Coaching For Success
Posts tagged Successful Business
3 Tips to Help Your Internet Marketing Goals
Jul 21st
'The Chair Principle'
Like all new skills when you start off doing marketing whether online or off it is difficult to do. There is always a learning curve, which sometimes can feel so steep that you will never conquer it.
Many new online business owners start off by getting information from anyone of a numerous and growing source for guidance ‘a guru’ and some of the information is good and some bad, some expensive some cheap like most things, however sometimes doing this might not be the answer they were looking for as many people seem to spend more money, time and effort in what I call fix it plans that concentrating on the real reason they got into business in the first place.
This constant struggle to get this part of their business right leaves many new business owners seriously out of pocket and yo-yoing between the latest big product to do X (I am guilty here also 
). So I thought I would give a few quick tips to get off the treadmill, the bandwagon and on the road to recovery.
1. Don’t get distracted
This is a biggy as many people are distracted by the flashy sales patter and the glitz and glam, the promise of an amazing product, which will give them the ultimate way to do X (sound familiar), that’s because it is.
If I said to you now go to any search engine and type in Internet marketing products; millions, if not billions of results come back – why? Because for those who get into this and do it well there is lots of money to be made at the expense of your inexperience and mine.
Do not get me wrong some of these products are good, some bad and some darn right ugly. But this is not the problem, the real problem is with each product there will be a different slant on how to do your internet marketing and with that comes the downside of distraction, confusion, dismay and ineffectiveness to make, choices or get anything worthwhile done so success if any is extremely limited.
To be successful in marketing yourself, your business etc online you need to pick one methodology and stick to it as though your life depends on it and to an extent it does – your livelihood depends on it, your peace of mind and the ability to stay motivated all depend on not getting distracted.
If you put all your efforts into just that one product for internet marketing you are far more likely to succeed with it and see good results.
2. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
Now I know you all know this saying and it is true, try to think of what I call the chair principle – a chair has four legs and these legs make the chair study to sit on, if the chair has less than four legs it becomes unstable and you are more likely to fall down. Business is like a chair the four legs makes a better seat.
Not everything you do will be a success many things you do will not work or will fall over, Thomas Edison is famed with stating that I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. He had many failures on the way to success what he kept in mind was a single process which he continued to use and adapt till he found the right way to make it work for him and this is what you need to do.
What you need to do is use that product on more than one online vehicle to see which one will give you the success and money you had hoped for, it is okay to have more than one website to try to achieve your goal, if one does not work get rid of it try another but use the same product throughout. This is better than trying to make your business chair with one leg?
3. Never Give Up!
More often than not things will seem as though they will never workout the way you planned them, things go wrong, people become tiresome and Murphy’s kicks in at this point you may feel like jacking it all in and this is the time when I recommend you take a deep breath or a day off if necessary to get your mind right and start again.
Maybe the initial product you choose does not work for your product or service then try a different one but only if you know you have fallowed it to the letter and tried it fully because otherwise you’re back at tip number one again.
I leave you with two Edison quotes to feed your mind and soul:
‘Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration’
‘Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up’
Good luck with your Internet marketing efforts.
Marketing Strategies Part Two
Jun 17th
Marketing Planning
In part one we discussed the different between what business owners percieve customers want and what potential clients want and need this was a case or product/service V people/brand allure. I discussed why people/ brand allure was a natural winning combination for any business and hopeful gave you some food for thought in changing the strategy you maybe using by looking at whether your business was inline with customers wants and needs. Today I want to look briefly at the process you need to follow to plan an effective marketing strategy for your business.
The objective of your marketing plan is to grab the customer and retain them for as long as possible, this is easier said than done, however following a step-by-step approach can guide you in the right direction. Below I have broadly set out a marketing plan.
1. Define business objective – You would be amazed at how many business owners we at The Internet Business Coach speak to who just can not define the objective of their business (Note: STOP! if this is you before continuing to read do this). How can you approach a potential customer if you cannot answer this. Your objective/s need to be short and succinct – if you can not do it in 100 words or less something is wrong and you need to rethink!
2. Establish market environment variables like competitors, customers’ behaviour. If you never study the competition, your business stands to lose, ask yourself if they are more successful than you what is it that they are doing that you may not be doing or getting right, what brand allure are they using to attract customers, how and most importantly where are they marketing? Is their marketing targetted at specific groups? All of the answers to these questions can help you overcome any current issues you have with gaining new business. Customer behaviuor is very important and as mentioned yesterday customers do not buy products/service but people and brand.
3. Define your market and customer profile. – to define your market you must first define your customer profile, i.e. where are they,? what is their key problem? then you can look at the market, where can you find them?, how do you reach them and so on.
4. Define your positioning, branding, pricing and promoting strategies – We discussed your positioning and marketing brand in part one and will discuss in more detail pricing and means of promotion in part three.
5. Establish an implementation plan. – At this stage you have already done most of the true hard work and now you need to think about how you use all of the data you collated to implement and execute your marketing plan of action. This in itself is no easy feat and if planned incorrectly can cost you time and lost money. Take time to write this down look at the time period over which this specific plan will be implemented and how this will get done i.e. your marketing mix.
6. Allocate financial and human resources. – The key here is to ask yourself how much of this can I do myself, what do I really know and could someone else do it better. If you know in your heart that you cannoot give this task X hours per week/month of undivided attention because your business demands are great or you simple do not know enough or the learning curve for you will be to steep then you really need to allocate enough money to your marketing campaign to cover outside help and the acual marketing itself ‘ it is better to plan to cover this cost in your product/service sale price then to try to do everything and end up doing nothing or half doing it where you ultimately end up with no new business and financial loses.
7. Identify the metrics for plan evaluation. – Basically this is a fancy way of saying what method/s you will use to monitor your plan and by what will you measure it i.e. collection of data, resources, schedule, quality, scope and problems. Keep reading the posts on this blog for how to do this.
8. Implement the plan. the D-Day of your hardwork is finally here in the words of Nike’ Just Do IT’.
9. Evaluate its effectiveness based on the set metrics – Now you are at the stage of checking to see if what you thought was going to happen and if not why not and how to change it, if it did go according to plan, how to contniue to do it or get potentially better results.
10. Define opportunities for long-term market development on the basis of the results. – This one speaks for itself, if it did not work well tweak, if it did rinse and repeat. In part three we will look at online and offline marketing, see you then. If you like this article and wish to republish it please leave it intact crediting it with a do follow link back to http://www.theinternetbusinesscoach.co.uk/blog
