Persistence Pays Off!

“Persistence Pays Off.” It’s a phrase that’s been used by inspiring entrepreneurs and successful people under a variety of circumstances, yet it rings true in each and every one. Persistence does pay off, no matter what your goal is.

Entrepreneurs, athletes, people on a mission to get fit or lose weight, sales professionals trying to land a great deal, business men and women seeking a promotion, new position, or raise. In each and every one of these situations, persistence pays off. It rings true.

Persistence pays off in marketing, too. Persistence – and consistency, which we’ve discussed before. You will see results if you are persistent in your marketing efforts, no matter what your marketing objectives are for the year. If your efforts are persistent and consistent, they will pay off.

Don’t give up on your new marketing plan one month into the year because you haven’t reached your goals yet. My life coach taught me yesterday that when I look at my goals for the whole year, the rest of the year seems like plenty of time to get it all done. Not everything needs to be accomplished today! Great things sometimes take time to accomplish, which is an unfortunate reality for those of us with Type-A personalities who want everything done yesterday. Practice exercising patience, and keep being persistent with your plan, and give it a chance to work!

Using Your Advertising Dollars Effectively

Business owners are resolving to use their advertising dollars more effectively in 2009. In our current economy, it makes sense to allocate our already thin marketing budget to the tactics that are going to bring us the greatest return on our investment. When you’re developing your advertising plan for the year ahead, think about new media and how it has impacted traditional advertising.

When is the last time you picked up your phone book to look up a business in the yellow pages? Personally, the phone book frustrates me, because I have a stack of about four different ones, all of which are formatted differently. For some strange reason, some don’t include business listings in the white pages, and other businesses are only listed in the white pages or are in some obscure category no one would ever think of. As a result, I seldom utilize the phone book when looking up a business, or a person, for that matter. I find it far more effective to bring up the trusty Google search bar and type in exactly what I’m looking for.

The trend in 2008 was that almost twice as many people said they use an internet search engine to look up a business address or phone number than those who said they still use the phone book. The really nice thing about those local listings that come up in a search engine search is that they appear in the hot spot where a web searcher’s eyes land first in the results. So how do you get listed in the local search results?

You can spend hours looking for search engines and web directories and inputting your contact information into every form yourself, or you can pay us to do it for you, at a cost that’s less than the cost of a simple yellow pages listing in the average print directory. Best of all, you can be listed across multiple categories and keywords, and we’ll update or enhance your listing once a month for free.

Visit our site for more information: http://www.stringfellowcreative.com/services/local_listings.htm

Be a Resource to Gain Clients and Customers

One of the best ways to market your business is simple: Be a resource to your potential clients and customers. There are many, many ways to do this that are very effective. Being a resource gives you more credibility than you get with a standard advertisement. It’s less blatant, less in-your-face, and actually provides value so your potential clients are more likely to pay attention, particularly if the information is relevant to them.

By being a resource, you’re basically providing information or some expertise related to a topic within your industry. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same thing that you get paid to do, but should be within the same general area, and it should be applicable to your client base. For example, this blog allows me to be a resource to my potential clients, because I provide relevant information and advice that my customers can use today to help build their business. 

Marketing and business are my expertise. It wouldn’t make sense for me to write articles on minimizing your insurance costs, because the people who are interested in reading an article like that are not my target client. If the reader of the insurance article would happen to also be a business owner, they’re not seeking out information on marketing at that moment. If they were, they’d be clicking on marketing articles instead of insurance articles. The key to being a resource to gain clients is to put relevant information in front of them at an appropriate time.

So how can you use this marketing tactic? Writing articles is an easy way to start, and it’s free. You can summarize what you already know about your industry into targeted articles and submit them to article directories all over the web. If you don’t have time to spend on that sort of thing, you can hire an expert, like Stringfellow Creative, to write and submit articles on your behalf, with your name as the author and a link to your website in the byline. It’s a totally hands-off way to conduct an effective marketing campaign.

Blogging is also an easy way to generate publicity for free. You can set up a WordPress blog just like this one, completely free. You’ll have to make an investment of time to keep your blog fresh and up to date with new content regularly, or you can hire a blogging expert, such as Stringfellow Creative, to keep it up to date for you. We have multiple blogging packages available to meet your specific needs, and we can assist in designing your blog as well.

Depending on your industry, it is often useful to offer free seminars in your community. With the ever-growing popularity of the internet and technology, it’s now easy to offer a seminar online to a global audience. Stringfellow Creative can assist with seminar production, marketing, and design. We can create your materials, design powerpoint presentations, and design online delivery systems.

Take advantage of any opportunities in your community to lend a helping hand. Yes, you might be giving out valuable information for free, but it will only build your reputation. Educational opportunities are abundant, you just have to seek them out. Network with other professionals – someone might be holding a panel discussion relevant to services you offer, and you could easily end up being a panel expert. Discussions like these frequently end up getting free media coverage. It’s a win-win situation.

Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. When you offer your knowledge as a resource to your clients, it’s an easy way to get free advertising, and it’s often more effective than traditional advertising. You’ll boost your reputation and your brand awareness, while at the same time saving your advertising budget.

What Motivates You?

I was just sitting at my laptop, trying to decide which of the many things on my seemingly endless to-do list I should tackle first. My mind wandered to my tendency to procrastinate certain tasks, and why? Some items on my list jump out at me and I dive right in and get them finished, but others seem to linger there for weeks at a time.

Apparently I have somehow categorized my list, mentally, in order of priority, using criteria that are not obvious to me at the moment. Suddenly, I realize the importance of being aware of what motivates you. I’ve always been the kind of person with internal motivation, yet now I find myself neglecting the items on my list that are important only to me and my own business. I have no problems completing work for my clients well ahead of schedule. To me, that sounds like external motivation.

So what is it that motivates you? Learning what motivates you to take action can be hugely helpful when you’re trying to reach a goal. Does money motivate you? Opportunity? Prestige? The simple fact that you don’t like lingering items on your to-do list? You want free time with no obligations hanging over your head? You don’t like to fail?

Whatever it is that motivates you, try to pinpoint exactly what it is. Then try to manipulate situations so that your motivating force is present and can help you reach your goals. If you’re motivated by having to answer to another person, let someone else in on your plans and ask them to hold you accountable. If you’re motivated by opportunity, set a goal to find a new opportunity – there are plenty around for the taking, despite what the media might have you believe. The best opportunities are those that are created out of a challenge.

What motivates you into action? I’d like to hear your ideas.

Article Marketing

Article marketing is still one of the best ways to improve your search engine rankings and drive traffic to your site. The key to effective article marketing is to write your articles with search engine optimization in mind. Create meaningful and informative content that uses your keywords naturally. You don’t want to turn your readers away by creating content that reads like an advertisement or sounds odd because of overuse of keywords.

Be sure to come up with a compelling title that will entice browsers to click on and read your article, and use keyword link anchors to help improve your search engine rankings for those keywords. Submit your article to as many article directories as you can, because the links back to your site will also help your rankings.

If you don’t have time to write or submit your own articles, it’s still very affordable to outsource those tasks to a freelance writer or marketing consultant. Visit http://www.stringfellowcreative.com/services/articles.htm for the updated description of available packages and pricing for your article marketing campaign. We’re happy to create custom packages that meet your needs, and we try to combine article marketing with other services at lower prices for longer-term, ongoing projects. Let us help you keep driving sales in this unsteady economy!

Generating Passive Income

Is your business generating passive income, or is it strictly fee-for-service, or fee-for-sale? Many business owners are passing up the opportunity to create automated cash flow without much effort on their part. Passive income is income that you do the work for once, but get paid for over and over again. A great example is rental income. Rental income is passive, and it’s not subject to self-employment tax. Most of us aren’t in the real estate business, but we can still create passive income that helps us maintain a steady cash flow during the peaks and valleys of income that can come with business ownership.

There are a couple easy ways most business owners can generate some passive income. If you have a business website, is it making you money? I don’t mean by getting you new clients, although it should certainly be doing that. You business website can be making you money through advertising revenue, affiliate products, or sales of your own information products.

Your website doesn’t have to turn into one of those outrageous sales pages in order to make you money. A few strategically placed ads can earn you some extra cash each month without affecting the integrity of the other content on your site. You can also promote one or two relevant affiliate products without your site turning into a full-fledged internet marketer’s paradise. By keeping your ads and your affiliate products relevant to your target audience, they won’t be intrusive and can actually be more successful than some of the more blatant affiliate marketing sites.

The other simple thing you can do to generate some passive income through your business website is to create and sell your own information products relevant to your business activity. If you’re not skilled at writing, you can hire an outside consultant to write your material in your name, also known as a ghostwriter. The targeted audience that is visiting your website already has an interest in your product or service, or at least in your general industry, and generally won’t be offended or turned off by your offering an additional resource at a minimal cost.

Prospering During Tough Economic Times

Our current economic crisis has most of us afraid for the future.  Small business owners seem to be in the most delicate balance of the whole situation, and political campaigning has small business at the forefront.  What can you do as a small business owner to remain prosperous during these difficult economic times?

The mistake most businesses make during a slow economy is that they immediately cut back on marketing.  Now is the time when you need to focus more on your marketing efforts, because other businesses will be cutting back on their marketing budgets, which leaves an open opportunity for your business to be top-of-mind.

There are ways to increase your marketing efforts without spending more money.  The internet is rich with opportunities to advertise your business free or for a very minimal cost.  There are free directories that you can submit your website to, free article directories that allow you to publish articles showcasing your knowledge to your potential customers, discussion forums for you to participate in, social networking opportunities, and much more.

If the web atmosphere is unfamiliar territory for you, seek the advice of an internet marketing expert. Many marketing consultants, such as Stringfellow Creative, can teach you how to use the internet to run a successful, low-cost internet marketing campaign that will drive sales even during periods of economic crisis.

Create a Plan

If you’re like me, you frequently have tons of ideas running through your mind, different ways that you’d like to try marketing your business. My problem is, I never have nearly enough time to implement them all. That’s why it’s important to have a plan. By having a plan, you can be sure to devote the proper amount of time to all the various marketing strategies that you want to try. Giving each idea the time and effort it deserves will really give you an idea of whether a particular method has been effective.

The good news is, you don’t have to try all your ideas at once. Without a dedicated marketing team, it would be difficult to implement too many marketing methods at one time, and even more difficult to determine which ones were working and which ones weren’t. Creating a strategic plan will allow you to clear all those great ideas out of your head and put them on paper. One good way is to try one or two new techniques each quarter. Three months is usually enough time to get an idea of the effectiveness of a marketing technique. If one method is showing signs of promise, you can continue it.

When you come up with new ideas, write them down and add them to your plan. That way you’ll have a few months to prepare in advance, and you can continue your proven marketing efforts while trying one or two new techniques at a time. This will help you eliminate the confusion of trying to try out all the new and exciting marketing ideas at one time, and over time you’ll develop a base of marketing strategies that are successful in building your business.

Consistent Marketing Efforts

Well here we are at the end of September and I haven’t posted to the “new” blog since March. I’m ignoring my own best advice that I always give to clients: Be consistent with your marketing efforts! Many marketing strategies don’t produce immediate results, and a lot of businesses miss the boat by giving things a try for a very short period of time and then giving up on them too soon because they didn’t receive this amazing response after very little effort. If you are continuous and consistent with your marketing strategies and your message, you will see results over time. Unfortunately, there’s no magic pill in the world of marketing, and it often takes a combination of strategies over a period of time for a marketing campaign to achieve its full potential. In some cases, it may be possible to acheive a tremendous response from a single message, such as sending a hot new offer to a huge list of email subscribers, but that kind of response requires a lot of back-end planning and building. It takes time to build a subscriber list, to build a brand, and to gain name recognition among your clients. Be consistent with your efforts and your message, and one day you’ll reach a point at which you can boost your sales by sending a single email!

Too many businesses fall into the trap of thinking they don’t need to advertise because business is booming. Any business will experience periods of feast or famine, and maintaining a consistent marketing campaign throughout both busy and slow times can make your income stream a little more consistent. Marketing only when times are tough will only exacerbate the feast or famine syndrome we all hate. You can certainly ramp up your marketing efforts a little when you have extra time between clients or when business is slow, but you should have a plan that you stick to regardless of the amount of business you have coming in at any given time.

My commitment now is to follow my own best advice and start maintaining this blog to provide my clients and visitors with the advice that I’ve promised. During times of feast and times of famine, you’ll now see regular blog posts from me!

Don’t Be Afraid to Use Coupons and Discounts!

Attention business owners everywhere – small, large, international, Fortune 500 – take note: It will not kill your business or significantly decrease your profits for you to offer your customers a coupon, a periodic discount, a reward or a special offer! In fact, you will more than likely see an increase in your profits!

I just cannot believe the number of business owners I come across who are stingy with their coupons. They don’t want to give any coupons to any non-profit organizations for any promotions or fund-raising efforts. They’re afraid to offer a sale or discount on any of their products or services, until they’re so desperate for business that they have to in order to move anything.

The number one reason I get from people who balk at the idea of offering a promotion of some sort is that they simply can’t afford to take that cut into their profit margin. I guess it never occurs to them that by offering even a small snivel of a dicount, they would probably move a lot more product or sell more services during that time frame, because bargains attract buyers! And even if your profit margin is a little bit less on those few items or for that short amount of time, if you bring in twice your normal number of customers due to the offer, you would more than make up for the difference in your profits.

Hmmm…do I really want to be sure I’m making no less than $5.00 profit on each and every item I sell, or would I rather sell more items and probably double my normal profits for the month?