The Marketing Evolutionary Process
November 24, 2009
Welcome back!
When it comes to your marketing, there are 4 parts to your evolutionary process:
- Automatism
- Awareness
- Understanding
- Knowing
Automatism
You start your marketing evolutionary process by responding automatically to situations and events, based on your conditioning about marketing to date. Your understanding of marketing is based on generalisations, and social conditioning. You do what you think you should be doing, and what is deemed acceptable and the “thing to do” by others.
The more diagnosis you do, by way of a marketing audit, the more you will begin to question whether what you (and everyone else for that matter) have been doing, are the correct tactics. More importantly, this aspect of your marketing is nearly always down to the unwillingness to accept responsbility and test new marketing approaches. An aversion to risk, to be unpopular,, face criticism, or to stick your head above the parapets, can all prevent you from waking up from your slumber of non performance and lack of results.
Quite often people in this phase of the marketing evolutionay process don’t understand why they think the way they do, or why they hold the opinions or views they do about marketing. Many are too busy responding to the symptoms of poor, bad or selfish marketing to awaken to the recognition or realisation as to why they’re not generating the results they want.
2010 is coming, but where are you NOW?
November 23, 2009
Some questions, to get you thinking…..
If you could get what you wanted from life, what would be the first change in your life that you need to make?
What skill, knowledge or wisdom do you possess that you want to share with the world?
What are the things that you really love to do?
What are your top 10 achievements in life todate?
What do you really feel passionate about?
Whats the greatest “lesson” you’ve learned or had so far in life?
What is the source of your motivation, energy and drive?
What is your biggest fear? (and logically, what is the WORST that can really happen?)
What do you want to change in your life right now, today?
What is the 1 goal you’d love to achieve before you die?
What is your biggest regret in life so far? (write it down, and now that’s out - forget about it, and move on.)
If I were your own personal marketing genie, what 3 wishes would you ask for?
Marketing Planning: How to save up to £100,000 on various marketing activities
June 6, 2009
Many people often confuse intention with achievement.
Having Good Intentions may be an excellent starting point, but you need to see some results from your efforts, or it counts for nothing. Worse still, the impact all your good intentions could have on your business or personal life can be catastrophic.
Here’s an example…
Yesterday, I had 3 coaching sessions, and one was with a lady specialising in leadership training.
She spends about:
Do the maths. She spends approximately 32 hours per week in all these different marketing activities, but they don’t appear to be as effective as they were “last year”, apparently.
I asked her how much time she dedicates to delivering her training. She said it varies.
Why some people cant get their head round Marketing
May 27, 2009
Many people have different beliefs, thoughts, trepidations and convictions about marketing in general..
Quite often they can be limiting the confidence, progress and results tbat they want with their marketing.
PART ONE
Read the list below, and decide if any “stike a chord” or sound familiar or whether you agree with them.
PART TWO
Why your Marketing isn’t working - Not ASKing for results
March 10, 2009
50 reasons why your marketing isn’t working
March 3, 2009
Now it’s quite possible that none of the following are appropriate to you.
But imagine if 1, 5 or if 20 of them are….
..think how many leads, enquiries, prospects, sales and referrals you could be losing.
Think of the negative impact it’s having on your business, and the amount of revenue you’re preventing yourself from achieving.
(Maybe you know someone who may be experiencing some of the following problems. If so, tell them to get in touch.)
1. You don’t have a product or service to sell.
2. You’re not using a very simple technique to qualify 100% of the prospects you meet.
3. You do have a product or service to sell, you just can’t get customers to pay the price you want.
4. You don’t know what price to charge.
5. The price you charge isn’t profitable or doesn’t create enough profit to cover all costs.
6. You don’t know exactly who your customers are, havent created a customer profile or given it to your advocates or referees.
7. You don’t use upto 63 different criteria to qualify or better target your clients
8. You don’t know how to qualify potential customers using a simple 5 word question
9. You’re attending meetings without pre-qualifying your prospects.
10. You’re making the same mistake as much as 73%+ of your competitors make at those types of meetings.
11. You’re submitting sales proposals without including the word “DRAFT” on the cover
12. You’re attending networking events without any business cards.
13. You don’t have your SKYPE address or ecademy profile url on your business card
14. People you speak to at networking events dread receiving a follow up call from you.
15. Your coming across as needy, desperate and skint to prospective clients.
16. That’s because you want more business, need more business and are appearing “needy”
17. You’re concentrating on what you can GET from prospects, instead of what you can GIVE them
18. You don’t have an upsell strategy, or backend product/service in place
19. The jump from your basic service to your premium service is too big for client’s to make
20. The jump from your FREE offer to your basic service solution is too big for clients to make
21. You’re too focussed on getting the sale or the appointment (People hate being sold.)
22. You’re still selling using features and benefits.
23. You’re still reacting to advertising bargains, instead of planning, and negotiating your ad campaigns in advance
24. You don’t have a marketing strategy document or written marketing plan for your business. Do you?
25. You haven’t done a marketing audit yet to identify what the root cause of your problems are instead of the symptoms
26. You haven’t set new marketing objectives
27. Your not monitoring the top 10 most obvious metrics or Key Performance Indicators with regards to your marketing
28. You just let your web designer recommend and sell you what they said you should have
29. Your website lacks 2 very simple features that could improve your short term profitability immediately
30. You can’t articulate your Unique Selling Point.
31. You can’t articulate and don’t use an elevator pitch
32. You don’t hold your prospects or clients accountable
33. You keep experiencing cyclical “feast or famine” periods because of 5 very specific reasons
34. You don’t talk thru all 4 parts of the money “issue” with your prospects
35. You don’t include any customer testimonials in your marketing
36. You’re not using a very simple, but powerful FREE technique to get PR from your local radio and TV stations
37. You’re not getting enough traffic on to your stand at the exhibitions you attend
38. You’re not attending any exhibitions for your sector/niche or industry
39. You don’t know how to calculate the cost of the life time value of a client, or know how to increase it with 2 powerful tactics
40. You don’t know why people aren’t visiting your ecademy profile.
41. You don’t know why people aren’t visiting your website.
42. You don’t know why people aren’t responding to your emails
43. You don’t know why people don’t get “it”.
44. You don’t know how to actually articulate what “it” is, so people do get “it”, and want “it”, and pay the price you want
45. You don’t know why your sales are converting
46. You don’t know what your the pains, needs and frustrations of your clients really are.
47. You don’t know how much in real terms the pains, needs and frustrations of your clients really are costing them.
48. You think you can get all the business you need from referrals without spending any money on marketing.
49. You think Blogging is a complete waste of time.
50. Your perception of “marketing” and “marketing consultants” is that of snake oil and snake oil salesman.
Then again, none of the above probably applies to you.
The Bank says No, so how do you resource your Marketing plan?
February 19, 2009
Let’s not kid ourselves…
..more than ever before, we need to be focussing our attention on our marketing efforts to stay ahead of the competition, to keep the bank manager onside, keep our houses, stay in our relationships, to pay our bills, stay afloat, and to ensure we steer a steady path through this recession.
But your marketing probably needs 3 things -
Many people don’t fully take them all into account when trying to create/resource their marketing plan, and can often find it very difficult to decide how much of each they need, and what marketing activities they will invest in for the year ahead.
plan and what marketing activities you need to invest in?
One way to find out is to use our FREE Marketing Calculator to help analyse your ROI with your new marketing tactics and decide whether it’s worth doing or not. You need to calculate the upside, and the downside to decide whether whatever marketing you do this year will be worthwhile…
Has your marketing wheel got a puncture?
February 19, 2009
The Marketing Wheel
Copyright © Fraser J. Hay 2007-2008
STEP 1.
Assess each area of your marketing. Give each area of your marketing, a score of 1-10. The higher the score, the happier and more satisfied you are in that area of your marketing.
Draw your marketing wheel, or at the very least, print off the wheel above, and plot your score from each area. Then join each of your scores in each area of your marketing with a straight line. Ideally you will want to see a round wheel. It will become very apparent very quickly, which areas of your marketing need attention.
Marketing Plan? 81% of Businesses don’t have one.
February 19, 2009
In a recent survey of 500 Businesses, 81% of respondents said they did not have a written marketing plan, marketing roadmap or or strategy document.
Yet, many people go through hectic periods, and very quiet periods of work.
This is sometimes referred to as “feast or famine”.
This will continue to happen unless you break the cycle, stop practicing “reactionary marketing” & start being more proactive.
I recall a chap explaining to me that business had been very very quiet. and when they were contacted by a trade magazine offering them cheap space (40% off), they jumped at the chance and bought it.
A Quarter page ad for £500.
They did however generate 0 sales and 0 leads.
But increased the debt on their credit card by £587.50.
Sound familiar?
When business is slow, quiet, or if you are experiencing a downturn or a “famine”…
It is not the time to become reactive.
It is time to become proactive, and plan your marketing…
..and implement a consistent, proactive marketing approach, that will generate leads, sales, and referrals.
stakeholders and stick holders.
Who is responsible when your marketing doesnt work?
February 18, 2009
…Maybe there’s other factors or reasons why you’re not getting the results you want from your marketing….
Your Marketing Blueprint may be corrupted.
Negative Verbal Programming from friends, colleagues, peers and associates about their poor results and previous negative experiences with marketing and specific negative incidents from the past, have tainted your marketing blueprint and thus contributed to your negative conditioning and have shaped your attitude towards marketing in general.
You need to identify and address the real marketing issues that are holding you back now and preventing you from achieving the leads, sales and referrals you want and need. Most people usually fail with their marketing because they’re not addressing the real issues or have gotten to the root of their marketing problems that hold them back - they’re only dealing with the Symptoms.
The funniest thing is, most people think it’s money, and being unable to finance their marketing. Ironically, in 93% of the cases we deal with - it’s not.
The best way to prevent the future corruption of your Marketing Blueprint is to start generating results with your marketing by putting powerful, simple, low cost and no cost marketing strategies into action.
