A Business Owner messaged me on Facebook last week with a question to ask for some help… So I have created a video where I give you 3 reasons why you would get deflated or frustrated with your marketing.
Here is what she said –
Hi Amanda… I was wondering whether you could help in some way…
I am really struggling on marketing and advertising my new studio, workshops and courses. I am feeling a bit deflated and frustrated. I can’t be bothered with it I feel like no one is interested in my business. So I am giving up?
I don’t know why I am getting like this… But if I don’t start getting myself ‘out there’ then I feel like I am going to lose my business and I don’t want to.
Do you have any tips/advice?
I want to understand how to get myself out there and why I feel like I can’t do this side of the business? I just want to sit, make and teach.
Hope to hear from you soon…
Video is 9 minutes 51 seconds
Do these 3 things and your marketing WILL become easier!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter… Please leave a comment, a thought or start a discussion.
Time Management, the wonderful enigma. Of course, you don’t need it explaining that it is impossible to manage time, only to manage yourself and your time better. A lot of business owners ask me for support with their time management. Below, I have outlined some basic tried and tested methods to make sure you are spending your time on the right things. Please believe me, I am no Time Management Guru, in fact I have always struggled with my time management, here are some ideas that have helped me get to where I am today:
Focus on your HPA
Amanda calls the important things you need to do; H.P.A’s (High Payoff Activities)
It may seem basic, but the amount of business owners who get caught up in the minutia of day to day activities at the expense of focusing on their High Payoff Activities is amazing. Often focusing on the right tasks is the difference between a business thriving and a business collapsing. It doesn’t matter about the colour of your paper, if your clients are starting to wane.
It goes without saying that each of the tasks that you perform must have a direct link back to increasing the profitability of your business. However, of these tasks, there will be some that can be done by other people, actually let me correct that, there will be a lot that can be done by other people. Write down your plan for this year, and then write down your key performance indicators. How much time are you spending on tasks that are unrelated to these key goals/indictors? How would your business grow if you just focused on these tasks?
Time Management is my responsibility
When coaching a client on Time Management I use this phrase:
“When I give you my time, I am giving you a portion of my life that I will never get back. Don’t waste it.”
It’s a powerful phrase.
Too often we believe that our time is not ours, that people take our time and we have limited control over it. In fact the secret of good time management depends on exactly the opposite. Good time management depends on 2 things: taking responsibility; and being disciplined. Without these you will always struggle. I don’t want to hear you say “yes, but…” that won’t help you. Taking responsibility means that you need to realise that you have choices, and that your choices got you to this point, if you don’t like where you are you can choose to change. As Jim Rohn once said: “If you don’t like where you are MOVE, you are not a tree.”
So what choices aren’t working out for you? What other options do you have?
A task written down is worth two in your head
I have always used a “to do” list, but many people I coach, don’t use them. Crazy right? Surely you can’t function without a proper to do list? I wasn’t blessed with a great memory, I’m in awe of those people that say, “Yes, I’m free Sunday, I’ll see you at 12”, and they actually turn up! In a business scenario your to do list is crucial, not just for remembering things, but as an analysis tool to ensure you are doing the right things.
After coaching someone I always look for the impact that my coaching has had, between you and me, if someone doesn’t have a to do list and makes that one of their action points I love it, because I know that they will see significant results straight away. That’s how powerful a to do list is.
Some to do’s and to don’ts:
Do write tomorrow’s list before finishing work today, you are in the best frame of mind to plan significant actions at this point.
Don’t write things that you have completed already, it’s wasting time.
Do deal with repeat offenders: If an item is always on your list and is never tackled make a choice: remove it from the list, delegate it or get it done.
And finally
Don’t go it alone, if you are struggling with your performance or if you simply know there is a better way of doing things then get support. A good coach will support you in this. Please contact me, I’d love to hear from you.
I’ve lost count of the times that people have said to me that they’re looking to reduce costs and that they’re cutting their marketing spend. You see, I’m an accountant, so they think that’s what I want to hear.
But I don’t. I think the opposite. To me, marketing is an investment, not a cost, and is essential to any business that wants to grow and be successful. The problem is that bad marketing is a cost, and that most businesses just don’t know whether their marketing is good or bad.
That’s why it’s essential to measure the results of all of your marketing. By tracking these results, you can see what’s working and what isn’t. You can then stop the bad stuff (“the costs”) and do more of the good (“the investments”).
So how do you do this?
At its simplest, you just need to keep a record of three numbers for every piece of marketing you do. That could be a flyer, your website, a networking group, an advert, or any other marketing activity. So what are the three numbers?
Cost of the marketing activity – what have you spent? For example, a mailshot might include the design cost, printing and postage. You might also include the cost of your own time but don’t worry if you can’t put a price on that right now.
Income brought in – the sales that come directly from this piece of marketing.
Profit brought in – sales are good, but what’s the profit? If you can’t work it out exactly, use you gross profit percentage multiplied by the sales figure above.
And with those three figures, you can decide whether each piece of marketing has made or lost money……and whether it’s worth doing again.
But how do you know where the sales came from?
There’s a famous saying that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half”. And that was true when John Wanamaker said it over 100 years ago. But it isn’t now. Everything is trackable and measurable…..if you know how, and put a bit of effort in.
Some sources are easy to track – for example, a new customer might tell you that one of your current customers recommended you – but others can be a bit trickier. Did that new customer come from the flyer, or the website, or the advert, etc?
So here are some ideas for tracking the exact source of income:
The Internet – without getting too technical, there are lots of ways that the internet can help. For example, you can get different sources to send customers to different webpages where they can order from you, e.g. the flyer sends them to www.yourname.co.uk/flyer so you know it came from the flyer. Google Ads and Google Analytics are also much easier to master than you might think.
Tracking Numbers – did you know that, for a few pounds each month, you can get a lot of different local phone numbers (ie all 0151, etc) that all ring through to your main office number? You can then put different phone numbers on your website, advert, business card, etc. At the end of the month, you get a statement that says exactly where each phone call came from, so you know exactly where those sales came from. Check out Invoco for tracking numbers and give the code KOOGAR to receive 3 months for FREE!
“Ask for Jon” – a really simple but effective method is to put “Ask for Jon/Amanda/Sarah” on each piece of marketing, using a different name for each. Of course, there is no “Jon” -they’re always “not in the office right now, but can I help with that?” – but you now know exactly where the lead came from!
So, using the steps above, you can track the success of all of your marketing.
It’s great to try different things, but you need to measure and stop the costs, so you can use your cash for investments.
And, as an accountant, that’s what I really want to hear from all of my clients.
As business advisors, we spend our working lives where sometimes angels fear to tread – working with company owners on how to leverage greater profitability (and pleasure) from their businesses.
It’s both a privilege and a potential minefield, but we are what we are, so we take our own advice.
There are plenty of business advisors, consultants, coaches or whoever out there, ready and able to work at the turnaround end of the market. We don’t. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that work – we’ve done our fair share and earned our spurs on the battlefield. But what we do is focused at SME owners and leaders who are already doing well and are at the point where they can see that there is more they could achieve, recognising that it’s time for support. In other words, we have a clear target market.
So, in Koogar’s valuable space, why am I talking about business advice? Simply, because what Koogar do is immensely valuable in the right time and the right place. I’m an enthusiastic (and occasionally quite good) clay pigeon shooter. So my shotgun is useful – in the right place. Not so popular in the supermarket! In other words, the right tools in the right time and place.
And it’s the same with marketing – it’s an essential, valuable and flexible tool when used well and for clearly identified ends. And that’s where a lot of companies go off track. It’s too easy to call for marketing activity because sales are down. But why are they down? When did it start? Are we sure of the causes? Did our target market change? Is our database dead on its feet?
Our strapline is Analyse, Act, Advance, and it applies to every area of a business. So let’s take a look at how this applies to a company’s thinking on marketing…
Sales are down, or we want to increase sales for growth.
So, some key questions;
Do we have clarity as to our target client base? Have we identified the client characteristics we do want, as well as the ones we don’t? (No point in working our socks off to service lots of clients who make us 10p each in profit, as opposed to a more select number who each give us £1,000 in profit.)
Is our planned target base the same as the present client one, or is there a planned shift?
Have we worked the numbers – how many extra clients can we deal with before we need additional staff and materials?
Are we able to provide our marketing expert with lots of data and information on our target clients? This increases their ability to make a real difference. Of course, they’ll help with this, but they’ll be reassured and greatly helped by you knowing your own detail.
Once we can, robustly, answer yes to all of these, we’re ready to talk to the marketing experts. If not, we’re going to be shooting at the moon…..
Marketing is about keeping ourselves in the customer’s mind’s eye, making sure that they know we are the people to come to when they have a problem that we can potentially fix.
Digital marketing as a whole has helped move the small businesses to the same level as large organisations by allowing us to target more people on a smaller budget. Social media isn’t the key to marketing, it is just one aspect. You need a good mix of different marketing components that will help trigger responses. The result is getting people to take action.
I’d like to give you 4 elements to think about when creating, designing or implementing online and offline marketing. Here is the third element:
#3: Treat them like they are VIPs (Alfie – everyone who gets in his car is treated like royalty)
I, along with thousands of others have been sent an email from LinkedIn. Informing us that we are in the Top 1%, 5% or 10% viewed profiles on LinkedIn in 2012 and as you may have seen I shared it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I thought to myself isn’t that nice… Getting a Thank you from such a large organisation for being part of their community.
Somebody mentioned on Twitter that “this is Spam and to be careful“.
After sleeping on it, I feel that this is Social Media.
Social Media is about engaging your audience, getting them involved, making them feel special and that is what LinkedIn has done for thousands of its connections.
Most Social Media is unsolicited, unasked for but we get it anyway. For example when your friend likes someone else status and you see it in your Ticker. You didn’t ask for it, but it was shown to you anyway. Otherwise known as “Social Spam”.
LinkedIn has used the power of its users to help get the word out. They want people to come back to LinkedIn, just like you want people to come back to your Facebook Pages, Websites and Twitter Accounts.
When asked what value being in the upper crust confers on its users, a LinkedIn rep replied that “The practical upside to being the top 1% or 5% is that we believe the more engaged you are on LinkedIn, the better you will be in the job that you currently have, and the better connected when you are seeking a new job.” LinkedIn began practice of congratulating top users for their elect status in March 2011, when it surpassed 100 million users. At that point, Co-Founder Reid Hoffman sent out emails thanking the networks’ first one million members.
So when was the last time you engaged so well with your audience, they shared a part of you or your company with other people?
When did you get them involved in the marketing of your company and most importantly when was the last time you made one of your clients feel special?
You may have heard me talk in my presentations about “the experience” and to get an experience online you need to make people feel, whether it’s good or bad.
LinkedIn has given its users the experience of feeling important and wanting them to be involved even more, which has then spurred the users on to share the news across the Social space.
So there may be sceptics out there with regards to the #LinkedInBlueRibbonGate but LinkedIn have managed to do what most companies cannot. Great Marketing!
Let me know what you think about #LinkedInBlueRibbonGate and if you got an email.
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Guest Blog by Sallie Bate of 
I’ve lost count of the times that people have said to me that they’re looking to reduce costs and that they’re cutting their marketing spend. You see, 
As 