Are These 3 Common Problems Costing You Thousands?

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Brett McFall - Inside Secrets Of Marketing Your BusinessI recently ran an Inside Secrets Of Marketing Your Business webinar with Australia’s #1 Direct Response Copywriter, Speaker, Coach and Internet Marketing  Legend, Brett McFall, where he explained why marketing sucks! And perhaps more importantly, he shared some simple, practical and – best of all, cheap! – marketing strategies that will turn your business around.

One of the things Brett discussed was the 3 Common Problems That Cost Most Businesses Thousands Of Dollars. Following is an excerpt of part of that segment:

Firstly, what are these 3 common problems?

1. Most marketing is ignored

2. Most marketing is disrespected

3. Most marketing is boring/samey

So, what’s the solution to these problems? How can you prevent these problems from costing your small business thousands of dollars?

Let’s look at the first of these…

Most Marketing Is Ignored

Whether on TV, the Yellow Pages, the internet, magazines … most marketing is being ignored. Around 99 people out of 100 are not taking any action on your ad!

How do you get around this?

It’s actually not that hard.

There are 2 top ways to get people to notice your marketing like a slap in the face. That effect is what you want to get with your marketing.

You may not literally slap someone, but you need to make sure you get their attention, right?

So how do you do this?

#1: Headlines

TVs and newspapers use headlines to grab our attention quickly, right, so that we want to watch more or read more and find out what it’s all about.

It is the ‘capture’ … the one element … the key thing that gets people’s attention. We want to say, “Hey everyone … here I am over here. Look at me.”

Here’s Brett’s formula for creating headlines really simply.

1. What’s the problem? What’s the problem that your customer – or potential customer – is having right now?

For example, if your product is something that can help stop smoking then your customer’s problem might be that they ‘Can’t stop smoking’.

So how do we make a headline out of that?

Well, it’s really quite easy once we know what the problem is. And if you’re in business, you should be solving a problem for someone.

So the headline might be:

“How To Quickly And Easily Stop Smoking In Just 21 Days”

Their problem was that they can’t stop smoking, so our headline addresses that.

BUT … we add a little bit of sizzle here as well.

The ‘How To’ is to help get attention because humans are curious people, right?

But we add extra sizzle by adding in ‘Quickly And Easily’ because we like things to be done quickly and easily.

Then we need to offer in some specifics. If you can add in “…In 21 Days” now we have something concrete.

It’s not enough to just say, “Here’s how to make money” or “Here’s how to get your taxes done”. That’s all basic blah blah. Today, you need to be more exact.

You need to put your balls on the line (for want of a better phrase). But it means stepping up and saying, “You know what? Here’s my promise. Here’s my definite claim to fame.”

(NB: You only make claims that are true though. NEVER claim that your product or service can do something it can’t! If your stop-smoking product has never worked in as little as 21 days then claiming so can get you in serious trouble. Plus, it’s just not the right thing to do).

 

Now we have something powerful. Because the human mind says, “Well, 21 days. That’s not bad. How? How do they do that?”

Bam!

Now you’ve got their attention. Now they want to find out more.

All the headline wants to do is get their attention.

So getting a response from your advertising these days should actually be easy because most marketing sucks!

Now, that’s only the first part of the solution for the 1st of these 3 common problems. For more information on how to solve this problem – along with the 2nd and 3rd problems that most marketing is disrespected and most marketing is boring/samey – please watch the recording of this exclusive Inside Secrets Of Marketing Your Business webinar.

You can watch the full recording at:

Inside Secrets To Marketing Your Business

And for more of Brett’s easy, but highly effective marketing strategies, make sure you click the image below to check out his video on…

Why Marketing Sucks

The Inside Secrets To Marketing Your Business

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Ultimate Marketer’s Toolkit For WP

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Now You Can Easily Add High Impact Graphics To Your WordPress Sites

If you like to create WordPress sites and like to jazz them up a bit with cool text formatting, images and shaded text boxes, it’s not always that easy to do if you’re not familiar with web coding.

There are plug-ins available that make it easier to add this effect or that feature, but if you’re like me, I like keeping my plug-ins minimal.

After all, the more plug-ins you add, the more chance of incompatibility issues occurring … and the more plug-ins you need to keep updated.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on to a graphics product specifically for WP sites – The Ultimate Marketer’s Toolkit For WP.

This nifty little plug-in is easy to install and provides a collection of 16 graphics modules to help make it easy to add great looking graphics to your WordPress site.

You can take a look at it here:

Ultimate Marketer’s Toolkit For WP – Short Codes Deluxe

It’s super-easy to install and the one plug-in includes:

    • ‘Add To Cart’ and order buttons
    • Bullet point icons and numbers
    • Guarantee boxes
    • Content boxes
    • Testimonial boxes
    • Signs and handwritten phrases
    • Headline fonts
    • Delayed content timer
    • Hyperlink designer
    • Content divider lines
    • And much more

I’ve used it to create the red heading on this post, along with the bullet ‘ticks’ and the yellow text highlighting above.

Best of all, it doesn’t cost too much. I bought the ‘Unlimited’ version so I can use this plug-in on an unlimited number of my own sites. But they also offer a ’3-site’ version and a Developer’s version for those who build sites for others.

Ultimate Marketer’s Toolkit For WP – Short Codes Deluxe

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Seven Time Taming Techniques

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pocketwatchWhen you own a small business you are an extremely busy person; everything about the business is your responsibility, which means your time and attention are constantly in demand.  Let’s take a look at seven real world tips and time management techniques to help you gain more control and efficiency in your work efforts.

Technique #1 – Track your use of time:

Carry a small notebook with you and for one full week keep track of how you’re using your time.  It takes a few extra moments at a time to capture this information, but at the end of the week you’ll be better able to see where your time is being spent and spot areas where you can make changes to be more efficient and/or effective.

Technique #2 – Establish goals for managing your time:

Once you have an idea of where your time is being spent you can set real, specific goals for making improvement.  You might set a goal of reducing the time you spend responding to emails, for instance, or cutting back on the amount of time you spend on personal phone calls.

Technique #3 – Establish a time management system:

Small business owners often find themselves pulled in many different directions at the same time which makes it very easy to get distracted from the really important things you need to do each day.  Set up a time management system to minimize these distractions, such as returning voice mail at a particular time each day, empowering your employees to make more decisions, or the like.

Technique #4 – Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise:

It is often said that 80% of your time is spent dealing with 20% of the activities related to your business, and this is absolutely true.  Make a point of setting priorities about which activities are most important and/or most profitable, and then be sure those activities receive the majority of your time and attention.

Technique #5 – Delegate and outsource whenever possible:

When you first started your small business you were probably the only employee and had to do everything yourself.  As your business has grown, however, it has become more and more difficult to take care of all of that stuff efficiently.  You can improve your time management practices by evaluating which tasks and activities could be delegated and/or outsourced and then taking the steps necessary to take those actions.

Technique #6 – Set a routine and stick to it:

The most successful small business owners understand that they use their time most effectively when they set up a daily/weekly/monthly routine and stick to it.  This helps to ensure tasks and activities are handled regularly, and when the inevitable crisis erupts you are in a much better position to safely deal with that crisis knowing the other aspects of your business are up to date and under control.

Technique #7 – Allow down time to think and plan:

This is perhaps the best time management technique of all because it allows you to step away from the day to day necessities of running your business and on a regular basis take the time to think and plan for the future.  Down time is important for letting your mind rest and refresh itself so that your creativity can come through more easily.

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How To Create A Form On Your WordPress Site

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If you’re using WordPress.org to power your web site, membership site or blog then adding a form is quite easy – whether that’s a simple ‘Contact Us’ form or a comprehensive survey or questionnaire.

There are many plug-ins available to simplify this but my favourites are the Grunion Contact Form and Contact Form 7 plug-ins.

For either of these plug-ins, install and activate them as follows:

    • Log in to your WordPress Admin Dashboard
    • Go to Plug-ins > Add New
    • In the ‘Search’ field, enter EITHER Grunion Contact Form OR Contact Form 7
    • When the results show, click on ‘Install’ next to the name of the plug-in you want to install
    • WordPress will go through the process of uploading and installing the plug-in
    • When prompted, click the ‘Activate’ link
    • Now you’re ready to go to the plug-in’s ‘Setting’ page to configure the form to your requirements

By default, data submitted by these forms will be forwarded to the email address that is in your blog settings. However you can nominate a different address(es) in the plug-in’s settings.

 

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What You Must Know About Protecting Your Intellectual Property

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Intellectual property. Most people have heard this term before, but what does it really mean to you as a small business owner?  Understanding what intellectual property (IP) is and what you should do to protect yours is important to protecting your small business and maximizing its overall success.

What is intellectual property?

There are a variety of definitions for the term “intellectual property” but they all generally agree that IP is a kind of intangible property that comes from the mind.  It is a result of creativity and thought, both from an artistic standpoint and a commercial standpoint as well.  Intellectual property differs from traditional patentable activities in that it does not have a distinct shape, process, or form; because it is based primarily on a creative process it is sometimes hard to clearly define in a way that can be submitted for full legal protection.

What does this mean for you as a business owner? It means anything that qualifies as IP and is related to your small business should be something you identify, protect, and maintain just as you would other proprietary aspects of your small business.  Most small business owners don’t think much about IP issues because they don’t necessarily understand the harm that can come from someone else violating their IP rights.  For the start up company or the very small operator the risks might be rather low, but for the larger business or one with a strong online presence the risks can be elevated a great deal.

The concept of intellectual property is a relatively new one in terms of potentially being registered and given a level of legal protection.  The type of registration and enforcement procedures varies tremendously, however, depending on the region or even the country where you live.

What should you do to protect your intellectual property?

In general, there are four distinct ways to protect your intellectual property rights:

  1. Register a patent
  2. Register a trademark
  3. Register a copyright
  4. Register a trade secret

In the United States this is done through the federally run United States Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov).  If you run a small business in the United Kingdom then you will pursue these protections through the government run Intellectual Property Office (www.ipo.gov.uk).  For those living in Australia and wanting to protect their intellectual property rights, the place to go is the Australian Government department known as IP Australia (www.ipaustralia.gov.au).

Although these avenues are available for receiving registered protection, in the real world these government entities are not set up to enforce IP in the same way they are other types of patents and copyrights.  In most cases, if you believe your intellectual property has been violated or compromised in some manner then your first line of defense is to pursue a civil claim against the offending party.

To pursue a civil claim such as this, it is absolutely vital to secure the services of an attorney or solicitor with experience in this area of the law.  Why? Because quite frankly, the laws and the avenues for enforcement cover such a wide array of possibilities depending on where you live, where the offending party lives, and where the violation has occurred.

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