Let’s get down to brass tacks.

Since 1999, I’ve been launching successful start-ups. Most were pure online initiatives, but two are click-and-mortar hybrids. Today, each business unit makes enough to pay the utility bills, indulge in fancy dinners, and fly off on exotic vacations. Just key my name in google and you’ll have an idea of my different passions.

Skyrocketing my pursuits to niche dominance doesn’t take a Ph.D degree. Allow me to bare my secrets:

1. ESTABLISH A PRODUCT-CENTRIC ONLINE COMMUNITY. eGroups, yahoogroups and google groups allow the establishment of virtual families where people of like minds converge. WIth just a group of twenty active participants, you create a massive product buzz that eventually snowballs into unstoppable viral marketing.

My earliest endeavor revolved around business NLP, mind advancement and dating. Coaching was my passion and TV advertising would have cost a bleeding arm. I tackled the challenge by deploying an eGroup account and posting free self-help articles. At the 10th post, curious websurfers began signing up and participating. They left comments, added suggestions and invited other friends to jump in. The forum then grew exponentially and I witnessed a living, organic group of 8000+ members. People traded stories, joked, passed on tips and even flirted outrageously. For me, this meant a goldmine of targetted advertising: I would post one product announcement every quarter to a community already avid on the subject!

2. GIVE THEM FREE LUNCHES. Everybody loves a freebie; I snap up product samples at the mall or grocery store. When I get home and try that free shampoo sachet, I’d eventually come back and buy a bottle at a bloodcurdling $19.95. Mall owners were on to something!

Free eBooks, articles and mp3 recordings are hot downloads on the web. To target the army of freebie addicts, I jumpstarted Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Audition. Every month saw me marching out armadas of pdfs and mp3s. They were my eager footsoldiers, poised to strike at at freeware download sites.

So how did this benefit me? Each pdf and mp3 is armed with a resource segment containing my URLs and services. As these marketing warriors circulate the web, they stir up a storm of awareness… and direct traffic to my sites.

3. GIVE LIFETIME MONEY BACK GUARANTEES. What would do if you saw a product that trumpted “Unlimited Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee?” Of course you wouldn’t think twice about buying it. There’s no risk on the part of the buyer… after all the product can be returned ten days– or ten months after purchase. Let your confidence in your product show by backing it up with unconditional guarantees.

4. TREAT CUSTOMERS LIKE FAMILY. Avoid canned responses. Reply immediately. Offer solutions, not qualified excuses. Throw in value-adding surprises such as unannounced freebies and 24/7 tech support. Friendly gestures might cost a bit of money, but it goes a long way in building warm customer relationships. You want to create friends out of your clients.

5.PRAISE THE COMPETITION. You may be the best at what you do, but if you bad mouth the competition, you cast a pall upon your reputation. Share the glory with others by giving praise and credit where they’re due.

In my businesses, I prominently advertise the competition on my websites. I empower my clients with CHOICE. Don’t worry about lost sales; customers will naturally appreciate your impartiality and quickly realize that you’re after their welfare.

Business isn’t always about making money. It’s about nurturing relationships and building social networks. Once word of your superb business practices spread, revenue will follow.

Five Unstoppable Tactics For Demonic Viral Marketing. is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

Lets start with mobile coupons. Mobile Coupons are text message just as vouchers that are simple and easy. There are many customers that have already known it and they certainly love it. Because there are many customers that feel satisfied and comfortable with the mobile coupons, many companies from various industries are success to drive their sales in the target. There are many products that the customers order with sms marketing, by the time an offer of text message sent, there are many customers attracted with the promotion and it is more efficient than paper vouchers. If you are interested with text message marketing to promote your products, the best is to find sms marketing provider that offers you mobile coupons.

There is a lot of mobile marketing company that offers you the easiness to promote your products to your customers. One of the best mobile marketing companies that you can trust is Cellit Mobile Marketing. Mobile technology creates entirely new ways to communicate with your customer, when and how they want. You have to deepen the relationship and mobilize them to actions. The way to make the relationship between you and your customers can be by text message crm program. Cellit develops groundbreaking mobile crm programs with clients of all sizes. Moving beyond mobile marketing to true customer relationship management, Cellit provides the tools which power the mobile conversation. Cellit gives you modern marketing strategy that can increase sales and reach the customers. Cellit provides mobile solutions by combining world class customer service and engineering expertise. Dont hesitate to join Cellit because it is very professional to reach the goal of your promotion products than traditional marketing strategies. Get in touch with your customers and get your great sales with Cellit!

Mobile Marketing is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

Internet penetration has been constantly increasing need for companies and individuals to monitor what people say what they think and what they share with others. Therefore, together with the development of internet spun off from a very large chapter and subchapter Corporate Reputation Management , online reputation management.

The Reputation Management Service in the Internet is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

Exactly how such targeting is done, that is a tech issue far beyond our e-Marketing topic. What is important to us, e-Marketers, is to be aware of this facility web servers have and use it towards making online campaigns more efficient.

Hour targeting is especially useful when:

- we already know the online buying habits of our target;
- we want to create an association between our products and a certain time of the day when interest might be higher;
- we try to avoid a certain category of customers that are known to be more active at a certain hour interval;
- we know from previous researches that sites where we are advertising have different categories of visitors, with different interests and behaviour, active at certain hours.

Let us try imagining some examples of justified hour targeting:

- Premium IT products (such as laptops) could probably use a business hours targeting, on the premises that active, working professionals have more buying power. Similarly, off-hours and weekend targeting could be used when promoting basic desktop systems with a lower price to a more younger audience with less buying power and/or buying decision.

- FMCG products might benefit from targeting ads within hour intervals when these products are more likely to be utilized. We would probably want to place ads for coffee on news-delivering web sites during the morning hours; and advertising creams and gels for muscular pains later in the afternoon or evening, when such pains are more likely to occur.

- It is widely known that surfers using a dial-up connexion get online in the evening and at night. Therefore, if we are to promote products or services destined to dial-up users (modems, access cards, offers to switch to a superior connexion) it only makes more business sense to target late hours.

Interesting enough, such hour targeting is not always successful. A media planner might be blinded by the revelation of a cool method to raise efficiency of online campaigns like an adserver, only to realise at a later time that it can be more of a bother. For example, a banner for a banking product placed on a business portal would not need hour targeting, as professionals visiting such portals usually have permanent internet connection whether it is at office, at home, or is using a mobile solution. A regular reader of Financial Times online might opt to access the site in the evening, from the comfort of his home, long after the regular “business hours”, and would be a missed target if we employ hour targeting.

To conclude, hour targeting for online campaigns makes a very powerful and efficient tool, but needs to be performed after carefully assessing surfing and buying behaviours of the visitors on web sites where we advertise.

E-marketing Basics: Pro And Cons Of Hour Targeting is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

(1) Review your past marketing activities and results

Take some time to review all of your marketing activities and try to understand which ones worked best. And when I say worked best I mean, which ones resulted in more clients, more customers, more sales, or more growth for your business?

Your goal each year should be to understand which marketing activities bring you more business and which ones do not, so you can concentrate on the activities that work, and delete the ones that do not. Even if you did not have an organized marketing plan, or marketing activities that you implemented consistently during the past year, if you are still in business today, then there must have been some form of marketing going on.

(2) Broaden your definition of marketing

Marketing isnt only things like running an advertisement, or sending out a direct mail piece. It’s anything you do that puts your business, product or service in front of the prospects you are trying to sell to.

You may be surprised to realize youve been marketing more than you know!

Any time you talk to someone about your business, product or service, in person, at an event, over the phone, or through a brochure or some form of media, you are marketing. Any time you send someone an email or a thank you card from your business, you are marketing.

Be aware of any time you are communicating with current customers, or potential customers. Take the opportunity to make them aware of new products or services, special offers or programs, or even milestones or changes in your business.

Do you include your business card every time you mail a letter to a client or prospect? Do you have an email signature that includes your business name, your phone number, your email address, your website address and possibly even your tagline? You should. You are reminding people about your products and services and making it easy for them to find out more if they so choose.

If you truly believe that your products or services can enhance peoples lives, then it should be easy to share the word at every opportunity. After all, if people dont know about you, they cant benefit. Put this way, it is almost a disservice to NOT market.

(3) See if you can track your sales to your marketing, either directly or indirectly

Take a look at the marketing you did do, taking into consideration all of the activities mentioned above. Can you directly or indirectly track any new or increased business to these activities? An example of direct tracking might be: You attended a networking event and someone you gave your business card to, contacted you or made a purchase.

An example of indirect tracking might be: You attended a networking event, and someone you gave your business card to, referred you to a friend, and that friend contacted you or made a purchase. For each marketing activity you did over the past year, ask yourself the following questions:

(a) Did I get any new clients, customers or increased sales as a direct result, or an indirect result, of this activity?

(b) If the answer is yes, quantify the result by asking yourself: How many new clients, customers or sales did it generate?

If you can’t seem to track your past marketing activities, consider asking your current customers how they found out about you.

You could do a survey that includes a number of customer satisfaction questions, but also includes a question to determine how they found out about you.

If you have a handful of clients that you work closely with and you really dont know how they found you, pick up the phone and ask them.

At the end of this exercise, you will have a list of all of your marketing activities, and the results connected to each one.

(4) Separate those activities that resulted in business from those that did not

Are there any activities on your list that did not result in new or additional business? If you gave these activities a good opportunity to bring you business, then maybe it’s time to consider dropping these activities and trying some new ones. After all, there is no sense continuing to spend money on marketing that has not proven to be effective for your business. Even if it has worked for someone else, it may not be a good marketing activity for you and your business.

(5) Use this information to plan your marketing for next year

Plan to spend more time, energy and/or money on those activities that brought you business and sales. These activities have proven themselves to be effective for your business, product or service. So odds are if you commit more to them, they will result in even more sales. And, if you really dont have any way to track your sales or new clients, dont beat yourself up. You are not alone. In fact, one of my biggest challenges as a marketing consultant has been to get my clients to track the effectiveness of their various marketing activities. Just make sure to remedy this now, once and for all. Commit to never implementing a marketing activity again without some way to track how effective it is.

(6) Set up a way to track all future marketing activities

Recognize the importance of tracking and make sure that you have a plan in place to track all of your future marketing activities. The simplest way to track is to simply ask each new customer where or how they found out about you. You may also want to consider including a code on any flyers or brochures that you distribute, and providing a reason for the customer to bring that flyer in when they come to make a purchase. Reasons to return the flyer could be to take advantage of a special offer, or to get a discount or free bonus gift.

You can also do this by phone or on the Internet if that is how your customers make purchases. Simply ask them to provide you with the code on the brochure or flyer that they are calling or ordering from. Make sure the code is specific to the location or group of people that you distributed the flyer to. If you are networking or speaking to a group and someone gives you their business card and agrees to receive your free report or e-newsletter, make sure you include a reference in your contact database of the event where you met them. For every marketing activity you do put a plan in place to help you track all them. Effective tracking is by far one of the easiest ways to improve your marketing effectiveness. And when you zero-in on what marketing activities are most effective for your business, you will be able to focus your efforts on only those activities, and will be able to spend less and get more as a result.

(C) 2005 Debbie LaChusa

Dramatically Improve Your Marketing Results With These 6 Simple Steps is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

The Cost to Acquire a New Patient
The Lifetime Value of a Patient
New Patients versus Existing Patients
Marketing Leverage
Practice Equity

Lets start with number 1 and work our way to number 5. Hopefully by that time the beginning of dental marketing will all come together and youll have a firm understanding of how all of these things will affect your practice and, more importantly, your personal and financial wellbeing.

1. Cost to acquire a new patient

The first thing to consider when thinking about dental marketing is the cost to acquire a new patient. This is simply how much you pay for each new patient who comes into your practice. This cost can easily be calculated by dividing the amount you spend on dental marketing each month by the number of new patients you see a month. For example, if you spend $3,000 on advertising and marketing and get 25 new patients from that investment your cost per new patient is $120 ($3,000 / 25 = $120). That may seem like a lot of money, or it may not. Before you draw any conclusions on the figure lets discuss #2.

2. Lifetime value of a patient

The lifetime value of a patient is what your average patient will be worth to you, in dollars, over the lifetime of them being your patient. In the dental industry the average lifetime value of a patient is about $22,000. If you didnt already know that, youre probably in a bit of shock right now. Now that you know how much the average patient is worth to you, heres the question: is it worth $120 to get that patient in the door? What about $240? What about $480? Now, were getting a bit excessive, but were trying to make a point. If that patient will turn into $22,000 over the years, its important to look at every dollar you spend on dental marketing and advertising as an investment rather than an expense and do whatever it takes to get the person in the door and keep them around.

Now that we understand the cost of acquiring a new patient and each patients lifetime value, we need to get a major misconception cleared up, which leads us to our next point.

3. New patients versus existing patients

Many dental marketing companies will talk about how many new patients they can drive into your practice. New patients are exactly what you need and the Avandant program drives in a ton of them, but thats not where the real money is made in dentistry. Allow us to explain. When a new patient comes in, theyre probably responding to an advertisement with some kind of offer. The amount of money theyll spend on their initial visit is not going to be that much since theyre probably just going to receive an x-ray, exam and cleaning or maybe some minor treatment. Now, we all know that the real money in dentistry is made from treatment plan fulfillment and long-term patients who return time and time again.

Heres what most dentists fail to understandwhen a new patient comes into your office theyre simply checking you out. They want to meet you and your staff, see if youre gentle, have sterile equipment, and more or less get an overall feel for your practice. Just because they come in once, doesnt mean theyre committing a lifetime of dental work to you. Even if they like you, they still might not come back. Dont worry about why they dont, its just human nature. They might get an appealing offer from another dentist, they might move, they might not have the time. Whatever the reason, a lot of them wont come back unless you employ the right retention and reactivation strategy.

A patient is only worth $22,000 if you have them over several years, they accept a treatment plan and they refer other patients. Theyre only worth an average of $800 in the first year you have them. This is why focusing exclusively on new patients will cost you a lot of money. You should focus on acquiring and keeping patients in order to build a solid practice. Weve met plenty of dentists who have patients going out the back door as fast as they have new ones coming in the front. While this is quite common, it is very costly. Dentists should work towards having a productive and profitable practice while decreasing their marketing budget and new patient flow over time. This is a realistic objective when you have a good retention and reactivation strategy in place.

Dental Marketing Strategies For 2006 is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

1. Create a directory of web sites on a specific topic. Give people the option of adding the directory to their web site by linking to it. Put your business advertisement at the top of the director’s home page. This technique will get lots of people to linkto your web site and give you free advertising.

2. Do you have a product or service that doesn’t sell good? Offer it as a free bonus for someone else’s product or service. Get free advertising by placing your web site or business ad on the product or in the product package.

3. Trade autoresponder ads with other businesses. If both of you send out information with auto-responders just exchange a small classified ad to put at the bottom or top of each other’s autoresponder message.

4. Start a free tip line. Offer a free daily, weekly, or monthly tip recorded on your voice mail. The tips should be related to your business. Include your ad for your web site or business at the beginning or end of your message.

5. Exchange content with other web sites and ezines. You could trade articles, top ten lists, etc. Both parties could include a resource box at the end of the content.

6. Offer to insert ads into your product package for other businesses. Just ask, in return that they do the same for your business. You should only trade insert ads with businesses that have the same target audience.

7. Offer a free daily class in your web site’s chat room. The class should be related to the subject of your business or web site. This will get people to visit your web site everyday.

8. Do you have a product that doesn’t sell good? Offer it as a free bonus for another businesses product or service. You’ll get free advertising by placing your web site or business ad on the free bonus.

9. Place different emotional response ads for the same product or service all over your web site. One ad may hit their hot button to buy more than another ad.

10. Publish your e-zine in e-book format. You could offer a larger number of articles per issue. It also allows you to include graphics with your ezine.Your advertising revenue would increase because you could charge businesses for large color ads.

How would you like those 10 secret marketing tips? I could have listed more than 10 marketing strategies but those 10 tips are my interesting strategies. I hope above 10 marketing strategies will increase your sales and marketing growth.

Brand New. 10 Secret And Effective Marketing Strategies is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

And dont forgethow do you stay on track and motivated? Sure, its one thing to be inspired during a marketing workshop or by ideas from a book. But then the reality of execution sets in.

Believe me, I feel your pain. Working on some major, next-level projects of my own right now, its tempting to stick my head in the sand and say forget it. Since Im writing from the beach this week, it literally would be that easy.

Instead, Im taking it bird by bird.

Author and writing teacher, Anne Lamott, coined this term to encourage budding authors in her book, Bird by Bird. The phrase refers to a school report about wild birds that her younger brother had to write as a child. He put it off until the night before it was due. Sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by piles of books, he was overwhelmed and frozen by the task at hand. His father, also a writer, told him to just take it bird by birdfirst write about one bird. Then write about another bird. Then another. Before he knew it, his report would be done.

Faced with your own pile of marketing tasks? Here are some things you can do to take it bird by bird:

1. Dont start with a whole bird. Start with some feathers. A beak. The feet. My point is, just start on one, tiny thinglike spend 15 minutes brainstorming your Positioning Statement (and if you dont know what this is, email me!). Then stop. Come back to it tomorrow and spend 15 more minutes. Eventually, youll be done.

2. Be okay with lousy first drafts. Creativity experts know this. Famous authors count on it. Whether youre working on your website, a client proposal, deciding where to network or writing an actual article, just get the ideas out of your head and onto paper. Dont worry about complete sentences, clever themes or specifics. The point is to just start.

3. Invest by carving out the time. If you want to attract more clients for the long haul, youve got to carve out time to work on this stuff. It wont happen by itself. Look at it as an investment in what matters most to you (your future? your sanity? your family? your freedom?). Then carve out the time to invest. Start small 15 minutes of uninterrupted, honest-to-god-Im-not-going-to-do-anything-else time every day then expand to 30 minutes and more. Ive found that the daily discipline is what makes this magic.

4. Protect and guard this commitment. Others will try to lure you away (that crucial client meetingthe latest staff crisisfamily and friends), interrupt you, to make their needs more important. Dont take the bait. Make your commitment to this investment more important. Julia Cameron shows us how to keep from being blocked by falling in with other peoples plans for us, in The Artists Way.

5. Use a timer. Okay, I know this sounds analbut it works. I learned this from my friend, Susan Rose, whose book, Bourbon? Babes, comes out this fall. Now Im addicted. Instead of stressing about the time I dont have, I simply set a timer and do the work. When the alarm goes off, I stop. Its very freeing, since I dont have to decide when to stop the alarm decides for me. Try this every morning for a week and see how much you accomplish.

6. Show up and see what happens. Carving out the time to work on marketing is half the battle. The other half is being open to what you come up with during the time youve set aside. The best ideas will come to you if you dont pre-judge your efforts. Why put that kind of pressure on yourself?

7. Be gentle with yourself. Remember lousy first drafts? Again, go easy. Take a page from The Artists Way, where Julia Cameron encourages us to go gently and slowlyno high jumping, please! Mistakes are necessary. Stumbles are normal. Progress, not perfection is what we should be asking of ourselves.

8. On the other hand, no whining. In his Little Red Book of Selling, Jeffrey Gitomer gives us a tough love message that, when in doubt, give yourself a swift kick in the rear (his words are less delicate, but you get the idea). His main advice: no whining and kick your own a–!

9. Dont go it alone. Yes, you have to carve out the time, show up, and stop whining. But you dont have to go it alone. Create a system of support. Schedule a weekly check-in meeting with someone. Subscribe to marketing e-newsletters and online groups. Start a Marketing Book Club and meet monthly to share ideas. Join one of my Marketing Action Groups, Online Discussion Forums, Marketing BootCamps or Advanced TeleClinics. Get marketing coaching. The best athletes, performers and executives have ongoing supportwhy not you?

Getting started is the hardest part. I promise you, that once you carve out the time and just start, youll notice progress. And that progress however small will act as a magnet. It will attract you to the work of being a marketer, in ways that you cant imagine now.

To Julia Camerons point (she uses the word artist where I use marketer)

Remember, that in order to recover as a marketer, you must first be willing to be a bad marketer. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad marketer, you have a chance to be a marketer, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

References

Cameron, J. (1992, 2002). The Artists Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. New York: Tarcher Penguin.

Gitomer, J. (2004). The Little Red Book of Selling. Austin: Bard Press.

Lamott, A. (1994). Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor Books.

TurningPointe Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved.

Bird by Bird is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

1. Be an authentic liar.

2. Be your own valentine.

3. Fight bull.

Heres how these successful experts connect with the marketplace and you can too:

Be an authentic liar. In his latest book, All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin explains the power of telling authentic stories in a low-trust world. Mildly unsettling at first, he makes the case that our buyers are actually the ones who are lying. To themselves. About why they want to buy from us.

Successful marketers are just providing the stories that our buyers choose to believe. But heres the rub: you have to really live the story youre telling. The second a potential buyer smells anything less than complete dedication to what youre selling, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Its simply not good enough to have a good story. You have to live up to it as well. If youre a cobbler with no shoes, why should your clients take your advice?

Be a role model for what you sell, and nothing less. Then tell a good story about it, to buyers who want to believe.

Be your own valentine. In his hot little book, Little Red Book of Selling, Jeffrey Gitomer takes a tough-love approach to helping us be the best version of ourselves we can be.

My personal favorites are:

No Whining (Dont whine to me that the customer wont return your call. Study voicemail. Dont whine to me that your boss is a jerk. Get a new one. Dont whine to me that your company wont give you a laptop. Go buy one.)

Kick Your Own Ass (Ever have a bad day? Ever lost a sale you thought you had? Ever had someone say yes to you and three days later just evaporate? Wanna know what to do about it? Kick your own ass. No one is going to hand you successthats something you have to do for yourself.)

The heart of Gitomers message is put your heart into your workand if you dont love what you sell, go sell something else. No amount of cleverly packaged marketing spin can camouflage a missing heart. Your clients will see right through it and wont buy from you.

Research shows that people buy professional services because of trust. In Gitomers words, If they like you, and they believe you, and they trust you, and they have confidence in youthen they MAY buy from you.

Let your heart shine through in your words and actions. If you do, your clients will like, believe, trust, have confidence, and buy from you.

Fight bull. In their recent book, Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter’s Guide, Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky give it to us straight. Stop using words that are meaningless, boring, indirect and obscure. Start communicating with your own voice, personality, and style.

How many times have you sat through mind-numbing presentations, meaningless PowerPoint slides, or felt no connection with (no trust in?) the person trying to sell you on their idea, service or product?

So stop. Just stop adding to the bull that piles up every day in business communications. Talk and write to your target audience person-to-person. Ask them simple questions that get to the heart of their wants and needs. Tell them that youve thought a lot about their situation and have some ideas that might help them. And do it without the crutch of slides, silly business-speak, or slick messaging.

In other words, just be yourself.

*WIIFM: Whats In It For Me?

References

Fugere, B., Hardaway, C., and Warshawsky, J. (2005). Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter’s Guide. New York: Free Press.

Gitomer, J. (2004). The Little Red Book of Selling. Austin: Bard Press.

Godin, S. (2005). All Marketers Are Liars. New York: Penguin.

Be Yourself is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com

* Invest thousands of dollars in direct mail and expect prospects to eagerly call about your services

* Treat your vendors poorly by not paying them on time or not communicating with them in a timely manner

* Misunderstand the differences between advertising, PR, and promotion – and what they can and cannot do for your professional service firm

* Underestimate how important it is for your to address your clients’ PERCEIVED need (i.e., what THEY think they need) vs. what you know they need

You’re playing chess when you…

* Understand that there are right clients and wrong clients for your firm, based on where you want your firm to be in one year, two years, five years – and that your definition of “right” will change over time

* Consider what the right kinds of clients look like for your firm and then carefully develop a roadmap for all marketing activities that align with your definition of “right”

* Use a combination of carefully crafted “touches” to move prospects through your relationship pipeline from Stranger, to Acquaintance, to Friend, to Lover, to Loyal Partner. Are looking six moves ahead, instead of at the next move. Whether it’s developing your website, deciding what committees or networking groups to join, if you should invest in a particular piece of marketing collateral, or where to publish your next article…chess players see the connections between today’s marketing decisions and their impact months and years ahead.For a game plan to avoid checkmate, try these things:

* Consider where you want to be in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months and 36 months. Identify the big steps to get you there. I organize my actions by “theme of the month.” For example, within 6 months, I want to be well into developing an online platform to launch subscription-based marketing tools. So January and February are Research Months. I’m attending two related conferences to quickly assess the latest approaches, make some good contacts, and scope the competition.

* Your time is precious, so why squander it on marketing activities that don’t fill your pipeline with the right kinds of prospects? Decide how or if to invest time in a particular action (networking, developing a brochure, sending thank-you notes, writing a newsletter, giving a talk) based on how it aligns with attracting attention from the right kinds of prospects. I’ve recently joined a Steering Committee because, in addition to loving the cause it supports, I’ll be exposed in a leadership capacity to my target audience.

* When following up after an initial contact or introduction, you’re nowhere near making the sale. The game is just beginning. Make your goal one of learning more about the other person’s condition so they feel comfortable you’re tuned into their needs. Moving from Stranger to Acquaintance to Friend to Lover takes several “touches,” including telephone conversation(s), face-to-face meeting(s), email, sending them to your website to dig around (because you’ve stocked it full of valuable freebies), seeing you in action as a speaker, or reading about you in the press. Put a predictable system of “touches” in place and run everyone through it.

* Set a huge, “unattainable” goal and then connect the dots to reach it. In 2005, I have my eye on penetrating specific major organizations and creating partnerships for national distribution of my marketing education programs. I’m envisioning what these relationships look like in the end and am taking much smaller, practical, “doable” steps now to get there. These include attending conferences where I can meet key contacts that I’ve already identified (and where I’ll get the lay of the land to speak at next time), putting the wheels in motion for a series of books (the ultimate business card!) to build credibility and exposure, experimenting with local prototypes (where the sales cycle is shorter and there’s not a lot of expensive travel involved to make the sale), and building a solid relationship slowly with VIPs before jumping the gun.

Ready to play chess? Your move!

Are You Playing Checkers or Chess? is a post from: Marketing Blogs | Albrowmarketing.com