You Need to Know 1. FOCUS ON HELPING, INSTEAD OF SELLING This is the foundation of the Give to Get Marketing philosophy. If you were to ask us what is the most important concept that we share, it would be this one. Dedicate yourself to applying this one concept throughout your business and your marketing efforts and your business will thrive. Remember this . . . People hate being sold, but they love being helped. Many small business owners find it difficult and frustrating to attract new customers because they view marketing and selling as a manipulative and distasteful process. That's because they are focusing on getting the sale (what 'they' want), and not on helping their prospect solve his or her problem (what the 'prospect or customer' wants). Marketing and selling should always be viewed by you as a process to help people solve their problems. For a perfect example, just take a close look at Maria's, Web site, Get Organized Now! https://www.getorganizednow.com Her entire site is focused on offering helpful advice to people who want to get better organized. 90% of that advice is in the form of free articles, tips, slide shows, a discussion forum, etc. She focuses on helping, not selling. And her results are phenomenal. By using our 'Give to Get Marketing' approach, in a relatively short time, Maria's Web site has become the number one site for getting organized on the web. She attracts over a million visitors every year, and hundreds of thousands of people have signed up to receive her Get Organized Now! newsletter. People are attracted to such a 'helping' approach like a magnet. That's why we named our marketing guide, The Give to Get Marketing Solution. And of course, this has resulted in her site becoming one of the most profitable--generating well over hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales annually. The same approach is used on our Give to Get Marketing Web site. You can attract all the customers you want, by just dedicating yourself to this 'Give to Get' philosophy. 2. TWO EMOTIONS (Feeling Good and Feeling Bad): When it comes to marketing to your prospects and customers, there are only two emotions -- feeling good and feeling bad. People buy products and services to increase their good feelings and reduce or eliminate their bad feelings. Think about everything you buy--food, gas, clothing, videos, CDs, car wash, etc.--and you'll see that this simple concept applies to everything. Another way to think of the good and bad feelings, is to think in terms of problem (bad feeling) and the solution (good feeling). Your prospects and customers have a problem -- bad feeling -- and your product or service should be the solution -- good feeling. Maria's book, Finally Organized, Finally Free, was written as a solution to the problem of chaos and clutter. People who have that problem and are feeling bad about it, are searching for a solution--they want to feel good. Maria's book provides them with that solution. What problem does your product or service solve? 3. THE POWER IS IN THE OFFER: Unless an offer is made, nothing happens. If you simply place an ad or hand out a flyer that talks about your company and your services, people won't respond, because there is no offer being made. There is no decision for your prospect to make. But the minute you make an offer, your prospect will have to stop for a second and make a decision, 'Should I act on this offer, or should I pass for now?' Imagine if you attended a dinner party and your host walked up to you and just started talking to you about the weather and other small talk. In that situation, you would not take any action because there was no offer. Now imagine the same host walking up to you and saying, 'Can I get you something to drink?' Now the situation has changed. An offer has been made and you now must make a decision. You may decide to say yes, or you may decide to say no, but either way you must make a decision. It's the same with your marketing. If you want to sell more, you must make more offers to your prospects and customers. Most small business owners don't understand the power of the offer, and they rarely make offers to their prospects or customers. You'll learn a lot more about offers in our future e-zines and on our Web site. 4. FOLLOW UP SEVEN TIMES: When it comes to contacting your prospects, once is never enough. The standard today is seven times. People need time to get to know, like and trust you before they will feel comfortable enough to do business with you. Once a prospect has shown some interest in your product or service there are a number of ways you can follow up. You can do it in person, phone, mail, e-mail, Web site, etc. You want your prospects to have your business uppermost in their minds when they are ready to buy. To make sure that happens, just remember the magic number seven. 5. SELL WHAT SELLS: Sounds so simple. But far too many entrepreneurs try to sell what few people want. Too often, business owners come up with an idea for a new product or service, and they fall in love with their idea. They mistakenly believe that everyone will feel the same way they feel about their product or service. So they invest a great deal of time and money in developing the product, producing it and then promoting it, only to find that no one wants it. Always test your product ideas first before you invest a lot of time, effort and money in them. Another variation on this problem is the marketer who tries to sell his product to the wrong people. We had a client a few years ago who was trying to sell very expensive vacation packages to lower middle income families, because she liked those destinations. Of course, that wasn't the kind of vacation packages that target group wanted, and so, they didn't buy them. We showed her how to survey this group to find out what kinds of vacation packages they wanted. With the results she was able to design the types of vacation packages they wanted in the price ranges they could afford. By simply giving her customers exactly what they wanted, her sales to this target group began to soar. To 'sell what sells,' find out what your prospects and customers want . . . and then give it to them. 6. TEST & TRACK: Trying to guess at your marketing strategy and tactics is a guaranteed way to fail. The world and people are just too complicated. Everything you do to market your business will be a test. When you try something that produces good results, you'll keep doing it. When you try something that doesn't produce results, you need to stop doing it. To grow your business effectively, it's vital that you know what is working and what isn't. There just isn't enough time, energy and money to waste on things that produce nothing for your company. Tracking is simply keeping track of what marketing efforts you are using, and exactly how many responses you are getting from each one. Without this information, you'll waste a great deal of time and money. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2000-2023 by Joe Gracia - All Rights Reserved. All content, graphics, and HTML code are protected by US and International Copyright Laws, and may not be copied, reprinted, published, translated, hosted, or otherwise distributed by any means without explicit written permission. For Reprint Policies and Details Click Here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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