More Than A Few Words

From our archive. This conversation with Sharyn and Hank Yuloff was originally released in August of 2021.  If you missed it then you are in for a treat.  This was a fun, lively conversation about the marketing path.   As you drive down the road, you have to be ready to make small adjustments.  The same is true for your marketing. This week's guests, Sharyn and Hank Yuloff,  think you need to stop thinking about your marketing as if the plan was carved in stone.  Instead, you should view it as a path that will need to be adjusted along the way.  You need to keep your hand on the wheel, so you can make the small changes to your program as conditions change.   About Hank and Sharyn Hank and Sharyn Yuloff bring a very unique perspective to clients who wish to have their marketing efforts reach new focus. Hank is a targeted marketing tactician with a background in advertising and public relations who has helped small businesses get bigger for over 35 years. Sharyn’s path went through the business affairs and huma

I would love to tell you that out of the gate I was a business genius and everything I did in marketing worked perfectly. Well that's not true.  We all make mistakes along the way, but when we learn from them we have a better shot at success. And if we can get out ahead of some of those mistakes, by learning from what other business owners are doing wrong we can shorten the cycle to success. In this conversation with Lori Highby, we discuss the three most common mistakes new business owners make and how to avoid them. 1 ) The We We syndrome where owners think all their marketing needs to be about them.  2) Defining too broad a target 3) Describing what makes them uniquely qualified to solve a problem.    ABOUT LORI  With a core personal value of lifelong-learning, Lori Highby has shared creative and strategic digital marketing, personal branding, and entrepreneurship lessons with people and organizations from allover. Her 20 years experience, education, and involvement range from currently owning a digital ma

We’ve all had that marketing brainstorm sitting alone at a desk. It sounds like a good idea so you bounce it off other people. everybody excitedly supports the concept. You execute it the best that you can, but it doesn’t work out they way you planned. You should give up, but you’ve built this whole program so you double down and you keep pushing and pushing. Eventually you have to accept it wasn’t as good an idea as you thought. It is always painful when you realize you have made a mistake, but the longer you pursue an idea that isn’t working, the more you delay your ultimate success. Now I’m not suggesting abandoning ideas after two or three months, but if you give it your best, investing time and effort and it just doesn’t click, you have to prepare to try something else.. That’s where I have right now. I created a private Facebook group for the Digital Toolbox.  Private, because I thought that would give it a little bit of prestige by making people feel they were joining something exclusive. But Facebook

Getting up in front of an audience and speaking is how I make a living. Even if that's not your career goal you need to be a good public speaker. Whether you're standing up in front of an audience  or one-on-one with an employee or a customer at the heart of each of those interactions are your communication skills. In this episode, Brenden Kumarasamy joined me for a conversation on how everyone can improve their communication skills. He started by explaining that good communication is like juggling 18 balls at the same time. One of those balls is body language, one is storytelling and another is remembering to smile in the right way and there are lots more balls. So he thinks you need to start with the three easiest balls to juggle because if you can juggle those three you can get results really quickly and build momentum. One of the skills you need is the ability to think on your feet. He shared a simple exercise  where you start with a random word such as light bulb like home like doorknob. Then crate prese

From our archive.  This conversation with Mike Wittenstein was originally released in August 2021.  If you missed it then, you should definitely check it out now.  Why does your business exist?  If you answered to make money, you are missing the point.  That may be  why your own a business, but the business exists to create value for your customers. As you define your reason to exist consider, the value you create, who you create it for, and what the customer will ultimately do with  your product or service. Mike Wittenstein says those three elements comprise your “reason for being” which can become the North Star, or guiding principal for your business. About Mike Mike is a 5-time professional services entrepreneur and IBM’s former eVisionary. Global business/creative executive who speaks four languages. Leaders, Chiefs of Staff and Boards call on Mike to help them find profitable opportunities, sharpen their ideas, win support from their teams, and create more value for their customers. An expert at definin

You have a great product. That's wonderful. But a product by itself is not enough to guarantee success. Shaun McAndrew believes you need to build a complete offer where you integrate a combination of the product, be it hardware and or software, with the technology, the internet of things, AI and machine learning, with the data analytics and services needed to build a single package that aligns to customer outcomes.   About Shaun McAndrew Shaun is a Navy Veteran, the VP of Business Development for The Service Design Group and keynote speaker.  Shaun honed her leadership skills as a helicopter pilot and Commanding Officer in the U.S. Navy before diving headfirst into conveying the stories that build business relationships and create personal transformations. Learn More - https://theservicedesigngroup.com/learn-more/

Let’s face it, sometimes mistakes happen and things go wrong. How you handle the situation will often determine whether your smallest mistake becomes a big crisis  Even if you can’t predict what will go wrong, having a plan in place outlining specific steps in case of a mistake will make it easier to respond. This is true in the real world or on social media, where your Twitter or Facebook page can absolutely blow up. Keep these things in mind as you develop your crisis management plan  Appoint a team leader. Have one person identified who will be in charge of coordinating all of the public responses.  They may not need to be the one crafting all the messages, but should serve as a clearing house for all statements. Personalized apologies are great, but be sure to create a blanket statement  you can use if you start getting lots of comments all at once. Remember if customers have legitimate grievances, the very best thing you can do is encourage them to connect with you directly and take the conversation off

These days so many people are hot on social media and whatever the new platform is this week.  But Nicole Krug says that year after year email marketing works.  It has a 400% return on investment and that has been consistent for many years. One of the reasons is email is more personal than social media.  You have been invited into the inbox. Now the trick is getting people to open your email once you land there. Data suggests only about 20% of emails are opened, so in this conversation Nicole shares some great tips on how you can improve your open rate.   

Maybe you think that when someone says something negative you shouldn't dignify their comment with a reply. According to David Oates, that's actually not the best strategy. The reality is everybody, right or wrong tends to have the same weight and credibility in a social media post or an online review. Now that rubs most of us the wrong way particularly when we get criticism from somebody who may not have ever been a customer or who had realistic expectations when they walked in our virtual or actual physical front door. You know they're out of line and you feel like all you're going to do is to give them some credibility if you reply.  Responding with empathy and action allows you to take control of the narrative.  You may not get the naysayer to change their mind but you are telegraphing everybody else who matters to you; customers, partners, employees and the general public that you take things seriously.  About David our guest David Oates Dave possesses more than 25 years of strategic public relations exp

Athletes love to play on their home court. Being intimately familiar with every square inch of the field is reassuring, and the supportive crowd gives them the confidence to play their best. In a way, the same is true in sales. If you can get a customer to come to your office or showroom, you’ve already scored the first point. Unfortunately, many home service businesses such as heating and air conditioning, plumbing, landscaping or roofing rarely have the opportunity of selling on their turf, so they don’t have that home court advantage. The sale is in the client’s home, where they are most comfortable, and you aren’t. That isn’t likely to change, but there are ways to use information, brochures, web content and emails to move the game to a more neutral setting. Use Your Website to Level the Playing Field in Every Selling Situation What kind of information can even the playing field in your next selling situation? Here are a few examples. This content can be a blog post, the text of an email or even a video.

It is often said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  That is definitely true on the journey to master your marketing message. In this conversation Tracey Watts Cirino and I explored the first steps you need to take on your journey to master your marketing message.  1 - Get clear on who you will serve. You can not serve everyone.  When we try to be for everyone we end up being for enough for no one This doesn't mean you're not going to do different types of things for different people. But when you're really clear about who you want to serve it aligns so much more beautiful in your marketing message. 2 - Speak directly to your audience. Create messages that are relevant for the people you want to serve 3 - Finally talk about your product.  Don't lead with this.    About Tracey Tracey Watts Cirino is a 5-time #1 bestselling author, podcast host of Beyond Common Business Secrets, and certified success and mindset coach. She helps business owners and leaders discover their own power so

In this episode I had a chance to chat with Alison K about research.  I know you're sitting there saying I already know everything about my business. Well guess what, you don't! So you need to listen to this short and lively conversation about affordable ways you can conduct market research to make better decisions about your business. Alison explains as businesses owners, especially in service area know the end goal it to make the sale.  We know our target clients and their pain points.  We already understand what will happen when they're done. However. our ideal audience is the prospects who aren't ready yet. In their evaluation they may consider a whole bevy of people you wouldn't consider your competition or contemporaries. Audience research allows us to get our own heads out of our butts see the world through the eyes of our customers.

After 13 years of podcasting, I have found tools I rely on. My two favorites are Podmatch   - It is kind of like a dating application. Instead of finding dates I use it to book podcast interviews on high profile shows and interesting guests . And now, they have rolled out a new feature that allows me to get paid to host guests on my show. Learn more at : https://www.joinpodmatch.com/mtfw For recording interviews, I love  Zencastr  It is a great all in one tool. Audio only or audio and video are possible. I use if to record because it creates transcripts of every conversation which saves me tons of time on production. Learn more at https://zencastr.com/ And finally, if you want to be a guest on a podcast you will want to pay attention to what Kelly Mosser has to say about pitches. The biggest mistake most potential guest make is the emphasis of the pitch. The message boils down to “I want airtime on your show. Here’s why I deserve it. Here’s why you should give it to me.” This one-sided approach misses the key

Jennifer  Denney is obsessed with measurement and marketing data.  She believes you can't improve what you don't measure. But there are a lot of challenges for marketers right now, as they try to measure the effectiveness of a particular type of marketing, Recent changes from Apple have cut off all apps from being able to know what happens after you click on a ad and leave their site. And there is more data loss coming in July 2023 with the changes to Google Analytics. Trying to map individual customers to individual campaigns or attribution is going to be harder than ever to figure out. So marketers who have been obsessed with trying to attribute marketing to one data source or another are going to be frustrated, and Jennifer thinks that logic was flawed even before the changes. Consider this: It wasn't the last beer that you drank that got you drunk, it's all the beers. And it's the same way in marketing, you need to look at the interactions of all your marketing, recognizing the cumulative effect of your e

Have you ever done something for the first time, without prior knowledge and been able to achieve success? If so, you’re truly unique. Most humans find themselves meeting new challenges with a series of frustrations and failures. Imagine an infant as they decide to walk for the first time, they stand up then they stagger and inevitably they fall. To become consistent walkers they repeat the stand-stagger-fall cycle for a few weeks or months. This pattern of stand-stagger-fall is repeated throughout our lives. Over time we learn that practicing tasks makes eventual success more likely. We also learn that preparation is a bit of a grind certainly not enjoyable and nearly always hard work. But learning to effectively gain new skills and improve performance with existing skills is the key task we all face as adults. So, we learn to practice. This week, I get to chat with Matt Nettleton about the importance of practice and the danger of over practicing.

If your blog titles don't grab reader's attention, they're not going to read your blog posts.  While it might seem that people want to see something positive in these challenging times, surprisingly negative titles work better. Look at the newsfeed on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn. Posts with negative titles stand out and are more likely to be read, create engagement and be shared. So, I want you to commit to not boring readers with weak language in your subject line. If you start your blog post with words like improve common mistakes tips for success, your titles look like all the other articles on the same subject. We all want to improve, so you'd think these safe titles would work, but they don't. These nice helpful blog titles are like a serving of broccoli. We know it's good for us, but the Devil's Food Cake is so much more enticing. One of the most successful series of posts, white papers and seminars I created were built around the theme of why people hate your website. The series was and still is ef

Would you like to be a guest on a podcast?  If so, you want to pay attention to what Kelly Mosser has to say about pitches. The biggest mistake most potential guest make is the emphasis of the pitch. The message boils down to "I want airtime on your show. Here's why I deserve it. Here's why you should give it to me." This one-sided approach misses the key detail that podcasts are a business collaboration.  When you focus on what you can get, and what the audience might take away, the host and the show are kind of forgotten. Put yourself in the shoes of the host. Why would they want someone on their show who doesn't care about them. If you understand you are entering a business partnership with the host together it is easier to think about how can you help the host achieve his/her goals. Then you need to explain what you bring to the audience.  When you start with that approach  you are much more likely to be invited to be a guest on the show.

According to Stacey Hall when we create marketing content it should not be about our products and services.  So stop talking about your products and focus on how you solve problems. She has a simple three step process to help you do just that. 1) Start with a question that is relevant to your customer and their problem 2) Explain what causes the problem 3) Provide the solution to your problem.  Great content is just that easy.    Stacey is one of the contributing authors in MORE THAN A FEW WRITTEN WORDS, a collection of essays by some of my favorite guests. It is available on Amazon

Social media is all about ego. No matter how many followers and fans you have, it’s always fun to see a new follower, a retweet, or reply, like, love or share. All of those things signal to us that we’ve been accepted and esteemed by the community. And that feeling of acceptance is really one of the most basic human needs. When you are using social media for business. Your objective is to make other people feel that way. If you spend the majority of your time on social media, liking and commenting and interacting with others, making them feel valuable and important, there is a great chance that they will return the favor.  They will be more likely to like, share and interact with you  both personally, and with your brand. So your assignment for today is to get out on social media and be active and friendly. Don’t just like a post; share, comment and interact. Maybe share a comment on one of my social media posts.

Many potential customers read your bio to figure out who you are, and what it is going to be like to work with  you.  Danielle Hughes believes you need to give them a sense of who you are as a person instead of a litany of tasks and accomplishments.  That task list  doesn't help them start the conversation with you or get to know you in any way. When somebody reads your bio and then meets you or they has a conversation with you. it should be the exact same person. They shouldn't feel that there's a disconnect. They shouldn't feel like the words on the page were stiffer than the person they're talking to or vice versa right. The trick is to present genuine self  so that somebody feels like they already know you or they want to know you or they want to ask you a question.   Danielle is one of the contributing authors in MORE THAN A FEW WRITTEN WORDS, a collection of essays by some of my favorite guests.  It is available on Amazon