Self Employed Success

Consumer trust of the messages they see on TV, read in the newspapers, and even the product and service suggestions their friends make is down 50% in the past two years, according to a study described in an Advertising Age article, In Age of Friending, Consumers Trust Their Friends Less.

Yet we use testimonials, social media and word-of-mouth as viable marketing techniques, right? But Edelman’s 2010 “Trust Barometer” says that consumers just see the jumble of marketing messages scrolling across their Facebook News Feed and Twitter Stream as a bunch of noise, not to be trusted except if it comes from someone they really, truly know in real life. In our minds, we separate our social media “friends” from people we really know, like and trust so much, we now use the acronym IRL to mean “in real life” when talking about certain friends.  (Perhaps we should use IFL to mean In Facebook Life? )

Now more than ever, it’s important for you to get out in the real world and let your face be seen and your message heard from your own lips. You can’t rely on social media word-of-mouth to do passive marketing for you if your prospective clients don’t trust marketing messages coming to them in that manner.

And it’s equally important, if you are using social media marketing, to make sure that most of your messages are not marketing messages. Never forget the importance of “social” in social media marketing. We can’t get to know you, like you or trust you if all you do is throw marketing messages at us without ever sharing tips, techniques, ideas, rants, and news about who you are IRL.

In the grocery store last week, I had an epiphany of the effectiveness of marketing message and marketing differentiation.

My husband loves cheese — specifically cheddar cheese. He swoons over the decision about which cheese to purchase. He’ll stand in front of the display of cheeses in the market for ages and ages, reading each and every label, like he was choosing the next Nobel Prize winner.

I laughed so hard, my stomach hurt, when he rationalized his latest cheese-buying decision:

“Look. Right here on the label is says ‘Hand milked by Amish farmers.’ It must be great cheese.”

‘Nuff said.

My client Mary called me and cried, “I need to find my niche!”

She had been told over and over again that she needed to find a narrow niche for her Life Coaching business so that she could be more noticeable among the pack of Life Coaches who market themselves to business professionals and managers.

But she had also been told that using words like “meaning” and “purpose” to describe what clients were looking for was over-used; all life coaches were using those terms and they had lost their power when it came to writing marketing text.

To find your niche, you need a tailor-made approach. Here is my reply to Mary in regards to identifying her niche and writing her marketing text towards that niche:

Finding The Right Words

Remember, WITHIN the coaching industry, words like “soul,” “meaning,” and “fulfillment” are used constantly and we’re used to them and don’t think they’re special.

But, OUTSIDE the coaching industry, people are just awakening to these words. They love these words. And people ARE looking for meaning and fulfillment in their lives. (Just because you are used to seeing those words everyday doesn’t automatically make them powerless or boring.)

So you may be tired of hearing catch-words in YOUR industry, but that doesn’t mean that customers aren’t still searching for those very same ideas.

If you want to know if people are interested in these words, go to the Google Keyword Tool  and type them in. You’ll see for yourself how popular they really are.

As a life coach, saying you don’t want to market yourself using the words “fulfillment” and “meaning,” is like saying you’re a dentist, but you don’t want to have the niche of “filling cavities” because every dentist does that.

Sometimes your niche isn’t just what topics you talk about with clients; sometimes your niche is the combination of what topics you talk about AND the people/groups you talk to.

Finding The Right Niche

The whole purpose of choosing a niche is so you can find a central place that potential clients congregate — so that you can get in front of them to introduce your business via your marketing techniques. You can find “professionals” or “mid-level managers” or “upper level executives” in specific industry associations, magazines, websites, newspapers, peer groups, etc.

But say you want your niche to be “Hyper Ambitious Stress Coaching.” There is no industry association for Hyper Ambitious people…how will you locate them?

Do you really want to be known as the “Hyper Ambitious Stress Coach?” (Do people really type in “hyper ambitious stress coach” into Google when they’re looking for help?) It implies that you work with only people who are hyper-ambitious, and only stressed ones at that. There are plenty of “non-hyper-ambitious” professionals who are want to achieve great things and be successful (and are stressed), they just don’t go overboard into “hyper” behaviors that create unbalance.

One caveat: labeling yourself the “Hyper Ambitious Stress Coach” is great for PR. The news media loves a specialist. But clients may not be looking for a Hyper Ambitious Stress Coach; they’re just looking for help with stress, over-scheduling, high demands, etc. So unless you’re going to get all your prospective clients via news media interviews, you might want to re-think that narrow niche.

Choosing a niche is not an exercise in finding a place where you have no competition. It’s okay if you have competition in your niche: it shows there’s a thriving market there.

Differentiation vs. Niche

If you’re simply looking to differentiate yourself from your competition, then that’s not done by choosing a niche market. Differentiation and Niche are two separate marketing steps. You can differentiate yourself based on:

• your personality
• your processes
• your techniques
• your classes and products
• your background
• your experience
• your skill set & knowledge
• your availability
• your fees
• your style

Differentiation asks, “Why would they buy from ME versus my competition?”

Niche asks, “Where will I find THEM so I can introduce myself?”

This entry in Wikipedia may help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_market

I’m not saying, “Don’t go in that niche direction.” What I am saying is this: if you define your niche too narrowly, you’ll have a hard time getting in front of them with your marketing techniques. And along the way, you might not be following your own soul purpose.

So, how do you define your own niche? I’d love to hear about your target audience and how you help them!

A few months ago,  I posted a note on my Facebook page about how our cat brought a dead mouse into the house, got chased around by us (looking like idiots), and eventually dropped the dead mouse in the cat toy box alongside her catnip toys.

My peeps loved that note and shared so many stories of the cool things their cats have done (with and without dead critters).

It was a great non-business, non-marketing post – just a funny story I wanted to share. I got THREE emails from people who had seen or commented about that post, thanking me for it, and asking me if I had any openings for private clients. One person even said, “If you have six cats, you’re my kind of business coach!” (Kitties got an extra treat that night for giving me the funny story, too.)

It’s not just the “here is what I offer in my business” posts that get attention. When we’re acting real, authentic, human…people can see and touch us in a new way. And we get to connect so beautifully with our clients and students, really communicating about ALL that matters to us in our worlds.

Make your business look more polished and established with the power of great design. Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System will be our guest, and will share four easy-to-learn design tips that will make your marketing materials more effective and save you money by keeping some of your marketing duties in house.

December 10, 2009
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM eastern

Class will be recorded, so if you miss a session, you will be able to download the audio recording of the live class and listen to it at your leisure.

Click here to register!

I’m offering two great business-building classes for September!

Now that summer is over, it’s time to kick-start your business. After all, there are still four more months in 2009…better make good use of them!

What do you want to create for your business?

• Increase Your Income With a Powerful Marketing Plan – if your marketing isn’t bringing the results you want, it’s time to revisit your marketing strategy — begins September 15
• Creating Small Business Websites That Grab Attention - do you need a new website or a face-lift on your existing one, and need a strategic plan for a successful website project? — begins September 17

“Education is not filling a pail, but lighting a fire.” 

–William Butler Yeats

Much of marketing is about persuasion. (Note that I do not say “manipulation.”)

Dictionary.com defines the verb “to persuade” like this:

1. to prevail on (a person) to do something, as by advising or urging: We could not persuade him to wait. 

2. to induce to believe by appealing to reason or understanding; convince: to persuade the judge of the prisoner’s innocence. 

So persuasion, especially in marketing, is all about encouraging someone to take action (call me to talk about your needs, sign up for my program, buy my ebook, etc.), as well as convincing someone by helping them to understand information, ideas and/or benefits.

CNN/Fortune Magazine recently posted a self-quiz entitled How Persuasive Are You? The quiz helps you to understand your own first reactions to a series of events, to see how much you use persuasion in your marketing and sales efforts. Go ahead, take the quiz! It’s an eye-opener!

I’m absolutely fascinated by the psychology of marketing: what makes people pay attention to a marketing piece, and more importantly, what persuades them to take action and buy. I’m reading several books on the topic right now, and as soon as I compile my notes, I’ll write more about the topic in this blog and on my ezine.

I think the psychology of marketing will make all the difference in the world to your success. I’ll keep you posted.

I did an interesting test over the past few months, with astonishing results.

I sell an ebook about mastermind groups on three of my sites. I’ve been tracking the sales results for 4 years, across three different sites. Conversion rates (the percent of people who purchase as compared to the total number who view the page) ranges from 2% to 14%, depending on which site.

A second edition of the ebook was launched this year, and on each site I used this book cover graphic, with the “second edition” graphic on it:

Six weeks ago, I ran a test, removing the current book cover graphic and replacing it with the exact same book cover, but WITHOUT the “second edition” graphic on it, like this:

An amazing thing happened: conversion rates FELL by 75% using the plain book cover without the “second edition” graphic.

I did not change the book cover graphic on the other two sites, and their conversion rates remained stable.

Conclusion: People who visited the article page felt more trust when an ebook was in it’s 2nd edition, deducing that an ebook that had been updated was a popular ebook that contained up-to-date information.

As we know, trust is a key element in marketing, especially ecommerce. What are you doing to instill trust in your site visitors?

You can see the new graphic in place in the article, here:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/articles/mastermind-group.htm

“I’m going nuts,” one of my private clients emailed me last week. She continued, “There are so many marketing techniques, how in the world do I choose the best ones for my business, without making massive mistakes?”

Putting together your marketing plan and your marketing campaigns can be a daunting task. You hear rumors that a specific marketing technique is a “must” for your type of business, yet you wonder: Will it really bring the desired results before I run out of cash and patience?

There are over 30 internet marketing techniques and another 50 or more traditional marketing techniques. How do you choose among these 80-100 possible marketing techniques to find the most powerful ones for your business? Here are some things to consider.

The Purpose of Marketing

First, let’s talk about the purposes of marketing. Knowing which goal you want for your marketing will help you choose the proper technique. There are thousands of books and websites on marketing, and by distilling them down to their core essence, we discover there are four primary purposes for marketing:

• Brand Awareness – Helping your target audience to become aware of you and want to learn more about your services and products.
• Lead Generation – Getting your target audience to request information and/or a sales conversation with you; also, for building a pre-sales relationship.
• Brand Consideration – Your target audience is considering buying from you or at least has included you in their short list of possibilities, along with your competitors.
• Direct Sales – Getting your target audience to purchase directly from you.

For example, you might use search engine advertising, like Google Adwords, for lead generation purposes, but it may be a poor choice for direct sales, especially if your target audience doesn’t purchase that way.

Read the full article>>>

Have you ever wished there was a magic word you could say to get people to do whatever you ask? Unfortunately, there’s no such thing, but Steve Martin, the author of “Yes: Fifty Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive” has a pretty surprising suggestion.

Watch this video from MSNBC “Your Business” TV show  for more information.