Marketing Tips – Unique Positioning

One of the best marketing tips, is the concept of developing unique positioning for your product or service. In this podcast Murray Smith and I talk about the creation of your corporate marketing plan by defining your unique positioning in the marketplace. Defining your unique aspects is a very important part of the sales process, and is a great online marketing tip.

Marketing Tip – Differentiate

Without the ability to easily and quickly differentiate yourself from the competition you diminish the ability of the prospective customer to understand your value.

Here are some of the direct links that Murray had referenced during the many podcasts we recorded with him;  The free PDF’s downloads (see below), links to the business growth makeover contest with millions in prizes, and Get the Answer site that references more about Murray and the business growth system he built called Attract more Clients. This system is the summation of 30 years of his life’s work and everything he learned about growing business put together in a simple, user friendly format.

-       http://gettheanswer.com

-       http://www.businessgrowthmakeover.com

-       http://accessmainstreet.com

-       The Test your EQ button on the Mainstreet website has the following Free PDF Downloads for all Success U listeners:

• Unique Selling Proposition Examples from many industries
• Client Profile – Match what you want with what your clients want
• 3 Ways to make money in business
• Map the Gap – Helping business owners map the distance from where they are to where they want to be
• How to think like a Business Millionaire – Vision, Focus and Action

Additional Marketing tips resources

ADVANCE DIRECT MARKETING: Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Do-It-Yourself Secrets for Creating a Profitable Website or Blog

55 Twitter Tips – How to Maximize the Benefits of Using Twitter!

Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day

25 tips For Marketing Your Blog

Online Marketing Blog Tips

• Great Tips About Viral Marketing You Can Put To Use Right Now The general public has heard many marketing terms; however, ‘viral marketing’ is not one of them -upon hearing it, many people conjure up their own meaning to it. It really is not that hard to understand. Simple viral marketing was the impetus for the growth of Hotmail.com and the phrase......
• Building a Strong Customer Relationship Strong Customer Relationship Determining who is your ideal client is the first step on the long road to developing a strong customer relationship. Murray Smith, best selling author ("The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life") and super successful Serial Entrepreneur joins us on......
• Entrepreneur Beware Your Own Success Entrepreneur, Success can be Hard Success as an Entrepreneur can be it's own challenge, and we are hitting those challenges today. We are working on a great many new things for Success U, tools that will help you succeed. But using these tools ourselves, we have been flooded with,......
• Entrepreneur, Work Smart, with Murray Smith How to Work Smart as an Entrepreneur Serial entrepreneur Murray Smith co-author of "The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life" shares the secrets to his success in this Success U podcast. His book is a best seller and  Stephen R. Covey says it......
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• The Best Way To Carry Out Online Marketing When you have any battling web business, you may be dealing with the actual trial of how to attract website visitors to your website at a cost you can pay for. Certainly, Internet Marketing is a obstacle, also it takes many years of perseverance. There are numerous cost-effective techniques......
• Weight Loss Tips and Blogs Needed I need some help. Any one with any weight loss tips and blogs that can help me shed some extra weight and adjust to my new lifestyle are encouraged to share them. I am looking for tips and tricks that will assist me in losing some extra fat, gain more......
• Quick and Dirty Tips for Effective Corporate Blogging, pt 3 This is part three in a series about tips for good corporate blogging. We touched on three tips in both the first part and the second part of this series - Now here are another handful of tips for your consideration. - 7 - Write clearly and concisely when it......
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Strong Customer Relationship

Determining who is your ideal client is the first step on the long road to developing a strong customer relationship. Murray Smith, best selling author (“The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life“) and super successful Serial Entrepreneur joins us on this podcast to explain how he identifies your ideal customer. Murray gives us a great example of how the perception of who our clientele is, and who they really are might not coincide.

If you are struggling to find your clients, or marketing with poor results this podcast will likely give you some insight into the problems you currently face. The biggest mistake we entrepreneurs make is often overconfidence in our understanding of the market, and a need to compete that stops us from asking for help when we need it. This also tends to sometimes we neglect to develop a strong customer relationship with our ideal clients, who are more than willing to help us improve our business.

Throughout our lives we have had parents, teachers, bosses and friends who gladly mentor us. But the moment we enter into a new enterprise we stop asking for that advice.Ask your customers how they found you, ask them what they are looking for, ask them if they found it. Ask, ask ask questions. Have a friend who is a gifted artist, ask for help with design. We do not stand alone and the myth of the self made man is just a myth. Every great success is a team effort.

Strengthening Our Customer Relationship

Recently Innovocus has made a focus on this aspect. When we approach a new client the first thing we do is contact their customers with a survey. But there is more to understanding your clients wants than just asking questions.

Here is the link to Murray’s book on Amazon.com:

The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life

Here are some of the direct links that Murray had referenced during the many podcasts we recorded with him;  The free PDF’s downloads (see below), links to the business growth makeover contest with millions in prizes, and Get the Answer site that references more about Murray and the business growth system he built called Attract more Clients. This system is the summation of 30 years of his life’s work and everything he learned about growing business put together in a simple, user friendly format.

-       http://gettheanswer.com

-       http://www.businessgrowthmakeover.com

-       http://accessmainstreet.com

-       The Test your EQ button on the Mainstreet website has the following Free PDF Downloads for all Success U listeners:

• Unique Selling Proposition Examples from many industries
• Client Profile – Match what you want with what your clients want
• 3 Ways to make money in business
• Map the Gap – Helping business owners map the distance from where they are to where they want to be
• How to think like a Business Millionaire – Vision, Focus and Action

Resources for Building a Strong Customer Relationship

Building Customer Relationships – Successful Selling [VHS]

Recipe for Disaster

Creating Customers for Life – Relationship Management and Sales Training DVD Video

Model Sales & Marketing Letters

Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers

The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage

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• Social Media Marketing Sucks Tools such as Twitter, Digg, and Facebook are Horrible sales vehicles. In fact using them poorly can do more to hurt your brand than help it. Social Media as a tool for business is much more useful to your PR group than it is to your sales team. At best......
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• Unique Positioning - Standing out From the Competition - Marketing Tips Marketing Tips - Unique Positioning One of the best marketing tips, is the concept of developing unique positioning for your product or service. In this podcast Murray Smith and I talk about the creation of your corporate marketing plan by defining your unique positioning in the marketplace. Defining your......

• 5 Reasons to Start Corporate Blogging Now In today's fast paced world, where companies are built daily and there is a big scandal every week bringing a corporation crashing down. That is why it can be very beneficial to start a corporate blog. We will go into this and four other reasons for starting a corporate blog......
• Your Customers Don’t Care About Your Business – Not One Bit One of the biggest marketing mistakes small business owners make is to blow their own trumpets. In their advertisements, sales literature, marketing copy and all manner of promotional materials they rant on about themselves and their businesses. They will tell you how they have been in business for 200......
• What Are The Disadvantages Of Email Selling? Do you think email is the best way to sell your product or service?  Some sales people seem to think it is. Here's the simple truth: Many times relying upon email to sell isn't your best approach. It is not a good idea to replace calls with emails when contacting......
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• Strategies For Developing A Solid Network Marketing Team What Makes A Good Network Marketing Team? [/caption] Success in network marketing comes down to duplication. Unless your business is taking on a life of its own it simply will never grow past your direct referrals.  Do you ever wonder why when someone joins your business they never seem to......

You the Entrepreneur

The life of an entrepreneur, is the tale of many triumphs and long hard work. Knowing how to push past the negativity and find your hidden reserve of strength is a valuable tool in your struggles for success.

We as entrepreneurs are a unique breed. We thrive in challenging situations and we seek out the difficult. This can often put us in a place seemingly impossible to succeed. Pushing past your own limits to find greater heights is often the only way out, well that or giving up, but you wouldn’t be a true entrepreneur if you seriously considered that.

In this podcast I talk with serial entrepreneur Murray Smith. This is Part 2 of the Podcasts series with Murray Smith co-author of “the Answer”. Which you can win a copy of my joining Success U for free:

The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life

Here are some of the direct links that Murray had referenced during the many podcasts we recorded with him;  The free PDF’s downloads (see below), links to the business growth makeover contest with millions in prizes, and Get the Answer site that references more about Murray and the business growth system he built called Attract more Clients. This system is the summation of 30 years of his life’s work and everything he learned about growing business put together in a simple, user friendly format.

-       http://gettheanswer.com

-       http://www.businessgrowthmakeover.com

-       http://accessmainstreet.com

-       The Test your EQ button on the Mainstreet website will have the following Free PDF Downloads for your listeners:

• Unique Selling Proposition Examples from many industries
• Client Profile – Match what you want with what your clients want
• 3 Ways to make money in business
• Map the Gap – Helping business owners map the distance from where they are to where they want to be
• How to think like a Business Millionaire – Vision, Focus and Action

More Resources for you the entrepreneur

Small Business For Dummies

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

More Entrepreneur Podcasts

Entrepreneur.com Podcast Directory

• Becoming Viral Podcast Last week we talked about Viral Marketing from a stratospheric level, this time we go a little more in depth and give a great example of a company building a program that will definitely create a viral effect. What it all boils down to is understanding the value you offer......
• Know Your Faults Tanah Lot from Crestock Photos I hate to be put into a box. Being categorized, labeled and predefined , not my thing. Which is precisely what every personality profile I have ever taken says. I thrive on change, and solving problems. I love to look at products and try......
• Building a Strong Customer Relationship Strong Customer Relationship Determining who is your ideal client is the first step on the long road to developing a strong customer relationship. Murray Smith, best selling author ("The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life") and super successful Serial Entrepreneur joins us on......
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• Taking Your Idea to Success Every great invention or idea has run up against the same first roadblock… fear. The would be entrepreneur fears the unknown, fears to possibility of failure and fears the innate risks involved with a new venture. So, what separates the entrepreneur from just some person with a good idea?......

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We started the conversation discussing how to determine the best price point for your product and then went into a wide variety of tools you can use to drive sales online in the first part of this podcast. In this podcast we continue the conversation by looking at one particular company that has done it right… Apple.

There are many ways to look at driving your sales and a plethora of tools to use in doing so. Apple is the prime example of a company who has used many of these tools to develop a unique and profitable brand identity with an almost cult like following. How have they done this? We talk about some of the techniques they use, and we found this great post “What Would Apple Do?”.

Here are several more resources for developing your brand:

First Steps to Developing a Brand Identity

Personal Branding 101

Creating a Brand

Creating the Brand: Halo Effect

Creating a Brand on a Budget

In our next podcast we will put the pieces together for you and walk through the process of developing a unique Brand ID and how to drive sales using this new brand.

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• Building a Strong Customer Relationship Strong Customer Relationship Determining who is your ideal client is the first step on the long road to developing a strong customer relationship. Murray Smith, best selling author ("The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life") and super successful Serial Entrepreneur joins us on......
• Unique Positioning - Standing out From the Competition - Marketing Tips Marketing Tips - Unique Positioning One of the best marketing tips, is the concept of developing unique positioning for your product or service. In this podcast Murray Smith and I talk about the creation of your corporate marketing plan by defining your unique positioning in the marketplace. Defining your......
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When starting a new business keeping the costs down is the key to your survival. To help with your quest for success we have compiled a short list of software and services that, even though not all are free, they all will help you save money.

Zoho has a huge list of software and services available, including reporting, a CRM and Invoicing.

Dropbox is a virtual hard drive service.

Mozy we use to save important documents. It is a safe secure online backup service.

Google Docs is another great resource, as are all of the google tools.

Portable Apps allows you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.

Mail Chimp makes it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. It is a free online email marketing solution.

Fulfillment by Amazon is an innovative service, you send inventory directly to Amazon where it is stored and managed in a secure, climate-controlled facility. When orders are received, Amazon will professionally pick, pack and ship the product directly to your customer.

Skype you should already know about, but if you don’t it a free online phone service and chat application. There is a pay service as well. But primarily we use it to track and record conversations for free.

Business Nation has a library of free and fee based legal forms such as lease and sales agreements. It also has directories of services, opportinities and a business library.

Open Office is the Free and open productivity suite. It has software that mimics all of the Microsoft Office applications.

GIMP according to their website

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, if you know of a valuable free tool for business users please share it by leaving a comment

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• Entrepreneur - Tapping into your Hidden Reserves You the Entrepreneur The life of an entrepreneur, is the tale of many triumphs and long hard work. Knowing how to push past the negativity and find your hidden reserve of strength is a valuable tool in your struggles for success. We as entrepreneurs are a unique breed. We......
• How To Get Your Product Name Out To The Masses Internet marketing can make you rich; it's a fact. Does everyone fare so well? No way! If you hope to succeed, you must learn how to go about internet marketing properly. The majority of people do not have any concept about what is possible with 300 Internet Marketers, and we......

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Take the time to create value with your content. Optimizing your content to provide the maximum value will have many positive long term effects, and is well worth the effort put forth. Keep readers coming back by giving them a reason to. Post quality over quantity.

It still amazes me how often I find a site, that obviously had some money and time spent on the design. They also took the time to SEO the site and chose relevant keywords. And then they did nothing with it… They wasted all the effort by providing no value in the actual content.

A major mistake many bloggers make is thinking that quality is less important than quantity. It gets compounded by the fact that the search engines see quantity as valuable. it might even increase your traffic to post constantly. However it dos you no good if the traffic you gain simply comes once, never to return. Instead make your site important to the viewer by adding real value.

• Writing SEO Focused Articles The reason you write; blog posts, website content, or promotional reasons, isn't necessarily important. Ultimately, you're missing out on a ton of free traffic if you fail to optimize your writing for better search engine results. Far too many Internet marketers and webmasters fail to focus on SEO articles, which......
• How Social Bookmarking Can Benefit Your Business In order to make your website profitable, you must get more than just traffic there; you need to get targeted traffic to visit your site. You will be capable of generating income whenever you wish, if only you understand how to bring in visitors and even master this one capability.......
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Letting the negative things in your life interfere with your potential will stop you from reaching your potential. In other words, stay positive. Let nothing bring you down. It is imperative that you look for the good in all situations.

Easier said than done, right? Well in truth whatever you think is true. If you believe you can accomplish something, then you can, if you believe you will fail then you will. Saying “I can’t” and believing “I will fail” makes it a certainty.

No one who ever achieved success, believed they would fail. In fact, often the team or individual is the only one that has faith in their future success. How many times have you read the story of someone who has overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve greatness? All their family and friends said they could not do it. But they pressed on regardless to all of the negativity from their associates.

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Every great invention or idea has run up against the same first roadblock… fear. The would be entrepreneur fears the unknown, fears to possibility of failure and fears the innate risks involved with a new venture.

So, what separates the entrepreneur from just some person with a good idea? The successful professional knows the steps to define the unknown and by doing so they eliminate fear.

Fear is the Mind Killer

It is the fear of the unknown that stops most people from attaining their dreams. The fear keeps them in their comfortable job. The fear stops them from taking the risks necessary to succeed.

Here are the 5 steps to help you get over your fears, and get the ball rolling on your new venture.

1) Do Your Research

Find out everything there is to know about your idea.  Who will be your competitors? Even if no one has the exact same product or service, there will always be competition, so get to know them. Google is your best friend. Use it to your advantage. Find the keywords your would be competition uses, search blogs, directories and every resource and media outlet.

This is a great time to define what or how you will be better than the competition. Find the answers to these questions: How will you take market share? Who is your target customer? Where are they? How do you get them? What is the MVP (Minimum Viable Product)?

2) Define the Opportunity

Now that you know everything there is to know about the market and competition it is time to define your opportunity. There are a series of questions that are vital to answer: What are acceptable price points? How many customers are there? Is the market local, regional, national or international? What is the exact niche? You will want to know who you are targeting, why you are going after them, where they are at, when you will launch and how you will reach them (Who, What, When, Where, Why and How).

3) Entrepreneur Know thy-self

If you have done the first two steps, it is time to decide if you are the right person for this opportunity. What relationships do you have that could open doors in this market? Do you have the skill set to  fit the concept?  Do you have the tools, software and money to go full out? What essential skills, experience, knowledge or money are you missing?

By understanding how you fit the opportunity you can define the gaps in your own abilities, knowledge and finances. These gaps help you Define a team.

4) Build Your Team

So you have determined the skills, experience, knowledge or money you are missing to make your idea a success. Look around you at your friends, family and colleagues. Do you know people who can fill your gaps? Are they willing to work with you, especially  on speculative work. What are your financing options, do you have the money or do you know potential investors (Friends and family) that might be interested? You will need to be able to sell them on this idea. Often the first person I look for is a great salesperson, because they can help me sell the next person in the idea. The people involved can be contractors or freelance, you don’t have to look for the long term team at this time, in fact it is often best to keep the final team small early on. Find the people and fill the gaps.

5) Build the Prototype

There are a great many cliches to remember at this time, and all are valid. Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t get overly complex, just make it work. If it is a service this is a great time to do the work cheap or free. What you want is to get a couple of clients that will give you an endorsement and that you can use as a reference. If you properly defined the opportunity then you know what the M.V.P. for your prototype should be, build that.

Always remember that perfection is the enemy of profit. Build the MVP, get it into the hands of a few customers, let them define what more is needed, or how it should change. Your customer will know better than you what they really want, so let them tell you.

Incremental Perfection

Now that the customer has the product in hand and has told you what they really want. Now is the time to incorporate some of these changes. Add a feature, test again. The steps we have outlined here are actually a cycle that you should re-iterate through over and over until you have the final product. Often what you will find is that the initial idea and the final one are radically different.

Don’t be afraid to change direction .

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