Here’s a simple tip to increase your small business revenue: Don’t think outside the box… make your own box.

Here’s where most people go wrong and make costly mistakes in their marketing: they find their most successful competition, copy their marketing strategies, and sit back and wait for success.

While there’s nothing wrong with copying successful strategies from your competition (in fact, it’s a topic I’ve blogged about in the past), by limiting yourself to that strategy, you’re limiting your potential for success.

Pioneers in any industry are the ones who make it big. Copycats can find success, but the ceiling is often lower than that of the people they have copied.

So what’s the solution? Create your own marketing paradigm within your industry.

What’s the easiest way to become a pioneer in your industry and set the gold standard for success? Look to the successes in other industries and apply them to your industry.

By looking to other industries to see what’s working and applying their successful marketing strategies to your small business, you’ll stand out from the crowd and uniquely position yourself in your market.

Example: About a year and a half ago I decided to put my house on the market. The housing market had already started it’s down-swing, but I felt that if I could market my home differently, I’d have a great chance to sell my house at a price I was happy with.

What did I do? I looked to the web for examples.

Most successful internet marketers use a lead generating product that’s free to collect leads, then a follow-up system to close a sale or make an upsell. I followed that example in real estate.

I set up a website offering a free e-book on selling homes in a down economy and collected leads. My follow-up system sent out a series of auto-responders that talked about selling strategies and promoted my house. To get even more local leads into the system, we called local real estate agents to tell them about the free e-book and our house.

Within a couple of weeks we had shown the house on a daily basis and had offers coming in.

By thinking outside the real estate paradigm, I was able to set a new precedent that generated more interest in my house than anyone else in the region was getting. It was easy to do (didn’t require unique, earth-shattering ideas) and it worked.

So how can you come up with an outside-the-box marketing strategy that will work for your small business? Here’s an action plan:

1. For the next five days, keep a sharp eye out for good marketing strategies that you encounter in your every-day life. Pay special attention to local commercials, sporting events (minor league baseball is a gold mine for unique marketing ideas), the internet, and local excursions to places like the coffee shop, breakfast cafe, and home improvement store.
2. Jot down the 10 best ideas you encounter (even if you don’t think you can use them for your business).
3. At the end of the 5 days, go through the best ideas and narrow the list to the top 3.
4. Talk to your mastermind group (or a group of trusted associates) and share your top 3 marketing ideas. Ask them to help you brainstorm how you can apply them to your business.
5. Take action! Once you have your ideas and a strategy for implementing them in your business, take action and put them to the test. Brainstorming is great, but what separates the cream of the crop from the rest is action… so make sure you implement those ideas!

To Your Marketing Success!
Jared

PS: I’d love to know about a time you’ve taken an idea from another industry and successfully applied it to your business. Post a comment about what you did and how you found it. At the end of the month I’ll choose the best of the lot and give the winner a FREE copy of my new small business marketing tool, The Magic Beans Marketing Kit (this tool will retail for about $179 when it’s released. It’s not a e-book… I’ll actually mail you a copy absolutely free!). Thanks!

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In fact, as I was sitting in our overheated living room with my 9-month-old daughter I thought, “If a door-to-door air conditioning salesman offered me an AC unit today, I’d buy it in a second.”

Which brings us to why we’re talking about this at all: “If you want to increase sales and make more money, fill a need when the need needs filling.”

What am I talking about? It’s like the ice cream truck: Have you ever heard the ice cream truck coming down the road with the music blaring when it’s 40 degrees outside and the neighborhood kids are in school? Of course not. Ice cream trucks make their rounds on hot days when school is out.

The need: A cool, refreshing treat (ice cream).
The market: Kids.
The reason the “need needs filling:” It’s hot, and ice cream is a delicious treat!

Here’s another example… About ten years ago I was stuck in a huge snowstorm with a couple of buddies on our way to a weekend of snowboarding in fresh powder. The storm was so bad that the roads kept opening and closing. When on the freeway you had to have tire chains on to pass the check points. Once the road was closed again and you drove into town, you had to take your chains off (or risk a ticket for driving in town with chains). Back on the freeway–back on with the chains. It was like this all day.

My buddies and I, realizing an opportunity, started helping frustrated travelers with their chains. We charged a few bucks and put the chains on (with three of us we could get the chains on in less than three minutes), and charged a few more to take them back off. By the end of the day we had collected a tidy sum. (The Department of Transportation was offering it for a fee twice as high as ours, and they didn’t have nearly enough employees to keep up).

The need: Help with tire chains.
The market: Frustrated travelers
The reason the “need needs filling:” It was cold, travelers were frustrated, they needed help with their tire chains, and we could do it faster and for less money than alternatives.

So How Can You Increase Sales and Make More Money with this Simple Strategy?

If you want to increase your small business sales and make more money, you need to take a look at the products and services you offer, determine what specific needs they fill, who the market is, and why the “need needs filling.”

Once you have the answers to those questions, you should be able to find a ripe market that is begging to do business with you… but you need to find the right market in the right circumstances.

Today I’d buy an AC unit is a heartbeat… but in a month — when the temperature is in the 70’s — it would be a hard sell. I’m not buying a choco-taco from the ice cream truck in a snowstorm, and I’m not helping people change their tire chains on a normal winter day.

Do you need to have perfect circumstances to increase sales? No. But knowing what the perfect circumstances are will help you determine the optimal opportunities to sell your services and products faster, for more money, and with less effort than ever before.

So what are the perfect circumstances for you? Put it on paper and start looking for your golden opportunities. Just fill the need when the need needs filling.

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Editor’s Note: This guest post from Andrew Sobel, author of All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships, was written in response to my book review of All for One. I asked Mr. Sobel about how his strategies could help small business owners… below is his response. Enjoy!

1. 

   Andrew Sobel

   Leverage your existing, loyal customers. Ask your top twenty customers to write a testimonial for you. Yes—20, because some will forget to do it or won’t have time. Then, ask the ten best if you could videotape their testimonial. Put these short (1-2 minutes) videos on your web site or on a DVD to hand out to prospective customers. Create compressed versions that you can then also email. Also ask each of the twenty if they know of one or two people who could benefit from your services.

2. Offer an assessment. An assessment is an excellent way to engage prospective customers in a way that doesn’t feel like selling and is value-added. It could be as simple as a questionnaire that you score and interpret, to an on-site, half-day working session to assess their needs and come up with the outline of a solution. You can charge for the assessment (people value what they pay for more than something that is free!), offer it for nothing, or refund the price if the customer goes ahead with a purchase.
3. Lower the risk of trusting you. A guarantee is of course the most basic way of making it easy to trust you and your products or services. There are other things you can do as well. For example:
   1. For new customers, offer to hold back 15% of your fee based on the customer being satisfied. No complicated metrics—just, “Are you satisfied?”
   2. Try to get prospective customers to speak to an existing, satisfied customer. Carry with you a list of half a dozen satisfied customers, and their phone numbers, that you can share with any prospect.
   3. If you provide a service, break your work into smaller chunks, with checkpoints along the way.
   4. Give a free sample. If you offer coaching services, give a free session; if you’re a landscape gardener, draw up a plan to revitalize a small portion of a prospect’s garden.
4. Consider a value-added email newsletter or report that you send to all past, current, and prospective customers. A real estate broker I know issues a very well-researched quarterly report on the state of home and land sales in my hometown—a document I find quite useful. I personally write a monthly article on building long-term client relationships, which is emailed to my newsletter list. Not infrequently, someone will get my newsletter and write back, “Andrew, give me a ring, I’ve been meaning to speak to you about an issue…” The key word here is value-added, which many newsletters just are not.
5. Use collaborators. One banker I interviewed told me that one lawyer he knew had referred 20% of his lifetime revenue to him. Reciprocal relationships with other small business owners can provide a significant leadstream for you. I have found that developing just a few of these types of relationships—and really building mutual loyalty and respect—is more productive than having dozens of them.
6. Focus your marketing efforts. Sending a postcard to 10,000 people in your city (I get plenty of these, believe me!) is not a useful strategy unless you know that those individuals may clearly have a need for what you do. Most small businesses have a focused niche, and they need to create mechanisms to reach their target customers efficiently, not spend money on broad-based advertising or mailings.
7. Build your network before you need it. Asking near-strangers for a referral is awkward and a waste of time. Start with your 20 most important professional relationships, and include on your list clients, colleagues, influencers, mentors, and others—I call them “catalysts”—who can introduce you to people and help make a deal happen. Identify a priority or goal that each person has, and think about how you can help them achieve it. Devise a staying in touch plan for these 20. Then keep going, and think about the next 20.
8. Be a collector of marketing best practices. There are some excellent books out there on marketing and customer development, but don’t ignore what’s right in front of your nose: other successful small businesses that are innovative marketers. Some of the most successful workshops I have ever facilitated have involved me getting out of the way and letting a group of clients from different industries share what does and does not work for them when it comes to building client and customer relationships. Identify the fastest-growing, most customer-centric businesses in your community, and take the owner out for coffee or lunch to pick his or her brain about what they are doing to grow their customer base.

Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on client relationships and the skills and strategies required to earn enduring client loyalty. Andrew is the author of the newly-released All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships (John Wiley & Sons, 2009) as well as the business bestsellers Clients for Life and Making Rain. He can be reached at www.andrewsobel.com (Tel: 505.982.0211).

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More importantly, how do you take your small business blog from after thought to power player?

About two months ago I finished reading Stephane Grenier’s “Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets to Creating a High-Profile, High-Traffic, and High-Profit Blog!” I knew I was going to review it, but I wasn’t sure what to think (plus, I’ve been doing a lot of mountain biking and hiking, so my blog time has been in short supply!). I started formulating my review several times, but I was never sure whether I should recommend the book or not.

I won’t recommend a book if I can’t answer the question “Will this book help small business owners make more money?”

The answer? Blog Blazers can help your small business make more money… if you look in the right places.

About Blog Blazers

In Blog Blazers, Stephane Grenier has published a compilation of questions and answers from some of the world’s most powerful bloggers. People like Manolo Blahnik, Seth Godin, Ramit Sethi, Jeff Atwood, and many more. The questions asked are intended to reveal how they became successful bloggers and give you an idea of how you can emulate their success.

In a large way, it succeeds.

Unfortunately, it falls short in a few areas.

The Downside to Blog Blazers

After reading the first few chapters of Grenier’s book, it became apparent that he sent out a list of questions to bloggers hoping for a response. Those who responded were ultimately published in the book. I think it’s a great tactic, but unfortunately, the list of questions was the same for every blogger, so the book can be a bit tedious to read.

On the Flip-Side

On the other side of that coin is that by using the same quetions for every blogger, you get a great comparison of how each blogger became successful. For some questions, the answers are nearly unanimous (ie: “Who do you think are the most successful bloggers on the Internet today?” almost every response the obvious choice: Darren Rowse of www.problogger.com), but for others, it can provide unique insight into the different ways people have become successful.

How This Book Can Help Your Small Business

Blog Blazers CAN help you increase the success of your blog, but you have to read it with a critical eye. Only a few questions from each blogger are “can’t miss” reads. Those questions?

1. “Which Websites Would Your Recommend for Any New Blogger Starting to Blog?”
2. “What’s Your Biggest Tip On Writing a Successful Blog Post?”
3. “What’s Your Best Advice in Regards to Content and Writing for Bloggers?”
4. “What Are Your Main Methods of Marketing Your Blog?”
5. “What Is Your Best Monetization Method?”

There is a huge range of answers provided and they provide the best insight the book has to offer on how to start a blog, make your blog successful, and make money with your blog. If you’re thinking about buying the book, make sure you highlight the answers each blogger gives to those five questions!

The Bottom Line on Blog Blazers

Blog Blazers is a worthy addition to your small business success library. It’s a great single resource on how some of the world’s most successful bloggers have risen to the status they currently hold and provides some great insights on how you can start to increase the success of your own blog.

The book won’t give you instant success, but it isn’t often that you find a book that doesn’t promise success only to deliver one “surefire” method of achieving it. In Blog Blazers, there is no promise, no blueprint, and no action plan. It does exactly what it claims to do: provide unique insight into how other bloggers have found success and a library of ideas for your to apply to your own situation.

Jared

PS: If you’d like to pick up a copy of Blog Blazers, you can find it on Amazon or at www.BlogBlazers.com.

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It’s true: Headlines are extremely important. They are the entree into your sales pitch. They have to draw in the prospects and compel them to read more. They set the tone for your entire piece. And most great copywriters will tell you they spend more time writing the headline then they spend writing the rest of their copy — combined!

So how do you write a great headline — a headline that will fatten your wallet with loads of green? Make it sexy.

Writing Headlines That Attract New Business and Make More Sales

This is where most “experts” get it wrong when it comes to “how to write headlines” lessons: they focus on the biggest benefit, not the sexiest benefit.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: You pick up the latest product on copywriting from the guru of the moment. In the product he has a section on writing killer headlines. He tells a story or two, talks about the psychology of headline writing, gives you a checklist, and tells you to get going. You’ve read it word-for-word and this is what you’ve come up with: take the biggest benefit of the product you’re selling and write your headline around it.

Sound familiar? In some form or another, this lesson has been taught by literally thousands of copywriting “masters.” And basically, it’s correct. People buy benefits, not features, so sell your best benefit in your headline and you’re golden… right?

Not exactly. You see, that’s not how the human psyche works. People don’t buy the “biggest benefit” of your product. They buy the sexiest benefit of your product.

What’s the difference? The “biggest” benefit is most often determined by small business owners to be the benefit of greatest monetary value — If it’s wort a lot, it’s the biggest benefit. The “sexiest” benefit is the one that has the most appeal to the prospect.

Why Biggest Isn’t Always Best in Headline Writing

Here’s a story to help illustrate the idea: I work regularly with an holistic dentist based in Southern California. We were coming up with a sales letter for his Holistic Dental Health Plan and had created a killer features/benefits list. When I asked him what the biggest benefit was, he looked over the list and pointed out the nutrition plan. With every Health Plan, he has a certified nutritionist develop a custom plan for the patient.

Unfortunately, most poeple looking for dental services aren’t searching for a custom nutrition plan. They are, however, probably interested in the straight, white smile that you’ll end up with by the end of the plan. Smiles are sexy. White teeth are sexy.

So which is the better headline?

“Discover A Healthier You With A Custom Nutrition Plan”

“Bigger Promotions, Better Relationships, More Friends: Unleash the Power of a Brighter, Whiter Smile”

Obviously the second headline is more attractive to potential clients. Would some people be more interested in a nutrition plan? Probably, but those same people will still be interested in brighter, whiter smiles. Go with the sexier headline and you’re headline will appeal to a much broader group of prospects.

Headlines to Dollar Signs

The economy stinks and more people are heading into the small business ownership world. To differentiate yourself and stand out from the crown with your marketing, you must write quality, attractive headlines that bring in new clients. Skip the old addage “The Biggest benefits Write the Best Headline” and remember this one instead: “Sex Sells… And in Your Headlines, Sexy Sells.”

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Just recently I had a client ask me about video marketing online. I told him I thought it was a bit over-hyped, but I know some people have done very well with it. He asked me to sign him up for a video broadcasting company and start a campaign to roll out a video a week. Sounded fine to me.

I’m a skeptic, and to be honest, I probably would never have tried a paid service if my client had not requested it. But he had been uploading his videos to a couple dozen sites one at a time and was tired (literally) of all the work that went into it.

I did some research and based on recommendations, I chose to go with Traffic Geyser to broadcast the videos. Using his Flip Video MinoHD, we made a quick, unedited film just to try it out. The following morning his webhost had shut down his site due to all the traffic.

Over 2,000 page hits only a few hours after we published the first video. We literally spent 5 minutes filming the video and 5 minutes uploading.

We received a bigger marketing boost via that one short video than any other traditional small business marketing means we had tried.

Here’s how it works:

• You set up an account with Traffic Geyser and upload your video.
• You fill out a form about where you want to video to be uploaded.
• You set the upload dates and times for the various sites.
• You press “GO.”

That’s really it. There are a bunch of other features (like custom video players you can use on your site, podcasting options, etc.) but the basic idea is that you upload your video to Traffic Geyser and they optimize it for viewing, they maximize the SEO potential, they generate page hits, and they broadcast your video.

It works.

How You Can Get Started with Video Marketing

If you want to give Traffic Geyser a try, they are offering a special trial discount right now: $1 trial .

I haven’t found a company quite like Traffic Geyser, although I have found some alternatives that just didn’t seem to match up. I have stuck with Traffic Geyser and continue to see positive results (although we haven’t come quite close to that first video). Whatever you decide to try, make sure you add video marketing to your small business marketing plan… it’s not a passing fad and you’re not too late to reap the benefits!

Happy video marketing!
Jared

PS: I love the Flip Mino HD. It’s not perfect, but at about $200 on Amazon, it’s worth the price. I can film and upload a video to YouTube in less than 5 minutes. If you decide to pick one up, here’s a link: Flip MinoHD (Black). Make sure you get a tripod with it… there’s no image stabilization so it bounces around a lot if you don’t have the tripod.

PPS: I’ve been trying out the podcast options on Traffic Geyser. Not sure yet what the results will be, but I’ll let you know.

PS #3: If you’ve used another service (paid or free), please leave a comment and let everyone know what you thought. And if you’ve used Traffic Geyser, what was your opinion? Thanks!

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This is a quick overview of Andrew Sobel’s “All for One.” To read the complete review from a small business marketing perspective, check out Ten Essential Strategies for Getting and Keeping Key Clients.

Have you read the book? What was your take? I’d love to read your comments!

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“10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships”

About a week ago I started reading Andrew Sobel’s new book: All For One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships. I know Andrew’s stellar reputation as a consultant and his specialty is in developing and maintaining powerful relationships with valuable clients and partners. That being said, I almost didn’t make it through the first chapter… and I almost missed out on an incredible blueprint for client retention and partnership building.

Why I Struggled to Get Through the First Few Pages…

There are two reasons I struggled with the beginning of Andrew’s book (and two reasons you might have the same problem):

1. It’s dry. The start of the book is dry and doesn’t have that hook that really pulls you in. I guess if you’re dream is to “partner with clients and add value in new ways,” you might not have any problem. But I’m a marketer at heart and I need that massive draw to really pull me in… this book didn’t really have it.
2. It becomes clear in the introduction that the book is geared toward bigger businesses than mine or the businesses I consult with (and probably bigger than your business, too… unless you’re the CEO of Shell, CitiGroup, Booz Allen, or any of Andrew’s other examples at the outset).

Why You’ll Be Making A HUGE Mistake If You Don’t Keep Reading:

Once you get through the beginning of All For One, you’ll discover a series of tips that could change your business forever and turn into one of the single largest turning points you’re business will ever encounter.

So Here’s What You’ll Discover:

While the book is indeed aimed toward larger businesses, that doesn’t mean the ideas won’t work equally well for the small business owner. In fact, I picked out three gems in particular that have already helped strengthen my business partnerships and have already started altering my business structure and the structure of my client relationships.

1. Strategy Two: Developing Relationship Capital
   This strategy is geared around building relationships with the “key few” that can alter the course of your business. Sobel provides a step-by-step guide to analyzing and building these relationships that breaks it down to the foundation and will make it easy for you to identify and build vital business relationships.
2. Strategy Three: Engaging New Clients
   This chapter convinced me that my time was well spent in reading All For One. It’s the step-by-step guide to turning your contacts into clients. It’s easy to understand and easy to implement. If you don’t read this chapter you are doing yourself and your business a disservice.
3. Strategy Ten: Creating a Unique Client Experience
   I think an entire book could easily be written about “creating a unique client experience,” but Sobel does a great job of breaking it down over several pages in All For One. He talks about Apple and Lufthansa and breaks down how they have completely altered the way businesses create the user experience: they’ve taken it from a product-based experience and turned it into a point-of-interaction experience. Sobel gives you the strategies you need to completely reshape your client experience and what you need to thik about when implementing it. It’s worth it’s weight in gold.

The Bottom Line:

There are at least a dozen other great ideas I gleaned from this book, including a killer Frequently Asked Questions section and a short chapter on how to properly and effectively survey your clients. But the bottom line is this: while the book may be geared toward larger businesses, don’t be fooled into thinking it can’t help your small business. Pick up a copy of All For One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships today, grab your highlighter, and start getting ideas to transform your company.

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