5 Marketing Game Changers for Your Business

I cannot help myself, but I love talking to entrepreneurs and business owners. It tends to drive my kids nuts, especially when we're at a new restaurant or store, but I cannot help myself. I find these conversations quite interesting and as you would expect from me, I usually start to asking the owner various marketing questions.

Unfortunately, many times I hit a wall where the owner expresses reluctance and staunch stubbornness to even consider trying something new in their marketing efforts. Running and marketing your business with blinders on is inefficient and detrimental to your bottom line. Now I’m not saying you need to pay attention to every shiny object that hits your email inbox, but being open to learning and trying new things is an inherent trait for successful entrepreneurs.

The challenge comes down to knowing where you should spend your time and money and in this article my intent is to showcase five marketing game changers you should thoughtfully consider for your business in 2015. These are not the sexiest strategies and there’s a 99% chance you’ve heard me preach about them in the past, but I’ve seen success after success with these strategies with my Private Client Group members and others I know, that you would be foolish not to spend quality time considering how to use them in 2015.

Each of these strategies can work for you. They can increase your level of influence. They can drive new prospects into your business. They can help you connect with your best customers and offer them the products and services they want, but only if you figure out a way to use them. So with that in mind, here are five key marketing strategies that can change your business forever.

1. Think Small to Get Big

If you understand the Pareto principle (typically known as “the 80–20 rule” - it theorizes that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes) and apply it to your business, you realize the bulk of your revenues typically comes from a small portion of your customers.

If you accept this premise, it creates a fundamental and important shift in your marketing approach. You stop thinking about the masses and focus most of your marketing efforts on your best customers and prospects (the 20%).

You become much more selective on how you target and focus your marketing messages and offers and you quickly realize not everybody is meant to be your customer, client or patient and you do whatever you can to attract those you’re designed to serve exceptionally and repel those who don’t fit your marketing criteria.

One of the most valuable exercises you can do is spend dedicated time and identify what this 20% looks like and what do they want more of. If you invest focused time in 2015 and craft a chunk of your marketing for just this 20% (and how you can attract more of the same), I know your results and profitability will improve.

2. Create a Lead-Generation Short Book to Attract More of Your 20% Ideal Customers

I believe every business owner should have some sort of “lead generation” educational guide or short book created for their business. A lead-generation short book properly positions your products, service and expertise, answers the questions your 20% have and allows you to generate prospective customers from the book. Plus there is a high probability your competition is not doing this.

With the simplicity and high-quality results from Amazon’s, CreateSpace everybody reading this can publish a professional looking book, in any quantity, to their local community or the world! Sell the book, give it away, use it as a reward for opting in at your web site. There are many ways to get your short book out there and with it your expertise, contact information and offer to get to know you better.

3. Create a High-End Service or Product for The 20%

If your 20% represents your best customers who love what you offer or do, there’s a high probability you have a unique opportunity to offer them something special, in the form of an exclusive product or service.

Again, I realize at first glance, you might not see what it is you can offer. One easy way to get clarity is to ask your best customers what you can do for them or provide to them above what you’re already doing for them or what’s missing that they wished you had for them.

The bottom line is to develop something meant only for the 20% or even 20% of the 20% who have shown a propensity for what you offer.

4. Host a Small Group, Highly-Focused Paid Event

Similar in context to #3, but the difference being this is an in-person, live event. Done right, these can be very profitable on the front-end (meaning the revenues generated from the registration fees) and even more profitable on the back-end (sales made at or after the event). Plus nothing matches the relationship-enhancing experience and positioning-ability, like being in front of a room teaching or instructing others.

Hosting these specialty events is not just for public speakers or info-marketers. Again, I would be hard-pressed to think of a certain type of business owner who could not figure out a way to host a paid event for a small, select group on a very specific topic relevant to their products or services.

As an alternative, if hosting a live, in-person event is not practical for you, consider using
webinar technology to host live, virtual events. These don’t have the impact of an in-person event, but they are an acceptable second choice (in lieu of or in addition to in-person events).

If your prospects have questions, concerns or very specific pains, there is a very good chance you can offer them a paid, content-rich event to help them.

5. Leverage a Marketing & Sales Automation Platform

A behavioral-based marketing & sales automation platform, when set up properly, allows you to capture, convert and nurture leads, prospects and customers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year automatically. This means marketing and sales things that should happen 100% of the time, DO HAPPEN 100% OF THE TIME!

• No more having to remember to send out a thank you card.
• Or remembering to make a follow-up call.
• Or remembering to send out the product information for a person who requested it.

Instead the systems and automation does it for you - all the time! This is what Infotail does.

By “behavioral-based” I mean you can put people into different marketing sequences, based on what they do, what buttons they click, what emails they read, what they don’t do, etc. This is extremely powerful and allows an amazing level of personalized marketing.

Retail store owners, restaurant owners, doctors, lawyers, insurance agents, etc. can and should be using an automated marketing platform to build a powerful marketing engine that runs on auto-pilot.

Yes, they are a hassle to set up. And no, they are not cheap, but once you get past all that, an automated marketing and sales platform empowers you to do extraordinary things and stand above your competition.

So there you have five very specific strategies for growing your business in 2015. I want to challenge everybody reading these words to take some time and seriously consider how you can leverage these five strategies. The correct implementation of any one of these strategies could be a HUGE GAME-CHANGER for your business.  If you have any questions regarding any of these, leave them below and I will answer.