I was listening recently to a fascinating business speaker, Grant Leboff, as he explained that when Barak Obama was campaigning for the presidency he talked repeatedly about the necessity for change. Yet by the time he assumed office in January 2009 the world of business had already changed – dramatically.

Back in 1990 – a London born computer scientist by the name of Tim Burners-Lee implemented the first successful thread of the World Wide Web and the internet was born. As a result, the biggest change we’ve seen since the industrial revolution occurred during Bill Clinton’s time as President between 1993 and 2001.

When Clinton came to office there were just over 600 websites around the world, by the time he stepped down in 2001 there were over 36 million websites around the globe and business, in particular the way we need to market our products and services, had changed forever.

Cast your minds back – if you can and if you’re too young to remember, ask your mum or dad… When we watched the equivalent of today’s ‘The X Factor’ (Opportunity Knocks) or the equivalent of ‘I’m a Celebrity,,,’ (3-2-1 and Dusty Bin), we had little alternative to Saturday night TV entertainment. We only had four channels to choose from. We had to watch it whilst it was live. The majority of TV sets didn’t even have a remote control… imagine!

With viewing numbers for these shows hitting 18 million on a Saturday night it was an advertising company’s dream come true. Companies could buy their time and shout their messages to the masses. What were the alternatives?

We can now record any one of hundreds of channels. We can pause live TV. We can watch programs on our laptops when we want to and catch up on anything we missed over the internet. What do we do when the adverts come on?… Fast forward!

You can’t just keep SHOUTING your sales messages the old fashioned way and hope to be heard above the noise, and I mean shouting in any form of advertising. You need to be finding new ways of engaging with your clients and prospects.

We used to measure results of marketing based on a R.O.I. (Return On Investment). I’d suggest a better measure today would be an R.O.E. (Return on Engagement). Focus on building your contact database and building relationships.

You need to find new ways to engage with more people and hold their attention. Let people get to know you and trust you – that way, when they’re ready to buy – they come to you and ask for what you have on offer.

How do you do this? You need to focus on your niche. Be the expert in your field. Share your knowledge and information freely. Don’t get too hung up on the idea of security on the web. I know too many people that practice “security by obscurity”. You need to be noticed and you need to be attractive.

The switch to blogging from flogging makes so much sense. It’s how you share your knowledge and allow people to get to know you, trust you and buy from you.

If you need more help or advice or have a question about how to integrate blogging into your business or what to blog about email me steve@eurekasales.co.uk or call me on 0845 053 4937

To say I was sceptical of the power of social media for business and of Twitter in particular would be an understatement.

If you’d asked me just a few months ago what I thought of Twitter – the answer was simple… Twitter, Twatter, Schmitter, Schmatter – what a complete waste of time. All I’d witnessed was, “I’ve had a cheese sandwich” ping. Who cares? What a waste of time. All I could see was that it was for people that were playing at business and had nothing real to do in their day. Boy was I wrong…

I’m a grass roots sales and marketing kind of a guy. A direct marketing man. Do this – get that, measurable outcomes. So when I read Penny Power’s book called “Know me, Like me, Follow Me”, in an attempt to get my head around social media, I struggled, I mean really struggled.

I was scouring the pages for how to use social networking for my business and what did Penny in her infinite wisdom tell me to do?… “spread the love”. Really? Sorry, but I thought Penny was away with the fairies – spread the love, oh come on… I’m in business, I’m a salesman, a direct marketer.

Let me tell you; I hold Penny in very high regard and we have now become good friends. She and her husband Thomas are the founders of an incredibly successful social media business – Ecademy. I persevered and read her book – it delivered an eye popping pivotal moment for me in my relationship with social media and dozens of Eureka moments too.

The first thing was to understand that this is social networking not social selling. (Read that again and take it onboard too.) The second thing that hit me was that people use Google to search for information where as they use social media to find the people with the knowledge – that’s important to understand.

OK, so spread the love. Penny wrote about how we should be open and random. Find people and groups to engage with and listen to. Join in conversations on things other than just what we are trying to sell.

So I took a deep breath and jumped on in. At the time I was trying to get fit for for the London to Brighton bike ride so I set up a filter to let me listen to people on Twitter talking about cycling. In no time at all a guy had pinged out a tweet asking if anyone knew someone that could help him with getting fit for road riding?

OK I thought – let’s spread the love. I sent back a tweet.

“I just bought a bike from a former UK triathlete who has a bike shop with a gym attached, he could help”. Ping.

He tweeted back, “sounds great where is he?” Ping.

“Flitch bikes, Dunmow, Essex.” Ping.

“Great thanks.” Ping.

That was it. I felt I’d been helpful. I’d certainly spread some love, Penny would be proud, but so what? Well here’s what happened next…

They guy that had asked the question thought… who’s this nice guy @uksalesmentor helping me with the cycling thing? He checked my Twitter profile and saw I was involved in sales and marketing. He then clicked the link to my website. He read my bio and decided to sign up for my free marketing strategies. As he got to know me, he liked what he read and began to follow my tweets too.

(What’s the name of Penny’s book? Know me, Like me, Follow me. Ah ha.)

A day or two went by and he pinged me another tweet. This time with a link to a photo.

“What do you think of the graphics on my van?” Ping.

I opened the link and there was his van covered with a beautiful model in a bikini and fur hat a wielding a great big power tool that his company sells.

With my marketing hat on I would have lectured him on the lack of benefit statements, missing phone number etc etc etc. Instead, all I said was;

“That will grab attention.” Ping.

Quite fun this spreading the love stuff was all I thought, but really, who has time for this nonsense?

Three weeks went by and I was hosting one of my Fast Track Marketing Master Classes. These are always relatively small groups to ensure it’s fully interactive and personal. Around 20 people were registered on this occasion. To break the ice a little and to help everyone get to know who else is in the room I have each person give a brief intro of who they are, what they do and to help illustrate how various elements of my marketing generate sales I always ask them to say how they came to hear about the event.

The first person kicked off;

“Hi, I’m Jane I’m and architect and I’ve been getting Steve’s top tips for the last few months after I heard him speak at a networking event and wanted to learn more.”

“Morning, I’m Dan, I’m a fitness instructor I’ve been implementing Steve’s free tips and my enquiries have gone up by 20% – thought I’d come and see what else I could learn.”

“Hi I’m Dave, I run a web design company I’ve been reading Steve’s column in the paper and again, I wanted to learn more.” And so it went on. All my marketing efforts were working, email, PR, Public Speaking, Direct Mail, recommendations etc.

Then…

Hi I’m Paul. I met Steve on Twitter. He introduced me to someone that could help me with my bike fitness… Wow – it was Van Man! He got to know me, like me, follow me – then decided he’d like to buy from me – without me selling anything at all.

That opened my eyes… wide. Since that day I’ve been completely converted. I now deliver regular talks on how and why people in business should engage in the amazing world of social networking.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube deliver new clients to me every single month. I now operate an active social media strategy as part of my marketing mix which keeps me from spending every waking moment online. I’ve actually got it down to around 20 minutes a day and it works a treat.

And to think… it took a bikini, a fur hat and a transit van! Go on – you make sense of it.

Spread the love (but have a strategy for best results).

There was a well known saying, “Half my advertising works and half doesn’t, but I just don’t know which is which”.

And back in 1930 or whenever this quote was first used, it was quite true. However, times have moved on and this just doesn’t have to be true any more.

It’s easy to get a pretty good handle on most, if not all, of your advertising and marketing just through using Tracking Numbers…

Tracking Numbers is simply a service that allows you to track and monitor how many telephone calls you receive from each individual advert or piece of marketing that you do.

How’s does it work?

You acquire a set of new different phone numbers from a broker, there are several in the uk – and you point them all at your existing phone line. Don’t get hung up, (pardon the pun) on the technicalities, it’s really easy to do and you don’t need to change lines or providers and your existing numbers work just the same.

The only difference is that now you know which advert or piece of marketing generated each call as they all have a unique phone number. This means that you can go online and see exactly how many calls you’ve received on which phone number.

Here’s a really simple example;

Let’s say you run a gardening business. You have an ad in Yellow Pages, plus ads in two other local publications, you have a website that you drive traffic to via Pay Per Click, you have a flyer and also cards that you distribute.

That’s 6 separate pieces of marketing:

1. Yellow Pages (OK maybe not, just an example)
2. Parish Mag
3. Local Paper
4. Website
5. Flyer
6. Cards

How do you know which one produces the most inquiries? Which ones to continue and which ones to dump?

You buy 6 separate phone numbers – all local numbers and allocate one phone number to each stream of marketing. Then I’ll know for sure, over time, exactly which bits of marketing are working best for me.

You don’t need 6 new telephones these all ring on the usual phone line, you just get to track results automatically… in the voice of a meerkat… Schimples.

Seriously, it works like a dream – and it’s one of the most under-used tools available to businesses in the UK. It costs just a few pounds to set up and next to nothing to run. Yet it puts you in control and lets you test and measure your marketing effectively.

Oh, and there’s are additional benefits too. this type of system will also tell you how many calls you failed to answer. Just imagine that! You’ve purchased an ad, a potential customer has seen it, called you up…but nobody picks up the phone.

You’ll know exactly how many calls you’re not answering, that could prove invaluable. Stop losing customers and find an answering service that will take your calls 24/7. Mine calls are all answered – and I only pay for that service when they take a call!

If you’d like more information about these types of services just call me on 0845 056 3911 – the call will always be answered by a real person any time of day or night… and I’ll know it was because of this article – go on test it out.