A lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, and SOHO’s don’t just fear marketing they think it takes a lot of work.  While marketing does take work… most of that work revolves around understanding what your best potential buyers need to hear to buy your stuff.

After you get that right it probably takes a whole lot less work than you realize.  Andrea Stenberg recently wrote about ways to re-purpose your blog posts.  Something serious bloggers do on a regular basis.  So it’s easy to forget how something that’s a habit for me is something you don’t even think about.

Although I’m reminded of this fact when working with my individual coaching clients all the time.  They are so relieved to see how you can get so much value from just one simple thing.

The concept is simple.  For everything you do figure out ways to re-purpose and recycle it in as many ways as you can think of so you get the maximum return for your efforts.  This is leveraging.

When identifying ways to leverage remember to respect the different ways people like to consume information.  Some prefer to read, others like to listen, and most enjoy seeing things.

Let’s take something you probably already do and see how that might work.  Let’s say you get the opportunity to speak at a local event.  Here’s what you could do to get the most value from that speaking engagement:

1. Record your live event then either sell the recording or use it as a gift for people who connect with you.
2. Create notes for a hand-out to give people at the live event and then either use those notes with your product for sale, or include them with your gift.
3. Have your speech transcribed from your audio recording then offer attendees the opportunity to get the transcription in exchange for connecting with you.
4. Turn your transcription into an ebook.  You can either sell your ebook or give it away.  When you combine your ebook with the audio, and notes the value increases.
5. Transform your ebook into a number of articles and submit those articles to local publications, as well as, online article directories.
6. Submit audio recordings of your articles to online podcast directories.  Remember to include an offer at the end that invites listeners to get free information and connect with you.
7. Create a video from your articles and audios, and submit your videos to online video directories.
8. Combine your audios, videos, notes, and ebook into a product to either sell or use as an offer to connect with you.
9. Share your free content with other business owners who sell to the same people you do so they can give it as a gift to their customers.

See how easy it is to do just one thing and leverage that work so it works over and over again for you?

The next step is automation.  If you limit yourself to one-on-one interactions you’ll work yourself to death and sell yourself short.  To prevent that simply set-up ways for people to connect with you 24/7/365.  A web page is an easy way to do that.

Then help them stay connected with you by offering your free gift in exchange for their name and email address.  This information is simply collected via a form that’s connected to an auto-responder.  There are so many good things to say about automation I’ll leave that for an entirely different post another day.

photo credit: TheTruthAbout…

Technically a blind spot is a distortion or absence of sight in a small area of the eye.  In practical business terms a blind spot represents the challenges, mistakes, and oversights we face in our own businesses.  We all have blind spots.

What’s so frustrating is the fact that everyone but you can see the mistakes you are making yet no one tells you about them.  Mostly because you don’t ask and also because people don’t want to hurt your feelings, or worse yet, make you mad.

If you’ve ever tried to sell your home or watched HGTV you know that most home owners don’t see the things about their home that make the home less attractive to buyers.  Sometimes it’s an easy fix to get your home buyer ready.  Other times it requires some major work.  Yet the result is worth the effort.

Now I’d like to demonstrate how this can happen in your business as well.  The easiest way to do that is to show you two successful online businesses and demonstrate the impact.  First, I’d like you to go to Yahoo and take a look around.  Even if you’re a regular Yahoo user please take a moment to visit the sight and really look around.  Try to notice things you haven’t noticed before.

Next, go to Google and take a look around.  You can’t miss the difference.  While Yahoo has all kinds of things to look at and click on Google is very sparse.

Here’s why Googles approach has worked so well for Google and Yahoo’s hasn’t worked as well for Yahoo.

When someone new comes to your business whether online or offline that person has three questions you must immediately answer or they leave never to return.  Here are those questions:

1. What is this business/website about?
2. What can this business/website do for me?
3. Is there a good reason for me to do what I can do here?

It seems pretty obvious when you think about it doesn’t it?

When you compared the Yahoo website to Google did you notice how cluttered and confusing Yahoo seemed in comparison?  There were so many different things you could do.  There is so much stuff on the page it doesn’t feel like there is a clear pathway to the information you want.  Yahoo simply looks like a whole lot more work to use than Google.

In contrast Google’s sparseness is easy to look at.  There is a simple pathway to well defined information.  Plus there is one clear action on the page, enter a search phrase in the search box.

A clear path to one action is huge.

That’s exactly what you are trying to accomplish with your marketing strategies.  You want the right people to take an action that connects that person to you and your business.  And that’s all you want.

Everything else must come later after they’ve decided there is a good reason to connect with you.

When you try to do too much, ask too much, and give too much information YOU LOSE!  Even when you are as big as yahoo.

Going back to the concept of blind spots I want you to realize you can’t see what your potential buyers see because you’re too close to your business and too invested in what you’ve done.  So get help from some outside impartial eyes and really pay attention to the feedback you get.

This is something we can help each other with right here.  If you’d like to get constructive feedback about your online presence for your business tell us about your business in the comment box and include a link to your website so others can view your site.

After you view the other person’s website come back here and give constructive feedback about your impression and recommendations for improvements.

Don’t be shy this is an opportunity to get some valuable help!

photo credit: Marcin Wichary