Business Coaching

What comes first, building your brand or generating leads?

Many businesses believe that if you build your brand well enough, leads will inevitably follow, but in reality the opposite is true. If you can generate enough leads and convert those leads into customers, your business will grow.

This situation is a trap that many business owners are in. They advertise in hopes of building their brand, when in reality, they should be advertising with the goal of generating as many leads as possible.

Advertising is a necessity for any small business today although some still don’t or won’t advertise because they don’t know how to get the proper return on investment with their advertising.

Throwing good money after bad won’t create a strong advertising campaign, but studying the needs of your customers and speaking to those needs while testing and measuring the results will.

The problem with advertising is that most businesses don’t know where their resources go or what the return on investment is.

You can try virtually any kind of campaign, as long as you’re speaking to the needs of your target market and testing and measuring along the way. When you test and measure you can cut your losses when certain strategies aren’t working or continue to ride the wave when they are.

Simply take 10% of what you expect your total ad spend to be and run some test ads to see what kind of response you get.

If you get a response, continue with and run the campaign.

If you don’t, kill it now before you waste any more money, then go back and develop a new ad or campaign to test.

That way you know if your campaign is working based on the number of leads it generates.

To test and measure your advertising, a system has to be put in place.  Over the course of a campaign you should measure the number of enquiries made, the number of sales made as well as your conversion rate, or the difference between the number of people who bought from you and those who just visited your store but didn’t buy.

From the figures collected during this testing period, you can tell whether to change, adjust or re-run your advertising to get the best result.

This way will save you and your business a lot more money in the long run putting a different slant on the old adage, “It pays to advertise”.

Just remember that your goal isn’t some random idea of building your brand, but the actual end results of lead generation.

We like to say in order to earn more, you need to learn more, and reading a steady stream of great business books is one way to do exactly that.

Here are two books we’ve been sharing with our TEAM over the past quarter, both of which offer great insight and perspectives into the world of business.

The first is about the value of customer service …
The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary by Mark Sanborn

… and the second is a somewhat “Politically Incorrect” take on why it’s called “work” …

It’s Called Work for a Reason! Your Success Is Your Own Damn Fault by Larry Winget

You can grab both for your own “business re-education” program by clicking on the above links …

Enjoy!

A basic part of the ActionCOACH system is our belief in the power of testing and measuring. No business should ever undertake a project or campaign without setting up a process which will test and measure its success.

But, in our personal lives, we fail to test and measure all the time.

For instance, we go to sleep and assume we’ve gotten enough rest when we get up, even though we may still feel groggy. We got to the gym and assume we’ve gotten enough exercise to burn the necessary calories to stay in shape, but have no real data to prove it aside from how we feel.

In these situations, we are hoping our actions will lead to the desired outcome, but we are taking a leap of faith to get there, much like business owners that spend money on advertising but don’t test and measure that campaign’s effectiveness.

But, thanks in part to some incredible advances in technology and some enterprising entrepreneurs, the time has come for us to be able to test and measure virtually anything we do and use that data to design better program or situations for us to take advantage of.

Today there are alarm clocks that will measure your sleep patterns to give you a better idea how long you should sleep and when you should wake up. There are smartphone applications that will measure your spending habits and do your budgeting for you. There are even systems that allow you to measure your happiness at various times of the day or with various people in your life.

There are so many tools available that it may seem like overload, but these tools can help anybody make better usage of their resources and create a happier and more abundant life.

That is the goal when we test and measure with our clients and, no doubt, testing and measuring, with the help of the tools available these days, can positively influence you personally as well.

Everybody’s online these days, right?

It sure seems that way, but there are still a shocking number of businesses that aren’t taking advantage of the online world to grow.

In fact, almost 40 percent of small businesses in the United States have no online presence at all.

It’s easy to blame uncontrollable factors on failures, but a business that has no online presence and fails has no excuse. There is help for any business if they know where to look.

The economy may be bad, taxes may be high and the economy may be uncertain, but none of those factors mean anything if you aren’t taking full advantage of the opportunities around you and the internet is as powerful a marketing tool as we have ever seen.

People don’t look for the products and services they need in the Yellow Pages anymore.

In fact, many communities have done away with distributing phone books because most people search for what they want online these days and having a massive tome with everyone’s contact information was simply too expensive to produce every year.

For business owners that haven’t gone online with their message yet and then wonder why they aren’t finding enough customers, it’s time to move to the 21st century.  If a business isn’t marketing, it’s dying.

Developing your presence isn’t hard and it shouldn’t take up too much time, but it’s vital to your success.

If a small business doesn’t have an online presence, whether it’s a Facebook fan page or a dedicated, multi-page website, they are missing out on hundreds if not thousands of potential customers.

Online you can build a following of your best customers, interact with them and find easy, cost-effective ways to market your business.

An on-line presence is, arguably, the most important marketing tool available these days, so get online today and don’t lose any more business to your competition.

Mark Schmelder of Cimbrian, a marketing technology company in Pennsylvania, was experiencing rapid growth, but the company was unable to handle the growth because it lacked organization. Since working with ActionCOACH Jeff Witmer, the business has become more streamlined. Cimbrian has increased its earning ability and profitability. Working with an ActionCOACH has allowed Mark to find the perfect balance between his business and personal life — just watch the testimonial above!

There are positives and negatives to social media marketing.

Marketing is the life blood of any business but many companies spend too many of their resources on marketing campaigns that don’t lead to real and substantial results.

How can companies get the results they want from marketing campaigns?

Online advertising already accounts for a $55 billion market, but the fastest growing aspect of online advertising is social media marketing. Over $2.5 billion was spent on sites such as Facebook or Twitter last year, a 14% increase from the previous year.

There is no doubt social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are changing the way businesses advertise. But do the benefits of social media advertising outweight the benefits of traditional advertising?

One of the best aspects of social media advertising is it doesn’t cost a lot of money. In a recent interview on the Today Show, SillyBandz CEO Robert Croak said his company spent, “nothing on advertising” because they allowed the brand to advertise itself through word of mouth on social networking sites.

Social media advertising helps keep you in touch with your customers; you can review feedback, both positive and negative, and even conduct informal surveys or customer polls to find out what people want to buy from you.

There are a few negatives, however, and the biggest negative might be that if social media is used incorrectly, it can create a negative buzz for your business.

When businesses use social media marketing, there are some things to remember so you don’t generate negative buzz:  Social media accounts must be continually monitored to ensure customer content is positive and constructive, and all questions and comments must be responded to in a timely manner. Not doing so can have customers questioning your motivation or commitment, which can hurt business and allow disparaging comments to last, not only in cyberspace, but in prospective customers’ minds.

Using social media to advertise may take time to master, but it can be a great benefit to any business if used correctly. What do you think of the social media advertising revolution? Has it helped your business grow?