A fresh perspective
If you start to contemplate a fresh lifestyle change, for example, taking the family around Australia for six months, it will suddenly become clearer which things and activities you (and the family) can live without. It’s easy to think of leisure habits to reduce, since we all watch too much TV/play too many games, but what about business activities?

As a consulting Mum with a gazillion things to do, good systems save me from many hours of work. There are ‘no brainer’ tasks like:

• Letting a good email marketing system process email opt-ins, bounces and unsubscribes; allowing you to set optimum times to send, and sending it to the right list category
• Reminder systems for business appointments, and
• Automated reminders to send account overdue notices to clients (this one is more to backup the ole brain)

Ages ago I realised that I cannot do it all myself, namely: BAS/accounts, sales, backend admin, replying to enquiries, IT issues, writing blogs, PR, branding/design, create marketing campaigns, etc. I’ve seen too many micro businesses suffer under the weight of all those tasks to believe its possible.

Outsourcing to professionals may hurt in the hip pocket, but if we take on too much, life will find a way to penalise us anyhow:

• Late bill payment fees
• Missing out on sales due to slow response
• Spouse mad that you never seem present and not distracted
• A slow decline of movement and muscle tone, leading to aches and pains.

Deliberate or Delegate?
Just recently I had a vital lesson in delegation, when a website coding problem wreaked havoc on a client website. As midnight drew near, I was stressing that the website would never look the same again due to my lack of ‘tech’ knowledge.

My partner had told me about a local WordPress expert who helped him out ‘beyond the call’ earlier that week. Finally I came to my senses the next day and emailed Mr WordPress. He quickly responded, and sent a picture asking, “is this what it should look like”? It was. Did I mind paying for one hour? No I did not.

Just about an hour later it was all fixed, including the footer. And it cost just $44 to solve a problem that I bothered over for three hours.

Henry Ford had a method. He said something like, “Don’t BE the expert, it takes too long. It’s far easier and faster to surround yourself with experts.” Amen to that Henry.

For any given product, there is a primary target market and possibly secondary markets. If you are trying to capture two different markets with the same campaign, you are splitting the focus and this normally doesn’t work too well. It’s exactly the same with selling propositions – hence the name ‘Unique’ Selling Proposition.

The answer is fairly simple: just craft a campaign and choose the media for each audience. This is made easy with the target market segmentation provided inside Infusionsoft.

First, You Must Get to Know Them

Get to know your top 20% of customers intimately:  find out their reading or viewing habits, their shopping habits, and their interests and tastes. Write all this down in a file called “ideal customer profile”.  Then when you have a new campaign to be written, you can send this to your copywriter to craft a message just for them.

Why do I suggest the top 20%? Because that’s who spends the most with you (80%, if the Pareto Principle is correct). They are usually the most loyal, and will often cost you less in administration.

Many companies have an offering for each market segment and this makes a lot of sense. But be careful if you cater to both business and consumer markets, because each needs different styles of marketing. For instance, you cannot get away with a longwinded online sales letter for a B2B software product, because your main buyers will dismiss it as fluff. But offering a free white paper outlining the pros and cons of certain systems would be infinitely better.

Ensure you have a marketing follow up system in place to build on this great first introduction to your product.

Then, You Must Court Them

Marketing is a lot like dating. Just as the beer swiller at the bar with a one liner gets rejected, so does the email marketer with a full-on sales message or over-familiar tone, intent on the sale.

If you’re setting up an email campaign, spend the first email welcoming them and reassuring new patrons that you respect their privacy. The second email should contain some great fresh ideas or knowledge that will help their decision making (business) or overriding problems (consumer). The third email will build on this; perhaps introduce a case study of how your solution helped someone, or keep up the interesting articles… with links to your website if they want to find out more.

In this strategy we’re not selling in the emails because if they’re interested, the linked website pages should be primed for persuading both cold and warm prospects to your solution.

Sometimes this will not be the way forward because your business has limited time offers (such as a travel agency or accommodation provider). In this case, you can ‘sandwich’ these offers in between some words that ignite the imagination. Even well crafted captions will do the trick; it’s certainly preferable to an image-laden email that does not even get seen by most email viewers.

I hope this article has you brimming with new ideas to implement. If you need any help with copywriting, web design, or email marketing, please send InfusionOz an email and we’ll pass you to a trusted professional that’s right for the job.

As a Small Business Owner, it’s easy to find yourself working long hours, doing everything you can, winding up with a few hours at the end of the day to eat and fall in a heap… only to get up the next day and do it again!  It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you view every work hour that passes as being an hour that could have brought you money, are you using that time in the best possible way?  And are you using leverage and strategies to bring you the most amount of income?

Here are some things you can do to ensure you structure your day for maximum effectiveness:

• Have set times each day for breaks and meals
• Ensure you take regular breaks to clear your head and stretch your body!
• Use an organised system for storing files and managing daily files and papers
• Start your day by reviewing a list of things you need to accomplish for the day, and prioritise them.
• Identify all the items in your list that you know DE-MOTIVATE you, ones that you DISLIKE doing!
• See what items you can outsource to others, so you can keep your motivation and energy levels high.

Secret Steps to Diary Management

I’ve got two secret steps to many successful people’s diary and time management:

1. Identify all the tasks or actions in your daily list that will actually make you money – and put those at the top of the list. These are the no. 1 priority items each and every day!
2. Write your daily task list at the END of the workday for the following day, and leave it on your desk. It will enable you to walk in and start working on item no. 1 without delay.

When you start looking at your daily list in terms of what will make you money and ‘everything else’ – you’ll find your focus will be clearer and you’ll have far more energy for the rest of the day.

Remember to outsource or delegate those things that slow you down or de-motivate you. You’ll feel a load off your shoulders.

By following these simple and effective strategies, you’ll be utilising your time more wisely – and you’ll plug the gaps on any money leaks from wasteful activities. Not only that, when you focus on income-earning activities more, you’ll find yourself with a more profitable bottom line.

All around the world, people use this program because it is remarkably powerful. They’re not die-hard techies, just real business people who needed a trackable, all-in-one CRM and marketing program.

Six Features Which Outclass the Rest

If you’re shopping for an online CRM but remain confused which to choose, here are six features that may give you that extra tip towards Infusionsoft:

1. Tags. These became popular with WordPress.  Tag Clouds – a way to classify information so that it can be easily found – are also great for segmenting your list. These tags allow identification of the right message to the right prospect.
2. Action Sequences.  You can easily add or change a record’s status based on certain conditions. For example, a prospect buys “Product X” from you, you can change the record’s status from prospect to client, add a tag indicating that they’ve purchased “Product X”, and initiate the marketing sequence of emails for Product X – marketing your up-sell packages based on what they bought.
3. Trackable Links.  You can send an email with a link that says, “Please have someone call me”, and once someone clicks the link, it starts an action sequence – perhaps it creates a task, assigns it to a salesperson to follow up, and sends off a sequence of emails.
4. Infusionsoft API.  It’s one of the few systems that allows direct access to your database via an API (Application Programming Interface). Basically, this gives it unlimited scope to ‘automate’ business operations. Read 19 More Ways to Use Infusionsoft APIs
5. Subscriptions and Recurring Payments. You can create order forms that accept credit cards and even spread payments out over a period of time.  After you’ve sold something, this allows you to concentrate on delivering the goods.  It takes a lot of worry out of chasing payments, just “set it and forget it.”
6. Custom Reports. If you really like to keep a handle on things, Custom Reporting is for you. The possibilities are: Marketing & Sales Funnels (graphical), Google Analytics through API, Managing Marketing Budget, etc. Infusionsoft users can copy the code from this informative post. You can create custom reports by pulling data from Contact Records, Tags, Order History, Opportunity Records, and many other database tables.

Of course, some people need to see it working to fully understand the functionality. So if you’d like to see it in action, click here to see a demo or have a go at the 15-day FREE trial.

My argument was that to become financially free via the traditional methods (not winning lotto or getting an inheritance), you need to work really hard.  His response was “it’s not about working hard – it’s about working smart”.

Upon reflection, I realised that it comes down to interpretation. Perhaps ‘hard work’ need not be difficult – I see it as persevering to achieve an outcome, and doing what it takes to reach it.

So let’s explore whether working hard is enough to make your business successful these days.

Well, are you currently letting your business run you? Are you reacting to clients, staff and suppliers instead of being proactive… do you often find yourself in a state of disorganised chaos?

OR… Are you in control of your processes, functions, and have systems in place to manage things in a calm and consistent manner?

People who run around busily each day without a clear goal or purpose are creating a lot of noise and flying papers, but they aren’t getting anywhere.

While those who link their daily activities to their strategic goals are creating less waste and inefficiencies, are finished sooner, and could be defined as working ‘smart’.

What Does it Take to Get Ahead?

The key to working smarter is to be really clear about what direction you are heading in.

-       What are your business goals and objectives?
-       What are the timeframes you want to achieve these within?

THEN, look at your daily activities and ask:

-       Are these activities linked directly to my strategic goals?
-       Or am I doing lots of ‘stuff’ without really achieving anything?

You’ll realise fairly quickly from your business results what the answers are.  You’ll also know from your internal sense of achievement.

The key to working smarter (and not harder) is to align your daily tasks and activities with your larger strategic goals. Then to use systems, technology and processes to make it more efficient and take the load off you.

That’s where a highly automated Email Marketing and CRM system comes into it, just like Infusionsoft.

• Consumer Brand building
• Personal branding
• Establishing yourself as a thought leader
• Creating a Facebook group as another touchpoint
• Advertising targeted to key demographics (this is not free – it’s pay per click).

Facebook is growing its offsite presence (it seems like an omnipresence) with ‘like’ thumbs-up buttons popping up on every website and blog, allowing users to ‘show interest’ in them and to share their message with Facebook friends at the same time. Within 3 weeks of the launch of this new ‘like’ feature, some brands were seeing traffic from the social site double (example IMDb.com, source ClickZ). So for consumer brands it works.

But for B2B, people who are looking for new opportunities and professional connections, they tend to use LinkedIn. It is easier to see if someone is credible and trustworthy, since most have their resume and recommendations from others.

But Should You Jump on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc?

There are no hard and fast rules to say you must have a presence on social platforms. If you’re flat out just following up the leads you have – why add to your stress with setting up social networking for business?

Don’t just jump in with the lemmings.  First develop a new Marketing Plan for business. See where your customers are coming from, what are they interested in, what is going to attract them?  From this information, your plan takes shape…including how best to attract, persuade and sell to your market.

You are probably going to need a central system to control your marketing communications and growing customer base.   Otherwise, with multiple databases and different lead campaigns, your worklife will become chaotic.  This is what I have found in many micro/small businesses.

So from Facebook or LinkedIn, Email marketing, Website leads, and offline leads, capture all this information together with a tool like Infusionsoft… so a step-by-step sales process can be easily set up, and you can go focus on the important work of building relationships.

What about in business – do micro and small business owners need automation?

In any business, automation can easily be set up in a number of ways:

• Scheduling daily tasks in the computer calendar, with timers to remind you when a task is due.
• Using software programs that automatically run a program every month.
• Operating system is set to check for updates on a regular basis.

These are all examples of automation.

So how does a Small Business Owner utilise automation more to save time and make life easy?

Firstly, look at the tools you have available.  A calendar is a great way to set things up so that you’re keeping on track.  If you’ve created a schedule of your day and allocated time to do certain things, then set it up in Calendar (inside Outlook or Entourage), with alerts to remind you when to finish and start the next one.

Let’s face it – emails often distract us from our task at hand. If you don’t want to be distracted by emails, turn off the automatic downloading of emails or set it to download only twice a day.

You can also create different views or types of calendars for the different activities you have – very handy for those of us leading double lives!  Some calendars – such as Google Calendar – allow you to colour code your different calendars and activities, so that you have a visual representation of the different activities you’re doing.

Taking It One Step Further – Complete Business Automation

You can take things to another level in your business by actually automating processes, so that tasks normally done manually are done using technology.  This is where a system like Infusionsoft can put your business on Steroids (good ones) with marketing, sales, and billing automation – to name a few.

The best part about automation is that you control the set up – so it can be customised to your business and personal needs. Before setting it up, my advice is to find some smart tools and ensure you’ve identified all the processes that can be automated.  The benefits are well worth it.  And if you’d like some help with this, just give me a call.

What is a CRM?
A CRM system – Customer Relationship Management – is a database that allows you to store information on your clients, prospects and other people related to your business.  The larger, fancier CRMs are more flexible and customisable, whereas the simpler, lower-priced ones are stock standard and hence have limitations.  Price follows functionality in this case.

What can it do for you?
I recall a client a couple of years ago who had a very profitable business, but was extremely inefficient in their processes and systems – so they hired me to sort things out.  What surprised me was that they had built a massively large database and huge client list using just Outlook, Word, Post-it notes and lists.  It’s no wonder they were in disarray!

Since they were adept at attracting business, imagine how much better off they were once they could view all their clients and sales details, and then follow-up with them all.

Ultimately you want a system that is going to make life easy for you.  So it should:

-       save you time
-       improve your productivity
-       streamline your processes
-       help you to make money

You might think that using those paper files, post-it notes, Outlook lists and Excel spreadsheets is safe – but it could be costing you dearly in time, not to mention efficiency.

Having all your client and contact information in the one central location is not just  ‘mandatory’ for big business; it’s essential for small business too.  As a solo business owner your time is precious – and you need to be able to access important information quickly.

Do your homework, set up a system, and reap the rewards.  Your time and business success is worth it.

First, think about why it’s so hard to get moving.  Are these tasks or items that are your least favourite things to do?  Or are they things that you’re putting off for some other reason?

As humans we tend to move away from pain, towards pleasure…

We all have days that we would rather sit on the back porch in the sun with a magazine and cup of hot coffee (or similar) at our side.  But the reality of our life is that the bills still keep coming in, clients need our assistance, prospective clients need to be found, and we have to take action to create a nest egg for our future.  So the choice is: do nothing and sit on the porch, or get into action and make some money.

Obviously, doing nothing WON’T pay the bills!  So how do you push past those internal barriers of resistance to the activities that you really don’t like doing?

An Action Plan to Create Money

First:

• Identify what it is that you like doing and what you don’t.
• Identify what you’re good at and what you’re not.
• Identify the things that actually bring money into your business, and the things that don’t (for example they’re just admin tasks).

Then:

Consider how long it takes you to complete the things you’re not good at and don’t like doing, and what that time is worth in $ terms.  Is it worth outsourcing?  Someone else might be able to do it far quicker, and you can make better use of your time too.

When you’re in ‘work hours’ – always do the things that bring you money FIRST.  Leave the non-revenue stuff for the times when it’s not suitable to be sourcing clients or doing marketing.

And finally, remember your goals… look at any Goals list that you wrote on January 1st. Bigger goals are always much easier to get motivated for, so keep your Big Hairy Audicious Goal in mind as you set to work on those smaller tasks.

We all have motivation slumps – but if you re-examine your daily tasks, you’ll be able to manage them so much better.

While social media is the belle of the ball, Email marketing still arguably provides one of the most cost effective returns on investment… if you have a well-managed database.  So how do you spin those database names into pure gold?

Give it a Branded Look

Effective email marketing systems let you use easy templates, which you can have customised with your branding. Use them time and time again. This gives a consistent look to your prospects when delivered over time.

Send Laser-Targeted Campaigns

You can improve your campaign performance by segmenting your audience based on information collected with web forms, emails they’ve opened and clicked, their location, and previously purchased products.  This is the ‘gold’ in email marketing!

Track All Email Activities

If you want to know how successful your emails are, you need to track your email campaigns to see how well your campaigns engage (and convert) those that respond.

When you can easily view open rates, click rates, opt-out rates, and bounce rates for each campaign, you will know how to tailor future emails.

If you have a large database you should also test new emails on smaller sample groups (i.e. A/B split testing). You can test things like subject lines and pricing offers.

Automated Marketing

Most email marketing tools can send autoresponders (a series of pre-set emails sent by the system).  These are often lists of email addresses, rather than a database for your prospects and customers – which can prove quite limiting if you want to store and manage information about your prospects.  As well as the ability to have unlimited autoresponders, Infusionsoft can automatically start or stop any autoresponder when a person fills out a form, opens an email, or clicks a link.  And the database will tell you exactly who has done it, and who hasn’t.  Hence – you are using a far more sophisticated tool to manage campaigns that make the data crunching and analysis a whole lot easier.

Deliverability

While the average legitimate email delivery rate is around 56% (Return Path, 2008), a good commercial delivery rate is over 90%. Infusionsoft has a 97% delivery rate. A careful watch on wording will also see it get past the individual’s junk mail filters.

Delivering more emails makes the most of your marketing efforts, so it’s important to use your time and choose your system wisely.

Follow-up of Interested Prospects

I’d also recommend you employ a follow up system for all email and web form enquiries; people will have questions about your products, service, or costings. After all, this is how you bring people into your sales funnel and learn more about them!  Customer-focussed businesses need to watch they don’t ‘forget’ to respond. Australian businesses have a dismal rate of follow-up: 59% of businesses do not respond to email or web form enquiries within seven days (Strike Force Sales survey, 2008, NETT).

Copywriting of Emails

Use the right writer! While it calls for a journalistic style for newsletters, it takes stronger persuasive writing for effective lead generation emails.  Don’t think because you wrote a good essay back in 9th grade that you automatically know how to write to capture leads!  So seek out assistance of those who can do it better, quicker and more effective than you can.

Here are some guidelines:

1. The messages will need a consistent style and tone (especially if you’re marketing as if it were coming direct from you).
2. The copy must be not too wordy, and it should draw attention right from the subject line.
3. Of course, it must deliver on your campaign goals. Calls to action must be there!
4. Good writing needs time. Planning your campaigns well in advance with a copywriter will ensure that your emails are written in both good time and good style.  Let them know all the research on your customers that you have gathered, because then they will be better able to connect with your prospects.

If you hire a copywriter, expect to pay around $70 to $140 per hour. You can negotiate a good rate for multiple email projects.

Remember: email marketing when done properly with the right tools and resources will make a huge difference to your business.