Monday, May 25, 2009

Andrew Barden - Inspiring Entrepreneurship Trainer & Marketing Coach



Click above to play this 9 minute promotional video, highlighting the group training services I provide. To hire me to train your group, for an evening, a day, or multiple days, call me to learn the wide variety of entrepreneurship training topics I can offer you: 1-866-339-4619
Some of the training events I do are free to qualified business owners, paid for by government agencies, chambers of commerce, foundations, non-profits, or banks. Individual business owners may also call me to set up a 30 minute complimentary small business marketing diagnostic. You'll know immediately what you may be doing wrong as well as how to fix your marketing to improve your ROI. 1-866-339-4619 or email me at andrew@andrewbarden.com  and connect with me at http://andrewbarden.trustedteam.com and http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbarden

Friday, May 15, 2009

10 Proven B2B Marketing Communication Strategies

Know the decision making process of your targets.
Know the decision making process of your targets.

If you are a business marketing to other businesses (B2B), there are a few steps you’ll need to address. Unfortunately, 9 out of 10 small businesses, when surveyed, don’t do sufficient planning of their marketing strategy. If you are a start up, your failure to plan means that you are planning to fail. To avoid the most common pitfalls, do your homework. The below steps will help you get started. It’s all about your research, your strategy, and your careful execution of marketing campaigns that are first tested and then refined and then launched.

If you need help with developing your B2B marketing strategy and execution, find a business coach / consultant / counselor with experience guiding small business owners through the process. The investment will pay off with a much higher ROI.

Before you start on your B2B marketing communications plan, there are some important things you need to consider:

The purpose of your marketing communications – Any marketing / communications effort has only two purposes: create a positive, larger-than- life image of your company, and create and facilitate sales opportunities. It’s all about creating a funnel of qualified leads for your sales team to close. And, if you are the only sales person (“solopreneur”), you need to leverage your time with effective marketing: you waste less time and end up making more money in less time.

Your budget – Most businesses fail because they run out of seed capital or have a dip in cash flow at some point. All factors must be taken into account. Obviously, a key new product or service introduction will require more money than an established product or service that “sells itself.” When a business owner makes marketing mistakes, the average cost is around $15,000. It’s better to invest in getting help developing your strategy than to waste your budget on failed marketing campaigns.

Your strategic plan – Are there new products to be introduced? Problems to be solved?
Images/perceptions to be altered? Interest/sales opportunities to be created? What do you expect to achieve through your marketing efforts? Develop a SWOT analysis (identifying your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) that helps you see problems before they arise.

Your tactical plan – Never forget that the desirability of the product or service itself is by far the greatest single factor in any marketing/selling effort. How you plan to create demand depends on just how much in demand your product or service is already in the market place. The more demand, the more competition, right? But, competition is good! Why? Because, as you read above, most small business owners don’t take the time to develop effective marketing strategies. When you do just a few simple things to correct the most common mistakes in your industry, you’ll soon see yourself dominating your market.

10 Proven Revenue-Growing Strategies for Small Business Marketing Communications

It’s just as important to execute the various components of your marketing communications campaign in proper sequence as it is to execute them well. For most small business owners the order should be as follows:

1. Corporate Identity – Logo, branding, letterhead, business cards, tagline, signage, etc. Follow through on all communications projects/materials. Look up the ebook called The Branding Bible. I’ve used it and recommend it highly. Branding is more than you’re your logo, or the colors and pictures you choose on your website. When you position yourself in the market correctly, you differentiate yourself from other businesses offering similar products / services. Your brand needs to show your Unique Selling Proposition within each marketing message. Not familiar with a USP? Simply “Google it” and you’ll know enough to improve your current slogan or elevator pitch. In fact, you’ll want to do the “poor man’s background check” and Google your brand or your first and last name to see how others see you. I’ve been working on this one myself. Google “Andrew Barden” and you’ll see that I dominate the first page, usually 9/10 or 10/10. Your online reputation can make or break your business reputation. Protect it.

2. Product photography/illustration – You need good photos or illustrations before you can do anything. This seemingly basic requirement is often overlooked. A picture says 1,000 words. The right picture can grab the readers’ attention enough to get them to read. Pictures of human faces or animals can also create a desired emotional reaction, even before reading a single word of copy in the promotion.

3. Web site – All of your leads / interested parties will go here, so make sure your web site is ready for them! Your site must make it easy to locate products/info and download quickly and easily. You need to be able to answer your prospect’s first question upon arrival “What is the ONE THING they want me to do?” And your answer needs to be “Give us your information in exchange for X.”

You need good copywriting and professional navigation, but you don’t need fancy graphics – web sites in the B2B world are for information, not showing off. No Flash is necessary. Your web site exists to help sell your products or to generate leads to sell your service. Make sure the information is current. Above all, develop a video with testimonials from satisfied clients. Adding a video introduction from you, the business owner, goes a long way in building rapport, too.

4. Web Traffic Generation – How to generate targeted traffic to your site. There are two approaches, short term and long term. An example of a short term approach is designing a landing page with Google Analytics embedded in it, then design a pay-per-click campaign, assign a daily budget, and test to see if within a week or so you have made more money than you spent.

A long term approach is to set up well written professional profiles on all the social networks, grow your network to many thousands, and ask and answer questions within groups of which your ideal client is likely to be a member.

Don’t dismiss the efficacy of growing your business with a well written social network profile. I’ve personally had prospective clients read my answers to questions posed on social networking sites, read my profile, check out my verifiable testimonials, and then pick up the phone and call me to sign up for business coaching. Plus, I’ve been fortunate to have both the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswire writers contact me as a small business expert—all based on my well written professional profile on sites like LinkedIn.com and Biznik.com. Just imagine if you had your industry news organizations calling you or clients calling you, simply because you had a compelling profile!

5. Literature – Provide first-class brochures that your salespeople are proud to present. Your literature is a reflection of the professionalism, or lack thereof, of your company. You need as much to capture the mind share of your salespeople as you do the attention of your potential customers.

6. Follow-up system – Use telemarketing to follow up on leads. Your telemarketing people must be capable of connecting with prospects and getting the information you need to close sales.

7. Ads – Target any ads to a very small niche. You’ll need to do your psychological profile of your Ideal Client first, to know where their “eyeballs” are going to be through the day. For B2B, industry journal advertising gets your company and products in front of a huge audience. It’s very cost effective in that sense. Advertising will not, typically, generate hot leads, but it will get people to your web site.

Establish a campaign or “look” unique to your company. Carry this through on all ads for at least a year. This is key for any branding strategy. And remember this: You only get one shot, so you have to stop them! Make them want to take action, and help them get in touch with you. Frequency is important, and so is impact. Take advantage of editorial calendars in journals and map out your schedule accordingly.

8. Public relations/publicity – Once you have your list of journal editors (which you need to update faithfully), send out press releases on a regular basis. You can use services like PRWeb.com and similar companies, most of whom charge around $400 per press release. If you are not a writer, be sure to have a professional write your press release or it won’t be distributed. Provide photos. Some online PR companies even allow you to embed video.

Establish relationships with the editors. You can use the press release’s cover letter to set up the initial pitch for technical articles. Technical articles are one of the most important yet most under-appreciated activities you can perform. They can generate huge exposure and position your company as the expert in your field.

With your article, you will want to showcase 2 main qualities. First, your humanity and only secondarily your expertise. Your humanity is showcased when you tell a painful story, showing the reader that you understand their pain. Then the reader believes that if you understand their pain so well, you’ll undoubtedly know how to solve their problems and make the pain go away. Only later do they need to confirm your competence. Start with a story and you’ll get them hooked to read all the way to the end where your contact information is located.

Most editors will run them, especially (whether they want to admit it or not) if you’re running ads with them. You can also write what is called an “advertorial.” Advertorials look like articles but you paid for their placement. It is one of the best forms of publicity out there.

Press tours to introduce new products or services are a very wise investment if you can afford them. You’ll need to hire a professional PR firm for this.

9. Direct marketing – It’s expensive to mail a printed piece to a huge audience. That’s what the wide circulation of a trade publication is for. But direct marketing is very easy to manage. You can target your recipients, check the leads yourself, and follow up easily. Success is easy to quantify. You’ll want to hire a professional copy writer for your sales letter, post card, or brochure. Write the first draft, focus on success stories and the benefits (the emotional release of solving the problem) and then turn it over to the copywriter to make it sing.

With any direct marketing effort, always make an offer. Without “something in it for me,” people will not respond. It’s called a “Call to Action.” But don’t just give stuff away. Make them respond to receive the offer.

Creative execution is critical. It must stand out. Newsletters, both print and electronic, offer another excellent way to communicate current information and generate exposure. There are often services within an industry (real estate, for example) that provide a weekly newsletter that they send to your list on your behalf, with your branding and photo and personal letter. Then they add plenty of news and stimulating articles that will be salient to your ideal clients. They can be either printed/mailed or electronic. Just look at your average client acquisition cost to see if postage and printing is a relatively small expense compared to the lifetime value of a new client.

Newsletters should be sent on a regular basis to key customers/prospects, sales channels, even editors. Most people want to receive personalized information. This means that you could have a different newsletter for a different product or service category. Let your browser choose which information will best suit their interests. They are far more likely to both subscribe as well as open and read the newsletter when it comes. You’ll also wan to utilize the service of an auto-responder service, like VerticalResponse.com or others, making the capture of contact information and regular sending of newsletters that don’t go into spam folders a much easier task. These services typically run at a very cost-effective $20 monthly fee.

Opt-in email is a very cost-effective, contemporary method of direct marketing and should not be underestimated. I recommend the work of the late Cory Rudl of MarketingTips.com His group, continuing on after his passing, is among the best trainers for email marketing and web site design that I’ve come across.

10. Trade shows – Pick the key trade shows in your industry and use a modest, well-organized booth. Get a hospitality suite, sponsor a press breakfast, host a seminar. Do something unique – focus on a key new product or product family. Focus on shows that will allow you to personally speak to enough qualified buyers to make it worth the cost. One little secret of how to write business at trade shows: do a major phone campaign to all the registered attendees prior to the show. Find out if they are willing to set up an appointment for a presentation. If you can present before the show, you can even close the deal at the show.

Remember, business is about relationships. Money comes from people making decisions. All of your communications, write, audio, video, or in person, needs to communicate the benefits of doing business with you. Apply the Law of Reciprocity and “show up giving” when first talking to your prospects. You’ll be amazed at how many prospects respond.

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Andrew Barden is a small business marketing strategist, trainer, author, consultant, and one-on-one coach, based in Los Angeles.

He can be reached at Andrew@AndrewBarden.com or 1-866-339-4619. Sign up for his free monthly “Small Business Marketing Strategies” newsletter and receive a 30 minute complimentary small business diagnostic: http://eggurl.com/dV

You can also view his professional profile, read testimonials, and connect with his 5,300+ global professional network on LinkedIn at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbarden

Optimizing Your Small Business Marketing Campaigns


As a copy writer for web/print, I know that the most effective campaigns are guided by thoroughly planned out marketing strategies. I've written the following brief article to help you grow your revenue faster with less risk.

Optimal marketing campaigns—those that result in the highest net profit return on your investment of time and money—are the result of sufficient research, strategy, planning, and careful decision making, weighing all the factors. As a seasoned marketing strategist with experience in a wide variety of industries, I can help guide you every step of the way, preventing you from wasting your precious time and money. Then, when it comes time to design the format and write your copy for web sites, sales letters, post cards, flyers, and promotional audio or video, I can either write it for you or write it with you, teaching you how to do it yourself in the future.

Without the necessary research, strategy, and planning, the likelihood that you’ll have a strong ROI, or even have ANY profit from a marketing campaign, is much lower. If you take the time to develop a strategy that answers the following questions, you’re like to find much more success in all of your campaigns:

Which strategy is most likely to produce the greatest net profit in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of risk?

So, let’s break that down. Which strategy (or optional promotional opportunity) is 1) most likely (probability expressed as a percentage, e.g. 50% probability of success) to produce the greatest 2) net profit (a $100 net profit versus a $1000 net profit) in the shortest amount of 3) time (recorded in days, weeks, months, or years) with the least amount of 4) risk (the subjective emotional as well as financial component of the company’s decision makers).

Risk assessment is probably one of the most challenging of the 4 factors. If you had $1 million in your company’s accounts, you probably wouldn’t mind investing $50,000 in a marketing campaign. But, if you only had a total of $50,000 in your company's "war chest," you would be far less comfortable investing your entire amount of capital. So, for our purposes, we will express this risk factor as a percentage of total capital available.

This single question, involving several variables, will guide all of your marketing and sales process decision-making. It can be graphically illustrated in the following table, where the Options are the various marketing channels or promotional opportunities available to most small businesses. Then, you give a numeric value to each of the factors according to how important it is to YOU relative to each other.

Options Probability Net Profit Time Frame Level of Risk/

% of total budget

Option A 90% $100 1 week 5%
Option B 40% $2,000 3 weeks 30%
Option C 20% $50,000 8 weeks 60%

Based on this matrix of marketing campaign decision making, which type of decision is easier, faster to make, and one that you’d be willing to go ahead with time and time again. Let’s look at Option A: Is it a “no-brainer” to make a decision that is 90% likely to work, only involves a 1 week time span, and requires only 5% of your overall marketing budget at risk? So, even though the net profit of $100 is not a lot, you could make this “bet” several times a week, couldn’t you? And you’d still be able to feel very comfortable with the level of risk, wouldn’t you?

Whereas, Option C, with it’s high net profit potential, is less of an attractive option, since it is only 20% likely to work and requires both a longer wait time of 8 weeks and a much larger risk factor, taking 60% of your marketing budget to execute.

Now, are you starting to see how analyzing every marketing opportunity available to you is a crucial step to making sure you don’t waste time and money? In fact, this one formula for comparing marketing channels can guide your every decision, making sure you are comfortable with the risk, and can improve your chances of a successful campaign many times over.

For testimonials from clients, enjoy reviewing my LinkedIn professional profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbarden

Sample copy writing sites:

www.eggurl.com/dV

www.AndrewBarden.com

www.SoccerMarketingInc.com

www.TrainingInLA.org

www.MackeySalesTeam.com

Saturday, May 2, 2009

My answer to a start up landscaping business owner - how to handle competition

Date: 4/28/2009 8:32:57 PM

Andrew,
I'm a young guy (26) who just recently moved back home, a small county in Va. I opened up a landscape/hardscape business and have a wonderful skills aquired in this area, that were developed in a rather ritzy city in the midwest. I'm very proud of what I know and can do.. But here's the scoop, when I moved back and opened the business, a "good ole' boy" down the road saw what I was doing and started the same type of business and has really got a corner (literally) on the market for advertizing.. more and more people are starting to use him and he has never planted a plant in his life much less designed anything! I know I have him by light years in regards to knowledge, work quality, and the such.. but he has the whole "being local" thing going for him. How do I get the corner market in this case besides just doing great work??

And my answer to him:


Hi,

In order for any small business to succeed (whether landscaping or carpentry or chiropractic), you first need to plan. Researching and writing a business plan is so crucial that those who fail to plan essentially plan to fail, so the saying goes.

This competitor of yours is leveraging his network against you. In normal business planning, you would develop what is called a SWOT analysis, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You would write up a description of your own strengths, the opportunities in the local marketplace to service clients who are not already being serviced by others, your own weaknesses, and any threats against your businesses, whether those threats are direct competitors, indirect competitors, bad weather, economic decline, etc.

And, you would also do a SWOT from all of your competitors positions. You would determine what weaknesses of each of your competitors (in this case, the good ol' boy who is opportunistic but incompetent) you could leverage against them.

In this case, based on the little that you've already told me, you would recognize that this competitor's clients will soon realize that he is not very good (assuming that they have a point of reference to compare his work to). If he charges the same that you do, and he does inferior work, his clients will quickly notice this and, if you are in front of them as an option, either in person or through marketing collateral (brochures, fliers, post cards, business cards, ads, etc) they know that you could be a better option and will contact you.

So, if his weakness is incompetence, and if he may even have a character flaw of a lack of integrity (knowing he is not qualified but still selling his friends his services), then your marketing message must leverage this against him, without specifically mentioning his company. How would you do this?

First, you'd tell a story of a very satisfied client. Marketing messages that actually capture people's attention are often story driven. You explain someone's problem and show how you solved it, thus directly showing how you'd solve your prospective client's problem. You'd tell the story that SHOWCASES your education, training, certification, and how landscapers without this background would not have solved it. You could even explain the story with your client describing the "MESS" created by "the other guy in town" who truly didn't know what they were doing. You explain to the prospective client the "DANGERS" of hiring someone who doesn't have integrity, essentially teaching them HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT LANDSCAPER.

I am a small business marketing specialist, having helped over 1,600 small business owners from around the world identify what is stopping them from making more money in their particular business, in their particular market, and in their particular economy. The principles and "best practices" are the same, but, the application of them is unique to each situation.

You see, becoming a successful landscaper has only partly to do with being good at your craft. You are not really in the business of landscaping. Sounds funny, doesn't it?! You are in the business of marketing landscaping services. So, you'll need to first become a good marketer and sales person and then you'll never have a problem growing your business... Your clients will see that you deliver on your promised (unlike your competition) and you'll dominate your local market.

Essentially, I can help you avoid the wasted time, wasted money, intense frustration, & hopeless confusion you experience when you ineffectively market your small business. For many years I have been helping over 1,600 small business owners understand the psychology of their ideal client: why your ideal client will buy what you are offering

I can review your current business plan (if you have one) and/or help you research and write your plan. With a thorough & accurate profile of your ideal client guiding your strategy, all of your marketing campaigns will produce a significantly higher ROI. After working with me, you'll be able to make marketing & sales process decisions with confidence and clarity, knowing exactly how to send the right message to the right people in the right way. Marketing is simple, it's just not that easy. Why is it not easy?

Simply put, most people don't take the time to do their homework, thus they feel confused and start guessing as to how to advertise and grow their client base. They try everything, and very little works. So, frustration is inevitable. If you spend your initial time and money instead on a marketing consultant/coach, you'll then start thinking like a marketer and eventually you'll become the expert at marketing landscaping services and you would only need someone like me for more advanced strategies.

I’m is also a professional copy writer. I can help you develop your marketing campaigns to make sure your overall design, images, and words will motivate your prospects to take the action you request.

There are proven formats that consistently yield the highest ROI, and I can show you how to implement those principles. I take the time to stay on top of all the latest traditional marketing & internet marketing strategies that are producing the best results for small businesses. When you partner with me, you get results. Period.

My specialties are:

Start ups, business model feasibility studies, target marketing, sales process strategy, psychological profile of ideal customer/client & catering the marketing message & sales process to fit that customer's natural tendencies. Focusing your marketing campaign only to ideal clients results in a decrease in marketing costs and an increase in ROI. I am quite adept at understanding "why people buy" and I have a history of successfully developing marketing strategies that allow those who are most likely to buy hear your messages—and converting more prospect with follow up sales strategies that are most effective at closing the sale.

How I Can Help You Grow Your Profits:

I can SAVE YOU TIME & MONEY:

There are numerous common marketing mistakes that I can help you avoid. The average marketing mistake costs a small business owner $15,000. I will work with you, one-on-one, developing both an initial diagnostic and later, if you choose, a thorough review of your marketing history and current strategies. You will know what is wrong and why it has been stopping you from attracting your ideal clients. You will know with certainty which marketing strategies for your particular business are most likely to produce the greatest net profit in the shortest amount of time. No more guess work. No more wasted time and money on marketing efforts.

I can help you Master the Psychology of Consumer Behavior:

I am adept at helping business owners understand why their ideal client will buy. I will guide you through a step-by-step process to get inside the mind of your ideal client and reach them with a message that is so appealing that they choose to start a relationship with you.

I deliver STRONG ROI for marketing campaigns:

After working with me, you'll be able to make marketing and sales process decisions with confidence & clarity, knowing exactly how to send the right message to the right people in the right way.

My Ad Copy Writing Converts Readers to Buyers:

As I’ve said before, I’m a professional ad copy writer. Copy is simply an industry term for the all the words in your marketing materials, including your sales letters, your advertisements, your website, post cards, business cards, and your elevator pitch when you introduce yourself. There are proven formats that consistently yield the highest ROI, and I can show you how to implement those principles, working with you to write effective copy.

I study the LATEST TRENDS in EFFECTIVE MARKETING:

I take the time to stay on top of all the latest innovative marketing and cost-effective internet marketing strategies that are producing the best results for small business owners. My clients leave my office with confident smiles & deeper pockets.

I can help you make more money in your small business for a lot less investment than most small business coaches. Again, I've helped literally thousands small business owners from around the world make more money through improving their marketing strategies and execution of their marketing campaigns.

The greatest resource of the entrepreneur that is also his or her most scarce resource is not money. The scarcest resource you have is your time. If you are willing to invest and hour or two of your time I will be willing to do the same. Then, we can agree to either continue on a regular basis or not.

Often it takes an objective third party to diagnose what's really going on in your business.

Given our tough economic times, as a start up, you'll have to overcome a lot of resistance from clients as to price. There is a method to make price a lot less important, even during a recession, to your clients. You need to attract your ideal clients to you, which is something I specialize in helping you do.

During your diagnostic session, I don't hold anything back. I give you my best, with the hopes that you and I might eventually develop a relationship in which I work with you regularly on a contingency contract.

There are typically two areas that most small business owners neglect.

First, most small business owners neglect optimizing their own mindset. Developing prosperity consciousness is the first and foremost responsibility of the business owner. I will make available to you for free hundreds of files, including pdfs, audio, and video, that can help you develop a mindset for business success.

Second, most small business owners, and I mean 99 out of 100, never take the time to develop a psychological profile of their business' IDEAL client. Without knowing how your ideal client makes decisions you will not know how to most effectively market and sell to your ideal clients. Not knowing who your ideal client is will make its much more difficult to grow your net profits as you will service clients who are not ideal.

In general an ideal client is one who is easy to find, easy to reach with a message, responds to that message, takes action, is easy to sell to, buys more than your average clients, does business regularly would you, and refers all of his or her family, friends, and associates to you.

Applying the 80/20 principle, we know that 20% of your revenue comes from 80% of your clients and 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of your clients. Wouldn't you like to replace the 80% of your less than ideal clients with the 20% of ideal clients less quadrupling your income, basically making more money in less time. This is the power of developing an ideal client psychological profile otherwise known as psychographics.

Demographics are the first step and also the easiest step in developing a marketing campaign. Too often small business owners stop at a demographic profile, then buy a list from a list broker, and send off thousands of postcard or flyer or brochure. They then sit and wait for the phone to ring, and unfortunately, little to nothing happens. Have you ever found yourself in that situation?

There's a simple solution that unfortunately most small business owners don't know. In order for even an ideal client to respond to a marketing message they need to hear a similar message in various formats from 10 to 12 times before they will take action and contact you. This means that if you send out 5000 postcards you don't send them to 5000 people once.

Instead, you send to 500 people 10 postcards with a similar branding theme, similar marketing message, yet different stories or themes. You'll have a similar cost, as postage is by far the greatest expense in such a campaign. And you will have a far greater response rate and a much greater return on your investment in the end. In fact, I seen up to 400% ROIs in direct mail campaigns.

The other crucial principle most small business owners neglect to apply correctly is generically termed relationship marketing. Roughly 85% of all small businesses in the United States are service based. Even if you are also selling products they're typically is a decision-making process that requires a live person to interact with the buyer. The sales process typically looks like this:

awareness --> like --> trust --> buy --> repeat buy --> refer

So, in the beginning of the relationship you are simply making your prospect aware of your offer. Your next step is essentially to get them to like you. People do business with those that they like, just like people choose to associate with friends for which they have some affinity.

Once you begin to like someone, notice that they care about your welfare, and notice that they are competence in their particular industry, you can begin to trust them and consider doing business with them.

This is where the Philanthropic Entrepreneur concept comes into play. A philanthropist is literally a lover of people, like a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. If you treat your prospective clients like a brother or sister, literally focusing on truly helping them, truly being of service, they will choose to do business with you, because they see your transparency, your honesty, your integrity, and that you truly care about them. Only once they feel your truly care will your prospecting success increase dramatically. And, you can’t fake this. You truly need to be a philanthropist. Then, at the point you’ve developed this trust, then and only then do you as the seller of your services begin to talk about the benefits of doing business with you versus other people, and the various advantages and features of your product or service.

Most sales processes (or marketing messages) start out backwards, neglecting the emotions of the prospective client. And, it is the emotions that govern decision making processes. People buy from you because it feels right, because they like you and trust you. They trust that the benefits you promise you will deliver. It has little to do with price or the features of your product or service. Remember, benefits sell, features and advantages seldom do.

Unfortunately, most people sell in face-to-face interactions or create written or video recorded promotions that focus on price, discounts, features, and forgot to establish an awareness, affinity, and trust in the relationship. This is why many advertisements and other direct mail or e-mail campaigns simply do not produce a significant return and often even no return... in fact it is often poor marketing strategy and field campaigns that is the direct cause of small businesses going out of business.

You may have heard from the Small Business Administration how well over two thirds of all small businesses failed in the first four years. And even greater numbers fail in subsequent years. Without effective marketing producing strong returns on your investment of money and time and the sales process that is engineered specifically to cater to your ideal clients preferences, wants, and hot buttons, you're more likely to fail than to succeed in building your small business.

As I said earlier, growing your landscaping business can be simple, but, it's simply not that easy. If you work with a business coach who can help you develop prosperity consciousness as well as the psychological profile of your ideal clients your likelihood of succeeding in your business venture increases exponentially.

I you are looking for clarity and confidence in your marketing strategy and campaign execution, your best strategy is to find a business coach who will act like a partner. They will grow with you over the next few years, helping you make key decisions and review everything with you every step of the way.

When you hire a business coach who works with you on marketing and sales process strategies, you'll avoid all the common mistakes, saving you a lot of wasted time and money. And, most importantly, you start making a strong RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT of time and money.

Sometimes he can happen quickly. Sometimes it may take a few months.

In uncertain economic times business owners who will survive will take much more calculated risks. They will do their homework in order to make decisions with clarity and confidence. A business coach who can walk you through a proven small business marketing system that has enabled literally thousands of small business owners to achieve strong ROIs in various industries in numerous cultures and economic conditions around the world is hands down one of the best partners a business owner would want to have.

We can do a full diagnostic of your business, for one hour or until you feel we've addressed everything. At the end of the conversation you and I will both make a decision to move onto the next step or not.

Once we are talking on the phone, I can tell you about website profiles where clients have written testimonials about how I've helped them (http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbarden). And, you can even contact those clients directly to verify. I'm a legit marketing specialist, as you'll learn when we first talk. I'm looking for long term relationships and lots of referrals. Once I help you make more money in your landscaping business, it is natural for you to refer your contacts to me, right?


I hope this helps.

Andrew Barden
AndrewBarden.com
866-339-4619