An Innovative Way to Get in Front of Clients

I had to smile today as I enjoyed my green tea and a scan through my emails.  I love when people start taking innovative actions when times get tough.

Humans never move when they are comfortable but watch them go when times get tough.

I loved what we can learn from an innovative way hotels are getting more guests in beds.

As it gets harder to sell hotel beds as less people travel the globe due to factors such as technology advances bringing people together virtually, a greater consciousness of the ecological damage the travel industry brings to the planet and overall the financial crunch means less spending in general.

So hotels are needing to get smarter.


We can learn a lot from this industry because therapists have exactly the same problem hotels have.  At the end of each day, any beds not filled are never available to sell again on that day.  Yes they can sell tomorrow’s beds, but today’s beds are never available again.

Treatment rooms or consults are the same.  If you didn’t fill yesterday’s diary - the opportunity to get revenue from those spots has gone.  So watching the way hotels think and market is a good habit to get into.

Springwise had a link to a service that scans twitter and picks up on destinations people have mentioned in their tweets.  The hotel sends those people some local area knowledge or a discounted room offer to that twitter account. 

Some hotels are reporting a 9% uptake on their direct twitter offers.  This is huge as most direct campaigns would celebrate if they got a 2-3% response.

Why the big difference?

They are adding value, saving their customers time and solving a problem for their clients. 

In some instances they are solving a problem before the client even thought too hard about fixing it.

This is marketing genius which you can replicate on a smaller scale.

It's our equivalent of dropping a flyer on the bedside table of someone who is about to get out of bed and complain of an ache and pain or emotional deficiency.  They are delivering a solution at a time of pain. 

Humans are lazy creatures.  

In most instances if a suitable solution comes their way at a price and service level suitable to them .... they will most likely take it.

The reason this campaign by hotels is working is because this is very targeted marketing.  The hotel knows its customers well and presents only one solution to their problem - a room in a hotel in the city they are visiting in the near future. 

Its your classic WHO & WHAT situation.  They know WHO their customers are and WHAT those customer want.

These hotels are getting under the noses of people solving problems AND saving them time.

How can you do that?

If you are very clear WHO you work with - simply figure out where your people are hanging out - what their problems are on a daily basis and get yourself, your message and your offerings in front of them, at a time when they are thinking about their problem.

People with a certain problem start seeking solutions in similar places

The golden question to answer is .... where do your people hang out????


But an even better question is ..... who else has my people?  This is the question the hotel has answered - they have figured out that their customers tweet their travel plans out to their network. 

Do people tweet or facebook their problems on a daily basis - YOU BET!  If you exactly solve their particular problem, then a simple google search to see if that person has a public profile and you could drop one of your flyers in the post to them.  It can be that simple.  If you are really brave you could make the offer directly in the post they've made - but truly I find that a bit intrusive.  You must discern what's the right level of contact for you. 

People leave clues everywhere - you need to get your intuitive super power glasses on and start seeing those opportunities everywhere.

It is so much easier to sell something to someone who wants what you’ve got.  You’ve just got to get very creative about figuring out where the problem YOU solve occurs in THEIR life.

For instance, if a child is having a hissy fit on the supermarket floor and the parent looks up and sees a flyer on the notice board for a hissy fit behaviorist or a golfer walks into the club room from a round of golf and finds a person who can improve their swing by loosening up their muscles - I reckon they will be pretty interested in at least hearing about your services.

Where are your people and what are their problems?

GET YOUR COPY OF MY NEW FREE REPORT

Getting started is the hardest part of growing a small business - the euphoria of being your own boss, doing it your own way and being able to run your own ship quickly wears off when you realise your great ideas and methods aren't manifesting the same glory in your bank account!

I created the NO GO to GET GO Fast Track Guide as a way for you to understand the types of actions you need to take in the early days.

All too often we have these great ideas and expect the Universe to pour people through our front gate and have them hammering the door down to work with us.  Unfortunately this is rarely the case for someone who has never had a small business before.

The sadder news is most give up even before they get a decent head of steam up and are left feeling like a failure.

The saddest news here is that these people often have the most amazing gifts of healing to offer the world, but their fears of being seen, judged or fear of success (not failure, we can all do that well but the thought of actually succeeding is new to many) and it stops them from achieving their dreams.

I am SO serious about people getting the right information at the start that I've filled this free report with the exact information that has kept me in the game.  When I started I didn't have a system and I wasn't appearing in the places I needed to appear.  I spent my first six months sitting at home developing brochures (which rarely bring large numbers of clients), developing logos (which is part of your brand and rarely brings clients in the early days) and I also spent a lot of time working on my website (needed but won't bring a bunch of clients hammering on your door the day it goes live).

I was gutted every time I spend months working my heart out only to find it didn't bring any results!  I just didn't know the RIGHT things to do in the early days!

Little did I know the three activities I was focusing on were the three worst things I could have done.  You can imagine how stunned I was when someone told me you could still get clients without the three things (logo, brochure and website) that I had spent most of my time, energy AND MONEY developing …. but sadly bought me NO clients.

So the NO GO to GET GO Fast Track Guide has ALL the information you need to understand before you go out into the world of small business.  What it's not is a where to put your brochures type of document - this one gives you - for free - the actual strategies that will work for you.  When you realise where you need to spend the MOST time in the early days, you will be much more productive in your early marketing attempts and when you understand which activities actually get you the clients - then you can just focus on them in the early days.

Don't be tricked by the simplicity of the material - once you are established you will understand the gold in this report - for now - just do what it says and watch your business change!

So - you've got nothing to lose - its free - its string free - no ra ra - simple concepts - in simple plain language - I urge you to read it cover to cover and then sign up for my 90 Day Challenge and then really get serious about growing that business that is currently living in your heart and soul!

Imagination in Business

As I continue to break down the benefits to therapists of the 12 Personality Traits of Wealthy Guerrilla Marketers shared by Jay Conrad Levinson, the inventor of Guerilla Marketing, he placed imagination at number two spot on his list.

I was SO pleased to see it even hit the list let alone rank so high because I believe healthy doses of imagination are vital to a successful marketing campaign. 

At Disney the people who imagine up all those wonderful theme parks are called "Imagineers" and I think every business owner should study Imagineering before they set out in business.

"Disneyland will never be completed as long as there’s imagination left in the world”
Walt Disney

Walt Disney was well aware that anytime someone's imagaination was switched on, there was something that could be improved on or done better.  In business if we have this focus, then every day will be an adventure.

The very first time I visited Disneyland I was blown away by the details and by how much thought had gone into this magical kingdom. I can still remember floating through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and seeing a tiny little dog in one of the scenes and his tail was wagging.   Even though he was made of bits of fabric glued together and he was a small and an insignificant part of a very big production, he was still given personality and movement.  Thirty years on I can still imagine him in my mind, eyes sparkling and tail wagging and all because someone was given permission to imagine him into life and then animate him.

Bringing the ordinary to life for people has to be one of the greatest gifts we can share.

It's the same in small business.  Sure we have to do certain things in a regimented or even some times boring way but because we are our own bosses, we have permission to apply imagination to everything we do.  We can bring ordinary things to life in the way we teach, in the way we share or in the way we run our business.  Every day is a new opportunity to be innovative or to improve on some aspect of our business, or our marketing or our message to the world.

I've always put my message out in a quirky non standard way and I've found the more off the wall I get the more responses I get.   My How to make Your Duck Boogie anti-Christmas newsletter got the best response and sign up rates of all time.  You can never be sure why this sort of thing happens but I'd like to guess that it stood out from all the plastic christmas wishes people were sending at the time.

When you let your imaginination out to play regularly I find it makes the day go faster and it helps you stand out from the crowd AND it allows the fun in.  I can't tell you how much fun I had creating that duckie newsletter - matching the pictures to the duckies circumstances made me laugh till my sides hurt.  Quirky stands out but it also brings joy and helps you be remembered.

On his teleseminar Jay was talking about how it used to easy - we could put an add in the Yellow Pages and off we'd go, instant business success.  But today in the fast and wild world of social media you have to be different to get noticed.  People notice positively when you have the guts to turn up as yourself and show you are imaginative, creative and unique.  They also notice negatively if you take the easy option and just copy something.  They won't say a lot but it gets noticed.   

These days its all about how you stand out and how you show up as yourself.  So have the guts to get the glory by using your own imagination.

Most certainly keep an eye on what is happening in the marketplace and see what your competitors are up to.  But don't just copy them, add your slant to it, show your own opinions, come up with your own ideas and set free the ideas and thoughts that are currently locked in your imagination.  You might like what you find when you do.

Jay Conrad Levinson is coming to Australia for a short teaching tour in September 2010 – you can find out more here

Patience is a Virtue

There is a saying that has been dated back to the thirteenth century:

    “Patience is a virtue,

    Possess it if you can,

    Seldom found in woman,

    Never found in man”

I could also add rarely found in people starting out in marketing!


Why is patience so important when marketing your products and services?

I was on a great teleclass recently with Jay Conrad Levinson, the genius who coined the phrase “Guerrilla Marketing” back in the 80’s. On this recent call Jay shared 12 Personality Traits of Wealthy Guerrilla Marketers.

His #1 trait was patience.

Many would think there would be many more fancy things he could have thought up to place in the #1 spot but I also believe patience is the number one thing you need when growing your natural therapy business because patience and persistent consistent action brings results in every other area of life ......... so why wouldn't it bring success in marketing.

I encourage my people to start doing good things like blogging and setting up their website and regularly doing newsletters very early in the set up of their practice.    I get VERY frustrated when I go back to them a few months later and ask how they are going with those tasks only to hear them say that they gave up because they thought it a waste of time because no one was reading them.

One client was recently featured on a two hour radio program.  Was her website finished, did she have a free product to offer the listeners to encourage them to visit her site?  Did she have a blog so people could get a sense of her opinions and methods? No, so all she could do was hope they would write down her phone number.  People will remember a catchy website name but they have little hope of remembering a phone number so her wonderful piece of free publicity was limited to people with a pen and paper close by.

Another client was recently telling me how her partner had read the single blog post one of my old clients had put up and it changed his life in that instance.  Imagine if he had kept up the posting, he might by now have changed many more lives with his words.

You can see why I get frustrated when people lose patience because they end up losing patients.

These stories highlight the need for patience.  It is also based in the beautiful words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Take the first step in faith.
You don't have to see the whole staircase,
just take the first step.

Marketing is all about the first step, not the staircase.

Most who are starting out want the big sweeping staircase from Gone with the Wind but the reality is that most don't have the budget to purchase one step, let alone the whole solution.  That is where Guerrilla Marketing hit the spot for so many people because it offered low cost ways to get your message out and gave many of us the faith to stay in the game because Jay's methods worked for so many.

The staircase appears after you have patiently worked your strategies for a long time and been patient enough to test and measure your results, tweaking as you go and eventually working out what it is you like doing and what it is your clients like receiving.  I’ll give you a hint – when those two things are the same, magic happens BUT it takes a little time, effort, energy, frustration and feeling like you are wasting your time to get to that point.

But if you don’t start you will always be struggling to get your message refined enough for people to want to listen to you.

Marketing is not a short term fix.  You can’t write one newsletter and expect miracles.  I’m not saying that won’t happen but in my experience it takes a little while for you to find your voice and find out what does resonate with your people and what does get them commenting and letting you know they are reading.

For a long time I also thought no one was reading until I started to speak to small groups and associations.  Then people would start coming up to me and talking about small things I had written in a newsletter that had helped them or had inspired an action that helped them move to the next level.

If I hadn’t been patient enough to keep writing even when I thought no one was listening, then for sure I would have given up and those people wouldn’t have had that small success or small step up that made a difference for them.

Jay shared on his call a strategy that is key to Guerrilla marketing and that is the concept of getting known.  He shared the importance of getting known by forming interactive dialogue not monologue with your audience.  The Internet creates so many ways you can interact with potential clients but most still aren’t making the most of it because they run out of patience and stop the activities that could result in many more clients being attracted to them.

During the call Jay also spoke of a survey that was done that calculated how many times it took for someone to experience your marketing message before they bought something.  The magical answer that this survey came up with was nine times.  I’ve heard some experts say it takes eleven touches before someone will move from apathy to “purchase readiness”

Each one of these “touches” or “experiences” of you or your products and services moves the potential client one step closer to purchasing from you.

But here’s the thing – there is another crippling piece of information that goes with being patient – you must also be consistent in getting your message out or people will forget you.  I have heard it said that if you don’t keep in touch with your people at least bi-monthly they will forget you.

It stands to reason then that if you only have one post on your blog, have sent a couple of newsletters and meant to get around to building a website and people can’t easily find you, then you are going to struggle.

If you are prepared to get into the game for the long haul, these are the things you will need to have on your to do list:

• Send out your newsletter each month
• Post to your blog at least once a week
• Spend 15 minutes each day on social media sites
• Create a free e-product to give away on your website that gives people a taste of what you do
• Speak to people in your target market, it can be small groups to start with at least twice per month
• Submitting articles to websites or media once a month
• Make contact with an important person in your industry (at least one per week) and then make it easy for those people to send you clients
• Arranging small workshops so people can understand how much you know about your preferred topic and get to know a little more about you.

Most certainly the most powerful way I know of connecting with people is in person so that puts speaking right up on top of the list of things you patiently need to be delivering to people.


If you take these type of actions, eventually people are going to notice you and then guess what?  Your business will start to get traction.


Natural therapists are some of the most patient people I have ever met.  They will sit for hours listening to people’s stories, taking case notes, being there for their clients at all hours of the day and night.


So why not move some of the traits of patience over to your marketing and start doing all the actions that are necessary to grow your business.

12 Personality Traits of Wealthy Guerrilla Marketers in a Natural Therapy Context

I was on a great call today with Jay Conrad Levinson.  He is the genius who coined the phrase “Guerrilla Marketing” back in the ’80s.  He has sold over 21 million books during his highly successful career.and his books are “must have’s” on any small business bookshelf.

Image Credit

So does he sell apes?

No, that would be silly :-) 

Wikipedia describes the concept of guerrilla marketing as an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget.

Levinson used the concept of guerillas (rebels who live in the mountains and use unconventional methods to get their political message across) as a really clever way of describing marketing done at a base level often using free or low fee tactics to get your message to the world.

It was nothing short of sheer brilliance as it tipped the marketing world on its head and he has helped many people all over the world embrace marketing.


Something he shared today made me just about fall out of my chair! 

Why?

Well because it’s the exact opposite of what you might think for natural therapists.

In fact, I’m so excited I’m going to write about each category so you can really get why this information was so mind-blowing for me.

Natural therapists think they are bad at marketing or not designed for business.  

Well, this list turns that theory on its head.  If one of the greatest marketers in the world is right (and why wouldn’t he be) it seems we have every ability to be awesome marketers – we just gotta stop believing some of the misinformation we have been given by well-meaning “business experts”. 

For instance, I had an awesome woman in my Sore to SOAR group this month who had been told by many reliable sources that her business ideas and concepts were basically “rubbish”.

This made her “think” she was not good at marketing.

As it turned out she had an incredibility distinctive way of getting her message out to the world.  To date, she just hadn't found the right person who was prepared to look beyond the obvious and be prepared to help her find her unique voice.  I was honoured to be that person and I’d have to say I was pretty blown away by how creative she was once she got the hang of it.

The sad thing is she is not alone. 

Success stories abound in our industry when we figure out that standard conventional business theory won’t work when applied to something as “tactile” as a natural therapy or coaching business.

This is why Jay Conrad Levinson’s method’s changed the world ….. simply because he found another way to give people confidence and take actions that would achieve results when applied in unconventional ways. 

So I was really excited when on today’s call he shared the following twelve traits he has observed in every successful Guerrilla Marketer he has worked with.

My elation was because of course most of my people do the first eleven really well – its only item 12 they aren’t so hot at! 

12 Personality Traits of Wealthy Guerrilla Marketers

01.    Patience

02.    Imagination

03.    Aggressiveness (never give up)

04.    Sensitivity

05.    Embrace change well

06.    Educators

07.    Generosity

08.    Energetic

09.    Constant Learners

10.    Love people

11.    Maintain Focus

12.    Action oriented

This blog post does an excellent job of describing Guerrilla Advertising.

I'm so excited about this list that I’ll be breaking down each point on my blog.  I believe it is important that you get that you are ALREADY a great marketer – you just need to find a patient person who will help you roll your message out your way and stop you listening to the crap most of those "pointy-toed business coaches" deal out of textbooks.

When Jay Conrad Levinson came to Australia, I got to queue up and say hello.  When he kissed my hand it made the wait worthwhile!