How To Market Your Business

My name is Greg Marshall and I help individuals and businesses increase their sales and revenue by sharing my sales and marketing concepts.

[gregmarshall]

[gregmarshall]

Consistently focus on how you can add more value in everything that you do! The more value you provide the more opportunities come.

[gregmarshall]

Make Your Marketing As Personal As Possible

We all want to market our businesses and get more customers to know who we are and what we do. In my opinion one of the best ways to do that is to personalize your marketing as much as possible. People like to be talked to like a person as opposed to being talked to like a mindless drone. When you are doing any kind of "mass messaging" your goal is to focus on finding ways to segment your list so the messages your target audience is seeing is personalized. An example I like to use is when you are someone who hates vacuums but you are part of a "mass marketing list" and you keep seeing ads for vacuums you are going to be extremely upset about having this message being shoved down your throat. This is why people hate marketing and anything that it stands for because they are so used to the "mass marketing" that is not personalized. If you want to get better results and have lower complaint rates then spend the time to organize and segment your lists! Be personal and always remember you are talking to people no matter what medium you are using.

[gregmarshall]

Push Yourself just a little more

As a leader of a team one thing that I know for sure is I want to set the example of working hard. In my opinion it is the leaders job to go out there in put in more effort than anyone else on his team to set the tone. In order for us to get the results that we really want we have to push ourselves just a little bit more. It can be easy to just settle on what you have accomplished already or think that you can just coast by but then you wouldn't be maximizing your potential or growing as a person and/or team. A lesson I learned from one of the best leaders I have ever been around is if you don't put in the work you can't expect the results plain and simple. The guy I am referring to is someone who would get up earlier than everyone else and stay up later than everyone else to accomplish the goals that he had set for himself. The thing I admired about that was he did not need to work this hard. He had already "made" it from a financial standpoint but his desire to build his team and to lead from the front was amazing. It definitely made an impact on me and taught me very valuable lessons. I remember he pushed me so hard to be more and to be better because at that time I was content with just getting by and putting in minimal effort. Truthfully I had no self confidence or belief that I could do more. I can tell you during that time frame that he pushed me (harder than I have ever been pushed) I had doubled my results and achieved things that I thought I could never achieve. It helped build my confidence and opened up my eyes to what was possible. I had never been around someone that driven. In fact he was so driven I sometimes wondered if he had an "edge" of some sort but I later found out that he didn't. He just loved the opportunity to wake up everyday and do something he was passionate about. So the lesson that I try to apply every single day ( I am not perfect) is to push myself to do just a little bit more than what my comfort zone is because that is where the true growth happens.

[gregmarshall]

Execution is the key to reaching your goals

Everything you want to accomplish all comes down to production and executing. If you sit around and think too much then you will not end up accomplishing all of the things you want to do. The thing that holds many people back is thinking too much and not acting enough. Typically anytime I have procrastinated on doing something that I wanted to do it was because I had some sort of fear that held me back. I was afraid of something so I put it off and usually that fear had something to do with the fear of confrontation. But back to execution the thing...it takes massive action in order to achieve anything of real substance. Something that I find when I take super high levels of action are I notice that I tend to get better and more efficient in whatever it is that I am trying to do. If you look at anything you ever achieved in your life that was worthwhile I am pretty sure that it took a whole lot of effort to do it and you took massive action. Today I spoke with a few people about wanting to achieve certain goals and one of the objections were the level of discomfort it would take to achieve it. The goal itself is a simple task but the discipline it takes is very high. The reason why it was uncomfortable was the level of activity that was going to be taken and the fear of what people would think when they saw how much activity would be taken is scary. It can be scary to have the "mental jury" (as I like to call it) of all of the things that people might say when you post or share something. But this is where the opportunity lies because if you can push yourself past that level of discomfort and just go a little bit further than what everyone else is willing to do then you will be able to get the rewards that you want. Being outside of the comfort zone is the number one reason why people don't try in my opinion. They don't like to feel "exposed" because we are wired to be afraid of what people think of us. We are wired to think it is the end of the world if some "internet troll" says something we don't like or it hurts our feelings. The thing about execution is you will have to accept that when you are an executor you will make a lot of people feel uncomfortable because it puts them on the spot. High levels of execution makes others look at themselves in the mirror and ask questions that maybe they do not want to answer. You will know when you are executing at an high level when you start to get people questioning and even making fun of what you do. That is when you know that your actions are getting to the levels you need them to be in order to succeed. Execution is scary because what if we were to outgrow our friends? What if we make someone else look bad because our stuff is better? What if we become great just because we take more action and not necessarily on how talented we are? What if we prove our inner critic wrong? Those are all questions we must answer but I think it is better to lay it all out on the line and no matter what we do, be able to tell ourselves that we gave it our best shot instead of wondering...what if I tried harder and actually executed?

[gregmarshall]

Motivation in your Marketing

When you are creating your marketing you want to make sure you are creating marketing pieces that motivate the person to take action. The offer and emotion has to be strong enough that it will drive the person to action. One thing that I learned from marketing guru Dan Kennedy is you have to pretend that your potential person is a sloth laying on the couch and your job is to do whatever it takes to get them so excited that it is worth it to get up and take action. This is why the words, images, and offers must be STRONG because this is no easy task so take the time to think out everything you have create so it is powerful enough to drive action!

[gregmarshall]

Every great leader had a wonderful, skilled, and trained team behind them, no one does it on their own

[gregmarshall]

Don't forget the fundamentals of sales and marketing

When you are on the internet and learning all of these new tactics it can be easy to get sidetracked or forget that who you are talking to are people. Getting seduced purely by numbers is common but it can be a mistake if you only look at numbers and you don't take into account that there is a psychology side as well. If you only look at numbers and don't also combine it with psychology then you are going to forget one of the most important parts which is the messaging. If you are only asking how to get more website visits or eyeballs and not asking how do I craft a relative and compelling message that will spark an emotion or action in my audience then it does not matter if a billion people see your message. Your messaging will not do very well as far as getting the responses that you want. Do not skip making a compelling message! Focus on your messaging and how it can touch your audience in a unique and powerful way and then keep refining it until you finally get your exact messaging down! Writing a good message is not something you want to get lazy with. Look at the time spent as an investment in your business future. Spend the time now testing and fine tuning because in the long term it will be worth it and you will be glad that you did. Always remember that we are in the people business and people like to do business with people who care about their well being and can also relate to.

[gregmarshall]

How much is each source of website traffic worth to your business?

All website traffic is not created equal. If you look into your stats you will see that some web traffic converts better than others and some web traffic is of higher revenue than others. Your job is to figure out what is more valuable to you in your business and then optimize all of your traffic acquisition activities to align with your business goals. The other beauty of measuring your traffic source value is if you are able to figure out how much each visitor is worth to you then that gives you direction on what your paid advertising strategy can be. For an easy example, if your average Facebook visitor is worth $1 to you then your job is to acquire that visitor for less than a dollar. The more you understand the values of your traffic sources the more wasted marketing activities you can cut out and the better you can allocate your efforts towards building your business!

[gregmarshall]

Why Testing Your Campaigns are so Important

If you are running marketing campaigns then you are going to want to test against your beliefs on what you think will work versus what will actually work. I have been guilty of assuming a certain marketing campaign will work because in theory it sounds like a great idea but then I tested it in the real world and realized that it was actually the thing I thought wouldn't work worked. It happens all of the time because it is easy to think what would work to market us (the business owner or marketer) is how our target market wants to be communicated with. Be very careful of this because if you make this crucial mistake you will lose time and money. Marketing is all about communicating to your target audience not making yourself feel good. The point of testing everything is to be able to spot certain trends and to be able to optimize what you are doing so you can have a winning campaign. Some things that you think don't matter... matter and by making just very simple adjustments you will be shocked how much that can impact your results. I am telling you don't underestimate tracking everything. Yes there is a time to use your gut feeling on marketing but you should still track and double check to make sure that your theories are working. The biggest benefit of tracking everything is you can grow your business once you find the winner and by doing that it will put you in the drivers seat of your business's growth.

[gregmarshall]

How Committed Are You to Your Business Goal?

What is your goal in your business? Why is that goal important to you? Are you committed to reaching your goals? Think about whatever goal you want to achieve and ask yourself are you trying enough things in order to achieve that goal? Being committed to your end goal is different than being committed to a specific tactic. Things change, strategies change, and life changes but the ability to adapt to the changes is what will make or break you. There is a difference between saying I want to do something versus I am committed to doing something. The main difference between wanting to do something versus being committed to doing it is when you are committed you are willing to make the necessary changes, make the tough calls, be extremely uncomfortable, and sacrifice the short term to have long term success. This applies especially in marketing your business because sometimes you have to fall out of love with the ideas and strategies that may have worked in the past and try new things. In digital marketing everything changes and at a rapid pace! Algorithms change, platforms become noisier, platforms go out of business etc... So the question you have to ask yourself is are you committed to adapting to the rapid changes to market your business successfully or do you just want to market your business?

[gregmarshall]

Does social media actually work to grow my business?

Many business owners think that social media is a waste of time or it is something that is to be overlooked because it is not the standard accepted channel of business. I think you should never underestimate anything until you try it because if you are paying attention to the trends... all of people's attention is on their phones and their social media pages so why would you not want to be there? Social media is a great way to connect and find your customers because they are all there. Think about it in it's simplest form... imagine a highly efficient place you could go to where ALL of your potential customers hung out and then you could showcase what you have to offer. That is what social media is. It is a tool to get in front of your potential customers so they can see how you can help solve their problems. Social media is measureable and highly effective if you know what you are doing but most importantly if you are tracking it to see what it is bringing in. The reason why some business people can think social media is a waste of time and ineffective is because they do not understand it and I would recommend that they start to study and understand the new channels of how business is being done because if you don't you are just missing out on opportunities. To build or grow your business you are either going to invest time or money and maybe even both. It is just a matter of where will you invest so the question you have to ask yourself is...where can I spend the most time and money on the most efficient channels so I can grow my business? Do not become attached to the channels or methods because they are changing at ultra speed, instead become attached to learning what you have to learn in order to grow your business.

[gregmarshall]

Focus on Quality versus Quantity in your Marketing

More is not always better. Especially in marketing I find that it is easy to fixate on the number of followers, email subscribers, Facebook likes, etc I have been just as guilty as the next person when it comes to focusing on those numbers but a better question to ask yourself is... why do I want more followers? I have worked with businesses that have millions of followers and I have worked with businesses that just have a few thousand and on several occassions the businesses with the "smaller" following actually generates more revenue because they are focused on building a more targeted (quality) following. When it comes to what kind of audience I want to build I like to think more about using the process of elimination versus addition. Who your customer is not is almost a more important question to answer than who your customer is.

[gregmarshall]

3 Things to Pay Close Attention To When Marketing Your Business

There are alot of variables that are important when it comes to marketing your business. First you have to know who you are trying to talk to. Second you need to know the key emotions your prospects have currently and then you need to know what emotions your prospects want to feel in the future. This will help you craft a more powerful and effective message. Third you need to know how you will reach them and what channels they are on so you can spend 80-90 percent of your time mastering those channels so you have all of your resources invested there.

[gregmarshall]

Social media in my opinion is a very powerful tool. There are a lot of different opinions on whether it really works or not. Many business owners view social media as just a place to post things and other business owners view social media as a complete waste of time. They are above using social media because it is for people who don't have a life and that is definitely not them lol The first way you can use social media to grow your business is for research and feedback. Social media is one of the best places to get feedback on what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. So there are pros and cons to using it but basically you can use it to post things about products, services, or ideas that you have and you can essentially make adjustments to your business based on them. The second way you can use social media to grow your business is to use their powerful advertising platforms to target your exact group of potential prospects. Social media for the most part requires you to put in a lot of your personal information and what they do with that information is allow businesses access to target users based on what their interests are, what they like to do, when they are typically online, things they are most likely interested in etc. The third way you can use social media to grow your business is you can find influencers who already have an audience and do product or service placement. Essentially what you would be doing is finding people who have your target audience and the leader of that community will tell their fans and followers why they should do business with you. The key with this one is to make sure that the audience is a relevant audience. The fourth way you can use social media to grow your business is you can create helpful content and then distribute that content on your social media profiles to drive them back to your website. Some of the things that I have seen work pretty well is using quality pictures/videos with a strong headline on why they should read or watch your post with a link back to your site. The fifth way you can use social media to grow your business is one to one marketing. If you search for hashtags, specific words/phrases, and/or location you can find people who match your customer profile and you can start a conversation with them. The only way this technique can work is you have to know who you are targeting before you dive in to reaching out to them so make sure to create a customer profile prior to taking action on this. The sixth way you can use social media to grow your business is to recruit quality employees that can help you to grow your company's vision! When you go on social media you can look up people who are talking about certain topics and then reach out to them for an interview to see if they can help you and you can help them. Social media is no different than marketing in person as far as philosophy is concerned. Always remember that the people on social media are "people" and not just numbers or website traffic so use the same relationship skills that you would use in person on social media. Just make sure to treat each platform a little bit differently as far as what kind of posts you will share but also don't be afraid to experiment. P.S. make sure to do some research to see which social media platforms have your target audience and then choose accordingly!

[gregmarshall]

If you are looking to generate more traffic to your website or products the very first thing you have to do in order to do so is you have to know exactly who you want to reach and why you want to reach them. Not being specific enough is what will cause the most problems when it comes to generating ideas. The reason being, the more vague you are about trying to hit a target, the more likely you will become overwhelmed with what action steps to take next. The other reason why you do not want to be too general is if you are going to be doing paid advertising, it is going to be extremely expensive to reach all of the people in the world. Instead I would focus on a smaller niche first and then slowly expand after that. Always remember you cannot be everything to everyone and if you try to be you will not succeed. When I first started out in business I thought I had to sell everything to everyone because I had this fear of missing out but what I found out pretty quickly was every time I tried to be everything to everyone or introduce a new product that I was not really an expert on I would dilute any kind of traction and my business would actually shrink instead of expand. When you are focusing on a smaller niche you are able to focus more on serving them and getting a better understanding of what their problems, fears, and concerns are. The more you focus and know your niche the more creative you can be to add more products or services that will help solve their problems. I cannot stress this enough...DO NOT try to be everything to everyone. Ok now that you know exactly who you will be focusing on the next thing you will want to do is find out where all of these people are at so you can get your message in front of them. This is where creativity can really help you drive traffic so you can eventually drive more leads which can eventually drive more sales. Below are a few strategies you can use in order to get your message in front of the right people Facebook ads Instagram ads Influencer marketing Email marketing Direct mail marketing Video marketing Forums or group marketing Writing on targeted publications Text message marketing Mobile marketing Re targeting Campaigns Google or Bing Ads Event marketing Endorsed marketing Podcasts Those are just some ideas on how to get some of the right traffic to see you. Now I am not a big believer in the more random website visits or traffic the better. I always like to go back to the most targeted website traffic is the best because at the end of the day the reason why you want traffic is because you want to sell your products and services and if you are getting unqualified people then you have done it all in vain. Now the part that you HAVE to figure out or else you won't maximize your opportunity is you have to figure out how to convert the traffic into sales. Converting the traffic into sales is a very important part of the entire marketing cycle. Once you learn how to convert the traffic then you can start to optimize what you are doing and coming up with a systematic approach to building your business. Now this is a good area to be in because it puts you in control on growing your business. It takes away the feeling of things are just happening to my business and instead replaces that feeling of "I create my own business". Anyways, back to increasing traffic to your website or products. Take some time to think through who offers a complimentary service or product that you can partner up with to send traffic back to your site or offer them this service as an up-sell or cross sell. This is probably the fastest way to get traction immediately considering you have a relationship that you can tap into. Unfortunately you can't do SEO in one day but you could find someone with an email list and have them send out a message to that list and immediately build exposure. (Just as a side note in my experience email is the best way to sell digital products or even anything that will be purchased online). Do a Google search for the bloggers and/or businesses that would fit the description we talked about above and then from there build a relationship. Once a relationship is built and you guys have had some success then ask them if they know anyone else that could benefit from partnering up with you. Another technique you could use to increase traffic and awareness is to have social media influencers do a shout out or endorse your product on their pages. By doing this it will help you to increase your following and once you increase your following you can then start to market your business to them. You have to be creative to get influencers to want to do anything for you so make sure you don't just ask them if they would do a shout out or endorse you. Instead find a way to do something for them that helps grow their business or following while making them look good in the process. Remember this is all about building a positive relationship where both parties feel like they can benefit not just one. Influencers are getting "hit on" all of the time so you have to make sure you can stand out from the rest. Anyways those are just some ideas that you can do in order to help increase your traffic so you can make more sales. The last thing I want to encourage you to do is to make sure you are investing in learning more about your potential and current customers because all of the answers are right there!

[gregmarshall]

How to track return on investment in marketing