Are you blogging yet? If not you need to be. Whether you have a large corporation or a small business ran out of your home, blogs are the easiest way to set up a web presence if you don’t have one and are even more powerful as an addition to an existing website.

I still hear it from most business owners… “I don’t get it. I don’t have that much to say. I don’t want to do that. It’s just too much work”

Well, if you want to get your name out there more. Get more prospects. Get more customers and provide better customer service to your existing customers, then a blog is the easiest way to do all these and more.

So, why is it that blogs are so powerful and why should you have one? Let me count the ways!

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Maybe you’ve heard the term: Build a better mousetrap and they will come.

Well, as great as it sounds, even the best mousetrap still won’t sell if people don’t know it exists. They still won’t buy it if they don’t see the value in it.

In today’s age where people are swamped with advertising messages all the time, you need a better message than everyone else to stand out and be noticed.

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Do you use promotional items in your business already? If not, you should take a look at what you can use as a promotional item in your business that will help market your business and keep your business’s name on the top of your prospect’s minds.

Promotional items are a great way to get your name in front of your prospects and customers each and every day. You see promotional items all over the place. If used correctly, they can be a great addition to your marketing mix. But, if you don’t know how to choose the right promotional item, it can be a huge waste of your marketing dollars.

If you are already using promotional items in your business, then this guide will help you determine if you have the right product for your business. Picking the wrong promotional item to promote your business can be a complete waste of your marketing dollars if you aren’t careful.

Follow these simple tips when choosing the right promotional product for your business and adding promotional products to your marketing mix will pay for itself tenfold.

1. Is the product something that will be very useful to your prospect or customer?
Make sure that the product you use is something that is useful to your prospect or customer. If your business is business to business then the cute “Chip clips” with your company logo and phone number on the side will be mostly useless.

Think about this one. The best you can hope for with an item like this is for the clip to be used by employees in the break room. The president of a Fortune 500 company doesn’t usually have bags of chips hanging around their desk.

This might work with a residential service like real estate or lawn care but be sure to keep the use of the product in mind when choosing your next promotional item.

2. Is the product ACTUALLY useful?
There are thousands of products out there that you can stick your logo on. Honestly, most of them are just silly, fun or cute items. Some of these items might work if you are catering to children but do they actually do any good in most cases? Not really.

I have a friend in the Promotional products business. Every time she comes back from a trade show, she brings me a bunch of fun cool toys to play with. (yes, the kid at heart!) Now I love getting these and love to have fun with them but when it really comes down to it I would never actually buy any of them for my business. It doesn’t make sense. They aren’t useful items that I will keep in front of me and use every day. See what I am talking about here. Stress balls, goofy pens with sharks on the top, table top golf, etc. They may be fun to play with but do they have a practical use to promote my business? Nope. Not one bit.

Most of them end up in my drawer and I forget about them until the next time I dig in there. You don’t want your marketing dollars shoved in a drawer or worse yet, given to someone’s kid and shoved to the bottom of their toy box.

3. Does the product have staying power?
You want to pick a product for your business that will last a long time and get used a lot. I’m still a fan of pens for my own business. BUT, I also had a lot go in to the pens we use in our business. First off, I don’t use cheap pens. The cheapest pens you can find will also break easily and run out of ink fast.

So what happens to these cheap pens? They go right in to the trash!

Spend some money on good pens. I’m not talking about the expensive metal engraved ones. Just good solid pens that have good ink, feel strong and don’t fall apart. Nothing annoys me more than a pens that falls apart in my pocket.

Think about pads of paper. These are great too as they do get used by a lot of people but don’t go for the cheap small pads with 25 sheets on them. Guess what happens once they run out? Poof… your marketing  is now gone too.

4.  Also be sure to include your contact information AND what you do on all your promotional items in order to get the most out of them. It doesn’t do you any good to have your logo on a pad of paper if not one knows what you do. They might end up writing down quotes for the services you offer from your competition and not even know the difference. Be sure to include your website also.

No matter what type of promotional item you use for your business, be sure to put some thought into it and follow these simple tips to make sure that you’re money is well invested and will get you a great return.

What if you could cut your advertising budget in ½ ? How about 90%? Well, I wouldn’t advise going that far but I want you to see the point here. Most small businesses spend way more money on their advertising budget than they need to in most cases. Let me explain how…

Most small businesses focus all their energy and money on marketing to new customers all the time. Now you will always need some degree of this and new customers help you grow your small business but you need to also focus some of your efforts on marketing to your existing customers and making them loyal repeat customers for life.

This is where most small business marketing falls short for most businesses.

It is ten times easier to sell to an existing happy customer than it is to find another new customer. Did you know that? If you customer is happy with your products and services, then you can easily sell them again and again as long as you keep providing valuable products and services to them.

So how can you keep selling to the same customers over and over again?

Offer an upgraded package on the initial sale
When someone has already agreed to buy your product or service, what can you offer them that will enhance the product they bought? What other products compliment the product they are buying.

This can be anything from a warranty package on that new computer to an accessory kit for their new MP3 player. What products and services do you have that you can add on to an existing product in your business? Be creative. As long as the product makes sense, there is a large chance that the customer will buy the extra in order to complete the package.

So what can you do in your business? Carpet cleaners add extra carpet protection products, fast food offers drinks and fries, car dealerships offer warranties and tinted windows. Think about it and see what you can do in your business that might make sense.

Just by offering these upsells in your existing products can make a huge increase in the sames for your business and doesn’t require any additional customers than you have already walking in your door.

Many franchises understand this concept and have it built in to their sales process but most small business owners never think about creating a systemized process for this in their own business. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see small business owners make in their marketing efforts.  As a small business owner, if you could give yourself a 10% raise without having to spend any more money on advertising or marketing, wouldn’t that be great? You bet it would.

It’s the easiest thing you can do to increase sales in any business and increase your income without an more stress or scrambling to find more new customers.

Do you want to learn more on how to create the perfect systemized process in your business? Learn the #1 secret to increasing sales by asking one simple question and claim your free video at http://MyBusinessMarketingMentor.com/claim-free-video

If business is slow like it is for many other businesses around the world, your business could easily ramp back up and increase sales without additional advertising by simply focusing on your existing customers.

So many businesses make the mistake of just spending their marketing budget on trying to get new customers that they tend to forget about the customers they already have. This is an untapped goldmine for most businesses.
Most business owners think about the initial sale and then tend to forget about their existing customers unless they get a call from one asking for customer service. You need to be asking yourself, what is is that I sell that I can promote to my existing customers.

Did you know that it’s 10 times easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new customer? It’s true. Your customers are people that have already agreed that they wanted your products or services. Who said that you can’t sell them more stuff?

Does your product or service require maintenance?

If so, you should be putting it in your calendar to contact each customer when their product needs maintenance. If you do this right, you could use one of many automation tools that will help take care of this. You just enter when they bought your product and then the system will let you know when you should be contacting them.

Sending a letter or postcard a month in advance is usually a great way to make first contact. This helps your customer be pro-active and call you to set up an appointment. Then if you haven’t heard back from them within 2 weeks of the maintenance time you should try calling them.

You might think that these smaller maintenance jobs aren’t as profitable as new customers but it’s not about getting a big chunk of money all at once. It’s all about growing your business to a steady and stable business for years to come.

Think about it. If you have happy customers that are paying you like clockwork to maintain a product that they bought from you, then they not only give you residual income for life but also build better loyal customers in the process.

These loyal customers then talk to their friends and family about how great you are and you then can get the sale of another long standing customers. All while building residual income and not just a bunch of one hit sales.

Too many business owners focus all their energy and money in to finding new customers without spending the time on their existing list of customers. You can easily stand out from the crowd and build a long standing business based on great service and recurring income that will keep your business thriving for years to come.

If you are looking at how to increase sales in your business and don’t have a huge budget to spend, then this is the easiest and fastest way to get a rush of income in your business right away. While your competition is chasing new customers like a herd of cats, you’ll be running a nice stable business and building customers for life in your business.

If you found this article useful and would like to learn more, then watch my free video on the  #1 Secret To Increasing Sales In Any Business By Asking One Simple Question!

Ok, So this isn’t a marketing tip or resource but I have to share an experience worth way more than any marketing resource I could ever give you.

It’s about becoming unstoppable in your life and your business.

So here’s how it starts…

We have a friend that’s been bugging us to go to this seminar for a while now and we keep putting it off as we’ve just been too busy to fly across the country to go. We didn’t even really know what it was about. Just that is was awesome.

All of a sudden we get an email from her saying we have no excuse to go as they are having one here in Phoenix and she’s GIVING us the tickets just to get us to go!

So, long story short. It was great. I understand why she had a hard time explaining it to us and we had an amazing experience.

It was by a guy named Marshall Sylver and he’s a motivational speaker with his roots based in hypnosis. Before you go off on any objections here, just hold out and read on…

The entire 2 days was great but one thing stood out specifically for me that was the light that clicked on brighter than the sun.

We Ate Fire!

That’s right. You know the fire eaters that stick a flaming torch in their mouths and put it out? That’s what we did.

Just crazy!

The rules are simple.

It’s safe.
It’s easy.
If…
You follow instructions and don’t hesitate and chicken out.

Funny thing, when he first showed us what we were going to do, I didn’t even stop to think if I was going to do it. I just said, “OK” and got in line.

There were a ton of people there and most of them also did it so it wasn’t like I was one of just a couple of people, but the fact that I did it is still the same.

The videos of Cindy and I both doing it are below so you can see that we actually did it. They are quick and low quality but it’s still way cool!

So here’s the whole point of this post. When I was actually standing there and they lit the torch, we were supposed to say one word.

Unstoppable…

That’s it.

After I did it, the rush was crazy and I stopped and thought about what I had just done.

I actually ate fire!

And, yes… I am unstoppable.

The mindset that changed at that very moment was the coolest thing I had ever felt.

We are unstoppable if we just set our minds to it and focus on the task at hand.

Don’t think.
Don’t worry.

Just focus and do it!

With people still freaking out about the economy and the negative things in the world, I know it might be hard some times but you have to focus on the goal, not the obstacles or you will trip every time.

What can you do to move forward? Stop thinking about the past. Stop worrying about the future. If you focus your energy on just doing the things that you know you need to do to achieve your goals, then the rest will fall in place.

That’s my message to you and I hope that you see the true value of the power of being unstoppable. It can move mountains, cure diseases and even… fix a bad economy.

We as entrepreneurs are the solution. With the right mindset, the right focus and the right goals, we will build the world to an amazing place.

That is my goal. It helped me remember why we started MBMM. To teach small business owners how to grow their business and give them the tools to explode.

Thanks a bunch for reading.

Best of Success and Be Unstoppable!

Ely Delaney
The Purple Guy

P.S. Check out the videos below. They are pretty cool!

If you are in business, you are probably concerned about keeping your business growing. It doesn’t matter what type of economy we are in, your primary goal with your business is to grow and increase sales.

The thing is that most business owners scramble to find ways to increase sales and usually over complicate the process in pure desperation. Years ago I learned a very basic and simple principle about how business works and how to increase your income in any business, in any economy. There are only 3 ways to increase sales in any business and that’s it. If you can keep these 3 principles in mind when marketing your business, you can easily excel in any business that you are in. I learned about this basic process from Marketing Legend Jay Abraham years ago and they run just as true today and will for pretty much all of eternity.

1. Increase customers
By increasing customers, you increase sales and can grow your business. This is something that you should always be looking in your business. But… Most companies JUST focus on this method to increase sales. They don’t realize that this is actually the hardest method of growing your business. It costs more time and it eats up the most of your marketing dollars.

2. Increase Price
This is the second way to increase your income in any business. Most businesses undercut themselves anyway and it is something that you should take a serious look at in your business. If you were to just increase your prices by 10% you’ve just given yourself a 10% raise. Most of the time, that 10% increase won’t even be noticed by your customers but it will add up to quite a bit over all the products or services you sell over the year.

One thing people always say is that they can’t raise their prices because then customers will go someplace else. Well, this is true to some extent. You will almost definitely loose the guys who always want something cheap. Guess what, those customers are also usually the ones that complain a lot and take up the most time. In reality, you can spend a lot less time with those few clients and spend that time with your better customers anyway and end up working less for the same amount of money.

This actually brings me to the third way to increase sales.

3. Increase the number of sales a customer makes
What do I mean by this? Upsells and future sales. Just by adding additional products or services that compliment your existing products, you can easily increase your sales by 10-20 percent almost immediately. Many times, if you offer a deluxe package or premium option to a customer, they will take it. In reality, it doesn’t take much more work on your part to give them the extra product or service, but the increase in sale amounts can add up very quickly.

Remember that your existing customers are the easiest customers to sell to. It is 10 times easier to sell to an existing happy customer than it is to find a new customer and convince them to buy from you. Is there an add-on product or package that you can offer to your main products that would be easy to sell to your customers? Be creative and you you can easily increase your sales without much extra work. This works in any business and while your competition is running like crazy trying to figure out how they can get new customers, you can be sitting there growing your business without having to compete with them.

Are you using direct mail marketing in your business? Postcards or sales letters are the most common ways most small businesses use direct mail to market their business. Whether you are using direct mail currently or not, you might want to look at using Lumpy mail otherwise called dimensional mail to step up your marketing efforts to stand out from the crowd and get you mail opened by your prospects.

Any more, people get so much junk mail on a daily basis that both consumers and businesses open their mail over the trash can and toss the stuff that they don’t think is relevant or wanted by them. You don’t want to waste you hard earned marketing dollars by not even getting your mail opened.
Lumpy mail is a great way to help you get your mail noticed and opened right away. People can’t resist opening a package or envelope that has something thick and mysterious inside. It’s just like Christmas or a Birthday present. The most exciting part is the anticipation of trying to figure out what’s inside!

If you want to guarantee that your marketing mailer gets opened and makes an impart on your prospect, you need to be creative and use Lumpy Mail to get their attention.

So let’s talk a bit about what exactly Lumpy Mail is. Lumpy Mail is a package or envelope that has an additional object that makes the package, well exactly like the name implies, lumpy. It isn’t plain and boring like 95% of all the other mail that people see on a daily basis. Just by the lone fact that there is something Lumpy in an envelope will increase the chances of it being opened up by the recipient.

Here’s a couple of ideas of what you could do with your own business to use Lumpy Mail to get more attention and almost guarantee that your mailer gets opened up right away!

Look for simple yet attention grabbing items that you can include with your package.

A 9 x 12 envelope coming in the mail with something “lumpy” in it will stick out from everything else in the stack very easily.

Try including a toy airplane if you’re in the travel industry.

How about a sample pack of band-aids for someone in the health industry? You can even use band-aids in other industries too. I’ve seen people attach band-aids to their packages with a message of “I know your pain and we can help”. This works great in the Computer Industry too!

What about the classic box of candies? Everyone loves free food and candies or chocolates work great too.

If you are promoting a special event like a seminar or conference, you could mail a nice calendar with the dates of your event already circled so they not only get the impact of your message but also have something that they can use all year.

Lumpy mail is anything that you mail directly to a prospect or client that will stand out from everything else in a stack of mail and that they will be curious about opening. As you can see from the examples above, you just need to be creative. The creativity that goes in to your mailer will make it more interesting and increase the chances that your mailer will be opened. As with any marketing idea you use in your marketing mix, be creative and stand out from the crowd. Make a lasting impression on your prospects and you’ll see a much higher return on your advertising dollar.

What makes you stand out from other businesses in your industry? This is one of the most basic yet most important questions any business has to be able to answer in order to get ahead and run a successful business. You need to be known as the expert in your industry. So how do you do this?

One of the easiest ways to do this is to write a regular column for a local publication on a regular basis. If you are an expert in your industry, and you should be if you are in business, you’re ability to give valuable information to others and educate them on the aspects of your business can easily be one of the easiest ways to get your name known out there and quickly become known as the expert in your industry.
Step 1 – Get some basic articles written to start with.
You need to realize that you ARE the expert. If you weren’t the expert in your industry, you wouldn’t be in business right? Realize that if you have one year more experience in the field, you have more expertize than your general audience. You just need to realize this and start educating people.

What kind of tips, tricks and basic information can you share with your prospects and clients that will help them in their lives? How-to articles are one of the best ways you can educate the reader quickly.

Let’s say you own a landscaping company. You could easily write articles on the “Top 10 ways to keep your grass green in the summer heat without a huge water bill” This is something people want to know about. Your articles don’t need to be big. 300-500 words most of the time.

Step 2 – Contact local publications
Do may not realize this but local media like your local newspapers are always looking for good information for their publications. If you are willing to give them good solid educational content and not just write articles that are a long sales pitch, many will be more than happy to insert these in their publication from time to time if not on a regular basis.

Here’s the good part, you generally get to put a small bio line at the end of your article. This can have a link to your website, email address or even phone number.

Just be sure to keep your article every educational and informational, not a sales pitch.

Step 3 – Rinse & repeat
Once you get in the habit of writing articles on a regular basis, you’ll start to get a large number of articles built up that you can use. Nothing says that you have to only submit these articles to just one publication. The more places you submit these articles, the better. Not all publications will want them. Not all will have room for them. That’s ok, just keep it up and see what you can do to find more places that would be willing to take those articles. The idea is to keep adding as much as you can out there and build a reputation as the expert in your industry so your name keeps popping up all over.

Most publications that will publish your articles are happy to do so for free as long at it’s great content and adds value to the quality of their publication. You won’t get paid for the articles but you also won’t be paying for the exposure either.

As long as you provide regular valuable content, you are likely to get great result and it might even turn in to a regular column in a publication or two. If you become a regular contributor to a publication, people will see you as the expert and when they need your services, you will be the first person they think of.

Every business owner knows that customer service is important to keep your customers happy and excited to come back. What most don’t think about is that your employees are also your main sales people. Everyone from the stock people to the cashier.

If you want to increase sales in your business, you need to make your employees aware of your customers and encourage them to interact with your customers on a more personal basis. If you’ve ever been to a small town, you have most likely seen this as most small town businesses do this much better than they do in bigger cities. The process is really the same and should not be overlooked.

Let me explain what I am talking about.

Let’s say you sell electronics and a customer is walking around the store with a new MP3 player. You need to teach your employees to take notice of this. They could walk up to the customer and ask them if the player is for them or for someone else. Build a conversation by asking questions.

Once they establish this, they should be pointing out anything that the customer might have missed about the product. Depending on why they are buying the product, it might not be the right choice for them. Your employees should educate the customer on if that model is the right one for them based on their reasons for buying it. Also, are there accessories that they might need for the product?

The key is not to push a sale, but to make conversation and help the customer out. Make them feel like you care and want to help them make the right decision in their buying choice.

Think about what happens in this process.

While you are helping the customer make the best choice, you are also increasing the amount of the sale. People might forget that they need batteries or an extra charger. They might not realized that the player doesn’t include a case.

Remember that most customers don’t actually know a lot about their purchases and it’s your job, or the job of your employees, to help educate them along the way.

Be sure to point out additional benefits of the product that they might not have known about also. This helps them feel more comfortable about their purchase. It’s not just about selling them every extra toy you can. It’s about making sure that they buy the correct product and the extras that will make it better for them.

If you want to increase sales in your business, you need to make sure that your employees are interacting with your customers on a personal level and helping them as much as possible. By doing this, you not only increase sales with your additional products or services, but you also build a great relationship with your customers and they will remember you for that. This encourages repeat customers and a lot of word of mouth which is always the best form of marketing you can get for your business.