As a small business owner or contractor, you know how important it is to stand out from the competition. 
But what are some specific ways you can do that? This article will teach you 10 ways to make sure your company can stand out in the market.
After reading this article, you’ll have a better understanding of how to make your company more visible and appealing to potential customers.
1. Make it Convenient
In today’s hectic world convenience is one thing most people highly value, even more than time or money. Most of us visited a convenience store and willingly paid extra for the items purchased because it saved us time.
How can you save your customers time by making it easier to order from you, being available to do business on THEIR schedule, adding delivery options, or offering payment terms?
2. Add Education and Training
Remember the last time you purchased an item that said: “some assembly required”? The instructions that generally accompany these items are terrible! They could be labeled as “Difficult to Assemble – Aspirin Needed”.
What if your product or service came with step-by-step instructional videos providing vivid easy-to-follow assistance? Customers love assistance. Not only do they remember the positive experience, but they also tell their friends about it.
3. Offer a new or unique product/service:
This is probably the most common way businesses distinguish themselves; however, it can be challenging to come up with an innovative idea that hasn’t been done before. When considering this option, remember that it does not have complicated or expensive. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something that your customers can’t find anywhere else.
4. Use Social Media
Social media is a great way to connect with potential customers and create a buzz about your company. Be sure to post interesting content that will engage your followers and make them want to learn more about your business.
If you’re not already active on social media, now is the time to start. Keep your content interesting, post often, respond to comments promptly, and run promotions or contests regularly to keep people coming back for more.
5. Create a Strong Brand
Your brand is what sets you apart from the competition. It’s important to create a strong brand that customers will recognize and trust. Be sure to choose a name, logo, and tagline that represent your company well.
6. Offer Incentives
Incentives are a great way to attract attention to your business. Offering incentives such as a free service that compliments the customer’s original purchase is a great way to get people interested in your products or services. Have you ever ordered apple pie with the burger and fries? I know I have.
7. Get involved in the Community
Getting involved in the community is a great way to show potential customers that you care about more than just making a sale. Try sponsoring a local event or volunteering for a charity.
8. Use Traditional Marketing Methods
Don’t forget about traditional marketing methods like print ads, flyers, and business cards. These techniques can be very effective in getting the word out about your business.
9. Have a Great Website
Make sure your website is professional and easy to navigate. Include plenty of information about your products or services and make it easy for potential customers to contact you.
10. Use Email Marketing
Email marketing can be a great way to reach out to potential customers and keep them updated on your latest products or services. Make sure you have a strong call to action in your emails and offer something of value. Encourage people to make a purchase but only after you have helped them in some way.
How will you make your business stand out?
Author: Linda Lewis
Put Them in a Trance
We’re going to go through the 5 essential keys to a successful and reusable marketing campaign launch. Once you have these basics down, you can use them over and over again.
The 5 essential keys are:
• Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• Put an effective sales offer to work
• Avoid the marketing pitfalls
• Use a world-class marketing perspective
• Get results!
We’ll go through each one of these, so you can see exactly how to use them and how they all affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaign.
Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Take the time to ask yourself some questions from the perspective of the customers/clients. What would it take to get your attention? What needs do you have that need to be met? What are the promises you want to be fulfilled?
Once you know the answers to these questions you can start putting together a plan to meet these needs. Then take a look at what USP your competitors are using to help you develop your own USP. Your USP is what you are “promising” your customers/clients. This is what’s going to set you apart from your competition.
Put an effective sales offer to work
To develop an effective sales plan, you need to:
1. Put together a headline that gets immediate attention.
2. Share the benefits of your products/services speaking from the customers’ perspective.
3. Identify the specific needs met by your products/services.
4. Make it easy to do business with you by offering guarantees.
5. Share your specific sales proposition.
6. Walk your customers/clients through how they should respond and act.
7. Motivate with a call to action.
What this all means is, that you need to put together what makes your products/services special and compel customers to buy. If they don’t feel like they NEED your product, they won’t buy it. You need to answer a question, solve a problem or feed an obsession.
You need to provide them with all the information they need to make an informed and confident decision. Buyer’s remorse is one of the worst things that can happen.
Avoid the marketing pitfalls
There are 5 major marketing pitfalls many businesses fall into and you should avoid:
• Ignore market testing and push on with an inaccurate plan.
• Offer an incomplete case, or reasons, throughout their marketing plan.
• Fail to notice the needs of their prospective customers/clients.
• Fail to diversify their marketing options.
• Fail to get market opinions on their offers.
These are all areas to avoid. If you’ve been working through these lessons, avoiding these pitfalls should be easy and natural.
Use a world-class marketing perspective
A world-Class marketing perspective is important, especially if you want to attract customers/clients from all over the world. You can do this with a number of different techniques and activities:
1. Keep a marketing journal and scribble down anything innovative you see.
2. Keep encouraging your marketing department, or yourself, to try new things and dump the ones that aren’t working.
3. Order from your own company under a different name and analyze the process of ordering, shipping, online store, customer service, and the product itself. This will show you where the areas for improvement in the customer experience.
4. Read every quality ad you can find and keep a file for future ideas to consider.
5. When out in public, watch how consumers behave in different situations and how they consider their purchases.
6. Step down a notch or two and work on the front lines with your sales and customer service staff.
7. Continuously acknowledge your staff, vendors, and customers. Everyone works and shops better when they feel appreciated.
8. Always listen to feedback from employees and customers.
9. Continuously test markets, ads, and marketing techniques. This is the only way to stay successful and know what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not.
10. Offer more information in your marketing than anyone else. The more information you offer, the more products/services you’ll sell.
11. A great marketing plan can only get better. Continue to fine-tune and refine your marketing plan based on testing results and feedback.
12. Be classy in your marketing. Make sure your marketing and advertising fit your company image, products/service, and quality.
13. Improve your best marketing areas and drop those that aren’t working.
14. Focus on what you say, not how you say it. The best marketing ideas turn into the best marketing naturally.
15. Develop all your ads, campaigns, and sales materials with attention to compelling and factual information.
By using these techniques you can put your name out there to the world and become one of the top brands in your industry.
Get results!
The last area we are going to talk about is the best-satisfied customers. If your customers aren’t satisfied, you’ve wasted all your marketing resources and all chance of positive word-of-mouth advertising. You can satisfy your customers by:
• Providing quality products/services
• Providing high-quality customer service
• Providing a low-pressure, highly informative sales experience
• Taking all the risk away with a great guarantee
To generate more business there are a couple of simple techniques that work every time:
• Build your database with a contest.
• Do regular mailings with sales, discounts, or other incentives.
• Find other creative ways to keep your current customers coming back for more.
“As long as the reward is directly related to your product or service, you can’t lose. Why not get started today? It’s so simple, it’s so seldom done, and it’s so profitable. And that’s the bottom line.” ~Jay Abraham
It is so simple! So, why aren’t you starting today? We can help you put together a great marketing plan that will get you results.
Try our GUIDED TOUR and find the tools and resources you need to be built by some of the biggest names in the marketing world.
Linda Lewis
Do It Like the Big Dawgs!
Today we’ll take a look at how the kings of industry wine, dine, and otherwise cajole prospects
Most successful professionals use a series of information-based ads that build emotion and a call to action. These are much more effective than standard company branding advertisements. The same principles that go into putting together a high-impact (and, often, high priced) ad campaign can be adapted to fit your needs with similar results.
Here are some ways to put together and execute a professional, effective ad campaign:
- Put together a short report that’ll you’ll automatically send to prospects when they contact you. This should include a short description of your business and what you specialize in. Don’t forget to include case studies, samples, or other proof of your success.
- Consider newsletters as a way of educating and informing customers about your industry and the services offered.
- Offer a free seminar, webinar, or other lecture to build awareness of your business, but make sure you make the information pertinent to your target market and find speakers who are respected and known in the industry.
- Buy an existing business, introduce better marketing, and grow this new business faster than a “from scratch” business.
- Always test different versions of your ads to find the most effective ones.
- Use direct mail marketing to grow your business.
- Put together a database of previous customers and send them new information.
- Offer incentives such as frequent purchasing benefits, loyalty programs, referral programs, or others.
- Approach large firms who may need your services and negotiate a deal to be their exclusive expert in your field.
- Offer a 24-hour information line with a regularly updated recorded message. Make this available to all past and future customers/clients.
- Donate time or materials to local charities to show support in your area.
- Offer public clinics for the general public to come along and discuss what they need that’s free and approachable.
- Organize seminars your customers/clients can pay to attend by putting together a high-perception value package.
- Approach local newspapers by offering to write a weekly column about your area of expertise. Don’t ask for money, just a byline and bio.
- Develop a weekend or other destination seminar for customers/clients, not only does this give you an action-packed weekend with the most important people, it gives them a tax-deductible business adventure.
- Take a good seminar and turn it into written form as a home study, member site program, audio, or video program.
- Approach large companies and offer to give seminars to their employees, investors, or management.
- Be proactive with your marketing plan.
- Barter for your marketing. Offer products or services in lieu of payment.
- Be willing to bring in new clients, even if at an initial loss because it will likely pay off later.
- Regulate your marketing budget to maximize the potential income from them to hit the next year and try to push back advertising costs for the next year to offset your expenses.
- Make offers to target markets or target market businesses to pay them for referrals or shared databases.
- Offer loaner products to replace equipment that’s being repaired or refurbished.
- Give away something free to everyone who brings in a print version of your advertisement. This is a great way to see which ads are giving you the most bang for your buck.
- Continually consider what new products/services you can offer to current customers/clients.
- Develop a mail order division of your company.
- Offer a proposition to your competitors to trade customers/clients you were both unsuccessful in selling to.
- Use different marketing tactics as an excuse to attract new customers/clients with new offers and goodies.
- Offer a “you-choose-the-price” program. This is especially good for products you just can’t seem to sell.
So, there are 29 great ways to market to other professionals and businesses. Some other great ways to get your name out there for little or no cost are:
• Get involved in your community-volunteer, donate to local events, etc.
• Join your local Chamber of Commerce and attend the networking and other activities throughout the year.
• Join local, state, or regional professional associates for further networking opportunities.
• Become a board member of a local organization.
Advertising should never be your only method of marketing, there is a myriad of ways to get your name out there in a way that feels personal to potential customers/clients.
“Effective advertising…must be used to get your name out to the public. If your name is not familiar to people, they will not come to you.” Jay Abraham
If you’re not sure where you start with your marketing plan or how to reach out to your local community, competitors, customers/clients, and others who could influence your business in a highly positive way try our GUIDED TOUR to experience the tools and resources we have to boost your business to the next level and beyond.
Are you ready to ACCELERATE YOUR PROFIT? Book a 15-minute call to see if a PROFIT ACCELERATION CONSULTATION is right for you.
Gather the Troops
Today I’d like to chat about the different types of support staff you need and what makes them so important.
There are essentially three key roles that need to be filled to set your business up for success:
• The Technician
• The Manager
• The Entrepreneur
All of these roles need to be played simultaneously by different people with the right talents. It’s all about balance.
The Technician
This person represents the present and all that needs to be done for the physical aspects of the business-building process. They are the “doer”. This is usually the most visible person of the entire operation.
The Manager
This person represents the past and works to fix problems through learning from past mistakes. They are on the practical side of the business and is in charge of putting together the business and overseeing the planning.
The Entrepreneur
This person represents the future and the vision for the business. They are responsible for the creative side of the business and are always considering ways to enhance products/services, business image, branding, and more.
All three of these characters are essential in the success of any business and to build a solid foundation from the start, you need to work harder to find the right people to put in these roles. Obviously, you need to be one of these key people, but ensure you find the role that fits your skills and talents, not necessarily what you THINK you should be doing.
This may be a hard process for you as you will need to relinquish some control over the business and instill trust in people to allow them to do their jobs.
Remember, our business coaches can help you through this entire process and teach you how to avoid falling victim to e-myths when you try our GUIDED TOUR.
Mortar Makes it Happen
Today I’d like to talk about the three keys to business development and how you can put the right bricks in place to build a solid foundation.
There are three main areas of business development:
• Innovation 
• Quantification
• Orchestration
If done well these three areas will help you build a solid foundation for your business.
Let’s talk about each one of these for just a minute.
Innovation
Innovation should not be confused with creativity, which is the expression of ideas. Innovation is taking these ideas and putting them into action. This is where a large amount of your focus should be in the beginning and even throughout your business’ entire lifespan.
Quantification
This, of course, refers to the numbers. We are talking about the value of your innovation. The best way to gauge this is by your customer response. Look to positive responses for what you are doing right and keep doing it. Look to your negative responses to find out what you’re doing wrong and fix it. This will enable you to keep growing and progressing with the needs of your customers and business climate.
Orchestration
Once you’ve had a chance to find what areas are working, you can narrow down those areas and concentrate on making them the stand-out ideas. You shift your focus here to get the most out of your business and to meet the needs of your customers.
We can help you work through these three areas to put together your franchise prototype during your GUIDED TOUR.
In the next few lessons we are going to transition to the 7 specific areas you need to consider in your franchise prototype process:
• Primary Aim
• Strategic Objectives
• Organizational Strategy
• Management Strategy
• People Strategy
• Marketing Strategy
• Systems Strategy
These 7 areas will fine-turn your plan for the ultimate level of success.
Are You Aiding & Abetting E-Myths?
We are going to embark upon a journey through the world of e-myths and debunk them to help you avoid falling into the e-myth trap.
First, let’s take a minute to talk about what an e-myth is.
An entrepreneurial myth, or e-myth, is an assumption that anyone can succeed at business with:
• Desire
• Some capital
• Projected a targeted profit
This sounds great, but it just not realistic. Think of starting a business as a marathon. Sure, everyone starts out of the gate at a record pace, but after a few miles, people start slowing, and some drop out entirely. Building a successful business takes stamina and agility.
The reality is that there are many different facets to a successful business and none of them can be ignored if you plan to find success.
Let’s take a minute to talk about the entrepreneurial seizure.
This defines the roller coaster of emotions that comes with starting, nurturing, and the potential failure of a business.
The emotions that occur, in order, are:
• Exhilaration
• Exhaustion
• Despair
• Sense of self-loss
This is usually caused by the e-myths and assumptions we talked about. You can get your hopes so high on the instant success that even the smallest lag and you are sent into an emotional tailspin. This is also brought on by the stark realization that you can’t do it all and will need help in the areas where you don’t have the knowledge. Now, faced with limited choices you may feel like you need to back out and hide, but don’t do this.
Use our GUIDED TOUR to get the business coaching you need to avoid feeling overwhelmed and defeated.
The Corporate Puzzle
The 7 specific areas you need to consider in your franchise prototype process:
• Primary Aim
• Strategic Objectives
• Organizational Strategy
• Management Strategy
• People Strategy
• Marketing Strategy
• Systems Strategy
These 7 areas will fine-turn your plan for the ultimate level of success. In this lesson, we are going to cover the first three.
Primary Aim
It’s essential in business development to set goals and see a vision for the future. This needs to go beyond the business and you need to think about what you want out of life. What do you dream about? How do you see your success unfolding? Knowing and understanding these things will give you the momentum to get started and the stamina to see it through. Even take a minute to write them down and tape them to your desk for a constant reminder of what you’re aiming for.
Strategic Objectives
These are essential in taking your business from surviving to thriving. All of these objectives should offer solutions for how to get to your primary aim. There are many things you can use to set strategic objectives, but here is a couple of the most popular:
1. Money: Setting monetary goals is a great, simple way to see how you are doing at any point in the game. It’s easy to measure and easy to find adjustments to help meet this goal.
2. Worthy Opportunities: When considering partnerships and other business opportunities you need to think about whether or not they will help you reach your primary aim. Those that will are the best opportunities to seriously consider.
The key in setting standards and goals is not to limit you or stress yourself out. You need to find some quantifiable things you can use to measure your progress toward your primary aim. These are just two suggestions, but make sure no matter what standards you set you are paying attention to the details, as these are one of the biggest keys to your success.
Organizational Strategy
The strength of your organizational structure can make or break your business, so it’s important to take the time to put together a solid structure for your business to grow from. Generally, a company is organized around the roles and responsibilities that need to be taken care of on a daily basis and the personalities that need to fulfill those roles.
No matter what roles and responsibilities you’ve defined for your employees, you must always keep your personal primary aim separate from your company’s primary aim or mission statement. Once you’ve identified the primary aim for your company it will be easy to set up a position structure that will work.
Don’t forget to put together position contracts. Your employees should sign a statement of their roles and responsibilities. This helps keep them clear for you, the employee, and other employees/vendors or other individuals.
You can see how these areas all work together to build a solid structure on which to build your business. If you need help defining any of these areas, you can check out the resources, tools and speak with one of our fantastic coaches during your GUIDED TOUR.
You Turn Me Right ‘Round Baby, Right ‘Round
The biggest area of turn-key businesses is franchises. There is a franchise for every industry in the world and they are fairly easy to acquire and come with practically a pop out-of-the-box pre-assembled system.
McDonald’s is a prime example. In fact, a $40 billion, 28,707 strong example.
There are a few things we are going to talk about:
• Business Format Franchise
• The Franchise Prototype
• Franchise Prototype Standards
Business Format Franchise
The business format franchise came from an earlier model call the “trade name” franchise. The big change was in the rights. During the “trade name” days the franchise owner only had marketing right’s, now franchise owners have ownership rights to the entire business including systems. This has allowed for a shift in focus to go from the quality and name recognition of the products carrying the business to sales techniques that carry the business.
The Franchise Prototype
It was really the franchise prototypes that allowed for the changes to be made that help today’s franchises really shine with the techniques developed by the owners instead of the corporation. This can make a significant difference in the success of the franchise as the owner can custom tailor their marketing and promotions to the direct needs of their local target customers.
Franchise Prototype Standards
Now, the above being said, no one in their right mind would purchase a franchise if the parent company didn’t have a solid plan of action set up to ensure the prospective success of the business. So, there are a few standards that are put into place that helps jump-start the process of opening a successful franchise.
Build a model of prospective customers/clients, suppliers, creditors, and employees who will consistently offer high-quality work.
1. Build a user-friendly model that can be used by individuals of any skill set.
2. Build a defect-free model.
3. Build a model with Operations Manuals.
4. Build a model that will provide guaranteed, consistent results.
5. Build a model that encompasses the same branding in color, dress, and facilities codes.
These are all ways the parent corporation makes sure their brand stays the same and in the front of the minds of customers. When you are purchasing a widely-known brand you will attract customers just for being you.
If you are considering purchasing a franchise, talk with one of our experienced business coaches during our GUIDED TOUR.
Expand the Life of Your Business
Business Life Cycle
Today I’m going to talk about the life cycle of a business and how to get the most out of each cycle while also extended the lifespan of your business.
The four different stages of a business life cycle are:
• Infancy
• Adolescence
• Growing Pains
• Maturity
We’ll talk a little about what each of these cycles means and how they can each help expand your business’ lifespan.
Infancy
This is generally considered the technician’s phase, which is the owner. At this point, the relationship between the business and the owner is that of a parent and a new baby. There is an impenetrable bond that is necessary to determine the path your business will follow.
The key is to know your business must grow in order to flourish. You cannot stay in this stage forever.
Adolescence
In this stage, you need to start bringing your support staff together to delegate to and allow growth to happen. The first line of defense is your technical person as they need to bring a certain level of technical experience. This cycle really belongs to the manager though. The planning stage needs to start and a relationship should be built with the entrepreneur to plan for the future.
Growing Pains
There’s a point in every business when business explodes and becomes chaotic. This is referred to as growing pains. It’s a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. You are often faced with a number of choices:
• Avoid growth and stay small
• Go broke
• Push forward into the next cycle
Maturity
The last cycle is maturity, though this doesn’t mean the end of your business. Your passion for growth must continue in order for your business to succeed. You need to keep an entrepreneurial perspective in order to push your business forward.
You see how all three of these cycles are connected and depend on a strong foundation for each one of them for your business to be and continue to be successful. All three of your key roles must also work together to work through these cycles.
If you’re having trouble putting together your business life cycles and figuring out which of the key roles you fit into, try our GUIDED TOUR and work with one of our amazing coaches.
How Well Do You Know Your Vendors?
It is extremely important to build relationships with your vendors and those around you can bring in new customers/clients and increase awareness of your company branding.
The people you work directly with on your products and services are really the ones with the most to gain when you find success. By taking the time to get to know them, you’ll find a whole host of opportunities you didn’t realize were there.
Look for great ways to offer your vendors rewards for helping grow your business and everyone wins. One of the ways you can do this is by offering performance-based incentives that are much larger than their normal charges.
Here’s the step-by-step process of putting together a partnership with a vendor:
-
- Approach all the vendors you work with and offer an incentive-based on performance.
- Put the generous incentive plan together from their perspective, even take suggestions.
- Develop a clear, concise, and easy to track incentive plan, this will increase competition between vendors and therefore higher performance levels.
- Encourage subsequent sales instead of focusing only on the initial sale. By doing this you can give away more of the profit from the initial sale to your vendors and make higher profits off the back-end products. Encourage:
- Future sales
- Upsell better and more profitable products/services
- Cross-sell to additional products
- Create an incentive plan that’s irresistible to your vendors by offering generous, exclusive compensation.
Think of all the vendors you work with and the creative ways you can put together an incentive plan that entices them to be part of your business. Use their talents, capabilities, and connections and you’ll both be winners.
Putting together an incentive plan doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Use our GUIDED TOUR to come up with some great ideas and put your incentive plan together for maximum results.
