Why is this important? Marketing is really letting people know about your product or service [...]]]> During my last two blogs, I talked about the importance of getting to know your target market, and more essentially, understanding what makes them tick.  There’s one more important thing to understand about your target market.  Where do they “hang out”?

Why is this important? Marketing is really letting people know about your product or service and why it’s beneficial to them. In order to tell them, they have to be able to “hear” you.  It was easier in the earlier days of advertising—options were limited. Now you have everything from newspapers (which are dying) to Twitter. And, of course, you have people who are glued to their television close to 24 hours a day.

The simplest way to find out how to access your target market is to ask. You can pick a few of your favorite clients and ask them. Or you can use something like Survey Monkey to do a survey of your email list. Be careful though, you want to learn about a particular segment of your target market – the people who actually buy things.

Based on what you learn you can build a marketing strategy to reach your target market. Depending on the media, you’ll either be telling them about your company (newspapers, magazines, television, etc.) or engaging them in a relationship (internet marketing, some radio, networking, etc.). When you’re having the conversation, don’t forget the research you’ve done on your target market. Remember it’s about them and not about you.

Be aware, too, of the etiquette of the medium you’re using. People who Twitter are quickly bored by people who want to sell them something all the time. Twitter is about sharing information and developing a relationship. Offer to help someone and you’ll get much more traction with that particular medium.

Marketing can be a creative learning experience.  The more you move away from your pre-conceived notions, the easier it will be to develop relationships that lead to sales.

Good luck!

The problem is the belief that as the business grows, the stress will grow, the business owner’s time will be more limited and their work/life balance [...]]]> Often an interesting thing happens when women entrepreneurs think about creating a bigger business vision. They freeze. They revert to old behaviors. The urge to control is stronger than ever.

The problem is the belief that as the business grows, the stress will grow, the business owner’s time will be more limited and their work/life balance will be gone forever. If you practice the principles of Holistic Business Management, this can be avoided.

What is Holistic Business Management? It’s a style of management that incorporates the best of current business practices with the best of what women bring to the table as business owners and managers.

In order to run your business holistically, you need to be clear about what’s important in your business. Over the last few weeks I’ve been blogging about money and different ways to look at your income and expenses within your business.  It’s obvious that a certain income is important so a business can keep its doors open. However, what other financial aspects are important to you? For instance,  gives 1% of its sales to environmental groups and supports the environment in many other ways. The giving is built into its model.

What’s important to you? Why did you build your business in the first place?  Define what you want to have happen in your business. Think about financials, how you want your customers to be treated, and the culture and environment you want for your customers. How do you want to source your raw materials? Do you want to insure that only non-toxic products are used to clean your floors?

Be specific. Rather than saying “Prompt delivery of meals to a table,” say, “Delivery of meals to a table in 15 minutes or less.” The more specific you are, the easier it will be to develop metrics to run your business.

We’ll talk about metrics next week.

One of the most recommended marketing strategies over the last two to three years [...]]]> Last week, I talked about how to determine return on investment (ROI) for small business marketing activities. That’s somewhat easy when you’re looking at money you’ve spent vs. money that’s come in. But how do you determine the ROI of your time?

One of the most recommended marketing strategies over the last two to three years has been the use of social media and networking. This is a broad term that can include everything from blogging to creating a video for You Tube to tweeting on a regular basis. These activities can be real time eaters, particularly if you find it difficult to write or create stellar sound bites.

It also can be difficult to count the sales that actually come from these activities. If you ask most people where they’ve heard of you, you’re most likely get a vague answer of “the Internet,” if they found you through any of the social media channels.

Let’s assume that you are getting a substantial number of sales from the Internet. You have a sales page on your web site that converts your leads to sales. And, let’s say, that 10% of the people who visit your website (unique visitors) purchase a $25 item from you each month.  You’re getting 1000 hits a month. So you’re earning $2,500 a month from your web site.

Once you’ve built your web site, your costs should be negligible. If you can increase the number of people showing up at your website, you should be able to increase your sales.

The next thing you’ll need to do is assign an hourly wage to your efforts. Let’s say $50 an hour is the minimum wage you want to pay yourself for your time. Spend two hours a week on social media, and you’ve spent about $400 per month.

You’ll need to make 16 more sales a month to break even. Remember, breaking even isn’t good enough.  You’re really looking to get close to more than 100 sales a month to make the effort worth your investment.

Social media is a long term strategy. You’ll have to invest several months of time up front before you receive the results you want. Through a use of Google Analytics, analysis and careful record-keeping, you’ll be able to get an idea if your time investment is worth it!

Interested in more small business information for women entrepreneurs?  Sign up for our monthly newsletter at the upper right and receive a free report to enhance your business success!

From the example on Tuesday, we determined that the imaginary lead from In Style cost $2 per person.

Suppose you converted 10% of those people to buy a product worth $50 each.  Ten percent of 500 [...]]]> On Tuesday, I talked about determining cost per lead. The next step is to determine how much a sale costs you.

From the example on Tuesday, we determined that the imaginary lead from In Style cost $2 per person.

Suppose you converted 10% of those people to buy a product worth $50 each.  Ten percent of 500 people is 50.  Fifty people times $50 is $2,500.  The ad cost $1000. To determine your sales ratio, you need to divide the revenue by the cost of the ad.  The result is 2.5.  That means that for every dollar you spend with In Style, you get $2.50 of revenue. The sales ratio is 2.5 to 1.  That ratio is o.k., but ideally you want a 5 to 1 sales ratio or better.

A sales ratio of 1 to 1 is no good.  If you only ever earn $1 for every $1 you spend, you will have no profit. No profit means no growth, salary or return on investment for you, a business owner. It may seem preposterous that business owners would ever do something like this—but I see it all the time as a business coach, particularly with women. “Well, at least I made my money back,” is a phrase you should never, ever utter.

Let’s examine the same scenario for the lead from O.

Out of the 1000 people who responded, 10% bought a product worth $100. The total revenue was $10,000.  (10% of 1000 times 100). The ad cost $5000.  The sales ratio is 2 to 1.  (Revenue divided by ad cost.)  For this example, every $1 spent in advertising $2 in revenue was received. In the In Style example $2.50 was received for every $1 spent in advertising. Which is the better deal?

But what about time invested?  We’ll get to that next week.  (Don’t want to miss this information? Sign up for this blogs RSS feed on the left.)

Now it’s your turn. Look at the sales ratio you received for your advertising efforts.  Based on that information, figure out which advertising you need to increase and which you need to abandon.  Let us know the results in the comments below!

Sometimes marketing for small [...]]]> Small business marketing can be a great big hole that sucks your money into the vortex. How much do you need?  What do you need to do? How much time do you need to spend blogging, twittering and networking? What if you think you don’t have a creative bone in your body?

Sometimes marketing for small business can make you feel like you’re in an endless rerun of Mad Men.

Many marketing people will tell you that you can’t really measure return on investment (ROI) with marketing. After all, how do you track the money you paid a PR firm to get you “placed” in Oprah’s magazine? If image is important, how can you track the impression that polished walnut furnishing, fresh flower arrangements brought daily or a perky receptionist make on your clients?

The truth is, that you can’t. But there are places that you can track ROI and you should whenever possible. I see women continue to advertise in magazines for the prestige, or continue to invest in networking groups where they’ve never gotten a sale.

Let’s look at magazines and how you could go about tracking an advertisement.

Say you advertise in two magazines – O and In Style.  You can have the person reading the ad respond to you for a free sample.  In O, you ask them to respond to Dept. O and for the magazine In Style, you have them respond to Dept. S.  You get 1,000 leads from O and 500 leads from In Style.  On the surface, it looks like the ad from O is better.

However, let’s say that the ad from O cost you $5,000 and the one from In Style only cost you $1,000.  What is your cost per lead?

Cost per lead = Cost of strategy divided by number of leads returned.

So, cost per lead for O is $5 ($5000/1000) and the cost per lead for In Style is $2 ($1000/500).  So, even though you received more leads from O, your cost per lead is higher.

Cost per lead isn’t the only determining factor. Cost per sale is actually where the rubber meets the road. I’ll talk about that in Thursday’s blog.  (Sign up for the RSS feed to the left if you want to be sure you get every valuable tip that we offer on our blog.)

Now it’s your turn.  If you can, determine the cost per lead for every marketing strategy that you had in the past year. Let us know what you find in the comment section below!

As a business coach in Silicon [...]]]> According to Liz Hamburg in an article on USA Trends, one important reason women don’t receive venture capital (VC) or angel investment is…they don’t ask! “Women business owners with $1m plus businesses are still twice as likely to use debt instead of equity, according to Illuminate Ventures. Or they self-finance.”

As a business coach in Silicon Valley, I see this all the time. One of my clients finances her debt by moving credit card balances to one 0% interest credit card to another every year. Another dips into her home equity line every time there’s not enough cash flow to cover payroll. It’s not that these women aren’t smart—they’re very smart. Part of it is their vision of their business.

A larger part is avoidance of risk. Hamburg goes on to say, “Women are afraid of failure more than men.” Perhaps it’s because they are always aware of the need to maintain a certain level of security for their families. (A position Wall Street high rollers would do well to emulate.) Perhaps because regardless of source of the money they use in their business, they still feel as if they’re “playing” with their own money.

Hamburg also points out that there’s a dearth of risk-taking role models for women entrepreneurs. We may be out-numbering men in the workplace and the university, but we haven’t made it to the top of the food chain frequently. (About 3% of CEOs of major companies are women.)

Would it be better for women entrepreneurs to aspire to the winner-take-all mentality of previous generations of business owners? Probably not. But it would be good if we could get past the feeling of “less than” when we go to ask someone for money.  Experience is proving that women make good managers. We handle our company’s money well, precisely because we regard it as “our money.”

How do you handle your debt?  Every company has it, particularly companies with employees. If we’re going to expand our vision to community, to create jobs that heal our economy, environment and world, we’ll need to create bigger businesses.

What would it take for you to create a business big enough to go to a venture capitalist for money? Leave a comment below!

3. Listen for your prospect’s true objection. Listen, price is an easy way to object to being sold something. Have you ever been accosted by one of those kiosk salespeople in malls? I’ve gotten sucked in a few times because the item is something [...]]]> Here’s the continuation of “Five Ways to Sell So Price Doesn’t Matter.”

3. Listen for your prospect’s true objection. Listen, price is an easy way to object to being sold something. Have you ever been accosted by one of those kiosk salespeople in malls? I’ve gotten sucked in a few times because the item is something I’m toying with getting. Ultimately, though, I don’t buy. I tell them it’s because of price. The real reason? They annoyed me and wasted my time when I wasn’t ready to enjoy the shopping experience.  They made it about them and not about me. But, I’m not going to tell them that.

One technique to get to the problem behind the price is to ask, “If you felt that you had no problem affording this, would you buy it then?” And then wait. We are too hurry to interrupt and supply answers to others. The most respectful thing we can do for others is to listen – truly listen. And pay attention to the answer. Don’t just use the answer to “sell” them right away. Store the information and then use it to change your marketing materials and your selling script.

4. Use your prospect’s language. Selling is about developing a relationship. This is particularly true of women. People have better relationships with others that they feel understand them. If a couple is having trouble, one of the techniques that family counselors use is to teach them how to “mirror” each other. They become aware of the language that their spouse is using and use it back to them. No, it’s not fake. It helps the other person feel that you are really hearing them.

Pay attention to the industry that your prospect is in. Do research before you even pick up the phone to make that first call. Understand, at least to some degree, the jargon that they use in their everyday life. You don’t (and shouldn’t) use it if you don’t totally understand it, but it will give you an idea of how to best explain the benefits of your product/service in ways that they understand.

5.  Have an outrageous goal – and an outrageous reward for meeting that goal! Get out of your own way in terms of price. If you really want to reach your goal, you will make the changes that you need to make to eliminate price as the only reason that people decide to buy from you. You will also begin to honor yourself, and your prospects, by not wasting time with those for whom price truly is the only criteria to buy.

Different economic times require that we pay more attention to our selling techniques. We need to refine them, and yes, work a little harder. But most of all, we need to work consistently and smartly to reach our business goals. Use these five strategies to bring you better selling conversations where price is no longer an issue.