When it comes to marketing workshops, programmes and webinars the number one BIGGEST mistake small businesses make is spending time developing the content first.

I ran a session at the Web Tech Club last month on how to run virtual events – teleseminars and webinars – and this was my biggest rant of the session (and I do like to rant!!)

Typical Small Business Owner

Here’s what happens for most coaches, trainers and consultants:

“I want to run a workshop. I’ve been told this is a great way of making more money in working with more clients.”

Good thinking

“What topic shall I do?  I know, I love talking about growing tomatoes (OK – run me on this one!!).  I could easily run a whole day workshop on growing tomatoes.  I love tomatoes.  I’ve got stacks to say about tomatoes and my clients really need to learn more about growing tomatoes.  I’ve seen how they treat their tomato plants!”

OK – it’s good to focus on what you are good at.  There’s no point trying to promote something that you are not an expert in.  BUT … assuming you know what your clients need is WRONG WRONG WRONG!

“I’ll spend the next couple days planning out what I will deliver during this tomato growing workshop.  After all I want to be confident in what I am selling.  If I’ve got nothing to say then it’s going to be tough to promote it.”

Huh?! You’ve already told yourself you are an expert in tomato growing.  Why do you need to convince yourself first that you’ve got enough to say.  Of course you have!!

2 days later …

“OK, got the content together. Really pleased with the way I’ve designed my workbook.  I could sell that as a separate product.  Glad I spent that £65 on getting a graphic designer to come up with template and front page for the workbook. It looks very professional. I feel ready to sell it now.”

Gulp!! You’ve spent £65 on graphic design already but made no money from the workshop?

4 days later …

“No one is interested!! I’ve emailed everyone I know and no one is in the slightest bit interested in the best way of growing tomatoes.  What a waste of time.  I’m never going to run another workshop again.  I’m no good at this.”

There goes another demotivated, hacked off business owner whose dream was crushed at the first hurdle.

The 3 questions you need to answer first

This is why you must NEVER EVER spend time creating content for a workshop, product, book or anything else until you know these things:

1.  Your target audience – who do you want to work with?

2.  What is their pain – what keeps them up at night?  (What you think it is, is often no where near what it really is!!)

3.  What is it that you can deliver to soothe their pain?

And before you write the content, you promote it!  That’s right.

You work on your sales page, explaining what is your client will come away with and benefit from.  You may well have the course or content outlined as Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 or in chapter headings.

But you DON’T write the actual word for word content.

Sell before you write the content

You go out and sell tickets or pre-launch orders to make sure that your target audience will buy before you spend the time creating the content.

I know it will seem scary at first to sell something you haven’t finished, but I promise you that after the first time of doing it this way, you will never go back to your old ways!

Most small business owners who use email newsletters in their marketing don’t send enough emails!

I bet most of you who use email marketing stick to sending out a monthly newsletter, don’t you?  ”I don’t want to annoy my subscribers”, I hear you say.  But, here’s the problem.

An email newsletter that goes out once a month is, well, just 12 emails a year!  That’s right … only 12 emails a year!

But not enough time to write email newsletters!

Now if you came to me and explained that you struggle to find the time to write one email newsletter a month, let alone two, three or even four, then that’s another issue.  If you decide to embrace email marketing, then either make the time (coz you certainly won’t find it!) or delegate the setting up and scheduling to someone else, such as a virtual assistant.

But if you are worried about over emailing someone 12 times a year, then I’m afraid you may be wasting your time.

Your potential clients and customers need reminding.  They are all time-poor individuals who would love to have their problems solved by you.  But if you are not there reminding them – more than 12 times a year! – then I’m afraid they are just going to forget who you are.

The spamming dilemma

Back to this spamming dilemma.  If you were to send out an email once a day, then yes;  your subscribers will probably be unsubscribing in their droves and probably report you for inappropriate emails too.  But one person’s spam is another person’s essential reading.  If you are sending your subscribers valued content along with your promotions and events, then keep sending them great stuff.

An email has such a short life span that once received, it is either read and actioned on … or deleted.  It’s not like a letter or postcard mailed out which can hang around on someone’s fridge door as a reminder.  An email is usually gone as quickly as it is sent.

Once someone has had enough of you, they will unsubscribe.  They don’t want to buy anything from you, so why would you want to keep sending them stuff.  But for the people who would love to read more of your stuff but sometimes (and quite often!) don’t have the time to read more of your stuff, keep sending more of that stuff to them.

Be there at the right time

I promise you that, one day, they will take the time to read it. And that’s usually the day they’ve made a decision to have their problems solved by you.  If your email doesn’t arrive, how are they going to remember you?

Quick example: I ran a Web Tech phone-in clinic last week.  Recording available to members, but free to attend to anyone on my newsletter list.  The people who showed up on the day where the ones who responded to my “Last chance” reminder.  And boy where they pleased they made the effort to show up because the session was a fantastic.  They all agreed that if I hadn’t sent out that one last reminder they would have missed out.  And I would have given them a poor service!

Yes, I got un-subscribers from that last email, but the ones who responded where pretty pleased I had sent it. They read and actioned it … there and then.

Don’t be afraid of spamming

Of course, measure your successes and if you over-send you will notice your subscriber numbers dwindle.  But for goodness sake, think beyond a monthly newsletter!  12 times a year is not enough.

Photo Credit: Arnold | Inuyaki

There’s nothing like introducing a new product to the market infront of 150 hungry customers!

And if there is one thing that Dee Blick is fantastic at it is bringing together an amazing group of people to launch her second marketing book.  The queue to wait for her to sign her book was loooong!  And I don’t believe one person left that venue without at least one copy of her book tucked under their arms.

Dee came to me last summer to ask me to contribute to the chapter on online marketing. I was delighted to be her social media expert and provide advice on setting up LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  It’s rather lovely having my name in print (at last!!).  My kids were actually quite impressed when I showed them the book at breakfast.  Not a bad reaction from an 11 and 9 year old who were still buzzing from their sports day the day before.

Making a book launch look easy

Dee made the book launch look easy though.  It was almost as if she clicked her fingers and poof! the event happened.  The energy in the room was electric and it was fantastic to meet some old and new contacts.

But I can bet that a lot of blood, sweat and tears went in behind the scenes.  And it’s this commitment to the cause that makes things happen.  It’s no good wishing and dreaming of turning up to events like this and hoping it will all come good.

You’ve got to set goals, create a very strong vision, learn how to collaborate … or bully people in to working with you with your contagious energy!  But the key to Dee’s success, as far as I can see, is that she not afraid of self-publicising herself.  Her belief in herself as a great marketer (and a great business owner) is second to none.

And she’s not afraid to get her own clients along to share their experiences with her!  She didn’t need to tell the world how good she was last night.  She had several people stand up in front of the audience, and share their own thoughts about why they think Dee is top quality.  Nothing quite beats a bit of personal recommendation!

One very successful book launch!

So if there is one person you want to learn from when it comes to book launches, I would highly recommend you start with getting a copy of her book – The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book … if only to read my rather excellent chapter on social media marketing <wink>

Gather round, folks. We seem to have lost our way to our Facebook Page

If I was to ask you how far ahead do you plan your marketing, what would you say?

Do you splutter in to your morning coffee and stammer “Plan? Do I have to plan my marketing?”

Or do you merrily dig out out a your inch thick marketing plan that’s buried under piles of paperwork on your desk?

Planning ahead does sound rather dull, especially if you really don’t have an idea on what you should be doing.  Having a neatly tabulated marketing plan (printed in different colours depending on the activity so it’s easy to read!) that you don’t seem to have time to carry out is actually just as bad as making it up once in a blue moon, when you panic about your pipeline.

It seems that the main reason most of you don’t have a marketing plan is that you are just plain scared of the enormity of it all.  The 20 page template that your friendly bank manager (do they exist any more??!) gave to you when you first started out, just felt too overwhelming to complete.

And as for coming up with your 5 year Business Goals (launch first franchise, be hiring at least 5 associates, sat on the BBC Breakfast sofa …) it can feel, well … a bit tricky!

But if you don’t plan ahead then you are guaranteed a rough ride.  Fail to plan and you plan to fail may be a cliche but when it comes to running your own business, this can’t be ignored.

So what do you do?

The simplest and easiest way to think about your future marketing activity is to answer these 3 questions:

1.  Where are you now?

Be realistic about your current business – know what’s making you a profit, know where the clients you are attracting are coming from, know what it is you love to do … and what you hate too.

2.  Where do you want to be going?

If 5 years is just too big a goal for you, can you think about where you want to be this time next year?  What one project (one project at a time, please!) do you want to see working for you?  What type of client do you want to be working more with?

Be specific.  Be realistic.  Do set yourself a date in the future you would like this to happen by.

3.  How are you going to get there?

This is the part that seems to fox most of you, to be honest.  The sheer overwhelm by the number of things you could be doing.  Yes, live virtual events such as webinars and teleconference calls work.  Yes, Facebook is a top business marketing tool.  Yes, you could be speaking up and down the country.  Yes, creating your own LinkednIn Group is perfect for developing a community of your own.

But to do it all? In the next 3 months? Crazy!

One project at a time, remember!  What if I gave you permission to focus on just one marketing activity and got that to work before embracing anything new?  What if I told you that you weren’t allowed to do any other marketing activities until you got the first one to work?

I bet you would start seeing results far more quickly when you’ve just got one thing to do.

Keep it simple.  The less choice you have got on what you can do, the more likely you will be to get on and do it.

Photo by: Dickdotcom

Doreen knew it was time to get someone in to do her recycling!

How to hire a VA

I was interviewed earlier this week by Carmen MacDougall, one of the leaders in the UK Virtual Assistant industry.  She was putting together a book for VAs looking to build up their client list and wanted to find out how I went about hiring my first VA.

It was more than 4 years ago that I took on my first VA – someone who helped me with my business remotely, without the need of coming to my office or offering an employment contract. (And no – a virtual assistant is not one of those virtual animated people who pop up on websites to offer assistance as one person admitted to thinking!)

The interview reminded me of the struggle and confusion I felt when I first decided to take the plunge.

You see, I bet we are alike.

You run your own business.  And you probably are, like all good entrepreneurs and business owners, a bit of a control freak!

When it’s your business … your clients, your blood, sweat and tears … it’s really hard to start handing over some of that responsibility to someone else.  Someone who – let’s be frank here – you are not sure you can really trust.

What happens if they send out the wrong email to the wrong person?   What happens if they end up offending a new client which results in them cancelling the contract you’ve just agreed?

What happens if they lose all your files and mess up your accounts system?

All over-the-top, drama-queen emotions – yet perfectly reasonable thoughts from a business owner like me and you.

But if you carry on running the business in the same way you are at the moment, you probably know that you are going to drop some balls yourself.  Trying to do it all by yourself is guaranteed to result in you being the person who sends out the wrong email and messing up your invoices.

So when is the right time to take on some extra help and hire a VA?

Here are some of the danger signs:

• You have become a slave to your inbox.  Every time you respond to an email another 5 magically appear, which means you never have a chance to get on with business development.  Or writing that book you’ve promised yourself you are going to write!
• You are missing messages on your phone.  You are out with clients and it takes you at least 3 days before you manage to phone someone back … and you are losing potential new projects on the way.
• You are spending hours sending out information to clients such as training packs, terms of engagement letters, quotes and proposals.  You sit by the printer waiting patiently for everything to come off before you dash to the post office to get it in the last post of the day.
• You have projects such as “set up email newsletter” or “get Facebook Page sorted” on your to-do-list for week after week.
• You find yourself sat at your desk on a Saturday morning working out the last 6 months of business receipts whilst your family go out for a day trip to a local park
• You are missing out on having that “every other Friday” that you promised yourself to spend with friends – working for yourself meant that you were you own boss … but it feels like you are chained to your laptop and can’t get away.
• You forget to send out this month’s invoices … because you are too busy!  Cashflow starts to look a little tight.
• You are frustrated by your website as several of the pages are so out of date that you have stopped sending potential clients there to look at it.
• You struggle to find the time to book plane and train tickets and often find yourself missing out cheaper seats because you’ve left it too late to organise.

And the reason why I know these danger signs is because I have had them all at some point in my own business.  Got all of those T-shirts!

This was one of the big things that I shared during the interview with Carmen earlier this week.  By the time I came round to getting someone in to help with my business, I was in such a whirlwind of thoughts and big ideas that trying to explain what I needed help with was tough.

When it’s all in your head and you’ve trained yourself to thinking “it’s quicker if I just get on and do it” – you know you’ve got to slam on the breaks and take the time out to get some help.

Because if you don’t you will only end up suffocating your own success.

So when is it the right time to get a VA?

Before you begin that new project.  Before you decide to launch that 6 month VIP programme.  Before you launch yourself in to a frenzy of project juggling.

Break off one small part of your business – such as your live events, book project or new product you’re planning to launch – and focus on getting help on this.

If you do, you will find it far easier than trying to get help with that whole mountainous business of yours.  And you will have stronger foundations to take on more clients and projects without taking more of your precious time to do it.

It can take 3 or 4 months to establish a good working relationship with a VA but once it’s there, the sense of freedom is wonderful.  Knowing that there is someone else to do the things you hate to do and not able to do so you can concentrate on what really matters.

And you never know – you could find yourself working that 3 day week after all

If you are thinking about hiring your first VA or you’ve already had your confidence knocked when someone you’ve hired just hasn’t worked out – then check out my quick and easy course “How to Hire a VA“.  Follow the steps and you will find the right person for you in a matter of weeks!

Whether you are in the business of selling services or products, nothing quite beats having live events integrated in to your business model.

Live events can be one the most challenging parts of a business model to get right – after all, I’m sure you’ve grimaced at the thought of standing at the front of a room full of empty chairs, wondering why no one turned up.

The mere thought turns my stomach to knots, too!

But live events can be one of the most energising and proactive marketing activities a small business can make.

It’s hard to make a business successfull without taking some calculated risks.  And live events are one of those calculated risks that, if you have got the guts and energy to take them on, can push a business forward and make a real difference to your revenue potentials.

Here are the reasons why I love live events and recommend that they added to the business models of many of my clients.

1. It gets you right in front of your potential clients: Whether you go for the free or paid-for event option, getting in front of your clients works.  They see the whites of your eyes.  They see how passionate you are about what is you do.  And it’s a lot easier to build that rapport and trust when your clients can “experience” you.
2. You get to experience your potential clients: Getting instant feedback from what you are saying and demonstrating, can speed up your product development and help you create something that people love.  If your attendees are sitting back in the chairs and stiffling yawns, you know you’ve got it wrong.  But seeing them scribbling notes, asking detailed questions and leaning forward with interest, means you are getting those all important buying signals.
3. They create a sense of urgency in your own marketing: Putting a date in the diary, sharpens your mind and clears all clutter because you know you have to get on with the marketing plan.  You have to get things done – you can’t afford to faff!
4. They create a sense of urgency with your potential clients: Your clients have to make a decision in order to make the time to attend your event.  They can’t put in to next month’s plan or review because the event will have been and gone. Offering a live event can help swing certain people to commit to what you are offering.
5. They don’t have to cost you much to run: Hiring a room at the nearest Holiday Inn and forking out £5 a head for coffee can make some events impractical to run.  But using one of the many web based conferencing tools makes running virtual events simple and easy.  I’ve run both physcial and virtual events over the years, and there’s something very lovely about being able to communicate live with potential clients (and paying clients) wearing my PJs and not bothering with my hair : )
6. They test your commitment to your business: Running live events is not right for everyone, but if you want to “put yourself out there” and take charge of your future success, the risk of running live events can pay off massively.  For every “failed” event I have run, there have been 15 or 20 successful events.  And each one has taught me something new about what I should do differently and how to improve my offerings to my clients.

Running live events or workshops can be a risk – but have the right plan and processes in place, they can sky rocket your business!

One of those processes to have in place is ensuring you can take payments online.  Confirming workshop places upon receipt of a cheque or promise of cash on the day is not only hard work for you, but makes it hard work for your clients.

Check out this month’s Web Tech Training Session and all will be revealed on how to be able to take credit card payments from your website.  Click here for more info.

Imagine a 5 year old boy. Let’s call him Tom.

Tom needs looking after as his mum has to work and you have agreed to help out for a couple of hours after school.

Now, Tom is a typical 5 year old boy. He wants to play football.  He wants to go to the park and climb up trees.  He has been at school all day and yet as enough energy to keep Greater London in power for the month of July.

You, on the other hand, are tired from a hard day of endless phone calls and email bashing.  You would just love to sit down and watch the latest kids DVD together.  After all it looks like rain and you don’t fancy getting wet.

What do you do?  Do you spend the next ten minutes explaining that the wind is picking up and the way that the cumulus nimbus clouds that are forming means that they is a definite probability of heavy precipitation?

Or do you start selling the DVD option?

Whether you have children of your own or not, common sense tells you that when communicating with a 5 year old you need to use simple language and be very clear in your requests.

And this is why I like to compare communicating with potential clients with communicating with children.

If a 5 year old can not grasp the concept of what your business is all about, then there is every chance that your potential client, who knows nothing about you and your business, will not either.

Here are my top tips for treating your clients like children.

1.  Avoid all jargon. There is a big danger that when we live and breathe our businesses, we tend to adopt the language and abbreviations of that business.  This is especially so for technically based businesses and NLP practitioners, for example.

Would you know what web-based CRM interface actually is, let alone know how it could benefit your business?  And how on earth does the average person on the street know how to define neuro-linguistic programming? Or life coaching for that matter?

A quick note on abbreviations – it is just plain rude to assume that your potential customers know what TLA’s are. (answer at the bottom of the article to find out what it means!!)

2.  Use simple language. Using the best part of a Thesaurus on your website home page can look exceptionally pretentious, at the best of times. At worst, if your reader has to pick up a dictionary to understand what you have written, no relationship is going to be built, is it?

3.  Never patronise. Go too simple with your language and your potential customer may take offence to be treated as someone who is one sandwich short of a picnic.  Coming back to Tom – he would certainly take offence to being talked down to and may reward you with a kick in the shins for be treated like a baby!

4.  Avoid using negative language. Tom is carrying a glass of milk across the room and you say to him “Don’t drop the glass”.  What do you think will happen?  Yes, there is every chance that Tom will drop the glass.  Our brains can’t process negatives so we just leave them out.

Think of commonly used phrases such as “Don’t Delay.  Don’t miss out on this special offer”.  Yes, that’s right.  There is a higher chance that your potential client will delay. Far better to use “Book Now.  Reserve your copy today.”

5.  Be very clear in your requests. You would never take Tom to a busy road and just leave him to cross by himself.  You couldn’t afford to take the risk of assuming that he may be street savvy enough to look for cars before crossing.

So, when communicating with your potential customers, whether it is a personal email, an advert or a direct mailing, always be specific with your call to action.

“Call me on 001 234 5678 before Friday at 12 noon if you would like to benefit from this 20% discount”

“Email offer@product.com by the end of the day to reserve your place.”

Never assume your potential customer is going to know what to do.  Be specific and clear and your customer will thank you for making it so easy for them.

5.  Reward with lots of praise and sweets. OK, Tom may be motivated by Smarties and your potential clients may not be.  But use the same principles.  Reward your customers with a simple “Thank you” or “I really appreciate your business” is just as valuable to building relations as continuing discount vouchers and referral rewards.

P.S.  TLA’s is short for Three Letter Acronyms.  Um, annoying isn’t it :0)

Your customers and clients rarely buy what it is that you offer, especially if you are a service based business.  It doesn’t matter whether you are a coach, photographer or website designer – people don’t actually buy the coaching, photos or websites.

And this is why most service-based businesses fail.  The life coach who is trying hard to sell coaching sessions for working mothers gives up after 3 months of networking.

The photographer who is desperately trying to sell wedding photography at every wedding fair he goes to begins to wonder whether he made the right choice leaving his corporate job.

The website designer who offers a bargain basement offer for building a 5 page website starts to discount her fees even further as she panics about next month’s cashflow.

What do all these small business owners have in common?  They are trying to sell what it is that they do.  A common, yet costly mistake to make.

What your clients buy are the end results.  They buy the benefits and rewards to the product or service you deliver.

People don’t buy coaching – they buy the business idea or new career path they get from going through the coaching process.

People don’t buy photos – they buy a gorgeous collection of memories, beautifully presented in leather-bound book that they just know the children they plan to have together will cherish sometime in the future.

People don’t buy websites – they want to found on Page One of Google and have email enquiries flooding in to their inboxes.

It was Heather Gillam of FitBizTraining who inspired this article and it was her that I give credit to one of the best names given to a fitness programme I have come across.

10 days ago I was feeling rather desperate. My mummy tummy muffin-roll had gone beyond cute and cuddly as even my “fat” jeans where uncomfortably tight and the thought of getting in to a bikini on my summer hols was filling me with dread.

Then in popped an email in to my inbox from Heather Gillam.  “Would you be interested in a joining my “guaranteed drop-a-clothes-size-in-a-month bootcamp” starting in 2 weeks?”

What me – be able to guarantee to drop a dress size in a month? Absolutely yes!!

Now, let’s go back to the context of this article.  What response do you think I would have had if Heather sent me an email on that same day and asked if I fancied joining her on a fitness programe?  I probably would have gone away and considered it.  But by packaging up her progamme as a “guaranteed drop-a-dress-size-in-a-month” programme, there was absolutely no room for any doubt on whether I should do this or not.  I even re-scheduled client appointments so I can make the twice weekly sessions.

So, how does this relate to you and your business?  Take a long hard look at what it is you are selling (and coaches – you are the worst culprits in this!).  Are you selling your service and products?  Or you are selling a dream?  A feeling?  A guaranteed result?

Because if you are not selling a dream, a feeling or a guaranteed result, then you need to re-proposition your offer right now.

Give your clients the results they want – and not what it is that you do!

There’s lots to do to market your business, isn’t there?  There’s stuff that you can do for free, like Twitter or Facebook.  There’s stuff that costs a little like networking and websites. And there’s stuff that costs lots like direct mailings and advertising.

But even though the amount of money you have to spend can go up aswell as down, there is a more valuable commodity that you will never have enough of.

Time!

It doesn’t matter how good your time management is, you will always have exactly the same amount of time as everyone else.  60 minutes in an hour.  24 hours in a day.  7 days a week.

Your competitors may have fatter wallets to spend from on their marketing but you are all on the same playing field when it comes to time.

And as a small business owner, who notoriously never has enough time in any given week, you need to make sure that the time you spend on your marketing activities is time very well spent!

So why do you still try to attract each new client one by one?

Too many of you focus your marketing activities on attracting individual clients.

Let me give you an example.  Business owners who sell services such as coaching or graphic design often use face-to-face networking as a marketing strategy.  This can never work for them long term because they go to a networking event with the sole intent of finding a new customer.  Even if the event may only cost them £20 or so, a networking event could take at least 4 hours out of your day.  Work out what your hourly rate is and each new client lead could be costing you £200 minimum.

If you convert 1 out of every 3 leads (I’m being generous here!!) that’s £600 per new customer.  And if an average customer spends less than a £1,000 with you, your profitablity margin stinks!

I know, I know – I have used pretty basic sums here and your hourly rate may be much higher than £50 and your average client spend could be £10,000 or more.

But I wanted to make a point here.  Face-to-face networking is important to build relationships and, to be honest, get you out of the office before you go mad and start talking to the plants!  I make the time to go to certain networking events and make it a part of my working month.  But to focus on face-to-face networking as one of your main marketing strategies is not going to work.

Stop chasing the one to one approach and focus your efforts on the one to many.

You can spend your time far more wisely by focusing your efforts of getting in front of groups of your target clients.

Speaking, article writing, affiliate relationships, running live events – these all focus on one to many.  And which approach you take depends on what you enjoy, what you are good at and where your target clients hang out.

Answer these questions and they’ll help understand which approach to take.

Question One: Where do your target clients hang out? This can be online or live events up and down the country.

Question Two:  What do your target clients read? Again, on and offline – blogs, trade publications, magazines.

Question Three:  What communications are you good at? Speaking is my favourite way of reaching out to people but I know getting up in front of an audience is not everyone’s cup of tea!  So if you don’t want to speak, can you develop your writing? Can you run virtual events?  Would you be good in front of the camera? Even perhaps do you need someone else to be the voice for your business?

Question Four:  Who has an influence on your target clients? Who already has a big Twitter following? Who already has a large mailing list, blog readers, subscription list?  Who runs the large events or heads up groups and associations?

Use the answers to these questions to help you decide on how you are going to get in front of groups of your target clients.  Whether it’s a campaign to get you speaking gigs over the next year or a plan to build an affiliate programme – you decide.

Just as long as it’s marketing one to many – and not one to one!