Friends, Followers, and Tribes: Social Network Marketing 101

by Wendy Burge 

In this day of digital communications, an evolution of social networks have emerged connecting people without geographical boundaries. Social networks in their purest form let people connect who have a commonality. It’s these commonalities that create “tribes” or groups of people who relate to their similar aspects, collectively. Social networks have become the greatest marketing tool for businesses to utilize because of their targeted, cost effective strategies for relationship marketing. However, social network sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn do have cultural distinctions that must be considered when choosing them for marketing purposes.
 
Let’s start with MySpace. This social site is largely dominated by 17- 25 year olds. Personal profiles host commentaries, video, and music. Musicians, bands, and artists often use it as a multi-media gallery to showcase their works. However, the nature of MySpace tends to feel “noisy” as profiles have individualized personalities. In general, MySpace feels like a voyeuristic glimpse into a teen-ager’s bedroom where friends come to hang-out and anything goes. MySpace has very few privacy features and profiles are open to full public viewing so businesses geared to younger consumers could take advantage of interacting with them on this site with relative ease.
 
Facebook, on the other hand, is like the office water-cooler where people share stories of their lives and things they’ve done. The median age on Facebook is 35 years old, and with 1 million users a week signing on, it’s the fastest growing social network site. It hosts 200 million active members and is predicted to hit ½ billion within the next 2 years, if not sooner. This makes it one of the best places to do business online.
 
A person is limited to having only one profile listing on Facebook and only 5000 ‘friends’-those people who are linked to your profile. As a privacy feature, people may not read your profile until you both agree to be ‘friends’. ‘Friends’ can make comments to your posts which run like news feed to your Facebook networks. For small businesses, this news-feed profiling becomes viral throughout networks that can consist of your customers, prospects, and colleagues and read by their networks attracting new clients. Their commentary to your posts allows them to co-create the experience with your business. For this reason careful consideration should be made about the content of posts, in general.
 
Your business may not host a profile page itself, but you may set up a ‘fan page’ where information relative to your business including updates on product or service offers, special events, and or activities your business may be involved in can be listed. Fan pages are open for full public view, have no limits to the number of ‘friends’, and offers target-specific broadcast of information directly to people who are interested in what you have to offer.
 
If Facebook is the office water-cooler, then LinkedIn is the corporate boardroom. As one of the largest professional network sites online, members showcase their career profiles, ‘link’ to others within their industry, and connect with people from jobs they have held or done business with. The adage “Its not what you know, but who you know’ that best describes this site. If you are a solo-professional, LinkedIn is an important site to join as your profile is like a virtual resume for other to see. It’s a great site to target other businesses for joint ventures, collaborative opportunities, and or add as referral resources too. On a note, LinkedIn has become the hottest place to be “headhunted” because companies can easily check out potential candidates who might possess the skills they are looking for.
 
Last, but definitely not least, is Twitter. Described as a micro-blog, it allows people to post up to 150 characters of information about themselves at a time. Twitter hosts over 8 million users and has no limit to how many people can follow your profile. Like a cocktail party where you share sound bites of information within a group conversation your ‘followers’ or “tweeps” can and do make comments or contribute to your posting and overall discussion. As a marketing tool, it can be used to post info regarding business products, services, or offers. Innovative businesses are using it to drive traffic back to their websites for special promotions to their consumers.

Social network sites have given businesses an innovative and new way to reach their consumers. Building upon relationships-even those without borders, considerations and courtesies should still be kept in check because potentially the whole world is watching.
    
© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Radiant Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com

Crafting a Lifestyle Business Blueprint as a Model for Success

by Wendy Burge

It used to be that if you wanted to start up a business a lot of planning was necessary to get the lending institution to finance the location, the over-head expenses as well employees, and the money to develop a marketing profile. This valuable process allowed businesses to establish an overall blueprint of their projected revenue and used it as a benchmark to mark their growth. Because there was a high amount of accountability to the lending institutions involved in the seed funding of their businesses the practicalities of this planning was essential.

Nowadays, with a bit of ingenuity and time someone can start up a business with little relative cost involved in location, over-head expense, or for employees. All they really need is a computer and internet access. This has opened up new opportunities for solo-professionals, service providers, and even product-based businesses to work ‘virtually’– leveraged by help of the internet. The value of this model has been the freedom to allow more people to look at the option of becoming a small business entrepreneur and to step into the ownership role without having to develop huge strategy planning, funding or extra support from employees. The basis of this business model is focused on the lifestyle-flexibility being built into the structure.
 
Although this has been a true gift by offering more people the opportunity to run their own businesses without all the costly over-head, a lifestyle business model must be adopted to set the benchmark for obtaining constant growth and profitability with the focus on flexibility and the needs of the owner.
 
Investing in a business and marketing coach who works to develop a system exclusively serving you and your business can be the best strategy in designing a custom fit blueprint and structure to create a lifestyle business model. The objective focus of an outside source–such as a small business and marketing coach-is to specialize in this ability to build a bridge between personal happiness and professional success with strategies to support three areas primary to the overall business structure.

Market Position
 
It is common practice, initially, for young, small businesses to cater to the needs of their clients. As with any venture there is an excitement to see a profitable transaction as quickly as possible after start-up. While it is important to offer good client and customer services, it can also be taxing on a small business to adapt to each specific need of their client. Additionally, it makes it difficult to clearly direct the right clients to your door if there is no clear distinction as to what makes your business different although offering similar services or products to that of your competitors. By clearly creating a targeted customer niche, small businesses can hone in on who they serve best easily and more effectively, especially now with the help of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. This market position then allows them to dictate how each product and service offered fits into their “marketing funnel” of how best to serve the niche and remain profitable.

Additionally it is much easier to attract the right kind of clients, those ready and willing to use your service, because every offer provided by your business is created to support the success and happiness of your clients. Case in point, a hairstylist who creates a small shop out of their home would be more successful declaring a market position based on their specialty let’s say, long-hair styling and care; cut, colour, and conditioning. By targeting this specific type of client to work with they are more successful in attracting that client which allows them to specialize and offer service just to that niche with whom they enjoy working with rather than just handing out business cards with the word “hairstylist for women.”
 
System Leverage
 
The largest challenge for small business owners is to not get easily overwhelmed by the amount of operational and administration duties necessary in maintaining their business. They spend more time working in their business than on its growth plans. Developing systemized plans which create an “office bible” of how every task necessary is performed becomes critical for a number of reasons. First it creates consistency in the daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly actions necessary to operate the business and provide the best client experience. Second, it provides insight into areas where delegation of a task would better be served by outsourcing it to a virtual team member or employee. Third, this allows the business owner to focus more on higher pay-off and profitable activities in their business-which they usually prefer to do anyway.

Systemizing a lifestyle business further provides long-term business strategies by leveraging web-base software, marketing automation tools, and social network media which then allow a more flexible “built to go” business that can be operated from home or on travel without a lot of complication or disruption.
 
Money Making Activities
 
Traditionally, most people were employees before they stepped into the world of entrepreneurism. It was common for them to have a salary component or sales target which meant there was consistency in income on a biweekly basis. Unfortunately, this comfortable flow of money coming-in takes strategy to “turn on” again when they go into business for themselves. The reality hits that there are only ’24 hours’ in a day in which to handle all aspects to the administration and operation, including networking, service, and sales, within the business so focusing on higher pay-off money making tasks is essential to turning on their money tap. A business clearly needs creative ways to generate revenue with the limited time an entrepreneur usually has then. Selling a service on a client to client basis may be beneficial at first, but it’s virtually impossible to generate high revenues that way. Let’s say that you are a massage therapist or specialized service provider where time is a factor in the transaction with the client. 

Assessing how to develop packages, cross-promotions, and ‘up-sells’ will be but a few of the ways to leverage more money in the time you have with clients. Additionally, it may be that your services or products can be repackaged and sold as information products or digital training courses in order to reach a larger audience online through specialized websites. Again, these are only a few of the multitude of ways to generate additional income streams online which would allow a small business to leverage time by being ‘open 24 hours a day’ on the internet to people around the world now who may find their information beneficial.
 
The focus on money making activities falls into the idea of a ‘marketing funnel’ as well  because it gives small business owners the ability to capitalize on creating better service offers and products to meet the needs of their clients. It’s a known fact that when a customer has a good experience with a business, their lifetime value to that business has a huge impact on the growth of the business because it is easier to re-sell to existing, happier clients than it is to convince new, potential clients to do business with you–(but then again that is why you create your targeted niche market!).
 
The success of any business is based on its planning, marketing, and ability to take effective action for growth. If your lifestyle based business is starting to become “the job you never wanted”, then it’s time to take action and hire a business and marketing coach to restructure your business for success.

 

© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Conscious Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com

Keep the Conversation On-going with a ‘Warm Prospect’ Marketing Campaign

by Wendy Burge

If you are like most solo-entrepreneurs, you attend anywhere from one to three events a month. That is a lot of networking with a lot of new business cards at the end of the month! However, while getting out meeting people is essential to growing your business, how many of those business cards end up in a pile on your desk without any follow up? I would wager that the percentage is high.
 
Why is this?
 
First, there are no established follow up marketing systems in place which promote continuing the dialogue with the warm prospects.  Second, there is lack of clarity in how your service might help the warm prospect right now.  And, third, time slips away and a few days or weeks have passed since the meeting, so now, it feels like a sales pitch if you call -and not wanting to sound pushy you don’t call.
 
While many people may stick to the hot leads for immediate business, they are leaving money on their desks by not continuing the conversation with the rest of the people they have met.  Implementing a follow up marketing strategy is a sure fire way to turn those new contacts into warmer prospects, clients, and referral generators. 
 
It is a known fact that it takes seven contacts before a person will purchase – so, consistency is the key. Often the reason people struggle maintaining on-going marketing systems is due to this point.  With a few simple steps, create your ‘warm prospect’ marketing campaign today and watch it work for you again and again-easily and effortlessly. As the old business adage states, “The fortune is in the follow-up!” 

Develop a Warm Prospect Marketing Campaign
 
Create a system to cater just to that new contact who thought you and your business were “interesting” – like the ones you meet at events, seminars, workshops, or the hundreds of other locations you have that dialogue “What do you do?” With a relationship foundation bound by their interest in you-well, enough to keep them speaking with you and in turn, offering you their business card build on this initial meeting and conversation by showing them you are the best person to call if ever they should need your services or products.  Incorporate into the system the three contact points they have on their business cards: physical mailing address, direct phone number, and their email address. Each of these can offer you three unique approaches to re-establishing your conversation with them.

Care to share then leverage with an offer

No one likes to be sold to unless they are ready to buy. But, sometime people do not know they “should buy” as a matter of being “ready”. Offer tips, articles of interest, and timely pieces that provide information for new leads to become better consumers when it comes to using your product or service in their life.  Develop short information pieces for direct mail and email using this simple formula: 

Create a Catchy Title
 ”7 Tips for Prepping Your Lawn In-Time for Spring”
“Stop Money from Slipping Through the Cracks – 5 Ways to Energy -proof Your Home”
“How to Save Time in Your Business Without Hiring Employees”
“Where to Find Lasting Love Just by Looking at the Stars”
 
Tell why they should know this information
“Pump-up the appeal of your home value and aesthetics with early planting and seeding.”
“Save up to 35% on your energy bills just by caulking the drafts around your doors and window.”
“Increase your productivity and profits by outsourcing to a virtual team.”
“Discover your long term love compatibility by assessing star charts and astrological signs.”
 
Show what they can do about it
This is where you would explain the steps, process, and or action they should take to make this a benefit for them. Keep this section brief and simple. Use short paragraphs and bullet points that are easy to read.

Leverage how to make it happen
In closing, your expertise can be offered if they should need help implementing any of the information you shared. Leverage this with a free consultation, free trial offer, free information package, free assessment, and or coupon. Furthermore, invite them to follow you on social network sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked-In to establish more trust by getting to know you better.
 
Automate your conversation

The gold within business cards is the amount of contact information they contain. Use this information to reach out and keep your conversation going by putting it on auto-pilot.  Thanks to the internet, there are numerous tools to help automate your follow up messages after initial set up.

Email
Auto-responders allow you to develop a series of emails that can be scheduled ahead of time for specific mailings dates. A series can last as long as you want – often up to a year out. (Talk about convenience.) Just add the new contact’s name and email address and it initiates the email series. Many programs also allow for particular information to be extracted about the email receiver so the email looks and reads more personal -like using first names.  Auto-responder programs such as Getresponse.com, Aweber.com, and Constantcontact.com allow you to create continuous email communication easily and with a “set & go” philosophy.
 
Direct Mail
In spite of the cost of traditional direct mail used to market, businesses should still blend-in some postal mailings as a component of their marketing puzzle. People do not like junk mail but will appreciate follow up cards, postcards, and letters. Sendoutcards.com is a great way to automate the direct mail process allowing you to upload your own hand-writing sample that can be imprinted with a message; you create, on any one of their thousands of templates for greeting or post cards. Once the warm prospect’s name and mailing address is uploaded in your account database, you can create a series of greeting cards for a more personal touch -again they can be scheduled up to a year out. Thank you cards, well wishes, invitations to special events, workshops, or seminars now have a personal touch. Best of all, card services print and send the cards out for you saving on time, as well.
 
Voice Broadcast
Reach more warm prospects with the ease of voice broadcasting. Create follow up specials, invitations, and announcements that can be generated to your warm prospect list over the phone. Voice broadcasting simply allows you to record your own message and have it distributed to your phone list on a scheduled date.  Create your account, set up your message, and broadcast it out to warm prospects.  Review your current phone systems. It may have a broadcasting option. There are numerous, resource companies online which also are able to meet your specific volume needs, as well, and many offer optional payment systems like IfbyPhone.com .

Now decide who is “hot” and who “is not” without losing all the great leads you have created while out networking. Just a little bit of front end effort can open the door for sales down the road by having established yourself as the expert to turn too when it’s time for that warm prospect to need your service or product.
 

 © 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Conscious Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com

3 Simple Steps to Make Great Introductory Statements

by Wendy Burge 

Networking is a MUST as a small business owner if you want to grow a healthy business filled with the right clients. This doesn’t matter if you work in a business with four walls or online in a virtual community. Communicating clearly what service or product you offer aids people in determining how you can help them; this is especially true when you attend networking events.  A one-minute marketing pitch must be well-developed in order to deliver the right impact and interest to your prospective clients who may be in the room.  Unfortunately, some solo-professionals, healers, coaches, and consultants have a tricky time explaining what they do because they are so well versed in various techniques which can help multiple issues that they have difficulty identifying just a few topics to “pitch” in their introductory statements.

My most recent experience of a poorly crafted introductory statement happened this past week at a networking group I was attending. Everyone had a 1-minute to introduce themselves and their business, as typical with these kinds of events. This went well for the most part.  Then it was time for the woman sitting near me to speak about her business. She quickly hopped out of her seat and stated with uncertainty, “Hi – My name is Jane, I am a healer, I do massage therapy, energy healing, and EFT – a tapping technique, and well, I am looking for people who are open to my kind of work.”  Then she sat down.  OUCH!

I watched the room as people scrunched up their face trying to figure out what exactly this woman had to offer or how to make a referral to her.  All I will honestly say is that she missed the point of this type of marketing opportunity. Most especially, what she could gain from introducing herself with a well-crafted introductory statement and offer. Hint: CLIENTS!

This happens often when people describe what they do not how or who they can help.  In this case, she made it hard for listeners to determine if they were able to use her services or if they knew someone else who could. So how do you explain everything you do in under a minute?

Here are my 3 Simple Steps to Make Introduction Statements, and equally important how to leverage your service in the offer. So, grab your paper and pencil and let’s get you started!

1. Determine What Problem You Solve For People

Many people are not specific enough as to their service and offer too many choices about how they can help others with their business. While you may be able to help people with many issues, too many choices can overwhelm people when you first meet them. In general, most PROSPECTS think in terms of “How can this person help me?” So, if you have a laundry list of issues you deal with, it can appear that you dabble in everything and are really not a master at any one item.  This can put people off very quickly.

Typically, PROSPECTS are looking for individuals who appear to be EXPERTS in their industry. They want to feel they can trust someone who knows exactly how to help them solve their problem. By choosing only a few PROBLEMS which you can solve you can position your message easily. You can always introduce your other services to your prospect once they have become a CLIENT. (Then they will think you are even more fabulous!)

To narrow down your SOLUTIONS practice listening to the types of conversations you have with people in general, clients, and prospects, or review the successes you have had. Do you see a common theme?  Make a list of them. 

2. Develop 3 to 5 Specific Solutions With Features And Benefits

Now that you have determined what exactly you find yourself solving for people, pick only the three to five items that you really enjoy or have had success in resolving. Do not pick items that you dread!  You will not be convincing when you have to speak about them. Remember you are crafting a message that will capture the attention of your IDEAL CLIENTS so the energy you project when you speak about something can enhance or take away from the topic.
 
With these points clearly identified develop a FEATURE and a BENEFIT of your solution for that problem.  You may find that there are multiple features and benefits for each solution, list as many as possible, so you can work with a variety of options. Examples might look like this:

Business: Massage Therapist
Client Problem: Low back pain from pregnancy
Solution: Soft tissue massage and prenatal stretching
Feature: Gentle massage technique
Benefit: Relaxes muscles stressed by pregnancy hormones

Business: Certified Pet Groomer
Client Problem: Dog fur matting in winter
Solution: Regular mini-grooming session between clips
Feature: Conditioning of the fur and skin in winter
Benefit: Less matting of the fur in cold, wet weather 

 3. Craft A Statement Which Includes An Introduction

Now that you have clarified your problem and solutions and each feature and benefit, combine them into a well crafted statement with a simple introduction of your name, your business name, and profession.

“Hello my name is Jane, my business is Bodyworks. As a Massage Therapist I help pregnant women who have low back pain by using soft tissues massage and prenatal stretching. I offer a gentle massage technique so that it relaxes muscles stressed by pregnancy hormones.”

“Hello my name is Claire, my business is The Dog House. As a Certified Pet Groomer, I help keep long hair dogs from matting in the winter by offing regular mini-grooming sessions between clips. By conditioning their fur and skin in the winter, less matting of the fur occurs in cold, wet weather.”
 
Each of these statements clearly enables prospective clients listening to determine if they are an ideal client. What you have done by crafting your message this way is PRE-QUAILFY your PROSPECTS.  Members of the audience listening now know that you can help them with an identifiable problem. And in the case of our examples, care of their pregnant sister or their own little, long haired dog.

 
* BONUS STEP 

In marketing, these types of introductory statements posses a Hottest Undeniable Benefit or HUB statements. Now that you have a great HUB statement, leverage it with an offer to the group you are speaking with.  It may be that you offer a free consultation, maybe a savings or discount, or a special package deal to the members of the group. Examples might be:

“Hello my name is Jane, my business is Bodyworks. As a Massage Therapist I help pregnant women who have low back pain by using soft tissues massage and prenatal stretching. I offer a gentle massage technique so that it relaxes muscles stressed by pregnancy hormones. If you or someone you care for is pregnant and is experiencing this problem, come speak to me today and I will offer you a free consultation and a great prenatal stretching guidebook exclusively from Bodyworks”

 ”Hello my name is Claire, my business is The Dog House. As a Certified Pet Groomer, I help keep long hair dogs from matting in the winter by offering regular mini-grooming sessions between clips. By conditioning their fur and skin in the winter, less matting of the fur occurs in cold, wet weather. If your dog experiences this problem, come speak to me today and I will offer you a 10% savings on your dog’s first visit to The Dog House.”

 By clarifying your Introductory Statement with these 3 simple steps you will naturally attract the RIGHT clients. By enhancing your statement with a SPECIAL OFFER you can create a great marketing opportunity in under a minute. Simple, clear, and do-able!
 
Have fun crafting your Introductory Statements. Try creating 3 to 5 messages that you can use at different events, as well, to introduce yourself where ever you go.

 © 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Conscious Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com