Before reading on, please take a moment to think about this statement…
Spirituality is mumbo-jumbo!
Now, answer the following questions. Answer them honestly before moving on. Even better, write them down, because I want you to see how with a couple of simple points I can prove spirituality to be mumbo-jumbo and that anyone who believes in it is as “unconscious” as everyone else, and that includes you.
#1 – Do you agree with this statement?
#2 – If not, why not?
#3 – How does this statement make you feel? What emotion is most prominent? Come on you believers, you should be good at this bit.
#4 – What inner dialogue is going on in your head?
#5 – What are your initial thoughts about the person responsible for writing this statement?
Only when you have honestly answered these questions, should you read on.
Get Results: pause graphic
So hopefully you have done what I asked before arriving here. If you didn’t please do so before progressing.
So I said spirituality was mumbo-jumbo and that you were as “unconscious”, spiritually speaking, as everyone else.
How can I prove this? Well, by your answers and reactions. If you felt a string of negative emotions to the statement above and if you felt a degree of hostility towards the author of that statement then you are indeed as unconscious as everyone else.
You are attached to the idea of spirituality and that attachment or identification, is proof that you’re trapped in the Ego.
So for you spirituality is indeed mumbo-jumbo, because the Ego is anything but spiritual. Now I don’t mean for you to take offence and you may well do from an egoic state, but what I want to prove is how easily, even well practiced, enlightened people can be overcome by the Ego.
You have an attachment to the idea of spirituality, you have your sense-of-self invested in it. You see yourself as spiritually aligned, and you don’t like that to be criticised or doubted by someone outside your sense-of-self. When someone outside your sense-of-self attacks an attachment within your sense-of-self, you feel anger to some degree, depending on your strength of attachment and the degree to which it is being attacked.
If you didn’t feel the slightest negative thought or anger towards the author or the statement, then well done, you truly are enlightened.
Well, apart from the fact you felt compelled to check the article out in the first place. If you are truly 100% enlightened, would you have felt the need to have even clicked through to this page to begin with? Maybe there is an element of doubt in your spiritual beliefs in the background of your subconscious. Hey, spirituality is not easy, that pesky Ego isn’t a quitter, it will keep you on your toes. Bringing awareness to this fact, is the very thing that will break its control over you.
Hopefully you have gained some degree of self Awareness from this exercise, which was, after all my true intention. Please don’t take any offence. Peace and love.
Get Results: Books give a soul to the universe, wings in the wind, flight to the imagination and life to everything
Reading books is one of the most effective methods for the acquisition of knowledge, because it’s an opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants, to learn from others experiences, trials and tribulations, experiments, time, effort and expertise.
If you’re not the reading type, then audio versions are available for many popular books and are a great substitute. Check out Audible for some very affordable listening plans. I use it myself, listening in the car to make the most of travel time.
The most important part of reading a book or listening to an audio book, with the intention of learning something, is to put what you learn into practice, otherwise what’s the point? Knowledge is not power, it’s the potential for power, providing you put it to work for the good of yourself and others.
I hear people bragging about reading or listening to a book a day, Really? How can you read a book a day and possibly, gain anything of true value. Just reading without the time to reflect on the insights you have uncovered, seems nonsensical, unless you’re only gaining one or two insights from each book. Hey, if it works for you go ahead, but if you look back, having forgotten most of what you have read, then maybe it’s time to find a good book to read and take your time absorbing its valuable teachings, and to re-read it again and again.
There are a number of high quality books around, that are worth taking time over and re-reading. These are what I would describe as all time classics. Here are my favourites, if you haven’t read them, check them out by following the links.
Please note: these are affiliate links, I get paid a small commission if you decide to buy, and I thank you for that. The books are genuinely my favourites and well worth checking out.
Spiritual/Wellbeing
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
Wealth, Business, Marketing
Wealth and Wisdom Classics: Think and Grow Rich. The Science of Getting Rich, The Art of War by Napoleon Hill
The One Thing by Gary Keller
Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck by Chip Heath
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Build a Brand in 30 Days by Simon Middleton
Keep checking back for updated recommendations. Also check out our guide for the acquisition of Knowledge.
Knowledge is power, or at least it’s the potential for power. Knowing what to do is vital for success, but it comes about in a variety of ways.
The best method is probebly learning through DOING. But lessons can be learned, and shortcuts can be takens by paying attention to the journey of those that have gone before you.
Role models and mentors can make a huge contribution to your progress, and shorten the time needed to reach your goal, as long as you pick sources that provide accurate information, unbiased by their own agendas, and self interests.
If you don’t have direct access to role models, books are a great alternative and gateway to knowledge.
https://youtu.be/jPMsoMrP8uk
Below is a number of ingredients to the acquistion of knowledge, which is one of the three components of the Get Results model, the others being motivation and productivity. We will, over the coming months be linking from this page to fresh, relevant content related to the component it is linked from, so please keep checking back.
Clicking on the posters will take you to more in-depth information. If it doesn’t click through, the information isn’t available yet.
Get Results: Knowledge requires reliable sources of informationGet Results: Knowledge requires verifiably credible and unbiased sourcesGet Results: Knowledge requires roles models mentors mastermind teamsGet Results: Knowledge requires accurate informationGet Results: Knowledge requires knowing how, what and when particularly whyGet Results: Knowledge requires putting knowledge into actionGet Results: Knowledge requires developing skill from the prractice of doing. (Click on poster for more info)Get Results: Knowledge requires learning, comprehension and recallGet Results: Knowledge requires testing variableslGet Results: Knowledge requires asking expansive questionslGet Results: Knowledge requires hiring talent to do it for you
Knowledge Quotes
“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.” – Anton Chekhov
“The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.” – Socrates
“Knowledge is power if applied.”
“Power is gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it.”
“knowledge comes from learning, wisdom comes from living.” – Anthony Douglas Williams
“knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
“The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.” – Richard Cecil
“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin
“intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” – Salvador Dali
“As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.” – Charles Morgan
“Doubt is the key to knowledge.”
“knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.” – Alfred North Whitehead
“If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come.” – Arapaho
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” – George Bernard Shaw
“The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.” – Herbert Spencer
“Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.” – Peter Drucker
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realise the extent of your ignorance.” – Thomas Sowell
“We are all ignorant. It’s what you do about it that counts. I wish more people felt comfortable asking questions, the world would be a better place if they did. After all, division is built from ignorance.”
Lead Magnets otherwise known as “opt-in bribes” or “opt-in incentives” are the little bonuses you promise your website visitors in exchange for their email address.
Why do you want their email address you may ask, well you want it so that you have a method of contact, a direct way of keeping in touch with them, so that you can let them know when you have something to share.
Imagine what would happen if your website crashed and your audience couldn’t find it, you could simply send them an email to let them know where they can continue to follow you while it’s down and explain what has happened.
If you have a time sensitive offer that needs to be acted on quickly, you could easily send them an email to make them aware of it.
Getting your audience’s email doesn’t mean you should keep pestering them with endless communication. But it’s a way you can keep in touch with them directly, rather than hoping they can still find you or them having to keep checking your site to find new content.
In fact growing an email list is one of the most important things you should be doing in your efforts for on-line success, no matter what type of business you run, whether it is an e-commerce site, an affiliate site, or a site that just provides information, like this one.
You’ll need three things to grow your list, an opt-in form on your site, an auto-responder service (sends automatic emails to subscribers) and a lead magnet (see below for examples)
The list below is a general lead magnet list, but when you create a lead magnet yourself, obviously, you should make it relevant to your business/niche. It’s no good offering a recipe download when you’re in the furniture restoration niche.
Make sure it provides value in some way, and is not available elsewhere on your website without your visitors, first, exchanging their email address.
Lead magnets can come in the form of a PDF document, HTML page, video, audio file, slide presentation, or whatever best suits the content you’re providing. People like to have something they can keep and is easily accessible on their preferred device, whether that be phone or computer, and preferably, without having to go on-line to access it, so make it downloadable, where possible.
Lead magnet ideas
White papers – A white paper is an authoritative guide or report designed so the reader can understand a specific topic or issue. Traditionally they have been used by government bodies and business to business (B2B) marketing.
Re-organised blog posts – Put existing content into a PDF download and call it an e-book – Blog posts aren’t always particularly well organised, they are rarely in the best order to be able to consume information about a specific topic, but rather, in the sequence they were written and posted. So if you write an article about say, lead magnets and then do another post about the subject taken from a different perspective, some months later, the two posts may be separated by other content, which means the audience have to search for the two posts separately. If you’re organised you should link the two posts via page links, but many times this doesn’t happen. You could even put them under their own specific category, but if you talk about a lot of topics, this could become unwieldy. So putting the posts into one document and offering it as a lead magnet could be beneficial to the reader.
Ebooks – are one of the most popular choices as an opt-in bribe. They range from a few pages, up to hundreds of pages in length and are usually in PDF file format. If you’re very knowledgeable about your subject, share it in an ebook
Recipes – we used recipes in an early example of what not to do, but they’re a great idea as long as you”re doing a cooking related blog.
Resource lists – People love resource lists because they provide tools that actually help get things done. I have a resource list here, that you can check out
“How to…” guides/tutorials – Another favourite of many blogs. Teach people to do something that’s important in achieving their goal or solving a problem. These can be in text form as a PDF file or in video/audio format. If you’re going the way of video, host them on platforms such as Youtube or Wistia, you can always embed them within your blog posts, on your own website. Make sure that you don’t list them publicly though, otherwise, people won’t need to exchange their email address, to access them, they’ll simply go to your Youtube channel to view them.
Tips and tricks – if you have any nifty short cuts or other time saving tips and advice, when doing something specific, or using a particular piece of software, then share these with your audience via an opt-in.
Case studies – If you can access case studies that prove a point or show some achievement, relating to your niche, share them.
Quiz or Competition – Allow people to enter a competition or quiz in exchange for that all important email address. People love to spend time doing quizzes and winning prizes.
Offer a link to a Questions and Answers or a Frequently Asked questions document where you spell out important information that you know your audience are desperate to know the answers to.
Provide a “5/10/20” day training series in return for an email. A multiple video training series gives your audience an ideal opportunity to get to know you a little better We’re conditioned to deal with people face to face, and while this is not always possible, video allows viewers to see the person behind the brand. Make sure you give them some great information to-boot, and you’ve got a very compelling persuader.
Interview your client/supplier/yourself/industry leader/influencer
Tell a story
Reviews
What’s new/hot in your niche
Your opinion on (your industry, economic trends, best practice)
Discount
Software
Consultation
Free trial
Physical gift
Notification for future announcement
Newsletter/webinar registration
Notification of latest blog posts
The “Take Away”
The more perceived value your audience sees in your lead magnet, the more likely they are to opt-in. The best advice I can give you is, test different options and see what work for your particular niche. Use best practices as a starting point, and build on these, but you won’t know what’s best for you and your audience until you try and compare results.
There is some evidence that offering different lead magnets on individual articles, relating to the content of that article, can significantly increase opt-in rates, and this seems logical when you think about it.
If you have a site wide opt-in for say, “Facebook lead generation tips” and this appears at the bottom of an article about “Creating Content”, they reader is unlikely to find your lead magnet offer interesting, because it’s not relevant to their interest at that time, and as a result, they will most likely leave after reading the article without opting in. However if it was relevant to the content, they would surely find it more compelling to opt-in.
The added benefit of this approach is you are segmenting your audience into their specific interests based on which offer they opted in to. They may find multiple lead magnets also more engaging and encourage them to hang around on your site longer.
I recently read an article by Jeff Bullas that talked about “Content Upgrades” being an effective lead generator. Basically a Content Upgrade is something that is related to your article that adds extra value. So it could be a PDF version of the article that the audience can download and store on their device, or a checklist version of the article containing the main take-away points from the article. It could even be a video or audio version of the article containing extra value in the form of extra information or deeper insights into the material.
Summary
Getting email addresses from prospective customers should be one of the main objectives for your website, and lead magnets are one of the most effective tools available to you in achieving that objectives. It’s considered much easier to get new visitors to part with their email address, than it is to part with their money, so selling the click, is a sensible marketing strategy for new visitors, who don’t yet know you.
Use your email communication to build trust, liking and credibility in the eyes of the receiver, all which are needed before people will part with their hard earned money, and buy from you.
For more marketing information, check out our marketing guide.
Think of an advertising system where you can target specific prospective customers based on how they are searching for your services. You can appear to them at the very moment they are looking to buy from suppliers just like you.
You only pay when someone clicks on your advert unlike traditional print media where you pay a fixed fee whether you get leads or not.
Depending on the type of business you have, you can scale up your marketing or narrow it down. You can re-market to visitors that have visited your site without buying so that you increase brand awareness. Research shows that a prospect will interact with your brand at least 7 times before buying.
The advertising platform that does all this is called Google Adwords, otherwise known as pay per click (PPC) advertising.
The importance of being on page one of Google search results
If you’re not on the first page of Google, prospective customers aren’t going to find you. Think about it, do you look beyond the first page of Google search results when you’re looking to buy something on-line? Research shows that most people don’t.
Click through rates vary massively even if you do appear on the first page of the search results, depending on what position you’re listing appears, for instance the first 3 positions on Google get over 60% of all the traffic with the bottom 3 positions getting less than 10%.
In a recent study on the effectiveness of social media as a sales generator compared to PPC and SEO it concluded, “As far as driving on-line sales goes, social media is an astoundingly ineffective channel. If you want to grow your on-line sales, the evidence is clear: SEO and PPC are where you need to invest”
SEO is a long term strategy, simply because it can take months to get a decent listing position, providing you follow the SEO guidelines for onsite and offsite SEO, all of which takes time to put in place. Whereas PPC is immediate, there’s no waiting months to see results. As soon as your adverts get Google approval, they go live. I have had adverts go live within minutes of setting them up.
Quick Tip – Success in Pay Per Click isn’t just about getting your advert displayed as much as possible for the least cost. It’s about getting it in front of good prospects that are interested in buying your product or service. You don’t want to be paying for people who are just looking for information, particularly if your budget is tight or you’re bootstrapping. You don’t want them clicking through your advert and bouncing off your landing page either, ideally you want them to buy if they click through your adverts, or not click at all, if they’re not interested in your product or service. How you achieve this balance is where the magic happens. Focused targeting is the name of the game.
DIY or pay someone else to do it for you?
Now you can learn to do Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising yourself, there’s lots of free information available out there that takes you through the process. However much of it may be out-of-date, with Google constantly making changes to its system. There is also a lot of mis-information circulating that you should be aware of.
Alternatively you can pay an expert to do it for you, many of which will want a large up-front commitment of £300-£800 to set the system up for you, followed by a minimum contract period. I used a very reputable SEO company to do PPC for me some years ago, and after spending £1000+ I didn’t get a single sale out of it. I still get calls from PPC businesses now that promise the world but don’t ask anything about my business, and without knowing about it and my prospective customer profiles, how can they know who to target?
I decided to learned the system myself from the ground up, and I still use it successfully today because I’ve tested it, tweaked it, and improved it as I’ve gone along. I use it for my own business (not related to this site), and it works for me. I have learned to build on each campaign by split testing, peeling and sticking, dropping poor performing adverts and replacing with new improved versions, in an ever improving spiral. It takes time, I’ve spent lots of money as I’ve gone along but I’ve learned, DOING is the only way to learn in this game.
I highly recommend you try PPC for yourself, it’s made a huge difference to my business. I compete with some of the big UK based experience companies and have consistently ranked higher than them, so it can be done with the right targeting. And with a ROI of well over 300%, it can also be profitable.
Local business campaigns can be effective for as little as a couple of pounds per day, of course if you want a bigger reach you’ll have to employ a bigger budget. Return On Investment is what it’s all about. If you can make £2 for every £1 you spend, than spending £10k a month means you’re making £20k, spending £100k means you’re making £200k, and that’s how you should look at it.
For more about marketing, please check out our Marketing guide.
Below is a blog post I did back in 2013, but which was on another website, I thought I would include it here as it has some relevance today.
Get Results: Google Adwords
I have been using Google Adwords for my photography business for 7 years now. Initially I used a third party to execute a campaign for me, but after spending about £1000 without getting a single sale, I decided to cut my losses and end the whole sorry saga.
However in the back of my mind I thought the basic premise of Adwords was a sound one. Your ads appear to anyone searching for your product / service, at the very time they want it. Surely this is one of the best ways to target your customers? So why was my previous experience of Adwords such an expensive disaster? Had I not given it enough time? The company that ran my Adwords campaign thought I should have given it more time, I ran it for approx 4 months. Only when I questioned why I wasn’t getting any conversions did they talked about changing certain aspects of my site to improve performance.
I decided to run my own campaigns and set the whole thing up from scratch. I read a lot of stuff online, and invested in what turned out to be a great book a “Ultimate Guide to Google Ad Words: How To Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes” by Perry Marshall. which was great at giving me a clearer understanding of the psychology of how Adwords works and then how to develop the campaigns to get better and better results. I read much more after that book but would have to credit it for getting me off to a solid start, so thanks Perry.
Once I had a clearer understanding of the techniques that make the difference between a successful campaign and one that empties your pockets faster than an hole in the bottom of them, I understood why I hadn’t got anything out of my previous attempt. I now get more in voucher sales from my site than I spend on Adwords and with a good chance of up-selling those vouchers once they are redeemed, I find Adwords to be an invaluable sales channel.
The moral being that if your product is suitable for online selling (and not all products are) and if you know your customers have a tendency to look for your service online, which I did, then Adword can be very profitable if you know what you are doing.
So what did I do to change my results, from having no sales to actually making a profit from Adwords? Well first of all I took a close look at my customers. Who was buying what from me? Initially I had Ads selling portraits, with lots of different keywords that included Babies photoshoots, Family photoshoots, Pet photoshoots, and Mother and Daughter Makeover photoshoots. Once someone clicked on the Ads they were taken to a page that sold vouchers for all of of these photo experiences. The first thing I learned to do was split my business into all the separate experiences and who the likely buyer of those experiences would be.
Makeover photo shoots – Usually purchased as a gift for friends or relatives, sometimes bought for self, enjoyed by 12 year olds up to middle aged women. Having said that the purchaser is often an husband or boyfriend.
Newborn Baby photo shoots – usually purchased as a gift for friends or relatives, sometimes bought by mother of newborn babies.
I then split these separate experiences into their own campaigns, chose keywords that were relevant to each such as baby photos, newborn photo shoots for the baby campaign, makeover photo shoot for ….guess what …the makeover photo experiences…and so on.
I kept the number of keywords down to about 1-2 per ad group, making sure that each keyword was included in the Advert and again on the landing page, which contained information about just that particular kind of photo experience. What was I doing? I was focusing my Ads towards specific customers who were looking for specific photo experiences. So someone looking for a baby shoot would type in say “baby photo packages” into the search engine, which would trigger my ad to appear on their search results. They would see my headline “Baby Photos just £30” and hopefully would click on it to find out more, they would then go through to see my landing page which would give more information about my baby photo packages. They then have the option to buy a voucher for the package there and then, or give me a call to order one.
This way of structuring my Adwords campaign has helped turn my fortunes around. It sounds like common sense but wasn’t how the so called experts that managed my first campaign had gone about it.
Adwords can work for you but you need to know what you’re doing. I guess that applies to any kind of advertising. I am sure there are many great PPC agents that can execute very good PPC campaigns for you, but only when they understand your business, your products and your customers. If they don’t ask many questions about your business at the start, how can they know enough to give you the best return on your investment. I will be going into my Adwords experience in more detail in future posts.
Summary
Google Adwords can work for local businesses, but you really need to know what your doing, otherwise it can be an expensive waste of time. The key to setting up a successful Adwords campaign is to know your business and focus on each of your product offerings (either individual products or by category depending on the nature of your business) and the type of customer who buys that particular product offering. Focus is the key here. If you are using an agent to do your Adwords campaign for you, make sure they understand your business as well as you know it. Even if you do use an agent to manage your Adwords campaign for you, I would suggest having a basic understanding of how Adwords works, so that you know if your agent is giving you the best service. I would suggest reading “The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords” by Perry Marshall, it contains everything you need to know at this time. Adwords is ever evolving so you will need to stay ontop of the changes to get the most from the platform.
Hope you found something useful in this one….thanks for stopping by.
The power of GRATITUDE can not be overstated, it works like magic, to change a negative mindset into a positive one, in an instant.
There is a quick way to move from negative emotion to positive emotion, and that is by pschologically reframing what you think about.
You can only think about one thing at a time, try it for yourself, your thoughts might flitter around aimlessly, but you can only hold one thought at any time.
Get Results: make the best of everything
If you’re feeling in a negative state, it is because of what is occupying your thoughts in that moment.
One quick fix for this is to become grateful. Coming from the perspective of gratitude, allowing your thoughts to really explore the feeling of gratitude, instantly shifts your perspective.
Get Results: appreciation
If you focus on what you don’t have, on the pain that you share your life with, of what’s not good, then you inevitably are going to feel negatively.
However there is so much to be grateful for, your life, the fact you get to experience this reality, against all the odds of even being born. Of the love and friendship you share with others, the glory of health and capability, both physically and mentally. The beauty of nature, the rich tapestry of life that is all around you, if you dare to look, and I mean really look. The possibilities and opportunities that are there for all, if they believe and are willing to put in the work. It’s a matter of perspective. Changing the way you think about things, really does change your experience of life.
If you would like to read more articles focused on GRATITUDE, click here.
Get Results: gratitude changes mood
Gratitude Quotes
“Trade Expectations for Appreciation.” – Tony Robbins
“Gratitude is the quickest way to turn a negative mood into a positive one.” – getresults.org.uk
“It is not happy people who are thankful. It is thankful people who are happy.”
“Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have.”
“A moment of gratitude makes a difference in your attitude.”
“Expect nothing and appreciate everything.”
“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.” – Tony Robbins
“There is always, always something to be thankful for.”
“Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.”
“The quickest way to change a negative mood into a positive one is to think deeply about what you have to be grateful for. There is always something.” Getresults.org.uk
“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” – Karl Barth
“When you arise in the morning. Think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”
“Gratitude transforms common days into thanksgivings, turns routine jobs into joy, and changes ordinary opportunities into blessings.”
“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”
“On a good day, give thanks, on a bad day, give thanks. Life is a gift. Tomorrow isn’t promised.”
“Don’t wait ’til it’s gone before you realise its worth. Appreciate it while you have it in your life, instead of neglecting it. That way it’s more likely to be in your life for longer” – getresults.org.uk
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein
“Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received.” – Henry Van Dyke
“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” – Melody Beattie
“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” – Willie Nelson
“Whatever you appreciate and give thanks for will increase in your life.”
“There is no joy without gratitude.” – Brene Brown
“Enjoy the little things for one day. You may look back and realise they were the big things.”
“If you count all your assets, you always show a profit.” – Robert Quillen
“Contentment makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.”
“The great secret of life is to cultivate the ability to appreciate the things we have.”
When I first started my business many years ago, I found finding my USP, one of the hardest things to get to grips with. A unique selling proposition (USP) is something that differentiates you from all of your competitors. It’s what makes you so different or unique in a particular way that customers and prospects will opt to do business with you over any of your rivals.
One of the biggest mistakes you, as a business owner, can make is not finding something that makes you unique, especially in a very competitive market, where customers have an abundance of choice and where differentiation becomes increasingly difficult other than through pricing.
To survive, you have to stand out and differentiate in the eyes of your prospects. Your USP is what explains to the world why you are different.
The more clearly you can communicate you USP, the more you will stand out from you competitors
Get Results: Branding
So how do you go about finding or choosing your USP?
Think carefully about opportunities within your market that are not currently being catered for. If you base your USP on these opportunities you are much more likely to be successful. Another way to look at this is, identify a demand that is not being supplied, and centre your USP around this. Examples can include:
Genuine convenience – such as instant availability, handy location and so on.
Large selection of stock items,
Fast service,
Longer than usual opening hours, or more convenient opening hours,
Professional advice,
Longer than normal warranty or guarantee,
Reputation for honesty and integrity,
Personal service and assistance,
Privacy and security,
Another way to identify your USP is to have a good answer to the following customer question:
Why should I do business with you, instead of any and every other option available to me, including the option of doing absolutely nothing at all?
Another way of asking the same question from your point of view is:
What do you uniquely guarantee?
When you have a really powerful answer to these two questions, your adverts practically write themselves. When you have a really powerful answer to these questions, people will line up to buy from you.
A third method to identify your USP is to answer the following questions, again these questions are taken from your customers point of view:
Why should I read or listen to you?
Why should I believe what you have to say?
Why should I do anything about what you’re offering?
Why should I act now?
A fourth method of identifying your USP is comparing yourself to your competitors over a range of criteria, and focusing your USP around the areas where you score higher. The following table is an example of how you might set out your analysis. Score you and your competitors 1-5 on each of the criteria listed below, or add your own.
self
Comp 1
Comp 2
Price
quality
range
Catalogue quality
website
Ease of ordering
Speed of delivery
reliability
Personal liking
First understand the Characteristics that Customers’ Value – Evaluate your strengths and significant competencies. Take a good look at the features and benefits of your product or service and then decide what differentiates you and your business from the pack.
What services and/or products do you provide?
To whom do you provide these services/products; who are your customers?
What needs do you fill for your customers?
How big a problem you solve?
What benefits do they appreciate most and which do they actively look for?
What makes you better than other companies?
Is it the value you provide, your experience, know how, customer service, delivery speed and so on?
Rank yourself and your competitors by these criteria – Check on competition by reviewing leading trade publications, analyse newsletters and search the internet for news and trends about your niche, particularly social media pages.
Here’s another great tip: survey your customers to gather data.
Identify where you rank well – Take your top match(es) and use it to position yourself and your product in the market. Summarise the results into one compact, compelling, motivating phrase that will persuade your clients to trade their cash for the benefits presented by your products/services. Your significant product benefits and the way in which you structure your offering is your ‘Unique Selling Proposition’ or ‘USP.’
Once you have identified your USP, you need to think about the ways in which you can use it. These could include:
Sound-bites or elevator speeches
Marketing messages online and offline
Brochures or flyers
Press Releases
Business Proposals
Keep your USP as the central theme throughout all your marketing, and through repetition you will become known as the business to use for that particular USP. Be careful not to try and be all things to all people. Selling to everyone is selling to no one.
To find more information about marketing, check out our marketing guide.
When you stand side by side with your competitors in a publication, a directory or in a pay per click (PPC) advert, you have to have something that makes you stand out, to get noticed. There needs to be something that jumps off the page and smacks your prospective customers right between the eyes. One of the best ways to do this is to use “contrast“.
If you have the luxury of being able to use images in your advert you can make use of contrast in a number of ways using size, tone, colour, value, direction, shape, type, position and texture within your advert. The key to making an impact is being as different visually, to your competitors as you can be. If they are using bright colours, use black and white, if they are displaying a particular style do something that looks very different.
If, as in the case of PPC ads, you don’t currently have the benefit of using images to stand out, you have to make sure your wording provides the contrast. If your competitors are offering discounts, then you should reframe from doing so and approach it from a different angle say something like:
“No Sale Here, just great prices all year round.”
“We Don’t Need a Sale to…”
“Giving You the Best Prices – Order Now.”
If they’re not displaying prices, then you show prices, if they are showing prices then you reframe from doing so. If they are using lots of words, then you use less and make use of white space to stand out, and so on.
Using Contrast to sell
You can make use of CONTRAST on your landing pages or in your sales copy by using the rule of contrast – this is based on perceptual contrast and happens when you introduce 2 vastly different alternatives in succession. It distorts and amplifies the perception, making them seem to be more different from one another than they actually are. It works due to the fact that people need to establish a benchmark for comparison to make judgements especially in unfamiliar situations.
The passage of time reduces the effect of contrast. So timing is critical when using this method. The second offer should be presented immediately after the first to get the full effect.
The Door in the face close is a great example of the rule of contrast where a larger initial request is followed by a smaller request – the prospect feels they are getting a better deal than they were originally and are more likely to make the purchase.
A slight variation of this rule is the Comparison effect which presents an undesirable version first and follows it up with the sellers “intended offer” at the same price. This is often used by realtor’s when selling houses, they present a run down property first followed by the one they really want to sell, and at the same price. The prospect feels the second property is vastly superior in comparison to the first, and so is a bargain.
Summary
Using CONTRAST helps you stand out from the crowd and allows you to differentiate yourself from your competitors. It also allows you to anchor your prospects perception of value, helping them feel they are making a more informed decision.
Hope you found this article useful. For more marketing information, check out our marketing guide.
One of the most important things I’ve learned about Marketing is, you can’t and shouldn’t try to sell to everyone. Doing so means you’re not actually selling to anyone. The point is perfectly illustrated through the following tale:
The boy, old man and a donkey tale – don’t try to please everyone.
An old man, a boy and a donkey were going to town. The boy rode on the donkey and the old man walked. As they went along they passed some people who remarked it was a shame the old man was walking and the boy was riding. The man and boy thought maybe the critics were right, so they changed positions.
Later, they passed some people that remarked: “What a shame, he makes that little boy walk.” They then decided they both would walk!
Soon they passed some more people who thought they were stupid to walk when they had a decent donkey to ride. So, they both rode the donkey.
Now they passed some people that shamed them by saying how awful to put such a load on a poor donkey. The boy and man said they were probably right, so they decided to carry the donkey. As they crossed the bridge, they lost their grip on the animal and he fell into the river and drowned.
The moral of the story? In Marketing, if you try to please everyone, you might as well… Kiss your ass good-bye.
Stay Focused
Instead of marketing to everyone, look to focus your marketing to a particular customer profile, who buys a particular product from you, maybe for a particular purpose. For example, mobile phones are a “must have” these days but who would be a typical customer for a mobile phone, and why might they look to make a purchase?
If I think about myself, a middle aged man, I want a phone to be functional by allowing me to make calls when I need to (network coverage), and offer a good payment plan (cost and value). I rarely purchase anything from the internet on my phone, so that is not one of my considerations when making a purchase. So in summary my buying criteria for a phone purchase would be:-
Connectivity (phone and internet works when I want it to, which I guess would be a universal requirement)
Payment plan deal – value for money
Cost and affordability
My buying decision doesn’t consider:-
How the phone looks
How well it plays games
How many text messages I get with it (I hate texting)
Internet access and social media connectivity (although I am finding myself spending more and more time doing these)
All the technology info ( I don’t care how it works, just that it does)
So if marketing to someone like me, Companies would have to make sure their marketing ticks my buying criteria. If instead they talk about how the phone looks and feels, and how well games play on it etc, then they are not appealing to me in any way.
If on the other hand they were marketing to my 12 year old daughter they would have to aim for a whole different buying criteria, where style and brand would be very important factors, as would texting and social media functionality
To further complicate the point, what if I am buying for my daughter as a gift. The phone company would have to consider my buying criteria as well as my daughters in this instance. They would have to appeal to my money consciousness, security issues, and my concerns about her ability to make calls in an emergency, while still providing the style my daughter would demand.
Summary
So it’s important to know who you’re trying to sell to and focus on them.
Is it a parent searching for a phone for their child? (security, able to make calls in emergency), is it the child searching for themselves? (functionality, popularity of model, visual appeal), is it a geek buying a phone? (technical specifications). Each would need to be targeted differently. Speak to each in their language.
Hope you get something from this article, check out our marketing guide for more information.
When discussing WEALTH, most people focus on the economic aspects of wealth. But ECONOMICS is only a small part of overall LIFE WEALTH. Life wealth covers all aspects of life, including, economic, physical/health, psychological and social areas.
Social wealth
This is about the RELATIONSHIP CONNECTIONS that you form, and can include good and bad. Relationships with family, friends, colleagues, bosses, subordinates, even strangers. Think about the positive relationships you establish and the negative ones. Increasing well-being, means deepening the positive relationships and ditching the negative ones. Align your energy with those that feel good, and positive. Having a good social SUPPORT NETWORK, and personal BONDING is a fundamental need for the human species.
How do you know if a relationship is positive? Ask yourself honestly, if you feel a greater sense of your BEING, an expanded version of yourself. You are MORE, in the company of a particular other person. You can be true to yourself, and the relationship JUST WORKS. There are no downsides. You accept the other people for who they are, and they accept you. If it’s a case of they are great when not [blank], then consider how often they are [blank], is this a price worth paying. The blank could be drunk, angry, on drugs or a myriad of other things.
You have to take the person as a whole, their good aspects and bad aspects. Don’t try to mould people to fit what you want, let them be who they are. If it works on that basis, great. If not, move on, life is really too short.
Physical Health wealth
It doesn’t matter how economically wealthy you are, without good physical health, you just can’t enjoy the fruits of wealth to the same degree. Health is so much more of a blessing than money could ever be.
We tend to neglect physical health, taking it for granted until it is taken away from us. On the flip side, enjoying good health, makes everything else more enjoyable.
Now I’m not saying you can’t have a good life without good health, because you can. You have to make the best of the hand life deals you. Some of the most extraordinary people in the world today, suffer from bad health and illness, but through the frailty of their form, shines through the light of their spirit. They can be an inspiration for others.
The point I’m trying to make is, don’t take your health for granting, look after it, and appreciate it.
Psychological wealth
Psychological wealth, includes intellectual and emotional aspects of personality. Emotions are triggered by our thoughts, which also have a bearing on most everything we do, including our social connections and how we treat our health.
Our thoughts are what shape our beliefs and values, which in turn affect our perceptions and interpretations about life and everything in it. What you focus your thoughts on, beccomes your reality. Therefore the quality of your thoughts, determines the quality of your life. Check out our wellbeing guide for more information.
Mental health is getting more attention today, than it has ever has before. It is a really big issue. Life today seems to be too much for some people to cope, overwhelmed by their perception of the complexities of modern life, the rapid rate of change, seeming lack of security, consistency, and stability economically and politically. People locked in EGOIC STRIVING for more and need for growth, are put under tremendous social pressure to achieve success, or be labelled a failure. Interpreting a breakdown in the sense of community, lack of emotional support and parental bonding can also impact negatively on psychological wealth.
On the positive side, having a positive mental attitude, the freedom to be yourself, to be true to who you are, the courage to follow your dreams, a positive self image, acceptance of the good and bad of what makes you, you, can have a major positive impact on your psychological wealth.
Economic wealth
So let’s give it some attention, economic wealth, is what most, or at least, a lot of people are fixated with. Wanting more is a structural part of the Ego, where WANTING is often more important than HAVING.
Having the burden of debt or liabilities has a negative impact on you, while having savings and assets, a positive one.
Pulling it all together
Like a balance sheet, positive aspects are weighed against the negative aspects of each of the wealth categories PHYSICIAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL, and ECONOMIC. The aim is to have a positive perspective for each to increase your overall LIFE WEALTH.
I’ve weighted the categories in order of importance (from my perspective).
PSYCHOLOGICAL and PHYSICAL HEALTH WEALTH = each is 5/16
SOCIAL WEALTH = 4/16
ECONOMIC WEALTH = 2/16
You might have a different order than mine, it doesn’t really matter, as long as you consider them all when coming to a judgement of your wealth status.
The initial inspiration for this article was taken from actualwealth.com. Check it out by following the link. We have built on the model presented there, making a number of adjustments, taken from our own experiences and understanding.
” by Perry Marshall. which was great at giving me a clearer understanding of the psychology of how Adwords works and then how to develop the campaigns to get better and better results. I read much more after that book but would have to credit it for getting me off to a solid start, so thanks Perry.
