Time for a Spring Spruce-up!

Spring has finally sprung and traditionally, it’s a time that many people think of clearing out the clutter in the garage or basement. Why not initiate a spring spruce-up of your business marketing?

The best place to start is by taking an objective look at your existing brand and/or logo. Is your logo old and outdated? Is your marketing material inconsistent? Now may be the time to enlist the help of a graphic designer to create a fresh and new image that clearly enhances the look of your business. 

When was the last time you updated the pictures you have on your social media profiles and web pages? If they are more than six months old, it’s time to post new ones. You may want to consider having your photo taken by a professional photographer.

And while you are at it, why not freshen up your data on all your social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter? Your business is constantly evolving and your social media should reflect those changes.

Haven’t taken the plunge into the internet marketing realm yet? Now may be the time to explore your social media options and make the commitment to maintain your internet presence. 

Is your website or blog in need of an overhaul?  If you don’t have a website, landing page or blog, this could be the perfect time to consult with a web designer to explore your options.

What are you doing to drive traffic to your website, blog or other social media sites? Do you send out an e-newsletter on a regular basis with “links” directing your readers to your website or blog?

All of the elements above can be included in a Marketing Strategy. Does your company have such a plan in place? A Marketing Strategy is a living document that changes monthly, weekly, and even daily, as your business evolves and adapts to your business environment. If you are currently without a marketing strategy or business plan, now is the time to create one.

I would be delighted to help you explore any of these options and welcome the opportunity to meet with you face-to-face to discuss new ideas and answer your questions on how to brand and expand your business.
 

Seriously . . . Another Post About Business Plans?

As I’ve said ad nauseam, before I agree to work with a client on marketing strategies, they need to have a business plan in place. And from my experience, 99% of them currently don’t have their business infrastructure put down on paper or it hadn’t been updated in many years.

If you have been following my blog, you may be wondering when am I going to move on from this topic. Before I do, I wanted to share two different experiences my clients had while writing their business plan.

Let’s start with Client #1: She is a life coach, who stepped away from her business for a couple of years and wanted to jump-start it again. Even though she had the practice for several years before her break, there never was a business plan or marketing strategy in place. Initially, she took on the project with excitement and energy. The first few attempts needed to be fine tuned and I returned each copy back to her with questions that would help make her entries more specific.We hit a rough patch when I encouraged her to find the one key thing about her business that made her different from all the other life coaches. It took her several weeks but she came up with a new area of expertise that was quite impressive and set her apart from all of her competition. I got caught up in her enthusiasm.

Then in a puzzling turn of events, she cancelled our work session and didn’t return my call or email. Not taking it personally, I chalked it up to the festivities of the holidays and knew I’d hear from her sooner or later.

When she did call, she explained that while really examining her business, she discovered that she no longer wanted to pursue being a life coach. She had signed up for some classes in a field that she had always wanted to explore and was going to focus on that. 

So in this case, going through the process of writing the business plan brought on an epiphany for my client and lead her in a totally different direction.

Client #2 is an independent publisher who is restructuring his entire operations. While doing a bit of research of his competitors, I discovered products and services that he wasn’t actively promoting to his clients. Some of the items he was offering in his repertoire, but wasn’t seeing them as services to be offered. In addition, he found some new ideas to introduce to his clients.

This is an example of a company being able to expand their business potential by adding and enhancing their products and services by simply going through the process of developing a business plan.

Have You Found Your Niche?

Last  week during the first week of my 90-day Marketing Makeover journey, the focus was on updating my business plan and marketing strategy.  Did you do that for your business as well? Did you find that you had trouble creating your marketing strategy? Or did you notice that the one you had in place isn’t working for you anymore?

If so, the problem is most likely that your target market isn’t clearly defined or your original niche market has changed.  This is crucial, especially when planning your internet marketing strategy to achieve optimal marketing success online.

Perhaps in the beginning you thought that all you needed to do was to build a website and people would automatically be drawn to the site with credit cards in hand to buy your product or service. The hard truth is that in order to reach some level of financial success on the internet, you have to do all you can to get your message in front of your target market and get them to even notice you in order to buy what you are selling.

By definition, “target marketing”, or “niche marketing” as it is also called, is the strategy of identifying your  potential clients by segments, such as age group, geographic area, business industry, etc., and gearing your marketing efforts to one or more key segment.

To refine your niche market, you need to ask yourself a number of questions including:

·     Who is going to buy my product or service?

·     Are my clients limited to a certain industry or demographic? Or can anyone be a potential customer?

·     Does my business appeal to residential or commercial consumers? Or both?

·     Is my business limited to a local geographic area?

·     What is unique about the services or products my company offers?

·     How is my company set apart from my competition?

Once you have clearly defined your specific target audience, you’ll realize a number of benefits.

·     You’ll be able to maximize your marketing budget. You’ll know where you need to focus your efforts to find your niche customers. 

·     You are able to tailor the content of your website specifically to your target market. Using keywords pertinent to your niche, the content can then be optimized for search engines so that your potential customers can easily locate you online.

·     You’ll also, in turn, be able to search for blogs and related sites that are catering to your market.

·     You are able to develop new products or services that focus more directly on the needs of your refined group.

And now that you know who your marketing efforts are directed toward, you will be able to better develop your company brand.

NEXT BLOG POST: Branding Your Company

Marketing Tip #28 - Become Proactive

If you are like most business people, your time is mainly spent being reactive to your clients needs and in turn, you neglect the needs of your own company. Why not become proactive by setting aside the first half hour of your work day to focus on what you need to do to expand your business. Create a checklist of updates you have been putting off and work through the list as you can. Need help creating a checklist? I’m happy to help.

Practicing What I Preach! A 90-Day Journey

My client was in a panic. Within the next two weeks, he would finish a long-term project for one of his clients and was concerned that there was no new project immediately in the pipeline.

It didn’t take me long to figure out his problem. After delving into the mechanics of his business, it was blatantly obvious that he was primarily "reacting" to his client's requests, rather than "managing" them. Even after being in business for a number of years, he still hasn’t made the effort to be proactive by getting his corporate infrastructure in place.

We reviewed his goals and aspirations for the company and came up with a 90-Day Marketing Plan. For the next three months, before he concentrated on his clients, he was to commit to spending the first half hour to an hour every day working through a checklist of things that he has to explore in order to expand his business. To help him get 'up-to-speed' quickly, he has hired me to manage his list and implement the plan.

While looking over his checklist to determine what marketing advice I was going to suggest to him, I 'subconsciously' reflected on my own business. It was obvious that I needed to take my own advice! So, I’m inviting you to come along on my 'journey'.

Today is day one of my own 90-Day Marketing Plan. I’ll be reviewing my existing Strategic Marketing Plan and determine where I need to re-evaluate and update.

A Strategic Marketing Plan is a living document that changes at least monthly, sometimes weekly, or for some, daily as your company evolves and adapts to your business environment. It is a companion to a Business Plan. The marketing plan describes, in depth, how you are going to promote your product or service to your target market. The business plan defines all the other aspects of your company.

The first thing I did was to bring out my neglected marketing plan and created a checklist of areas that required my attention. The first order of business was to redefine my target market, or sometimes called a niche market. I simply made a list of all my current clients and determined what they had in common.

Do you currently have a strategy in place to market your business? There are a gazillion books and online resources to help guide you through the process of creating your own business/marketing plan
or just email me at Sandra@MaurerMarketingMinutes.com and I will send you FREE, a simple outline you can use as a guide for creating a business plan and marketing strategy that I give to my clients.

Out With the Old and In With the New!

There is no better time than the year end to do an overhaul of the marketing you have in place for your business. Below is a checklist of things you can do to give your business a fresh, new makeover for 2012:

1. A Marketing Strategy is a living document that changes monthly, weekly and even daily as your business evolves and adapts to your business environment. When was the last time you updated your plan? Don’t have a marketing strategy or business plan in place? Now is the time to create one. Remember, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Marketing expert Sandy Barris discusses the value of creating a marketing plan in an interview from July 2010 at http://tinyurl.com/dx7yu9c.

2. Does your company have a memorable brand or logo? Or is your logo old and outdated? Do you need to enlist the help of a graphic designer to create something fresh and new that reflects your business. Diane Krueger, the Brand Identity Artist at Contagious: Cure for the Common reminds us that a company’s logo is the starting point of the entire corporate image. http://tinyurl.com/c5v7ll7

3. Are your marketing materials consistent? Does your logo or brand carryover onto your business cards, brochures, website, blog, Facebook fan page, etc? Linda Kleist of Identity Graphic Design talks about the importance of consistent branding. http://tinyurl.com/csmcc99.

4. Are your social media sites up-to-date? When was the last time you updated your profiles and contact information on Linkedin, Facebook, etc? Is it time to post a more current photo? Are you getting the most from your social media efforts as you market yourself and your business? Marketing and social media expert, Beverly Cornell, covers the whole gamet of social media’s do and don’ts. http://tinyurl.com/bw8fu62.

5. How long has it been since your website was updated? How many hits are you getting to the site? Not a lot? You might want to have a professional revise the content, adding key words that will get you found on search engines (SEO) such as Google. Kevin Van Dette, President of Affordable Website Specialists, talks about all this and more in his 2010 interview. http://tinyurl.com/d572lny.

6. Do you currently have a blog? Is a blog right for you and your business? Are people reading or listening to your blog? Corey Perlman, author of "eBootCamp", describe blogging in concise and easy to understand language. http://tinyurl.com/ctnc4g8.

7. What are you doing to drive traffic to your website, blog or other social media sites? Do you send out an e-newsletter on a regular basis linking to your website? In a second interview, Corey Perlman gives tips on how to use e-newsletters as an effective marketing tool as well as a means of keeping yourself in front of customers and business associates. http://tinyurl.com/744wrdh

8. How current is the information in your database? Over this past summer, I purged my database of the old and outdated contact information. I was shocked as to the extent of job changes, out of state moves, and businesses that had closed in the past year. You probably will be amazed too.

Have a Happy New Year!

Maurer Marketing Minutes #50-Sandra Maurer-Maurer Marketing & Media

Maurer Marketing Minutes 50-Sandra Maurer-Maurer Marketing & Media
How does one celebrate their 50^th radio blog post? Linda Kleist, of Identity Graphic Design, takes over the host chair of Maurer Marketing Minutes and interviews Sandra Maurer. We discuss my five-step process that I coach my clients through in creating a marketing strategy and then implementing the plan. I was able to reveal my extensive marketing and networking background and the niche I have found with published or soon-to-be published authors and baby boomers that are technology challenged.
Thank you, Linda, for celebrating with us. You would make a great host of your own show! I can be reached at Sandra@maurermarketingminutes.com. Linda can be reached at linda@identitygraphicdesign.com

Maurer Marketing Minutes #42-Hena Husain-“Insights to Marketing & Getting Clients” #2

Maurer Marketing Minutes-#42-Hena Husain-Insights to Marketing and Getting Clients #2
What happens if you aren’t achieving your goals? In part-two of our interview, hypnotherapist and author Hena Husain reveals emotional blocks to the subconscious mind that could be limiting our beliefs.  Her advice for 2011: We need to focus on our goals as if we have already achieved them. And keep the focus on what we want to achieve, not what we don’t have.  Contact her at her website   www.balance4life.biz or email her at info@balance4life.biz or call 248-561-8159.

Maurer Marketing Minutes #41-Hena Husain-“Insights to Marketing & Getting Clients” #1

Maurer Marketing Mintues #41-Hena Husain-Insights to Marketing and Getting Clients #1
Why do most businesses fail? In this segment of our two-part interview, hypnotherapist and author Hena Husain pinpoints the reason as the lack of a structured and realistic marketing strategy. Hena reveals 10 questions to ask yourself as you set your business goals for 2011. Her book, "Insights to Marketing and Getting Clients", can be found on her website at www.balance4life.biz or email her at info@balance4life.biz or call 248-561-8159.

Maurer Marketing Minutes #10-Sandy Barris-Marketing Expert

Maurer Marketing Minutes-#10-Sandy Barris-Marketing Expert
Sandy Barris, "The Measureable Marketing Madman" and author of "97 Marketing Secrets", discusses the value of creating a marketing plan, in addition to your business plan. Whether you seek funding or want to identify and target your potential clients, a marketing plan is an essential tool. Sandy can be reached at 248-335-8080 or visit his website at: www.sandybarris.com.
Direct download: MMM-10-Sandy_Barris-Marketing_Expert.mp3