BroadVision Marketing Blog

by Robert Middleton, owner of Action Plan Marketing and Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing

Marketing actually has a language just like the game of baseball has a language. And the purpose of this language is to get attention, generate interest and motivate people to take action to find out more about our services.

If you understand this language and speak it fluently, you'll be more successful at moving prospects around the bases of Marketing Ball and ultimately turning them into clients.

The language of marketing is based on what we call "Marketing Syntax." Syntax is the order of things. Syntax creates meaning. For instance, the order of letters in a word give that word meaning and the order of words in a sentence give that sentence meaning.

We also discovered that the order in which you present marketing ideas determines the meaning the listener attaches to your message. In other words, if you deliver your marketing message in a certain order using marketing syntax, you'll get more attention and interest than if you use a different order.

Topics: Marketing Plan, BroadVision Marketing Petaluma CA, marketing ball game

by Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing and Robert Middleton, owner of Action Plan Marketing

If marketing is a struggle for professionals, it's not only because they don't understand the game of marketing, but also because they have a poor attitude about it. And this attitude, or what we prefer to call mindset, colors our approach to marketing and tends to result in our avoiding most marketing activities.

A marketing mindset is how we think about marketing. It's our attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, expectations, fears, fixed positions, assumptions, and limitations. You could say that our marketing mindset is the "water that we swim in."

The mindset affects us profoundly, but we don't see it because it's so close to us. Our actions are shaped by what we focus on, what we believe, what we think and what we assume. And if these beliefs, thoughts and assumptions are negative, we see marketing as something bad, something to be avoided.

Topics: BroadVision Marketing in Petaluma CA, Marketing Plan, marketing ball game

by Robert Middleton, owner of Action Plan Marketing and Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing

 

Master these Seven Principles and you'll grow your business. We will be covering them one at a time over this series of blogs.

If you are going to attract more clients to your professional service business, you must market those services. But you can't market haphazardly and expect consistent results. You must market according to proven principles. This article outlines those principles and gives you the keys to growing your business with less struggle and effort.

 

 

Topics: BroadVision Marketing, Petaluma CA, Marketing Plan, marketing ball game, Social Media

by Robert Middleton, owner of Action Plan Marketing and Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing

 

If you're a professional interested in attracting more clients, you want more than marketing theory, ideas and tips; you can read about those in hundreds of books. No, you want to build solid marketing skills you can use for a lifetime.

Here are the marketing skills that count. No matter what marketing strategy you use, from networking to speaking to eZines, to blogging, to video, trade shows, to collaboration, these are the core skills you'll use every single time. They are based on proven principles that have been time-tested with thousands of business owners and you'll have several breakthroughs in the following seven areas:

Topics: Robert Middleton, Petaluma CA. Jaco Grobbelaar, BroadVision Marketing in Petaluma CA, Marketing Plan, Marketing Principles

Plenty of business people are not using LinkedIn to the best of their ability because they don't know how to make it work for them. LinkedIn reported that it has reached 135 million registered users as of November 3, 2011, up from 100 million the end of March 2011, consisting of people from more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Why are people flocking to LinkedIn?

Topics: marketing, San Francisco Bay Area, Petaluma, Lewis Howes, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Business, social media marketing, Branding, Marketing strategy, Leadership

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The other day I was looking for some information and found a website that addressed my question. To my dismay, the information was five years old and had not been updated. The website was static and for all I knew the business no longer existed.

This is something that I know has happened to us all. It’s frustrating, but more than that if the business still exists, it just lost a return customer.

There are some reasons a business would not keep up a website, adding new blogs and updating the product or service information.

 

Topics: Marketing Plan, Marketing Principles

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What is the ultimate purpose of social media? You want to use it to get good solid leads that will convert into customers. Basically, social media tells you your leads are getting interested in you and your company.

You use social media as a business process, which means that you develop a process in writing that you follow and test regularly to hone it. The sales department and the marketing department, as two very different entities, need to sit down together and discuss what criteria a lead must meet before being passed from marketing to sales. Furthermore, marketing needs to follow-up after the lead is passed on in order to find out if the sale occurred. Also in order to keep the customer for life, the marketing department needs to stay in touch with the client for future sales.

Topics: marketing, Company, Squeeze page, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Business, Twitter

You don't want confuse lead nurturing with sending out brochures or marketing copy focused on your product information or your company announcements. This is not the same thing as nurturing a lead.

To nurture means:  foster, help develop or help grow;  the act of nourishing or nursing; tender care; education; training; that which nourishes; food; diet; sustenance; the environmental influences the contribute to the development of an individual.

Sending out information about you or your company is not the same thing as “feeding” your leads. When you talk about yourself, you are not focused on what the leads need or your relationship with them.

 

Topics: marketing, lead, Advertising and Marketing, Marketing Plan, Marketing Principles, Business Owner

A cook starts with a recipe. A tourist starts with a map. So why do many small business owners think they can run their business without a marketing plan?

Many small business owners think marketing equals expensive advertising. Some advertising is costly, but marketing also includes less costly ways to engage prospective customers, thanks to the internet. With some research, planning and execution, business owners can market successfully without enormous spending.

Topics: marketing, Using Different Media, Small business, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Business, Branding, Twitter, Marketing strategy

All businesses selling products or services are familiar with the term “marketing budget.” This means a plan to organize and allocate future funding of business functions. If you only have money for a mini-compact car, you are not going to go look at limousines. Right?

Let’s say you have a marketing budget of $1,000. If we use this to bring people to a computer site, we would call the same amount we intend to spend a “traffic budget,” since we are working to get the traffic to the site or even to our brick and mortar store using computer advertising.

“Conversion” is not just a religious term. It now means getting the customer to meet the business and to interact with it. Conversion is the mechanism and process of pouring targeted consumers into, through, and out the other side of the marketing funnel. The conversion rate is only going to be a percent of all those who come to the site, the percent who actually buy.

One way to get people to the site and to convert is to encourage them to do something, to become interactive. The best way to do that simply is a “call to action (CTA).”

A call to action has four main parts:

1. The Call: This is the request that a person interact the way you want him to.


2. The Action: On the computer, the simplest action a person can make is to click a button.


3. The Outcome: What happens when the person clicks the button. This should be related to the call. For example, if you ask them to click to get a free coupon, you deliver the coupon when they click the button.


4. The Design: The design will make a difference in how people respond, but there are many different types of designs. You will have to do some experimenting to find the one that works best for you.

Your CTA needs to be on every one of your website pages. If you have a blog site, it should be at the bottom of each blog.

How are you doing with this information? Are you having trouble getting responses?

 

Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.

 

Related articles

• 6 Lead Nurturing No-No's to Avoid in Your Email Campaigns (hubspot.com)


• 10 Amazing Blogging Insights Your Analytics Can Tell You (hubspot.com)

Topics: marketing, Using Different Media, landing page, Conversion rate, Hubspot, Marketing Plan, Facebook, mobile marketing, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business, social media marketing, Branding, Blogging, Twitter