Marketing Tips

Sales is simply talking to people, figuring out what they need and seeing if you can help them. Lots of sales trainers will try to convince you there is more to it. The reason we all believe that sales is about manipulation is because this is how sales trainers have sold sales training to sales managers who don’t actually know how to sell for years. When you are simply having a conversation with someone, an authentic and honest approach is always best. No one likes to

Facebook – While Facebook is the largest social media platform, it is mostly used to connect with people you already know. If you have a business, your business should have its own designated business page. At least 70% of your posts should be related to your business on your business page but only up to 30% of your posts should be related to your business on your personal page. Reels (video) will help you reach people that you are not already connected with. These shou

Imagine there is a giant invisible funnel in the sky and every time you make an impression on a potential customer, you toss them into the funnel. Some people will just float around the rim because no matter how many times you reach out to them, they will never become a customer, but some will drop down to the first level of the funnel, the level called ‘Awareness’, which is where that customer will start to sense that they may need to make a decision about your product or s

Far too often, businesses focus on what they want, which is selling whatever product or service they have available instead of really understanding their customer and why that customer might want to buy your product or service. All buying decisions are emotional, which means if you can figure out how to push your target audience’s buttons into an emotional reaction, you will sell more. Most people understand the need to identify their target audience, but you need to go de

Word-of-mouth advertising begins when your business has a moment of positive interaction with another human being. This could be because they saw something on social media that emotionally connected with them, or maybe there was a time when you had a positive interaction with them in the comment section or through direct messaging. Word-of-mouth advertising can also occur when you have events or attend events where you can connect with people one-on-one. When people ha

When someone starts a business, they immediately set up all their marketing: their website, logo, business cards, Google profile and social media accounts. They are so excited! And then they realize none of these things, on their own, is going to get business rolling in so they are going to have to go out and find the business so they can have money coming in. That’s how a lot of small businesses end up in networking groups, which is a great place to find business opport

Every small business I visit seems to believe if they just had better social media content, they would have more people flocking through their doors. Sometimes, that could be the case, but all too often, it isn’t. Social media is like word-of-mouth advertising, only the information moves faster because you reach more than one person at a time. Products do best on social media because they can be bought immediately and directly tracked. Services typically post organic co

Social media isn’t just about content anymore. It isn’t just about people leisurely scrolling on Facebook and Instagram looking for the coolest products or the most entertaining content. Social media has now become more intertwined with Google and AI than it has ever been before. Meta reviews and Meta content now play a much bigger role in AI searches, meaning that if you have quality educational content about the industry you are in, chances are potential customers could

The best way to get more reviews is to make it as simple as possible. Train your staff to request a review when they are checking out by using a QR code that directly links into the review of your choice. Send an email within 24 hours with a link to the review site asking your customer for a great review. Shoot your customer a text saying something like “It would mean a lot to me if you could leave a quick review here. It really helps us grow,” and then provide the link.

Yes, a Google Profile page will not only make your business look professional, but it is one of the key elements that will help you get found on Google. When potential customers go to Google, they will see your Google Business Profile and look for common information like directions, services and hours of operation before they even see your website. A Google business profile is free so there is really no excuse why a business wouldn’t have one. To register for a Google Pr

Your website should be an extension of your selling strategy. You should know your customer, and their decision-making process so well that when you send a potential customer to your website, it will make perfect sense for them to progress to the next step in their buying process. People spend a lot of time, energy and money trying to figure out how to optimize their website on Google, but Google has always optimized the sites that have the best user experience and that i

These days the temptation is to design your logo using AI. Here’s why that is a bad idea: Anything produced by AI is considered public domain and if AI was able to create it for you, it would be able to create a similar logo for your competitor. This could lead to confusion in the marketplace when customers can’t tell the difference between the companies, and here’s the bad news: Because it was created in AI, you have no legal jurisdiction to sue the other company. Your

You need to understand that the world is over-saturated with marketing messages. Marketing messages are so common they usually blend into our everyday background, and because of this saturation, customers have very little time or energy to think about whatever it is you are trying to sell. That’s why you need to make your unique business proposition both simple and designed to elicit an emotional response. People don’t buy things logically. They buy things based on emot

Consistency. People like knowing what to expect. It’s why some people won’t change even when they know something is bad for them. Consistency feels like safety. People gravitate to it. While some people would consider consistency as part of operations, we consider it to also be an integral part of your overall marketing strategy. If all parts of your business are consistent, people will subconsciously recognize it, understand it and buy from you time after time. This

Before you develop a branding strategy, it is important to identify your unique business proposition, (what you do better than your competition) and who you are looking to sell to, (your target audience). For new business owners, start with the basics: Pick colors that align with your target audience’s taste. If you choose red, make sure it is always the exact same color of red. Pick messaging that is simple, clear, direct and aligns with your unique business propositi

Your customer’s memory is like a room full of moving boxes waiting to be packed. When they see or hear a marketing message, they take that memory and categorize it in a box in their brain. When they get to a point where they are ready to make a decision to buy from a company in your category, they look back into their memory at the boxes labeled in that category. If you have competition, there will likely be several of these boxes in their brain, and they usually choose th

There is one common marketing strategy I see in businesses that succeed that no one talks about. Probably because it isn’t a product that can be sold so people often don’t consider it to be marketing. But it is. Businesses that succeed often have developed some sort of strategic partnership with other businesses, so they have leads coming in without them having to go out and work for those leads. This could be through affiliates, businesses in similar industries, or busin

It is not feasible for your target audience to be every man, woman and child on the planet because that’s not a target. That’s a wild prayer that you might catch a few customers in your net. A lot of businesses owners hate the idea of narrowing down their target audience because they think they are going to miss out on sales, but the reality is that if you can’t speak directly to the few who are most likely to buy from you, (i.e. the low hanging fruit), your marketing mess

Most business owners are so consumed with the marketing and operations of their own company they neglect to think about how their competition is positioning their products in the market. That doesn’t mean you should copy what your competition is doing, but you should be aware of how they are getting people to buy their product or service. This is the gut punch. Ask yourself: “What does my competition do better than we do?” If they are open for business, they have custom

Before you spend one cent on marketing your business, you need to understand why people would want to buy from you. Ask yourself: “What do we do better than our competition?” Chances are the answer will be that you either have a better price, better service or a better product. You might get two out of the three. You will almost never see a business with all three of these things. Decide who you want to be as a business. This is called your unique selling propositi