We know we need to keep clients and customers happy.  But sometimes we commit to unrealistic deadlines, which can cause us to let them down. So instead of over promising and under delivering, why not build the opposite into your business practices?  Build customer delight and loyalty by under promising and over delivering.

 Here are some ideas to get you on your way.

 What’s the customer’s real deadline?

Sometimes we assume customers’ deadlines. We project when we think they’ll need our product, service or action by and cause unnecessary business stress in the process.  So ask the customer for their deadline from the outset.  You may find there’s more time available.  And if the timescale is tight for you, be honest with them. Is it possible to deliver a specific part of the project, service, action etc by then with other elements being completed at a slightly later date?  If so, make sure you do deliver as promised.

 Prioritise by deadlines 

 Can you move away from a first come/first served approach – methodically processing one customer at a time depending on when they placed their order?  One customer may not need your product or service so soon, where for another it’s vital right now.  Keep everyone happy by putting customers’ deadlines at the heart of your processes.  If some clash and cause problems for you, then talk and see if there’s any margin for moving the dates with any of them. Alternatively try sweetening things by offering a small discount or other incentive to extend the deadline.  Or quickly call in reinforcements!

Be ahead of schedule

In today’s world, deadlines are more often missed than achieved.  Customers are really impressed when you deliver slightly ahead of schedule.  So assess the time it will take to get your product/service/ action completed and then communicate a deadline a day or so afterwards (but deliver that day early). Don’t deliver too far in advance of the deadline as customers won’t trust your word. Also, don’t always expect customers to spot that you’re ahead of schedule.  Emphasise it to them, albeit subtly.

 Perfect your processes 

 Look at the current obstacles in your business operations.  What gets in the way of you delivering your promises to customers? Can more people, outsourcing, better time management, faster suppliers, project-management software or other IT applications improve your efficiency?  Ask for an external viewpoint if necessary to spot ways to fine-tune your approach.

 Do more than you said on the tin 

 Can you create added value around the product, service or action that you deliver?  For example, can your report be in a format that fits easily with the client’s house style?  Can you include samples or testers of complementary products when you dispatch the a customer’s bought?  Can you give a voucher giving a slight discount off the next purchase or if the customer recommends a friend?   A word of warning though – added value does impress, but only if the initial product or service purchased meets expectations. Get the basics right first.

 The more you understand why a customer is buying this service or product from you, the more chances you’ve got to tick their boxes and delight them.  What issue are they trying to resolve?  What need are they hoping to satisfy?  What other factors pivot around this purchase?  If you can find these out, then ways in which to under promise and over deliver will become clear. And you can look forward to a happy future built on this customer’s pleasure and loyalty.

About the Author: 

Michelle Daniels is the Managing Director of Extended Thinking. An experienced and effective business development and marketing strategist, Michelle has built a successful career increasing top line growth for service businesses and organisations. She helps her clients turn their marketing, business development and thought leadership plans into reality with her ‘hands on’ support and practical advice.    A prolific writer, Michelle also combines creative flair with business nous to produce highly effective results.  She has written (and ghost-written) for many professional and business publications and is a chartered marketer and member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Extended Thinking

Extended Thinking is a hands-on marketing and business development consultancy.  Bringing together great minds and great ‘doers’, we help our clients devise and implement plans that achieve real business growth.  Our clients come from a wide variety of backgrounds and sectors, but invariably are those who are too busy or lack the resources to action their marketing and business development plans.  We roll our sleeves up and muck in to free them up to do what they really want to do and are good at doing. 

For more visit: www.extendedthinking.com

If you’ve ever heard a talk about standing out from your competitors, you’ve probably heard about unique selling points. But you might struggle to really define them if your work is similar to that of your competitors. Offering the same service as your competitor doesn’t mean you don’t have unique selling points. It just means you might not know how to communicate them to your audience.

In this article I’m going to give you 5 key areas that you can write about on your site which will automatically set you apart from the competition and make you stand out in your customers’ minds.

• Services you take for granted
• Your personality.
• Who you work for.
• What you don’t do
• Your experience.

 Services you take the granted

This is such a simple way to set yourself apart from your competitors.

Take a process that you take for granted and explain it to your customers. It might be something that you know all your competitors do, so you’ve never thought about it being unique selling point before.

The unique aspects are that your business is going to be the one that communicates the process or system to your audience.

This works because it shows you are an expert in your field. Remember, your competitors don’t need to think you’re an expert, but your customers do. When you educate the consumer about the way you work this builds trust and credibility because you are opening up the doors to your workshop and letting them into the inner circle.

Let’s say that you offer a dog walking service. Obviously you’re going to take them somewhere grassy, but if you communicate this on your site, the consumer will remember your business as the one that takes care and attention to your routes.

Your  personality

Trust in showing off some of your personality, even if you think it conflicts with your industry because it might not be a weakness.

You may be a shy person who runs a marketing company. You would be the perfect fit for businesses that feel conservative when it comes to promoting their business.

Communicate your personality to your customer, whether you swear like a sailor, have a dry sense of humour or hate mornings. A little flavour of who you are can go a long way to make your business stand out and attract the kind of customer you’re going to love working with.

Who you work for

It is so tempting to feel your service is for everyone.

It isn’t.

Don’t be afraid to rule out people that you don’t want to work for or who your product will not help. I had a client recently who was offering a coaching service. I asked who the product would not work for.

Initially she answered “no-one”, but with a little probing we discovered the material wouldn’t be great for:

• People who weren’t committed
• People who didn’t want to work hard
• People who didn’t want to change
• People who didn’t want to invest in the product

We decided to communicate this through the content on her site by:

• Making the prices very clear
• Including a money-back guarantee, to show the customer made an effort
• Explaining the level of commitment required to get results

 Make sure the content on your site speaks to your perfect customer and not to people who won’t enjoy your product.

What you don’t do

 Don’t be afraid of letting people know, what areas you either don’t do or don’t want to do, especially if you’re in a field where people may assume you do particular thing. It might be that you can outsource this service to an expert or it might be something you don’t want to get into at all.

Don’t even be afraid of having a page that states “what I don’t do.” This might seem negative, but it’s just being honest and saves both you and your visitor time. Remember you don’t want just any customer; you want a customer who is going to love what you do.

Your experience

 You probably have your experience listed on the “About” page on your website.

But are you talking about your “unique” experience?

Your unique experience might not be obvious. We all tend to look to our professional experience, but we could be missing other experiences that are just as important, that set you apart from the crowd.

For example, in my business, I used to write and work for a number of very different businesses. It was difficult to show that my experience was relevant to my target market because it covered financial products, insurance products, stag and hen parties and even the international mining industry.

However, my unique experience was working directly with the business owners and working directly with entrepreneurs. That’s what I communicate to my target market. Whilst the products I’ve worked with are important, it’s that experience of working with busy entrepreneurs that my clients trust and enjoy.  

Remember, you don’t have to be unique from your competitors, you just have to write in a way that makes you seem unique to your customers.

About the Author: Amy Harrison runs Harrisonamy Copywriting. She helps passionate entrepreneurs and business owners turn visitors into loyal fans through engaging content. For tips and techniques you can use in your business today, sign up for her free “Copywriting Guilty Secrets” online course, or follow her on twitter: @littleunred for copywriting (and sometimes irreverent) updates.

Meeting new people in person is still one of the best ways to market your services. If you do a good job at this, you will quickly end up with a desk drawer filled with business cards. But then what do you do with them?

 Timely and consistent follow-up is the key to successful marketing. Meeting someone once is rarely enough to bring you business – repeated contacts are what do the trick. You always want to follow up with prospective customers, of course, but you should also follow up with potential referral sources.

A good referral source is someone who interacts with your desired customers on a regular basis. For example, as a business coach who works with many start-ups, I look for referrals from career counselors and people who teach small business classes.

There are three avenues you might choose to follow up with people you have met: by phone, by mail, or in person. Let’s look at the uses of each one.

With prospective customers, you can phone them to see how interested they are in what you do and try to set up a meeting. The meeting might be in person or by phone, depending on the nature of your business. You can mail them a marketing letter, or a brochure with a personal note. You could also call or write to refer them to your web site or invite them to your next presentation.

The most effective way to contact prospects is usually call-mail-call. Call first to develop interest, and if you can’t reach them to set up a meeting on the first try, send them something by mail or e-mail. Then call again to see if they are ready to take the next step.

If someone is a potential referral source rather than a prospect, your best approach is to establish a reciprocal relationship. You might call to begin getting acquainted, exchange information about yourselves by mail, or arrange to meet in person to find out more about each other’s work.

It is completely appropriate to call another business person you have met and say, “I think we might be serving the same type of customers; could we get to know each other better so maybe we could exchange referrals?” Another easy and friendly way to follow up with anyone you meet is to send a handwritten “nice to meet you” note with only your card enclosed.

Be careful when making contact by fax or e-mail. Many people are offended by faxes or e-mail messages that are essentially generic marketing letters. It’s more advisable to use these media as tools to communicate more personally with people you have already opened a dialogue with.

After your initial contact, think of ways to keep in touch on a regular basis. Call to see how people are doing, or to tell them what’s new with you. Send a note with a clipping or cartoon, or email a link to an interesting web site. Don’t forward email jokes or inspirational stories, though, unless you know for sure the recipient will appreciate them.

To follow up in person, schedule lunch or coffee, or invite your contacts to an upcoming event you plan to attend. Once you have a large follow-up list, consider a regular newsletter, ezine, or postcard mailing.

To manage your follow-up activities, you need a contact management system.When your list is short, you can use contact sheets in a notebook, or 3 x 5 cards. You will quickly outgrow a manual system, however. By the time you reach 200 contacts or so, you’ll be ready to graduate to a computerized system designed for contact management.

However you choose to keep track of your contacts, the important thing is to stay organized. Always have one central place where you record who you meet, what contact you have had so far, and when it will be time to follow up next.

If a business card you have collected doesn’t belong to a prospective customer or referral source, throw it away. There’s no point in keeping the card of someone you don’t plan to follow up with.

 About the Author: C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now!™ Thousands of business owners and independent professionals have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of “Five Secrets to Finding All the Clients You’ll Ever Need” at www.getclientsnow.com.

The process of converting a prospect to a client can seem like it takes forever. You meet a prospective client, follow up with him or her over time, and hopefully have a chance to make a sales presentation or schedule an initial consultation at no charge. Then you follow up some more, trying to close the sale. Months can pass, or even years, between your first encounter and getting the prospect to sign on the bottom line.

How do you keep following up for all that time without being a pest? Is asking prospects over and over, “Are you ready to buy yet?” the best way to go about it? How can you build the trust of your prospects enough that they become willing to take the risk of hiring you?

The answer to these bothersome questions just might be found in this simple idea.

Treat those prospects as if they were already your clients – they just haven’t paid you yet.

Imagine what it would be like to treat every prospective client you encounter as if you were already working together

Every time you contact your prospects, you offer an article they might be interested in, an introduction to someone who might help them with a goal, or an invitation to an upcoming event in their field.

When you meet with them, you listen to their problems and recommend solutions. When you contact them after a meeting, you suggest resources for helping them address the issues you discussed. The solutions and resources you recommend may include your products and services, of course, but you don’t stop there. You also offer answers that don’t involve hiring you.

The impact of this kind of generosity on your prospective clients can be dramatic.

 Instead of considering your calls or e-mails an interruption, they will welcome hearing from you. They will no longer count you as a salesperson or vendor, but rather as a valuable resource and important person to know.

I’m not talking about giving away the store. I don’t recommend providing the client with free training, spending hours addressing their issues at no charge, or otherwise practicing your profession without pay. It is completely appropriate to ask for and expect payment for doing your professional work.

But what I am suggesting is a shift in your attitude, to being of service instead of selling a service. Give your prospects a taste of just how valuable you could be to them if they were to hire you. Be generous with the information and contacts you already have at your disposal. It only takes a few minutes to pass along a phone number, clipping, or helpful web site, but the impact can be unforgettable.

The effect of this shift on you can be just as significant as the effect on prospective clients.

 You will eliminate those dreaded sales calls from your agenda and focus instead on what you do best — helping people. You will no longer fear or resist making contact with prospects, but will begin looking forward to it. Instead of selling, you will be serving.

The fastest way to turn a prospect into a client may be simply to change how you think about them.

New entrepreneurs frequently hear the advice to “be unique” in their marketing. The basic idea is a valuable one -to get attention in a crowded marketplace, you must stand out in some way. Distinguishing your product or service from the competition can make your marketing more effective. Crafting a novel marketing message can attract the notice of more potential customers.

There’s no question that an element of uniqueness in your marketing can make your business more memorable, competitive, and special to your target audience. These are all reasons why being different can be good. But how different should you be?

A student in one of my classes had noticed there were no display ads for management consultants in his local Yellow Pages. “What a great opportunity,” he thought, “to make my business stand out to prospective clients.” He spent over £150  a month on a large ad for a full year. The result was not a single phone call, unless you count the ones from vendors trying to sell him photocopiers and phone systems.

He had neglected to ask his consulting colleagues WHY none of them had ads in the Yellow Pages. It seemed like a good idea to him, and no one else was doing it, so he pulled out his checkbook. What never occurred to him – and what any experienced colleague could have told him — was that companies don’t choose management consultants from ads in the phone book.

Sometimes you can be too unique for your own good.

There’s a lot in sales and marketing that is tried and true. If you decide to forge a completely new trail, you may be attempting an experiment that many others in your field have already tried with no success.

It’s not always just your marketing techniques that are a little too different. The same problem can afflict the product or service you are marketing.

I met a fellow while networking who had a “unique process” for helping companies resolve conflicts between employee groups. When I asked him to explain his process, he said I would have to experience it to understand it. I inquired how it compared to solutions like mediation or team building, and he told me it was a totally different approach that defied comparison.

Since I knew a company that needed help with a problem like the one he described, I would have liked to refer him. But I couldn’t picture myself calling my friend at the company to say, “Hi, I know someone who says he can fix your problem, but he can’t explain how. You’ll just have to hire him and see.”

Being noticeably different from the competition can help you attract customers and close sales. But claiming that you have no competition is naive. Comparisons to a known quantity can help prospective customers understand where your product or service fits in the range of solutions they are considering. If they can’t compare it to anything, it’s doubtful that they will be able to see how your offering could work.

Your market, too, needs to be a group of people who already exist and can be readily identified.

A reader once wrote to ask me for some advice on getting her new book published. I asked what market category it fell into, and she replied that she hadn’t really thought about it.

I pressed her bit, explaining that her book needed to be categorized in order to be marketed and sold. Even something as simple as where to shelve it in a bookstore depended on having a category to print on the back cover. Was it self-help, spirituality, careers, business? Who did she see as the audience for her book?

She asserted that she was creating a new paradigm, and if I was going to help her, I needed to think more creatively. My reply was to tell her I couldn’t help her at all. Her idea may have been brilliant, but no publisher was going to touch her project.

Creating the perception that your product or service is one of a kind can help you capture people’s attention and make them remember you. But you have to be able to identify the people you want to reach and communicate how you can be of service in words they can understand.

You know those car commercials that go, “Zoom, zoom, zoom?” I had to see those ads dozens of times before I could remember that the car being advertised was a Mazda. “Zoom” was unique alright, but what did it have to do with Mazda? Or with the benefits of owning one? A catchy slogan like “Inspiration Beats Perspiration” may be clever and unusual, but what the heck is it marketing?

Definitely look for a unique way to express the benefits you offer to your clients, but make sure it still communicates what you actually do. It’s okay to get creative with your marketing, but don’t bet the rent money on untried techniques.

If you really want to make your marketing more effective, cheaper and less stressful, stop re-inventing the wheel.

 Find models that work and replicate them. I’m not suggesting that you plagiarize your competitors’ marketing copy, but when you see someone successful in your field, find out what they are doing right, and follow their lead.

Don’t let your business be a victim of “terminal uniqueness” – the belief that you are so different from anyone else that none of the rules apply to you. Being distinctive is good; being eccentric can be unwise.

C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now!™ Thousands of business owners and independent professionals have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of “Five Secrets to Finding All the Clients You’ll Ever Need” at www.getclientsnow.com.

A desperate entrepreneur contacted me recently. “I need to get clients immediately,” she said. “I’ve been trying for months with no success, and I’m almost out of money.” When I asked her how she had been marketing herself all this time, she gave me the following list of what she had been doing:

• Attending networking events where she met people, introduced herself, and exchanged business cards
• Launched a brochure-style website describing her services      
• Purchased ads in several directories where businesses like hers were featured
• Printed some flyers and posted them on bulletins around town                                                                                                                        

 Now here’s some of what she hadn’t been doing:

• Never asked any of the people she met at networking events to have coffee, get better acquainted, or find out more about their needs
• Never looked around her community to see who might be a good referral source and ask them to consider referring business to her
• Never told her friends and former co-workers about her new business and asked them to let others know about it
• Never asked anyone else in her profession where they found their clients

In other words, she had never asked anyone for help, even though she was drowning.

I’ve heard sad stories like this many times over the 18 years that I’ve been helping entrepreneurs find clients. It seems there is a persistent myth that the “right” way to get clients is to do it all on your own. Yes, many entrepreneurs do tend to be Lone Rangers and enjoy their independence, but this determined avoidance of asking for help goes beyond ordinary self-reliance. It’s almost as if these business owners had been told getting help was illegal.

Because of this pervasive do-it-all-yourself attitude, I hear from many entrepreneurs that they are embarrassed or ashamed to ask for any assistance. One business owner told me, “I was really struggling, but I couldn’t ask anyone to help me, because then they would think I was a failure.” Tragically, by refusing to ask for help, he was actually causing himself to fail.

Let’s bust this myth wide open, here and now. Successful people ask for help all the time. It’s how they become successful. That is how the business world works. Entrepreneurs do not build successful businesses all on their own. They build them with the help of their family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, networking contacts, customers, and fans.

Here are five approaches to get started with asking for help to build your business right now.

1. Ask and ye shall receive.

If you’ve been feeling held back by believing that asking for help is somehow weak, presumptuous, or taking unfair advantage, let those feelings go. Give yourself permission to ask for help, recognizing that all around you, people more successful than you are doing exactly that in order to succeed.

The people already in your life — family, friends, colleagues — truly want to give you their support. They just need to be asked, and shown how. If you have not yet told every single person you know about your business, now is the time. Tell them what services you offer, the type of clients you are seeking, and ask them to please spread the word about how you can help the people they know.

2. Make your requests specific.

First, make sure you are actually asking, and not just hinting. Direct requests are much more likely to produce results. Say, “Would you introduce me to your friend?” instead of, “It would be good to meet your friend sometime, but I know you’re awfully busy.”

Second, be specific about what you’re asking. Saying, “Please refer me some clients,” is nowhere near as effective a request as, “The best clients for me are people who care about their health and are suffering from back, neck, or joint pain. Do you know anyone like that?”

3. Offer something in return.

People are more likely to respond to your requests — and you’ll feel better about making them — when you offer something in return. When speaking with entrepreneurs, ask who would be a good client for them, and how you can best refer likely prospects. When speaking with others, just ask them: “What can I do for you?” Simply showing your willingness to make the relationship reciprocal is often enough for both of you to feel comfortable about your request.

4. Make your request appropriate to the relationship.

You’d be amazed how often I get emails like the following: “I’m brand new in business, and I do exactly what you do. I imagine you get more inquiries from prospective clients than you can handle. Would you refer some of those to me?” I applaud these folks for taking the initiative to ask, but a request like this isn’t appropriate to make of a complete stranger.

Spend some time getting acquainted before asking for a referral. Entrepreneurs who share your target market, but don’t do the same work, are ideal candidates to become referral partners. When you encounter successful people who are essentially your competitors, ask them to share their wisdom about where to find good clients. You’ll find that most other entrepreneurs will be happy to help you when you approach them with reciprocity and respect.

5. Don’t wait until you’ve made it.

If you wait until your business takes off to let friends and colleagues know about it, you will lose out on the most likely source of referrals most new businesses have. If you wait for clients to send you referrals instead of reaching out to likely referral partners, you may never have enough clients to make those referrals. If you wait for people you meet while networking to contact you instead of contacting them to ask how you can help, you may be waiting a very long time.

Asking for help is not cheating. It’s how anything important ever gets done. Stop struggling all alone! Start asking for help, and you’ll also start building your business.

About the Author: C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now!™ Thousands of business owners and independent professionals have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of “Five Secrets to Finding All the Clients You’ll Ever Need” at www.getclientsnow.com.

Every business should have a website, right?

True. Every business, big or small, should have some sort of web presence. The internet is part of every day life and, as you don’t need thousands of pounds to get a business online now, there really is little excuse for a business not to a have a website created at some point.

But my question to you today is whether your website is a help or a hindrance?

Just because you’re online, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doing anything for you. And worse case scenario is that your website could actually be working against you.

Let’s look at how the average person uses the web. Did you know that the average time it takes for someone to “read” a website is 3 seconds?

Think back to the last time you used Google to find something. You may have been looking for the best place to buy toner cartridges for your printer. It could have been that you were trying to find a villa or cottage to rent for your holiday this summer.

Do you remember how long you took to make the decision to hit that back button and go on to the next website on the search results listings? I am pretty sure it took you less than that average of 3 seconds on the websites that didn’t grab you.

How long would it take for a visitor landing on your home page to make a decision to stay or go? 1 minute? 10 seconds? Or less than the average 3 seconds?

And imagine if they were on hold to their bank at the time. Or waiting for a file to download on to their laptop, whilst they click through to your website. How is your website grabbing their attention?

It could be that your website is being more of a hindrance, than a help!

Here are some of the common “hindrances” that I see every day on websites that don’t generate any leads or new clients for a business.

1. A website that talks about the company and not the potential customer.

Look at your home page and for every “We”, “I” and your company name, exchange it for the words “You”, “You” and “You”. People are only interested in themselves when they are looking for someone to help them. It’s all very well that you are the market leaders in what you do, but how is that going to benefit your clients?

2. A website that is so obviously “home-made”.

You may have gone on a HTML programming course to save yourself a few pennies. You may have even used your next door neighbour’s son who is studying IT at Uni. But saving money on your website to end up with a site that doesn’t work in a particular browser or doesn’t display on a mobile phone will only push clients away. There is really little excuse not to have a nicely designed website. Using blog platforms such as wordpress.org, for example, mean that you can have a simple, professional looking site that works, set up for as little as £500.

3. A website that has a fussy design, clashing colours and is more concerned with how pretty or trendy it looks.

Internet users want to find their information quickly, rather than hunt for it in cleverly worded menus or images. Flash introductions just annoy – remember the 3 second time limit. Unless your clients expect to watch a dancing cartoon or slideshow, they will be gone before it’s finished playing!

4. A website with no obvious purpose.

Static brochure style websites just don’t “do” anything. They may look pretty and give lots of information, but what is that website visitor meant to do? Picking up the phone and making an enquiry may just be too big a leap to make. They will more than likely leave and move on to the next site on their search lists.

This last point has to be the one that I rant about the most. A website with no obvious purpose is a waste of time. It just floats around in hyperspace, gathering pixel dust and being ignored by by anyone who happens to stumble upon it.

For the majority of small businesses, the most effective purpose to give your website is to help build a database of potential customers.

The competition to be found through search engines is so fierce, you can’t afford to trust that your website visitors will bookmark your site and come back another day. They will have found what they are looking for by then and you’ll have lost a client.

Having a website whose primary purpose is to invite visitors to leave their name and email address has been proved to be one of the most successful online marketing strategies to have for the majority of small businesses.

It creates the opportunity for you to build a relationship with that visitor so, over time, they trust you enough to become a paying customer.

How do you do this?

Capturing names and email addresses by offering something in return is something so simple and yet so many small business owners don’t do this. And the easiest way of offering something in return is to offer a free newsletter, a free e-course or free report. The options available to you are limitless.

You may be keen to start your own email newsletter but feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information out there. I know I get enough emails asking me about them so if you haven’t started one or in the early stages of creating a database, then do check out my “How To Do Email Newsletters” programme starting this month.

In the meanwhile, start by checking out your website right now. Ask yourself – is yours a help or a hindrance?

And what are you going to do about it?

About the Author: Karen Skidmore helps small business owners work smarter and use the right marketing tools so they can attract more of the right clients to their business. To subscribe to her free email newsletter and get access to practical advice and marketing ideas that will move your business forward, visit www.CanDoCanBe.com

Look beyond traffic and links and you will find the real value. Social media, and by that I’m lumping together blogs, RSS, social networking and social book marking sites, presents the marketer with a rich set of new tools to help in the effort to generate new business.

You can’t approach new media with old thinking. Taking full advantage of social media requires understanding and adopting a specific social media strategy.

First and foremost you must appreciate the differences between social media and, say, direct mail. With direct mail the outcome is likely, to create an action. With most social media, it’s to create a connection. Both of these have equally important places in the long-term health of a business, but how they happen is significantly different.

Try to do one with the other and the results may actually backfire – ie: Ads on Facebook? There are definitely instances in which a social media play can align with an organization’s industry focus and become natural facilitators of lead acquisition.

I think the best way to look at social media, though, is to view it as a way to open up access points. These points can then be leveraged to create content, connection, and community. Do that well, and they can also add to lead generation, nurturing and conversion. Think of your web site as the ultimate destination or bucket to catch what comes through your social media access points.

Blogging

If content is one of the golden measures, blogs are a given. This one has become so mainstream it’s hard to think of in the same light as say Facebook. Blogging enhances all forms of content creation, drives search traffic and enables the start of connection and community in the form of comments and conversation. Employing this tool effectively feels a bit like social media 101 – a required course of action before advancing.

In Action: A blog connected to or functioning as your website, a blog network for your customers, a blog network for your strategic partners, an idea blog for your industry.

Tools – Typepad, Wordpress, Wordpress MU, MovableType, Drupal, Square Space, Twitter

RSS

Perhaps best known as a subset of blogging, RSS is what drives the spreading, filtering and aggregating of ideas and content. RSS technology has the ability to make content more useful.

In Action: Simply researching through news, republishing news and search results, reformatting information – data and calendars, creating custom news feeds, mashing lots of feeds into one.

Tools – bloglines.com, Google Reader, GoogleNews, YahooNews, aideRSS, mySyndicaat, Feedburner

Social Bookmarking and News

Social news and book mark sites live to promote ideas and reward the creators of those ideas for creativity and consistency. The best social news plays consist of targeted campaigns focused at a specific site or audience.

Getting on page one of Digg or del.icio.us or creating this week’s viral hit on You Tube can send your site’s traffic through the roof, but there a couple things to consider.

These are communities that reward participation and hard work (that’s not to say people haven’t figured out ways to beat the system, but go in realize that methodical work is ahead.)

Choose a community with the proper focus. Digg is technology heavy, Small Business Brief is for small business

Tools: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, YouTube, Google Video, Mixx, Small Business Brief

Best Practices: Build deep once, Study and read, Find and pitch influencers, Make it easy for you and your readers, Build networks, Promote your chosen site.

Social Networking

The recent rise in popularity of sites like MySpace and Facebook clearly points to the desire for community. As marketers rush to these sites it becomes clear that virtual “no soliciting” signs are hung out.

Networks are networks and while the meeting place may be new, the rules (manners) are the same. If you goal is to establish yourself as an influencer of an existing network, you must be prepared to earn the right, mostly by giving, helping, guiding and building relationships without overt efforts to cash in.

The long term can be very fruitful, with patience you can make connections, improve your visibility and increase sales.

Tools: ecademy, Facebook, mySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Jigsaw, Ryze

Best Practices: Participate actively, Pitch influencers, Make it easy for yourself and your network, Find connections

Building Your Own Social Network

The next wave in community building is the personalized, niche, hand-build community. There are some emerging tools that make this idea much more doable, but creating your own community is a serious investment in terms of time and resources. Done well it can be the ultimate in terms of building a brand.

Tools: Drupal, Ning, KickApps, OneSite

About the Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting www.ducttapemarketing.com

Harnessing the art of storytelling in your sales and marketing

In March I received two similar looking magazines, slightly unexpectedly. One was a freebie from a lifestyle magazine I subscribe to and featured short stories by five authors, three of whom I had previously read and enjoyed. The other was a brochure from a serviced office company I was interested in and had enquired about. As I was busy at the time, both went into the magazine rack. Which one do you think I retrieved more often in the next couple of months? Which can I tell you most about today?

So what’s my point here? As a popular after dinner topic, which scores most highly – what’s your favourite book, or what’s your favourite brochure?

Customers are now very savvy, not only to sales ‘speak’, but also to sales ‘look’.  They judge in a matter of seconds whether a marketing or sales communication is worth their interest.  The look, choice of words and language are quickly processed through their ‘read it’ or ‘bin it’ filter – how many pieces of direct mail (electronic or paper) did you choose to open this week? And how many did you reject at a mere glance?

Of course this is tough for businesses looking to market and sell their products and services.  So how can we capture people’s interest and how can we be successful in that rejection vs engagement process?  Let’s go back to those magazines.  It was the freebie of short stories that I read from cover to cover and it’s still kicking around the house today.  I’m afraid I can’t remember where I’ve put the brochure from the serviced office company.

We love stories

Humans love stories. It’s built deep within our psyche and comes, not just from the books that were read to us as children, but also further back into our ancestry.  This is to a time before books when friends and family gathered by the fire and told each other stories.  The love and comfort of being told a good narrative has filtered through the genes and is still with us today.  I can still tell you how leaving a cup of tea saved my Grandad’s life in the blitz. And he loved his tea.

How to use stories in business

But how does this relate to business? Well if human interest is engaged by stories, why don’t we use more storytelling tactics in our marketing communications?  Case studies, customer anecdotes, product or service descriptions are just some examples that are ripe for a storytelling makeover.

The classic structure of a story is a simple one to follow.  Invariably it begins with an introduction to key people in the narrative and their situation. Then a drama of some kind occurs, which is followed by a period of trying to solve it (typically a fight between good and evil in most tales).  Finally the hero/heroine /main protagonist usually wins in some way and lives happily ever after. It may sound boring laid out like this, but the way in which the story is told can turn this structure into a gripping drama, a tearjerker, a period classic and yes even a piece of marketing. If you’re really interested there are apparently 7 great and universal plots and by the way, the film Casablanca is supposed to have them all.

As customers, we connect with descriptions of

• people in a similar role/business stage to our own
• those we aspire to be
• those who face a similar challenge to us

We are also interested in how the protagonist solved their problem or achieved their success and we want to know if they lived happily ever after (ie. what the results and benefits were of their actions).

Now, I’m not suggesting that we all start writing novels about our products or services.  People are also very busy now and want short, pithy pieces of information. But we can harness story structure and the type of language stories use to engage a customer’s interest.  Remember, that customers know what ‘sales’ speak looks and feels like and equally they know what ‘storytelling’ sounds and feels like.  Put storytelling into a marketing/sales environment and a customer’s brain will do a double-take.  There’ll be something different here that they haven’t been able to sort/sift/file so easily and already you’ve gained further seconds of their attention.

Language makes the difference

So what sort of storytelling language should you employ? lt needs to be simple, in places it needs to be descriptive, there needs to be action and above all it needs to feel very human. There has to be a credible and sympathetic protagonist, who makes other people’s lives better. That’s you – or your product or service. Pick up your favourite book and look at the language in that.  What sections stand out more and which bits did you skim read? What’s the language doing in those parts of the story?

Some companies and organisations are grasping this very well.  There have been examples of case studies built up over instalments (like a serial) to tantalise customers’ interest, others have used storytelling through the web and video to attract attention.  I’ve seen turn page technology and storytelling working really well together on the web to create a marketing communication, which is both engaging and interactive for the customer.  Combined with great visuals and a strong creative execution, business stories can stand out a mile.  And of course on numerous product/company pages on Facebook a whole compendium of stories are being created by the customers themselves. And as well as getting ideas from stories in books, look at the way newspapers and magazines construct their reports of the news.  We engage with these just as much as books.

What’s your story?

So if you’re about to invest in a new website, a new piece of direct mail, a new brochure or newsletter, please just pause and think about using storytelling techniques to harness your customers’ attention.  Make sure you fall into the read-it camp when they see your communication, rather than the bin it.  Who knows, it may help both you and them to live happily ever after…

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About the Author: Michelle Daniels,  Managing Director – Extended Thinking. An experienced and effective business development and marketing strategist, Michelle has built a successful career increasing top line growth for service businesses and organisations. She helps her clients turn their marketing, business development and thought leadership plans into reality with her ‘hands on’ support and practical advice.    A prolific writer, Michelle also combines creative flair with business nous to produce highly effective results.  She has written (and ghost-written) for many professional and business publications and is a chartered marketer and member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Extended Thinking is a hands-on marketing and business development consultancy.  Bringing together great minds and great ‘doers’, we help our clients devise and implement plans that achieve real business growth.  Our clients come from a wide variety of backgrounds and sectors, but invariably are those who are too busy or lack the resources to action their marketing and business development plans.  We roll our sleeves up and muck in to free them up to do what they really want to do and are good at doing.

To find out more visit: www.extendedthinking.com

I reviewed a consultant’s LinkedIn profile the other day and after I had emailed over the report, we arranged to speak on the phone to go through my advice and recommendations.

Unfortunately, to make his LinkedIn profile work harder for him, it became apparent that this consultant was trapped by the “time excuse”.  He felt he was so busy he didn’t have the time to make the necessary changes I had recommended.  It was a Catch 22.  He knew LinkedIn could prove to be a profitable marketing platform for him – many of his target clients where active users.  But even though his profile was poor and if a potential client was to Google his name, it would probably put someone off from contacting him, he felt he didn’t have the time to do anything about it.

He wanted new clients, but was too busy with day-to-day “stuff”.

But was time the real reason for not taking action?

Probably not!  As small business owners, it is easy to feel there is not enough time in the working week.  But if a new client was too call you’d make the time to speak with them, wouldn’t you?

Time is not genuine excuse for not getting on with your marketing.  And I think the reason why you may use the time excuse is that you don’t really know what you should be doing first.

You have no plan of attack.

It’s too easy to wade through hundreds of emails that have been stacking up in your inbox.  Perhaps you have lots of paperwork and invoices to send out or sort out.

These are just excuses.  If you have no plan of attack, then it’s not surprising that all your good intentions are just left by the wayside.  It’s not surprising that you will find yourself at the end of each month having drifted along, not having attracted any new clients or moved ahead with any new projects.

So, before you let yourself drift through the next month and allow your competitors to be one step ahead of you, follow these simple steps.

Step One.  Get Clear on Your “Big Plan”. Where do you see your business in 6 months or 2 years?  What do you want to known for in your industry?  What product, programme or book do you want to create before next year?

Step Two:  Map Out Your Journey. Your “Big Plan” is your long term plan.  However, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed before you’ve begun the journey, if you have failed to chunk your plan down in to more manageable time frames.  It’s easier to climb several hills than go straight for Mount Everest! Good milestones to have are 3 months, 6 months and 1 year.

Step Three:  SMARTen Up Your Milestones. Classic goal setting tips here!  Make sure each milestone is SMART.   SMART means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timescale.  If each of your milestones can be each of these, then you have a great goal that is easier to achieve.

Step Four:  Create Your 3 Month Action Plan. By focusing now on just your 3 month milestone (rather than your “Big Picture”) you should find it far easier deciding what to actually do over the coming weeks.  Remember though, this isn’t a to-do-list (that’s for your daily brain dumps).  I suggest no more than 3 daily, 3 weekly and 3 monthly actions because this is will ensure your plan of attack is simple and easy to follow (and will also allow you to manage other parts of your life so you are not working 24/7!).

Step Five: Diarise Your Action Plan. Work out how long your daily, weekly and monthly actions should take you and diarise 30 minute or 1 hour chunks in to your diary.  It can be tough allocating a whole day every week to marketing.  Little and often fit better in to a working week.

Follow these five steps and the time excuse will no longer be needed as you will now know exactly what you need to do get on with your marketing.

As for the consultant I mentioned earlier – I’m looking forward to seeing what he has managed to achieve from my checklist in the one hour chunk I challenged him on!

If you want help in chunking down your “big plan” or even with the “big plan” itself, then call me on 01428 607745 or click here for more information on how working with me could help you and your business.

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About the Author: Karen Skidmore helps small business owners work smarter and use the right marketing tools so they can attract more of the right clients to their business. To subscribe to her free email newsletter and get access to practical advice and marketing ideas that will move your business forward, visit www.CanDoCanBe.com“