Category Archives for Business
Have you done any simple market research?
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and president of Marketing Automation Group.
This simple strategy will help you turn your business around and get it heading in a profitable direction almost overnight. It requires a little extra effort on your part, but if you take action, you will uncover marketing opportunities and rewards that you never knew existed.
Ok, Here’s How:
1. Take a few of your best clients to coffee/lunch and ask them what they like and dislike about your business. Make sure they know that you want the honest truth because you value their opinion; you want to keep them as a client; and you want more clients just like them.
After the meeting send a thank you letter. Make sure it’s personal. Anything less will weaken your sincerity.
2. Call up some of the clients that have not used you in a while and offer to take them to coffee or lunch. If they don’t want to meet in person, get information from them on the phone. Ask them why they haven’t used you lately; what you can do better; and what you do well. Then ask them if it’s OK for you to send them a ‘special thank you for your help gift’. Send a special offer, just for them. And make sure it has real value.
If you talk with 10 current and former clients and take good notes, you can use this information to improve your business and create marketing messages that target your potential clients more effectively. You’ll uncover many strengths and weaknesses. Some of them may shock you. Improve on your strengths, and fix your weaknesses. I guarantee you will get very valuable and useful information from this tip, and you will get a lot of satisfaction from the smart work you will accomplish. You might even get a few unexpected referrals, or win over a disgruntled client.
Asking for the honest, (and sometimes brutal,) truth is one of the hardest things a person or business owner can do. If you can find the inner strength of character to do this exercise, I promise: your life, (and cash flow), are going to start changing in BIG ways.
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
Are you working ON your business, or IN your business?
What the heck does this mean?
Let me explain-
Working in your business means solving problems, scheduling appointments, and managing employees. Any of those things are working in your business.
Working on your business is planning what services you want to expand into, what new niche you might want to target, or thinking about how many new marketing strategies you might want to implement.
Get the difference?
You probably work in your business now. That’s OK. But you also need to work on your business. If you don’t, no one else will. You need to plan to be successful.
As you grow and get bigger, you should work less and less in your business. You can hire others to do that, but you can’t hire anyone to do your job- working on the business.
This is a very powerful strategy.
This strategy is what Walt Disney used to create the huge Disney empire – Disney World, Disney Land, all the Disney characters, Disney movies, etc. Disney is one of the most successful companies in America. One of the reasons for this is that the people at the top work on the business not in the business.
This same strategy will work for you too.
Work less and less in and more and more on your business. You’ll see great results!
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
Do You Have A Marketing Plan?
Do You Have A Marketing Plan?
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and President of Marketing Automation Group.
This is very important. It may seem obvious but less than 1% of all businesses actually do it. Even though it’s very simple, don’t underestimate its power!
The most important thing about marketing is to have a:
Marketing Plan
More businesses fail because they don’t have a plan or goals. You should have a detailed marketing plan of what you want to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it.
Don’t be vague either. Things like ‘I want to make more money than I can ever spend’ or ‘I want to make $20,000.00 a month’ –these are not plans. They’re too vague and they won’t help you get there.
Be specific. As you go through this manual pick at least 5 ideas to start with. Write them down. Write how much you are going to make from each idea this week and this month. Then do a 3 month plan. And then do a 6 month plan.
Once you start using the first 5 ideas then add another 5. Then another. Soon you should be using almost all of the money making marketing strategies in this manual. (We say most because there might be one or two that just aren’t you. That’s OK. Use the ones that you are most excited about to begin with then branch out.)
Your plan should include money goals. Try to put your money goals in net (take home) to you, not gross. We know gross is what you are used to thinking in but net is obviously more important. One Business owner might do $250,000.00 in gross. It sounds impressive, right? But, after it’s all said and done if he only nets $50,000.00- that’s not very impressive at all.
First examine your current numbers. More than 80% of all businesses don’t know how many clients they get a month. That’s a deadly sin. You must know how you are currently doing.
You should know how many new clients you get each month, how much you make from each client and how much it costs you to acquire a new client.
Here’s an example:
Jake is a fictitious business owner. (The following scenario is full of numbers and figures chosen only for the sake of the illustration.) He’s been in business for 2 years. He gets most of his clients from walk-ins and from his yellow page’s ad.
He grosses $15,000 a month. His average ticket is $100.00
Therefore he gets 150 clients a month.
His net is 25% of gross or 3,750.
Jake wants to double his net income in 6 months, triple in 12 months. (We don’t blame him.)
Considering that Jake doesn’t know any of our marketing secrets (like how to charge more for his services), he will have to get twice as many clients to double his business.
Goal: 300 clients a month.
He currently gets 100 clients a month from his “store visits” and about 50 from his yellow pages ads. But he gets around 15 calls a month from his yellow pages and about 30 “store visits” a week that ask questions but don’t buy or schedule a service call. So he currently only ‘converts’ about 65% of all his prospects.
If he doesn’t learn any of our methods to improve his 65% conversion ratio, then he’ll have to get 405 prospects to get 300 clients.
His plan to get 405 prospects:
100 from his store visits
50 from his Yellow Pages
20 from his new mover letters
90 from his 3-step Letter
50 from repeat service contacts
30 from emailing current clients
30 from the internet
30 from her referral Program =
405 Prospects
You should have a weekly plan. Schedule 15 min. out of one day to make up your weekly plan and to see how you did the last week. Schedule this time and keep to it. Don’t see any clients during this time, keep it strictly for planning. If you do just this and not one more of our secrets, you will easily double your income in 12 months.
Of course, Jake didn’t know any of our secrets to double the profit from all his clients. If he did both- double his profits from each client and double the amount of clients, he’d quadruple his business in less than 6 months.
Your weekly plan should include the following:
Goal for total net income.
Goal for number of new clients.
Goal for number of repeat clients.
Goal for number of referrals.
Average net income from each client.
The number of prospects you’ll have to generate to reach your goal.
A detailed plan to generate the number of prospects you need.
Your plan doesn’t need to be typed or put into a computer. It can be handwritten on paper. The important part is that you do a plan every single week and keep on top of things.
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
Developing an Easy, Lucrative, and Autopilot Business
Developing an Easy, Lucrative, and Autopilot Business
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and president of Marketing Automation Group
There are two ways you can build your business. You can do it the hard way (this is most likely the way you are doing right now) or you can do it the easy way.
Sometimes building your business the hard way can be lucrative and you can make a lot of money but it is a struggle, makes your life hard, so what is the point of it.
Building your business the easy way will be a new concept for you.
Most people think that in order to get a business to succeed it has to be hard. Through the unconventional marketing systems you will learn throughout this program your business will be fun, easy, and very profitable. You will make a lot more money in your business and you can do it easily and quickly. There is a lot more to life than going through a series of tough struggles to get what you want.
Using great unconventional marketing makes selling easy and most of the time unnecessary.
Most people interchange marketing and selling or are confused on the differences. Selling is face to face or person to person over the telephone. Marketing comes before selling and is what you do to get the prospects to you so you can sell them. We have created unconventional marketing processes for your business that will allow you to, in many ways eliminate selling face to face.
When unconventional marketing is done right it will deliver to you people who are pre-qualified, pre-interested, and pre-motivated to do business with you. It will screen, sift and sort people who want to talk with you and get rid of people who you should not be talking to. Sometimes in selling an enormous amount of time is wasted talking with people who have no interest in the services or products you offer. When the unconventional marketing is done right like we are going to show you, you’re not going to have much difficulty selling because the marketing process automatically did all the work.
Always remember that unconventional marketing done properly is the fastest way to get clients.
Everything in this program is easy to understand, implement, and completely ethical.
Businesses who have the biggest profits are not necessarily the hardest workers;
They are the smartest workers.
Working hard can only get you so far. There is no limit to your profit if you learn to work smart. And you will not have to sacrifice any part of your life or time with your family to dramatically increase your net profits.
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
“Relax – Help is Here”
“Relax – Help is Here”
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and president of Marketing Automation Group.
Here is some advice I just gave to my 143 members who are Business owners just like you. I usually only give out strategies, methods and techniques to get new clients fast, easy, and for a low cost, BUT this is what I do and it works.
So here you go.
Take Time Off Every Week – First of all, work only five or six days per week, and rest completely on the seventh day. Every single study in this area shows that you will be far more productive in the five or six days that you work if you take one or two days off completely than you ever would be if you worked straight through for seven days. Get Your Mind Busy Elsewhere – During this time off, do not catch up on paperwork, or do anything else that requires mental effort. Simply let your mind relax completely, and get busy doing things with your family and friends. Maybe work around the house, go for a walk, watch television, go to a movie, or play with your children. Whatever you do, discipline yourself to shut your mental gears off completely for at least one 24-hour period every seven days. Get Away on Mini-Vacations – Second, take one three-day vacation every three months, and during that time, refrain from doing any work. Do not attempt to catch up on even a few small things. If you do, you keep your mental gears in motion, and you end up neither resting nor properly doing work of any quality.
Take Big Chunks of Down Time – Third, take at least two full weeks off each year during which you do nothing that is work-related. You can either work or relax; you cannot do both. If you attempt to do a little work while you are on vacation, you never give your mental and emotional batteries a chance to recharge. You’ll come back from your vacation just as tired as you were when you left. Give Yourself a Break Today – If you are involved in a difficult relationship, or situation at work that is emotionally draining, discipline yourself to take a complete break from it at least one day per week. Put the concern out of your mind. Refuse to think about it. Don’t continually discuss it, make telephone calls about it or mull it over in your mind. You cannot perform at your best mentally if you are emotionally preoccupied with a person or situation. You have to give yourself a break. Go For a Walk in Nature – Since a change is as good as a rest, going for a nice long walk is a wonderful way to relax emotionally and mentally. As you put your body into motion, your thoughts and feelings seem to relax all by themselves. Eat Lighter Foods – Also, remember that the process of digestion consumes an enormous amount of physical energy. Therefore, if you eat lighter foods, you will feel better and more refreshed afterward. If you eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain products, your digestive system will require far less energy to process them. Be Good to Yourself – Since your diet has such an impact on your level of physical energy, and through it your levels of mental and emotional energy, the more fastidious you are about what you put into your mouth, the better you will feel and the more productive you will be. We know now that foods high in fat, sugar, or salt are not good for your body. The lighter the foods you eat, the more energy you have AND Relax, I am here to help.
IF the marketing you are doing now is NOT filling up your store with high quality customers or your phone is not ringing off the hook every week it because you are using OLD methods, OLD strategies and OLD marketing that just doesn’t work that well anymore
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
“Are You Happy With The Results Your Yellow Page Ad Is Getting?”
“Are You Happy With The Results Your Yellow Page Ad Is Getting?”
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and President of Marketing Automation Group.
If you are NOT getting the results with your yellow page ad you want or hoped you would get when you signed on the dotted line, its because……
Are you really ready to hear this?
Your ad STINKS
Plain and simple, let me explain.
Until now maybe you thought the Yellow Pages were just a necessary evil. May be you said, “I’ve tried the Yellow Pages before they don’t work.” I don’t blame you. Really, how powerful is an ad that looks almost identical to the hundreds of other ads it’s buried between? How powerful is an ad shoved between your competitor’s with little setting it apart but slightly different graphics, and phone numbers?
Now, think about this. To make a sale you need the right message to the right market at the right time. When someone digs out the phone book and looks through the Yellow Pages for a company to fix their computer they are the right market, and they are looking for a company so it’s the right time. All you need is to furnish the right message
Huge Potential
The potential for this medium of advertising is huge. But, there is one small problem. Hardly anyone knows how to create an effective ad. See for yourself, open up your Yellow Pages right now and look through the ads. Copy cat ad, after copy cat ad, you’ll see the only difference in these name, rank & serial number ads is the name of the businesses.
What if YOU ran a Yellow Pages ad that was a real, honest to goodness, attention-getting, direct response-oriented ad?
What would be the results of doing this?
Why, people might actually be motivated to call your business and use your services!
See, the Yellow Pages are a directory for people who already want a service and are looking to see who delivers that service in their area.
But, just because they’re looking for a service, that doesn’t mean your advertising must be boring and “professional.” It doesn’t mean that you have to look like everyone else.
Don’t Listen To What Yellow Page Reps Tell You
They are not trained in emotional direct response marketing. In fact, you will be surprised to know, they don’t know very much about marketing at all, that’s why they tell everyone to run the same ads. And the only thing they really are concerned about is selling you the BIGGEST ad they can because the more money they suck out of you each and every month the bigger their commission check is. This may not seem fair or even ethical but this IS the reality of the yellow page business.
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
FREE Business Marketing Strategy – Educate Employees
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and President of Marketing Automation Group.
Here is another FREE Business Marketing Strategy.
Educate Employees
Employees can be a wonderful source of referrals. In order for a business to be extremely successful, the employees have to believe in it too. Employee education is key.
Once you educate your employees why you deliver such a great service, you’ll be surprised at the rewards.
This is what will happen:
Your employees will start up selling a lot more. If they don’t know how certain products or services benefit their clients they can’t sell them. But if you educate your employees they’ll know and be much more likely to try to sell.
Your employees can be a wealth of referrals. If they don’t think your business is exceptional, they won’t refer anyone. But if you’ve taught them why and they truly believe it, they will tell lots and lots of people.
An educated employee is much better suited to help or answer questions from a client. Clients get annoyed when employees don’t know anything.
Educate your employees on a regular basis. Get them excited about working for such a wonderful business. Education and motivation are the key to super great employees.
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
Are you picking the low hanging fruit first?
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and President of Marketing Automation Group.
This morning I am going to talk to you about how to increase your business’ income the easiest and fastest way I’ve found.
There are only two general categories where you can get new customers and they are:
1. From your current customers, past customers themselves, or from referrals
2. From marketing and advertising for new customers via the ways I show you.
It is much easier, faster, and cheaper to tap into your customers list for new customers.
Here is why: Birds of a feather flock together. What I mean is that your current customers picked YOU and YOU were attracted to them for reasons. The other people your customer’s know and hang around with are like them. That is WHY they hang around them. So they will most likely be comfortable with you as well.
You are eliminating the biggest resistance when someone buys something: The fear of the UNKNOWN. Your potential customer goes through a thought process something like this: “If my friend is happy with ABC Business and I usually agree with my friend, then I will like ABC Business, too.
It’s cheaper. There is NO cost or only a small referral fee to acquire the customer.
So if you start marketing to your customer list you are picking the “lowest hanging fruit,” which means you are working very
SMART and leveraging your greatest asset; Your customer List.
Now of course this assumes that your customer list is all put together. If you don’t have addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, have your customers fill out a form when you go to them or they come to you. If your customer list is old you MUST get updated information. I cannot stress the importance of this.
I was told once that there are basically three types of people:
1. Those who MAKE things happen,
2. Those who WATCH what happens,
3. And those who don’t know WHAT the heck happened.
I know you are a “make things happen” kind of person, or you wouldn’t be reading blogs, interested in learning how to improve your business. If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
It’s impossible to manage what you don’t measure.
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and President of Marketing Automation Group.
Here to fill you in on something you may not be aware of.
This past week I received a call from a friend who is in the insurance business. He asked me if he should renew his yellow page advertisement. When I asked him how much revenue his ad has generated, he didn’t know.
There is a very important lesson here for anyone who spends their hard earned money on marketing or advertising: It’s impossible to manage what you don’t measure.
Let me explain: He couldn’t make an informed decision about renewing his yellow page ad because he didn’t know how much business he was getting from it… if any.
He wasn’t measuring his results, so how could he possibly know if it was a good or bad business decision to renew it?
So what should he do in this yellow page advertising case, and what should YOU do as a business owner with your own advertising?
You need to create a simple advertising source form and train your people who answer the phone to ask each and every customer…
“WHERE DID YOU HEAR ABOUT US?” or “WHERE DID YOU GET OUR PHONE NUMBER?”
And then, when you enter new potential customers into your computer database, you needs to add how the customer found you. In this case, “yellow page ad”.
At the end of the year, (hopefully well BEFORE it’s time to spend money again,) you will be able to analyze how much business/profit came from this group of customers, which we know found you via your yellow page ad.
The decision wether or not to continue advertising the way you have been can be made just by looking at the numbers; Without any stress or guessing.
Your answer will be obvious. It’s either:
YES – I made more profit than the yellow page ad costs, so I should run it again.
NO – The ad costs more than the profit I made from it, so I will not run it again.
Better Opportunity – The ad made a profit, but if I spend the same money on other advertising that I do, I would have gotten more business and profits.
There are only 3 things you need to make sure you are doing so that every dollar you spend in marketing and advertising is making YOU more than that dollar. They are:
1. Make sure you know who your target client is.
2. Make sure all the advertising you do is traceable.
3. Make sure you track your advertising. Don’t be lazy or sloppy like most business owners- KNOW YOUR NUMBERS! You should know what it costs to generate new clients from each marketing and advertising method; new mover program, referrals, yellow pages, the internet, open houses, etc.
The better you know your numbers – The better your decisions will be about spending your advertising dollars.
Put another way, – The better you know your numbers – The more money that will end up in your bank account.
Period.
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
FREE Business Marketing Strategy – Thank-you letters
Hi Business Owner,
My name is Bob Britton, a fellow small business owner and President of Marketing Automation Group.
Here is another FREE Business Marketing Strategy.
Thank-you letters
Thank you letters are very important and often overlooked by business owners. Thank you letters create a positive feeling about your business and services.
When was the last time you received a thank-you from anyone you did business with? Most businesses just don’t bother. People will be so “wowed” they will talk highly of your business and return for more.
For 45 cents you create a good feeling about your business. This is one of the cheapest ways that you can build loyalty, trust and a chance to get more referrals.
You should use a form of ‘thank-you’ and send it out the day after a client visits your store or you visit them. This is very easy. You just put the form into your computer and then add the persons name and print. Simple. Cheap. Easy. And very effective. It has impact because the client feels special.
If you have any questions, need some immediate advice, or would like to get involved with my program please give me a call at 585-633-7563.
To your success,
Bob Britton
