In a previous post I talked about how to differentiate yourself from similar businesses and used the example of a market for fruit and veg stalls.

While I was in Split I took a ferry over to the island of Brac. I opted to hire a car so that I could visit as much of the Island as possible in just one afternoon. It was a rather battered Volkswagen cabriolet but very good to drive on the windy island roads.

One town I particularly liked was Sutivan. It has a really pretty little port, a few cafes and shops with a very zen atmosphere. I could definitely spend a few days there.

While I was there I discovered a lovely shop called Portus Olivae owned by this lady.

I was drawn into her shop by the way she’d displayed the eclectic range of locally produced items that she sells – from children’s tee-shirts, olive oil based soaps and creams to jewellry and candles. For me her shop was a great example of how important it is to display your products so that people feel drawn to looking at them and exploring what you have to sell. I bought a lovely necklace and soaps even though in truth I didn’t really need them !

It’s so important to sell products that your target clients will want to buy but also to display them in an attractive way.

Don’t forget where and how your products are displayed is an important part of your promotional actions!

When you run a business you need to know who your target clients are – that’s absolutely crucial otherwise how will you know whose problem or pain point you’re aiming to solve ? How will you know how to communicate with them and where? How will you deliver your product or service to them ? How will you know who your competitors are? How will you be able to differentiate your products/services?

Today I’m going to look at differentiating your products. What if you have a stand selling fruit and vegetables amongst many other lookalike stands also selling fruit and vegetables? How would you stand out from the crowd and attract people to come to your stall and buy from you?

I was wondering this today as I walked through a fruit and vegetable market in Split (Croatia) where I’m teaching an intensive marketing course.

How could a stallholder differentiate themself from all the others?

I looked around but I couldn’t see anything obvious that they were doing. If you don’t sell all your fruit and veg then not only do you not make much money but you also have to throw a lot of your produce out. It’s an open air market and quite warm – the temperature was about 27C.

I went back the next day – a Sunday – and there were only a few stall there. One of them had really made an effort at displaying her fruit and veg as oyu can see in the photo below.

So I started to think about ways a stall holder could differentiate themselves from the others. These were some of the ways I came up with – many of which are applicable to all businesses.

• have consistently high quality produce
• sell at competitive prices
• clearly display your prices
• let people taste a sample
• build a relationship with regular customers – always easier to keep a customer than get new ones and it also brings WoM
• have the same pitch each time so people can find you
• put up a sign with your trading name
• display the fruit and veg so they stand out and look appetising
• provide nutritional advice
• provide recipes
• make vegetables into packs of the right quantities for a particular type of soup together with a recipe
• keep the flies off  (it’s very offputting to see a box of nectarines covered in flies – makes me wonder whether they’re a bit over ripened)
• splash your produce with cold water to keep them as cool as possible and looking fresh
• always be smiling and courteous
• learn to recognise regular customers and make it worth their while to be loyal – maybe give an extra fruit or something new to try
• have paper bags to put things in (in Split there seems to be a plastic bag for each type of produce that you choose – not good for keeping the produce fresh in these temperatures and not environmentally friendly)

I’m sure there’s lots more ways you can think of. why not share your ideas for the benefit of other readers?

I’m teaching an intensive Fundamentals of Marketing course in Split (Croatia) at the moment. Today being Saturday I decided to take myself off to the pretty little town of Trogir on a boat operated by Bura Line. In theory the boat departs from a quay not far from the harbour masters building but at 9am this morning there was no sign of it. I asked at the information booth and the guy responded to my question by saying: “I’m getting fed up with people asking about the boat to Trogir. I’ve no idea where it’s leaving from.”

I went to the harbour masters office and discovered that it was leaving from a totally different quay some way off. I had just 10 minutes to get there – jumping over cables and zig zagging around people pulling suitcases.

I got there in time.

I was one of three people on the boat.

Now the first thing that occured to me was this – why don’t Bura Line have someone standing where the boat normally goes from to gather people up and take them to where the boat is berthed. And…  leave an A Board saying which pier the boat is leaving from. I’m sure they lost a lot of revenue today because people couldn’t find them.

Always make it easy for your customers to find you.

Remember the mouse trap theory?  “If a man can make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door” but as Emerson O.B. Winters remarked: “The manufacturer who waits for the world to beat a path to his door is a great optimist. But the manufacturer who shows his ‘mousetrap’ to the world keeps the smoke coming out of his chimney.”

Make sure you show your mouse trap to the world !

Make sure your target clients know where your boat is berthed !

So many people are packaging their knowledge into an online course which makes total sense because then your expertise can be easily shared with many people without you having to trade time for dollars working one on one (which really only works if you’re a major expert and can command thousands of dollars for your one-on-one sessions). There are however a few things to bear in mind when building an online course.

In this post I’m just going to go through the 7 most important ones and share some resources with you.

1. What do you know that you want to share?

At some point you will almost certainly want to combine your online course with group coaching or even individual coaching so you not only need to be knowledgeable but also really enthusiastic about your topic.

2. Do people want what you want to share?

A mistake that many people make is to develop a course on a topic that they’re passionate about or which they know that people need without checking whether their target clients want it and are willing to pay good money for it. You need to know who your ideal clients are – what their pain points are or what they’re desperate to learn more about. You need to know how they like to learn (some will like books, others evening classes and some will like online courses) and how much they’re prepared to pay.

I highly recommend you prepare a short survey and put it in  front of your target clients (who hopefully are the people following you on Facebook, LinkedIn etc). I started out offering courses on getting ideas for a business, getting from idea to launch, handling the financial side of the business and then realised that whilst people needed these they didn’t necessarily want them. I’ve had a lot more success helping people monetise their knowledge and build their programmes as this is where people can get stuck and are willing to pay for help.

I also suggest you don’t build all the course straight away – build the first few lessons and see how it sells.

3. Do you really know who your target client is?

Not only is it important to know who your target client is from the perspective of creating a course that they want and are willing to pay for but it will also inform what you include in the course, what format you use (video, webinars, texts, worksheets…), how and when you deliver it and how you promote it.

4. Do you have a compelling name for your course?

If you’re well known then a title such as How to organise an event will most likely sell as you already have a tribe of committed followers eager for your next offering but if you’re not so well known then a compelling name is a must have. Think of Sigrun’s From Passion to Profit or Star Khechara’s Passive Income Rockstars or Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid or even my own Rock the Financials rather than something boring like How to manage the financial aspects of being in business. Yawn!!

5. How will you structure your course?

I’ve built many courses for the MBA programmes I’ve taught on and for my own business and I always start with an outline – much as you would when writing an essay at university. In this way it’s easy to see whether it’s logical and flows well. It’s then a lot easier to cut and paste the content from your blog posts or reports or do a brain dump perhaps using a transcription service.

6. What format will you use?

Will you do videos, webinars, handbook ? will there be worksheets? This is where you need to know the characteristics of your target clients so that you know how they like to learn. People learn in different ways. Have you ever wondered why some online superstars offer an electronic version, a paper version and a recorded version of their course? I’ve had MBA student moan that my Powerpoint slides were too detailed and then when I didn’t use any I had a group of lovely students from China complain that they needed to read while I spoke so they could be sure of understanding me.

7. How will you deliver your course?

When your course is ready and illustrated and ready to make it’s journey into the world how will it get into the hands of the people you aspire to sell it to? Will you set up autoresponders to go out with a link to a PDF that’s on your website or in Dropbox? will you use an online platform such as Ruzuku, New Kajabi, Jigsawbox all of which are paid. Will you use a learning management system on your WordPress site? will you use Udemy or Zenler and pay them a fee for each sale you make?  You need to think through the pros and cons of these and have in mind what your future plans are.

RESOURCES:  I’m a massive fan of everything that the Rapid eLearning blog produces.

CAN I HELP YOU?

I have many years experience in building university courses and in building and marketing online courses.

Take a look at my services to help people just like you strategise and build their own online course. Your Course – Built with You!

Here’s a thought provoking, motivating article from Barb Wade. It’s some great advice on how to make 2015 your banner year. But you know what? you could follow these steps and make any year a banner year!  As barb says at the ends “One thing is for sure: you will end up somewhere by the end of 2015. Why not fill your sails, chart a course, and set out sooner than later? “

This great article was written by a personal friend – Erin Alli – who first came into my life quite a few years ago when I hired her as my VA!  Life intervened but we remained close friends and we do our best to meet up each year even though we now live on different sides of the Atlantic.

Her article suggests you ask yourself three questions to determine whether you need a business manager.

Your business may be going quite well but are you? If you are doing everything yourself, my guess is no, you are not doing that well.

Running a business can get overwhelming and lonely when you don’t have people in place to help you.

But how do you know if you are ready to bring someone on to help?

Here are 3 questions to ask yourself to determine if you are ready for a business manager:

How many hours a day/week do I put in?

If you are putting in 10 hour days and working 7 days a week to keep up you are in need of help. You need someone that can be your gatekeeper so you are not taking care of things that you don’t need to be. You need someone to take over day to day tasks so that you can focus on what only you can do and not have to worry about the rest.

Am I spending time learning new things or trying to figure out things that I don’t need to be?

If you are trying to fix your website yourself, or set up your shopping cart, or fix a glitch in the system and this is not what you are good at, the answer is yes, you are spending your time this way and it needs to stop. You need someone that can take care of that for you or hire the people to do that so you are not even aware of it unless you need to be. This takes the worry and stress off you so you can focus on bringing in more clients or selling more products. This also increases your revenue because while you are paying someone that is skilled in this area to take care of the project, you are able to be spending your time out connecting with new leads and prospects.

Did my family forget what I looked like until they glanced at the family photo on the wall from 3 years ago?

Yes, this is something I hear often and it is a huge problem if you are spending all your time working and your family is coming in second. You shouldn’t be missing their important moments. You should be going on family vacations with them (and not working while you are there). You should be home at bedtime to tuck the kids in and read stories and be available for your spouse afterward to talk and connect. If you are finding that you spend more time working than anything else, it is time to look into hiring a business manager.

Many times entrepreneurs think they can do it all themselves but that just isn’t the case. You need to invest in getting the help you need because that investment is worth it. You shouldn’t be losing your sanity, letting your family slip away or wasting your precious time. You should be working with someone that cares about your business, wants to see it grow and wants you to experience freedom and relief from the pressure cooker you are currently in.

Erin Alli is a Virtual Business Growth Manager. She helps her clients to rediscover the joy in their business by removing the tasks from their plate that they don’t need to be focused on.

Erin also helps her clients create new offerings, monetize what they are missing to increase revenue and has strategy and accountability sessions with clients so they stay on track and keep moving forward with their ideas in a simple, step by step way that doesn’t overwhelm them.

Visit www.ErinAlli.com to learn more about Erin and how she can help you in your business.  In fact if you’re interested in finding out more about different ways to delegate projects or to bring on a business manager contact Erin for a free consult at Erin@EssentialAssisting.com.

It really frustrates me when I walk down the street containing a barbers shop in a certain little town in Devon. The interior has been beautifully done out by the owner but… there isn’t a high footfall in the little street where it’s located and most people  walk by on the other side of the road. Every time I walk by I look across and see the door is shut and the lights so dim it’s hard to know whether it’s open or not. So I cross the road just to check and invariably see the owner sat in the corner seemingly engrossed in their smartphone. Brighter lights; a half open door, an A board outside would signal that they were open for business.

Advantage could have been taken of the Christmas season to have mulled wine and mince pies for visitors regardless of whether they had an appointment or were even going to be making one – it would have created a buzz, brought people in through the door and given the owner a chance to hand out a card offering 10% off the first appointment.

I know a few people who are clients – they tell me they’re always the only customer. There’s no loyalty scheme to encourage return visits and no referral system to encourage people to tell their friends.

The Facebook page has few Likes, no information about the owner, no posts, no incentives to Like the page. This could be worked on during quiet times. On Twitter they have just 38 Followers and have produced but a handful of tweets – none of them incentivising people to come in for a haircut.

Yes – it does cross my mind that this lovely salon is at high risk of becoming another statistic – yet another start-up that didn’t make it – but could have.

Here are some of the marketing ideas I would have suggested had my offer of free advice been accepted:

1. brighter lights; a half open door, an A board outside to signal open for business
2. an open day with mince pies and mulled wine to have an opportunity to hand out business cards with a special 10% off offer
3. have flyers in local shops and hotels
4. always remember what Maya Angelou  said: “… people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – always make your clients feel special.
5. as time goes on categorise your clients into regulars and occasional – reward the regulars and encourage the occasionals to come more often
6. try SMS marketing – send regular customers an occasional text message – about a promotion, an event or just to remind them it’s time for a haircut !
7. exploit WOM (Word Of Mouth) – give customers cards to hand out to their friends offering a reduction on their first booking but make sure the card has referred by… so that you know who your evangelists are (and don’t forget to reward them!)
8. make sure local photographers, hotels and wedding venues know about you – invite key staff over for a wine and cheese event so that they can see the salon and meet you
9. make active use of your Facebook Page – a cover picture, information about the salon, details of special offers, open days
10. write engaging content for your Facebook page and post lots of photos and videos
11. run contests on the Facebook Page to attract Likes and bring in customers – e.g. “Take your photo outside our salon and post on our Facebook page, get your Friends to Like it and the photo with the most Likes gets xxx”. This could be a free haircut or 10% off for the next year for example.
12. offer exclusive deals to Facebook fans
13. have a photo taken with your clients and with their consent put them on your Facebook page and if that person is on Facebook get them to share it with their peeps
14. use Twitter if your target clients are using it, follow target clients or sources of clients and then tweet about things that will encourage them to visit, to book an appointment
15. encourage retweets on Twitter – a simple Retweet from one of your Followers can generate referrals. Offer incentives for Retweets such as “The Hair Salon is the trendiest place in xyz – have  $10 off your next appointment by retweeting this post”
16. use hashtags on Twitter for the location of your salon
17. offer group deals e.g. “Come in this Saturday with 2 or more friends and receive 10% off each just by showing this tweet!”
18. consider using Instagram
19. have a website – with an Offers page. Have calls to action to encourage prospective clients to choose your salon.
20. start a blog with hair tips, trends and advice – even information about events in the town. It will eventually brings in visitors which helps with ranking on Google and gives an opportunity to get people to sign up for a newsletter
21. promote blog posts on your Facebook page
22. have a special deal on days that are often ‘slow’
23. network at local networking events
24. set marketing objectives
25. have a marketing strategy and implement it – consistently

Need it be said that if YOU want marketing advice or help developing a marketing strategy for YOUR business I’d be only too happy to help.

 As many of you know already I was selected as one of the Top 100 Women in Ecommerce for 2014. (page 60 of WE Magazine).

I’m in great company including Ava Diamond who I’ve followed for a long time. This week she wrote a thought provoking article on What Do You Stand For? Fortunately she’s happy for her articles to be reproduced verbatim so long as we acknowledge her at the end. So read on…

 

 

 

You are not the only one who speaks on your topic. Whether it’s wellness, leadership, social media, or any other topic, there are other people talking about it, too.

So how do you stand out?

How do you differentiate yourself?

How do you not get lost in all the noise that is out there in today’s marketplace?

• Have a strong Point of View (POV).
• Have a strong opinion.
• Be willing to be out on the edge.
• You have to be interesting.
• Your message has to be compelling. It has to evoke a strong reaction

Your strong point of view will draw in those for whom your work is perfect, and will repel people who are not perfect for you. Now that scares some people. Some of you want everyone to like you. So you water down your message in an attempt to appeal to the masses. It hurts you and it hurts your business.

You need to take a stand and to have that point of view show up in everything you produce: your talks, your blog posts, your social media posts, your webinars, your programs, etc.

Two questions Larry Winget asked us last week in the Hell Yeah Star event are “What is the idea you’re owning?” and “What makes your idea different from everyone else?” He’s an excellent example of someone who owns a space. He says that you can hire anyone to speak on leadership, customer service, teamwork, sales, or personal development, but “there’s only one Larry Winget.”His book titles are provocative. “Grow a Pair” “Shut Up, Stop Whining and Get a Life.” “People are Idiots and I Can Prove It.” He wears jeans, cowboy boots, and cowboy shirts. Always. He has very strong “personal responsibility” POV, and is consistent in everything he does. He does not create fans, he creates fanatics. There are people who hate him, too, which is totally okay with him.

It’s critical to know who you are—who you really are.

It’s critical to know what you stand for.

And it’s critical to know what your uniqueness is.

Here’s a four question process that was shared in Hell Yeah Star to help get to your own uniqueness, your own POV, your own stand. If there’s one thing in the world I know based on my life and my research, it is…

• What is the one thing you want to tell the world?
• Why do you want the world to know that?
• Why are you the one to tell them? (this goes back to your story, your experiences, and your research).

Here are some additional questions that I use with my clients:

• What about your topic ticks you off?
• If you could change one thing about business or the world, what would it be?
• What do you stand for? What can people count on you for?
• What are you afraid to say because you’re afraid you’ll turn people off?

You should be able to articulate your point of view in a sentence or two.

Don’t be afraid to be controversial.

Don’t be afraid of turning some people off.

Be fearless.

Take a stand.

Share your POV.

© 2014 Big Impact Speaking

My question to YOU – what do YOU think ?  Share your feedback in the comments section below!

 

Ava Diamond is a speaking mentor and messaging strategist, and is the founder of Big Impact Speaking. She has created such programs as Speak Your Way to Clients and Cash, and the Rock Your Speaking Academy. A professional speaker for seventeen years, she helps entrepreneurs rock their speaking so they expand their influence and reach, become known as the “go-to” expert in their field, and get all the clients they want.

Download the complementary Rock Your Speaking Power Pack at http://BigImpactSpeaking.com Contact Ava at ava@bigimpactspeaking.com or at 970-224-3015.