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Marketing Without Money – How to Build Your Business Influence Through Community Speaking

One of the fastest ways to become established as a regional expert is through the process of offering community workshops and seminars. I’ve spoken to hundreds of these groups through the years and have made some wonderful friends, as well as experienced some remarkable opportunities by volunteering time to add value to others. Yes, I said volunteer, since you don’t get paid in dollars to give a community speech, but you can be well paid in other ways. How? Through influence, network, multiple referrals into your business, opportunities to give full fee presentations to other groups and wider media exposure, especially on the Internet.

Still, there’s another huge benefit to you – free advertising. Consider how much you would be willing to pay in advertising dollars to be featured as an expert in front of a group of key decision makers, successful business people or community leaders? I suspect a lot because of the incredible return on investment of being in front of key people who have the capacity to hire you or refer you to other key people in the community who can. Treat these opportunities like a public audition that features you in front of 15-30 people who can meet you to learn more of your desire to help in your area of expertise. And the best news is that you don’t have to pay to be in front of these community leaders, but you do have to be strategic.

There are opportunities to give community presentations every day in your backyard if you know where to look. These events often take place during a breakfast or lunch time on a weekday all over your town. Consider the following as a sample of the type of groups in your area that need communicators to get your thinking started about targeting the key groups looking for you right now to line up as the speaker at their next event.

___Business groups such as a chamber of commerce or Female executives

___Service or Civic Clubs, like Rotary, Sertoma, Lions, or Kiawanas

___Medical groups, like nurses, interns, residents or hospital committees

___Networking groups, like BNI, Focus International or Babblebee

___Faith based groups, like churches, ministries or the retreats they sponsor

___Health groups, such as the American Heart Association or Red Cross

___Political or Political Action Committees, (PAC’s) focused on issues

___Emergency Services, like police, fire, EMS groups or safety committees

___Women’s clubs, like the Junior League, Curves or MADD

___Athletic groups, like master swimmers, soccer clubs or hunting groups

___Education groups, like parent/teacher organizations or school volunteers

___Fraternal Orders, like the Elks, Eagles, Moose or Fraternal Order of Police

___Senior’s groups, usually found at senior centers or retirement centers

___Youth groups, sponsored by churches, Youth for Christ or Jr. Achievement

___Parenting groups, especially young parents such as Mothers of Preschoolers

___Trade Associations- which requires a longer explanation, since there are over 22,000 professional trade associations in the United States.

Most of these trade associations have a national, state and local chapter pushing the number of professional associations into the multiple thousands in every region of the country! Each level has to have a speaker at every event and writers for their monthly newsletters and websites.

This creates a HUGE opportunity for communicators to make a positive difference. If your background is in education, look for teachers associations. If it’s in real estate, look for realtors or brokers associations. If it’s in giving care for the elderly, look for agencies on aging or the professional associations that care for the aged.

You don’t have enough time to speak for every group, but you will have the time of your life if you can get in front of the right trade association and knock their socks off with a great presentation. Plus, at the local level these are always going to be free talks, but if you can ‘wow’ your audience, you can often be suggested to speak at the national trade association’s annual meeting and they do pay speakers at that level. So it pays to always speak as if you were giving the most important talk of your life. Excellence always comes back to bless you after it blesses your audience.

These groups need your input, they need your expertise and you need to help. It’s a perfect fit, so begin searching now to find the groups where you can make the biggest impact and once you have identified your key target groups, then make some calls to see who’s in charge of scheduling speakers to begin the process.

How do you find them? Search out your local newspapers under community events, do web searches on specific topics, or ask around to see who belongs to community groups, which are always looking for effective communicators.

Here are a few important principles to keep in mind as you begin to reach out to make a positive difference using the strategy of community seminars that serve others while positioning you as an expert.

1) It’s not about marketing – it’s about the message

The goal isn’t to market you, your book or your services… it’s about the message to help answer people’s questions, solve their problems and basically give information to help make their day or week go a little better. You want to give as much user-friendly content away in your presentation as possible. If it ‘smells’ like selling- it won’t work. You have to really care about your audience and helping make their lives work better. To quote motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, “You can get anything you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.” If you have a book, you could use it as a door prize. If you have business cards, you can leave them in the back, or another technique is to offer a special report via email in exchange for a business card or email opt-in. This rapid follow up builds your e-list, (which should NEVER be shared or rented in my opinion to respect the privacy of those who trust you), while showing that you are a professional who believes in giving as much away as possible to build value into every presentation you give. You can build in a very mild marketing follow up, but only after giving a ‘killer’ presentation that adds greater value to each member of the audience. Remember, if you ‘wow’ them, they will find a way to find you for their future events. Mostly give a great speech and somewhere have a business card, or memorable way to share your website with the audience and then let the power of your presentation plant the seeds that will grow into them remembering you for their next paid event.

2) Build on your communication strengths

If you are passionate about a particular subject, then this is your place to shine, however, if you aren’t really strong on a given topic, then stay away from it. Talk about how to solve problems in the areas where you can make the greatest difference. Usually this will come out of your existing career, or an avocation that you really enjoy discussing. If you are building on a strength the writing and speaking will come easy, and your sincerity will come through to show your audience that you are an expert they can trust to add value to their lives. If you love to tell stories, then build on that strength, if your style is more instructional, then create an interactive hand-out to make it a training time of greater learning.

3) Focus on creative topics to catch your audience

Avoiding financial ruin, getting out of a bad relationship, secrets of living to be 100, fast ways to regain health and wellness, prevention of disease, how to stay out of therapy, when to kick your kids out for good, how speed reading creates lasting wealth, recession proofing your business, how to gain a #1 ranking on Google- basically use a great title to excite your audience that it’s going to be a fun time of learning. Another technique I like to use is a title/sub-title process to capture the right and left hemispheres of the brain, (logical/rational vs. emotional/creative).

For instance, title- ‘Relationship Renewal’ (right hemisphere), sub-title- ‘How to recover, rebuild and renew with the people you care about most.’ (left hemisphere, which is often about a lengthier description of ‘how to’ do what it is you have described in your main title). This way you catch the attention of a much wider audience and your specific topic keeps your own thoughts in line for a more powerful presentation. Remember, you can often give the exact same speech, since you will be going from club to club and group to group, so you can strengthen it every time you give it.

4) Be professional and be prepared

Arrive early, know that frequently you may not get the full time you were allotted due to other business the club may be taking care of, so be flexible. The more prepared you are ahead of time, the easier you can ‘edit’ on the fly to end on time, (which is important since people on a tight schedule will actually get up and leave in order to stay on their schedules. You must finish on time, no matter when you get started). Have a printed introduction in large print to give to the meeting planner that outlines your credentials as an expert and encourage them to read it aloud ahead of time to get comfortable sharing this important information to let the audience know of your background and expertise. Hand-outs are a great way to reinforce your message, as well as add your contact information at the bottom of the sheet. (I’ve found that people will keep these for years if you 3- hole punch them or print on pre-drilled paper, which adds greater value to the sheet by suggesting that it’s important enough to take home and put into a notebook). If you have professional marketing material at a back table, that’s great, but in this communication setting the main strategy is to give an amazing talk first and foremost. Dress one level above your audience and be as polished as you can be for maximum impact since you really don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.

5) Give a great talk and get a lot of great PR

Once you are comfortable with the process and are giving great presentations on a regular basis you can leverage your talks several ways that bring in new opportunities by taking your message to new audiences. Ask to professionally record or video tape your presentation. This can be turned into a new CD, podcast, DVD or online webinar. These can become bonus items to add greater value to your website, or stand alone products that you can add to your shopping cart of online resources for purchase by other groups.

Get quoted by the media, (especially if you send out press releases ahead of time which can be done with online services that offer free press releases), since your local newspapers and television stations have to fill news time and a clever topic given in a public seminar can often lead to media quotes which are quite valuable in establishing you as a regional expert. And don’t forget to ask that someone takes your picture with a digital camera while you are talking, so that you have some ‘action shots’ to use on your website, or with your blog of recent presentations.

The more you think ahead on how to leverage your community talk into a great community event, the more likely you will receive positive public relations and on-going referrals into your ‘day business’. Community workshops add value to everyone involved. To you, to your audience and to those who will meet you in the future because they heard about someone who cared enough to take their message to the marketplace to share with others. Do that long enough and you’ll be the busiest professional in your region… and it all started with a free speech.

I dare you to be the one who adds the greatest value in your regions by sharing the message entrusted to you with the most people possible. And then I look forward to hearing the success stories of how free speeches turned into fee for services because you cared enough to tell your story to some people looking for answers. Get to it!

How to Build Wealthy Home Business Secrets Revealed

If you are starting from a humble beginnings it is still possible to become wealthy if you are prepare to apply the secrets of the wealthy and rich and it can be done almost overnight. In fact scores of people are included in the millionaires club, while a few dozens move up to the big boys billionaires club every year. Anyone can build a wealthy home business if you have the qualities that are essential for success. So whether you wish to earn six figure incomes, have multiple streams of income or residual income then the list of required attributes in building a wealthy home business can be group into five broad areas namely: desire, choosing the right business for you, attitude, marketing and leadership.

Leadership

The quality of leadership is not genetic or some special rights bestowed on the privileged few, nor is it dependent on the number of zeros on your paycheck, but solely on your commitment to diligently pursue those qualities that will strengthen and develop you as an effective leader.It is only the magnitude of your commitment that will determine the quality of your leadership. Remember the timeless adage; leaders are not born they are made, and whether you have these naturally innate leadership qualities or not is not a hindrance to you becoming a leader. Leadership and I am referring to effective leadership is an essential feature in any business model of your choice and also very important in building a wealthy home business and residual incomes to enjoy the lifestyle you wanted for you and your family.

As a leader in a home business you must be enthusiastic about your work and have a passion for excellence. Good leadership means being a source of inspiration for your team and motivator to taken action. Good leaders developed the ability to always focused on the main goals, analyzing the task at hand as a whole as well as breaking it up into sub-parts that are more manageable and progress towards achieving the desired outcome. Therefore passion, inspiration, motivation and the ability to remain focused on your goals are key elements of leadership in building a wealthy business from home and creating multiple income streams.

REMEMBER:

“Leaders are not born, they are developed”

Desire

Desire is an essential quality of effective leadership but by itself, desire will not ensure that we life a life by our design, to win the money game or become wealthy but it is an important ingredient and an essential step for moving in that direction. If you want something badly enough you will get it because desire can be an unstoppable force. If you want to earn six figure incomes, residual incomes or have multiple streams of income, then an unstoppable desire to succeed is essential. A strong desire to succeed in building a wealthy home business dispels any thought of ever quitting as an option. If you want anything badly enough you will find a way or make one, in order to be successful, no matter what the price or sacrifice required. Once you have the desire to become successful you must persevere and remain steadfast on your task. This is keen to note because some people seem to “born tired” and are naturally lazy possessing no self-reliance or perseverance. Your desire is the fire that heats you up to perform, to excel. P.T. Barnum, in the book The Art of Money Getting, stated that “If you hesitate, some bolder hand will stretch out before you and get the prize”. The proverb of Solomon succinctly puts it like this: “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.” One simple exercise that I’ve found useful in fuelling my desires constantly to be successful in building a wealthy home business which I’ll share with you now is:

1) On a piece if paper or word pad write down all the reasons why do you want to achieve your goal.

2) List all the benefits you can gain if your goal were achieved, starting with the word “I”. For example; “I am a successful business man”. “I am building strong family ties at home”. “I am a successful internet marketer”. “I provide for all my families need”. The more clearly stated reasons you have, the stronger will be your desire to be successful.

3) Practice to reading your list of benefits every morning.This affirmative action triggers your sub-conscious to act as though you have already achieved your goals, since your sub-conscious mind doesn’t distinguish between realities. It places your goals or wish list into the present and not something to be achieved at some later time. This daily affirmation keep you connected with your goal during the day, making you more motivated and inspired.

REMEMBER:

“Desire overcomes obstacles to success.

Desire makes molehills out of mountains.

No matter what stands in the way, it is moveable.”

Attitude

Maintaining a positive mental attitude is very important in the pursuance of achieving your objective to build a business from home and gain the wealth you need to live the life that you always wanted. After all the old adage is true, “so a man thinketh so is he”. In other words, we perform the way we think. Positive attitude and optimism work like a magnet for success. If you maintain positive attitude no matter what the situation is success will come to you automatically.

REMEMBER:

“We may not be able to control the obstacles of life,

But we can control our attitude.”

Every goal will require some kind of sacrifice. There is always something to give up in order to achieved a certain desired outcome, and if you wish to build a successful business from home so you can have the wealth to enjoy the lifestyle you want, then don’t forget this fact. In business this sacrifice is called the opportunity cost. The right attitude for success means having the right priorities. It is only the right attitude toward success can allow an aspiring entrepreneur to live the kind of lifestyle that you for yourself and your family, having a steady stream of residual income to do so.

So what kind of sacrifices have you had to make for your goals in the past? What kind of sacrifices have you been making (or struggling to make) with your current goals?

When it comes to sacrifices, only two things matter:

Is it worth it? With every goal, you need to know that what you stand to gain is worth the cost of what you’ll have to give up.

Are you willing to do it? If you find that you are willing, all you need to do is simply keep reinforcing that decision mentally every time you feel tempted to act in ways that are counterproductive to your goals

Finding An Appropriate Business For You

So far we’ve covered issues dealing with desire, attitude, and leadership. Now lets see if we can’t find an appropriate business for you. So you have a plan to retire at age 35 or maybe 40 years and you are certain in your decision to start your own business, be your own boss so you can be become financial independent, maybe even to become a multi-millionaire earning six figure incomes but do you know what business to get into, which is right for you and do you have the requisite Business Management Skill Sets to be successful and build a business from home?

Building a business from scratch usually involve many steps and some critical decision making, namely: 1) should you or not go into business and take the plunge so to speak. 2)The business structure or model to adopt- sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability Company etc., 3) The kind of business niche, or what kind of company should I start. I am of the view that the most critical decision is the kind of business to start- Brick and Mortar, Franchising and Licensing, Home-based, E-commerce, Niche market websites or Multi-Level Marketing (mlm). What makes it so critical is are the myriad amount of business opportunities available. It is almost incredibly easy for aspiring entrepreneurs, without proper research and guidance, to fall victims in making the mistake of investing in the wrong type of business. It is therefore critical to choose a business model that’s appropriate to your interests and even your personality.

REMEMBER:

“Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature,

And best suited to his peculiar genius,

He cannot succeed.”

Since there are thousands of business opportunities vying for our attention; a Google search will prove my case(over 4 million business opportunities advertised), so how can you tell which is right for you? Each business model might has its own distinct structure and way of being conducted, however, some of the most commonly chosen models are:

1) Brick and Mortar:

This refer to the regular usual type of business where there is a physical structure where all business activities, with clients are done.This physical space is usually a separate space from your primary residence.

2) Home-based:

This is the business model of choice for those entrepreneurs who are seeking residual incomes and multiple stream incomes because of the tremendous amount of flexibility it give them shuttling back and forth between business and personal life. It is usually run from a small office space in your own home.

3) E-commerce:

The internet is by far the most dynamic vehicle for growth for those entrepreneurs who wish to become successful by building a wealthy home business earning six figure incomes or may be it’s just to diversify your earning potential with residual incomes and multiple income streams. Some online business opportunities provide home based entrepreneurs excellent scope, if they are willing to put in the work, to create the income streams they need to win the money game and live the life of their dreams.

4) Multi-Level Marketing (MLM):

MLM is a good residual income earner for those entrepreneurs involves selling and building up a network. The earning potential is good, if you are high up in the network triangle. The more people you have under your own network, the more money you earn and the larger is your stream of residual income over time.

Marketing

A guerrilla marketing strategy for all aspiring entrepreneurs who wish to successfully build a wealthy home business, earning six figure income or a constant flow of residual income, is called attraction marketing. Attraction Marketing is a very powerful way to optimize the leverage of your home based business. It can be used to build any kind of home based or small business by leveraging social media, internet marketing and direct response marketing principles.

Attraction marketing primarily involves the branding and promoting of you the entrepreneur, not your business opportunity or network marketing company or program. You can personally brand and promote yourself to your potential clients using any of the social media available to you. These include web sites, blogs, videos and social networking such as Facebook, Twitter and email marketing. By doing so a home based entrepreneur can attract like minded people who resonate or relate with their story, their background, their hometown, their college or high school and this helps to build a list of contacts, which is the lifeblood of any online business.

The essential tools of attraction marketing are simple and consist of:

Lead Capture page.

Basically a single page on your website offering products of value free of charge to potential customers in exchange for their email address. this is the fastest way you can build your list.

Auto responder

Auto responder services allows you to deliver a prescribed email to your prospects inviting their patronage in your product for sale.The benefit of this program is that it’s done on autopilot for you.

REMEMBER:

“Attraction Marketing is a simple philosophy that is very effective for home based entrepreneurs”

Many dream of starting their own businesses, but remain frozen in status quo mainly because they do not know what business to engage in. While starting a business with your individual interests and expertise in mind is crucial, so is the necessity of making sure that this enterprise represents a concrete entrepreneurial opportunity.

Build Your Own Website Easily With WordPress

If you work from home or are trying to get that elusive first project, creating a professional website is an important step. As a home for your business, your website can showcase your skills, provide details of your experience, and give potential clients and customers a convenient way to get in touch.

What’s more, being able to create or work with a website is a useful skill in itself. For many people that work at home, the ability to get a website up and running is an additional service that can be sold to your existing clients.

You don’t need to spend a fortune getting a website developed for you. You can do it yourself, even if you have never had any experience. Thankfully, there is a secret – WordPress. WordPress is a free system that streamlines and simplifies the process of web development and, as you will find out, can still be flexible enough for just about any website imaginable.

What Does WordPress Do Besides Blogging?

Many people have heard of WordPress, but do not understand the full capabilities of the system. Most people think that WordPress is a platform for blogging when, in fact, it is far more than that.

Today, WordPress has grown into what would be called a content management system, or CMS. A CMS is a tool to store all of the information required for your website and present it to your visitors in a professional, organized way. Other content management systems include Joomla and Drupal, but the reality is that WordPress is the easiest to understand, the easiest to work with, and the most easily adaptable.

Let’s look at – in simple terms – how exactly WordPress works once it is installed:

You access a convenient WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface to securely work with all of the content on your website
You can create new web pages in a variety of formats
The content that you create is stored in a database
You can use the same interface to edit your content in the database
When visitors access your website, the information in the database is presented to them in a website layout. You can change this layout at any time and your content will automatically adopt the right look

In technical terms, WordPress is fairly advanced. In the nine years since the platform first launched, this advanced functionality has been used in all kinds of exciting ways.

Why Should You Use WordPress?

You may be wondering why people choose WordPress as their CMS. The answer is because WordPress can make just about anything that you want to do easier, quicker and more convenient!

Press agency Reuters uses WordPress to keep journalists up to date with the latest news as it happens. Music streaming service Spotify powers its entire website with WordPress.

WordPress makes creating, editing and organising your content simple and, as a result, less time-consuming. That gives you more time to focus on other areas of your business. WordPress also gives you the chance to get a professional design to make your website look great – often free of charge.

The best way to see how WordPress streamlines setting up your website is to try it for yourself. WordPress is easy to install on your web hosting or, if you sign up on the WordPress website, you can explore its features with no set-up required.

Installing WordPress Made Easy

There are a few different ways to get started with WordPress, depending on your budget, your expertise and whether you use a web hosting service.

If you are just trying out WordPress and do not have your own web hosting, visit signup.wordpress.com and sign up for a free account. You will be guided through the entire process of creating your WordPress site, which will be stored on the WordPress servers for you. It is also possible to pay for a custom domain name (the address of your website) during the sign-up process.

Alternatively, if you already have a web hosting plan that supports PHP and MySQL, you can install your own WordPress on your server. This can be done by visiting WordPress.org and downloading the necessary files. The website also offers a convenient guide to installing WordPress in 5 minutes.

Finally, see if your web hosting provider offers an automatic script installer such as Softaculous. If so, you will be able to log in from your web hosting control panel and install WordPress in just a few clicks.

Finding A Great Theme

Once WordPress is up and running, you will need to log in with the details that you chose during set-up – usually at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. You will see the WordPress dashboard, a control panel that lets you work with your website, and a range of different menu items on the left-hand side. A good place to start is by selecting a theme, under the Appearance menu.

Using the ‘Install Themes’ tab at the top of your screen, you can explore an extensive database of layouts and designs for your website. From conventional business layouts to distinctive and unusual looks, there are currently 1,607 themes available. After finding one that you like, installing is as easy as clicking the ‘Install Now’ button.

As well as these free WordPress themes that are available from within your control panel, many websites offer a great selection of themes – some of which are free, and some of which are ‘premium’ themes that incur a charge. If you are just getting started with WordPress, a free theme is a good choice. Of course, paying for a premium theme guarantees high quality, good performance, and continued support from the theme developers.

For professional WordPress themes, check out these websites:

ThemeForest
WooThemes
GetYourThemes

Once you have installed your theme, you will be able to conveniently customize it to suit your specific requirements. You can do this using Widgets.

Using Widgets

Many people choose WordPress because there are so many professional-looking themes available for it. However, it can be useful to tweak your chosen theme to make it more individual.

When a developer creates a theme, he will name specific areas of the layout that you can customize. For example, you may be able to change the menu at the top of your layout, a sidebar that runs down the side of every page, or the footer.

Under the Appearance menu on your WordPress control panel, select the Widgets option. On the right, you will see a list of the different areas of your theme that you can customize. On the left, there is a range of included widgets that you can simply drag and drop into the relevant section.

Standard WordPress widgets include Links to other websites, an automatic list of your Pages, and a calendar of when Posts have been published. You can also install other Widgets free of charge, in the form of Plugins.

Use Widgets to personalize your theme. Once you are happy, it is time to start thinking about the most important thing of all – your content.

Pages And Posts

A common obstacle for people that are new to WordPress is the distinction between two similar types of content – Pages and Posts. Whenever you want to publish something on your website, you will need to decide whether it is a Page or a Post and select the appropriate option.

Originally, WordPress only offered the ability to create Posts – a term that is short for Blog Posts. Posts are content items that are time-specific and, when they are created, they have the current time and date attached to them. Creating a new Post causes two things to happen:

An individual web page is created with the content of your post
Your post is added to a single page that collects together each individual post

This is perhaps clearer as an example – let’s imagine you have a blog section on your website, at yourdomain.com/blog. When you publish a new blog post, a single page will be created – for example, this could be yourdomain.com/blog/my-post-name. But, at the same time, your blog post will be added to the central page at yourdomain.com/blog, giving your visitors the chance to see all of your most recent posts in one convenient place.

Posts are also added to your website’s RSS feed – more on that in our next article on advanced WordPress tips. Pages, on the other hand, are static items that do not have a date attached to them. They are the pages of your website that stand alone, offering general information about your business.

If you’re still unsure, ask yourself this question before you create your content – is this something that will stand alone (a Page), or something that is part of a section of the website that I will update regularly (a Post)?

Explore And Learn On The Fly

You now understand the concepts of WordPress, including what it can do, common terminology, and why you should be using WordPress to build your site. So start exploring!

The great thing about WordPress is that it is intuitive and easy to use. Anything that you create can be deleted or edited with ease, so the best advice is to check the menu options included in your control panel and start working on your content right now.

Once you’ve made a start, be sure to read our next article on making the most of your WordPress installation to create a website that really stands out from the crowd.

Build a Successful Marketing Plan – 15 Key Business Success Factors

Every marketing plan needs to include an industry analysis. Why? Because it is of critical importance to understand the industry you operate in, and to identify and track your performance to key business success factors (KSFs) for your organization.

Understanding your industry and identifying your KSFs will help in building a successful marketing plan; one that is based on measurable progress and results. A key success factor is an element of a whole that affects your business’ ability to do well in your market.

Most businesses focus on between three and five of the most important (to their business) success factors. From time to time, or year to year, these key success factors may change, as the industry or the market changes.

15 Examples of Key Business Success Factors (and this is not a comprehensive list) are:

Number of new customers per year;
Number of lost customers per year OR the number of customers retained (it is important to understand and measure the potential customer lifetime value for each customer on a regular basis);
Hire and retain excellent employees (measured by employee turn-over, job vacancies, customer satisfaction);
Successful new product introductions (measured by sales and costs);
Successful promotional programs (measured by sales and costs);
Good/healthy financial indicators: for example, working capital, acceptable ratios (in particular debt to equity ratios), profit margins, cash flow, receivables and more;
If in the manufacturing industry, high operating capacity utilization;
Strong supplier network;
Strong distribution network or channel;
Successful product positioning;
Low cost structure;
Niche product/service – track the number of competitors entering and/or leaving the niche. Is the cost of entry into the market high or low?
Market leader or follower or challenger, and is your relative market position and why? Are you able to support that position if under ‘attack’?
Product differentiation: Do you have technology or service advantages that others can’t easily copy? How unique and differentiated is your product or service?
Time to market: is your product or service able to be delivered quickly and easily; from the first point of contact to the time shipped and subsequently invoiced?

Once you have identified your specific KSFs, build strategies around those factors and integrate those strategies into your marketing and business plans to ensure business success. Develop measurement programs to help you track your progress against your success factors. You also need to assess your competition and see if your competitors’ key success factors are similar or different than yours (depending on your strengths and weaknesses and your marketing and business strategies, they might be very different). One way of comparing and assessing is to do a competitive strength analysis; find out what your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses are and build your competitive strategy accordingly. (A sample swot analysis can show you how to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that your business faces.)

For example, if retaining your existing customers is a key success factor, your business objective must be to grow sales with your existing customers. How do you do that? First, do a customer satisfaction survey to assess how satisfied your existing customers are (or aren’t). Then determine what needs to be changed and what you need to focus on. Make sure that you understand how your customers chose between competitors: is it price, service, quality, knowledge, reliability, relationships, or all of these factors? What product or service attributes are most important to your customers? What is the unique difference between your product or service and your competition’s product or service (from your customer’s perspective)?

Once you have identified your key success factors; built measurement devices to track them; assessed and compared your competitors’ KSFs – and the industry’s; built your strategies and objectives into your marketing and business plans(phew!); you need to act! Build your business on these key success factors.

How to Use LinkedIn to Build Your Business

1) When you have significant news in your business – for instance, a big product launch or a joint venture – use LinkedIn to notify your contacts by way of a profile update. And in your accompanying email message to the network, say “I would love to catch up with you – want to make time for a phone call?” It’s that keeping-up process that sparks conversations about opportunities both for you and your contacts. It’s in these conversations (which could be done by email, although probably not as well) that ideas will arise about prospective clients, partnerships, and other revenue-generating projects.

2) Use LinkedIn to understand the relationships between people you know and people you want to know. For me, this is the heart of LinkedIn’s value – the ability to see at a glance how people you don’t know, but would like to, are connected to people who are closer to you. So when you find Mr. Lofty Dude in the LI network and realize that he used to work with your former admin assistant – a data point you almost certainly wouldn’t have acquired on your own – you can reach out to the admin and get, not only an introduction, but some intelligence about Mr. Dude’s current dealings, needs, and hot buttons.

3) Connect, by all means, with your former colleagues from every company that has ever employed you. There is something about old-workmate ties (unless you, er, aren’t the sort that former teammates think of fondly) that can’t be duplicated in most relationships of shorter duration. Seek out these old workmates, tell them what you’re up to and who you’re most interested in meeting, and offer to help them out as well. One good lead would be worth the price of LI membership – oh wait, it’s free – or anyway worth the price of your time doing LI searching and connecting.

4) Let’s say that you would dearly like to work with General Motors, but you can’t find anyone at GM who seems especially suitable for contact as you search the LinkedIn database. No problem. Find a current GM vendor or customer in the functional area you’re interested in, and reach out to him or her. Is there something of value that you could offer in exchange for the introduction you want? In an ideal world, your sterling qualities and dazzling personality should convince this new acquaintance that introducing her client to you is something of value all by itself. But don’t bank on that. Offer to extend an invitation of your own, or design his or her new database, or something.

5) Use the LI database to understand more about your prospects. This is the beauty of LI – what other source will tell you where many or all of the senior execs of your prospect organizations used to work (given that only half a dozen of them have profiles on the company’s website)? Let’s say that you want to do some work for ABC Company. And lo and behold, half the ABC execs worked for PayPal back in the day and the other half worked for FedEx. Great intelligence! You see that they have a strong Notre Dame alum thing going on, and some connection to Stanford as well. Now you can use your FedEx and PayPal alum contacts, your Notre Dame folks and your Stanford fellows to help you get ‘over the wall.’

6) You wouldn’t email a complete stranger, even if you obtained his business card (say, by stealing the win-a-free-lunch goldfish bowl of business cards at P.F. Chang’s) to say “Hey, why not buy some stuff from me?” So please don’t reach out to new LI contacts by saying “Maybe you could help me make a new-business contact.” I wouldn’t recommend that. Instead, read this intended contact’s profile. Let’s say you are reaching out to me, who runs an online community. Two seconds of reading my profile would give you some ideas of things that might interest me. I guarantee that a typical working person could offer me something I’d be interested in. So, when you make your LI outreach, mention that thing that you could offer! Write “I would love to connect by phone, both because I’m interested in your relationship with [my most-desirable prospect company] and because I have great friends in the social networking community whom you should know.” Bingo.

7) Many people in the business community, especially avid networkers, have numerous connections that don’t do any [short-term, revenue-generating] good for them personally but that could be invaluable to their new networking contacts. Think about these valuable contacts as you reach out to people whom you hope might help you. For instance, I know lots of headhunters who have great media contacts – contacts I would drool over – journalists who regularly call them up for insights on the job market. Unfortunately, apart from occasionally mentioning in her stories that Joe Recruiter says that the job market is looking up, the journalist can’t do much for Joe – she isn’t going to write a profile on him any time soon, for instance. But she might write a profile on someone that Joe has just met through LI. Of course, Joe wouldn’t throw around her name carelessly – but he might say, “You know, I can’t guarantee anything, but for your kindness today I’d be happy to introduce you to my friend, an editor at the San Jose Mercury News, who might be interested to talk with you.” Rock on.

8) When you spot a cluster of people on LI who all know one another and are all accomplished in the same arena, that’s a really special thing. It means that a group of folks who perhaps worked together, or met online, or are part of a group together, represent a kind of mother lode of shared knowledge around a particular area – say, SEO or CRM or German opera. That’s huge, because jointly, these folks may comprise the lion’s share of the current thinking on the topic. You can reach out via LinkedIn to one of them, and say, “You know, I’m trying to get up to speed on the operas of Handel. Might I sent you an email message with some of my key questions, and ask whether you wouldn’t mind sharing your thoughts with me and also forwarding my message to your friend Jack Sprat, who could undoubtedly add a valuable perspective?” With luck, in the case of an inquiry like this, you are able to repay these experts’ valuable time with a gift of some kind (perhaps tickets to the opera). But many such people would refuse any compensation at all. It makes a huge difference how you present your situation and how graciously you pose your request. So much depends on good manners, doesn’t it?

9) LinkedIn in combination with Google News Alerts makes a great business tool. Let’s say you are looking to talk to folks at Fidelity who work in one product area. Use LI to find a name (or two or three names) of people at Fidelity who seem relevant to your situation, and whom you’d like to reach. Set up a Google News Alert on Fidelity, and set one up with the target person’s name (or a few names) so that you can learn when he or she has been quoted, is speaking on a panel, etc. This kind of intelligence will tell you what’s currently on the plate of this person, the issues he or she cares about, etc. What’s more flattering than an LI outreach message that says “I was so sorry to miss your speech at the Financial Muckety-Mucks Summit, but I was fortunate enough to read your thoughts on petro-dollars on Money.com and to catch your NPR interview last week.” Dang! Be diligent, but be careful that you don’t sound like a business stalker.

10) Vendors like to reach out to former clients, and that’s good, but it can be awkward when you haven’t kept up and have no idea what the former client is now up to. But of course, if you’ve got the contact info, thanks (let’s say) to Plaxo, you’re going to use it! LinkedIn solves the problem. Presto, you can track what your former client has been doing since you last saw him – no awkwardness. On top of that, instead of an open-ended “let’s catch up” message, you can say “Wow! You’re at Fidelity! You know, I see that you’ve only been in the job a few months, so we should definitely talk. It so happens that I’ve become something of an expert on Fidelity lately……” Now, that’s power networking!

5 Reasons To Use a WordPress Website Developer to Build Your Business Website

WordPress is a hugely popular platform for small business owners and bloggers alike. Primarily because WordPress does not require payment for hosting at its basic level as well as having a user-friendly dashboard. As a small business owner, there are countless benefits for using this platform, including saving the time and expense usually associated with setting up a website for your business.

Even though it is possible, to create your own website using the free WordPress platform, it’s a daunting project to take-on, on top of the usual tasks involved in running your business. For a beginner; the learning curve is steep.

Most business owners find it saves them time, money and frustration enlisting a professional web design company to build a custom website for them using the WordPress platform. Do your business justice by increasing its potential to continue to grow and expand your online presence, with a professional designer to guarantee a seamless user experience.

But what does a professional web designer really bring to the table?

1. Customize the look, feel and functionality of your website to suit your brand

WordPress popular for its abundance of ready to use website templates, however, if want a unique brand experience for your visitors, even the templates need considerable tweaking. A developer can upgrade a basic template to suit the look and feel you want for your site. The free templates might seem like the easy option, however, I can’t even count a number of times I’ve been asked to step in a takeover from well-meaning business owners who’ve come to realize the time investment in customizing a template is significant, without the necessary the skill set.

2. Optimal and responsive website performance

Anything less than a friendly user experience will cause your hard-earned traffic to click off your site at warp speed. A professional web design and development engineer will not only help with aesthetics but also guarantee a seamless experience that will surprise and delight your site visitors. Use your designers’ experience to choose the right plugins to complement the functionality of your website without compromising performance.

3. Your website developer is your troubleshooting guru

WordPress is known for its regular updates which keep the sites safe, secure and offering the latest functionalities of your plugins. Unfortunately, sometimes plugins and updates wreak havoc with each other in the background causing issues and can even crash on your site. Save yourself the panic and headache of troubleshooting issues as they arise.

4. A professional website development company will have SEO options to suit your budget

You want your content to get picked by the major search engines, business directories and blogging platforms offering do-follow backlinks that are SEO compliant and work to attract targeted traffic to your site.

In addition to this, professional SEO services offer keyword research, heading creation, sitemap creation, URL generations, Google Webmaster, Bing Website Master and Google Analytics creation. Some services will also include Robots.txt generation, meta tag generation, image alter tags and check your websites crawl errors.

5. Create and support a responsive website on all devices

WordPress is our first choice for building small business websites because making it easy to design a responsive and mobile friendly website on. When you add content like images, videos, links and other feeds, you want them responsive on all devices too.

A professionally designed and developed website gives your business a competitive edge.