 

- The actual, tangible results your clients will have achieved after working with you, such as increased sales or enhanced skills. 

- The intangible results that are more based on feelings than on external measures, such as feelings of confidence. 

- For instance, "Your resistance and fear about marketing yourself will decrease significantly," is as important as, "You'll consistently attract more high-end clients." 

- "Paint a picture" with your words to give prospects more than a conceptual idea of what they get, but a deep sense. One of the ways to do this is to tell stories about your successful clients. 

How well do your current written marketing materials clearly outline these kind of specific, tangible and intangible outcomes?

3. Make very specific calls-to-action

Wishing and hoping your prospective clients will do something is not the same as directly asking them to do it. 

The trick is asking your prospects to take action that is a natural next step for them. Make it easy for them by making your offers immediately appealing and attractive. 

Here are a few examples: 

- To get people to sign up for your eZine, not only offer a great freebie, dedicate a full page on your website to talking about the real value they'll get from the freebie. Just a little box saying to sign up for it is no longer enough. 

- When you invite people to a teleclass or webinar, offer a special bonus for being on the live call. Explain how this bonus will immediately benefit their business. 

- After a talk, not only give away a freebie, such as a valuable report, ask for their cards and offer to also give away a complimentary strategy session if they are qualified. 

- Another way of summing up your calls-to-action would be "always-give-value." Ask people to take action to get some real value from you. This initiates the next step in the marketing process. 

You'll notice that I used the word "specific" for every one of these three attention-getting strategies. Sorta, kinda, maybe and sometimes simply will not get the job done. 

Cheers, Robert Middleton

By Will Kenny - Best Consulting Practices

You may be reading a lot of marketing advice, or getting coaching or attending workshops on marketing. If so, you probably have encountered the notion of a "funnel" to describe how you start out with a broad audience, a wide swath of potential clients, and whittle them down to qualified and interested prospects that you can turn into clients.

In fact, if you use some kind of contact management software, which is often designed with sales force users in mind, it may have some kind of "funnel" analogy built in. You indicate where each prospect is in the funnel, how far along in the process of becoming a client.

The funnel is a very popular, almost ubiquitous, analogy.

Too bad it is wrong.

And it doesn't really help you target your marketing at all.

Ever Put Oil In Your Car?

People who talk about the marketing funnel envision a large input and a small output. But that's not what a funnel does. Suppose you stop at the gas station to fill up, and you check your oil. It's down a little, so you buy a quart and pour it through one of those disposable paper funnels that gas stations provide. When you pour that quart of oil into the top, the fat end, of the funnel, how much comes out the narrow end, into your engine? Still a quart, right?

The width of the stream is the only thing that has changed, but everything you pour into a funnel comes out the other end.

There are many benefits to targeting your marketing efforts. It is easier to develop expertise, and to turn that into value you can sell to clients, with a specific audience. You can reach your potential prospects much more efficiently, significantly raising the bang you get out of each marketing buck. Recycling both marketing content and products and services is easier, meaning you can leverage your development efforts into repeated use and better returns.

But you can't find that target market with a funnel!

A Trip To The Beach

When I was a kid, and I went to the beach, one of my favorite things to do was to pour sand into one of those plastic sieves that came with your bucket and shovel. It was a circular tray, like a tambourine with a mesh bottom.

You poured a pile of stuff you scooped up from the beach into the top, and all the small bits, the sand, fell through the holes. If you were lucky, among the big pieces that were left on top of the sieve might be, say, a sea shell.

Unlike the funnel, the sieve separated what I poured into it into two different piles, one of large pieces, one of small. Each pile was smaller than the original input. I was looking for sea shells, so the sieve helped me pick those out, where a funnel would have just given me a differently shaped pile of sand, shells, rocks, and sticks.

Does It Really Matter?

What's the difference whether you use a funnel or a sieve analogy?

Models help us think in ways that make us more productive, that focus our efforts to build our businesses and be more successful. Thinking about your prospecting efforts from a sieve perspective will definitely help you understand your target market.

Sieves can be used in combination to produce sophisticated results. Some manufacturing and refining processes use multiple sieves of different sizes to sort, say, crushed rock into gravel, dust, medium pieces, and large pieces.

Or consider chemical filters, or even electrostatic ones. You might have an ionizing device in your house's heating system to capture pollen and other particles, based on electric charge.

In short, you can design a sifting or filtering system to focus on a very specific set of properties, and to extract exactly the items that share those properties. And that design thinking is the key benefit of using this analogy.

With a funnel, since little happens to the input, there are no criteria for changing the output.

But with a filtering or sifting model, you can – and definitely should – spend a good deal of time thinking about what properties you will use to separate the sea shells from sand and other debris.

For Example...

You could consider company size, sales figures, type of organization, type of business or industry, geographic location, point in the corporate life cycle as filtering criteria. You might work with individuals of a certain age, or profession, or life situation.

I have two clients who provide training for commercial loan officers (the people who turn down your business loan at the bank!). There's one course in particular, on gleaming information from tax returns, that both of them teach, and where the content is very similar.

But they are not competitors (in fact, they're friends). They even help one another out with referrals from time to time. They can do that because of the way they are filtering their broader audience to identify their ideal prospects

One does almost all of his training for the big banks, the large regional or national banks that we see everywhere. Another works exclusively with community banks and credit unions, the smaller operations that might have several branches in your city and surrounding communities.

Unlike the funnel, then, these two consultants can pour the same scoop of potential prospects into their system, and simply sort for different size clients. From the same starting point, they both pursue their best prospects and throw away the rest.

Think, Think, Think

The more carefully you design your sieve, the more clearly you will target a specific audience for your marketing message, and for your products and services. As you gain experience, or as new opportunities and challenges arise, you can tweak your filter settings to improve your results.

You have to know that you are looking for a sea shell before you can build a sifting system that will isolate sea shells from sand and twigs and pebbles. The sieve model can be a powerful aid to identifying the essential elements that define your ideal client, the kind of client that will offer you a more satisfying, more pleasant, and more lucrative experience.

About Will Kenny - Drawing on his own 25 years of success as an independent consultant, Will Kenny demystifies marketing and develops content for training professionals. You can follow Will on Twitter @BestConsulting and read more of his ideas about marketing on his Best Consulting Practices Blog.

Please feel to comment on this blog post, an of course, share it with your social network. 

Wow, this is one of those amazing videos. You know I hate "fake inspiration" that is nothing but words. But this is inspiration in action. Amazing. If you don't think you can do something, let this guy be your inspirational coach. 

By Kaya Singer - Awakening Business Solutions

These days everywhere you look people are giving away tons of valuable stuff on the Internet, whether it be videos, webinars, e-books or articles. 

I tend to get overwhelmed with all the options. It’s as though there’s a great sea of great information out there and it’s impossible to actually read, listen or watch all of it. 

The marketing strategy of giving away a “valuable taste,” is nothing new. This has been happening since way before the Internet. For small businesses, everything was local back then. 

However, back then wasn’t really that long ago. E-mail and the Internet have made it easy for you to create freebies and give access to thousands of people, world-wide without buying a stamp or paying for printing. But it also means you are now bombarded with tons of offers.

The problem is they all sound good and intriguing. If I wasn’t running  a business and working long hours I would love to listen and read every word. Maybe if I was retired

The issue is that most of you are as busy as I am and if you are also like me, you sign-up for stuff and then never have the time to actually go back and listen or read. 

Knowing all of these issues, you might be wondering how to create freebies that will work in your business. You might be thinking that if people don’t have time for it, why should you bother. Here are some points to help you see why it’s worth the effort and what you can do to raise the bar.

1. Make your freebies an integral part of your whole marketing plan. Many of my clients want to quickly create something and send it out because they figure that scads of people will read it and they will get tons of business immediately. In a good marketing plan the free offer is connected to a bigger strategy that might takes months or years to turn into actual business.

2. Know your strategy and why you are offering this freebie. You might be thinking, “Duh, of course I want more sales!”  However, freebies don’t always link immediately to sales. Your freebies can give you:

•  A platform to build your expertise and show your specialty. Even if they don’t sign-up they are more likely to remember you as an expert in a particular area.

•  A wider reach. People might hear about your freebie via a Tweet, Pin or a Facebook post and then end up following you on Twitter, “liking” your Facebook page or repining your pinterest pin.

•  A larger list of the right people who you can build a relationship with. Ideally you want people to attend or read your freebie, but more importantly you may just want someone to sign-up to get it. If people sign-up you know they have self-selected and shown their interest.  You can stay in touch with them and they may become a paying customer later. 

• It will drive people to your website which is ultimately what you want. When there, they might look at your whole site, read blog posts or download other stuff. 

3. Understand how it works. A small percentage of the people who sign-up for freebies actually follow-through, but even that small percentage can make a big difference in your business as they are more likely to convert to paying customers sooner. There are people have attended one of my free monthly tele-classes, liked it and then attended again the next month. Eventually they sign-up for a paid seminar. 

4. Focus on excellence. Internet marketing began with long screaming sales pages devoid of graphics and poor quality. They worked. Some people say they still work but the trend is to make things calmer now. People are over-stimulated and they are also much more sophisticated when it comes to quality. 

Here's an example:

I signed up for a free video series this week on a subject I really wanted to learn about. My time is precious but I watched the first couple videos yesterday and they were poorly done. The sound was awful and the graphics were hard to read. 

This would have been okay a few years ago when videos online were new, but now we are all so much more sophisticated. I make my own videos so I know how hard it is. However I saw how the poor quality affected me and made me wonder about the expertise of the presenter. This is prompting me to work on the quality of my own videos. 

If you have an e book as a freebie, hire a professional to make a hot cover. The cover is what people will see before they sign up to get it. Those people who don’t actually sign-up will still see the cover! 

Edit your freebie to reduce errors. Even with professional editing, some mistakes get missed but the extra effort is important. 

5. Make sure you know your niche group really well and offer freebies that speak directly to their problem or issue and offer benefits. Those are the people who you want to attract. Although the content needs to be good quality, the name of your offer is extremely important. It needs to clearly state the benefits your niche clients want.

How many of these five areas are you putting into practice? 

Share your freebies below and let me know what you learned from reading this!

About Kaya Singer: Kaya, owner of Awakening Business Solutions, is an expert at niche marketing and helping solo business owners move from start-up forward. Get her free “Niche 360,” a 5-part video course.  Facebook.com/AwakeningBusines

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

I think in the past couple years, one of the most effective marketing strategies of all has fallen by the wayside:

Marketing In Person.

Look, take just take a minute and compare these two scenarios: 

1. You spend a lot of time working on your website and blog, sending out your ezine and posting articles on the web, as well as posting on Facebook and Twitter. 

How many of these people in your virtual network really know you and understand what you do? 

2. You spend more time getting out there in person on a regular basis. You belong to a great networking group and give talks once a month or more. 

How many of these people in your actual network really know you and understand what you do? 

I'm willing to bet that scenario two wins in a landslide!

The truth is, these days and for the past several years, I've been marketing much more in scenario number one. But the reason I was able to do this was because I spent so much time building my network in scenario number two. 

The trick is to learn how to use both of these networks for marketing and learn how to gradually transition. But I'm still a big advocate of getting out there in person. 

I've been filling my Marketing Mastery Program via my email list. However, at the end of 2009 I gave a talk at the ICF conference in Florida. I learned that many people attended the conference just to see me in person and six of them signed up for the program.

This is what we forget. Virtual cannot totally replace the actual. 

I spent a LOT of time in my early years in business networking and speaking. The truth is, from 1984 to 1994 there was no Internet! You HAD to get out there in person. 

When email hit big in the early '90's and the web went wild in the mid '09s I jumped on that bandwagon in a big way. I created my website in 1996 and launched my eZine in 1997. By 2000 I had 6,000 subscribers and started to market my manual, teleclasses and workshops online with great success. 

The things is, now it's harder than it was twelve years ago. Much harder, because there are more websites, eZines, blogs and Facebook members all competing for the same clients. 

I used to have very few competitors for what I was offering. Now there are dozens, if not hundreds of consultants and coaches working with Independent Professionals on their marketing. 

So what can you do to stay ahead and compete in this marketplace? 

The solution is not to do more and more and more online marketing. Yes, online marketing certainly has its place; a great website, blog and eZine are essential, as they simply enable you to compete on a level playing field. But they are not enough anymore. 

What you need to do is get out there more and meet prospects and those who can lead you to prospects face-to-face.

I'm not going to do a long eZine with all the tips and techniques, for In-Person Marketing, but here's a list of things to seriously consider: 

1. Join a local chamber of commerce. Lots of small business owners belong to groups like this. When I belonged to the SF Chamber of commerce in early 90's I made a huge number of contacts, many of which turned into excellent clients. 

2. Join a morning leads group such as BNI. These can be very effective, depending on their members. This is the original social network for small business owners and it's a lot more satisfying than having a zillion Facebook friends. 

3. Join a higher-end business and networking club such as one of the City Clubs or Provisors. These organizations are populated by higher-end business owners. They cost more to join but they can pay off big time. 

4. Start doing talks in your area. Start with Chambers of Commerce, Professional Associations and even meet-up groups that you organize. Many have used these to attract all the clients they need. 

5. Look further afield to speak at conferences. That talk I gave at ICF gave me the best results of any venue I've spoken to, and there are hundreds, if not thousands of conferences around the country every year. Start searching on Google. 

This spring and summer I'm going to launch the first "speaking marketing action plan" I've done in several years. Last time I did it, I got 26 new clients in 26 weeks! 

Now I'm looking for new members for my Marketing Club and I think meeting me in person will be very effective given my past experience. I'm even planning on doing a big, free half-day workshop in the SF Bay Area - probably in the fall. Stay posted!

So, don't hesitate. Get out there! 

Cheers, Robert

Please feel free to comment. What's been your experience? And sure, you can share this with your virtual network!

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

One of my favorite marketing sayings is, "Writing is to marketing strength as pumping iron is to muscle strength." 

So, if you want stronger, more effective marketing, you need to write. There's really nothing else that has that impact. But writing, for most people, is a real struggle. That is, it's not a pleasant task. In fact, it can be downright stressful. 

Let's look at what makes it that way: 

1. You don't have a method or structure for writing that works. You're not sure what to say and how to put it all together so that it has impact and makes prospects respond.

2. You are intimidated by your English teacher and all the formal rules of writing. So your writing comes across as stilted or overly formal, not connecting with your audience. 

3. You are afraid that other people will judge you for your writing, so you hold back, not wanting to make a fool of yourself. What if your writing makes you look unprofessional or ignorant, or worse, it comes across as hype?

All of those are realities I'll address in a minute, but first, what if writing wasn't such a stressful chore, then what?

1. You'd have a tool immediately available to you to communicate about your business with impact. Your prospective clients would get the information they needed to make  a decision and they'd be motivated to contact you to find our more. 

2. You'd build business relationships quickly. After all, when people first hear about your business and want to know more, you'd have that information readily available in an easy to understand and digestible format. Good writing connects you to your prospects in a way nothing else can.

3. Confidence with writing would enable you to do other marketing activities much more easily as well. Presentations, audio, and video programs all start with writing. Once you've nailed down the formula for writing, none of these things would be a mystery anymore; you'd know exactly where to start. 

Let me give you the two most important tips that could transform your writing. 

1. The place to start is with "conversational writing." 

One of my guest bloggers, Diana Kightlinger, covered that about a month ago in some depth, so I won't dwell on that here. Read it if you missed it; it's great:

actionplan.com/blog/conversational-writing

2. Use Marketing Syntax in all your marketing writing. 

This is simply the order in which you organize your writing. And if you take a look at this article, you'll find I'm following marketing syntax to the letter. Here are the steps in marketing syntax that work for articles, blog posts, web pages, presentations, sales letters, etc. 

a) Start with a clear topic or issue in a paragraph or two. Immediately make it very clear what you are writing about or people will tune out fast. This may be either a problem that your prospects face or a solution you've discovered. Sometimes a bit of both. 

So if you've discovered a way to help your clients get more "employee engagement" which will increase productivity and retention, let your readers know that right away. 

b) Follow that with some issues, concerns, or problems regarding this topic. This gets you and the reader on the same page: 

"Have you ever experienced times when your employees are disengaged and can't seen to move steadily towards your company's most important goals? Perhaps some of these symptoms are familiar?"

That draws prospects right in. Everyone likes to discuss what's not working; they can relate to it perfectly. 

c) Then talk about what it could be like. You don't have to go overboard here, however your possible outcomes should be both compelling and believable. This creates desire in the reader to know how to get from where they are to where you're pointing:

"Not only is it possible to get your employees engaged, once they become engaged the power of peer pressure will get their fellow employees engaged as well, often increasing productivity dramatically. 

d) Next, you list a number of points of HOW you actually get those results. This could be anywhere from three to five points, depending on the medium. You are giving away specific, hands-on and how-to information your readers crave. 

As you see, this is exactly how I've outlined this article. It's very easy once you have this structure of Marketing Syntax. Let me review it again:

The Steps of Marketing Syntax

    1. Get attention with a relevant problem or solution.

    2. Get interest by discussing issues they can easily relate to.

    3. Increase desire by explaining how things could be.

    4. Provide fulfillment by giving away some practical ideas. 

    5. Make a clear call-to-action by telling exactly what to do next.

Suggest a simple action the reader could take to turn your ideas into results for themselves. This might be a link to your website or a certain service, or perhaps a meeting to find out more. 

The call-to-action depends on the context of the written communication. So here's my call to action for this article:

If you found these ideas useful, you might like to learn more about marketing syntax, effective marketing writing, and a whole lot more, that would help you attract more of your ideal clients with less struggle. 

I'd like to give you a free hard-copy of my new book, "Marketing Ball - Lessons on Attracting Clients from the Marketing Coach." 

It's yours at no cost or obligation if you try out a month of the Marketing Club which contains a wealth of programs, courses, expert interviews, coaching calls, client tracking software, and a whole lot more to help you grow your business. 

If you're already a member of the Marketing Club, I'll send you a copy of the book if you upgrade your membership to quarterly, yearly or lifetime. 

Just click on this link to find out more:

actionplan.com/fasttrack

Cheers, Robert Middleton

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

As I'm just starting to work with the members of my new Marketing Mastery Program, my thoughts often return to the question: "What is Mastery, anyway?"

This is how I think most people think about Mastery: It's about getting really good at something until you are the best. 

Now in a way, that's not a bad definition. Masters are awfully good at dong something. They are the best, the top of the heap, the ones who can perform better in their fields than any others. 

And we all know people in the arts, business and science who we see as masters: Yo Yo Ma on the cello, Steve Jobs in business, and Albert Einstein in physics. 

This is all true, there are indeed masters, but don't you feel rather intimidated by all these masters? We certainly don't ever expect to reach their heights of accomplishment. We know for a fact that it will never happen to us.  

And you know, it's true. The chances of you becoming a master of marketing your services (or anything else) is about one in a million. 

So why bother even trying? Well, because it's the ONLY game in town!

You don't try to attain mastery to reach a specific goal. You try to attain mastery in anything because it's the only path that is truly fulfilling and rewarding. 

So in my Mastery Program, I'm not actually trying to develop marketing masters, I'm working to get them on the path of marketing mastery. And one of the things you realize on the path is that you'll never really get there - but it doesn't matter. 

When one ultimately takes the first step on the Path to Mastery, one starts working at one's calling, not as if it were a job or a chore, but as if it were a magnificently complex game that needed to be unravelled one step at a time. 

In jazz there's a term for practice: Woodshedding. It's when you spend time alone for weeks, and even months, holed up in your room, practicing your instrument. Up and down the scales, learning the different keys, trying to learn the basic jazz repertoire. 

When a jazz musician talks about woodshedding, it's not in grim terms and with a long face, "Man that was hard, I hope I never have to go through that again!" No, it's more like, "Man that was hard, it was the most intense, rewarding period of my life!" They always have this big grin on their face, and those who have shared that experience, smile and nod in agreement.

Look, for me, I had about ten years of woodshedding. I wasn't particularly talented, and I didn't get a lot of help, but I sure was determined, and I never gave up. Ultimately it paid off in so many ways - financially and personally. 

I'm sure doctors go through similar experiences when they're going through their residency, or when a would-be lawyer is studying for the bar exam.

At a certain point of intense study and practice, something shifts. You have gained basic competency in the knowledge, language, skills and fluency of the discipline. And after that, everything comes a whole lot easier. 

That's when you enter the Path of Mastery.

Yet one of the first realizations on this path is how little you know. In the vast sphere of your discipline, you realize that you are still a rank amateur. What you know is only a very tiny fraction of what could be known. 

Nevertheless, now you have the foundational knowledge and experience to start exploring, learning new things, experimenting and taking risks. 

Those on the path to mastery don't say: "This is too hard, I can't do it." Instead they say, "This sure is challenging, I wonder how I can find a way to make it work?" And then they jump into it, both feet first, looking for new ways to produce a result that exceeds anything they've done before. 

Which brings us back to Marketing Mastery. 

The job of marketing is to communicate to one's prospects in such a way that they move towards your business. That's it really, but the possibilities in this simple practice are vast. One could never learn them all in several lifetimes. 

So if you strive towards marketing mastery, I advise that you first spend time just getting yourself on the path, learn the foundations of developing an attractive message and then communicating this message in any media you choose to move just a few more people closer to working with you. 

To increase your chances of success I recommend:

1. Follow best practices. There's a ton of great information in the form of books, articles, courses, audios, and videos.  

2. Get a coach. Why make mistakes over and over again when a skilled coach can guide you, saving you untold amounts of time and money?

3. Get support. Musicians have bands. Doctors have hospitals. Self-employed professionals have mastermind groups. 

4. Try stuff out. Move into action with something, anything, as quickly as possible. Fail fast and learn faster. 

5. Commit. Yoda, the archetypal Master of our age, summed it up quite nicely:

"A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things."

Now that's the Path of Mastery!

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

For a very, very long time I've been trying to create a video that gives a quick orientation to my Marketing Club. 

And the truth is, I haven't been very successful. I would create a script and then create a slide show for the script. Then as I used screen caputre software I'd go through the slide show and narrate my script over top of it. This was such a frustrating ordeal that I finally gave up on it. It took me so many times to get a half-decent take that ultimately didn't even convey what I wanted. 

My alternative appraoch was to use the same screen caputure video and simply go through the Club site on my browser, explaining as I went. The problem is, it was slow and cumberson. Videos ended up being 20 minutes long. I couldn't win for losing!

Then today, something very fotuitous happened. I was being interviewed for Shelley Riutta's TeleSummit. The topic was "Why Speaking is the Only Marketing Tool You Really need as a Holistic Practioner." The interview went really well and I was on a roll. Then Shelley asked me to tell everyone about my Marketing Club. So, with no rehearsal or preparation, I expalined what the Marketing Club was, how it worked and everything it contained. I ended with a special offer. 

Well, lucky for me, I had asked Shelley if I could record the call, and I did. At the end, I had the flash of an idea. "Shelly, that went pretty well. I'm not sue if I've ever explained the Club better, so quickly. Would you mind if I just used the recording about the Marketing Club and put it on my site?" She agreed, and after some very minor editing I had posted the audio. 

And then it hit me.

Why not play the recording in the background as I do a screen capture of me showing the parts of the Marketing Club on my web browser? I wouldn't have to worry about scripting - that was already a done deal. All I needed to do was follow what I was saying and try to keep up. 

Well, I nailed it in one take. 

The screen capture software is Camtasia - Avaialable for Mac or PC. It's pretty easy to use overall. Camtasia capturer every move I made in my web browser and all I needed to do was import the audio to synch with it. I turned my AIFF sound file into an mp3 through iTunes and imported it into Camtasia. It worked on the very first try. No editing needed. I futzed around a little with the size of the video and then exported it to an Mp4 movie file, and then imported that file into YouTube. Ultimately I embedded the YouTube file onto my website.

I make it sound easy. And it sure was, compared to all my previous abortive efforts. If you've never done this before you're going to need to get a recording program. I use Bias's Peak LE for the Mac, or you could use SoundForge for the PC. Then you'll also need Camtasia from Techsmith.com. Yes, it will take a little while to figure it all out, but Camtasia includes a whole boatload of training videos that will guide you through the process. 

The final result was a short and spontaneous video that explains and shows what the Marketing Club is all about. Of course, you'll want to take a look at it. So here it is below. If you want to know more, just go to the Marketing Club Page that contains even more details. 

Cheers, Robert

By Stacey Hylen - Business Optimizer Coach

One of the basic things you need to be doing when marketing your product or service is to build trust with your prospect.  One of the best ways to build trust is through effective use of testimonials in your marketing pieces and  sales process.  If you use testimonials effectively, they will help you overcome objections, build social proof and shorten your sales cycle.

Before you start collecting testimonials you need to stop and be strategic about it. What objections do you hear over and over that should be addressed by your testimonials? Some common objections are: price, time, they don’t need it or they are happy with their current provider. How do you want to be perceived by your buyer? As an expert, a resource, the best in your industry,....?  

Doing this process recently with a client, we uncovered that equipment costs were a big sticking point that was slowing down his sales cycle. He was then able to identify a current client that had that same objection before investing in his product who was now a raving fan so it was a simple matter of asking him for a testimonial using the process I outline below.

Now that you have identified what you what to achieve with your testimonials, here are the steps to get testimonials that build trust and sell for you:

1. Make sure you make collecting testimonials a regular part of your sales process. As you speak to prospects and clients, let them know that your happy clients often share testimonials so they know it is expected and will be more likely to contribute.

2. Create triggers to remind you when to ask for testimonials.  For example, for one of my clients who is a dentist, we set up testimonial triggers so he and his staff would remember to ask.  Some of his triggers were: When people came back for their big reveal, when people mentioned how much they liked their new smile, after teeth whitening, after they had their Invisalign removed and when people said they were so surprised at the pain free treatment.  

3. Make sure the testimonial isn’t bland and boring. I am sure you have seen these used before, “Bob is good, the service was good, the _____ was good.”  These mediocre testimonials are better than nothing but will not get you the results you want, people lining up to buy from you, because they lack emotion and don’t answer the objections your prospects may have.

4. To get the best testimonials use this format, ask your client: "What was your question, problem or objection that you had before working with us, what was your result, the thing you were surprised about( in a good way) or emotional reaction." For example, “I was skeptical about the effectiveness of SEO and how it would help me get more organic traffic but once Bob explained to me how their SEO strategy was designed to help my website be found by my ideal clients, I decided to try it. I must say I am blown away by the number of visitors and opt-ins I am getting on my webpage; we have doubled what we had before working with him on our SEO." This format also should be used online for products you sell. Build this process into your autoresponder sequence post sale.

5. Don’t be shy to write up what your client has said to you and ask them if you can use it in a testimonial.  Let them know they can approve it as is, edit it or write their own from scratch.

6. Thank them for their testimonial.  While I don't recommend paying for testimonials, a small gift or token of appreciation is always appreciated.  If you have a lot of testimonials, you could do a monthly drawing for a fun prize for the best testimonial.

7. Make sure you track the number of times you ask and receive testimonials for you and any staff members so you stay consistent.

8.  Get those testimonials out there. They will not help you grow your business sitting in your in-box. Have a system for what you do when you get a new testimonial. A sample process could include: posting it to your social media accounts, putting it up on a testimonial page on your website, including it in your newsletter, adding to your proposal packet you send to new prospects, and including it in your sales page copy online or via direct mail.  As you build your library of testimonials you can choose the best ones and rotate them throughout your marketing funnel.  Make sure you create your own process and then get those raving fans out there selling for you.

The fun thing about testimonials is that your clients can say amazing things about you and your company that you wouldn't say about yourself, so start asking, so you can speed up your sales cycle and attract even better clients.  

About Stacey Hylen: Stacey works with high achieving entrepreneurs who run B2B companies. She delivers powerful sales and marketing strategies for business owners who want to increase their sales and profits and have more time to do the things they love with the people they love. Download her FREE Discover Your Hidden Profits Book and MP3 to learn how to increase your sales and profits with your current resources (they are not what you think!).

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

Are you looking for some kind of support to get your marketing off the ground, but are confused by all the options?

Unfortunately there are a lot of programs out there these days that promise a lot - and cost even more. Some paint a picture of riches with no effort, new clients pouring out of social media contacts, lists built overnight at the push of a button. 

Of course they neglect to tell you how hard they worked for years to put together their plans and strategies. Or they offer a strategy or techniaue that worked for them but won't necessarily work as well for others. But now that they've discovered the "magical keys to the marketing universe" they will happily share these secrets… for a pretty hefty price. 

So what's a poor Independent Professional to do when looking for marketing assistance? What should you be aware of? What questions should you ask and what are the warning signs that you're about to be scammed? 

Here are a few things to keep your eyes open about. 

1. Over-Exaggerated Claims

It's easy to stretch the truth, and many do, with little shame. If someone tells you their system, course, or program takes practically no effort, works 100% of the time and will triple your income in a month (or other ridiculous promises), run the other way - fast! 

2. Lack of Specifics

You want to know exactly what you'll get from a course or program. Yes, you want to know the benefits, but you also want to know the structure, the content, the topics. And you want to know about actual results from actual clients. You don't want hype, promising miracles with little to back up the claims. 

3. Will You Get Hands-On Instruction?

There are many programs that consist of written materials, recorded instruction and videos, but no live instruction. The problem is, people are moved to action more by instruction or coaching than by information. The information may be great, but very hard to apply without any live instruction. 

4. Is the Program Over-Priced?

If a program includes a lot of materials as mentioned above, but no instruction, I don't believe it should be priced astronomically. But a lot of programs cost from $1,000 to $5,000 and leave you pretty much on your own. You think the material must be great to cost that much, but will you be able to apply it?

5. Do Workshops Promise You Breakthrough Results?

I'm certainly not against workshops, but experience has shown me that they produce, at best, a temporary high. You leave excited, thinking you can conquer the world, but then face the reality of all the work it will take to implement what you've learned. With no follow-up support, success rates plummet. 

6. Do You Get a Guarantee? 

These days everything comes with a guarantee - and the world is better off because of it. So an expensive marketing program should come with a guarantee as well. Those who offer exceptional programs that deliver results aren't afraid to offer guarantees, so if someone is not willing or able to offer a guarantee of some sort, it's a warning sign. 

6. Would a Book Be a Better Deal?

In many cases, absolutely yes! For a small fraction of the cost of a course or program, there are some exceptional how-to marketing books that give you exactly what you need. How can a consultant live without "Million Dollar Consulting" by Alan Weiss? Or Jay Abraham's, "Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got"? These two books blow most programs out of the water!

7. Elements Your Should Look for in a Marketing Program

Here are the things I think are necessary: a) good written materials with detailed, how-to instructions, b) recorded materials in the form of interviews and/or how-to instructions, c) access to resources and tools not easily available elsewhere, d) a forum or discussion group, e) regular live coaching calls, f) developed by someone with several years of experience and solid client results, g) a price tag that won't break your budget. 

As you probably know, I offer a program that contains all of the above (and more) with the Marketing Club, but I also know I'm not the only game in town and others do offer programs with real value. Shop around. 

But before you jump into an expensive program that promises you the sun, moon and starts, take a careful look before you leap. 

Cheers, Robert

P.S. If you are considering a very expensive program, I believe it should offer all of the above and include extensive one-on-one coaching. A program that cannot provide this kind of hands-on support may offer great information and be quite valuable but not justify the high price tag.  

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