You’ve worked hard to make your business successful. You know you have quality products and services and competitive prices. You know you have customers out there that want what you have to offer. The problem sometimes is finding them . The Internet is a big place, and you’re just one firefly in the night. 

Lifecycle Marketing might be just what you’re looking for. It’s a simple process with a simple goal:  bringing customers in, ‘wowing’them and then letting positive word of mouth some advertising for you. Any customer is good, a happy customer is even better. But the best customer is the one who's telling his friends how great you are.

In our 8 part series on Lifecycle marketing, we’ll be looking at what it takes to attract customers. We’ll examine some of the new ways businesses are attracting leads, and the steps you can take to follow up on them. Later on, we’ll talk about ways to make your site more user-friendly by adding E-commerce tools and an effective lead management strategy, enabling you to convert site visitors into sales.  

In an age of faceless internet transactions and computerized phone menus, is looking your customer in the eye before offering an old fashioned handshake a dying art? Some customers would argue it’s no longer needed, while others wish for the days when an old school touch was not only offered but expected.

Your customers come in both varieties, so how do you keep them coming back? 

At a minimum you’ll need a quality product that meets their needs at an affordable price, but that is just the beginning. 

Despite the demands of modern life, many old school touches are still quite effective. Your customers want to feel valued, they want to be catered to and they want doing business with you to be quick and convenient.

As with fine food, presentation is critical. It doesn’t matter how delicious the meal is if the food is haphazardly slopped onto the plate and slapped down in front of them. Presentation counts, even if your company motto is ‘down home cookin’ or ‘just like Mom used to make’. You’re not Mom, after all. You’re an entrepreneur trying to attract their business. 

With the sheer variety of resources available online are many ways to get the word out about your product or service. Your official website, though a critical part of your online marketing strategy, is just one of many. Social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, have become an increasing part of modern life. Smart entrepreneurs adapt. 

According to Facebook internal estimates, the number of pages for small and medium sized businesses is close to 25 million. And there are over 750 million Facebook users daily.

With such a large environment, businesses have found that their sites and posts tend to get lost in the newsfeeds that users see. Since Facebook is a forum for people to share bits of their daily lives, the decorum tends to be a bit more informal. The professional appearance that companies use on official websites doesn’t always translate well into Facebook. 

Many experts on social media recommend a more personal approach for a Facebook page. Rather than telling potential followers about what a great company you started, tell them the hardships you went through trying to found it, and why you did. Instead of posting about your company’s great relationship with the community, post a story about a community event you or one of your employees participated in. Celebrating company moments can help potential customers feel like they’re dealing with real people, not a company logo. 

Manage Your Leads. Grow Sales. Save Time. Get Organized.

23,000 thriving small businesses use Infusionsoft. Discover how Infusionsoft, the only all-in-one automated sales & marketing software built exclusively for small businesses, has helped them manage their leads, grow sales, save time and stay on top of it all.

In an increasingly busy and chaotic world, stability has become a precious commodity. How do you find stability in a market that can change in the blink of an eye where the skills you learn are obsolete as soon as you’ve mastered them?

Pam Slim, award-winning author, business coach and creator of the blog Escape from Cubicle Nation believes she has some of the answers.  

Your body of work extends far beyond your resume, she says. You are everything you do in life. For an individual, your body of work is everything you create, contribute, affect or impact. It is the story of your life and everyone you’ve interacted with along the way. For a company, it is everything they have contributed during their history, whether it is their products, services, idea or values.

What's your business plan?

In 1845, a British expedition commanded by Sir John Franklin boldly set out in search of the Northwest Passage, a fabled sea route around the top of North America. The expedition was plagued by logistical problems from the very start.

The crew had little experience with the arctic. Other than Franklin, few among the officers were arctic veterans. Disregarding the advice of the native Inuit, crewmen were outfitted in uniforms far better suited to winters in Southern England. 

In May, the expedition set sail from England never to return. Studies over the years have concluded that hypothermia, starvation and lead poisoning, along with inadequate clothing and supplies, lead to its demise.

While few of us have our hearts set on being arctic explorers, the fate of the Franklin Expedition serves of a poignant example of the importance of proper planning. It has been said that if you don’t know how to get there, it doesn’t matter what road you take.

You’ve tossed and turned all night. You’ve counted so many sheep you’re pondering whether to start up a farm. Just when you’ve finally drifted off, you hear the sound of the alarm clock going off. As you pull back the covers and put your feet on the floor you feel like an extra in an episode of ‘The Walking Dead.’

There's an important meeting today with some potential new clients. You need to be at your charismatic and problem-solving best. As you’re about to find out, lack of sleep can make a challenging but achievable task seem almost overwhelming.

You’re not alone.

Nearly one-third of adults report getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night, according to a National Health Interview Survey. And the habit seems to start young; a similar survey sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found only 31 percent of high school students report getting at least 8 hours of sleep a night.

Time.

Why do we hate it so much? We spend it  indiscriminately. We waste it. Sometimes, we even try to kill it. Then when we run out of it, we complain there’s not enough of it to go around. It’s the most precious resource we have. With time, new relationships can be forged from the ashes of old ones. Entire fortunes can be made, lost and made again. 

Time. We don’t get it back. Ever.

So what are some ways to manage this most valuable of resources? 

Be proactive. You’re rarely confronted with a full-blown crisis that erupts out of nowhere. Almost every problem starts small. By anticipating them, you can deal with them with a much smaller amount of effort. Examine your processes and look for problem spots, even if they seem inconsequential. What may take you only a few minutes to solve now, can frequently take hours or days to solve later. It may seem like a hassle to replace a leaky water cooler sitting near the electrical cabinet, but that’s nothing compared to the nightmare of your company server taking one last water-logged breath and then dying. 

Twenty percent of your customers produce 80 percent of your sales. Named the Pareto Principle after Vilfredo Pareto, this concept is a simple yet powerful idea that can save you time, money and dramatically grow your business if used properly. Pareto, an Italian economist, noticed in 1906 that 80 percent of the land was owned by 20 percent of the population.

The interesting thing about this principle, or the ’80-20 rule’, is that it occurs with astonishing frequency in other situations. Twenty percent of your time will yield 80 percent of your results. Twenty percent of your products will create 80 percent of your revenue. The list goes on and on.

From a marketing standpoint, the applications are obvious. If 20 percent of the advertising efforts produce 80 percent of the results, then your marketing needs to focus on that 20 percent. If 20 percent of your webpages generate 80 percent of your traffic, then you need to highlight those pages to make them easier to find.

When it comes to customers, how do you zero in on your best customers, and more importantly, how do you find more like them? Using the ’80-20’rule allows you to develop more targeted marketing and more effective follow-ups so you can nurture sales. 

“You have to be where your customers are.”

That phrase used to mean making sure you had a store in high traffic areas such as malls, or placing your billboard strategically close to a major highway.  It meant advertising during popular TV shows and in high profile magazines.  In the 21st century, your website is your store, your TV advertisement, your billboard and your magazine ad all rolled into one.  Being where your customers are now often means being online (but don’t discount offline strategies too).  Increasingly, they’re wherever their Smartphone or tablet is.

StatCounter, a Dublin-based web analytics company, reported that in December of 2013, the amount of worldwide Internet traffic from mobile users topped 20 percent for the first time.  As the capacities of mobile devices continue to expand, that number will likely increase. 

As online usage habits change, many companies are lagging behind in making their sites mobile friendly, much to the annoyance of Smartphone and tablet users.

Your new product is about to launch. You’ve done the research. You know the market. You know your customers. You’re ready to begin the online marketing campaign to drive customers in. Where exactly do you start?

Greg Head, Chief Marketing Officer of Infusionsoft recommends you start first with a positioning statement. This document is a detailed description of your potential market as well as an engaging picture of how you want potential customers to perceive your new brand. It’s an internal tool, rather than a set of promotional materials. It’s a roadmap for your marketing efforts, helping you keep your focus once the chaos of a marketing campaign starts.

The basic template for a positioning statement looks like this:

• For (target customers), (company) is the leading (category) that provides (unique benefit). Unlike (competitors), (company) does (unique differentiator).

It’s important to remember that the positioning statement isn’t a tagline, it’s a strategy. All marketing efforts must be aligned around that strategy.

“Infusionsoft is the leading sales and marketing software for true small businesses, designed to help them get organized, grow sales, and save time.”

Forget old-school, dried up advertising methods!

Andrew Davis, best-selling author and former television producer, believes he has a better way for you to spend your advertising or marketing budget.

His idea is quite simple: create great content and engage your audience. Then use that content to leverage sales. Content brands build relationships. Relationships build trust. Trust drives revenue. It’s an approach Sesame Street and Walt Disney have used for years to drive millions in product sales, and Andrew believes it can work for small businesses too.

He has a five-step approach that’s already producing some great results for small online businesses.

In a competitive market, sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference between merely satisfying a customer’s needs and thrilling them so much that they’re bragging to their friends about your products. In other words, you want them to say: “Wow!”

According to Scott Martineau, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Infusionsoft and author of Conquer the Chaos: How to Grow a Small Business without Growing Crazy, there are four steps to wowing your customers.

• Step 1 - Create a culture of Wow! Customer service starts at ground zero. You need to talk about it from day one. You need to emphasize and teach it to your employees at every opportunity, and when you’re evaluating new employees, you should look for people who love to serve. Wherever possible add incentives for employees to go above and beyond. In a crowded field of competing companies, people will remember the small, personal touches far more than they will another advertising campaign.

Infusionsoft is getting ready to do another Implementation Accelerator on June 18-20, 2014 in Chandler AZ.

If you want to get more done in 3 days than you ever thought possible, then this is the place for you!

To find out more, check out the description by clicking HERE.

To start the registration process click HERE.

As an added bonus, Kerry and/or I will go with you if you want us to help you get the most out of it. Just let us know.

Kerry and I have done this before and I can tell you it is hard work, but the results are amazing. Highly worth the blood, sweat and tears!

Hope to see you there.

P.S.To see the descriptive PDF, click here. And to start the registration process click here.

For many creative people, ‘process’is almost a dirty word. Flexibility and spontaneity are swept into a mindless void of dull and boring routine. Do the same thing over and over again, all day, every day. 

An organized process doesn’t have to be some gremlin lurking in the dark. In fact, it can keep the gremlins from knocking at the door of your business. By developing a system, routine tasks can be done quickly and smoothly, freeing up valuable time and energy for more important things. It can also save your business some money.

Consider the case of a major film production. Expensive actors are already on the set, props and scenery have been built, and the production crew is ready to shoot. Time is money, and every second counts. One of the major reasons films go over budget is inefficient use of time on the set. Since a skilled production crew is often paid by the hour, the last thing a director wants is a costly delay or even worse, having to shoot the scene again months later.