Not many businesses know or realize that Google has changed it’s algorithm to focus on Local Business.  Now, when someone searches for a dentist in Tyler, Texas, 7 Local Businesses pop up on the 1st page right below the Google Ads.  These are called Google Places.  

Because of their placement, these are quickly becoming very powerful and one of the best ways to get to the 1st page of Google and get found online!

Here is a screenshot of an Eye-Tracker that shows on a Google Search where the User’s eyes and mouse are going first.  As you can tell it’s right on the 1st 5 Google Places.  

Did You Know that the Top 5 Spots in Google Get 50% of the Business?

Pretty powerful stuff!  Want to know where you show up in Google Places?

We have a tool where you can search for your Google Places listing and see where it ranks vs. your competitors ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!  

Click here:  http://localsearchexperts.biz/ and enter in your Business’s Local Phone # to see where you rank!

I hope this helps grow your business and produce great leads for you.  Until next time.  Have a great day!

Today we’ll start a new series talking all about Word of Mouth and how it can make or break your business in an extremely short amount of time. In this first lesson we’ll get a feel for what exactly word of mouth is.

Word of Mouth is easily the most powerful form of marketing and is absolutely free. People talk about ads they see, experiences they have and the products they purchase. If you treat people right and spread the word about your new products/services in a positive way, you’ll attract the right customers and client who will sustain your business for a long time.

Now, as positive as word of mouth can be for your business, the other side of the coin is how negative it can be as well. Bad news seems invariably to travel faster than good news and if you have a less than high-quality product or weak customer service system, then your customers will tell everyone they know to not buy your products and services.

The age of technology has proved to be an amazing benefit in the world of word on mouth. With blogs, podcasts, online marketing, forums, social networking and all the other online mediums available and making it easier and easier for consumers to share their experiences. And, remember this is all free advertising for you.

Let’s take a minute to talk about the importance of shortening the customer decision cycle to help customers/client choose more quickly and easily. There are three great ways to increase sales by shortening the decision cycle. They are:

Increase the overall dollar amount customers spend on each purchase

Increase your number of customers

Increase frequency of purchases

Let’s take a deeper look at decision speed. Offer simplicity, ease and a fun purchasing atmosphere and you’ll help your customers make their decisions quicker and more confidently. When this happens your customers will buy more frequently, spend more money than usual, refer friends and make the decision to purchase more quickly. This can raise your market share by over 100 times.

The time it takes your customer to decide and purchase far outweighs any other component of marketing. When you focus on customer decision speed it forces you to take a hard look at your company and brand image, positioning, value, customer service, guarantees and product quality.

The next area I want to talk about quickly is how to minimize the friction, or stress, involved with decision making. No matter how easily people find decision making there is a certain amount of anxiety we all experience when making a purchase, especially from a new source or for a large amount of money. When you help to minimize this emotional response, you will soothe your customers’ anxiety and they will make their decision quicker and more confidently.

There are a few secrets to accelerate the customers decision making progress:

Your benefits, features, claims and promises must be obvious, clear and concise.

The information you offer must be complete, easy to understand, credible and balanced.

Use comparisons that show a marked difference.

Your guarantees must be rock solid and more than the customer expects.

Make trial periods easy.

You must have simple evaluations of your products or services.

Testimonials need to be relevant and positive.

Your support, delivery and other operational systems must be perfect.

Your website can be as good as you make it. You can offer more than information, you can offer an experience that guides your customers gently through the decision making process to make it easy for them to buy. Take it a step beyond by offering toll-free support numbers, software downloads to help with the process or other classy and informative ways to reassure your customers that you are there with them every step of the way and have nothing to hide.

This wraps up the first post in our series on word of mouth. If you need help identifying your target market and the issues they are experience in their purchasing experience that is making their decision time long, try our FREE test drive and work with one of our coaches to come up with the best way to smooth out your purchasing experience.

Next time we’ll move forward with word of mouth and talk about the power of word of mouth and what exactly this powerful tool is and can be used for.

To Your Success,

Troy Braithwaite

This year, as you are setting goals, make sure that you are setting what I like to call SMART Goals.

SMART goals are just that: smart. Whether you are setting goals for your personal life, your business, or with your employees, goals that have been developed with the SMART principle have a higher probability of being achieved.

The SMART Principle

1. Specific

Specific goals are clearer and easier to achieve than nonspecific goals. When writing down your goal, ask yourself the five “W” questions to narrow in on what exactly you are aiming for. Who? Where? What? When? Why?

For example, instead of a nonspecific goal like, “get in shape for the summer,” a specific goal would be, “go to the gym three times a week and eat twice as many vegetables.”

2. Measurable

If you can’t measure your goal, how will you know when you’ve achieved it? Measurable goals help you clearly see where you are, and where you want to be. You can see change happen as it happens.

Measurable goals can also be broken down and managed in smaller pieces. They make it easier to create an action plan or identify the steps required to achieve your goal. You can track your progress, revise your plan, and celebrate each small achievement. For example, instead of aiming to increase revenue in 2009, you can set out to increase revenue by 30% in the next 12 months, and celebrate each 10% along the way.

3. Attainable

Goals that are attainable have a higher chance of being realized. While it is important to think big, and dream big, too often people set goals that are simply beyond their capabilities and wind up disappointed. Goals can stretch you, but they should always be feasible to maintain your motivation and commitment.

For example, if you want to complete your first triathlon but you’ve never run a mile in your life, you would be setting a goal that was beyond your current capabilities. If you decided instead to train for a five mile race in six months, you would be setting an achievable goal.

4. Relevant

Relevant – or realistic – goals are goals that have a logical place in your life or your overall business strategy. The goal’s action plan can be reasonably integrated into your life, with a realistic amount of effort.

For example, if your goal is to train to climb to base camp at Mount Everest within one year and you’re about to launch a start-up business, you may need to question the relevance of your goal in the context of your current commitments.

5. Time-Bound

It is essential for every goal to be attached to a time-frame – otherwise it is merely a dream. Check in to make sure that your time-frame is realistic – not too short, or too long. This will keep you motivated and committed to your action plan, and allow you track your progress.

So, if you haven’t set your 2012 goals yet, take some time out of your day to do so. Make sure you apply the SMART principles and you will be on your way to a great 2012!

To Your Success,

Troy Braithwaite
Profit & Growth Expert
Texas Biz Solutions

I hope this was helpful and you better understand the power of having a Blog inside your website.  Feel free to email or call us for more info and details on how we can help grow your business online.

Web Optimization for your Business

Don’t stop learning,  Jon Kendall

Facebook Advertising for Business

To Your Success Jon Kendall

If you have any more questions on Facebook Advertising for you Business or any other topics that you would like me to cover in my Vlog feel free to email me at Jon@texasbizsolutions.com

If your Not using it in your Business and would like to give us a call and we can get you started on the right Track!

To your Success -Troy Braithwaite

The last few posts have talked about how to multiply the resources that you’ve worked hard to maximize. So far we’ve covered:

1. Call in the Troops
2. Bring ‘Em Out of the Woodwork
3. Black Sheep Clients
4. Olympic-Size Sales Staff
5. Open Water Fishing
6. Call for Back-Up
7. Go Big Online
8. Bartering with the Best
9. Give Away the Farm

Today we’ll finish up this series with the last three ways to multiply your maximized resources. We’ll cover:

10. Finding Your Pot of Gold
11. Stay at the Top of Your Game
12. Wealth from the Inside Out

These areas are all key to keep up the momentum you’ve found in making what you have work harder for you.

Finding Your Pot of Gold

You must always have a goal you’re working toward in order to stay on course. Your goal needs to be something you can attain and utilize your full potential. Don’t be afraid to aim high, just make sure you are clear on what your goal is and exactly what you need to do to get there. You need to continue to hold yourself accountable to your goal and raise the bar as you accomplish the steps to your goal.

Stay at the Top of Your Game

Once you’ve mastered these areas, you need to make sure you are staying competitive and constantly coming up with new ways to use your new tools. Don’t rest on one success when there are more on the horizon. To continue to be successful your business must continue to learn and revolve.

Wealth from the Inside Out

Wealth and riches are defined within yourself, not by your profits or the world beyond. You can use all these strategies in both your business and life to find a greater level of success. When you naturally reflect who you are and what you mean, you will automatically attract the right people to you. This will happen in life and in business.

You are capable of reaching your goals as long as they are well-defined and a solid road is built to them.

Throughout the last seven lessons we’ve talked about how to take a hard look at the resources you currently have right in front of you and maximize them to get the most out of what you already have. Then turning around and multiplying those maximized resources to take them to the next level.

If you need help with any of these areas, steps or processes, try our FREE test drive to gain access to our resources, tools and business coaches-All there to help you succeed.

To Your Success-

Troy Braithwaite

Over the last few posts we talked about how to multiply the resources that you’ve worked hard to maximize. So far we’ve covered:

1. Call in the Troops
2. Bring ‘Em Out of the Woodwork
3. Black Sheep Clients
4. Olympic-Size Sales Staff
5. Open Water Fishing
6. Call for Back-Up

Today we’ll cover the next three:

7. Go Big Online
8. Bartering with the Best
9. Give Away the Farm

Go Big Online

There are businesses who solely operate online, there are those with only physical addresses and there are those who do both. Those who do both are by far more successful than the previous two. When you take the time to establish an online presence you open up your business to the entire world, through a few clicks of the mouse.

To successfully sell products online, you need to:

1. Offer high-quality products/services that people want.
2. Build an attractive, effective website that’s user-friendly.
3. Generate high-quality traffic at a low cost.
4. With all of these things in place you can find success with you online exposure.

Bartering with the Best

If you’ve ever gone to a yard sale and paid the sticker price, then you need to up your bartering game. Everything is negotiable and you need to take the time to barter with your suppliers. Companies are always open to bartering and when all is said and done you could find yourself saving significantly on the things your business needs to operate smoothly.

Give Away the Farm

Ok, so not literally, but you have to be willing to stay in contact with prospective clients and offer them products and services they are going to need. You don’t know what they need until you offer them everything you’ve got then work with them to put together the perfect package the fit their needs.

When you take the time to put yourself at the front of their minds, they are more likely to work with you going forward. You can do this by offering free newsletters, a free consulting session or other valuable tool.

This wraps up these three areas of multiplying on the resources you’ve maximized. If you’re not sure where to start or are feeling a bit overwhelmed, try our FREE test drive to work with one of our amazing business coaches who can help you navigate these peaceful waters.

To Your Success-

Troy Braithwaite

Next time we’ll finish up this series with the last three ways to multiply your maximized resources. We’ll cover:

10. Finding Your Pot of Gold
11. Stay at the Top of Your Game
12. Wealth from the Inside Out

Last time we talked about how to start multiplying on the resources you worked on maximizing. We covered the following areas:

1. Call in the Troops
2. Bring ‘Em Out of the Woodwork
3. Black Sheep Clients

Today we’ll talk about the next three:

4. Olympic-Size Sales Staff
5. Open Water Fishing
6. Call for Back-Up

Olympic-Size Sales Staff

Now we all know you can’t have a sales staff of 10,000 who work around the clock for free, but there is a tool that will do exactly that-direct mail marketing.

Direct mail is a written piece of sales and informative copy that offers information about your company and your products/services to potential customers/clients. You can sales letters, brochures or proposals that can be mailed out to a list of leads.

This approach can not only open your door to thousands of new customers/clients, it can save you thousands of dollars in advertising.

Open Water Fishing

You have to be careful not to waste your time on clients who are simply not interested. You have to focus on bigger fish. Remember, the lessons we talked previously about how you should always be targeting higher-quality prospects.

To do this you have to take the time to research and learn about your potential clients to make sure you are targeting the right companies to work with. Make sure they are companies who will benefit from your products/services over a long period of time.

If you’re not sure where to start in finding big fish clients, go back over our previous lessons or look into purchasing a direct mailing list that specifically targets the clients you need. You can purchase or rent lists with name, title, job specs and contact information. This gives you a jumping off point in finding high-quality clients.

Call for Back-Up

Don’t be afraid of telemarketing. It’s a powerful tool than can be done tastefully and be highly effective. However, keep in mind, when not handled correctly can bring about negative reactions. To be successful with telemarketing you need to use these tips:

1. Your first line of defense should be mail marketing.
2. Test before you start a telemarketing campaign.
3. Set the price for your offer.
4. Use a progressive approach with your campaign.

Progressive contact helps build trust and allow the potential customer/client to establish a positive relationship with you. These are the progressive steps you should take:

1. Put your prospect at ease.
2. Present your offer in a natural, conversational way.
3. Avoid being argumentative or pushy.
4. Always be honest.
5. Perfect your 30-second elevator speech.
6. Clearly state your name, business name, reason you’re calling and where you got their information.
7. Offer the benefits of your products and services.
8. Mention one of the features that back up the benefits.
9. Ask preliminary questions that gives you information about the prospect.

These step-by-step methods can help you be successful with a telemarketing campaign and avoid a negative response which could stigmatize your business forever.

This wraps up these three areas of multiplying your resources. We’ll continue with this series for the next two posts to give you all the resources you need to get the most out of your current resources.

If you need help working through any of these processes or areas, try our FREE test drive to get access to our wealth of resources and tools.

To Your Success-

Troy Braithwaite