Which Critical Drivers Will Create the RIGHT KIND of Results for Your Business This Year?

Whether you want to grow your business larger or keep it the size it is now, your goal should always be to generate more profit from the revenue you bring in—and to find other low-cost, minimal-effort income streams that can bring in additional profits for you.

In every business, there is a checklist of goals and targets that—when reached, surpassed and improved upon—continually drives revenue into the business and drives up profits.

We call these targets “critical drivers.”

To an insurance agent, critical drivers might be “number of cross-sells per customer” or “revenue per agent” or “amount required to trigger bonuses and overrides.”  For retailers, a critical driver may be “revenue per square foot.”

But from a marketing standpoint, the critical drivers of any business are things like number of new leads, response rate, number of unique website visitors, cart conversions, open rate, and more.  In this issue of the Revenue Report newsletter, I want to inspire you to identify, track, measure and meet the critical marketing drivers of your business.

The First Question to Ask: Are You Minding Your Metrics?

In every small business, there are “key profitability indicators”—information you need to know in order to decide if a particular income-generation activity is profitable and therefore worth continuing, expanding, or canceling altogether.

You can only get this information via regular reports produced from systems and procedures that you set up to give you that information.  With this sort of system, you can tell immediately whether a certain marketing campaign worked, whether your sales scripts are working, if it’s better to bundle a product package together using three items or six items, whether your emails are being opened and acted upon, and so on.  (An example of a helpful system that gives you data is Google Analytics, linked to your website so it will automatically deliver data to you. An example of a procedure are weekly reports from the Sales Department detailing number of leads generated, contacted and converted.)

Critical drivers are those numbers that give you an instant snapshot of whether your income generation efforts are working — or need to be improved. When you manage your business against these critical drivers, your sole focus becomes tracking them, improving upon them, and motivating your staff to surpass them.

Five Easy Measurements That Provide Information on Critical Drivers

While it does take some work to set-up measuring methods, the pay-off is enormous in terms of information you’ll gather which can help you shape your future marketing campaigns — and manage your staff to meet and surpass critical drivers.  Here are the five most important measurements you’ll need to track:

1. Monitoring Leads, New Customers and Sales by Product or Product Bundle—Even if you monitor no other numbers in your business, you must at least track the number of leads you bring in, the number of new customers you produce and the number of sales you get paid for—week by week.

2. Gathering Key Information from Your Website—Google Analytics, a free service, can help you easily gather important data in just minutes, including:  web traffic, opt-ins at your home page, cart conversions (sales through your shopping cart), and cart abandons (visitors who begin a purchase but do not complete it).

3. Calculating Response Rates and Conversion Rates by Marketing Campaign—In order to calculate response rates for each individual marketing campaign you run—a display advertisement, a teleseminar, or an insert in someone else’s shipping carton, for instance—you’ll need to know which promotional campaign each response comes from.  It’s easy to add a tracking code on the coupon, use a unique toll-free (800) number for each campaign (that’s captured by your phone staff), or have your inbound salespeople or in-store clerks simply ask the prospect how they heard about you.  (These are strategies for offline prospecting campaigns.  All response tracking at your website is done by your shopping cart software.) Once you know where leads are coming from, you can begin to calculate the response rate, return on expenditure and other critical information.

4. Measuring the Results of Your Email Marketing—Once you are capturing email addresses from visitors to your website, you’ll want to promote future products and services to those names via email.  To become a master email marketer, start tracking the numbers related to your list along with the rate at which your opt-ins open and act upon their emails. Regularly measure your list size, open rate of emails sent, click rate (which means clicking a link in your email to view an offer at a webpage), and bounce rate (emails returned to you due to bad addresses).

5. Tracking Your Telemarketing Results—If you sell expensive products or services and use salespeople to follow-up with leads generated from your prospecting campaigns, you likely know already that monitoring these salespeople is the key to increasing sales.  Continually measure: (1) Leads available to call, (2) leads reached, (3) leads sold into a primary product offer, (4) leads downsold into a less expensive package, and (5) leads not closed into any purchase.

Start Measuring Just One Critical Driver

Choose at least one of the key indicators above and set-up a method for measuring it—whether that method is paper reports your salespeople complete OR Google Analytics tied to your website OR another choice of the five measurements above.

Of course, “Managing Against Critical Drivers” is just one of the business-building topics that I’ve included in my Income:Series of planned-for-you monthly marketing campaigns. Others in the series include finding new customers, setting up your Internet Selling System (instead of just a brochure website), social media marketing, email campaigns, quarterly planning… plus so much more.  These are the exact sequence of campaigns that I would execute for you if your company were a high-end client of mine.

Click here to get started with “Finding New Customers”—your first month—at the introductory price of just $3.95.

Until next week,

Janet Switzer

P.S. If you need more than just a monthly campaign…if you literally want to transform your small business into a well-managed cash-flow machine…I’ve recently developed a packaged course that will help you easily execute pre-scheduled marketing campaigns, run advertising that makes the phone ring, implement sales strategies that convert prospective customers to cash-paying buyers and more.  This step-by-step training course helps you put in place those systems that reliably generate cash-flow.

You can even “hand off” the work of establishing these systems to your staff or virtual assistant since the course includes complete tutorials, sample promotional pieces, a dealmaking grid for your staff, easy-to-follow worksheets to help you plan, even hiring scripts for bringing different professionals into your business who can be responsible for bringing in the cash.

For full details and to immediately get your copy of this ground-breaking course, click here.

Before the holidays, I offered to spend 90 days helping you establish those business systems that are specifically designed to bring in the cash.

As your Income Advisor, I want to help you install 12 different systems—just like your accounting system, payment system and inventory system—that will become part of the fundamental underpinnings of your well run, efficiently managed business.

For most businesses, getting new customers is their #1 priority, which is why I discussed how to establish a simple offline Prospecting and Lead-Generation System in the first post in this series.

And System #2: Customer Relationship Marketing is here.

Today, I want to help you establish System #3: Your Online Prospecting Platform and Website Marketing Path

Most business owners understand the need for a website, but all too few understand what a website is really supposed to do. Your website is a delivery vehicle for your message, just like newspaper ads, postcards, telemarketing or direct-mail packages. And like those other devices, the Internet has its own checklist of requirements you must follow to make any campaign a success.

Your website must convince visitors to provide their name, email address and other identifying information in order to access a free buyer’s guide, online tutorial, downloadable checklist, subscription to valuable information, evaluation, self-audit or other instant giveaway that has value. The format of your giveaway item doesn’t matter—whether PDF, audio MP3 or other format—just as long as it can be easily opened, read, listened to, viewed or otherwise used by the people who opt-in at your site to get it.

It should be downloadable at your website to keep your delivery costs at zero. And it must be compelling.

These days, convincing visitors to opt-in isn’t as easy as it used to be—mainly because registrants know they’ll be emailed advertisements and promotions later. You need to provide a tangible benefit in return. Even giving things away for free requires a persuasive and specific offer. “We have great prices!” is not an offer. Similarly, “27 years in business!” is not an offer. And “Sign up for our newsletter” has not worked as an offer for at least a few years.

An easy way to create a compelling offer is to start with a persuasive headline about the giveaway item they’ll be downloading for free. Then, using direct-response style marketing language, describe the actual item they’ll receive, detail the benefits of instantly downloading it, and tell why you’re providing it free. Finally, this offer on your homepage should close with a simple opt-in form and give visitors exact instructions for completing the form—along with your promise that they’ll receive their information instantly.

Once visitors fill in the form and hit the “Submit” button, two things should happen: (1) Their contact information should be collected into a database linked to the opt-in form, and (2) Visitors should be taken to a simple thank-you page that confirms they’ve opted in successfully and tells them how to download the free giveaway item.

At the same time your visitor is accessing the free giveaway, your database should immediately begin delivering every 2-3 days (for a fixed period of time) a series of pre-written generic messages. Within these messages should be other helpful information. Then, starting with the 5th or 6th message, they should contain marketing copy about the first product or service you plan to sell to your visitors who opted-in. Later, you can offer other products, more services, and new offerings.

Taking visitors through a compelling opt-in on the homepage, selling them an easy-to-buy first purchase a few webpages later, following up with other compelling offers on subsequent webpages, and reconnecting via a logical series of emailed offers days and weeks later is called a marketing path.

What are the steps for setting up YOUR Internet prospecting system (or adding one to your current website)?

Five Easy Steps…With Tremendous Long-Term Pay-Off

Building a customized Internet selling infrastructure that’s actually designed to capture leads—then migrate them to a first sale—is simple when you consider there are really only five steps:

Step 1: Draw on paper a visual marketing path for your website that starts with an opt-in offer, then migrates visitors to a sales letter, then upsells them on other products. Your drawing will probably look like this one. You’ll be creating the webpages you need from your drawing.

Step 2: Sign up for a shopping-cart service which not only captures visitor data via opt-ins, but also facilitates sales of both your entry-level and advanced products and services. (Click here for my favorite, economical shopping cart service.)

Step 3: Build your webpages and link their featured opt-in forms and products for sale to your shopping cart’s name-capture and buyer’s databases.

Step 4: Write a series of emails that can be programmed and automatically sent by the shopping cart to visitors who opt-in at your site. This re-captures the interest of visitors who leave without buying. (To receive my pre-programmed series of Instant Income autoresponder emails, opt-in here.)

Step 5: Eventually, you’ll also want to create an affiliate recruitment and marketing system — including an affiliate recruitment webpage, affiliate registration function, online affiliate support center, and affiliate marketing tools — all managed by the shopping cart and designed to convince other list owners, website owners, bloggers, and endorsers to promote your goods and services to their customers through links at their site and emails to their list.

Executing the above steps is, admittedly, a lot of work. But it’s also worth it to you in increased lead-generation and revenue for your business. Plus, once this aspect of your website is operational, you can drive Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media followers to your site and send them through a path that prompts them to BUY.

This Week’s Homework Assignment

Begin the process by doing three things:

1. Draw your marketing path on paper (see the sample above).
2. Determine what your opt-in offer will be whether a free report, buyer’s guide, online tutorial, downloadable checklist, subscription to valuable information, evaluation, self-audit or other instant giveaway that has value.
3. Recruit a webmaster or HTML programmer to build the new webpages you need. You don’t have to hire an expensive graphic designer—in fact, because they’re usually not marketers, designers are notorious for adding unnecessarily elaborate elements that actually detract from the “compellingness” of the offer on the page.

Of course, if you need step-by-step guidance in developing your online prospecting platform and website marketing path, click below to get my comprehensive Internet marketing plan designed to give you the soup-to-nuts task list and tutorials for converting your website into one that resolutely migrates visitors from opting-in to buying an entry-level product or service to buying even more expensive products and services later.

With the right kinds of offers and marketing path at your website, your website can turn from a mere “brochure site” into a true money-maker for your business—regardless of whether you’re a consultant, service provider, retailer or other kind of bricks-and-mortar business owner.

Of course, this 59-page Internet marketing plan is in addition to what you’ll receive every month from my new subscription service which delivers planned-for-you marketing campaigns (at a very low cost) to help you execute revenue-producing campaigns, new-customer-acquisition strategies, media activity, customer relationship campaigns and more.

Click: http://www.instantincome.com/marketing-plan/?page_id=1229

These campaigns are easy to integrate into your business… are instantly actionable without a lot of advance work… and require just a few hours (or less) to review, understand and execute (either by yourself or by a staff person)…

Plus, they’re planned for you and delivered in exacting detail.

They can be yours every month for less than the cost of lunch at your favorite restaurant or 7 minutes on the phone with an accountant or attorney.

Click below to get started with “Finding New Customers”—your first month—at the introductory price of just $3.95. I’ll be back next week with details about the next Income System.

http://www.instantincome.com/marketing-plan/?page_id=1229

Until next week,

Janet Switzer
Editor, Instant Income Revenue Report

photo credit: SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent)

Overcoming Unpredictable Revenue and Boosting Stagnate Business Growth

System #2: Marketing to Your Existing Customers…

I want to help you install systems—just like your accounting system, payment system and inventory system—that will become part of the fundamental underpinnings of your well run, efficiently managed business.

For most businesses, getting new customers is their #1 priority, which is why I discussed how to establish a simple Prospecting and Lead-Generation System in the first module in this series.

Today, I want to help you establish System #2:  CRM and Marketing to Past Buyers.

CRM is the acronym we marketers use to say “Customer Relationship Management”. It’s also sometimes used to denote software applications that capture, store and communicate with customers in a database.

Why is managing the relationship with past buyers important?

Because you can often make more profit from existing customers (than from constantly bringing in new ones) simply because there is no cost to acquire that new customer. The entire purchase amount from that customer goes solely to (1) the cost of delivering the product or service, (2) the low cost of sending an email or letter to that customer to alert them to a unique offer, and (3) your profit.

What’s the checklist of tasks for setting up a CRM system and marketing to your past buyers?

Step One: Capture Your Customers’ Names

Whether you capture names, addresses and phone numbers from customer checks…or get email addresses from a free drawing card at your register… or obtain complete contact details from a shopping cart function at your website, capturing information about your customers is a necessity if you plan to do “relationship marketing.”

Here are some options for capturing and storing these names for later use:

* Offline databases like Salesforce, Goldmine, Microsoft Access, Filemaker
* Online CRM systems such as 1ShoppingCart.com, Infusionsoft, Aweber.com

Step Two: Plan Regular Communications and Unique Offers for Customers

Part of managing the relationship with customers whose names you capture is to regularly communicate with them—and extend unique offers developed specifically for them. At the very least, you should give them advance notice of a sale or an advance opportunity to purchase unique items.

What kinds of communications and offers work with customers?

• Reactivation Offers: Unique pricing or product bundles that encourage past buyers to start buying again.

• Continuity Offers: Converting one-time buyers into ongoing customers who receive a regular delivery of goods or services for a fixed price…by the month, quarter or year.

• Upsell Offers: Special pricing on additional goods and services extended to customers in your store or while they are purchasing online.

• Customer-Only Offers: Special sale days, unique pricing or financing options, advance notice of sales, opportunity to buy from a limited quantity of premium goods, and other offers extended only to past buyers.

Step Three: Create a Calendar of These Communications and Offers

The key to establishing System #2 is to schedule a calendar of regular communications with past buyers and current customers. Just like last week’s calendar of new-customer acquisition campaigns, marketing to people who have already purchased from you is imperative.

Schedule the “drop date” of your email, postal letter, phone call or voicemail broadcast, then count back the number of days or weeks you need in order to prepare that campaign. Delegate all tasks to your employees or outsource vendors. Require them to meet stated deadlines.

This Week’s Homework Assignment

Assuming that you started last week creating your one-year marketing calendar by scheduling NEW customer marketing campaigns, take time this week to add to that calendar all the special sales days and other campaigns you’ll create for EXISTING customers. Beware of overlapping dates, but most especially, be sure that past buyers are alerted to any sales or new-product releases BEFORE you advertise to prospects or the outside world.

Of course, if you need actual campaigns and step-by-step guidance in executing new-customer or existing-customer campaigns, click below to read about the Income:Series—a monthly service where I’ll send you highly detailed, in-depth, planned-for-you marketing campaigns at a very low cost.

Click here for details.

These campaigns are easy to integrate into your business… instantly actionable without a lot of advance work… and require just a few hours (or less) to review, understand and execute (either by yourself or by a staff person)…

They can be yours every month for less than the cost of lunch at your favorite restaurant–or for about what you’d pay to talk for just 7 minutes on the phone with an accountant or attorney.

Click below to get started with “New-Customer Acquisition Strategies”—your first month’s campaign—at the introductory price of just $3.95. I’ll be back next week with details about the next Income System in our 12-week series.

Click here to get started.

Until next time,

Janet Switzer
Editor, Instant Income Revenue Report

P.S. Have you established cash-generating systems in your business yet? Does your revenue get banked on a predictable basis? If not, you need to put in place the major systems that reliably bring in cash-flow. These systems will help you easily execute pre-scheduled marketing campaigns, run advertising that makes the phone ring, use sales strategies that convert prospective customers to cash-paying buyers, and more. Click here to read more about these systems and the step-by-step program for establishing them starting today. Then stay tuned for more advice, free reports and income-generation news from the Instant Income Revenue Report.

New 12-Week Series Dedicated to Finally Overcoming Unpredictable Cash Flow and Stagnate Business Growth

Spend the Next 90 Days (With My Help) Establishing Those Business Systems That Are Specifically Designed to Bring in the Cash…Predictably, Repeatedly and Easily

As business owners, we’re familiar with accounting systems, payment systems and inventory systems. Not only are these functions important, they’re also among the fundamental underpinnings of a well run, efficiently managed business.

And while most small businesses and consulting practices have these basic systems in place, unfortunately that’s often where the efficiency and management ends. Far more important areas of the business are run by gut instinct, with only random attention.

Spur-of-the-moment marketing… emergency sales efforts… an outdated website… lackluster new business development… these are the results of critical drivers that all too often go unplanned and unmanaged.

Yet marketing, sales, new business development and similar measures are the only business activities that actually bring in the cash.

Wouldn’t it be a relief to have pre-programmed, scientifically developed and intentionally planned systems (just like the ones that handle your accounting and inventory) looking after the cash-flow activities of your business?

Over the next 12 weeks, you CAN put these kinds of systems in place. And this newsletter is where you’ll find guidance on how to do it.

In fact, I’m offering to become your cash-flow strategist and Income Advisor.

Each week, I’ll detail one cash-flow system—and give you the steps for setting it up in your business. I’ll even give you a homework assignment to get started on the steps. You can delegate these steps to your staff… hire an outsource vendor to help you… do them yourself… or simply incorporate them into the existing functions of your business. It’s up to you.

What can you expect once these systems are in place?

• You’ll easily attract prospective customers and clients who want to spend money on the products and services you sell
• You’ll convert these prospects into eager buyers—now and in the future, as you present new offers
• You’ll know whether your prospecting and lead-generating efforts are working
• You’ll discover new distribution channels, ideal strategic alliances, and a whole new world of dealers and retail outlets for your products and services
• You’ll be on your way to becoming a leading authority in your field—interviewed by the press and written about in important trade publications
• You’ll identify the ideal employees, vendors, and managers who are committed to making you money
• You’ll have a website that’s ready to sell products and services to qualified visitors

You can expect all this and so much more over the next 12 weeks from the Instant Income Revenue Report.

Ready to get started with the most important system of all?

Your Prospecting and Lead Generating System:
Bringing In the Customers Who Bring In the Cash

Imagine how much easier it would be to make income whenever you want—if you had thousands of potential buyers just waiting to hear about your next product or service offer.

Think how easy it would be for your sales force to generate new customers—if you had a ready list of interested parties who had already been educated about the benefits of doing business with you.

Imagine sending an email, mailing a letter, or making a phone call to thousands of likely buyers—then sitting back while dozens or hundreds of orders flood into your business.

Maintaining a ready reserve of future buyers is what prospecting—or lead generating—is all about. When you set up a system that constantly drives new names into your business and educates those people about your product or service, your future effort of turning these prospects into buyers becomes so much easier.

Additionally, immediate sales are a predictable by-product of all prospecting campaigns.

The Checklist for Setting Up a Prospecting System in Your Business

To begin with, you should know that there are actually two different prospecting systems—offline and online. This makes sense since generating leads on the Internet requires unique technology and different types of methods for broadcasting your message.

This week, let’s start with your Offline Prospecting System.

While there’s some work involved with setting up an offline prospecting system, the steps are fairly simple.

1. Schedule major company events on your marketing calendar.

Whether you are a solo consultant, manufacturer, retailer or other type of business, you have “events” that you can anticipate such as trade shows, the time when your new seasonal inventory will arrive, annual sales, holiday shopping days, speaking engagements, and so on.

Since you know you must do marketing around these events, make it easy on yourself by starting a calendar where you can schedule each “event” and the related marketing campaign you’ll execute.

2. On separate paper, list the products or services your business sells.

This is a fairly simple process, however, a few words of advice are in order.

First, if the products or services you sell are large and expensive and you can identify them by name or model number, you should have separate marketing activity for each of these items.

However, if you are a retailer with hundreds or thousands of smaller items, consider bundling several of them together to create a seasonal kit or other package you can market with a unique offer.

If you own another type of business that doesn’t have fixed product and service offerings — such as a consulting practice, doctor’s office or day spa — why not create fixed product and service bundles such as a one-hour consultation plus written tutorials… or an initial assessment of a client’s needs… a bundle of five aromatherapy massages and detox sessions for summer rejuvenation… or other “packages” you create.

3. Create specific offers for each product or service.

Once you have identified each product, service or bundle, begin creating offers for each. These offers will be the major theme behind each marketing campaign you’ll plot out on your annual calendar. Here are a few examples:

• Winter boat cleaning and storage — just $499 if you book by November 1st.
• Holiday gift baskets at 20% off when your company orders by September 30th.
• Retool your company’s website during the “down days” of summer.
• Every customer gets our “trade show special” even if you can’t attend Widget Expo.
• New Year, New You: January weight-loss program with Dr. Smith-Jones.
• 2012 Strategic Planning: We’ve set aside October to transform your bank.

You can read more about offers in this recent blog article.

4. Schedule the “drop date” of each offer in relation to the major company events on your calendar.

When you know the dates of each major “event” in your business — even if they are sales or other events that you create in order to better market your products and services — you can easily determine a fixed date when you’ll mail the sales letter, run the newspaper ad, start making telephone calls, initiate the voicemail broadcast, and execute other offline marketing activities.

5. Plot out the complete campaign on your calendar.

The drop date in #4 above is merely the culmination of all your preparation efforts. Every marketing campaign takes advance planning which you should also schedule on your calendar.

For instance, trade shows require about 16 weeks of lead time from the day you reserve your exhibit booth… to the day you send an advance invitation to registered attendees… to the actual dates of the show… to the date you set to begin following up with visitors to your booth.

Other campaigns also take time:

• Three weeks for a lettershop to print, process and mail a sales letter.
• One week to prepare scripts and train salespeople for telemarketing.
• About six weeks to write and print a new two-step literature package. (More here.)
• Ten to twelve weeks to reserve and produce a magazine advertisement.

6. Plan all follow-up marketing to the leads generated from each campaign.

Whether you plan to make a telephone call to any leads generated or send them a follow-up literature package or product sample — or handle these non-buyer leads in any other way — you must plan in advance what your response will be.

All marketing — whether online or offline — generates a certain number of prospects who do not purchase immediately. Plan in advance (as part of the planning of each marketing campaign) how you’ll follow-up with these potential customers to convert them into buyers.

THIS WEEK’S HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT:

You can get started with a simple week-by-week calendar that helps you plot out your company’s major events and the individual tasks required to run marketing campaigns related to those events.

If you would like your own copy of the calendar I use at my own company (complete with space for delegating tasks and keeping track of key profitability indicators), click here to read about the Instant Income Business Enhancement System.  It’s the in-depth, fully documented course I developed to help you establish cash-generation systems in your business.  The included Cash-Flow Calendar helps you plan and execute, plus it’s contained in a handsome zippered portfolio you can keep right on your desk.

Until next time,

Janet Switzer

photo credit: s_falkow

Going Global With Your Business Can Add Substantial Revenues You Never Knew Were Available

Now It’s Easier Than Ever to Get Into Relationship With People Who Are Market-Influencers Overseas

I’ll never forget the first month my business sold products and services on the Internet. Suddenly, we got calls, customers, and cash from business owners as far away as Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Israel, Dubai, Ireland and Argentina. Years later, the Revenue Report newsletter and free downloadable Instant Income reports are read by businesspeople in more than 80 countries–with product sales that nearly match that worldwide reach.

It occurred to me that your business, too, could benefit from “going global.” So I’ve dedicated this issue of the Revenue Report to showing you how to get started connecting to customers around the world.

Global Strategy #1: Decide if your product or service can be used, sold and shipped worldwide– and whether buyers in other countries will need it or want it. If you own a business, you should know that business knowledge, consulting services and advice are some of the most valuable and most exportable commodities Americans have. Take a look at the consulting work you do.

Are there people in other countries that need your type of expertise? How might you advertise it, sell it, and deliver it?

If you produce a unique, non-commodity product, can it be used and enjoyed by people overseas with different lifestyles, infrastructures, electrical systems, languages, monetary or tax systems, and other differences? If not, could you find someone to “localize” your product (or expertise) for foreign markets?

Global Strategy #2: Launch a website that “speaks” to the world. When you launch a website, you automatically become visible to the world. And if you want to capture business from those other 190+ countries, you’ll need to “speak” about your product or service in a way that’s compelling and meaningful to all–not just your local or national market.

What can you do to “globalize” your website?

You can add special pages on how to use or enjoy your products and services if a buyer is from overseas. Of course, it’s not just special pages that you’ll need, but language is important, too. Most global buyers–even if they speak excellent English–do not use contractions (like it’s, you’re and don’t). And most have no idea what you are talking about when you use idioms such as “slam dunk” or “drop of a hat.”

Be sure to watch the testimonials, examples and case studies you feature in your marketing copy. And add tools such as clickable currency converters, Babel Fish webpage translation, and JavaScript that allows website visitors to click and adjust text size to fit their (often smaller) monitors.

Global Strategy #3: Pro-actively seek out dealers, partners, distributors, licensees and other relationships with market influencers in foreign countries. If you sell information products or consulting, start with English-speaking countries and broaden your search from there. Do a Google search for companies that are synergistic with what you have to offer.

If you sell other services that can be “delivered” overseas–or a product that can be easily shipped–start looking for companies who already sell to their own customers a product or service for which you might become an add-on.

Many retailers and service providers prefer not to provide every possible “extra” that might be necessary to a customer–either because there isn’t a big enough return on the training and equipment necessary or because they could never develop the expertise required to perform the service properly. That’s where you can be of great help to such a retailer or service provider–either on a referral, recommended or sub-contracted basis.

An easy way to start finding joint-venture partners you can add onto is to make a list of every company in foreign countries whose customers would be perfect prospects to buy your product or service. Then, make a list of all the products or services that company sells–and which of your products or services would be a perfect add-on for each.

Add contact information to your list and regularly update or add to it. Then start contacting these companies, one by one. Use the telephone and develop a script ahead of time to help you stay focused. Assure yourself each time you call that you are speaking with the actual decision-maker. Don’t stop until you speak to that person.

In the beginning, offer to send samples or literature they can read to see how your product or service enhances their product lines or service offerings (and their revenues).

And finally…

Global Strategy #4: Maintain a global focus. Recently, I spent three days sharing ideas and strategies with my good friend, Dr. Paula Fellingham. In just three years’ time, she built one of the fastest-growing seminar companies in the world–holding over 370 women’s empowerment events in 152 countries so far this year. Yet rarely does she bring her successful formula to the United States. She’s found that greater enthusiasm and attendance levels can be found outside North America, where her information and training is eagerly received by buyers.

Though her programs are specifically designed for women, here’s the lesson all of us can learn from Paula: She didn’t start her company in the United States, then move outward. She focused on building a global company which also happens to do business in her home country (the United States). In fact, you can take a look at her market reach here.

Her next event in the U.S. is the Global Women’s Summit in Los Angeles, where women from all over the world will be flying in to hear speakers like mega-bestselling author Marianne Williamson, MIT Fellow and globalization expert Dr. Taira Koybaeva, experiential-learning pioneer and award-winning humanitarian DC Cordova and many other women thought leaders. It’s being held October 28-29 and I strongly urge you to clear your calendar for this extraordinary event (and let other women business colleagues know about it, too).

In fact, it’s one way to start making connections with powerful women market-influencers from around the world. I, too, will be presenting at this incredible global event. You can read more about it here (and attend for a incredibly low 2-day ticket price).

Going global requires a dedicated strategy and a take-action mindset.

If you’re a woman business owner, I urge you to move everything out of the way to be in Los Angeles October 28-29. It’s your most immediate chance to start taking your company global–and develop an all-important global business mindset.

Until next time,

Janet Switzer
Editor, Instant Income Revenue Report

photo credit: garryknight

If Only 30% of Your Prospects Are Buying,
Do You Know What the Other 70% Are Doing?

Regularly Measuring and Monitoring Can Help You Immediately Pinpoint
What to Do Differently with Your Marketing

Many business owners call my company for help with solving a particular problem with their marketing. Sometimes it’s a low response rate from their direct-mail campaigns. At other times, their website’s homepage doesn’t capture and convert enough visitors into buyers. Still others see lots of foot traffic in their store, but don’t see a lot of sales rung up at their cash register.

But interestingly, very few of them have working knowledge about the cause of the problem — and fewer still know exactly what the problem is.

More alarming is that most are prepared to spend lots of money fixing an underlying “cause” that doesn’t actually exist.

Case in point: One of our clients, a well-known alternative healthcare company with licensees and trained practitioners around the world, said they “knew” that only 30% of visitors to their homepage were buying the entry-level product offered there. They had enough analytical tools in place to measure the number of visitors and the number of sales. But what they hadn’t looked at (we did) was what the remaining 70% of visitors were doing.

As it turns out, 70% of all their website visitors were clicking away from the home page (where there was an offer to buy something) and going to the Free Stuff page (where there wasn’t an offer).

So rather than charge our client tons of money to bring in more traffic (so that 30% of them could continue to buy), our solution to the “problem” was quite simple: Add a special offer for an entry-level product to the Free Stuff page which 70% of existing visitors were already viewing.

Their sales skyrocketed.

And while this solution might seem like pure common sense, sometimes it’s difficult to see the complete picture — especially when you don’t have measuring tools in place to compile numbers about your marketing activity.

Can You Handle the Truth About Your Business?

When you start measuring the results of your marketing activity, the truth will jump out at you. It may be that your salespeople aren’t selling as much as you would like because they need a written script that presents the key benefits. Or perhaps your Internet sales are low — not because of a poor conversion rate — but simply because of low traffic.

If you’ve ever felt like your marketing activity keeps you going through the motions without anything substantial to show for it, starting to compile your numbers will interrupt this pattern.

Tracking your metrics — or statistics — will tell you what’s really going on with your marketing. And tracking these numbers is easier than you think.

The Secret to Establishing a Simple Metrics Reporting System

Setting up a measuring-and-reporting system is easy. Making sure you regularly get the numbers you need — and that they’re reported correctly and objectively — takes some planning. Here are six things you can do in the next day or two to start the process:

1. 1. Assign the responsibility to one unbiased employee. This person (even if it’s you) will be responsible for compiling all data from every department into a simple summary sheet on the same day every week. This person doesn’t need to be a marketing, sales or e-commerce employee — in fact, it’s better if they’re totally outside these departments (and therefore unbiased).
2. 2. At first, ask other departments to compile each other’s data. While this may sound counter-intuitive (why would salespeople compile the marketing data?), it actually makes sense to have people compiling data whose jobs depend on improving results in another department. For instance, if the marketing department is generating fewer and fewer leads every week, that decrease impacts the number of leads that salespeople have to talk to. The salesperson handling the metrics will not only make sure the numbers are 100% accurate, but will likely start a discussion about how lead-generation can be improved.
3. 3. Use Google Analytics for free. Major companies spend tons of money to measure the same website data that Google’s online analytics tool will measure for free. In fact, it’s the #1 most used analytic tool in the world. Because Google sells pay-per-click advertising, they have a vested interest in helping people measure and improve their online advertising. You can benefit from this interest. To set up Google Analytics and start measuring what’s going on at your website, simply visit https://www.google.com/analytics/provision and click on the Sign Up button. Within minutes, you’ll be able to: (1) track how visitors migrate from page to page through your site, (2) view the source of referrals to your site, and (3) see how well visitors make it through a conversion process such as purchasing an item or signing up for a newsletter. It’s an incredible free resource.
4. 4. Create a phone log for call-in prospects. If your marketing creates phone calls to your business, one of the simplest metrics to measure is how many calls you receive per day and the marketing campaign or device that prompted them to call. Unfortunately, because most business owners don’t emphasize the importance of the data, employees often slack off in keeping these records. To make it simple for everyone, make a chart and put it on a clipboard. You can also use this as a data-capture tool if you don’t have a database yet for entering the names of callers. On the clipboard chart, measure the number of calls per day (or hour), what they were calling about, which marketing piece prompted them to call (if any), and to whom the caller was routed for help.
5. 5. Create a similar log for foot traffic to your store. Even if you have point-of-sale software in your cash register that asks for zip code or other details, you should still be measuring what happens with the people who DON’T buy anything. In fact, that’s even more important to know so you can improve upon your sales close rates in your store. Measure number of visitors, what prompted them to come into your store, whether they bought and, if not, why not. Much of this data depends upon sales clerks accurately recording the data — something which won’t happen unless they’re assured that it’s only for improvement purposes, not job performance ratings. In fact, you could make the clipboard reporting totally anonymous — leaving off entirely the name of the clerk who helped the prospective customer.
6. 6. Keep it simple. You won’t get any numbers if you complicate the process and make it overly time-consuming. Don’t ask for too much information unless it’s truly pertinent to your marketing effort. (Complicated reporting is best hired out to third party companies who provide this service.) Another way to simplify the process is to make sure that reporting procedures are in place before you run a promotion.

Once You Have the Numbers, Take Time to Determine What the Problems Really Are

Once you compile the data, start looking for trends — especially decreases in activity such as lower traffic or poor sales. Focus on determining what you can do to change those minuses into plus signs for your business.

While it’s often difficult to get past what’s not happening in order to determine what could be done to improve your revenue, asking questions like the following will help you read between the lines and determine where you really need to make changes or improvements.

• If only a small percentage of prospects are buying, what are the non-buyers doing, saying or revealing?
• When the weekly numbers suddenly jump or plummet, what’s the cause of that extreme change?
• Could you choose one number that’s low and test another sales script, online offer or other marketing campaign to raise it?

Regularly monitoring your metrics could be one of the most revealing things you’ll do to upgrade your marketing efforts. Only when you get a true picture of your business can you stop the confusion around your marketing and institute changes that make sense.

Until next time,

Janet Switzer

photo credit: CanadianAEh

Honing Your 30-Second “Elevator Speech” Can Instantly Transform Your Marketing Message…

And Deliver a Huge Payoff in the Number of New Paying Customers You Get.

Though I’m no longer involved in Congressional campaigning as I was early in my career, I still watch with interest anytime our elected representatives in Washington, DC seem to be making a hash of “selling” something important to the American people.

Two weeks ago, the debt-ceiling debates in Congress were accompanied by the usual sideshow of television pundits, radio talk-show hosts, Congressional leaders, President Obama and thousands of others making lots of speeches… few of which clearly described the approaching default — or succinctly described a viable solution.

While I’ve never used this newsletter to make political statements (and I’m not now), there is a useful marketing lesson here.

In our fast-paced society, sound bites have become important — and making sure that your marketing message is clear, concise and compelling isn’t always easy. Take your own business, for instance. If you had just 30 seconds to communicate an offer, a telephone sales pitch, an in-store special or other marketing message…

Could you do it three sound bites or less?

This spoken message is often called an “elevator speech” — because you should be able to communicate your product’s benefits and sales proposition in the time it takes to ride the elevator with a potential prospect.

Let’s look at an example of what I mean — using the recent debt-ceiling debates as the background for a marketing message:

Soundbite #1: Since 1972, the U.S. Government has used an accounting method different from most businesses and households. It’s called “baseline budgeting.”

Soundbite #2: Baseline budgeting assumes that last year’s budget (the “baseline”) is approved — whether or not the Government has the money to pay for each line-item again and regardless of whether each line-item is further needed. Under current law, every budgeted item from last year is not only retained, it automatically receives a budget increase of 4% to 10%. This phenomenon has increased our national debt substantially.

Soundbite #3: Repealing the baseline-budgeting law and freezing all spending at current levels would result in a savings of trillions of dollars in future debt increases — without any cuts in current services.

While this particular elevator speech never happened — and baseline budgeting was not a major topic in the debt-ceiling debates — it makes for a good example of how to put together an effective 30-second marketing message.

What About Your Most Important Marketing Message?

Could you clearly state YOUR offer or marketing message in three sound bites or less? Here’s a formula to follow:

Soundbite #1: State an irrefutable fact or current reality.

Soundbite #2: Explain why that fact or reality is causing a problem.

Soundbite #3: Describe a product, service or other item you sell that can solve that problem. State an added benefit of your solution.

Once you know this formula, it’s fairly easy to hone the wording of your message for presentation in any situation — from a phone call to a television interview to a ride in an elevator with a potential prospect.

Let’s apply the soundbite equation again — this time to a small business instead of Congressional wrangling:

Soundbite #1: Supply chain mismanagement is the #1 problem for small manufacturers.

Soundbite #2: Mismanagement not only causes delayed delivery of components, it produces cost overruns due to forced idling of labor, delays in final job delivery and reduced plant efficiency from project delays and backups.

Soundbite #3: We sell X-FACTOR software, the manufacturing industry’s most powerful application for small manufacturers seeking to better manage their supply chain and communicate with suppliers. It even contains an inventory management module that syncs with your shipping, assembly and receiving departments to track incoming parts and count finished and shipped goods. And it’s a lot less expensive than major software packages which are typically written for big companies with multiple plants and multi-million dollar contracts.

Honing your message is one of the most important marketing activities you can accomplish. It can put you way above the competition — and even make you sound smarter than the United States Congress.

More power to the (marketing) people,

Janet Switzer
Editor, Instant Income Revenue Report

photo credit: Jitter Buffer

Here Are 5 Expenditures Designed Specifically to Bring Substantial Revenue Into Your Business.

As business owners, we always like to think that every dollar we spend on our business will somehow come back to us multiplied many times in the form of revenue and profits. But lately, I’ve talked to many business owners who don’t really know where to spend in this difficult economy. Or worse, they’re spending money on marketing schemes or website design or training programs that may not return any substantial income in the short or long term.

Spending money wisely is even more important today.

Take a typical $5,000 expenditure, for example. Back in 2007, a business owner might have spent $5,000 on an executive coaching program… flash video content for their website… traveling to an industry seminar… or something else.

But what if TODAY you have just $5,000 to spend — and you know it must be put to work substantially increasing your company’s monthly cash-flow. What should you spend it on?

Here are some proven strategies from my own client work:

Strategy #1: Build an Internet Selling System that will generate new customers and new leads for your salespeople to talk to.

Most small businesses have a brochure-style website. In other words, it’s filled with copy that’s all about the company, what they do, who they are, maybe a page with biographies of their key staff, even a picture of their offices or storefront. The website is not designed to solve visitors’ problems, compel them to call or walk into the business, or convince them to identify themselves as a prospective customer for future marketing.

But what if you had a true marketing-style website that attracted visitors (through Google and other search engines) with compelling copy aimed specifically at visitors and their problems? What if you offered solutions, featured testimonials of others who have benefited… and even gave away a free digitally downloadable report or other resource that would induce visitors to opt-in with their email address for future marketing? What if that website was not only designed to sell an entry-level product or service — but was also pre-programmed to send follow-up marketing emails to those website visitors who failed to buy on their first visit?

That would be a much better investment than spending $5,000 on beautiful graphics or videos or other gimmicks. In fact, it would guarantee that you’d generate leads for future marketing purposes — something that could catapult you ahead of your competitors… even if you have a local bricks-and-mortar business.

Most of my clients are excited by the idea of fundamentally changing the role their website plays in the business. But the #1 question I get after explaining the process is, “Great! Who can put that website together for me?”

Well, as a matter of fact… We can.

For $5,000, my own web team will build a lead-generation website for you, link it to the Internet’s most popular shopping cart service, program your autoresponders, set up your affiliate management system, and program delivery of an entry-level product (or service voucher). Simply provide us with the copy we need (we’ll even give you the checklist of the 13 items required), and within 6 weeks your Internet system will be up and running — and ready to generate income and sales leads for you. (See details below for scheduling a call with me about this unique service.)

Of course, once your Internet Selling System is launched, it makes sense to pursue getting onto Page One of Google and driving qualified traffic to your site. For that service, we’ve worked with (and you should, too) one of Inc. Magazine’s Fastest Growing Companies — Increase Visibility, the industry leader in search-engine optimization and search marketing. They’ll even tune-up your current website to attract hundreds of prospective new customers you never reached before. Click here for information… they’ll be happy to help you.

Strategy #2: Mail a sales letter that sells an expensive consulting package or other service.

Most businesses and consultants know exactly what products and services they would have to sell in order to generate $5,000 in revenue for the company. Well, what if you could spend $5,000 on a professionally written sales letter — mail it for a few hundred dollars more — then sell many, many packages worth $5,000… or more? That would be a superb investment since just one sale might more than re-pay the cost of copywriting and mailing — plus the mailing would likely generate other paying clients AND generate prospects that could be sold something later, too.

When I write sales letters for my top clients (something I still do) the cost is surprisingly low when compared with the return they produce. In fact, a recent sales letter I wrote for Jack Canfield generated $300,000 in revenue from just 20 new clients.

And since I’ve written copy for many of the top authors and entrepreneurs for nearly two decades, a $5,000 sales letter is not only a snap to write — it’s faster and cheaper than other writers out there who charge $12,000 to $15,000 for a standard boilerplate-style letter.

That sales letter I wrote for Jack, by the way, took me four hours to complete, yet it still filled all 20 of Jack’s new client spots in 12 days and generated so many leads, he had to assign TWO salespeople to handle the call volume.

A sales letter like that would be $5,000 well spent.

Strategy #3: Buy 60 days’ worth of a professional salesperson who can personally call your past clients and customers.

If you paid a top sales professional a $2,500-per-month draw against a small commission on everything they sell, that salesperson could probably contact 50-80 customers per week to resell them a product or service, upgrade their previous purchase, renew a maintenance contract or otherwise get them to spend more money with your firm.

Let’s do the math. If your products and services sell for hundreds of dollars (or thousands), then $5,000 spent contacting past buyers with a customized offer just for them could generate substantial revenue depending on the sales pro’s close rate.

What kinds of offers do past customers respond to?

• Renewal of services or additional supplies
• Unique pricing
• Special bonuses not offered to other segments of your list
• Special packaging or bundles
• Special financing or terms
• Advance selection from one-of-a-kind items

Strategy #4: Invest in a complete campaign that endorsers can use to recommend your business to their own customers.

I talk to a lot of business owners who know potential endorsers with large lists of customers. Often times, these other business owners are happy to refer business — but they have no idea how to recommend you… what to say… whether to use email, telephone or postal mail…or what kind of offer would be appealing.

They will typically wait for you to guide them — and that’s where most referral and endorsement relationships break down. The company asking for referrals (you) simply doesn’t have the marketing pieces and other tools to give the referring party (them).

But what if you spent your $5,000 on having a complete referral package written for you? I’ve written countless dozens of these campaigns including an endorsement email that links to a web-based sales letter — plus every communication a potential endorser or affiliate would need to send business your way.

Here’s the checklist of marketing materials you’ll need to give to referring parties:

• Email to broadcast to endorser’s list (includes a clickable link to a webpage with more information)
• Webpage copy that reads like a sales letter for your product or service (can also be converted to a mailed letter or telephone pitch)
• Instructional email so endorsers know exactly what to do to promote you
• Also useful is a script for convincing the endorser to send a specific offer to their list (can also be converted to an email appeal that can be broadcast to lots of potential endorsers at once)

The cost of producing a campaign like this (with me, anyway)? About $5,000.

Strategy #5: Run a preview seminar or in-store event that you publicize on a local radio station.

For about half of your $5,000 budget, you can approach your local talk-radio station and offer to run a promotion — exclusively with them — where they become your event’s media sponsor. Agree to buy $2,500 worth of commercials if they will: (1) Feature you as a repeat guest on one prominent talk show with a local host (for three weeks prior to your event); (2) Give away free tickets on-air; and (3) Run additional free commercials during remnant time.

The commercials should urge listeners to call your office or visit your website for free tickets. Spend the remaining $2,500 on renting a local meeting room and providing a free gift, signed book or workshop handout package to attendees.

When my company used this strategy to fill an Instant Income event in Southern California, we packed the room with qualified prospective customers, plus I was on-air three different times as a guest on the top business show in that market. The radio station even arranged for a cover story about Instant Income in the local small-business magazine.

Using Economical Marketing to Make Money Is Easier Than You Think. In Fact, We Specialize in That.

While many people believe my firm does only percentage-of-profit joint ventures with our clients — or that we charge a fortune for our highly successful agency work — we’re still a service business, and enjoy working with new clients… especially where a little time and expertise on our part can add up to a big boost in revenues for our clients. If you have an interest in becoming a project-by-project client, give us a call at (805) 499-9400. Or if you want to speak to me personally about your idea or project, click here to get on my new-client exploratory schedule with spots open from now to August 3rd only to August 24th only.

Until next time,

Janet Switzer

But Here’s How to Bring Past Buyers (and New Ones) Into Your Business for Serious August Cash-Flow.

Several years ago, one of my clients mentioned that they saw excellent cash-flow during August — traditionally a “down” month for most businesses. This was despite the fact that they weren’t in the travel industry or any other vertical market that might see a boost during summer vacation months.

Their comment surprised me since, as a direct-response marketer, I and many of my colleagues usually saw August as the worst month for revenues.

What was their secret? While virtually every other business in town slowed its marketing during August, my clients increased theirs. They sent multiple marketing campaigns… to different segments of their list… with a unique offer for each segment.

Prospective customers received a different offer than existing customers did. Some names got a phone call, while others got a letter. Not only was the marketing copy different for each “mini campaign,” but the product and service bundles were, too.

What can you do THIS month to insure that August is one of your best revenue months ever?

Here are some strategies that have worked:

• Send a letter or make a phone call to prospective clients, telling them you have open appointments during August: If you must pay your service personnel whether you have booked appointments or not — or if your consulting calendar has unfilled time — you can use this fact as an appeal to turn prospects in paying first-time customers. Often times, the rationale of why you’re offering a specific product or price is the most important element of good copywriting.

Making a special deal just for August (or bundling a special package when they become a new customer during August) makes perfect sense to prospects — especially when you explain that August is typically a slow month that you’re willing to fill with eager new customers. You can even say you’ll “bribe” them with an extraordinary deal.

What could you say in a headline, telemarketing pitch or opening paragraph of a direct-mail letter? Here’s an example:

During the Month of August, We Experience Our Slow Time.
If You’ll Let Us Clean Your Carpets Over the Next 30 Days
On Our Schedule, We’ll Clean Six Rooms for the Price of Two.

Even Though It’s Slow During August, We Still Have to Pay Our Technicians.
That’s Why We’re Willing to Shamelessly Bribe You With a 37% Discount,
If You’ll Become a New Customer Before August 31st.

• Run a product launch campaign: Five years ago, one of the most successful campaigns ever conducted was used (during August) to launch a high-priced coaching program. The expert behind the campaign told me that, at one point, he was adding more than 5,000 names per day to his email list — as dozens of colleagues endorsed him and emailed their own lists about a special report he had written. He generated nearly a million dollars in revenue in less than two hours when his coaching program was finally put on sale. And he did it all during August.

While other online marketers were on vacation, the Internet was left wide open for his campaign to go viral. A couple of weeks later, I too conducted one of my most successful product re-releases, starting just before September 1st when most other marketers were on hiatus.

What’s a product launch campaign?

It’s a 28-day schedule of emails sent to your own growing list of new opt-ins. Other experts and email list owners send an enticing email to their list, endorsing you and mentioning that you have a controversial new report, interview or other free item available for immediate download. Interested prospects click a link in the email and are taken to your webpage to read about the free download and opt-in to get it.

Then, for the next 28 days, you bombard them with a pre-determined schedule of informative emails and other free downloads — preparing them for the day you eventually release your new product. The excitement and social proof that has built up during the previous 28 days (plus bonuses that disappear over the first few hours of the sale) cause a rush of people to buy your product as soon as you “open the doors.”

Many Internet marketing experts teach others to conduct these campaigns — and charge thousands of dollars for this training. If you’re on a budget, however, you can get my comprehensive tutorial (complete with a day-by-day calendar, sample marketing emails, affiliate pitches, a checklist of webpages and other details you’ll need to implement a campaign with confidence) in my Instant Income Business Enhancement System home-study course. Click here for details.

August, the quiet month, is an ideal time to run these product launches while other marketers are on vacation.

• Telephone your past customers to get renewals or repeat orders: You’d be surprised how much more receptive customers are to receiving a phone call from a trusted business during the slower, lazy days of late summer. Far removed from the hectic holiday pace of December or back-to-school fervor in September or other times of the year, you can have a real conversation with past customers about renewing or upgrading or simply buying more of what they’ve purchased already. Many small businesses also use the slow summer days to clean up their storeroom, organize their paperwork or make plans for the Fall — so it’s a good time to reconnect with a special offer on supplies or other inventory they may have depleted.

Additionally, we’ve found at my company that new-business development is also easier in August. Potential joint-venture partners or endorsers are less busy and actually have time to speak on the phone about how we can mutually benefit each other’s businesses.

All these campaigns are easy to plan and execute with a little guidance from my latest home-study course, the Instant Income Business Enhancement System. If you have yet to establish cash-generating systems in your business… if your revenue is unpredictable… if you need a better way to reliably bring in cash-flow, these systems will help you easily execute pre-scheduled marketing campaigns, run advertising that makes the phone ring, use sales strategies that convert prospective customers to cash-paying buyers, and more. Click here to read more about these systems and the step-by-step program for establishing them starting today.

Until next time,

Janet Switzer
Editor, Instant Income Revenue Report

photo credit: theloushe

Here’s What to Include to Generate Instant Income All Year Long.

Recently I was talking with a friend in the non-profit sector about how to increase revenue from her charity’s “Annual Campaign.” An annual campaign is the organization’s entire year-long calendar of fund-raising activities — from direct-mail letters to telephone outreach to donor recruitment by board members and more.

This got me thinking about businesses that operate for profit. An annual calendar of activity also makes sense.

While many business owners have a system for keeping track of their schedules, their meeting agendas, to-do lists and daily calls, how many keep on their desk a “command center” that helps them systematically drive their business forward on a daily basis—by planning and recording progress on new profit centers they want to launch, cash-flow strategies they want to implement, future promotions they want to conduct, and more?

Think about your own business for a moment…

Are your income-generation activities planned week-by-week in advance? Do you constantly track your goals, numbers, people, research and other elements that make up an Instant Income-style, cash-flow centered business? Do you check off these daily to-do items as you accomplish them? Do you have a system for easily delegating various aspects of marketing implementation to your staff and outsource vendors?

Or do you find yourself constantly scrambling for emergency cash?

When I first produced the Instant Income Business Enhancement System home-study course, I included a comprehensive Cash-Flow Calendar that easily lets you plan activities in advance — whether or not you have staff who can implement these activities. Even solo entrepreneurs can use the calendar to stay on track.

But what can be found on a typical annual marketing calendar? Let’s take a look:

New Customer Recruitment — Perhaps the most important revenue activity you will conduct in your business, generating new customers insures not only revenue from current sales, but ongoing revenue later from re-selling, upselling and cross-selling past buyers into other products and services. Just some of the new-customer campaigns you’ll find on a typical calendar include:

• Newspaper & magazine advertising
• Radio spots
• Preview workshops
• Trade shows
• Direct mail
• Speaking engagements
• Marketing-oriented teleseminars
• Referrals from endorsers

Special Offers for Past Buyers — People who have already purchased from you in the past should be targeted with unique offers just for them. Perhaps it’s advance notice of a special sale (or a special customer-only selection or sale day)…or access to obsolete inventory at reduced prices…or offers on special equipment or services that go along with something they’ve already purchased. These scheduled campaigns — whether via email, postal mail or telephone — should speak in language that will appeal specifically to past buyers rather than prospects who haven’t purchased yet.

Internet Marketing and Email Campaigns — Once you have a website that’s designed to attract visitors, capture their email address and sell them products and services, you can begin to schedule: (1) Pay-per-click activity or endorsements that drive traffic to your website, (2) product launch campaigns that substantially boost the size of your email list, and (3) email campaigns to the email addresses you currently have. Over 90 days’ time, you should be able to launch a basic website, begin capturing names, and sell these visitors an entry-level product or service.

New Business Development — While the business owner isn’t necessarily the one doing the work of recruiting new accounts, new referral contacts and other sources of new business, he or she should certainly schedule these activities for a staff person to accomplish. What kinds of new business efforts do we typically see on an annual calendar?

• Recruiting joint venture partners & endorsers
• Developing more distributors/dealers
• Recruiting non-traditional salespeople
• Establishing a professional consortium
• Finding unique retail outlets
• Locating other businesses for which your product can be an add-on
• Finding outside products/services to sell to your customers and prospects

Publicity & Media Relations — One of the most overlooked areas of marketing (and one of the easiest to implement), publicity and media relations should be scheduled and pursued as a low-cost marketing effort. Consider scheduling campaigns like:

• Monthly or bi-weekly press releases distributed over the Internet (read my blog post about it here)
• Contacting a list of radio talk-show hosts and producers prior to a new product release or as a follow-up to a sensational news item
• Announcing a new technology or methodology, a new book, a new service or a new market approach

All these campaigns are easy to plan and execute with a little guidance from my latest home-study course, the Instant Income Business Enhancement System. You can read more here.

Until next time,

Janet Switzer

photo credit: guccio@文房具社