Yes, I know that is a very bold statement.  But, I’m here to tell you — if you are doing what everyone else in your industry is doing in this economic environment, you will never rise above the crowd and reach the Pinnacle of your profession.

A friend of mine was talking about opening a commercial cleaning business soon.  He has spent several months preparing a manual on “how to successfully operate a commercial cleaning business” and notably, he was very proud to tell me about it.  When I inquired about the marketing, he said, “Well, in this business no one actually promotes themselves … its all word of mouth.”  My immediate response was, “If EVERYONE does not promote themselves in this industry, then putting together an extensive, multi step marketing campaign and doing the opposite of everyone else is the first thing you should be doing with your time … not writing an operations manual!”

My friend was taken back by my ‘odd’ advice.  A week later when we had lunch together, he took me back to that conversation  and pressed me for more.  (This was such an crazy concept to him … doing the opposite of everyone else to reach real success … and the fact that I was so passionate about it, he wanted more advice and how to apply.)  I told him only 2% of the people in any industry are really doing well.  I mean, they are achieving success that’s out of this world good.  They are at the Pinnacle of their industry.  I told him, if you want to be the ‘top dog’ in your area, you can not do what the crowd does (or the industry norm) and expect to get hugely successful results.

If You Are Doing What Everyone Else In Your Market Area Is Doing, You And Your Business Are Dying A Slow And Painful Death …

 Let me give two quick examples to illustrate my point.

If you find yourself doing the same ol’ thing you’ve always done, and it seems to be pretty close to what everyone else in your industry does, maybe you should think very seriously about trying a NEW approach in the next 3 days, no later than 3 weeks.  Like Zig Ziglar always says, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

If you want to reach ‘The Pinnacle’ in your market area, you gotta act and do something different right now!

Best,

Chauncey

Chauncey Hutter, Jr — Revolutionary Christian Business Success A New Breed of Marketing Consultant and Business Growth Coach Helping Marketplace Christians Experience Life-Changing Success.

For Free Video Report: “How to Thrive and Profit in Your Marketplace Sector, Even in an Economic Recession … Guaranteed!”   www.HolyRenegade.com/JI

So, in my last post, I broke down how business owners should WRITE their email marketing. Make sure you check out that post, because it’s the framework on which this structure I’m about to give you rests.

In a future post, I’ll cover techniques which you can use to effectively get visitors to your site hand over their precious email address to you — because, the fact is that the vast majority of your site visitors will come to your site for some reason … but then slide on by, distracted by the next shiny object online.

So, you need a strategy in place to be able to follow-up effectively with them, and put your mission, your products and your services in front of them, in a low-pressure (yet compelling manner). Again, if you write your emails the right way (as previously covered), this shouldn’t be an issue.

Here’s the best structure for how to organize your email marketing “machine”…

1)     Craft an opening sequence of emails which introduce you and your services and which automatically goes out over a series of days and weeks after opt-in.

This sequence should NOT immediately “sell” your services, but should be structured like a series of “open loop” stories, leaving your contact wanting more from and establishing your expertise and warmth as a real person. This opening sequence should take anywhere from 7-21 days, and include anywhere from 3-7 emails from you.

This can culminate in some sort of special sales event, whether it’s an email which sends people to a sales page with a special offer, or a live (or recorded) teleseminar or webinar that offers your services.

Remember, your prospects are most “hot” in the very beginning, but you don’t want to slam them immediately with sales messages … and nor do you want to forego the opportunity to harvest and monetize the relationship as early as you can.

But it must happen in the context of an established relationship. (The exception here, of course, is for a straight “e-commerce” business of commodity-style products or services, whereby you can easily sell from the very beginning  — but even these businesses can benefit from relationship-building and a deepening top-of-consciousness relationship)

2)     After your prospect goes through your initial sequence, place them in a regular relationship-building content and value series. This is your “live” newsletter, which you send out to all of your prospects and clients. I recommend weekly, but bi-weekly can also be effective.

Many businesses still rely on monthly communication, and unfortunately, in this digital age, they’re losing momentum. Too much time in between communications can make the relationship fester.

It’s important that these messages deliver real value, and aren’t simply “Hey, here’s why we’re so great and what we’re doing”. Remember — your clients and prospects care most about their circumstances and needs. So, if you can regularly come alongside them in what they are trying to do, you’re establishing yourself as the “go-to” expert for when they ARE ready to purchase/buy/engage your services.

It’s in these regular communications that you can offer seasonal sales, and other special offers designed to get the members of your list to take action on supporting/buying/engaging your services.

3)     Special sequences. If you meet with clients in person, or deliver services on a semi-regular basis, it’s a great idea to create special “thank you”, or post-delivery sequences which offer that above-and-beyond experience to your clients and prospects. It can be automated, without losing that personal touch.

So, use those this structure around which to organize your organization’s email marketing, and you’ll finally begin to see why email really is the growing business’ most effective “hidden” weapon.

Nate Hagerty is longtime friend of Joseph International. He is the former marketing director of a multi-million dollar tax firm and now the CEO of TaxProMarketer – the leading marketing advisors to independent tax and accounting professionals in North America.

Listen to an exclusive interview with Nate in the MP3 set of the recent Marketplace Christianity Conference, in Kansas City, MO.  Click here for more info

Kris Edler asked me to share some insight into world of email marketing, and how it’s done right. I’ve built my business almost completely online, and much of its success (from a tactical/strategic standpoint) I can credit to the power of properly-executed email marketing.

You see, there’s a reason why most small businesses think email marketing doesn’t work: They don’t do it right.

Shoot, I don’t blame them! Many small business owners model their email strategies from big-box retailers, or other internet marketers or ministry leaders — without understanding the techniques behind those email marketing campaigns (or even knowing if they’re effective!). They send out bland “email newsletters” and expect them to bring in new and repeat business.

And they’re usually sorely disappointed.

Now, I spend my mornings, as you probably do, cranking through my inbox and churning out the marketing junk which has little relevance to me, or my business. Sound familiar?

However, if you pay attention to those small percentage of firms and businesses who are skyrocketing their sales via EMAIL ALONE, you’ll see that they take a different approach. Their emails get read, they get opened — and acted upon.

So don’t you follow the herd. In this installment, I’d like to first dispel some all-too-commonly held email marketing myths:

1) Fancy headers and sharp graphics make your emails look more “professional”.

Riddle me this: how do you want your emails to be received? As a “professional” email — with such content that can be otherwise found through a simple internet search? Or as a warm, encouraging and actionable note — like one you’d receive from your neighbor down the street? Because one of those kinds of emails gets deleted … the other doesn’t.

The “look” of your email can make or break that moment of “delete” — or getting it read. Many email programs weed out graphics, unless the user has specifically accepted them, formatting gets messy but most important of all: it screams “I’m being marketed to.” Ministries, in particular, often fall prey to this temptation, and the increasing ease of creating such headers makes it too easy to fall for this trap.

Don’t. As a test this week, try a “plain text” email, formatted simply and written in a style — well, I get ahead of myself. Time for myth #2…

2) Businesses and ministries must maintain a “big business” feel with their marketing communication.

This is a Big Mistake. A) You’re not Best Buy or Amazon … and by aping these entities, you’re falling for the old canard that “building a brand” is a worthwhile goal for the small business. (more about that in a future posting).

B) Email is inherently relational – and when you abuse your contacts’ inbox with stuffy technical-ese or commoditized articles, you’re actually demonstrating cavalier disregard for your most important business asset: your list.

But when you use email RIGHT, you’re actually building deeper relationships with your clients and prospects, and demonstrating that you can be trusted with their time … and with their wallet.

So don’t blow your greatest asset (your client and prospect list) by falling for these traps. In a future post, I’ll go into greater detail on strategies which DO work.

Nate Hagerty is longtime friend of Joseph International. He is the former marketing director of a multi-million dollar tax firm and now the CEO of TaxProMarketer– the leading marketing advisors to independent tax and accounting professionals in North America.

This short, 6-minute video will help you learn how to search engine optimize a wordpress post or blog, so your blog will rank higher on search engines (like Google or Yahoo).  For those of you using other website platforms, you can modify these basic tips to your own content management system.  For more information, email SEO@josephinternational.org

If the video does not appear automatically, CLICK HERE to watch now.

You can get more information on Joseph International’s SEO Service for marketplace Christians by CLICKING HERE

Tips for Stellar Endorsements | by Kris Edler

1.  Brainstorm a list of the top 10 people in your sphere of influence who would be willing to endorse you.

1. Choose organizations, customers, and industry leaders that will best validate what you are doing.
2. Be strategic about which connections you are building.

 2. Don’t worry about asking for long, drawn out endorsements or recommendations.  KISS it…. Keep It Short and Simple.

1. General rule of thumb is to ask them for 2-3 sentences from the person endorsing your organization.  Remember, casual readers will not read much more than this.
2. If you are an events or product based ministry, you can also collect testimonies at events and/or about your products.  Using only the customers first time (maybe state / location) protects their identity.

 3.  Always send a hand written thank you

1. Especially if it’s an industry leader, it takes valuable time for them to take time for this.
2. If appropriate for that relationship, offer to do something in return for their organization in the weeks after receiving the recommendation.

4. Look for cross-linking opportunities.  This means that you put a link to them on your site and they offer to do the same for you.

5.  Display endorsements with meek chic.

1. Your website is not a platform to merely brag about yourself and your products.  Put the endorsements in your “About Us” section.
2. Weave the event, product, and service testimonies throughout the subpages, but avoid testimonies on the homepage of your site.

Building a Corporate Identity Manual  |  by Kris Edler

Your organization’s corporate identity manual is the key to maintaining brand integrity.  It’s the lifeblood of your organization that clearly lays out the philosophy and beliefs which manifest in the corporate culture.  It shapes the language used, images created, ads that are released, and the overall brand of the organization.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat and there are more than 100 ways to build a corporate identity manual, but here’s a darn good start for you.  Follow these steps to get the ball rolling and then see where your creativity takes you.

Identify a written version of your company vision and values.

1. Isolate key phrases that describe the vision.
2. Describe the types of images, feelings, or emotions that represent you.
3. Write out the objectives and desired end-product of your organization.
4. TIP:  Place this vision statement in a visible place somewhere in the office for people to keep in front of them.  Bosses should call their staff back to this at least twice a month!

Using the keywords and phrases you developed, find visual images to represent the language you came up with.

1. Get some art students or visual people to help you with this.
2. Make a concept board (See figure C) using magazine clippings, photographs, font samples, and completed designs.
3. If you have some ads previously created, you can use your own (or get inspiration from others).
4. Use this design / concept board to create cohesive branding for your organization.  The key is to stick to it!
5. TIP:  Do a brainstorming meeting and pose questions like, “Who are we (as a company)?  What impact are we to have on others?  What do we want our clients to walk away with?”  Get your employees talking and let them have ownership of the vision.

Consider the use of color

1. Get color swatches from the local paint store and come up with an acceptable color scheme that brands your organization.
2. Find pantone and hex code numbers to match the color swatches you selected.
3. Use these colors in every aspect of design elements.
4. TIP:  Take your creative team to an art museum or a park and let them loose with cameras.  Tell them to get creative and come up with some fresh design work for your company.  Let them loose for the day (on the pay clock) and help fuel their creative juices.  It will give them passion for their job and you’ll see a massive impact on the creativity of your team.

Select your font palette and stick with it.  Too much font action hurts the eye and distracts from your content.

1. You will need the following standardized fonts:
1. Title (for your logo alone…nothing else)
2. Heading 1 (website headings)
3. Heading 2 (article headings)
4. Sub-heading bold (main article headings and section dividers)
5. Sub-heading Italicized (sub-sections dividers)
6. Paragraph text (general webpage and document text)
2. Stick with your fonts.  Over-expressive creativity without healthy standards to follow will hurt your brand in the long-run.
3. TIP:  Always do at least 3 draft options of an ad before settling on it.  Your first one isn’t nearly as perfect as you want it to be… and after one week of looking at it… you’ll see just how imperfect it actually is.

Logo use

1. What is the proper way to use and display your logo?
2. What are incorrect uses for the logo (italicized, certain shadows, adding patterns)?
3. What positions are acceptable / not acceptable for your logo?
4. TIP:  Look at your favorite, long-standing companies.  Notice – their logos are pretty much the same.  Forever.

Style guide

1. Create prime examples of what successful banner advertising looks like for your organization.
2. Critique your work after ever year.  Look back and see what you should have done differently to make it fit the brand more exactly.   Remember, the ability to look back and see with clarity will separate good designers from excellent marketers.
3. TIP:   Continually develop and add to your corporate identity manual and track your style changes over the year.  At the same time, strive to develop a consistent, timeless brand that avoids the need to “be trendy”.

Require your designers to “SEO on the go”.  By enabling them to upload their own material and tag as they go, it will prevent a lot of back work later.  These are four things that they MUST do as they upload new content.

1. Alt-tag = The text used in html for an image when the image itself cannot be seen, loaded, or rendered.  This text is also used by platform for visually impaired users to read to them what is on the screen.
2. Meta-tag = The html tag that provides key information about a webpage or article.  It tells search engines who created the page, how often it’s updated, what the page is about, what keywords are on the page, and what may be in the content.  This text will not affect the way the page is displayed or show up on the front end for users.
3. Page Title and heading continuity
1. All page titles and descriptions should be done the same way.  For example:  “Company Name | Article Title | Description”
2. Always use the company name first on EVERY page
3. In your description, write it with the key words appearing first in the sentence.  Your first six words are the most important.
4. Image Descriptions = Describes to a search engine what is actually in the image itself.  Yes, this is different than meta-tagging, because this is done on the image file itself, not on the article you are creating.
5. TIP:  If your designers and marketing folks do not know what one of the previously mentioned tags are, tell them to come to Kansas City for three-months to do an internship with me and I will teach them how to revolutionize your company… right after I hit them for taking a marketing job without knowing how to do a proper page title.

Know Your Vision

It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know that isn’t really so that prevents the most growth.

Everyone in the marketing industry are asking the same questions:

1.  How do I get found by the people I am trying to reach?

2.  How do I increase usage of our website (be it in sales, readers, event attendees, etc)?

3.  How do I stay in the forefront of my niche market?

It doesn’t matter if you are a business person or a ministry trying to expand your horizons a bit.  These are among the base questions anyone in marketing should be asking.  The reality though, is when we are hiring and training new employees, we often mistakenly teach them to ask these questions instead of the most important.

Who Are We?

If we don’t first understand WHY, we will run out of fuel when the HOW’s and WHAT’s get too heavy to handle.

You would be amazed how many corporate employees and ministry volunteers don’t actually know the vision of the organization they are working for.  Sure, they might know the gist of it, but most people lack the understanding vital to thriving in their position.  For example, Joseph International is geared toward marketplace believers, with a purpose of training them in both spiritual and natural excellence in order to bring the Kingdom of God to their sphere of influence.  How do you like that mouthful?  Now ask one of our staff what the vision is… will they be able to answer that fundamental question?  I sure hope so!

A few years ago I had a young man working for me that was working on videos and website content.  One afternoon in the office, I asked him, “Why is that particular video important to what we are building?”  I didn’t even know what the video was, but love to play the Devil’s advocate and ask provoking questions. He stopped to think and replied, “It’s good website content to get people watching stuff on our site.”  I loved his thinking, but had the hunch that he had mastered the “how” without mastering the “why”. His mistake or mine?  So, continuing in conversation, I began asking him about why he started working for us, what message impacted him the most, etc.  His responses revealed that he was under the impression that our primary purpose as marketplace believers was to merely raise money to give away.  There was nothing said about brining the presence of Jesus to the city, nothing about training in prayer, how to hear God, or how to have an excellent job performance level.  Nothing.  Was this guy a total idiot?!  How could he work for us for over a year and have no idea what we were about?

Then it hit me… I WAS THE IDIOT!

A primary mistake many business owners make is they expect employees, especially those in marketing to do a job with out any reason behind it.  People will perish for lack of vision.  If the person (or marketing team) in charge of broadcasting your message doesn’t know the “why” behind the vision, how on earth can we expect them to trumpet it with clarity.

If you asked a random employee today why they are doing their job and how it impacts the company  - how would they respond?  Have you given them the DNA needed to know the “why” behind their job.  If you’re a Christian business owner, this why is actually the Christ-man, Jesus, as Colossians 3 instructs us to “work as unto the Lord”.  So, what’s YOUR motivation?  More importantly… does your company know it too?

Marketing Strategy Challenge

Ask your marketing person to answer the following questions for you (try this in casual conversation):

1.  How would you define the vision of our company (ministry)?

2.  What purpose does this website have in fulfilling that vision?

3.  Would you consider praying about this vision with me and ask the Lord to speak to you about it and how it impacts your work on the website?

This post is the first in a two-week series for marketplace Christians in marketing, advertising, and Search Engine Optimization.  JOIN us this week and tag a friend to read with you.

In the vast world of social media and buzz sites, it’s hard for entrepreneurs to know what sites they need to focus on with their business.  To make it easy, here’s a creative explanation for you of which social sites you should use, and the way that you need to use them.  Have a creative Monday!