I need your advice...

My local clients have asked me to compile an ebook containing tips and strategies on marketing for small business. Small business being under 5 employees like the local Dentist, Doctor, Vet, Accountant, Florist, Mechanic, Electrician, Plumber, Beauty Salon etc.

I'm thinking that this jam packed ebook would contain details on how the small business owner can double their profits within 12 months and retain the clientele in a continuity type program. Some content would be:

• how to set up a 12 month marketing plan
  
• how to determine which strategies to use
• how to determine costs
  
• how to measure results and ROI
  
• how to determine how much to spend
• how to set up loyalty and continuity programs
  
• etc.
  

I would really appreciate your feedback and ideas on what you would like to see in this ebook.

In fact if you have any tips or examples of your own that you'd like us to include please tell us about them. We'd of course acknowledge your contribution.

Just click on the comments tab below or click here. After your contribution leave your name and email address and I'll send you a FREE copy of the ebook when it's complete. I might get your feedback as well. Thank you in advance.

CLICK HERE to comment...

What is the Life Time Value of your Client?

To gain a new client into your business, one of the easiest ways, is to have a compelling offer. The offer should have a high perceived value... Something that the customer considers a no-brainer, something that will motivate them to try you. "FREE 14 point suspension checkup valued at $59 or FREE report (valued at $49) on ways to hire a car at 50% of the normal price" or similar.

But how can you afford to offer "loss leaders?" Surely it'll drain the bank balance or increase the bank loan and send you to the dungeons of failure? This is why you need to understand the ‘LVC Formula’ which stands for the Lifetime Value of a Client! Here'’s how it works... Let'’s consider the local beauty salon. Say a new customer usually pays $100 for their first treatment. I'm not a beauty therapist so if my costs are wrong, I'm sorry. But, how much is this $100 client really worth? What is their LVC? After all, if the client loves your service, (which you will be very motivated to ensure they do by over delivering... right?) they will continue to come back for years to come.

For this example, let's say your average client returns for a beauty treatment 10 times a year and remains a client for 2 years on average. Let's work this out... $100 (price of consultation) x 10 (purchases a year) x 2 (number of years) = $2000.00. And if your profit margin is 40% this calculates to an average $800 profit per client.

Now we know our numbers, let'’s send a letter to all the nearby businesses offering women a FREE manicure valued at $30.00. And lets say the manicure costs you $7 in products and 30 minutes of your time (which if you'’re not busy… you'’d be sitting on your butt anyway!) So the $7 investment could have just made you $800 in profit. Imagine if we get 100 of those clients, that works out to $79 300 of profit over 2 years. Now 100 clients x 10 visits per year x 30 mins each = 500hrs of work over 1 year which is 10.5hrs per week allowing for a 4 week holiday per year. Thats $79 per hour! Now you could further leverage the profits with a discount loyalty program, which is a whole different subject, for another day.

The secret lies in giving away something which has a high perceived value, but actually costs you very little to produce. Why does it work so well? Using the word FREE in your advertising STOPS inertia. You see, people are happy with their current beauty salon or their mechanic. But when they get an opportunity to trial a product or service for FREE there'’s something irresistible and risk free about it? A HUGE word of warning though, you have to be confident with your service or product. The service needs to blow them, even give them something extra they weren't expecting, overdeliver, make them ecstatic! Otherwise people will not come back, and you'’ll get a bad name very quickly. And make sure you collect your clients details and enter them into a database for future marketing and measure your results.

This thinking could give your business a big boost as your competitors won't think of it and if they do they won't find the time to implement it. But as always success is in the IMPLEMENTATION. I look forward to your comments...

Business is like a 3 legged stool

It's so obvious... the most successful business owners are those that invest in their education, especially MARKETING. Why? Because a successful business operates like a 3 legged stool. The 3 legs being:
1) quality products and service,
2) quality operations and customer service and
3) EFFECTIVE marketing.

Take one of the legs away from a 3 legged stool and it won't stand on it's own anymore... just like business. All 3 of the legs must be as strong as each other for the net result to be a successful business. Now, if you are an operator that works in the business rather than on the business, you are a typical 2 legged stool. And we all know what happens to 2 legged stools... they fall over, guaranteed!! it may take 6 months or 2 years or even longer, but if one of the legs is weak in your business, it will fall over.

Most business owners are motivated to start a business because they can create a better product or provide a better service than what is already in the market place. So this leg in their business is usually the one that requires the least ongoing work. However, quality operations, customer service and effective marketing are usually the weak legs and require ongoing education. Have a look around at various successful businesses and you'll find owners that work "on, rather than in" their businesses, owners that attend seminars, owners that read the right books and buy the right courses, owners that are looking for the next break to multiply their profits and make their 3 business legs stronger. I look forward to your comments...

We have moved...

Finally we have our own domain and we have moved to www.profitfitness.com
See you There!!

For The First Time Ever, It's 'Easier Than Easy' To Amass A Huge Fortune From Other People's Products When You Possess... more

Marketing Online to Compliment your Business Income

Many business owners today focus solely on the market located within their town and only generating income while their doors are open. By doing this they are leaving a lot of cash on the table... Every business needs to have systems in place to potentially generate sales 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all over the world!

I bet you are thinking... I have a service type business, how do I sell 24/7 all around the world? Well the answer is you don't! You identify other products that relate to your industry that you are able to sell online. Like the local lawn mowing outfit, they can't be mowing lawns all around the world while they sleep. But what they can do is create an information product on "How to have the best lawn in your street" and sell it online. Now I hear you say... I don't have the time to create an ebook! Then sell someone else's ebook as an affiliate. As an affiliate you'll only make 40% to 50% of the profit, but it's a solution that will provide another stream of income that you didn't have before for very little effort. You might find the motivation to write an ebook yourself (or have it written for you) when you see how well the affiliate product sells.

I know of a few businesses that have added online marketing to their arsenal of marketing and eventually closed the doors of their retail shops. They experienced the ease of operation, the lower overheads and better profit margins that the online world brings. But the lesson is to be selling 24/7 and not restricting your business.

For a FREE ebook on how to set up Affiliate marketing in your business click here.

A Great Product but in the Wrong Market!

An episode of the TV show "The Apprentice", demonstrated this problem of a product to market mismatch exactly. Each team was given an empty shell of a restaurant, a chef, and one day to get open, get customers, serve meals, and win a survey competition. The woman leading the losing team never got the point made to her several times, and ended up being fired. Her restaurant's interior and Asian cuisine were both terrific and all teammates where elegantly attired. Unfortunately, it was all a terrible mismatch with the demographics of the customers. If she had taken the time to spend an hour on the sidewalk, observing the people who lived and were walking around the area, maybe even asking them, her observation would have pointed to a different product.

The losing team made all their decisions based on what they wanted to do, and their own creativity. They built their product first, then hoped they'd have a market for it, instead of matching the product to the market. How many business owners do you know that have done this? It is prominent with tradespeople, they want to be their own boss and go head first without doing any research and wonder why they don't make the profits they thought they would.

As Dan Kennedy teaches "MESSAGE TO MARKET MATCH" is incredibly important as your product/ service could be the best in the world but without a market wanting to pay for it, it's dead in the water!!


FREE ebook - Dotcomology The Science of Making Money Online

Manage Your Time Well

We all have the same amount of time to use in a day and yet I hear business owners saying "“I don'’t have enough time"” or "“I wish I had more time"” or "There's not enough hours in the day" when I ask them to devote more time to the growth of their business. The truth is we all have 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in every hour and 60 seconds in every minute. We all have 86,400 seconds per day to invest in making our lives more meaningful and productive.

For the next week, in your diary... yes you should have a diary (physical or electronic), make a quick note of everything you do in the day as you start them. Don't try and complete your diary at the end of the day because you would have forgotten most of those time wasting moments. At the end of the week go back over your diary and analyse all the tasks by adding the total hours dedicated to tasks that have generated profits, tasks that have helped with the business growth, time that was wasted by doing wasted tasks etc.

You will be amazed at the wasted time... infact I make it a daily habit to start the day with my
"default, prioritised" diary, then during the day I insert tasks as I start them and then review them all at the end of the day. This 15 minute exercise has improved my time management hugely as I'm constantly aware if I'm wasting time. Get your priorities right, complete the essential daily tasks in the morning before a customer walks in and disturbs you or complete your business growth tasks from a home office where you can turn the mobile off and not be disturbed.

There is no excuse and at the end of the day "Profit is King" so focusing your energy in this area makes a lot of sense, but don't forget the business growth side as without dedicating at least 2 hours a day to this you may not have a business next year.

Dotcomology - The Science of Making Money Online

How To Create Powerful Offers That Drive Your Sales Through the Roof

How To Create Powerful Offers That Drive Your Sales Through the Roof by Yanik Silver

What does a mafia boss know about marketing?

Lots. Read on to find out...
Do you remember in the movie "The Godfather" when Don Corleone says,
"I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse"?

And it’s this simple concept that’s the backbone of any successful sales
proposition you make. (However if I were you, I’d probably leave out the
threats of violence in your sales piece.)

From now on, your job is to create such powerful offers that anyone reading
it would say to themselves, "My goodness, I’d have to be a complete idiot not
to take them up on this deal!"

And creating a powerful offer like this is easier than you think.

Let me share with you one of the most compelling offers I’ve seen. It took a
dying hotel on the wrong side of the Vegas 'strip', where you had to watch
your wallet at every turn, and transformed it into a super moneymaker.

This is from a very successful ad that used to run for Bob Stupak's Vegas
World hotel. Listen to this deal and see if you wouldn't act on this even if
you were just an occasional gambler:

"Act now, to receive a virtually free Las Vegas vacation. For $198 per person
or $396 per couple I will:

1) Put you up in a luxurious mini suite in an exciting Las Vegas hotel right on
the famous strip.

2) I will give you free tickets to a show with name entertainers.

3) I will put a chilled bottle of champagne in your room for free.

4) I'll let you drink as much as want for free, whether you're at the gaming
tables, playing slots or in one of the
lounges.

5) I'll hand you $1,000 of my money to gamble with for free.

6) I'll let you keep all your winnings.

7) I'll guarantee you'll win a color TV, VCR or a faux diamond ring.

Obviously I'm not going to give this incredible deal to everybody in the whole
world. There can only be (small number) of these vacation packages available.
First come, first served."

If that's not an irresistible offer, I don't know what is. The closer you can get
to something like this, the more customers you’ll have falling all over
themselves to give you their money.

Does this give you a few ideas?

Using The Bonus Pile On 

Vegas World’s offer uses a concept I call "Bonus Pile On". And the way it works
is to keep piling on bonus after bonus until finally you have to say "no mas"
and whip out your charge card.

It was the same thing with the famous Ginsu knife commercials a few years
back. They used this technique perfectly to sell millions of dollars of cutlery.
The announcer would say "And if you act now you’ll also get..." and then about
15 different knives and kitchen gadgets would pop up on the screen.

It made you think about how much value you were getting for such a little
price. That’s the power of the "bonus pile on".

So what’s the best way to start using this in your business? Well, one of the
best ways I know is using paper and ink. You can give away a series of
valuable reports with any purchase. What’s more, you could even make this
information available as a download from your website so you’d have zero
distribution cost.

Or you could make deals with other businesses where they’d let you give away
a product or service from them to your customers. If you really use your
imagination here you’ll come up with lots of ways to create a "bonus pile on".

Make Prospects Take Action Now!

There’s no doubt about it - deep down, everyone of us is a lazy procrastinator.
That’s why you need some kind of deadline or scarcity factor to make prospects
take action now. If your prospects believe an offer is going to be around
forever, there’s no reason to take action.

That’s the reason deadlines work so well. In one of my businesses, I’ll stamp a
red deadline on the order form for the last day prospects get over $2,000.00
in free bonuses. And believe me, it’s not unusual to get people ordering
right on the very last day of the deadline just because of this stamp.

100% No-Risk Guarantee 

Finally, the last component of a powerful offer is to make your deal as risk-free
as possible. Nobody wants to make a mistake and be stuck with something that
doesn’t deliver as promised. That’s why you should make every effort to lift
the risk from the prospect and place it squarely on your shoulders. Make a
bold guarantee and make it for as long as possible. If you have a quality product,
you shouldn’t worry because most often return rates will drop the longer you
extend guarantees for.

Another strategy to try is offering a 30-day "hold-your-check or charge slip" trial.
That means people will send you checks postdated 30 days out or you won’t
charge their credit cards for 30 days. Joe Karbo used this to sell tens of
thousands of copies of his book "The Lazy Man’s Ways to Riches".

Now you have all the keys to creating your own irresistible offer and watching
your sales soar. Just keep adding value and more bonuses until you come up
with an offer than makes your prospect feel guilty for not ordering.


(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.
Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on creating automatic,
moneymaking websites...and he still doesn't know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-selling online marketing
books and tools, including his newest resource for online copywriting - 
Ultimate Copywriting Workshop