John Jantsch - Duct Tape Marketing Consultant :: Duct Tape Marketing Consultant

Author Archive for John Jantsch

5 Ways to Make a Database For Your Customers

By John Jantsch · Comments (0)

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Standard marketing CRM type practice suggests that you should create and supplement a database of customers and prospects with the idea that you build more and more information to use to help build deeper relationships in your consulting practice and create additional selling opportunities.

What if you look at database building as a service you provided for your customers? Now, in some cases that might be a good service offering as a profit center, but I’m talking about providing a service that simply allows you to differentiate your business by adding value in ways that your competitors aren’t even thinking about.

database

RSS, search technology, and a slew of online apps have made the creation and streaming of database content a pretty simple affair.

Below are some examples of the kind of information this way of thinking might produce.

1. The knowledge database

Create a custom RSS subscription database of blogs and news sites your customers would find interesting, either by virtue of information they provided you or based on an industry they should follow. You can set-up an RSS reader or upload and OPML file to the reader of their choice and magically create a hand crafted set of blogs they should follow. OPML files may sound a little techie, but essentially it’s a list of RSS feeds that can be imported to an RSS reader to create lots of subscriptions at one time.

2. The best of class database

Build a list of best of class service providers that can deliver all the products and services you know your customers may need that are unrelated to your actual offerings. Create a database with all of the contact information and notes about each provider. Offer this to your customers as a service to help them find great companies for everything they buy. This strategic partner kind of database is something you should be building and maintaining for your referral and lead generation activities anyway, but take it a step further and make it a formal offering using a tool like Central Desktop to invite your partners to build and maintain their listings, including monthly specials.

3. The real time roundup database

Create custom social media and reputation monitoring databases for your customers that include all brand and competitive mentions in real time streams like Twitter, Facebook, and Media distribution sites and teach your customers how to monitor this database. This may be totally unrelated to your services, but it’s such an essential bit of marketing wisdom that you can create incredible brand loyalty by being the organization that shows them how to do it. Use a tool like Trackur to create your own white label social media monitoring service.

4. The cutting edge B2B database

Create a database of web apps that can help your business customers do more with less using free and low cost tools for things like design, file backup, file storage, file streaming, collaboration, online meetings, CRM, finance and HR. This is another play that can allow your organization to be seen as an online thought leader and go to person for emerging tools. Simply gaining this reputation can open some doors to many other teaching and exposure opportunities in your industry – regardless of what you actually sell. Here’s a nice example – The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need

5. The reminder database

What if you offered a service that could help remind each customer of important dates? Give them the opportunity to put all the birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates in their lives into a database with the promise to remind them to take action when the date was coming up. Obviously, this is a no brainer if you also have a product or service to offer as something for that date, such as flowers or gifts, but it also works for just about any business as a way to stay top of mind. The heating and cooling service could offer a monthly home maintenance reminder tied to the season and featuring a different partner each month. The key is to provide value and personalization. You might also get some inspiration from LIfeHacker’s Top 10 Reminder Tools for Forgetful Minds

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (0)

Categories : Consulting, Marketing Strategy

7 Ways to Acquire the Right Kinds of Links to Your Site

By John Jantsch · Comments (1)

Friday, January 14th, 2011

links I’ve said it many times – winning high rankings in search engines is not that hard for local businesses. There are some categories of business that are very competitive and certainly require the investment of a high caliber SEO firm, but the “do it yourself” type can do well if they focus on two activities.

When consulting with a client, guide them to create content and acquire the right kinds of links back to their site.

I specifically say the right kinds of links because there are still some folks out there promoting the easy way out, suggesting you buy hundreds of links, but there is no easy way out and this can even lead to getting your hand slapped or worse by the search engines.

Below are seven of the best ways to acquire those all important links.

Write a blog

Without question creating a blog and consistently writing keyword rich content is the number one SEO activity for the small business (for any size business). This is no longer something to debate. Blog content will improve your chances to compete in the search engine rankings many times over and draw links from other blogs and sites that syndicate content.

Guest post on blogs

A variation to writing on your blog is to seek out other blogs and offer to write content that is useful and relevant to their audience. Make certain that you get to place a link back to your site in the body of the post and look for blogs that are well read. You might also look for other local blogs using a tool like Placeblogger.

Submit posts and article to directories

Article directories are still a great opportunity for acquiring links. By submitting articles to sites likeEzinearticles.com, Articlesbase.com, Suite101.com, Buzzle.com you can begin to acquire more links and traffic to your site. You might also look into services like HubShout that provide turn-key writing and submission of content.

Write social press releases

Consistently writing news releases for even seemingly minor announcements is a great way to build up some extra traffic and links, particularly if you use the social features of tools like PRWeb or Pitch Engine. As a bonus print your press releases off and send them via mail to your clients and network, you’ll be surprised how much bounce you get from this little contact tactic.

Leave lots of relevant comments

Leaving relevant comments on other blogs does a number of things for you. In some cases, not many though, you may actually benefit from a link to your site, but the real value is that you may get the attention of other readers and the owners of these blogs in ways that could prompt them to point to some of your content via a blog post. I hope it goes without saying this won’t work if your comments are basically spam. Use a service like BackType to track when comments related to your topic get hot.

Create profiles

There are hundreds of places you can create social profiles on the web and most allow you to place numerous links back to your site. You probably won’t get a ton of juice from the search engines for these because many are what are called “no follow” links, but some are not and many will build extra pages and links for the big picture. You should be claiming this real estate and filling it with content and brand assets as a rule. You can even use a service like Knowem that will create hundreds of profiles on lesser known networks.

Use social bookmarking

Social bookmark sites such as Delicious, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon offer great ways to create valuable links and search engine juice. By bookmarking and tagging your blog posts with relevant keyword topics your content may be found by the millions of folks looking for content related to your tags. This can often lead to tweets and posts pointing out your content.

By creating a systematic approach that allows you to focus on a couple of these items each week you can start to build hundreds of links to your web pages and virtually lock out the competition for your key terms.

Image credit: Ramberg Media Images

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (1)

Categories : Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy

The Takeaway is a Powerful Position

By John Jantsch · Comments (0)

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

business There’s something terribly alluring about learning you can no longer have something you want. Once someone says no or takes it away all you can think about is getting it, right? It’s one of the oldest tricks in the sales bag, but it just might be a strategy you should practice from time to time.

The idea is that you start down the path with a prospect and at some point you stop pursuing them and tell them you’re no longer interested in having them as a client. In my experience there are a couple very valid reasons for doing this and it’s not about manipulation. By taking a deal off the table you send notice about what’s important to your business and give the prospect the chance to accept that and continue or reject that and move on.

In fact, in some cases you’ll lose a sale, but the best reason for practicing the occasional takeaway approach is that it will help keep you from attracting the wrong kind of clients. You know, the ones that think the buyer is always right and that your job is to jump through hoops, bend to their will and, oh, cut your prices.

By practicing some filtering in your consulting sales process you determine instances when taking a deal off the table will reveal if this is a client worth the work to build a long term relationship. Being prepared to say no to a prospect is a practice that is much easier to do when you feel confident you won’t starve to death, but it’s one that you must start to develop a sense for early on.

The red flag takeaway – In the hunt for new business we often ignore red flags and gut feelings about prospects and charge ahead sometimes agreeing to deals that don’t make sense with clients that aren’t ideal. Sometimes clients treat you like a vendor because they think that’s how the game is played – this is a point where you need to take a deal off the table with the suggestion that their demands don’t align with how you’re able to provide value. Two things happen – they walk away shocked or they suggest you start over – either way you’ve got a better client and can proceed with a caution in place.

The turn the tables takeaway – This one happens a lot with larger organizations. You attract a department head that wants and appreciates what you have to offer and starts the process. Then purchasing jumps in and throws an RFP process in the way, a set of out of date insurance requirements and the need for a dozen or so of your past clients to also submit detailed documents. Sometimes jumping this hoop is worth it if it’s simply an administrative hoop, but it can also be a place where you take the deal away so you don’t get pushed around by the lawyers. If your original contact jumps back in on your side, go for it; if not, you probably were going have even more roadblocks just to get paid.

The you’re not worthy takeaway – This one isn’t as much a takeaway as a position. This one is tricky and you can certainly overplay it, but the old “I’m not sure I want to be in a club that would take me” is at play here. Over the years Guinness has employed this message to embrace the fact that their beer isn’t for everyone. I saw an ad over the weekend that ended with something like – “It’s probably not for you”. This exclusive snob appeal can work well and it can backfire, but take a lesson in the polarizing aspect of this approach. Sometimes the best way to get a loyal following is to build an equally rabid group of detractors.

Image credit: jm3

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (0)

Categories : Marketing Strategy

Installing a Selling System

By John Jantsch · Comments (0)

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Image Credit: _-=Dreemreeper=-_ via Flickr

When asked to consult with a business, and challenged to make the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time, I always go to work on lead conversion first.

Lack of any asemblance of a systematic approach to selling is the biggest weakness for most small businesses. The focus of marketing is almost always on generating more leads. While leads are certainly important, the obsession with generating them consumes a significant amount of time and money.

Installing a sales system, one that everyone involved in selling within the organization operates, is the fastest way to improve overall marketing results. (I’m assuming you’ve also narrowly defined your ideal client, created a significant way to differentiate your business, and are consistently building trust through educational content.)

The end result with every business I’ve ever worked with was that we dramatically reduced the number of leads they were chasing (decreased expense) while also dramatically increasing the number leads they were converting to customers (increased revenue.) I’ve seen lead conversion rates go from 3% to over 50% when all of the parts of a total marketing system work together.

If you’re moving prospects logically through what I call the Marketing Hourglass^TM you will see that by the time they get serious about a buying decision they’ve already sold themselves. This approach almost makes selling a non issue and delivers stunningly high conversion rates.

Below are the essential ingredients needed to operate your lead conversion system

Discovery – You must have a planned response when a lead asks for more information. I know this sounds obvious, but few businesses do more than react. In order to move prospects you must have a call to action, education plan, and filter that helps qualify and direct leads to the next step. This is a significant step and one that can help you stop chasing the wrong leads while also giving your an opportunity to create a unique experience. Interrupt the norm for your industry here and you’ll help further cement how you’re different.
Presentation – Once a prospect determines they need to know more about your specific offerings, either by way of a demo or sales call, it’s important that you have a set way to present your organization. This is the point where many sales folks go out and try to answer the questions that prospects have. The problem with this approach is most prospects don’t know what questions they should have; so it’s really up to you to start adding value in the relationship by presenting what you know is useful, while also discovering their unique challenges. This is part scripted, part art, but it should be practiced consistently across the organization.
Nurturing – Depending upon the buying habits of your ideal customer or the sales cycle for your particular industry, you will need a systematic approach for keeping leads that are starting their information seeking process warm as they move towards a buying decision. This is a place where technology can certainly help you make automated contacts via email or snail mail. Creating planned education events such as online seminars and peer-to-peer panel discussions is also another very effective way to nurture leads and continue to educate.
Transaction – For many in selling, the game ends when the customer says yes. Your lead conversion system must be created in a way that delivers the same experience once a prospect becomes a customer as was delivered throughout the courting period. The best way to do this is through a planned orientation process where you continue the educational approach by teaching the customer how to get the most from what they’ve agreed to buy. This can be through a simple training video or a more elaborate new customer process, but this important step leads to a smooth transition from prospect to customer and often sets the tone for additional purchases and referrals.
Review - Your selling system won’t be complete until you create a process that allows you to measure and communicate the results your customers are experiencing. One of the best ways to do this is through some form of a planned results review process. By setting the expectation for this process up front you send a very strong signal that results matter, but you also get the opportunity to address issues that didn’t go as expected and collect client success stories and testimonials from your happiest clients.

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (0)

Categories : Consultant, Consulting, Lead Conversion

Marketing Without Strategy is the Noise Before Failure

By John Jantsch · Comments (0)

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

Image: kainet via Flickr

Anyone who has heard me speak or read my books knows I believe marketing strategy is far more important to the small business than marketing tactics.

And yet, the “tactical idea of the week” gets most of the mind share of the business owner.

Strategy and tactics must go hand in hand in order for a business to achieve a measure of true momentum, but an effective strategy must be in place before any set of tactics make sense.

This Sun Tzu quote, borrowed from the Art of War and adapted for the title of this post, pretty much sums up my feeling on the subject – “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

The reason strategy gets mostly lip service when it comes to marketing planning is because most people misunderstand what a marketing strategy really is.

So, let me start with what it’s not. Strategy is not a wish list, set of goals, mission statement, or litany of objectives.

How not What

A marketing strategy is a clear explanation of how you’re going to get there, not where or what “there” is. An effective marketing strategy is a concise explanation of your stated plan of execution to reach your objectives while consulting with clients.

To become the market leader is not a strategy – it’s an objective. To serve our customers with honor and dignity is not a strategy – it’s mission. To double the number of new customers is not a strategy – it’s a goal.

Goals, missions and objectives are nice, but how you plan to achieve them – otherwise known as strategy – paired with a logical set of tactics – is the surest route to victory.

To become a market leader you may find that an effective strategy is to carve out one very narrow market niche and dominate it. To serve your customers with honor and dignity you may find that an effective marketing strategy starts somewhere in your hiring process. To double the number of new customers you may find that an effective marketing strategy is to build a formal network of strategic referral partners.

Now each of these strategies will have a corresponding list of tactics and action steps, but the action plans and campaigns will all have your stated strategy as a filter for decision making and planning.

After working with thousands of small business owners I’ve developed a bit of a 3-step process for developing a marketing strategy. I must warn you though that market conditions, competitive environments and trending opportunities all play wild card roles in the process.

A company considering a marketing strategy in a mature market with entrenched players will have a much different view of things than a company trying to bring a new technology to a market with no proven purchase habit.

I wrote a post titled 5 Attributes of a Sure Fire Start-up that may shed more light on the start-up view.

When developing a marketing strategy for your business the following steps come into play.

Who matters

For any strategy and corresponding set of tactics to work they must appeal to someone. The first element, and in some cases the primary element, is who. Develop your marketing strategy around a narrowly defined ideal client above all. This post titled How to Discover and Attract More of Your Ideal Client goes deeply into this process.

As stated before this step alone may actually prove to be your strategy – to get good at serving a niche market.

Using your ideal client profile as the basis of your strategy also allows you to think very personally about how you serve them and how you use your tactics to attract them. Without this concentration on an ideal segment your marketing strategy will often lack focus.

Be different

After developing a profile of an ideal client it’s time to find a way to appeal to this group. In my experience the only sure way to do this is by discovering or creating an approach, product, or service that clearly differentiates you from the rest of the market.

The market needs a way to compare and differ and if you don’t give them one they’ll default to price comparison.

You need to dig in and find the way of doing things that your customers truly value, what’s going on your industry that frustrates people or how to turn the way people have always done it into an opportunity for innovation. This post titled 5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer unveils the best way to discover what your customers really value.

In some cases you may be doing something truly unique; you just aren’t communicating your core marketing message effectively.

If you don’t take this step seriously everything else you do in terms of marketing will be far less effective. That’s how serious being different is.

Connect the dots

The final step in the marketing strategy game is to take what we’ve done previously – defining an ideal client and creating a core differentiator – and turning it into your stated strategy.

When I created Duct Tape Marketing my stated strategy was to create a recognizable small business marketing brand by turning marketing for small businesses into a system and product. This strategy contained a narrowly defined ideal client and a clear point of differentiation.

Our mission was to radically change the way small business owners think about marketing and our “marketing as system” strategy became how we would do that.

Like most effective strategies the gap in current offerings and positioning was what offered the clear opportunity. Connecting your strategy will also include careful study of the competitive environment and that of other unrelated industries in order to fill a need with your innovation or differentiation.

Let me return once again to Sun Tzu and The Art of War – “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

Now, before you determine whether Facebook is better for your business than LinkedIn or if direct mail is still an effective way to generate leads, start at the point where you will ultimately create the greatest possible impact – strategy!

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (0)

Categories : Marketing Strategy

How to Create a Content Lead Generation System

By John Jantsch · Comments (0)

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Everyone’s talking about content these days and like it not you’ve got to get in the publishing game. (Content Rules – a great book on the subject that just came out.)

Of course this doesn’t mean you get in the game just to play. The idea behind all of this content creation you’re being asked to do is to use it to build your business in the long term – to get more leads and sales.

The following systematic approach to content creation will help guide you through the most effective use of your limited time on the way to creating a momentum building content lead generation system.

Content Creation Strategy

Like all good systems and processes, your content lead system must start with strategy. With that in mind there are three very important concepts to consider

The total body of work – think big picture when you think content. Pretend (or for real) that you are outlining a book about your entire subject of expertise. Now, as you think about content work through the outline and remember that are creating a body of work that may take months and years to finish.
Purpose and repurpose – As you create content always think about the purpose you have in mind – drive traffic, get links, draw reaction – and the repurpose opportunities – blend several posts into an article, use it as seminar, create an ebook from a category of blog posts.
Medium diverse – One great way to get more bang for your buck is to republish your content in various forms. Record and archive seminars, transcribe audio and video and offer multiple forms of the same content.

Tools – Moleskine notebooks to capture ideas, Dragon Dictation or Casting Words to transcribe audio and video to text, Audio and Video capture tools such as iPhone or Flip Camera

Content Inspiration

Even with a big picture body of work approach you can get blocked when it comes to creating fresh and frequent content. It’s a good idea to have ready made sources of inspiration to turn to and help keep you up to speed on all the real time happenings in your world.

Questions – make a note of all the questions that prospects and customers ask and get in the habit of posting answers to these inquiries.
Delicious – use bookmarking tools like Delicious so you can mark things you’ve found for later reading and so you can see what other people are bookmarking for categories you need to keep up on.
Google Reader – Subscribe to and browse 50 or so related blogs – you can do this on your phone while you stand in line at the coffee shop.
Alltop – Convenient way to see lots of blog posts sorted by countless topics.
StumbleUpon – Unique way to find off the beaten path stuff about topics you choose.
Google Keywords – Sometimes you just need to write about what people are searching for and using a keyword tool helps you know the best way to say it.
SmartBriefs – Daily digests of some of the best of the web on a variety of topics.

Content Automation

Few people are still as geeky about RSS as me anymore, but I still love what you can do with it. (Back archives and tutorials on RSS use)

My favorite use is to create content automatically or on the fly by installing a bit of RSS magic. Using this approach you can create fresh content for your own site or even custom filtered feeds just for your best customers.

Here’s a quick tip: Bookmark mentions of your company in Delicious using a company name tag, grab the RSS feed from the tag on Delicious and take it Feedburner and use the Buzz Boost feature to create HTML code to publish this info to your “In the news” page. The page updates automatically every time you bookmark an news mention.

Tools: Google News, Feedburner, Delicious, Yahoo Pipes

Advertising Content

If you want your advertising to be more effective and your content to generate leads don’t sell your stuff, advertise your content.

Use your Facebook and other PPC advertising to point to your valuable free ebook or upcoming online seminar and past seminar archive. Turn your advertising into a trust building platform rather than an expensive turnoff.

On Demand Content

One of the most dramatic advances in the communication of sales messages has come in the form of presentation platforms.

With today’s low-cost and easy to use video tools you can create full featured, highly engaging sales presentations and host them online to effectively generate and nurture leads night and day.

Using a tool like SlideRocket allows you to easily embed forms in your interactive presentations and receive alerts when people view the show and complete the form.

Content Partnerships

And now for the big payoff for all your content creation.

Once you create a blog, ebook, white paper, podcast, videocast, online and offline educational seminar you can take these proven and practiced bits of content and start offering them to your strategic partners.

Let them cobrand your ebook and offer it to their clients. Invite them to write guest blog content and interview them for your podcast. Offer to provide your awesome seminar free of charge to their customers.

While content creation may seem like a lot of work, using even a fraction of the ideas contained here, you can make the ROI of content creation crush just about any other form of lead generation today.

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (0)

Categories : Lead Conversion, Lead Generation

Build Your Marketing Hourglass

By John Jantsch · Comments (0)

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Many marketers have been taught the concept of the marketing funnel. The idea being that you bring leads into the top of the large opening in a funnel and push the ones that become customers through the small end. The problem I’ve always had with that is all the focus is on the chase. I think the real payoff in marketing comes from expanding and focusing your thinking on how to turn a lead into an advocate for your business.

Long ago I started using the concept of The Marketing Hourglass^tm. The top half indeed resembles the funnel concept, but the expanding bottom half, to my way of thinking, adds the necessary focus on the total customer experience that ultimately leads to referrals and marketing momentum.

I use the diagram below in workshops to explain the logical path a lead should follow to participate in your fully developed Marketing Hourglass. This concept is one of the key elements of the overall Duct Tape Marketing system. I could conduct entire workshops around this one slide as it seems to be the easiest way to explain the marketing process in simple and practical terms. At a recent workshop an attendee came up to me and said about this diagram, “I’m an engineer by trade and this marketing stuff never made sense to me, now it finally does.” – I guess that’s the ultimate test.

The Marketing Hourglass – (click to enlarge)

When you overlay my definition of marketing – “getting someone who has a need to know, like, and trust you” with the intentional act of turning know, like and trust into try, buy, repeat, and refer you get the entire logical path for moving someone from initial awareness to advocate.

The key is to systematically develop touchpoints, processes and product/service offerings for each of the 7 phases of the hourglass.

1. Know – Your ads, article, and referred leads
2. Like – Your web site, reception, and email newsletter
3. Trust – Your marketing kit, white papers, and sales presentations
4. Try – Webinars, evaluations, and nurturing activities
5. Buy – Fulfillment, new customer kit, delivery, and financial arrangements
6. Repeat – Post customer survey, cross-sell presentations, and quarterly events
7. Refer – Results reviews, partner introductions, peer 2 peer webinars, and community building

Far too many businesses attempt to go from Know to Buy and wonder why it’s so hard. By creating ways to gently move someone to trust, and perhaps even creating low-cost offerings as trials, the ultimate conversion to buy gets so much easier.

In order to start your thinking about the hourglass concept and gaps you may have to ponder these questions:

What is your free or trial offering?
What is your starter offering?
What is your “make it easy to switch” offering?
What is your core offering?
What are your add-ons to increase value?
What is your member only offering?
What are your strategic partner pairings?

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (0)

Categories : Consultant

7 Steps to Creating a Marketing System

By John Jantsch · Comments (0)

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

While this may be hard for some business owners to come grips with – leaning instead towards the “marketing is a strange form of creative voodoo thinking” – marketing is not only a system, it may be the most important system in any business.

To understand how to approach marketing for your business, it may be helpful to understand our definition of marketing: Marketing is getting someone that has a need to know, like and trust you.

Now you can argue about what like or trust is in your industry, but now more than ever, this definition gets at the heart of the game you’re in.

Below you will find the seven core steps that make up the simple, effective and affordable approach to systematic marketing that I’ve developed after working with small businesses for over 20 years.

1. Develop strategy before tactics.

Most business owners take the “idea of the week” approach when a good marketing strategy is the most important aspect of any successful marketing implementation.

Before you decide on direct mail or a Facebook page, you must adopt and commit to a marketing strategy. All tactical decisions should be filtered through your strategy to see if they make sense or support the overall marketing strategy.

The concept of a marketing strategy may seem foreign or out of reach, but it’s really little more than determining and narrowly defining your ideal client and creating and communication some key point of differentiation.

The challenge in this comes when business owners realize it means they can’t be all things to all people, and saying they offer good service isn’t a differentiator, it’s an expectation.

2. Embrace The Marketing Hourglass^TM.

Maybe you’re familiar with the marketing funnel concept – get as many prospects in the top of the funnel and choke a few through the small end.

The Marketing Hourglass suggests that there is a logical path that each prospect should be led that starts with the large end of a funnel, but as in an hourglass shape and goes to work, turning new customers into an expanding base of advocates and referral partners.

This approach starts and ends with a significant focus on the customer experience and requires special attention to the creation of systems and processes that move prospects logically along the path of know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer.

3. Adopt the publishing model.

Marketers today must commit to producing content much like a publisher might. Prospects expect to search and find large amounts of useful information on any subject or challenge.

Consistent production of content that builds awareness and trust, such a client success stories, testimonials, and content that educates, such as blog posts, e-books and online seminars is a major component of the new marketing system.

4. Create a total web presence.

It’s simply not enough to have a website and think you’re really participating online.

The majority of purchase decisions made today involve some amount of research online. Today’s business must be easily found online, easily engaged, and easy to communicate with online. This requires a major focus on SEO and social media participation.

Of course, this also means integrating your online presence and activity into every offline business function.

5. Orchestrate the lead generation trio.

With a fully functioning lead generation system in place, a large portion of your leads can originate as referrals, but by building out your system with the addition of advertising and public relations, you amplify your efforts in each.

When a prospect comes into contact with your advertising message, reads about your new product in a trade journal, and then gets invited to your educational workshop by their accountant, they’ve practically sold themselves.

6. Drive a lead conversion system.

Most small businesses view marketing as an exercise in lead generation only when the true measure of success is lead conversion.

The same systematic approach that created a lead must be in place when a prospect wants to learn more. Simply having a well thought out path that every new lead walks, a way to nurture and educate leads, and a proven process for orienting new clients can dramatically and positively influence the bottom line conversion results an organization experiences.

7. Live by the marketing calendar.

The scarcest resource in any business is time. There is always more to do than possibly can be done. Some people deal with this kind of overwhelm by simply shutting down and doing very little.

Marketing momentum requires consistent work over the long term and this is best handled by the creation of a marketing calendar. The annual marketing calendar is a great planning device for campaigns and product launches, but it’s also a great tool to schedule out the many projects that you know must be done on time.

By creating monthly projects and themes, weekly action steps, and daily marketing appointments you keep the focus on marketing heightened and the building of your marketing system in full production.

So, what would happen if you started to view your marketing as the system described above?

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (0)

Categories : Consultant

7 Steps to Creating a Winning Consulting Business

By John Jantsch · Comments (0)

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Archive of live online seminar – Secrets to Building a Winning Consulting Business

If the ideas if the above video make sense to you, learn how you can take advantage of these secrets by joining the Duct Tape Marketing consulting network.

Lots of folks are joining the ranks of “business owner” as a career path these days. Some by design and some, unfortunately, because they have little choice. Many of these business owners are choosing to open up coaching, consulting and service businesses in part because it’s so darn easy to do. The barrier to entry is sometimes little more than printing up some business cards.

Now, I’m not suggesting that people who start these kinds of business don’t have incredible experience and expertise to offer, far from it. But, because it is so easy to start a business offering consulting, it’s more important than ever that you find a way to differentiate your coaching and consulting business so prospects can understand your unique experience and expertise.

The following seven steps offer a road map for creating a winning practice.

1) Turn your service into a product - selling services is a little like selling air. By making your offerings more product like you can create something tangible while your competitors continue to offer solutions driven, customer centric services. Give your services a name – install your solution – offer a set deliverable, with set outcomes at a set price and watch how easy it becomes to explain and sell. The other advantage of a packaged program offering with a set price is that it allows you to rise above the hourly wage. When you sell your time you are capped. When you sell a product or program you are free to sell the value of the program without regard for the cost that goes into making it. As you become more effective at delivering your program you create the greatest path for getting paid on value delivered rather than hours input.

2) Develop a suite of tools and systems – to compliment your tangible product offering you must surround it with documented systems, tools and processes. This includes processes for lead generation, lead conversion, evaluation, service delivery, and results reviews. By creating tools that allow you to communicate and deliver a result in a consistent manner, you will immediately rise above 90% of your competition. Making it up over and over again with each engagement, writing proposals and reacting to client demands is a very tiring business. When you can guide a client logically through the path to success with a professional process your business will become more profitable with each new engagement.

3) Build a brand that’s easy to talk about - one of the things that Step One did for you was create an immediate point of differentiation. In order to create true momentum you must focus on a brand building strategy that makes it very easy for your prospects, customers, and partners to talk about what you do. You must simplify your core message to the point where anyone can understand it and communicate it. Again, you can lean heavily on your tangible offering here, but this is the place to add your story as well. In addition to the results you can bring, a strong brand is often accompanied by a strong vision and story. It’s crucial that you can tell a story worth repeating and make that a foundational marketing element.

4) Push out lots of expert content – Let’s face it, people hire people who are considered authorities and they often pay them a premium. One of the ways you develop your authority is to speak and write every chance you get. Authoring articles in publications, consistently writing engaging blog content, and presenting your point of view live or online is how your raise your authority. As a practical matter pushing out education based content is also how you win search engine results. I don’t think you can overdo this point and it never stops. You simply continue to raise your authority with a best-selling book and national speaking engagements.

5) Lead generate from multiple outposts – One mistake some consultants make is to rely on one or two ways to generate leads. In many cases there will be one ot two ways that seem most effective. Speaking for example is a great way to present your ideas and brand to willing prospects. But, to build a winning practice you need to generate awareness and trust by appearing everywhere. This means speaking, writing, advertising, PR and referral generation. The impact of multi-faceted lead generation is that it speeds the sales cycle dramatically and often removes price shopping. A prospect that sees an ad, reads a white paper and finds your quote in an industry journal can effectively sell themselves. If you rely on one form of awareness you may indeed get attention, but the education process will be much greater.

6) Perfect your lead conversion close – I sometimes get a little push back here, but I’ve found that writing proposals and reacting to what a client thinks they need can drive you nuts. When you take the tangible product approach married with the expert content approach, lead generation is more about getting in front of the right prospects and explaining “this is how we do it” in a way that addresses what you know they need. Add to that an elegant process that enrolls and orients them to your system and you are on your way to delivering a lead conversion experience that’s a joy for all. Winning profitability relies heavily on your ability to close more of the right deals and that includes knowing how to spot and move quickly away from the wrong deals. A systematic lead conversion process is the best tool possible for this strategy.

7) Construct a killer network – one of the best ways to make yourself more valuable to your clients is to become a source for everything they need to succeed. The best way to do this is to develop a network of best of class providers that you can refer and introduce whenever the need arises. By being the “go to” resource for your clients you become irreplaceable and ultimately highly referable. In addition, when you court and nurture these network partners with an eye on learning how to refer them to your clients, you set-up paths that make you an obvious referral choice for their needs. In fact, I would go as far as creating formal ways to build and enhance your network. Develop a plan to hold each other accountable, create and write a blog jointly, and freely offer each other an experience of your products and services. A strong network is also a powerful business tool for the solo entrepreneur to use as a sounding board, sanity check, and social outlet to replace the interaction that often comes with working with an internal team.

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Comments (0)

Categories : Consulting

Author Archive for John Jantsch

5 Ways to Make a Database For Your Customers

About John Jantsch

7 Ways to Acquire the Right Kinds of Links to Your Site

About John Jantsch

The Takeaway is a Powerful Position

About John Jantsch

Installing a Selling System

About John Jantsch

Marketing Without Strategy is the Noise Before Failure

About John Jantsch

How to Create a Content Lead Generation System

About John Jantsch

Build Your Marketing Hourglass

About John Jantsch

7 Steps to Creating a Marketing System

About John Jantsch

7 Steps to Creating a Winning Consulting Business

Archive of live online seminar – Secrets to Building a Winning Consulting Business

If the ideas if the above video make sense to you, learn how you can take advantage of these secrets by joining the Duct Tape Marketing consulting network.

About John Jantsch

Authors

Meta