Tag Archive for: Business Success

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5 Common Reasons Why Your Marketing isn’t Working (And How to Fix It)

Some common reasons why your marketing isn’t working are probably less obvious than you might think. Marketing, when not done right, can easily fail to produce the desired results. Many times, I have seen business owners sit down to come up with their own marketing strategy, only to end up with great disappointment. However, this is all part of being in business. When we fail, we pick ourselves up and go again.

Nevertheless, I have identified a few common mistakes when it comes to marketing and outlined some strategies for how to fix these problems.

Here are 5 common reasons why your marketing isn’t working

 

1. Trying to be everything to everyone

Many businesses fail to send out a clear message that is targeted at their ideal customer (Avatar). Instead they try to keep their message as broad as possible. This approach results in generic messaging that doesn’t work. Instead, be very clear about your purpose, what your product or service is about and who exactly it is for. Identify who your ideal customers are and craft copy that speaks directly to them. The clearer your message and targeting, the better your sales will be.

2. Competing on price

One approach many businesses take when competition moves in is to lower their price. In some industries, this has led to a war on price between competitors leaving little to none for anyone. Rather than lowering your prices, try to find ways to add more value to your customers. This won’t just leave you better off financially, but also position you as the expert amongst your competitors. Ever seen Apple run a sale?

3. Limiting Marketing to Just One Platform

Businesses have to consider more than one marketing platform. Digital marketing offers countless tools to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your campaigns and proactively increase your sales when you choose to. Social media is just one platform. Email marketing is another. Traditional forms of marketing are also worth testing, especially when targeting customers who are yet to embrace the digital era. Muti-channel marketing also allows you to identify where your best customers are coming from and where to spend most of your budget in order to get the best return.

4. Lack of Strategy

Without a strategy, marketing fails. This is one of the most common reasons why your marketing isn’t working. In marketing, strategy is everything. In fact, the right strategy produces stunning, hitherto unimagined results. Develop a marketing plan and stick to it. Test what’s working, repeat what does, discard what doesn’t. Numbers don’t lie.

5. Dead Techniques

Dead marketing techniques kill businesses faster than ever before. Don’t get stuck in the old ways. If it’s not working, change it. Replace it with something that works. Tweak it if necessary. There’s no need of staying loyal to ideas that cost a lot of money yet have nothing to show for all that investment. Even if it once was your best strategy.

Do you currently have a strategy that allows you to get new customers “on tap”? If not, I might be able to help. As an independent marketing consultant, I help business owners in the retail and hospitality industries to design and implement automated marketing strategies that take their business to a whole new level. When you’re ready, let’s have a chat about your business.

 

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6 TED Talks Every Business Owner Should Watch

Best TED Talks for Business Owners

TED Talks are geared towards spreading ideas using short, powerful talks. The talks last no more than 18 minutes each, are factual and entertaining. Initially, they revolved around Technology, Entertainment, and Design (hence the name TED) when they started out in 1984. Today, the talks touch on almost all areas of life and business. As business owners, we can learn a lot from watching many of these talks and gain valuable insights. The good news is, the talks are freely available on TED.com.

Here are our top TED Talks every business owner should watch. Enjoy!

1. Cameron Herold: Let’s Raise Kids To Be Entrepreneurs

Cameron Herold, who founded COO Alliance, gave a TED Talk entitled, “Let’s raise kids to be entrepreneurs.” In his words, the traditional system of education does not encourage kids to be entrepreneurs. He believes that we should change the system to produce more entrepreneurs.

2. Nirmalya Kumar: India’s Invisible Innovation

Nirmalya Kumar’s TED Talk focuses on the link between business and innovation. As most business owners know, running a business successfully requires a good dose of innovation. A business that constantly develops new products and processes has a higher chance of success.

3. Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Eight years ago, Simon Sinek gave a TED Talk on the role great leaders play in inspiring action. The lessons from that talk are still relevant today. Company leaders call the shots. CEOs determine the direction a company takes.

A leader determines how successful a company’s digital marketing campaign shall be.

4. Regina Hartley: Why The Best Hire Might Not Have The Perfect Resume

What makes Regina Hartley’s TED Talk a must watch for entrepreneurs is the advice she gives on the role of a resume in hiring or not hiring a new employee. Entrepreneurs put too much focus on what is on the resumes.

They forget that the resumes never capture all the important details of a prospective employee.

For example, the resume may not tell an entrepreneur everything the prospective employee did in creating a marketing automation software. A perfect resume may keep us away from one who has overcome great difficulties and challenges to get here.

5. Philip Evans: How Data Will Transform Business

The TED Talk Philip Evans gave in 2014 was designed to help businesses understand the role of data. We have to understand the transformational ability that data has in any business. We can no longer ignore analysing the importance of technology and data for running a business.

After all, marketing automation, like all types of technology, depends on data.

6. Seth Godin: How To Get Your Ideas To Spread

Seth Godin’s TED Talk was titled “How to get your ideas to spread”. In that talk, we understand the importance of using bizarre ideas in marketing. Good and boring ideas are not always productive. Bizarre ones, on the other hand, capture and retain customer’s attention.

These must-watch business TED Talks are a great start for any entrepreneur or business owner who is wanting to learn and grow, both on a personal and business level.

Do you have a favourite TED talk? Share the link in the comments below!

 

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6 Lessons About Growing Your Business You’ll Learn From Superheroes

Can superheroes really teach you any valuable lessons about growing your business?

The world has been blessed with a stream of several top superheroes over the years. From Wonder Woman to Iron Man, Firestorm, Superman, Spiderman, and Thor, there is a long list of superheroes to choose from. There are many lessons we can learn from your childhood idols

They entertain us. They also help us to understand more about ourselves. They remind us of some wonderful lessons regarding humanity that we may have forgotten due to the pressures of life.

However, superheroes can also teach us some valuable lessons about growing our businesses.

Here are 6 lessons about growing your business you can learn from superheroes

 

1. Staying true to our aspirations and beliefs

We are likely to forget or abandon our aspirations and beliefs from time to time. However, a close look at these superheroes shows us that we don’t have to go down that route. Pursue what is right for the business until the end, even if nobody else has the same belief in it.

2. Take your power seriously

Superheroes have a lot of power. They also have a lot of responsibilities hanging over their shoulders. Remarkably, they show an uncanny ability to use their power well. They take what they do seriously and so should we while running and growing our businesses.

3. Be ready to make difficult decisions

A close look at any superhero shows that they struggle to make decisions. The weigh each decision’s pros and cons. Sometimes they fail and other times they succeed. What they are very good at though is the ability and willingness to make difficult decisions.

Any person who desires to run a business needs to be prepared to make some uncomfortable decisions, too.

More importantly, making difficult decisions helps us to know our values better! We can all learn from this Harvard Business Review article about making tough decisions.

4. Never be afraid of asking for what you want

Anyone who runs a business also does a lot of asking. We ask for information. We ask for data. We ask clients to give us feedback. We ask clients to buy our products and services. Superheroes are never afraid of asking.

Never be afraid to use marketing automation apps to help the business expand.

We can’t grow any business if we are afraid of asking for help or stating what we want.

5. Stay focused on the most important tasks

Superheroes assume a new aura when pursuing specific goals. They allow nothing to distract them. Entrepreneurs also have to develop such an attitude. It’s important that we stay focused on the areas of our businesses that perform exceedingly well while ignoring distractions. This is just one of the lessons about growing your business you can learn from them.

6. Don’t wait until you feel ready, start now

It’s normal for us to wait until we feel ready to do what we ought to do. That may not be an effective way of growing a business. Superheroes never wait until all conditions are perfect to do something. They get up and do whatever is required now.

There’s no perfect time. Do whatever has to be done NOW!

If it’s digital marketing, embark on it right away! I’ll help you. Let’s have a chat to find out where you’re at and what you need to transform your marketing.

What lessons about growing your business have you learned? Let me know in the comments below.

To your success,

References

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5 Little Tweaks That’ll Transform Your Digital Marketing

Why would you want to transform your digital marketing? Digital marketing is a super dynamic field. It changes at a meteoric pace. Many businesses struggle to keep up with and adapt to these fast changes. It is important, especially for marketers, to always be on the lookout for the next wave of changes and not settle for old ways of doing business.

Your current strategy may require a few tweaks from time to time to improve the results it offers. A few tweaks rather than a massive overhaul is often all it takes to take your campaign to whole new level. Here is a list of five tweaks worth implementing to transform your digital marketing.

1. Integrating Data Into All Your Marketing Decisions

Stop all digital marketing (and any other form of marketing) that is not data-driven. Business owners who continue marketing while ignoring data stand a high chance of heading into a storm of failure. Any content that you develop devoid of data will not produce the desired results either. Make sure you know exactly how much of your budget you are putting into a campaign and what you get out. Track everything!

2. SEO Should Remain a Priority

You will hear all manner of things regarding SEO. For example, some will tell you it’s dying, if not dead already. Well, you have a choice to make here. Either you believe them or you don’t. We would rather you continue prioritizing SEO though. Learn to prioritize SEO.

SEO isn’t a new concept. It’s critical to developing a highly effective digital marketing strategy. Good SEO helps ensures all your content is getting the attention it deserves. More quality traffic will result in more business.

3. Personalising Your Customer Experience

In many industries today, customers are demonstrating a bias towards companies that offer them personalised experiences. It’s not surprising that our lifestyle and interests often determine the choices we make. A highly intuitive group of marketers is necessary to map out and develop this kind of customer experience. Use tools like email automation, Messenger Marketing and other platforms that allow for action-based communication to create a personalised buying journey for each of your customers.

4. Making The Most of Your Website

Your website, if done well, can be one of the biggest assets in your business. Make sure the content on your website is of high quality, engaging and current, so visitors spend more time engaging with it. Make it easy for people to share your ideas using social sharing tools.

Ensure your website is capable of capturing leads by providing additional value to people who opt-in. Opt-in popups are a great way to capture engaged visitors.

Make your website responsive! In 2018, more than 80% of people visit a website on a mobile device. Failing to have a responsive website will not only result in lost visitors, but in lost business opportunities, too.

5. Improve Your Email Campaigns

A well-designed digital marketing strategy always incorporates email campaigns. Emails are not new tools in marketing. Since we already established that the world has moved on, we also have to change how we carry out our email campaigns.

How To Improve Your Email Campaigns:

  1. provide your customers with more value and content they will actually love
  2. being concise by passing the right message at the right time
  3. making the Calls to Action clear while creating a sense of urgency
  4. be consistent with your sending frequency, tone of voice, design and core message

Embrace segmentation and personalisation when developing your email marketing campaigns.

In fact, marketing automation often results in a drastic improvement of the email campaigns I run for my clients.

What are some tweaks that you have used in the past to improve the results and transform your digital marketing campaigns? Let me know in the comments below!

 

References

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Seven Things Smart Entrepreneurs Do Daily

If you pay attention to entrepreneurial culture, you may start to notice a few daily trends among successful entrepreneurs. You may not be the ‘waking up at 4 a.m.’ type of entrepreneur but you may learn a thing or two from them. Below are some things smart entrepreneurs do on a daily basis.

1. They Plan Their Day

When you venture into the entrepreneurial life after working a 9 to 5, you will have so much time on your hands that you will not know what to do with it, literally. Instead of spending your newfound free time on Netflix, you should be growing your business. Successful entrepreneurs plan their days out so they know what needs to be done at what time to optimize their time. This is considered as the top thing smart entrepreneurs do on a daily basis.

2. They Take Time Off To Recharge

You may think that as an entrepreneur, there is no time to waste on rest but you need to know when to take a break. There is a difference between working effectively and working. Successful entrepreneurs usually have a strict work schedule, but they also have time off from their work and it does not eat into their work. You can switch off from work to help you find happiness in other things aside from work. Also, ensure you get enough rest or take time from work so you can recharge and get a new perspective on things. 

3. Smart Entrepreneurs Focus On Self-Development

Successful, smart entrepreneurs also use methods like coaching, mentoring, workshops, courses, audiobooks, and podcasts to enhance self-development. You need to keep learning in order to continue growing. Once you become an entrepreneur, invest in self-development and your own education. It helps you learn more about business and become more self-aware so you can grow professionally and personally. 

The fastest way to learn is to connect with other entrepreneurs who have already done what you are trying to achieve. Join a network of like-minded business owners to connect with and learn from others.

3. Smart Entrepreneurs Outsource 

You will get to a point in your business where you will feel the need to start outsourcing tasks because you are tired and cannot grow, but worried about making enough money to cover outsourcing. This is the ideal time to start. Successful entrepreneurs have admitted that outsourcing to experts was a turning point for their business allowing faster growth and bringing in more income than before.

4. They Have A Way Of Keeping Up with Their Inbox 

Outsource your inbox or schedule time to check emails and respond to them to avoid becoming a slave to it. Smart entrepreneurs turn off email notifications to resist the urge to keep checking each one as it comes in. 

5. Healthy Entrepreneurs Maintain Proper Nutrition

You can easily slip in this department as an entrepreneur because you may become caught up in your daily activities and end up eating a couple of snacks throughout the day. This also boils down to planning your day; schedule eating times and go as far as planning your meals and preparing them in advance.

6. They Take Time for Themselves

Everyone needs to take time for themselves regardless of how many hours he or she works or sleeps. Successful entrepreneurs schedule time for themselves for quiet time to meditate or read a book. You may also need to be away physically once in a while for a holiday; make sure you schedule it in so it does not clash with your business activities. 

7. They Use Time Chunking To Be More Productive

The idea here is that a task can take as long as the amount of time you have allocated to complete it. Schedule a specific amount of time to complete a specific task and you will be able to complete multiple tasks without procrastinating and with laser focus. Successful entrepreneurs have attributed this method to their increased productivity.

What’s something that you do regularly to stay on track and up your productivity? Let me know in the comments below!

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3 Things You Can Do Now To Get Your Marketing Right (And Your Time Back)

Unless you are drowning in new customers, getting your marketing right should always be a priority. As business owners, we face many challenges and have to be able to react and adapt to the constantly changing market, customer behaviour and other aspects of our particular industries.

Certain things, however, remain the same, like the importance of great customer service and building trust with your customers. In fact, they are becoming increasingly important in order to maintain a viable business. What has changed completely though is how we deliver customer experiences. Using clever software, it has become easier than ever before to design and deploy personalised customer experiences that build trust through consistent touchpoints. Moreover, it is now possible to automate your entire marketing strategy, from first contact with your brand to after-sale care. Thus, we have now reached a stage where we are able to develop digital marketing ecosystems that can deliver results 24/7.

A digital marketing ecosystem can help your business move from a reactive way of marketing (only marketing when business is down) to a proactive approach that is more predictable and fully automated. A well-designed marketing strategy produces a steady stream of qualified leads, builds trust through nurturing, helps to make sales and even provides guidance to your customers after they have made a purchase. By automating this entire cycle, we can move our focus towards delivering amazing customer experiences, identify exactly which strategies work and which don’t, and dedicate more of our time to producing amazing products and services.

Here are 3 things you can do now to take your marketing and business to the next level

The result of implementing these strategies is a healthier business, happier customers and more time for business owners to focus on what truly matters to them.

1. Map out your customer experience

What happens after a customer opts in for an offer? Design a series of emails that will guide your customer. Communicate the benefits of what you do in a non-salesy way. Try to connect on a deeper level, tell stories your customers relate to and encourage them to join the conversation. E-mail is a two-way medium. Recognise the fact that it’s not about your brand or product. It’s about your customers. Consider the emotional journey they go through, from not knowing you to increased brand awareness, over considering to buy to actually making the purchase. Help them with their decisions during each of these stages by delivering relevant content.

2. Automate, automate, automate

Use software, such as Ontraport, Infusionsoft or Mailchimp, to automate the delivery of your content. This set-and-forget approach will save you many hours of manual communication each week while creating consistency in the way you communicate with your customers. This, and the fact that you deliver relevant content at each stage of their emotional journey, results in increased trust levels and sales.

3. Consider ditching print advertising

The amount of money I see still being invested in print ads that don’t work is staggering. Moving your advertising budget to online ads (if done right) can result in higher returns and allows you to test and measure results faster and more efficiently. You can launch your ads the day you decide on a campaign and start seeing results in a matter of hours, not weeks. Print advertising certainly still has its place and might work well for certain industries. Just make sure that everything you spend money on can be measured and brings tangible results. If you don’t know your return on investment, it’s probably not a great strategy. Being able to measure the right metrics is key of a good marketing strategy.

Need help with your marketing? Let’s work together!

I help business owners develop and implement the right strategy for their business. In 3 months I will help you automate your marketing activities, including lead generation, social media content, email marketing and so much more – so you can focus on running your business.

Click here to learn more and book a free strategy call today.

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Change Your Habits, Change Your Life – 10 Things Successful Business Owners Do

Have you wondered what are the things that successful business owners do? Habits truly are a powerful thing. Develop the wrong set of habits and you are destined to fail in various ways. Develop the right ones, however, and chances are you will soon see your business thriving, regardless of the economic environment.

These ten life-changing habits that you should adapt today to accelerate your success in business; and virtually every other area of your life.

 

1. Have a Daily Morning Routine

The way you start your day has a major effect on how it will pan out. If you have a sleep-in, a long breakfast in bed and don’t leave the house until after 1pm, it’s unlikely it’s going to be super productive day. If you get up early, however, and have a routine that puts you in the right mind frame, you are much more likely to have an extraordinary day.
I was first introduced to the idea of a morning routine by Tony Robbins with his Hour of Power.
A while ago I came across a book called The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, which is all about developing a morning routine designed to fit into your everyday lifestyle. This one habit alone, if implemented into your daily life, will catapult you into a different league.

(Don’t think I don’t love having a sleep-in every now and then. They surely have their place.)

 

2. Regularly Schedule Implementation Days

Boost your productivity by incorporating implementation days into your work. I started having these days with my clients, where we plan out an entire day in advance and then set a date where I come into the business and help them implement a certain strategy. These days have literally doubled my productivity, compared to working on a project for a couple of hours and over a number of days. My credo on those days is that I’m not leaving until our to do list is completed.
Be sure to have a well-planned agenda for the day. I usually plan it out a few days in advance and schedule tasks in 15-minute slots.

 

3. Go on an Information Diet

I am a big personal development junkie. I believe that we should never stop learning, evolving, and striving to fulfill our true potential, at work and in our personal lives. However, taking time to let your mind rest and reflect is in fact necessary to keep high levels of productivity (and your sanity). Take a few weeks every now and then where you consciously reflect on what you have learned and focus on actually using your newly acquired knowledge. It’s easy to get caught up in the cycle of jumping onto the latest tool and strategy without ever having implemented anything you learned in the past. Remember, the best strategy of all is the one you implement, not the ones stuck in your head.

During this time, try to also stay away from technology, email and social media as much as possible. I like to have occasional no-tech weekends with my kids to enjoy quality time without all the daily distraction.

 

4. Develop a 90-Day Action Plan

Four days per year that can change the entire course of your life. Literally.
Take a day every quarter to re-write your vision for your life and business. Get clear about where you want to be in life in 2 years, 5 years or 10 years from now. Then think of the 5 tasks or projects that you believe will have the biggest impact in moving you closer to your goals. It might be launching a new website or implementing a new lead generation strategy. Make sure you it’s not more than 5, as you are much more likely to lose motivation if you pick too many. Make these 5 projects your absolute priority for the next 90 days.

Hint: It’s often the things that are not urgent that are in fact the most important ones to work on. We tend to give all of our attention to the most urgent tasks and as a result never actually get to the things that truly matter. A great way to ensure you will actually tick off your top 5 projects is to schedule a number of implementation days (see habit #2).

 

5. Write a blog or journal

When we write down our thoughts and ideas, our brains are forced to organise these thoughts. This will help you to clear your head and bring structure into all the knowledge you have acquired through seminars, podcasts, books or audio books. Every now and then, I take the time to sit down, pick a topic and simply put everything on paper that shoots into my head. It doesn’t always end up on my blog but it helps to get it all out of my head. If you don’t want to make it public, you can simply keep a journal instead.

 

6. Pay attention to what you pay attention to

Did you ever pick up your phone to quickly check your emails or look something up and suddenly realised that an hour has passed? After checking your numerous social media profiles and watching yet another useless YouTube video, you ask yourself, where did all this time go? With all the noise and distraction these days, it’s easy to get sidetracked and lose focus. Fact is, the more you indulge in these distractions, the harder it will become for you to regain focus and dedicate your time to what truly matters. You can think about it this way. We all start our day with a limited number of attention credits. Every time you pay attention to something you are giving away some of your credits. Until you have no more credits left to focus on the right things. That’s when most people simply zone out and turn to Netflix. Be mindful of how you spend your time and stop wasting precious attention credits.

 

7. Practice the 80/20 rule

The 80/20 rule – also called the Pareto Principle – has been around for over a hundred years and states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. For example:

80% of your problems can be attributed to 20% of causes
80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers
80% of complaints come from 20% of your customers
80% of your profits come from 20% of the time you spent
80% of your sales come from 20% of your products or services
By focusing on the 20% of tasks that make the biggest difference in your business you will free up a lot of your time and drastically increase productivity and profits.

Ask yourself, who are the 20% of your customers that generate 80% of your turnover? Or who are the 20% of your customers that create 80% of your headaches? Maybe it’s time to let them go? (Yes, sometimes it’s wise to fire our customers.)

 

8. Have a not-to-do list

We are often so busy worrying about all the things we need to do that we don’t realise that we fill our spare time with habits that are not only unproductive, but can be absolutely draining, even harmful to our bodies, minds and overall health. There used to be a time where I’d come home after a long day of work and, without giving it any thought, switch on the TV, wasting the rest of my precious evening. I’d watch random shows, go to bed late and wake up the next morning exhausted and with a lack of motivation. The longer I kept going, the harder it seemed to break the cycle. Until I made a conscious decision to change my habits. A not-to-do list was a great start and helped me keep on track. My list looked somewhat like this:

  • Do not switch on the TV when coming home
  • Do not check your phone at random intervals and get sidetracked
  • Do not eat out of boredom

You get the picture. I then added things I could do to replace my old habits. Instead of watching TV, I would go for a run, have a shower and go out with my kids for an hour. Instead of having my phone next to me at all times, I started switching it off during times where I want to be productive and only check my messages during a break or at the end of my day. What are some bad habits that you should/could stop doing right now? You probably already know what they are.

 

9. Have a Think Week

In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeown writes about the concept of Think Week. A week where you take time out of your busy schedule to simply indulge in good books, articles and magazines to learn, gain new insights and, most importantly, think. We are often too busy to think about if what we are doing right now is still congruent with our values and purpose. Taking time out to re-evaluate where we are and where we want to go in our lives is crucial to our success and, more importantly, our happiness.

If you are too busy to take an entire week off, start by dedicating a few minutes each day to read, learn and reflect. Your morning routine would be a perfect time for this (see habit #1).

 

10. Streamline & Automate Tedious, Repetitive Processes

One of the fastest ways to free up your time and budget is without a doubt the use of the right tools and software to streamline and automate the most time-consuming processes in your business. With the technology available today, many repetitive tasks can easily be fully automated, so you can focus on the things that truly matter to you.

Here are just a few things that I have helped business owners to automate and streamline:

  • Lead generation
  • Email marketing
  • Social media marketing
  • Invoicing
  • Answering Customer Questions and Enquiries

How many of these things are you currently doing yourself or have staff doing, when they can be fully automated? The goal of my 90-Day Marketing Transformation program is to automate all of the above, as well as other aspects in your particular business. You can find out more about the program here.

Do you have certain habits that help you to be more productive and accelerate success? I would love to hear from you! Leave a comment below to share what’s worked for you or what challenges you are facing right now that are holding you back.

To your success,

 

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