Small Business Marketing and Mindset for Savvy Mompreneurs and Moms Who Want to Ditch the 9-5 and Work from Home
Before the jolly bearded man in the red suit comes down the chimney …
I’m inviting you to participate in some Merry Marketing!
Do you have a special holiday offer you’d like to share?
Please use the comment box to post the link to your offer and a few details about the “benefits” of purchasing your product, program, or service.
Hope Santa is good to you this year!
**Note**
Please do not post any MLM or Direct Sales opportunities to join your company.
Thank you.
Picture this:
Everyone residing in your local community is an independent business owner who works from home.
And every day you all get up and go knocking on each other’s doors trying to sell your products or services to your neighbor.
Just think about that for a minute and get a crystal clear image in your mind.
Not a pretty picture, is it?
Now take that concept and mental image and transfer it over to the internet.
I don’t know about you, but the picture still doesn’t look very pretty to me.
So, let me ask you this …
Are you trying to market and promote your offerings to fellow entrepreneurs, in particular those in your same niche? In your same “neighborhood”?
What are the chances these folks are going to turn into loyal customers or clients?
I’ll tell you the answer: Slim to none. So stop spinning your wheels.
They’re not buying!
Having said that …
I’m not suggesting you stop connecting and networking with fellow entrepreneurs.
You’ll want to continue to look to entrepreneurs who “do what you do” for support, inspiration, masterminding, accountability, encouragement, and joint venture partnerships.
These will turn out to be some of your most valued and cherished online relationships!
But don’t look to fellow independent business owners for “sales”.
If you do, you’re going to be very disappointed. Remember: They’re also looking to make sales in their own business so it’s not likely they’re going to spend any money with you.
It’s your turn now …
Let’s get right to the monstrous meat of the marketing matter (bet ya can’t say THAT ten times real fast!).
Monster Size Marketing Mistake #1: Throwing fistfuls of money into an unproven product or service.
Are you building your business on research or a “hunch”?
Got a “feeling” you have a winning idea?
Just because your best friend, your neighbor, or your yoga instructor think you’ve got a winning idea isn’t nearly enough input to run to the bank and deplete your savings account.
You’ve got to do your detective work first and test your business idea with the real marketplace.
Monster Size Marketing Mistake #2: Thinking you have a product or service that will practically sell itself.
Please trust me … you don’t.
Whether you have a physical storefront in the busiest part of town or a beautiful web site that’s pleasing to the eyes with easy access to your hot products or services …
Your customers will not find you if you neglect to market to them.
Your grand opening is the same day you put on your “marketer’s hat” and you NEVER take it off.
To stay in business, you must profit. To profit, you must sell. To sell, you must market!
Monster Size Marketing Mistake #3: Setting out to reinvent the wheel.
I’m sure you’ve read lots of information that encourages innovation and creativity in your marketing efforts. It’s way too easy to get caught up and enamored with the innovation process and forget that the real focus should be on RESULTS.
There are some very basic principles to the age-old practice of marketing.
Great marketing ideas are used over and over again with just the right personal twist to make them fit a specific niche or industry.
Monster Size Marketing Mistake #4: Believing activity is productivity.
To sell a million of something, you have to sell the first ONE.
Failure is so powerful, we do everything we can to prevent it. Entrepreneurs can get so busy researching, preparing, and organizing to avoid failure, they never get around to actually marketing their businesses.
Over-preparing and doing nothing is a montrous mistake.
Monster Size Marketing Mistake #5: Getting bored and constantly starting new promotions.
What may be “old” to you is still new to an untapped target audience.
Not sticking to a marketing campaign long enough to get consistent results is detrimental to your business. You may have the budget to keep switching to something new, but resist the temptation.
“Boredom” is not a valid reason to abandon a current marketing campaign.
Google Analytics is one of the best known analytics tools. Although there’s now plenty of competition, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get everything you want from this fantastic Google tool. Here are some of the things you can do to improve your use of Google Analytics.
Leave Yourself Out
If you’ve ever spent some time installing a new WordPress theme or tweaking your site design, you’ll know that you spend a lot of time on the site. You may also spend time adding content, checking that it looks good, tweaking and checking again – and that activity shows up in your site stats. Since you don’t really need to know how often you visit your own site, then it’s best to leave those visits out. Google Analytics makes this easy by letting you exclude your IP address from tracking via a custom filter.
Check Social Media Activity
Ever wondered how you could track all those likes, tweets and shares to see what kind of social media pull your site has? Once again, Google Analytics has the answer with the track pageview function. Add the right piece of code to your social media button (suitably customized so you can tell where the source of the click is) and you will be able to find out how people are sharing your content via social media in your Analytics dashboard. Check this post on on Hongkiat for more detail.
Compare and Contrast
When you log into Google Analytics, you don’t have to stick with the default view. This shows you stats for the past month up to the previous day. There are two things you can do to make this data more relevant. The first is to manually select the last available date to give you stats up to the previous hour – which means you can figure out what’s happening with your site in almost real time. The second is to click the ‘compare to past’ check box to see how interaction with your site has changed month on month. It’s useful to be able to see what content is increasing in importance and what content is less popular so you can make changes.
Report Back
One often underused feature in Google Analytics is custom reporting. This is a great way to drill down into the really crucial data on your site. Want to find out how many people are really engaged with your site? Check out and customize the Non-Flirts report available on Occam’s Razor. Want to know how many people search specifically for your brand? Or how many people came to your site via the links you tweeted, liked or shared? Custom reporting can help you work it out. The feature is easy to use with drag and drop parameters and the ability to test your report to see if it’s giving you anything useful. And to make your Google Analytics reports even more useful, you can email them to yourself (or anyone else who needs access to them).
This was a post by Lior Levin who works for an applicant tracking software company and also advises to a neon signs online store
Have you noticed how much talking everyone is doing on the internet?
Some people refer to it as noise.
To coin a phrase from my friend, Martha Giffen, “It’s all good!”
It’s not only good, but all the talking people are doing is essential to success as an online marketer.
BUT …
With all the “talking” going on …
Who’s doing the “listening”?
Do the math — Maybe there’s a reason we have TWO ears and ONE mouth.
Listening is a critical communication skill. If you want people to listen to what you have to say and your intention is to build a lasting relationship with your target audience, you’ve got to stop some of the talking and learn to be a better listener.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone who won’t let you get a word in edgewise? You can’t shoehorn in a word if you tried?
That person was doing zero listening.
So don’t just jump from one online activity to the next, to the next, to the next in an effort to gain the attention of your target market.
Instead, become a better listener by tuning in to the needs of your prospects, customers, and clients.
How well you listen has a major impact on your effectiveness as a small business owner, your ability to influence and persuade, and on the quality of your relationships with others.
So listen up!
Taglines are tough.
Just my personal observation — no case studies, analytics, or scientific data to back it up.
I believe crafting your elevator speech or developing your unique selling propostion is a hundred times easier than creating a tagline!
What Is A Tagline?
Consider it a “sub-title” to the name of your business. It’s a few words, a phrase, or a sentence about what you have to offer your target audience.
Here are some examples:
Michelle Shaeffer’s tagline reads, “Simplifying Online Business Chaos: Websites, Blogging, Marketing & More”
Theresa Bradley-Banta’s says, “Empowering Entrepreneurs To Think And Act Like Entrepreneurs”
Deb Augur’s boldly states, “Making Sense Of Online Business!”
Heather Bestel of Mum’s Got A Business is “Empowering Successful Mumpreneurs”
Marcia Hoeck’s Breakthrough Business site’s tagline is, “Create A Business That Will Run Without You”
And then there’s Lisbeth Tanz. She doesn’t need a tagline (lucky duck!) since the name of her site says it all: “Your Words, Your Voice”. Lis is pretty sharp and I think she’s got a leg up on the rest of us. Darn clever to make her biz name and tagline one in the same. I’d stick close to Lis and hang around her blog if I were you.
My tagline is a little off the beaten path and that was intentional. What can I say? I’m a natural-born iconoclast. I wanted to do something slightly different by using individual words instead of a phrase.
Hence, my tagline reads, “Moms. Your Big Why. Your Big Idea. Market Smart.”
The Agony of Taglines
Ask the next ten online marketers you meet about how much “fun” they had coming up with a tagline. Chances are good they’re going to leave out the fun part and emphasize the “agony”.
That little piece of real estate on your website holds a lot of weight — keyword wise and otherwise. And getting it just right isn’t easy.
Small biz owners have agonized for weeks over what to use for a tagline. It really is a tough challenge.
The Victory of Taglines
Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion reigns victorious! Marcus was trying to come up with a tagline so guess what he did? He asked his loyal blogging community to craft one for him! Now there’s a bright idea.
Check out Marcus’s tagline story here: Dear Sales Lion Community – I Need Your Help!
As entrepreneurs, we are taught to create personal brands that, proudly and prominently, place our strengths in the spotlight.
And we are also taught to carefully and cleverly mask our weaknesses.
This flies in the face of traditional business school wisdom. Having said that, are you suddenly getting that inflexible, conservative “stuffed shirt” feeling?
Heaven forbid our target audience should find out we goof up sometimes and don’t know everything about everything.
Mistakes.
Errors.
Typos.
Faux Pas (a social blunder or indiscretion)
Boo-Boos.
Raise your hand if you’ve never made any of these.
Imagine that. I don’t see one hand going up.
Here’s a BIG newsflash!
Trust requires vulnerability. If you value trust in your social media network and you want your target market to trust YOU …
You’ve got to remove your mask and start talking about the really tough issues you’re wrestling with and let your human, far-from-perfect self show through.
My personal favorite social media marketing tip:
Express more vulnerability.
There’s NO Santa Claus, NO Easter Bunny, and NO box to think outside of.
Your balloon might feel a little deflated right now, and I’m sorry. But it’s true.
You’re only limited – you’re only “boxed in” – by your imagination. As an entrepreneur and online marketer, the sky’s the limit!
But if you’re someone who can’t let go of the box theory …
Then my suggestion is to start placing your ideas into a box and pull one out any time you wish.
As you grow your business, be as creative as you like. Use your noodle, put on your thinking cap, and WOW your target audience with your signature genius.
There is no box to think outside of.
The title of this post is a quote from my friend, Lisbeth Tanz, of Your Words Your Voice. She’s a one-of-a-kind amazing lady. Check her out and be sure to follow Lis on Twitter.
Have you ever heard entrepreneurs saying things like the following?
“I don’t know fancy stuff like FTP.”
“I could never create videos. That’s too hard.”
“I’m not good at writing.”
“I don’t understand social media. It’s complicated.”
“I’m a small fish in a big pond. No one will ever notice me.”
“I can’t do anything technical.”
“I know I need to craft an irresistible freebie. But I don’t have anything special to offer.”
“I can’t compete with the gurus. They know everything.”
“I’m just a mom. I don’t have any profitable skills.”
Yikes!!
Allow me to jump right up on my soapbox and set the record straight!
Every one of us knows how to do SOMETHING.
Just start THERE.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was a website, a blog, or a business!
Being an entrepreneur means being willing to learn as you go and learn as you grow.
What advice would you give a newbie entrepreneur who thinks he or she is lacking in skills or talents?
Your marketing messages should always be crafted and centered around “who” you serve and “how” you intend to serve them.
Today let’s focus on the “who” – your ideal prospect.
To zero in on your ideal target audience …
You need to turn yourself into a prospect profiler!
1.) GEOGRAPHICAL TARGETING – Specific locales (regions, counties, cities, communities)
2.) DEMOGRAPHIC TARGETING – Age, Gender, Marital Status, Occupation, Income, Education level
3.) PSYCHOLOGICAL TARGETING – Values, Fears, Desires, Goals
4.) ASSOCIATION TARGETING – Your ‘warm’ market (people you’ve met, know, or networked with)
Now let’s take it one step further and take a look at the …
Physical description + Psychological description + Their problem + The Solution + Where to find them + How you will communicate with them
What steps have you taken to identify YOUR ideal prospect?
Can you add anything to what I’ve shared with you here?
Jayna Locke (3)
Keith Davis (2)
Daphne Bousquet, CMP (1)
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Helenee (1)
Jackie (1)