If you're thinking of placing a magazine or newspaper advertisement for your business, then consider testing its effectiveness before you go spending your hard earned money. Too many businesses waste precious dollars on expensive advertisements without knowing whether they will prompt readers to respond at all! Now when creating a great advertisement (a direct response one that gets sales) you of course need the basic structure of:

• Attention getting headline
• Great offer
• A call to action

The headline is 80% of the pulling power of your advertisement, so make sure it is grabs the reader by the eyeballs. To place an "ad" in a highly regarded magazine may cost you several hundred to several thousand dollars. Before committing to an advertisement that may not even pay for itself, how about creating say 3 to 5 different versions of the headline, and placing 5 small, two line ads in the classified section of an appropriate publication?

This is split testing and out of the five headlines you may find one that out pulls the rest by a long shot. This is the headline you would use in you magazine or newspaper campaign. You could test various offers at the same time. The above is a lower risk approach to advertising. If your small, cheap classified produced results, then a similar advertisement in a targeted publication should give you a good return on investment.

It goes without saying that part of your testing would be to confirm how many sales would be required to break even (pay for your advertising costs) and how many sales are expected to justify using this medium as part of your marketing strategies.

•  Focus on making appointments and closing sales. When business is slow, it’s easy to coop yourself in the office and start organising you files. Take a look at how you spend your day. Are you starting to hold long drawn out lunches with your friends? Do you find yourself playing solitaire on the computer? Instead of finding distractions, why don’t you set up appointments with prospective clients?

• Set a minimum of 25 prospecting calls – Experts all agree that you should never stop your daily prospecting calls until you've hit this level. You can also start doing customer service calls to readily serve the needs of your existing customers.

• Enhance customer service – Your best customers are your existing ones. Develop loyalty in your old customers and they’ll readily refer you to new customers.Working your customer database is cheaper  and more lucrative than chasing new customers.

• Answer objections – Practice answers to the most common objections to your services or products. Role-play so that you’ll feel confident in delivering these answers. Two of the most common objections are cost and indecision, so make sure you have a convincing response for these.

• Research the networking event to confirm that the attendees will be predominantly your target market. There is little sense in going to a networking nightrfor "work from home" entrepreneurs if you sell high end manufacturing software packages. There may be a chance of a fruitful contact here, although the odds are not in your favour.

• Never sell your services. Instead ask questions of the people you meet and get to know what their issues and problems are. Remember you are building a relationship, not trying to close sales on the night.

• Have your elevator speach memorised and tell them what problems your product/service solves. Let them know who you serve - " I help health care professionals attract new clients".

• Never give your business card out unless asked.

• Don't allow yourself to get tied up with one person for an hour. Set objectives on how many people you touch base with - say ten.

• When you meet someone ask them if they know others at the event and would they introduce you to them. You may be speaking with a key individual within the group and he/she could know scores of people. By being introduced by this person to group members you have added credibility in breaking the ice.

• Follow up after the event to every contact with an email thank you note and perhaps a free report or reference to an article that may be of interest. Add all contacts to your newsletter list.

A good recruitment process, along with other Human Resources policy and procedures, are critical to the success of your business. To hire great staff start with the end in mind. First you define your company culture, including values and expected behaviour. Next, profile what you
consider to be an ideal employee - meaning their attitude, skills, experience and overall presentation. A survey conducted by Robert Heath International, one of America's largest personnel agencies, revealed the following reasons for staff dismissals:

• 39%   employee incompetence
• 17%   inability to conform with the team spirit
• 12%   dishonesty
• 10%   negative attitude
• 7%    lack of motivation
• 7%    refusal to follow orders
• 8%    other

When looking at the above list, quite a few of the reasons could be viewed as attitude problems. This list could form the basis of your interview questions allowing you to focus on and filter out employees that display non-desirable traits. In another survey of 942 companies, 67% of respondents cited misuse of time as one of their biggest issues, specifically:

• Long lunch breaks
• leaving early
• excessive chatting

Number four problem was unauthorized use of the telephone to make long distance phone calls, followed by non business related web surfing. The above problems could be minimised by defining and communicating policies that outline acceptable behaviour and management expectations of staff.

Do have a policies and procedures manual which addresses how your company recruits staff and manages them?

If you currently own a business and you've been struggling to find ways to build your  revenue and profits,  then it's time to get serious. Focus on those things you need to do to really make a difference this year. There are six aspects of your business that you can concentrate on that will allow you in a period of 12 months to double your turnover and profits. Here they are:

Define Your Vision and Goals

Ask yourself. "What is it that I want from this business?". If you could journey into the future one, three or five years, describe how you would want your business to look. Think big here, after all this is your dream, go for it! Will you have moved to new offices? How many staff are now working for you? How many hours a week are you working in the business? What are you doing in the community, such as charitable work or giving back to society? Describe how your life will be, your lifestyle, the people you mix with and picture yourself with all the things you have ever dreamt of.

Master Your Finances

Sure, you enter your figures and get reports every day or week, but do you really know what those figures mean. There are many indicators you can use to monitor how your business is faring. But there are three critical tools that you should really master: Breakeven Volume, your Revenue Model and the Cash Flow Model.

Develop Strategies

By defining and following strategies for how you are going to grow your business, you immediately empower yourself through the discipline of focus. What are your strategies for capturing your market? A re you going to dominate the market place? Are you going to aim for a niche market and specialize? Or are you going to innovate and change the game?

Work Out Your Tactics To Implement Each Strategy

Your tactics mirror your strategies and are designed to implement them. By and large, they will fit in to three main categories:

• Increase revenue
• Increase profit margins
• Increase cash flow

Leveraged Yourself

There are many ways to leverage yourself in your business as you grow. Here are a few of the mediums you can utilize:

• Improve your attitude - become a leader
• Manage your time more effectively
• Define and build your organizational structure
• Focus on recruiting good quality talent
• Develop processes and standards for all your critical work activities
• Develop systems that save time (for training, induction, sales, financial management)
• Employ technology to reduce labour-intensive activities
• Build a team-based culture in your business
• Continue to develop yourself as a leader in business and industry

Commit Yourself To Ongoing Self Development

Never stop learning about new ways of doing things and consolidating your existing experience. Attend seminars, read books, mix with other entrepreneurs who are successful, positive and always challenging you.

By concentrating on the above six areas you will elevate yourself to the ranks of the top 5% of business owners who are disciplined enough to structure their business dealings, and therefore achieve success.

In the late 1800s an Italian mathematician named Vilfredo Pareto observed that 20% of the population controlled 80% of the wealth. From his discovery came the 80/20 rule.

Its amazing how many things in life can be looked at from the perspective of the 80/20 rule. This rule can be brought to bear in your business with spectacular results. It has been observed that roughly 20% of  businesses  customers are responsible for 80% of the revenue. Which of course implies that 80 % of the customers are only contributing 20 % of the revenue! Use this approach for a month in your business dealings and you'll be surprised at what you discover. For example ask yourself these questions:

• Which 20% of your employees account for the bulk of your sales, sick days, ideas or management effort
• Which 20% of your customers spend the most money, complain the most, are late paying bills
• Which 20% of your products/services account for the bulk of your sales
• What 20% of your time is  giving you the best return on your efforts

This is just a small sample of the topics this rule can be applied against. Lets look at an example of how powerful this rule can be. If you have 1,000 customers:

• 800 will more than likely buy a single product/service
• 200, on average might buy 4 products
• 40 of the 200 will buy 16 products
• 10 of the 40 will buy 80 products

Hmm....interesting eh?. Our challenge is to identify and target the top customers in our marketing - imagine a business fully patronized by top customers.

• 80 steps will be error free
• 20 steps will cause 80% of all errors
• 4 steps will cause 64% of all errors
• 1 step alone may cause over half of all errors

Have some fun looking at your own business using the lens of the 80/20 rule.

Take a lead from the ancient Greeks and create your very own "Trojan Horse" in the form of a marketing kit. Many providers of professional services and small businesses alike don't capitalise on the leverage offered by well crafted marketing materials. These can consist of brochures,catalogs, product descriptions,price models etc. One very powerful collection of information is a targeted marketing kit consisting of:

• Your business profile
• Product/service offerings
• Product Flyers
• Frequently Asked Question (FAQs) sheet
• Testimonials Sheets
• Personal Assessment Forms

This kit when presented to the suspect/prospect can do a lot of the work for you in reducing resistance, allaying fears and increasing your credibility. All the things you will need to accomplish if you want to sell your services or product. This gift  will  enter the conversation in their minds and answer any questions they have whilst reading or listening  to the contents. This little "salesperson" can infiltrate your prospects defenses and actively lower them. The trick is to know enough about your target market so that you can craft a specific message for them.

Ask yourself these questions to see if you do know your market:

• What are their hopes and aspirations?
• What are their issues, problems "pain"?
• What "language" do they speak (jargon, acronyms etc)?
• What will it take to allay their fears of doing business with you?
• What is important to them (service,price,support, security...)?
• How does your offering solve their "pain"?
• What is unique and different about you or your service/product?
• How is your offering superior to your competitors?

If you do not know your market then your attempts to interest and convert prospects will be expensive exercises in futility. Begin today to build your awareness of your target market and gather the raw materials for your very own Trojan Horse.

Ever gone shopping for say a reasonably priced, practical mobile telephone and found yourself leaving the store with the latest high end electronic marvel?You became a victim of your wants - your emotional cravings for having the very best and latest toy that will no doubt impress all your friends. We tend to shop with our logical left brain, but when it comes time to actually buy we often succumb to our emotions to satisfy deep  subliminal drives for acceptance, love, belonging, immortality, acknowledgment and yes to be different and superior to others.

As a business entrepreneur you should always keep this in mind when creating copy or marketing your services or product. Focus on the emotional benefits of your offerings rather than the features to really  reach your target audience. To know these "emotional hot buttons" you need to research your market and understand their needs and pain, because after all people aren't buying a service or a product, they are buying a solution to a need or problem they have.

There is a saying that goes something like this - "For the man whose only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". In the context of marketing their businesses, many entrepreneurs have only one tool they rely on to generate leads. In very rare situations certain businesses may only require one form of marketing to fill their leads pipeline.

For the rest of us, it pays to build a good tool box of strategies that we can select from to grow our sales and profits. This selection is called a Marketing Mix. There are literally hundreds of marketing tactics that can be put into play for your business. These tactics (depending on what you are trying to achieve) can be grouped under the following categories of strategy:

• Networking and Referral Generation
• Direct Contact
• Public Speaking
• Writing
• Promotion
• Advertising

One particular strategy may not provide us with enough leads to keep our enterprise viable, but 6 or 10 tested tactics applied consistently over time, will  turn on a stream of fresh new prospects for us to convert into sales and ultimately, loyal customers.

How many tactics are you currently using to drive leads into your business? If it is only one or two, or you are using many different tactics in an adhoc fashion, it's time to change your marketing mindset. Successful business have a marketing strategy (even if it is one page) and a plan of implementation. This plan will feature objectives, sales targets, competitor analysis and of course what type of tactics will be employed in marketing as well as a schedule or calendar of activities.

The other thing all successful business owners do is market persistently and continuously test and rotate new tactics into their mix of marketing tools. By all means, if it works, use your "hammer" , just make sure you start filling your marketing toolbox with other tactics to choose from. 

There is no arguing the fact that a well thought out marketing plan can be vital to the success of a small business. Yet the majority of business entrepreneurs ignore this critical step in their business. Alright, so you don't want to go through the pain and struggle of developing a 30 page marketing plan along with all the tables and charts deemed necessary.

While a full marketing plan for any business is a good idea, why not create an abbreviated one page marketing plan that captures the essence of what you need without the time commitment of a full blown formal document. You can prepare a one page (maybe two) plan within a few hours. One page marketing plans give business owners a marketing to-do list, in addition to a general snapshot of their marketing situation.

A "mud map" marketing plan can later serve as a springboard into a more comprehensive marketing plan.
Here are some suggested sections of a simple marketing plan, with a brief description of each, to help you write your own one page marketing plan for your small business.

Target Market – This is who you’re hoping to reach with your marketing message (including demographics, like age groups, ethnic groups, sex, location, etc.).

Industry Trends – Is your industry going through widespread growth or decline, to know this informs your marketing efforts, so you need to be aware of this information.

Goals – Choose specific and measurable goals that you wish to achieve in the next 12 months.

Strategies - How do you plan to reach your goals? For example, if your goal is to increase your leads by 1,000 a year, your strategy might be to attend various targeted networking events. Lower level detail is considered a “tactic.”

Marketing Budget - You need to estimate your marketing budget spend, this will dictate approaches when choosing your marketing tactics.

Marketing Mix - The marketing mix is basically a breakdown of the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Placement & Promotion) of marketing.

Competitors – While you may have myriad competitors, choose at the top three competitors that you’ll need to position your products or services against.“Top competitors” are those that are competing directly with you for market share.

Strengths & Weaknesses – List out your strengths and weaknesses as compared to your competitors.Draw up a table with price, quality, service, management etc as topics to compare.

Monthly Tactics – Here’s where you’ll choose very specific marketing tactics that fit within your strategies and your marketing budget. Ensure you mix your tactics and spread your budget evenly.If there is a tactic that has worked well for you in the past, keep it in the mix rather than drop it and try something new.

Product
This will include all of your business’ products and / or services – basically anything you intend to sell, rent, or charge money for.

Price
The pricing model you choose will be a large factor in what market you’ll be able to target. What sector of the market are you wanting to attract?

Placement (Distribution)

Placement answers how your customers are going to come across your products. Where will they be able to buy them? (A discount store? Online-only sales? Catalog sales?).

Promotion

Promotion includes most of the marketing tactics you’re probably familiar with, such as:

• Brochures
• Newsletters
• Fliers and Posters
• Trade Shows
• Coupons
• Contests
• Advertising
• Public Relations
• Promotion will be one of the more costly aspects of your marketing strategy, in most cases. Do proper research beforehand, so you can target your marketing message to the appropriate audience.