I’ve been through this myself – wasting time trying to find my focus. It took a business consultant, a marketing consultant and finding a CEO to help me move forward (I have a hard time giving up all of my choices). Once I “got it”, my income shot up as soon as I could develop a launch – an internet based plan around that focus to present my products and services to the public.
So, here are some points that may help you get unstuck in those decisions that can keep your wheels spinning and your profits at bay.
1) Business Model – Are you going to sell a product? Maybe sell multiple products (related or non-related) and take a chance you may spread yourself too thin but make more money?
Do you offer a service, such as Consulting (ex: business, health, motivational) or Home Services (ex: HVAC, plumbing, roofing/construction, carpet, handyman, landscaping, home/pet care, investigations) or Professional (ex: legal, accounting, realty) and need to find your niche within those areas? or add products to your service offerings?
Are you going to sell a lot of less expensive product/services or a few expensive ones?
These are decisions that sometimes stump entrepreneurs who just want to make money doing what they like to do, but those decisions (or lack of) are keeping them from moving forward. The time you spend spinning your wheels trying to decide is time that you’re not making a profit.
2) Focus – The tighter the better. How do you determine your target market until you decide exactly what your business model is?
Even knowing your focus may not help you in finding and narrowing your demographics – you may need some help with that. The choices are not clear unless you are setting up and running ads where the number of words count – where specificity is crucial.
Once you have a clear target market, you will spend much less in advertising/marketing costs, especially on Adwords/FB Ads where you must have an extremely tight focus or you’ll end up spending a huge amount of money on no results.
When I was first learning how to do this, many years ago, I thought that the more keywords used, the better – and ending up costing the client a lot of money. Have you tried it the hard way and now think ads can’t work for you? Are you Ad-shy?
3) Even with a tight focus, if you don’t know sales psychology and processes, you’re probably still wasting your time and money. It’s just too competitive and click-thru response time must be under 30 seconds or you lose 80% of your chance to snag a client/customer.
Every single “selling” web site should have a slide-out “Can I help you?” or “What can I help you with?” – not a static link, and your visitor should be able to get a response immediately.
Landing pages for ads are critical to your process, and if not done correctly can cost you.
They are sometimes called “squeeze” pages, but they are based on (or should be) many years of social psychology experimentation. Find someone who has a knowledge of these mental trip (decision) factors. It’s too much to learn and do what you do best.
4) Are you trying to do everything yourself?
Here’s the rub – you may think you don’t have the cash to invest in someone who can help you, but a specialist can help you make those decisions to get you unstuck AND can help you get results faster for less than you could do it.
But how do you find such a person/company?
You are literally bombarded with people who say they can, but how do you know?
Look for someone who is willing to help get you started (give you ideas and insights) for free to get your business to the point where you CAN hire them.
If they give you good info and it helps, you hire them, because they will have a lot more they can teach you. Business is accomplished in stages – you might not be ready for advanced strategies just yet even though you think you are. Once you hire someone, they should be able to lay out a plan for you that makes sense, where they’ve only given you the first step for free (that’s really all you can expect).
5) Did you know almost all organizations (profit and non-profit) benefit from Adwords?
Do you know how to run them? Have you tried and spent a lot and gotten nothing back?
Ignore what Google says about ads not affecting rank – of course it affects rank when one of the criteria is number of visits!
Find a Google Certified Adwords Partner – they work with Google to set up the ads, using their experience and analytic data, and the ads will work for you, providing ROI, much faster.
6) Will Search Engine Ranking help your business/organization?
Not all businesses benefit from showing up at the top from searches on the search engines – most do, though some B2B models, highly branded and marketed, or one-of-a-kind products can be exempt from this, but that’s rare.
SEO will help you but any good Adwords Partner will do it for you less expensively and quicker than an outside company, who might not use the analytics available or set it up the way your Partner needs it.
Experts suggest you always use one company to do your entire internet marketing program to prevent duplication or even actual conflict of processes involved.
You’ll save a lot of money and get better results.
Our Results:
Fortunately, I was able to actually create a product in 1-Box (1-Box.com) to encompass all that I wanted to accomplish – help micro to medium sized businesses to succeed in business using affordable, custom tracking and analysis instead of guesswork and wasted time, incorporating internet marketing and consulting programs where needed.
We bring our team’s experience together to offer free consultations to give you the sounding board you need to move forward – get past those spinning wheels and lost profits.
Then, if you see our value, we offer custom business systems, internet marketing, business and tax strategy consulting programs to take your business to any level that you want!
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What Dawn is passionate about and speaks on:
– How to Run Your SMB like a Large Corporation
– TIP – the Time Invested Principal
– Why Your Website is Not Working!
(Is it just a poster or is it a big, bright LED sign on the highway?)
FEATURED POSTS:
– Tracking and Analysis – the Difference Between SUCCESS and FAILURE
– You Need a TECHNOLOGY PARTNER you can TRUST!
– 99% of ALL Websites Make These 3 MISTAKES
– Are YOU One of the 80% That Will Fail?
– Afraid to Jump? Entrepreneurship Takes a Team!
– Two Easy Ways to Exponentially Increase Profits
– Are you Failing at MLM? There is HELP!
– All Social Media is NOT Created Equal!
– Take your Hobby to a Business
– The Big Secret (to Success) is not a Secret at all!
– Gain 50% More Revenue – Update your Database
– Do It Yourself “Touch” Marketing for Entrepreneurs
– 5 Basic Internet Marketing Ideas for Entrepreneurs
– 10 New Tools for your Internet Marketing Arsenal
– SEO vs PPC – What every Entrepreneur should know!
– The Perfect Web Site – Does it Exist?
– The Decision Dilemma of Entrepreneurs
– Security Tips from the Secret Service
– Google and Facebook are the Bait – YOU are the product!