Categories
Online Business

Is Your Client Newsletter Boring Your Customers to Death?

Article Contributed by David Gruttadaurio

Are you making this dreadful newsletter marketing mistake?
The typical client newsletter is one of the most mind-numbing, agonizingly boring pieces of mail ever sent to consumers.
The main reason is that most companies think what they do is incredibly fascinating to their clients. So based on this false assumption, their newsletters cheerfully discuss the latest equipment purchase or the new back office operation and how Mary Sue has moved from Payroll to Marketing. While this might be riveting stuff internally, I can assure you that your clients just don’t care.
If you’re making this newsletter marketing mistake, don’t worry. It’s not your fault. No one ever taught you the system, until now…
4 ‘Set in Stone’ Rules to Publishing a Winning Client Newsletter:
Rule #1: Never make your business or company the focus of your client newsletter. This concept is difficult for most business owners to wrap their minds around. Read my words: Our clients don’t care about how our business operates! The sooner we accept this fact, the sooner we will be sending them something that they actually want to read.
Rule #2: Focus on article content that people grab hold of and actually use in their lives. That means you must provide appealing and interesting content that is relevant, useful and engaging. The goal is to create involvement. The more time they spend with your newsletter, the more likely they’ll take action.
Rule # 3: Be consistent. If you tell your customers to expect a newsletter from you every month, you better do it. And ask yourself: How often do I want my customers and prospects to think of me? While daily would be wonderful, it’s not going to happen. Following a monthly newsletter schedule is perfect. They will expect to receive it just like they do their favorite magazines.
Rule #4: Never forget that a client newsletter is a marketing tool. Within your compelling content weave client testimonials and the names of people who have referred your company. Have contests that give away free services or gift cards to create further goodwill between you and your clients. And always, always, always have a compelling offer just for them.
Follow these rules and you will have a winning client newsletter that will get you more sales. But, you have to keep in mind that…
You Must Take a Long-term View on Using Newsletters as a Marketing and Customer Relations Tool.
Be aware that the results will not happen overnight. In fact, it will take several months for your customers to develop the ‘habit’ of looking for it.
But over time, your clients will come to expect getting your newsletter. And they will hound you if you missed sending them an issue! You will definitely see the desired results with the payoff being client retention and more purchases from you.
Client newsletters that include the four rules listed above will build relationships with your customers and create a sense of reliability and professionalism. You’ll be sending literature that your clients will look forward to reading every month.
And since your rivals don’t understand my newsletter success system, you will create a powerful marketing machine that will blow your competition out of the water.
About the Author
David Gruttadaurio was sick and tired of wasting money on marketing that didn’t work. So he searched for a profit-producing, client-retention & referral-generating tool until he found newsletter marketing! Now go to http://www.NewslettersMadeForYou.com & get his FREE “Profit Exploding Newsletter Secrets Report” that reveals how to reclaim tons of money that should be sitting in your bank account now simply with newsletters.

Categories
Business Ideas

Build an Idea Library

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Article contributed by Karen S. Sieczka
Want to encourage your staff to think outside the box? Provide the tools they need to get creative.
An Idea Library is a place where you and your staff can go to look for the seeds of a new idea. Much like a regular library, your idea library houses books, journals, and magazines, and offers comfy seating and a place for quiet reflection. What’s different ? It is on-site and available for use any time writer’s block strikes, a project gets stuck in development, or new concepts just don’t seem to be coming.
It’s easy to get started. Carve out a space where there are few distractions. Add some comfortable seating and a table. Keep some games, colored pencils, and lots of paper available here as well. Now start to scour book stores or your own local library for interesting magazines. Here’s the key: don’t look for anything related to your current industry. You want to stimulate new thinking with books, magazines, catalogs, and periodicals unrelated to your organization’s primary industry. Go for something totally different. This is where is new ideas come from.
Look for opposites of what you do and add those items. If you’re in sales, go toward fashion. If you’re scientific, have materials from the day care industry. Bring in annual reports from non-competitors. What are they doing? How can you apply their expertise to what you do?
Borders Bookstores used a display technique garnered from the retail clothing business to quell lagging book sales. It changed its book displays with covers facing out rather than the traditional spine out approach.
Often great ideas come from adapting ideas from another industry or product line and applying it to your organization. We tend to read the same things and do the same things as our competition so we need to find a way to open the creative floodgates. Want new and unusual ideas? Look to other industries for ideas.
Ask: how can we apply what other industries are doing to what we are doing?
About the Author
Karen S. Sieczka is a training consultant and founder of Growing Great Ideas.com. Her latest training program is Growing Great Ideas: Unleashing Creativity at Work. The program generates ideas, enthusiasm, and teamwork and can be customized to address particular organizational issues or challenges. This article was excerpted from the book, Growing Great Ideas: Unleashing Creativity at Work now available at LULU.com in download or print version.

Categories
Entrepreneurship

Stretch Out Of Your Comfort Zone

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“You can gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do”. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Last month’s I wrote a post about having the courage to Say YES to your dreams and desires. If you missed reading the article, click here. I encouraged you to create your own I Say YES manifesto to use as a source of inspiration and commitment to consistently show up in intention and action.

To achieve your goals, vision, intentions, dreams… requires stepping out of your comfort zone to stretch yourself and open to new experiences that serve to grow you as a person as well as your business. Attempting to stay where you are is impossible. Change is a constant in life. If you’re not moving forward, you will begin to move backward.

This past weekend, I spent time with a dear friend at her parent’s lakefront home while they were away on vacation. I was really looking forward to relaxing, playing, soaking in the hot tub, and doing some personal transformation work together. So, when she said she really wanted to do a sweat lodge my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic. That was not part of my plans!

Several hours of sweating in total darkness with strangers and being vulnerable felt too uncomfortable! No, no, no!

And then I got very still. What if ????? I let go of the resistance (shifting from constriction to expansion thinking), sat with the idea and considered different options. I could go and support her without participating, experience part of it for a while and stop at any time, or I could stay for the whole experience and really stretch myself. Sweat lodges offer powerfull spiritual, physical, and emotionally cleansing and healing experiences. Intuitively, I sensed that doing the sweat lodge would support some healing and release work that was ready to happen.

So, I said YES.

It was an incredibly wonderful experience. In fact, the whole weekend was filled with gifts and blessings as I experienced several things for the first time. Being fully present to feelings, insights, and sensations was exhilarating and freeing. Each YES opened doors for new experiences and possibilities. I’m still integrating all that happened and it’s a powerfull metaphor to reflect upon the next time I dig in my heels.

It’s easy to come up with reasons and excuses to say no when we feel afraid or uncomfortable. We have the ability to effectively rationalize and justify a point of view to make it sound and feel believable. We become adept at convincing ourselves that our conclusions are accurate.

To add leverage, we collect evidence to back up our NO in case we, or anyone else challenges our decision!

Unless we look more closely, we may miss the truth: we just don’t want to do it, period, especially if the decision feels threatening, uncomfortable or potentially painful.

To achieve your goals, vision, intentions, dreams… requires stepping out of your comfort zone to stretch yourself to new experiences that serve to grow you as a person as well as your business. Attempting to stay where you are is impossible. Change is a constant in life. If you’re not moving forward, you will begin to move backward.

The strength of your NO is often a powerful signal that saying YES to moving forward in spite of the resistance is the step you are meant to take as a leap of faith. Learning to distinguish a valid no from a critical yes is an important skill and talent (intuition) worth developing.

How often does your No response come up when you feel challenged to stretch yourself.
What decisions are you facing now, that are asking for a YES?
What favorite excuses and reasons do you use to justify your position?
What needs to shift to turn your no to YES?
What are you willing to love yourself enough to do, no matter what?
What are you ready to say YES to right NOW?
What will help you stay strong so that you continue to say YES?

It’s your life… make it a great one!

Categories
Work Life

3 Critical Questions to Ask When You’re Procrastinating

A few reasons why people come to me is because they feel stuck or because they know what they should be doing and they just don’t do it.

They feel frustrated, stressed out, and often angry at themselves which only makes them feel worse.

They think that procrastination is a bad habit so they judge themselves harshly.

Not all procrastination is problematic. In fact, there are reasons why people hesitate to take action that are valid.

A good reason to take it slow is when you need more information or clarity in order to make an informed decision. While it might appear as if you’re dragging your feet, rushing forward impulsively or without the information you really need to say YES can cost you time, money, and energy. And if you’re the type of person who tends to make emotional decisions you often regret, having some boundaries such as waiting 24 hours before saying YES can be empowering.

So what about those times when you’re just not sure why you feel stuck?

Asking three important questions can clarify why you might not be moving forward.

1. Is this the right and best time for that goal, intention or desire to happen? You might have a dream of exponentially growing your business to open your flow of abundance. Timing can be an important element in reaching a desirable result. Market trends, cash flow, adding new target markets, reorganization, the economy….all affect timing. What are the factors you need to consider when implementing action?

Stay alert to fear-based excuses and reasons you might be using to say, “It’s not the right time” when it really is!” One other thing to consider is the Universal Law of Divine Timing. I encourage folks to tune into their spirit and intuition when making choices. When we partner with the Universe, things flow much better than when we don’t!

2. Is this the right goal? Is it something you really want? Or is it something you think you should want or what others want for you? This is a revealing question. So often I see people saying they want something and when they dig deeper, they realize it’s more of a should rather than a passion or deep desire. Anthony Robbins says, “People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals— that is, goals that do not inspire them.” When we are fully on board with a decision to have something we truly desire, we can become unstoppable.

3. Do you have room in your life for … more clients, a relationship, greater business success….? Do you have the time for it? Do you have the systems and structures to handle the extra business? You might want to have a relationship and you have so many demands in your life that you don’t really have the time and energy for someone new. A colleague told me about a woman who desired a new romantic relationship. She redid her bedroom and made room in her home in preparation of meeting someone special (which she did!). Consider what might need to shift to open space for what you say you want and take action!

Categories
Success Attitude

Why You Must Start Setting Goals!

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If there is one message I must get across, it is this. You must start setting goals in every major area of your life. Right now, whatever your age, whatever you are doing.

Without something to focus on, the decisions we make and actions we take daily will not have any long-term direction, and will not result in any kind of achievement.

Without direction, we will be caught up with short term outcomes like paying the bills, watching TV, going shopping, trying out the newest restaurant, avoiding problems or simply making it through one hectic week after another. Like rats on a treadmill. We will tend to be caught up in a stressed and monotonous existence instead of designing a destiny and truly living.

The human mind is always pursing some kind of goal, however feeble. If we don’t focus our mind on long term goals that lead us to success, our minds will tend to focus on short term and small goals that serve only to distract us and waste our time.

I always like to use a river as a metaphor for life. We are all in our boats moving down this raging river which splits into many tributaries downstream, representing the many outcomes. Which tributary we take will determine where we end up.

When we are clear which stream we want to take, we will begin rowing in that direction. Now, along the way, there are definitely going to be currents that pull us in different directions.

There are going to be rocks and rapids that block our path. But if we stay focused on where we want to go, we will just keep rowing steadfastly, re-directing our boat until we get to our destination.

However, if we go through life without any clear idea of where we are going and where we want to end up, we will just row our boats aimlessly. We will just allow the currents and the rocks to move us in all directions.

This is what happens to most people. There end up going down a stream that they don’t want to be in. When they finally realize that it is not an outcome they want, they start paddling hard to avoid it. By this time, for many, it will be too late.

They go over the rapids (disaster) or finish up in a dead-end mill pond. They end up feeling frustrated, disillusioned and unfulfilled in the many different areas of their life. So, surely it is time to start deciding where you want to end up in your river of life!