Mark Blomeley

Ok, what has really prompted me to put this together is that I was chatting to someone the other day and the guy was desperate to get his site to sell products (who isn’tJ), but his comment to me was that he was blowing a lot of cash on Google AdWords and has no leads and no sales to show for it.

Let me tell you right now that this is VERY common and this guy shouldn’t feel bad because I’ve certainly been there and done that too, as have many people before himJ. However, first things first, I wanted to put this together as really a cheat sheet for getting started in Google AdWords before you even contemplate getting things moving.

Ok, so lets start at the obvious, quite often people view the main issue as not getting enough traffic to the website, but if your doing AdWords and your blowing your coin, guess what, you’re getting traffic there. Which means your problem is one of two things, 1. It’s the wrong traffic and/or 2. There’s a problem with the website/sales funnel. In the case above I’m going to suggest it’s probably the website, but also some of the traffic is probably wrong as well.

Let’s break this down!

1. Wrong Traffic

Essentially what this comes down to is that some of the keywords that you are using in Google AdWords are bringing in traffic that are not looking for what you have to offer or are just browsing. If you’ve got products to sell, then you want people that are ready to buy and ready to buy now! You’ll find that when people are ready to buy they will type in certain keywords whereas if they are browsing they’ll select other keywords.

The only way to figure out what keywords work is to test, track and tweak!

2. Website/Sales Funnel Problems

Ok, you’ve managed to get the right traffic to your website, but you have no structure to your sales funnel or your website is not converting traffic to prospects. The main goal of when you first bring traffic to your website is to get someone’s details so you can begin to market to them over and over again. Your business is in your database, without a database you’re stuffed! Don’t worry too much about making sales on your first page, you must get the person’s details and to do that you need to give the prospects a reason to give their details out.

So that’s pretty much where most people go wrong, sure it sounds simple but it can obviously get quite complicated getting the optimal campaign going. It’s very easy to look at Google AdWords and say, oh I’ll just throw money at Google to send me traffic and I’ll make sales there. Wrong! Don’t get lazy with AdWords, it’s not as time consuming as other traffic generation strategies but it does take daily monitoring, tweaking and changes.

To get the cheat sheet just fill in your details below and i’ll rush it to you via e-mail!

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I was just reading a book today and came across a very important reminder of customer service, and it really brought to me perspective to what I am doing in my business and how to treat customers.  It also really made me think about how big companies treat customers and that has a lot to do about their reputation.

I have always prescribed to the notion that the customer is always right, I know it has been recently argued by some people that this isn’t right, but to me you really just need to have that mindset in business no matter what. More than anything it’s not so much about the telling the employees of the company that the customer is always right; it’s engraining a culture of doing this.

Within this book there was an interesting story about the author buying a round the world first class ticket and in one leg of the journey the lady at the first class lounge wouldn’t let him in because the leg that was coming up only had a business class option and therefore wasn’t technically flying first class.

Think about that, a guy that has bought a $20,000 ticket with the one airline, doing multiple legs with that one airline in first class and just because one leg of that journey wasn’t first class (because they didn’t have a first class section) he wasn’t allowed into the lounge. I know, I know, who cares about the poor rich man! But that’s not the point; the company should be doing anything possible to please this guy, it’s purely a case of a poorly engrained culture within the company as well as a black and white thinking employee.

On the flip side, there is also a story about a clothing store that had a really well engrained culture of saying yes to customers, to the point that they rewarded employees who had the best stories of delivering above and beyond customer service. One day a lady came in to the clothing store, to return some defective tires (that’s right defective tires!), of course the company didn’t sell tire because they were a clothing store. The shop attendant told the customer this but the lady insisted she bought the tires there. So the shop attendant gave the customer a full refund on the tires they don’t stock! A couple of days later the lady realised the error of her ways, apologised for the company and went to the media with her story. They got mountains of publicity!

This is an example of incredible customer service, although it might seem stupid initially to give the customer a refund on products they don’t sell, the end result was enormous exposure for this business. Although you might not get massive exposure for everything you do in your business, the point is that developing that sort of culture is going to produce extremely happy customers and a can do attitude amongst your staff.

What company do you want yours to be? The Airline or the Clothing Store?

Check out my 7 step sales system if you want some more tips on the sales process.

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One thing we hear in business as business owners all the time is “who is your target market”. If you’ve asked this question sometimes to other business owners, what is the response you generally get? You usually get something like “Men and Women over 30” or “small and medium companies”. I sincerely believe that the biggest issue and the biggest area that business owners slip up is not clearly defining or understanding their primary target market. In fact just the other day I asked an internet marketing newbie what his target market was, the answer “Home Business Owners, Entrepreneurs and anyone interested in Internet Marketing”

When you start to really think about and evaluate the marketing that you do as a business owner it’s very easy to slip into the trap of newspaper advertising or other forms of paid advertising and basically wanting to get the most out of your advertising. So what do you do? You create an advertisement that is potentially going to open the door to different markets, and you end up not appealing to anyone in particular. The result? Less effective advertising because you’re not appealing to the needs, wants and desires of anyone.

Again, I’ve been there and done that! I’ve run ads in local newspapers that have cost thousands of dollars (I hate to think how much money I have blown doing this) with very few leads to show for it and a horrible return on investment! Looking back I entirely put this down to broad focused marketing and not knowing my target market well enough.

When it comes to marketing it’s not so much the defining of the target market, because that is really the easy part, the hard part is doing the research and actually finding out what the target market wants! Often what you think they want is very different to what they actually want. If you go into marketing thinking you know what they want and start to advertise you put your dollars up to chance. Make sure you do your research and start understanding and eventually thinking like your target market, this will make your marketing appealing.

A client I used to train in my fitness business, was a very successful landscaper, so I asked him what his target market was and how he got his clients. Turns out his target market was “Outdoor landscaping for Doctor’s gardens” and his marketing was almost entirely word of mouth. That’s pretty incredibly don’t you think? Plus he has as much work as he wants, never had to worry about where his next job comes from.

If you think about this story above it makes complete sense. He has clearly defined who his target market is, he’s very good at what he does so delivers a very good service, then his target market talks and recommends him whenever they hear of another doctor that needs to renovate or build a new garden.

The tendency of when you are new to business is that you sit back and say ok, I’m going to try to get clients from anywhere and anyone; you just need to get critical mass before you worry about target marketing. Sure you might reach critical mass however your clientele may not necessarily be your target market, therefore word of mouth advertising is not going to be working perhaps as well as it should be.

There is a lot to be learnt by the story of my client above, if you can have a clearly defined target market like him, then you know what they are thinking, what they are looking for and how to interact and be valuable to them. Ultimately you become very appealing to your target market, additionally you can target your advertising a lot more specifically and you’ll be amazed at how successful you can be.

It’s easy to pass off a niche as too small (I would have thought my clients was) but this small niche could just be your ticket to an incredible business. I’m not saying that you can’t take clients on outside of your niche because you will appeal to people outside your niche to, but to simply target your advertising that way, because ultimately you can be everything to everyone.

For more information please feel free to check out previous posts or check out my 7 Step Sales System for Explosive Growth.

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I’ve actually been reading an interesting book that I’ve had for a while but never actually read because of its weird title, i.e. The Piano on the Beach. I’ll be upfront and honest; I find it very difficult to relate or prescribe to some of the fluffy, overly sentimental and somewhat tacky images that the home business and leaders industry put together, and the front cover of this book is no exception. However the perspective that the author comes from in this book definitely resinates with me and a majority of people who have gone to university.

One of the themes that I wanted to discuss today is that of action or inaction for that matter. I particularly feel that this relates to business, sales and prospecting in general, as these are the activities that business owners tend to either avoid or not spend enough time on. I was actually just discussing this with a few people on facebook just this week so I thought this was quite timely.

In a way this post is a little bit related to my previous post ‘What to Learn for Internet Marketing Beginners’, however this is more general about inaction or action for that matter. Tony Robbins often says that we make decisions out of avoiding pain or out of pleasure, and within this book this is one area that is discussed.  If you really think about this, it is very true, just spend some time reflecting on your decisions and you will generally see that there is a pain avoidance factor or to experience pleasure associated with your decisions.

When you reflect upon your decisions in relation to making phone calls to prospects, following up leads etc, these are always, ALWAYS related to fear. That is of course if you are 100% happy with you income, situation etc, which very few people actually are. Generally the success of your business is always related to your ability to pick up that 300kg hand set, because no matter what business is about relationships. Let’s face it; the only thing that makes the handset that heavy is your imagination and everything that comes flooding through your mind prior to picking it up.

My belief is that while you may be able to make some phone calls, the fact is you precondition yourself to a certain amount of exposure to Fear. What do I mean by that? I mean that you realise that you need to pick up the phone to make a certain income that you are comfortable with, however at some point you believe that you have had too much exposure to fear so you stop calling or avoid picking up the phone.

What does this mean? This means that you are cheating yourself out of making it your best every month/week/day in terms of achieving sales. The best sales people in the world aren’t the ones with the slickest presentation or the most sales education, they are the people who overcome their fears, overcome their comfort zone and continue to push through and ultimately make more calls and receive more no’s than anyone. Ultimately you can go to as many seminars as you like or get as much education but nothing is going to be better to prepare for making sales than actually going out and trying to make them.

So always keep your goals in mind and then go like the wind to taking action and overcoming your fears. Don’t avoid your fears, overcome them and push through your comfort zone.

Suck at Sales? Make sure you check out the 7 Step Sales System for Explosive Growth on the top right of the page.

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One of the biggest discussion points in the business world, both online and offline is the role of offshore outsourcing. Traditionally Offshore outsourcing has been left to telecommunications companies and call centers, however outsourcing for small businesses and entrepreneurs is growing massively and is now an incredibly important for any business to consider in order to gain a strong competitive advantage within their own industry.

For more Outsourcing information check out http://www.outsourcemybusiness.com.

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