Morning Coffee : Staying Commited To Your Business Part 1

 Are you commited to your business?

Coming January 1st at Boutique Marketing School

" Desire is the key to motivation , but it is determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to  excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek ." - Mario Andretti

Have you ever sat down late night going over your competitors marketing efforts wondering why you do not have equal success? Sometimes it just boils down to your level of commitment. There is a big difference between being interested in your business and committed to your business. It's easy to be interested in my blog posts, but are you applying the knowledge? Are you procrastinating and making excuses when you should be relentless and acquiring new skills and solutions? Sometimes the issue can be breaking down goals which can leave you stressed to the max! In my next few blog posts I will break down some ideas to keeping you  on track.

First of all get your mind right. In order to be successful you must have a goal. Take a step back and remember why you are doing this in the first place. Do you want to travel the world, put your children in private school or your simply NOT going back to cubicle 5? Let that be your motivation. What specific actions are you going to take that will get you where you need to be? How often will you do these tasks? When do these tasks need to be completed? Make sure your goals are measurable and you won't be intimidated or overwhelmed by your workload.

Now that you have goals in mind you must make sure your actions have a significant impact when reaching your bottom line. Remember, you are trying to decrease your workload but increase your pay. 80% of effects come from 20% causes. Spend 80% of your time focused on money making activities, and 20% on networking and promoting. Your back end should always be right before you try to sell. EACH move you make has to be focused.

My next blog post we will break down money making actvities so stay tuned.

Riche

4 Key Points To Branding Your Business

Here are four things you should keep in mind as you build your company’s brand:

1)   Own the “Significant Thing”:  Don't try to be all things to all people. Spend your time focusing on a single clear message.  Mercedes-Benz owns “Engineering" in the car industry because it’s focused on that singular message for decades.

2)  Consistency is key:  consistent presentation will ensure that your customers recognize you. Be consistent in the use of logos, taglines, visual elements, tone, and ad copy.  Coca-Cola it is one of the most recognized brands in the world because they haven’t changed in decades.  Make sure your brochures, website, Direct mail, and all the other advertising have the same feel and message.

3)  Make your message relevant:  know your audience, know what they care about and how to speak to them.  Make sure what you sell is what they need.  Remember the conversation should always be about your audience, not you.

4)  Use a strong offer to motivate:  you want your audience to remember you and you want its members to buy from you.  You need to move them to action.  A strong offer should give them a reason to buy.  Make the offer clear and appropriate for your brand.

Every time a customer comes in contact with your brand, they will have either a positive or a negative experience.  Those experiences will add to their perception of your brand.  Those experiences are recalled later when it’s time to make a purchasing decision.  How do you want your brand to be remembered when the time comes for a prospect to buy? You need to start building that positive perception today and do whatever is necessary to maintain it.

Good luck.

Riche Life Media

How To Convert Traffic With Video Marketing

Using video marketing to drive traffic to your website, and help convert that traffic into opt-ins for your email list or paying customers is becoming more popular all the time. With a video you are able to capture the visitors attention much more quickly than with the written word. Combining a great written title, with a great video allows you the best of both worlds.

Of course, as with all things, there are some important tips you need to keep in mind in order to be able to capitalize on this trend.

1. Your videos should be no more than 3 minutes long ideally, 5 minutes max. It's a sad truth  but a lot of online surfers just don't have a long attention span.

2. Do your keyword research. Find out which keywords are being used by prospective customers when searching for your product or service. Use those keywords in the tags and title of your video. Doing so will allow your video top billing in search engine results for those keywords which means you'll get more people watching and, if you've done it right, more visitors to your website.

3. Whenever you are marketing you have to test. You have to changes things (only one thing at a time so you can pinpoint what caused the change) and see which version produces the best results.

You could experiment with the title of the video. Than you might want to see if a shorter video works better, etc. This will allow you to find just the right combination and create a monster, traffic pulling video.

4. With any kind of marketing, consistency is the name of the game. Don't throw up a few videos and then move on to something else. Put up a string of informative, well made videos on a consistent basis and people will make a point of checking out what you have to say.

One word of caution, don't mistake quantity with quality. It's important to be consistent but if the videos you are putting up don't offer any real value to your subscriber or visitors, they will just 'change the channel'.  Offer them something that can really benefit them.

And don't forget to appeal to their emotions. Remember, people buy with emotion but they justify it with logic. Whatever you are selling, don't rely solely on facts and logic, that's cold and doesn't work. You do need to provide some features of the product but you also want to make it emotional.

So instead of just saying "my dog training video will teach your dog to come when he is called" add something like "so you can take him with you anywhere and spend more time with him without the embarrassment of having him run around out of control"

That provides both the feature, teaching your dog to come when he is called, as well as the emotional benefit of that feature, not being embarrassed by an unruly dog.

Video marketing is an important tool in your marketing efforts. Take the time to tweak your results and you could be sitting on a gold mine.

Riche Life Media

The Top Methods Of Networking In Business

If you’re networking with strangers, you’re wasting your time. A consultant friend of mine recently complained, “I’m doing 2-3 networking events a week – and I’m worn out.” When I asked why she felt networking was important, she replied, “One of my marketing goals is to do at least 1 networking event a week.” (I pointed out that she just admitted to doing 2-3 a week – and perhaps doing 1 a week is smart and doing triple that goal is causing some of the fatigue.) But there’s much more to the great American business myth of networking.

Myth 1: The more you network, the more effective your networking activities become.

Truth 1: It’s much more important to become well-known in 1-2 circles than to spread your networking activities over many different groups. Depth beats breadth every time.

I then asked her how networking was working for her. She said, “I don’t think I have gotten a shred of business out of it in the last six months.” Her rationale for doing networking: “Everybody knows that you build a business by networking!” Does this make any sense? Or worse, does it sound familiar?

See if this networking scenario has happened to you:

You meet someone for 30 seconds. They mumble something about real estate as you are tuning them out. They ask you what you do, and you say you are in insurance. After 10 seconds of staring blankly at each other, you both head to the celery sticks for lack of anything better to do.

Myth 2: The cocktails and miniature wiener circuit is the way to network to success

Truth 2: Networking with strangers to build business is about as effective as going to a bar to get married. In the words of Dr. Phil, “It simply ain’t gonna happen that way.”

Here’s why you’re not going to meet your business soul mate at a networking event:

1)  You aren’t going to do business with someone after meeting them for a few minutes and getting handed a poorly printed card.

2)  Businesses are built on relationships and not “30-second commercials,” no matter how effective and intriguing.

3)  Most of us have major trouble in explaining what we do, much less getting past that explanation and listening for what prospects need.

4)  Networking with strangers is not targeted or specific and in fact is completely random. For some people, networking is exactly as effective as cold calling, which is the least effective marketing tool there is.

So am I saying that networking is a waste of time? Absolutely not. What I’m saying is you need to start networking smarter.

Here are a few thoughts to jog your noggin:

* Network by having coffee or lunch with people one on one. Get to know them and their business. They may become a prospect, alliance partner, or referral source. But aim first and foremost to make them a friend. The rest will follow naturally.

* If you’re going to network with strangers, go with the goal of making 2-3 lunch or coffee dates with people you find interesting.

* Ask every happy customer you have (they’re all happy, right?) for just one referral of someone who would be interested in your type of goods or services, then call and use their name. (“Hi I’m Fred and Ginger said I should call you. Isn’t Ginger great?”) You already have one thing in common – Ginger!

* Create a network “hit list” of the exact kind of businesses you want to network with – maybe you sell software and you want to meet IT managers at medium-size companies. Make the list and put it in your little black book or iPhone. Focus your networking and outreach activities on only those people – or others who can refer you to those people.

* Join non-business groups and spend time doing non-business activities: Civic, social, religious, recreational, musical, athletic... the list is endless. Establish relationships with people in your group. Perhaps you’re a Moose and a realtor. A Moose, as it turns out, wants to by a house from another Moose. If so, you have the Moose Market cornered! Are you into hand-drumming. Guess what? A hand-drummer will want to do business with another hand-drummer. Get it?

* If you do go to a “mixer” go with a targeted goal in mind. For example, your goal might be “to meet three people on my target list and get their card so I can follow up for breakfast, lunch, coffee or badminton.” A traditional “networking event” now becomes simply the first phase of your targeted plan for global domination, and not an end in itself.

Here’s a final thought to shake up your networking mindset: Network with people who already know you, like you, or have done business with you.

Myth 3: Networking is all about getting more people to know what you do.

Truth 3: Networking is all about getting people that already know you to share opportunities where you can be helpful to each other.

Make 2-3 phone calls a day to connect with people from past jobs, former clients, or influential people who have expressed interest in you in the past.

We all have a “fan base” that we grossly under utilize.

Think about tapping into friends, colleagues, mentors, and family to mine the connections you already have at your fingertips.

So get out there and network – but make it worth your investment of time and energy by networking smart. As your mother always said, “Don’t network with strangers.”

Riche Life Media

4 Tips For Starting An Online Internet Marketing Business

Countless people are turning to the web everyday as a means of making money. There are a lot of opportunities to be had for those willing to reach for them. But while you may have the motivation to build an internet marketing company, you may not have the knowledge required. It can be a pretty daunting task, starting your business.

You may think starting an internet business is easier, but you would actually be wrong. You still have to put in a lot of time and effort, and even some money. The real advantage of starting an online business is that you do not require thousands of dollars to do it, and if you really work at it you can only spend a few dollars a month. The other benefit is that once it is set up and making money, it is fairly easy to manage.

The reason most people do not do this is because they simply can not get over that initial hurdle. It takes a long time and a lot of dedication to make money, and people just give up or poke at it a little and never really do any real work.

If you are ready and willing to put in the effort, then these tips should give you a place to start.

1: Patience. I really can not emphasize this enough and even though I have already mentioned it, it deserves it's own tip. If you are looking to start an internet marketing company, you need to understand that it is not some magical entity that will make you tons of cash overnight. It is an actual business and it will require a lot of time and hard work before you start seeing any returns.

2: Figuring out a niche. With the warning out of the way, here is a real tip to help you get started. Finding a niche, basically finding what you want to specialize in. Every company has their product, what is yours? Odds are that since you are looking into internet marketing, you will want to sell your services in helping other people market their business. If that is not the case, then look around to see what kind of service or product you do want to offer.

3: Build your website. Once you have figured out what you plan to sell, you need to set up a website. This can all be done freely (except for the domain name) if you are willing to put in the work. However if you have some money to spare and do not feel like bothering with this, you can hire professionals to build your website for you.

4: Marketing. Once you have the website of your internet marketing company set up, you need to market yourself. As I often say, you can have the best business in the world but if nobody knows it exists, you will not make any money. This can be a rather lengthy procedure and just like with website building you can outsource it if you want or you can do it all yourself.

These tips should give you an idea of where to start, but ultimately you will have to do a lot more research to learn details in order to effectively run your internet business.


Riche Life Media

Small Business First Quarter Review

One fourth of the year is almost over.  How are you doing in meeting your goals?  How are you doing compared to your budget? Goals and budgets aren't just for big businesses.

Big businesses put tremendous effort into creating detailed budgets and detailed goals each year and checking their progress against them monthly and quarterly.  Investors eagerly await the announcement of quarterly earnings and stock prices jump up or down based on the results.  They go to all this expense and trouble for only one real reason.  It works.

Big businesses very seldom wander from the tried and true.  They set goals, budget and compare to their budgets frequently because successful businesses before them did it.  I’m not saying that you have to have goals and a budget to be successful, but it sure does increase your chances of success.  That’s also why you are reading this.  To help increase your chances of success.  So here’s your tip of the week.

If you don’t have goals and a budget, stop what you are doing and create them.  If you do have goals and a budget, stop and take a look at them.  Ask yourself the following questions:

How have you done so far this year? 

Are you awesome or average? 

What can you tell from your results? 

What’s working and what’s not? 

Where could you use some help? 

What successes can you leverage? 

Now is the time to start looking at what adjustments you need to make to continue your successes or cut your losses. It’s also a good time to revise your estimates for the rest of the year.  Don’t stop at just revising the numbers.  Now is the time to revise your action plan too.  Where do you need to step up your action and where do you need to cut back?  Again look at what’s working and what’s not.  Don’t have an action plan?  Now would be a good time to create one.  Goals and business plans only get you so far.  An action plan is what makes your goals and budgets work.

Does this all sound like a lot of work?  I’m sure it does, but it is time and effort that will pay itself back tenfold.  Knowing where you want to go and then comparing regularly is the only way to assure yourself you’ll get to where you want to be.

Riche Life Media
Contact Us To Create Your Strategy via Hustlenomics-101.com
Info@RicheLife.com

How To Use Instagram Hash Tags Like A Hustler

How to use Instagram Hash Tags, Like a Hustler!

Part of your social media marketing campaign is about correctly  using the tools that the particular social media platform has set in place. On Instagram , many business owners are posting pictures, but may be missing out on their target audience.

One of Instagrams greatest marketing tools is the use of the #Hashtag. An Instagram Hashtag is a highly targeted tag , or a keyword . Hash tags help you find targeted people to follow and vice versa.

Here are a few tips to help you use Instagram Hash tags like a Hustler:

Be specific and relevant.

You see the picture above? That's my  3 month old son, Mitch. Mitch is my business partner here at Hustlenomics 101.  If I posted this photo to Instagram I would post more than just #Baby .We know that he is a baby but what is this picture about and what message am I trying to send? Think about your pictures message and what the image portrays.

To get my message across to my target audience using hashtags I'd probably make a post like this:

"Hey everyone this is my #BusinessPartner Mitchell. He is my 3 months old #baby and is a #YoungEntreprenuer / #Entrepreneur .  He will be #Hosting a #BakeSale at 123 Penny Lane on #Saturday.  - #Cookies #Cakes #Pastries #Event #CHARITY "

The Hastags are added to the tag page. If you click on any hash tags you will be sent to that tag page and will see who else posted about the same topic , and how many times that specific hash tag was generated.

Observe.

If you clicked on the hash tag "entrepreneur" and clicked on any picture under that tag, you are more than likely to find another tag used to describe "entrepreneur"  and you should add those keywords to your arsenal as well. ( if it applies of course.)

 FYI:

 - If you are a private user, which you shouldn't be as a business, your tags will not appear publicly on the tag pages.

-You can only tag your own posts.

- You can only have up to 30 #hashtags on a single post. If you make more than 30 #Hastags your comment / blurb / caption will not post.

- If you forget a hash tag just add one to the comment section of your post. Instagram doesn't let you edit a post so if your adamant about having it in your message, delete the picture and re post it.

Apply.

Now that you know the benefits of Instagram hash tags for your business , start adding them to your Instagram campaign. Remember they must be relevant and specific to be beneficial to your readers. Now you are on your way to generating thousands of real followers for free!

Thanks for reading hustler!

Riche Life Media | Hustlenomics 101
 Info@RicheLife.com