Two years ago today I started my advertising agency, Purple Diamond! I left a secure paycheck and and a company that wanted me to stay to open the doors to my own business and dreams. I had always done well in the past when I had worked in advertising for other companies and I believed that if I gave that same enthusiasm and strong work ethic to my own business, then success would follow. Success has followed in a big way for Purple Diamond, but there were pitfalls along the way that had me questioning if I was crazy to leave my job to seek entrepreneurship.
The first road block was me! When you are used to seeing a paycheck and being financially independent, it is a humbling experience to ask for help from others until you have a steady cash flow. I was a single mom paying for my 2 kids in college before I started Purple Diamond so my paycheck was that life preserver that kept me knowing I wouldn’t sink. Just a piece of paper with some numbers on it, but I allowed it to define me and hold so much power over me. If the numbers were high I felt I was a success and if I had a week where the numbers were smaller, then I would beat myself up for not doing my best and making the money I needed to provide for my two kids. So, how did I let go of my fear long enough to realize my dream of owning my own business? I met someone who dared me to put a blindfold on while he drove the car home from the Boston airport! My new husband who saw that though I was hugely successful at my job in advertising, I was a control freak who seldom trusted anyone and that I believed it was always up to me to do everything on my own. And, to be a success in business it requires you to let go of fear and your controlling ways to allow people close enough to help you when you need the help. And, since I have always been one for facing challenges, I put that blindfold on and allowed my husband to drive the car and I saw first hand that even when you own your own business you are dependent on others for their support…support financially til your business is making a steady income and support emotionally when you have days that make you question your own abilities and self-worth.
The second road block was the economy in 2008 and 2009 and how the media loved to post stories of doom and gloom so that business owners were afraid to make the important decisions that they needed to survive and thrive. During most slow economies you would see businesses choosing to advertise more so that they would end up with a significant market share when the recession was over, but this was unlike other recessions and the broadcasting of how bad everything was had smart business owners questioning their own marketing strategy and leaving them paralyzed and doing nothing. This was not something I anticipated for Purple Diamond since my business plan was based on creating affordable TV and radio advertising campaigns for local businesses in the Boston market. Thankfully, I had left TV advertising to work for an internet company before starting my own business so I knew ways that people could position on-line social networking, blogs and answering questions as an expert in their field on-line as a no cost or low cost alternative to traditional advertising. So, I created the marketing coaching services and taught CEO’s one on one how to remain leaders in their fields without needing enormous marketing budgets to do so.
Finally, my third and last road block to my amazing 2 years of being a successful new business was to never give up. Thanks go out to my family and friends and clients who constantly remind me of the positive impact my business has had for those around me, but even when you are doing a good job there are times when you scratch your head and wonder if life would be better for everyone if you were doing something else. Long hours and doing without many of the extras you had in your life when you had that steady paycheck can catch you on your low days and make you question your own sanity. That is when you need a support group to help you see that this is all part of owning a business or taking any risks in your life. You need to trust that you are exactly where you are suppose to be and to continue on!
Thanks for listening to my ramblings about starting my own business. As a marketing coach I hear many similar stories from my clients and each have recognized that you might own the business by yourself, but you still need a team of people who help you to build the business and remain strong in your decision to continue!
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success,
Marketing Team
Did you know that the 2009 Nielsen ratings showed the largest age group of people using on-line networking for Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter fall in the 35-49 year old age grouping with the second largest being 50-64 year olds?! Two weeks ago when I shared that information with a room of business owners during my seminar on Target Marketing I got many surprised looks. On-line networking is not going to go away just because you do not have the time to work it in to your business marketing plan or understand how to build a following on these sites. One solution for people who do not have many on-line contacts is to consider joining groups and being FANS of various different organizations that will connect you with people who may need your product or know others who could use your services. A quick way to find great local groups to join is to view the profile pages of your contacts and see which ones they have joined. Another is to use the search key to look for information about the topic you are interested in or find one of your competitors and look at their site. You want to be EVERYWHERE that your target market might be and be sure to post comments or questions and use your company logo or the same profile picture so people become familiar with you. Try to post comments on blogs and sites that allow you to link back to your own website. The more you create an on-line identity the greater the chance you have of reaching potential clients.
I do caution, though, that these sites are “social” sites and if you come on too strong with messages just about your business or you bombard your contacts with message updates that are not really important you may find that you lose your own following. The idea is to “connect” and build a relationship and not to try to constantly “sell” them. Since my husband and I met on a social networking site 6 years ago in which I was the moderator of a group, I know first hand the power of on-line networking and building relationships. The key is that you have to understand that social on-line networking is not a commercial or paid advertisement for your business. It is a place where people share ideas and connect and build friendships. Had the first time my husband posted to me on-line he proposed marriage I can guarantee that I would have been looking to drop him quickly from my network and I would have labeled him as “pushy and weird”. This is what you want to avoid. It takes time to develop relationships on-line and in person, but the number of people who use these sites cannot be ignored so create your accounts, look for on-line groups and FAN pages and be sure to make this as important as your other marketing projects by creating specific times during your work day that you check out these sites and post.
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success,
Marketing Tips,
Social Networking
For some of my regular readers to my blog they know I have been missing most of this week because of a death within my family, but if you are new to my blog then you might have wondered where I have been so I decided to post today and share my thoughts. Death is a strange thing in that it is so final and there is no more time to say the things you wish you had or to spend a few extra moments telling the person how much you love them and giving them another hug. You start to make yourself go crazy with the “should of’s” and “what ifs” and “if only…” , but the reality is that none of us have a crystal ball and we are never certain of our day so the best we can do is live with the choices we make and love with all our hearts in this instant and know that for right now we are here and life is to be cherished.
So, what does this have to do with helping your business??? Nothing and everything.
A business, like life, is touched by what is around it. When you have a death in your family or you lose an employee who was a key part of the fabric of your team, your business feels it. If you are a sole proprietorship, do you have a contingency plan for if you get sick or you need to take some time off to make arrangements and attend services for a family member who passes away? Have you developed strong relationships with your customers so that if a tragedy hits your home and your regular business activities are altered that your clients still feel confident in working with you? I have a t-shirt that my friend’s company makes that has a great saying, “Adversity doesn’t build character…it reveals it”. Having been a cancer survivor and not unfamiliar to how life throws you curve balls when you least expect it, I realize that no matter what today brings you must always remain true to who you are and what you believe in. I believe in giving as much as I can to help enrich my life and those around me, both at home and in the office. I care deeply for my customers, their families and their businesses and in return that is the relationship they give back to me. If you are reading this and you have not developed a strong relationship with the customers you service then it might be a time to regroup and consider how you can develop a stronger connection with them. Get to know who you are doing business with and offer more of your self in return. Go out to lunch or coffee with them or take an extra few minutes the next time you are doing a service call to ask them about their life and to get to know more about them and share about you. Be more than just someone who sells them a widget….build a friendship and a true connection.
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success,
Customer Service,
Success and Balance
Targeting your market is simply defining who your primary customer will be. The market should be measurable, sufficiently large and reachable!
LET GO OF YOUR FEAR!
Target marketing cannot work and offer the sales results you need until you let go of your fear. “EVERYONE” is not a target market. The fear factor is one of the key reasons people fail at selling or marketing their product. Most business owners have never worked for other companies as a “straight commission” sales person so they are not familiar with going after the “A” client and optimizing their sales day so that it results in closing key revenue accounts. They have not learned through time and aggravation and small paychecks that you can work just as hard with a small sale as you can a bigger client and that your closing ratio improves when you zero in on a potential market that is more likely to buy the product.
“Sales is a numbers game”. This is something my sales manager loved to say to me when I used to sell TV advertising campaigns and he was right. If I have an average of 8 hours of selling time in a day, who should I spend that time going after? What will be my strategy and who do I “Focus” my time on so that I make the most money and have long-term relationship accounts?
FOCUS…FOCUS…FOCUS!!!
There are only so many hours in a day and so much of an advertising, marketing and sales budget… remaining focused on what you wish to accomplish is the first step to determining your target market.
- WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER LOOK LIKE?
*Who are they? *Where are they located? How will you reach them?
- WHO DO YOU FOCUS ON AS A POTENTIAL OR “LIKELY” CLIENT & WHERE WILL YOU FIND THEM?
BUY TWO CUPS OF COFFEE & INTERVIEW YOUR CLIENTS!
You would be amazed at how helpful people can be when you just ask them for their help. For most of us we cannot afford to pay a big marketing company to do an in-depth analysis of who are “target market” is so what does a small business do? Buy 2 cups of coffee and ask your clients for 20 to 30 minutes of their time for an informal interview about them.
What you need to find out [if possible] from the interview:
- Age or Age Group?
- Male or Female?
- Socio-Economic or Ethnic Group?
- Education level?
- Marital Status?
- Do they have kids?
- Psychographics??? [Their beliefs, likes, dislikes, personality, why they bought your product, etc]
- Income Level? What do they regularly spend money on?
- Profession?
- Location?
NOTE: before the internet and on-line social networking the location was pretty straight forward to where do they live, work and buy goods and services, but today you need to know if they are tech savy, belong to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc and if they prefer to shop on-line or at the store directly or both.
- Do they read the newspaper [which one and is this on-line or in print]? What radio station do they listen to and what TV shows do they watch? Are they a member of any local business groups or read any business publications?
- Finally, this is a KEY question to ask them: WHAT SERVICES COULD YOU PROVIDE THAT WOULD MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR THEM???
GO TO A QUIET PLACE & ANALYZE YOUR DATA
Try to survey as many customers as possible either in person or on the phone and then go to a quiet room or place so that you can analyze ALL your data and look for patterns or similarities. Maybe you notice that most of your clients are females ages 35-55 who have a college degree, hold professional positions, have an income of over $125,000 per year and prefer to save time by shopping on-line. Or, the majority of your clients might have children and so they are looking for family oriented activities that are geared for saving money and are good for the environment or their health.
DO YOU LIKE THE GROUP THAT STANDS OUT & ARE YOU MAKING $$$?
Hopefully, the data you get from your current base of clients that help you determine the target market is in-line with your goals for your business. For instance, if you find that you have attracted many customers who are difficult to service because their needs are so unique and you do not feel you are making a profit with the time invested, you may need to discard that group as your target market, but use what you have learned to help determine what you could do either in your marketing material or sales process to reach a more ideal target market and increase your profits!
*CREATE MARKETING MATERIAL, ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS & YOUR SALES APPROACH AROUND THE GROUP YOU NOW KNOW AS YOUR TARGET MARKET!
AIM, FOCUS & SHOOT at the TARGET!!!
LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES & SEE THEM AS AN INVESTMENT!
Target Marketing saves companies both time and money by helping them to know who the best prospect is for their business and how to appeal to them as a consumer. Even the biggest companies have made mistakes in marketing that cost them money and valuable time, but knowing what didn’t work and why, can be as important as what does work!
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success,
Sales Tip,
Target Marketing
Taking care of your personal health or dental hygiene with an annual check-up is a widely accepted practice by most people, but how many business owners have hired a marketing firm to look closely at their marketing footprint to see if their marketing message is strong and healthy? Having an outside marketing person who can objectively look at your business and share with you what you are doing well and what needs improvement can give you the edge that your business needs right now. Don’t let your accountant be the only person who hears about your sales challenges by looking at your profit loss statement. A marketing consultant will look at your sales data, compare it with your marketing efforts and offer suggestions on where you can expand business with your current customers to increase sales and discuss with you what marketing tactics worked and didn’t work and what could have improved your results. Don’t wait til you get the “death notice” for your business…having regular marketing check-ups and being proactive and not reactive will keep your business healthy and your bank account growing!
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success,
Marketing Check Up
“How’s business?” may be a question that people ask to make polite conversation or small talk when meeting a business owner in a store or connecting at a business networking event. Most people are expecting a short response like, “it’s ok” or “it could be better”. However, have you ever considered that your answer will set the tone for your day! I just got off the phone with a friend who has their own business and his response to my question was that “it stinks!” Of course, like any good friend and marketing coach I offered him my help to change his situation, but the very first change must be the daily message you say out loud about your business and how things are going. If you always see the negative side of life there is little room for much else in your world. Talking negatively about your business is something people will immediately pay attention to and remember, but it takes three to four times the effort to get them to hear a positive message.
If I came in today as your marketing or sales executive and you heard me chatting with your customers or business contacts and saying that “business stinks” or “sales are WAY down” or something that tells them that your product just is not holding up in today’s market…..what would you think? Would you want me to be your sales manager or marketing rep? Well, for many small businesses, the owner is the only marketing and sales person so speaking from a place of seeing the worst in your business could be costing you future sales. Would you really want to purchase goods and services from a company that sounds like they are about to close their doors or that no one is seeing the value of their product including the owner? Negative talk can be contagious and when a person hears that your business is doing poorly they often share this with other people they know. “Word of mouth” advertising can both build your business or ruin it so do not be the person who starts the campaign to sink your chances in business. If you need a break from the day to day grind of running your business be sure to take one, but allowing yourself to fall in to having a negative attitude and verbally berating your own business to those who ask will close doors and potential opportunity for growth with your business.
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success,
POSITIVE ATTITUDE,
word of mouth advertising
I started my own Purple Diamond blog a couple of months ago and when I saw that I had over 1000 unique hits [1000 individual people] to my site I recognized the power of blogging and I was hooked like many other businesses that have learned that a blog is a great marketing tool if used correctly! However, there are some real big “No No’s” to what you use as content for your blog and it can cost you money and your business reputation.
Til this past week I didn’t honestly think anyone did this on their company blog, but I found out it is quite common and something that laws were created to protect….using other people’s articles without their written permission on YOUR blog . Now, I am not talking about taking a short quote and placing it in your blog or adding a hyperlink to someone’s website where more information is found, I have seen blogs that people unknowingly grabbed an article of interest and posted the entire article in their blog with the name of the author listed. YIKES! If you are doing this you need to stop unless you have written consent from the author. When I started my blog a few months ago I was actually asked by another blogger if he could grab articles to post to his site and I gave him written permission in an email as long as he gave me credit for the work. I knew the purpose of my blog was to help business people be successful and having other bloggers post my articles would be in-line with my mission statement so permission was granted. However, many bloggers are trying to build their own brand and traffic to their website and are not wanting their work posted as a way to build another site. So, there is a copyright law out there to protect them and was passed in 1978 that protects their written work that is posted on the internet even if you do not see a copyright notice and it has some heavy finds attached to it. [note: I am not a lawyer so please review this with yours to verify this information and learn more.]
I am assuming many of the bloggers that I see who are posting other people’s work are not aware of the laws. They might be new to on-line social networking and have a Twitter account and see people Re-Tweet links or they are on Facebook and have used the share option to take what one person has posted and then re-post it on their own profile page, so they get the impression that everything on the internet is FREE and there to share. Building your brand with a blog is powerful, but if you are using someone’s thoughts to offer information you are not helping your business. To gain market share and to be seen as a expert in your field requires you to have your own thoughts and offer your own expertise. If the reason you are posting articles from someone else is because you are too busy to create your own, then I suggest you either get written permission from the author, make time for blogging by prioritizing it in your work week, hire a staff blogger, hire a ghost writer, or take the blog off-line until you have this problem solved. The last thing you need is to ruin the business reputation you have built by using someone’s work without permission.
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
BLOGS,
Business Success,
Marketing Branding
This weekend I am busy doing a “marketing check-up” for a new client and part of that requires looking at their website, testing their performance in on-line searches, reviewing their effectiveness using on-line social networking sites and reviewing all the marketing collateral to see if they are enhancing the brand of the business and offering me a compelling reason to want to be a client of this business. In simple terms, does the marketing material work?
A simple answer to that question is if sales are strong, then the company’s marketing material is working. However, with the latest recession and the shift in how technology has changed how people find your business, you still might not be getting the results you would have gotten a few years ago with the exact same marketing material. So, that means you must continue to evolve in how you do things and be willing to consider adapting your material to get the best results right now. The days of designing one marketing piece and having it work for all people are gone. If you want to sell me…..then sell ME! Connect with who I am and what about me needs YOU! Don’t make a list of all the services you provide and tell me you are excellent at what you do….that might have worked 10 years ago to get you clients, but today you have to do more. Your marketing needs to catch my eye quickly and make a connection with who I am and why I need you. This means you need your marketing to be visually exciting and draw me in. The audience you are trying to reach has grown up with “fast food”, “color” TV, “fast” video games ["first person shooters games /FPS"]and technology that offers instant gratification so if your marketing material is outdated it most likely will not reach its target.
Much like when you do a spring cleaning or you organize your office space, consider tossing outdated websites, brochures and other marketing collateral and develop material that works for today’s market. Don’t get hung-up on holding so tight to the past if you are losing your market share today. The companies who are doing well today have learned to adapt their marketing material to meet the changing audience and they are developing services that are reaching the individual and meeting their needs.
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success,
Marketing Collateral,
Target Marketing
This past weekend I found a journal that I started when I began my company in 2008. The last entry was dated September 12, 2008…6 months after I opened the doors to Purple Diamond. I had shared in the journal all that I had accomplished in 6 months, the clients I handled, the challenges I was facing with the change in the economy and my hopes to sign a local business for a TV and radio campaign. I landed that account and did the TV and radio campaign and went on to grow my advertising agency, Purple Diamond, at an incredible rate. What filled 3 pages in in my journal in 2008, now filled 7 pages of all that I am doing today. Wow, looking back pulls me forward with such a great strength and confidence in the mission statement of Purple Diamond and where we are heading.
So, for anyone who has never kept a journal on how you are feeling today about your business, I encourage you to start. It doesn’t need to be fancy and no one else will be reading it so you do not have to worry about spelling or your writing style, but you do want to be honest in your journal entry. You want to be able to look back at the entry and understand what you were feeling good about at that time in your business, what you had accomplished and what challenges you had ahead of you. The day to day business of running your business can feel overwhelming when the economy is slow, but the opportunity to look back on where you were and what you have done is an eye opener. For some of us it could be the kick in the pants we need to realize that we need to be proactive with our business and stop waiting for “some day” to arrive. Either way, looking back can pull you forward and help your business grow!
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success
I have been asked to speak in February to the North Shore Business Forum on the topic of “Target Marketing” and how it is essential to better sales results. So, what is target marketing and why should a business owner care to know their target market? Well, most business owners lack a large sales force and unlimited resources for advertising their product so determining the best target audience or the people who are most likely to buy your product is essential for achieving higher sales. Much like throwing darts at a bulls eye, having a target market for your product allows you to focus your attention in one direction and not everywhere at once. Think how scary it would be to go a dart tournament and have there be no focal point for the darts or no board. “Yikes”, you would be ducking for cover and soon leave the event. The same thing happens when a sales person or an advertising campaign has no idea who their target market is and tries to sell to every warm body out there. People “tune-out” the message because it is of little interest to them. To be a better sales person you must understand who and why you are selling to that person!
First, review which market segment is the most likely to buy your product helps you to know where to focus your advertising dollars and your sales efforts. Consider if your product appeals mostly to men, women, or both. Is there a targeted age or age range that would use your product or be most likely to buy this product. How about income level, is your product priced in a range that is affordable or is it high end and which income level is most likely interested in purchasing it and why. Finally, consider where or which geographic location you wish to sell this product. Selling snow skis in a warm climate will not get the same results that it would if you had a ski shop in the north where it snows. And, if you have no distribution plan set-up to handle shipping your products out of state, then launching an advertising campaign in areas you cannot manage to support is a waste of valuable resources. Your target market is a segment that is created from the best age, gender, geography and socio-economic grouping.
Once you have a target market it is easier to use this information to position your marketing material to appeal to this group of people and launch advertising campaigns in medias where this target audience is most likely to hear your message. This strategy will save you money and get you better results! Making sales calls on anyone not in this group would not be the best use of your time. So, if you are still thinking your customers are anyone who is breathing, then it is time to call in for some marketing help or consider doing an analysis yourself by looking at your current client base, at who your competition is marketing to, and what benefits your product offers and who is most likely to need these benefits .
All my best to your success!
~Charlene
“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”
Tags:
Business Success,
Target Marketing
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