Archive for May, 2010

Great question, I’m glad you asked.  We’ve talked about a lot of stuff lately, but there comes a point where it’s just time to get things moving.  First, you need to take an honest assessment of where you are at in your business right now.  Are you meeting your goals?  Do you have your goals written down?  If not, step 1 is to do some real solid goal setting for your business.

Business is about people and connections, but first and foremost it’s about numbers.  If you aren’t hitting very specific numbers in your business, there are really no connections to make.  There are some great resources out there on the Internet that you can find to get real serious and complicated in your goal setting, but I’m just gonna get you to stick to some real simple stuff and you can make it more detailed later.

Let’s use networking as an example.  The numbers really apply to any business, but since most of my followers are networkers, we’ll stick with that.  I maintain that the Pareto 80/20 Principle that we discussed a while back seems to work pretty well for a business.  Out of every 10 people that are exposed to your business opportunity, product, or individual company, 2 will be interested.  Some do better than this number and some certainly do worse, but I think 80/20 is a very good average across the board.

So, if you want to generate 10 solid, qualified leads for your business each month, you need to establish a solid connection with 50 people.  If you want more, do the math.

So how are you going to get there.  You have a few options, obviously you can continue marketing the way you have been by chasing family and friends with great product claims, a debt free company, a chance to win a new car, etc.  If this is working for you, continue!  But if you are struggling, like we were, open your eyes up to using a cutting edge program with the greatest marketing tool every invented…the Internet.

My FREE newsletter will lay out over 10 different strategies you can use to take your business global.  Sign up today and get the solutions you have been looking for.

Wanna Learn About Social Networking? Click Here.

Last time we talked about the importance of market segmentation to make your message more efficient and effective.  Today I want to focus on this specific age group of people, the Millennials.

We already established that this generation places a high regard on finding meaning in what they do, in fact they will demand it or find somewhere else to work.  Do you think that being an entrepreneur has meaning?  Do you feel that a large part of your mission is to contribute to the greater good?  I certainly feel that way.

Last night I had an opportunity to watch a Webinar on how to use Facebook more effectively to get your marketing message out there.  I love Facebook for a lot of reasons, but mostly it is a free medium to connect with over 500 million people around the world.  More importantly, their advertising rates are cheap and they offer tremendous demographic and segmenting options for their paid ads.  A couple of really important attributes about the Millennials is that they are extremely tech savvy and they don’t want to be sold.  So, Facebook is a great medium to start a conversation with this group and allow them an opportunity to get to know you and your enterprise before you try to sell to them or recruit them.

To learn more about how you can use Facebook to your advantage in your business, visit our FREE Facebook training.

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Wanna Learn About Social Networking? Click Here.

So are you starting to get the picture a little bit?  We are hitting on a lot of different marketing principles in this series, but the one that I want to talk about today is market segmentation.  Why is this important?

Think about it, when you first got started in business, what was the first thing you wanted to do?  Probably go and tell everybody you knew what you were up to.  Did you try that?  How did it work out for you?  I’m guessing about as well as it works for most people.  The 80/20 Pareto Principle probably applied.  80% scoffed or said they weren’t interested and 20% had an open mind.  Why?  Well, because a large percentage of your “marketplace” in this case had no need or desire for your product, service, business opportunity etc.  Or, of the 80% that weren’t interested, you used the wrong approach based on their “hot buttons” or needs.  You see, when we apply a cookie cutter approach to the entire marketplace based on our needs, we automatically lose a large group because we didn’t segment the market to hit their needs or desires.

Since this series is on generational differences, let’s take a look at the generations briefly and come up with some “hot buttons” for each.

Traditionals (Born before 1946)

• Raised in an uncertain environment with depression, war and limited social safety nets.
• Many of them were immigrants who toiled as laborers to support their families.
• In regards to meaning they were likely to say, “I work to ensure a better future for the people I love”.

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