More Than A Few Words

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Are you hanging out next door? I don't mean, are you visiting your neighbors.  I am talking about the social media platform Next Door. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, Next Door is a location based message board which allows neighbors to post information. You can see information  on garage sales , lost pets and neighborhood news. The catch?  it will display information only from people who are in your neighborhood or surrounding neighborhoods so you won't see information posted by your mother if she lives in another state. You can list your business on Next Door. But the pages work more like Yelp than Facebook.  There are no friends or followers.  Consumers can give you recommendations and comments but there are very strict policies about commercial businesses posting into

More than a Few Words is a marketing conversation for business owners hosted by Lorraine Ball You work hard to build your email list and it is painful  to see your subscribers leave, but that is part of the natural cycle of email marketing. Why do they leave? Our guest Emily McGuire   says it boils down to one of three simple reasons.  There's the natural sort of progression of interest in your brand. Maybe they have purchased your product or no longer need your product.  In that case your messages are no longer relevant. There's also the content overwhelm.  These days our inboxes are flooded.  So if you are contributing to that flood without adding real value your readers are going to unsubscribe. Your readers feel tricked. They signed up to receive one thing, then you send them a string of unrelated pieces of content.  This happens when we hyper focus on the open rate as the baseline metric  Want to improve your open rate? Be sure to grab a copy of Emily's Action Guide: Boost Your Email Open Rates ASAP   Ab

More than a Few Words is a marketing conversation for business owners hosted by Lorraine Ball Everyone wants to do more than just work in their business. The challenge for small business owners is how to find the time to get everything done?  Sagan Morrow explains that energy management is truly at the root of effective time management. She says: "So often, we will look at our schedules, and we'll look at our tasks. And we'll think, Okay, this takes me an hour to do this particular task. But we don't really take into account does this particular task, drain my energy? " If a task, even  a  short one is an energy drain then you won't have the space, capacity, or bandwidth to do more afterwards. I If you take into account personal energy levels, so you're not getting too tired or exhausted or burned out, you will be able to be more creative as you manage time  more effectively. About Sagan Sagan Morrow teaches busy, time-crunched solopreneurs how to build their own successful home-based businesses—without the o

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Google ads are expensive. So if you're going to make the investment, be sure you're ready to engage and impress visitors and capture leads which result from the campaign. If you're driving visitors to your homepage, you're wasting your money, you've already attracted the attention of the customer who had a very specific need. They selected you because your ad promised to answer the question or fulfill their request. And so you need to build custom landing pages for every single ad. What makes a good landing page? There are three things. First deliver what you promise, this is not a time to bait and switch. If the ad promised a free coupon, make sure that's the first thing visitors see. The second thing is focused content, your ad promised one thing so keep the rest of the content on t

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.   Introduced in September 2020, LinkedIn Stories offers entrepreneurs to step out from behind their logo. It gives them a way to  share their story in a really real way. bringing attention to company pages as we focus more attention on the personal pages. This mobile only application, like the Instagram counterpart creates content that is only available for 24 hours. So you will probably want to use content that may also be published elsewhere.  Be sur to take advantage of the swipe option to drive more traffic to your site.   About Karlyn Ankrom Karlyn Ankrom is the founder of the Fan Firestarter Framework, a new approach to social media marketing made specifically for businesses “tempted to fake their own death and flee to Tahiti at the mere thought of content creation.” Ankrom developed her user-friendly strategy after working for a decade with a variety of bri

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Video Marketing used to be expensive. You had to hire a professional videographer, you needed to block out half a day for filming and at least that much for editing. Granted, the finished product was slick and professional, but out of date too quickly and out of reach for most small businesses. That was before everyone had a cheap digital camera built into their phone. Today, even small business owners with limited budgets can consider adding video marketing to their toolkit. Not sure if video is for you? Facebook Live is an awesome way to experiment with video in a very low risk environment. If you're going to try Facebook Live or any do it yourself video, here are a few things to keep in mind. Number one, get a tripod. No one can really hold a camera steady for more than a few secon

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world. When someone subscribes to your email list your first communication set the tone for the relationship your hope to create.   Our guest Monica Snyder describes a series of three simple emails that welcome and engage readers.    Email #1 - Provide the link to the resource they were looking for a just a little bit about you.  Email #2  - Did you find value in the content.  Please hit reply to let me know you got the resource.  This reply request is key to the success of your program.  Email #3 - This only goes to the people who respond.  It is very short and very personal.    About Monica Snyder Monica Snyder is a business & marketing strategist that helps entrepreneurs, experts, and authors systemize customer experiences that build relationships and generate revenue.      Want to put the  3-part email welcome sequence into practice?  Download Monica's free gift

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. What will you do when Facebook is gone? Now I'm not trying to spread fear and panic and I don't expect that the platform will disappear overnight. But let's face it, technology changes, platforms change and so do fads and trends. At some point, Facebook will diminish. I mean, a decade ago, everyone thought that AOL was the be all end all. And the answer to the question is actually simpler than you imagine. While social media platforms are important, the one constant in your business is your website. And so while you will continue to share content on Facebook and other social media platforms, remember to be cultivating your community and driving them to your website and to your email list. 

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.    There are five keys to a good collaboration:  Look for other businesses in your niche. They don’t need to do exactly what you do.  In fact it is best if you provide slightly different, but complimentary services Define a clear goal for the collaboration .Be sure the goal brings value to all the collaboration partners.  Look for collaboration partners with the right skills and the right energy.  Clarity and clear communication between all the partners is critical for success of your joint venture.  It is essential that everyone involved is willing to commit to the actions required to make the project successful.   About our guest Henriette Danel Henriette Danel is a strategic business coach and the host of the Entrepreneurial Success podcast. She is  focused on helping service-based business owners attract more clients and grow. In her own words: Born in South A

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Does your home page include a compelling call to action? What do you want people to do when they come to your website? That sounds like a simple question, but the answer is often very complicated. Why? Because if you're like most businesses, you have multiple objectives for your website, but you only have one first impression. So what message and what call to action should get the top spot. One of the best ways to figure this out is to look for inspiration from your competitors. Look for companies who provide a service similar to yours. See how they use specific words to connect with their audience, as they present a unique value proposition and a logical next step. See if you can figure out who their ideal clients are based on the wording they choose and then go back and look at your

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  According to Andrea Petrone, attracting clients starts with three simple steps.  Define you niche. Don't try to sell to everyone.  Find the people who are most likely to want your services Get to know your niche really well. How are they being impacted by current events. What are their fears and frustrations?  If you take the time to really understand their world, you are in a better position to offer solutions. "Over-deliver value.  Become a resource and customers will come to rely on you.  About Andrea For the past 20 years, he has helped small and medium-size consulting firms and B2B organizations to build and scale their business. He has been in the trenches, running successful consulting firms during economical crisis.   He is a Certified Executive and Business Coach, Facilitator, Professional and Keynote Speaker, li. I live in London, UK. He works with prof

Today I want to talk about what a customer is worth because I think all too often business owners look at what a customer's spending today and see that as the only value of that customer. But if you're in a business where customers come back time and time again, you need to look at the total picture, the long term value of that customer. If that customer stays with you three or five years, there is additional sales revenue with out the sales expense, but there is more.   When a customer really knows and loves you, they are more likely to be willing to talk about you to their friends and their families This goodwill has the potential to create multiple new opportunities. So as you start thinking about how much you can afford to spend, to generate leads  you need to think about what that customer is really worth to your business.

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Where does marketing end and sales activity begin?  These days, the line is a little fuzzy as both teams rely on digital tools to attract prospects and close sales.  This week, Kyle Hammer shares some ideas on how these two groups can improve their results by engaging in active listening to customers, to the market and to each other.    About Kyle Hammer Kyle is a sales and marketing veteran with a deep understanding of strategy, digital marketing execution, and using technology to enhance brand impact. A hands-on leader with passion for solving business challenges with process, operations, and technology.

If you’re like many business owners, you started your company to do something you enjoyed. Maybe you were a chef and you started a restaurant, or a doctor who wanted to take care of people, or a marketer who enjoyed the creative challenge of engaging customers with a product. Whatever it was, you started your company to do that thing. Along the way, you figured out you also had to do sales, bookkeeping, human resources, and dozens of other tasks which take time out of your day and your week. So how much time do you really spend doing what you set out to do? It’s unlikely that 100% of your day is comprised with things that you love. At some point, you have to deal with an unhappy employee, preparing paperwork for your accountant, or calling clients who are behind in payments. But if your day is primarily taken up with things that you’d rather not do, you’re heading for burnout. And you need to recognize the warning signs and reverse course, because life is too short. Maybe you need to change your business mode

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.    You have only a few moments to make that great first impression and you won't stand out by sounding like everyone else.  You need to find a way to be first, best or different. And if you choose different, make sure your point of difference is actually relevant to your customer.    Beyond that first impression, our guest Mike Verret explains that your words will have an effect on others, so choose them carefully.    About Mike Verret Mike solves problems that plague small businesses by giving them a unique perspective of what he sees in their goals. He believes that any marketing message is wrong if it doesn’t speak to us in normal human terms. And he thinks that corporate language is absolutely nuts. Who “ideates?” We think. We don’t have “Key Performance Indicators.” We have goals. Business forgets to be human. Mike understands how consumers think, and he help

The marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features brief marketing tips and conversations with professionals from around the world.  Okay, so you’ve launched your new website and everything’s great. It looks wonderful. But you’ve noticed that you’re not getting a lot of traffic. You probably did some basic SEO when you first launched the site, now’s a great time to continue to build on that foundation by adding blogs and additional landing pages. These new pages don’t increase just the size of your website. They provide additional content and give you an opportunity to focus on niche topics to attract the attention of search engines. You’re not going to win competing against giant national and international corporations on mega keywords. But what you can do is go down these really narrow rabbit holes and focus on a niche topic to create a custom landing page. When you can focus in on a niche topic and control that keyword, you can win the battle for SEO, and drive great traff

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Before you can create an irresistible offer, you have to have a clear picture of your ideal client. Without that target your marketing and your offer are unfocused. Once you figure out who you're serving and what they want, you can begin creating offers just for them.    The offer might be a brief coaching session or audit, a quiz or workbook. The goal is to create something which demonstrates your expertise, provides real value and leaves the prospective customer wanting more!    About Diane Diane Agudelo is a Master Transformational Coach & marketing strategist for female entrepreneurs in the coaching space. Her years of experience in corporate sales have allowed her to hone her skills and teach others how to be successful on their own. Her specialty is helping clients align their values with their business life, resulting in balance and real-life success

When I was Vice President of Creative Services at Conseco, we were always out of literature for key products. In the insurance business literature is all you have to sell, so these outages would cripple our sales team. Our out of stock list was routinely close to 300 different items and climbing. While we had numerous meetings on the subject nothing ever changed. So I stopped talking about procedures and policy and asked a simple question "If our goal was a back order level of 100 what would we do?" Defining a specific target, instead of vague "get better" gave a focus to our discussions. Every day we knew exactly how far we were from our target. As an added incentive, I offered to take the print team to any restaurant in town if we reduced our back orders to 100  by September. 1. The date gave us the sense of urgency we needed to keep this in the forefront of our discussions. We kicked off every production meeting with a brief conversation about the back-order list and the ideas started flowing.  We institut

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  These days there is a lot of noise out there. With the increasing number of free social media platforms right at our fingertips.  You can share the same boring information everywhere or you can create content which shares a bit of who you really are.  Our guest Karie Millspaugh  explains " There's only you!  You are the one make and model, and there are no two of you alike on the planet, unless somehow you figured out the cloning mechanism." Your goal is to bring that unique self to social media.    One of the first questions to answer is how much do you share.  In order to create connection, you have to be authentic.  You have to do more than just shove a message down the throat of  your audience, you need to let a bit of you shine through.  Don't be afraid to show off your sense of humor, the rule of thumb is that it will increase connection with your followers

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Good marketing starts with the basics.  You need to have a plan.  Unfortunately, as we learned in the last year, sometimes life throws us a few curve balls and your year long plan goes right out the window.  That's why my guest, Tim Fitzpatrick suggests businesses use a 90-day approach to their marketing plan. While it contains all the same elements, a 90-day approach forces you to stop and evaluate on a regular basis.  Tim's 90 day plan is built on six simple elements.  1) Your ideal client 2) Goal.  What do you want to accomplish in 90 days. 3) Resources including both time and money 4) Evaluate what you have been doing 5) Focus on actions for the next 90 days 6) Set up your metrics so you will know if your plan worked.  About Tim  Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20+ years of entrepreneurial experien