Month: August 2012

3 Tips On Engaging Your Ideal Prospects Using Copy

Post author By
Post date August 20, 2012

You’ve done all this work to get people to visit your website, only to have nothing happen.

No sign ups for your newsletter, no inquiries about your products and services, no sales, no nothing.

So what’s the problem? Chances are it has something to do with your copy not engaging your ideal prospects so they want to become your customers and clients.

What can you do to fix that? Well, the simple answer is your copy needs to connect on a deeper level to what your ideal clients find important. The difficult answer is how exactly do you do that. Below are 3 tips to get you started:

1. Know EXACTLY who your ideal clients are.

Look, you’re not going to be able to connect with them on a deep level if you don’t know who they are, what keeps them up night and what’s important to them. This is why you need more than just the demographic stuff (age, income level, etc.) you need to know WHY they’re struggling, what they most want in the world, what their values are, etc.

The more you actually know your ideal clients on this deep level, the more you’ll be able to use the words and phrases that truly engage them.

So how do you get started finding your ideal client? Ask yourself this — who are your favorite clients? Write down a list of your favorite clients and compare them. (If you’re just starting out and haven’t had any clients, think about the other people in your life you enjoy working with and describe them.)

Why are those clients your favorites? What do they have in common? (Look beyond the external descriptions such as gender and age, and instead think about mindset and values and beliefs.) Start there and see where it takes you.

Then once you have a picture of your ideal clients in your head, it’s time to look at tip 2.

2. Don’t write to a group (even if it’s a group of your ideal clients).

Instead, pick one person and write to that person. When you do this, your writing will naturally sound more intimate. In fact, I would take it one step further and imagine yourself writing a letter to a friend. Your friend has a problem, you KNOW what could really help them, wouldn’t you try and write an engaging, persuasive letter because you REALLY want to help your friend? That’s the way you’ll really start to connect with your ideal clients.

3. Use THEIR language, not yours.

In other words, don’t spend hours and hours trying to figure out a cute way to describe what you do that means nothing, or worse, requires a great deal of explanation before anyone even understands what you’re talking about. The best (and easiest) way is to use the same words your ideal clients are using.

Now, you may be wondering to yourself, how do you find out what words your ideal clients are using? Ask them.

Do a survey or ask a question on social networking forums or groups. See what language THEY use to describe their problems and what they’re looking for to solve it. Then use their words in your marketing copy. (Yes, honestly, it really CAN be that easy.)

Tags copywriting, online copywriting, persuade and engage, strategic online copy, website copy

Success Attitude

3 Strategies for Your Positive Business Independence

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date August 20, 2012

The annual U.S. celebration of the Declaration of Independence’s signing is this week. While many just eat hot dogs and watch fireworks, let’s Work Positive and discover 3 strategies from the Founding Fathers’ experience that we can use to achieve our own positive business independence.

Attention

The U.S. Founding Fathers viewed “taxation without representation” as the negative mental model cast by a negative British government.

What negative mental models receive your thoughts’ focus? It could be anything from the way you determine your attitude each morning by watching TV “news” to a scarcity mentality from which you grab and rake everything you can wrap your arms around.

Who are the negative people that get your attention? From an employee or coworker, vendor to regional manager, they suck your positive time and energy even after you go home. It costs too much to do business with some people.

Is your business positively growing this way?

The first strategy is to determine today to develop a more positive mental model independent of your status quo. Feed your attitude something more positively nutritional for breakfast. Grow an abundance mentality by thinking about all you do have instead of what you don’t.

Determine to give your attention to positive mental and social energies so your business will positively grow independent of current negativity.

How?

Intention

The second strategy is to declare your positive determination to transform your attention.

The Founding Fathers of the U.S. signed a document that clearly stated what they believed to be true as the positive recasting of their attention and why. It’s known as the Declaration of Independence.

Our positive thoughts and relationships to which we give attention organize and crystallize when we declare in writing what we believe to be true. The most powerful fuel for focus is your pen.

Write down what you positively declare your independence from today. Write about more than just what you’re against. Notice the U.S. Declaration of Independence primarily focuses on positive truths that to the signers are self-evident. Keep your word count tight and positive as you declare your positively transforming mental model and social relationships.

Action

You’ve determined to do business more positively by transforming the thoughts and people who receive your attention. You’ve declared your determined beliefs.

Now it’s time to act—the third strategy.

The British response to the U.S. intention for a more positive focus of attention was “Bring it on.” While the U.S. may have preferred acquiescence, war ensued.

Every action has a consequence. In business as in life, you are 100% responsible for your actions and their consequences. You start your journey to Work Positive with the first two steps when you determine to positively realign your thoughts and relationships and then declare them. There are many more steps down that path. Sustaining the positive change means you perpetually act in the 5 core practices of a Work Positive lifestyle.

The Revolutionary War came at a great cost to both the Americans and the British. Yet it was necessary for global growth to occur.

What one action will you take today to positively grow your business?

Create your own celebration as you implement these 3 strategies for your positive business independence.

About the Author:

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), coach, and speaker who help professionals discover success in the silver lining of their business and achieve their dreams. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org/speaking.

Business Ideas

Friends Think You Have A Great Business Idea? Prove it

Post author By Pamela Swift
Post date August 18, 2012

Article Contributed by Marketest

Who has never seduced friends and family with a business idea?

Guess what? They’re bias! Your enthusiasm along with the fact that the people you question are influenced by their connection to you means this data is far from relevant.

Although many start-ups develop detailed business plans before they launch their business which is of course vital, much of the research done for the business plan is limited. Either limited to secondary or biased primary research.

Having a great idea needs to be proven. Moreover it must be proven in a reliable way. Questioning biased participants is not viable and will not aid your product or service launch, if anything it will hinder it as you go forward with your business plan with unreliable and biased figures.

A great idea will not be an instant success based on your beliefs and the support and opinions of your immediate network. However, many entrepreneurs still do it. Being realistic is key to business success for start-ups. But we all know your close contacts, the majority of times are not the most reliable source, this is not to lead you down the wrong path purposefully, it is simply due to your infectious enthusiasm.

Little does your close circle realize that in fact, what is a benefit to your business plan is entirely the opposite! Objective research is vital; these are real opinions without any bias. You can ensure you are targeting the type of people that you plan to sell your product or service to. This is your opportunity to get inside the consumer’s minds and ask the important questions you need to know.

Objective market research has many benefits for start-ups and entrepreneurs, the following are the key ones:

Unbiased views
Reliable data
Valid results
Factual figures

All of the above enhance your business plan and even more importantly your pitch for funding. Start-ups have a series of barriers to overcome when seeking credit. This unbiased information can allow you to build a product and service which will meet your client’s needs. When a product or service can satisfy a need or a want in the target market the business plan pitch becomes far more valid and reliable.

Competition coupled with the economic climate means that effective business planning has never been so vital to start-up success. You may believe you have not fallen into this trap, surveying consumers outside your close circle, but when you are questioning people about your project, it will never be an independent view, your love for the idea will infect those you question and again result
in biased opinions. Independent research, neutral opinions is what you need to create a realistic, impartial business plan.

With over 10 years experience in cost effective, fast, online market research and an international panel of over 950,000 panellists, Marketest can deliver viable facts and figures bringing reliable statistics and insight to your business start-up.

About the Author

Sales & Marketing

Measuring the Success of Your Telemarketing Campaign

Post author By Pamela Swift
Post date August 17, 2012

Article Contributed by Jo

It is important that if your business plans a telemarketing campaign, your expectations are met and are measurable. If you decide to use the services of a call centre, you do not want to be throwing money away and not distinguishing whether your telemarketing campaigns are working or not. Telemarketing budgets are becoming slimmer and slimmer and this means that you need to do everything you can to ensure that the money that you do spend on telemarketing goes on the right things, and does not get wasted.

The way which you can ensure that your telemarketing campaign is successful is to set out clear objectives. This means that you need to set out clear cut measures so that you can indicate the success of the campaign in a formulaic fashion.

There are various ways you can do this. A professional call centre will help you to create measurable objectives if you outsource. If you are doing it yourself, you can go for simple objectives or more complex measures, whichever is most appealing to you and whatever is most methodical. Your telemarketing campaign might be complex, and therefore might require a more flexible and complex approach.

The first thing you should do is put a report together which figures out what exactly you are measuring in your campaign. You might be conducting the campaign for several reasons, you might need to generate more leads, you might need more data, or you might want to promote a product or service. You need to determine whether it is an outbound or inbound campaign.

You then need to think about your KPIs. This stands for your “key performance indicators.” Once you have decided what you are doing in your campaign, you can set very specific key performance indicators for your strategy. Your key performance indicators will be the backbone to your strategy, and can be anything like revenue, new leads generated, new data gathered, or the number of calls that have been made. These are far easier to keep track of and therefore you can track your campaign success more easily. You can also use this data to compare how this differs from previous telemarketing efforts you have made, and it helps you to define your return on investment.

After you have gathered the data that you need, you are able to assess your performance. Make sure that you use this data effectively; do not allow it to collect dust on the shelves. This data could be crucial and allows your business to adapt to changing industry or client requirements. You can take both the positives and negatives out of your data and use them to define a course of action. You might need to repeat the campaign in the future, to compare them with these results and see whether your redefined assessments were more effective.

About the Author

Jo writes for alldayPA.com – a call answering service that can help you launch your own tailor made business telemarketing campaign.