Balance is Important for Business Success

As a business owner, are you swamped from early morning to late evening handling all the aspects of your business and personal life? If you answered this question with a "yes," you are probably among the majority. We all tend to allow the daily pressures to take hold of and dominate our lives. The lack of balance leaves us feeling overwhelmed and tired.

I'm going to make this week's blog short and sweet... as a business owner, you MUST take time out for reflection. Whether it is self-reflection or reflecting on the success of your business, it is very important to schedule this time into your busy schedule. How can you take a look at where you've been and where you want to go with your business unless you dedicate the time for thinking? Making a concerted effort to schedule quality time for planning, troubleshooting, and creating can be the difference between running a so-so business and a great business.

Don't let the busyness of your schedule keep you from doing what is paramount to its success. You won't regret the time you take to reflect.

Creating a Winning Marketing Message

Before creating a winning marketing message, one must first understand the goal of that message. Some may think a company’s marketing communication strategy is consistently using their logo and slogan or a listing of accomplishments in their brochure and on their web site. Others may use their vision or mission statement to give a positive portrayal of the company's values. While these statements are important and should be used in marketing your company, alone they do not embody the real goal of what your marketing message should accomplish: TO GRAB YOUR PROSPECT’S ATTENTION.

Your marketing message should “speak” to your prospect. It should be written so the average person can understand. I'm not saying that to put down the intelligence of anyone, but many times business owners forget that not everyone understands the "trade lingo." Even more important, your marketing message should communicate “What’s in it for me?”. Often, companies make the mistake of describing “What We Do” rather than focusing on the benefits the prospect will receive from your product or service. To avoid this pitfall, after you have crafted your message, review it carefully with the intent to reduce or eliminate “we” and “our” and replace with statements that focus on “you” and “your.” When writing, I always like to put myself in the shoes of the person who would be buying a company's products or service. That way, I can craft language that is focused on the customer.

When creating that winning message also remember to:

1. Identify your target market. After you have narrowed down your prospects, it will be much easier to craft a winning communication strategy.
2. Identify the problems your target market experiences. One secret to writing a marketing message that catches the attention of your prospect is to identify their problem and let them know you understand and sympathize. Again... put yourself in their shoes.
   
3. Present your solution to the prospect’s problem and identify all of the benefits your solution can offer. Remember to focus on "you" and "your."
   
4. Present the results you have produced for other people in the same situation. Customer testimonials are a great way to give you credibility and let your prospects know you can accomplish results. Whenever possible, use video and audio to capture some real-life stories. Post these stories on your web site or use a CD-ROM business card to let your customers relate their personal experience with your company.
   
5. Finally, explain what makes you different from your competitors. Be careful here though. You don't want to bash your competition and you don't want to use the typical clichés like "We deliver on-time and on-budget." These are characteristics that should be part of any good product or service.

Writing benefits-oriented copy is a proven strategy for increasing sales response. Connect with your audience by understanding their pain points, tell your story with a fresh perspective, and eliminate vague copy. The result will be an irresistible message that will make your prospect want to know more!

Web sites and web-based marketing strategies should be a big part of any company's marketing budget

Several years ago, one of my clients decided to upgrade their web site. They own an automotive service station - a business most wouldn't expect to get a lot of traffic from the web. He didn't change the look of the site too much, but he did concentrate his efforts on re-writing text, adding new meta descriptions and keywords, including descriptions for photos, etc. The idea was to increase the SEO score for his site.

A team of three different companies worked on the site... Mainstay was responsible for optimizing the text with the proper frequency of keywords. In addition to getting the site up to snuff with SEO text, our client focused on marketing its web site to various search engines and directories. I must say, the response has been phenomenal.

Once a quarter we track the marketing results for this client and I was shocked to see how much business was coming from the internet leads. I knew he was getting a good response from the internet, but when we actually looked at the data, we found that his web site was now accounting for at least 25% of new business coming into his shop. No longer were people looking in the yellow pages to find their mechanic... they were turning to the internet.

A recent article in "internet retailer" highlighted the findings of a study done by CSO Insights (a copy of this article can be accessed by clicking on the link at the end of this post). This report notes that many retailers are turning to web-based marketing strategies because it is with these strategies they get their best return on investment.

If the internet isn't a big part of your marketing plan, perhaps you should reconsider how you use the internet and web-based marketing strategies in your business. It's quite obvious... people are now turning to the web. When they do, make sure they find your company.

To view this article, click HERE.