Congratulations. You stopped long enough to read this and get out of the task mindset.

Often, clients ask me how to budget for marketing. As we are in unchartered territory, the usual “left-overs” approach to marketing will sink a business today. At the core, it is not about the money. It is not about competition. It is about how you make your case to assure your prospect of a smart buying decision. They must feel secure that you will deliver on your promise. The prospect wants to feel good about a relationship with your company. Provide that link with your marketing message.

Amazingly, when companies are concerned about making payroll or staying afloat, the first place they cut is sales personnel. Think about it: how does that make sense when these “boots on the ground” or the voices on the phone or at the networking meeting are the circulatory system of your company. My personal favorite is how marketing money is slashed because it is a non-revenue producing department.—Try running a company without it.

The other mystery is how many small business owners do not understand marketing beyond a phone book ad. Advertising is a tool of marketing.

Here are a couple of tips as you review and revise your marketing plans. (Yes, I trust that you have one!)
1. Have a written marketing plan.
2. Define your primary, secondary and ancillary target audiences.

Assign a percentage of budget to each category.
Include research to map the psychographics of your audience:

Where do they shop?
What are similar values they hold and relate to your company values?
What causes are important to them?
What do they read?
What percentage of time are they online, reading print and want to be contacted?
Answers provide a place to start about placement of your marketing messages.

These are sampling questions for your website to conduct an online poll, survey after you have established and earned the trust of your visitor.

3.   15% designated to search engine optimization (SEO) functions. For example, if you have $500 for online marketing, $75 would go for SEO.
4.   Calculate your annual sales and take 5-7% as your marketing budget. Of course, if you are launching new products or services, you may want to assign a separate budget for those items.
5.   Who can best implement and manage your marketing? If you are doing everything, you are doing nothing well. This book will change how you view running your business, The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. You can easily order a copy by clicking on the Amazon box.

If nothing else, a simple outline encompassing the issues above will help you to run your business, stand above and look down (meta view) and begin to see how all the moving parts work together. If nothing else, consider ways to apply the suggestions. -MC

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by Coachcubas

Action plan, business coaching, career, Corporate, Decision making, fulfillment, Performance

Secret Pal or Powerful Tool—Your Coach

August 25, 2009

Today The New York Daily News, in an article on business coaching, got me thinking about my profession. I was pondering what I bring to my clients as the article headliner chalked up the advantages of business coaching.

One financial executive commented how much she liked the idea of talking though things she was dealing with. So, I asked myself, “What is that really, especially in a business setting?”

Being heard and acknowledged
Guided to or off the ledge!
Safety without concern of others’ perceptions
Invisible to their colleagues, family and friends
Watching my clients’ backs.

Of course, circumstances are mightily different in a corporate setting where much of the structure—mission, vision, values, for example, are already etched—from business owners, sometimes themselves consultants who use a coach differently.

How would you benefit from using a business coach, life coach? One of the best tools you can bring to your life and career is auditioning different coaches. You’ll learn something from each one. Most offer a complimentary session to measure a fit. I welcome your input.

Life and career are entwined because how do we take the humanity and life out of the person? Evidence litters the landscape with how people have fared poorly in large companies, suffered burnout, and have lost their way, their relationships, and their sense of purpose. Coaching supports how to integrate and enrich each aspect of a client’s life.

Coaching is a personal process through which clients process their humanity and their connections to compose and sustain fulfillment in their lives. It is a transparent process of a client meeting the self, dreams and desires.

Often at networking groups I introduce myself as a tuning fork or a Muse to draw upon a creative energy that may be tired, resistant or just plain lazy. Coaching works to link your intentions to commitment while we advance your career or business and your life.

The ultimate key for me is how I show up for my clients no matter what their condition. With their permission, they count on me for an unfiltered, clear reflection of what they bring to coaching.

I simply listen and guide, celebrate in concert and show up. With coaching, we can move mountains! —mc

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by Coachcubas

business coaching, Business Insights, healthcare, Marketing, Value

We’ve Sold the Soul of Marketing

August 14, 2009

Although this posting was during the campaign, I re-read it and found I could insert the word “competitor” instead of candidate. Cory Treffiletti was asking to look into the future.

Timely posting during the political campaigns. I’d like to add a third slant to your either/or. As a marketer I’m aware of the sectors, objectives and the “speak” that swirls around my profession. Here’s my rudimentary slant: Remove GREED from the picture. How novel is that!

I’m guessing greed motivates all the junk mail in my mail box, real and virtual. How about informing and providing information so people can know they need you.

What that does is remove the barriers and second guessing of getting into people’s heads and actually provides a pure channel to serve the consumers rather than outsmart them. Greed makes the actions self-perpetuating. Look at the spin-off business from this approach. It keeps expanding exponentially, like social media. What’s the reality of managing all these elements?
My head is spinning from it all.

I see current marketing practices as oversell and numbing, an avalanche of information and intrusive to boot. Currently, our biology hasn’t caught up with our technology™ so we’re overwhelmed and don’t know what to look at first. How do you break through that?

The marketing I supply is to find out what people need from me (my homework, research), deliver the message (variety of methods) of how they will benefit working with www.positivepotentials.com, and “show up” for them, not me.

As simplistic as it sounds, this approach eliminates the competing “noise” because people are delighted that someone wants to serve them rather than take their money.

My approach is to slow down, take note and deliver.
It works well for me, and I’ve been in business since 1982. I use this approach to build my coaching practice because of the multitude of coaches around. I guess marketers have to justify their own existence when only driven by revenues rather than value. I say to that, try running a business without marketing; no justification needed.

As a coach, it occurs to me that if the candidates adhered to such a simpler approach, not only would we know more about them, because they would discuss the opportunity of what they bring to the scene, they wouldn’t have to denigrate the opponent. If one is spending millions of dollars, why not promote your own views? I never quite understood why they miss the chance to promote their own ideas. The same applies to our current scream fest on healthcare reform. It needs a name makeover to start. Topic for another time.

In Response to: http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/spin/?p=1383
What Does The Future Look Like? Or, What I Read On My Summer Vacation
By Cory Treffiletti

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by Coachcubas

Marketing Budgets 101—An Easy Introduction

Secret Pal or Powerful Tool—Your Coach

We’ve Sold the Soul of Marketing

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