Just what is an autoresponder?

The word ‘Autoresponders’ has been used more and more over the last few months and pretty much all of us have now experienced them even if you don’t yet realise it.

But just what is an autoresponder and why should you think about using one in your business?

Well, let me explain.

The simplest form of an autoresponder is when you send a message to someone and you immediately receive an email back that tells you that person is out of office. This email will have been sent automatically (no human response was required) and it will have responded to you – hence the name autoresponder.

You will have also probably seen an autoresponder if you’ve purchased products off of a website. Take Amazon for example or Ebay. If you’ve purchased something from Amazon or made a bid on Ebay, the chances are high that you will have immediately received an email from the company confirming your purchase or your bid.

And you may have seen autoresponders at work if you’ve subscribed to a newsletter from a website. In most cases now, you will have immediately receive an email from the company concerned welcoming you to the website with a copy of the newsletter.

Now, trust me when I say that a human is not sitting there at all times of the day or night responding to messages that come in from a website or order confirmations – these emails are sent automatically from you by a computer programme that has been specifically written for this purpose.

But, why should you care? What has this got to do with your business?

Now (hopefully) you’ve got your head around what an autoresponder is, I want you just to think for a minute about the power of autoresponders and how they can help your business.

Imagine that while you’re on holiday, a potential customer visits your website. On your website, you have a mechanism to allow someone to subscribe to receive some top tips about your product or service. The potential customer is interested in what you do and then signs up to receive these.

These tips are sent to the customer automatically while you’re relaxing on your holiday. Over the next few days, the customer receives more tips and helpful information all while you’re soaking up the sun on the beach. By the time you come back, the customer has been so impressed with all the free information that they’ve been receiving that they’ve placed an order for your products or services.

Now ok, there is a bit of work required here – you’ll need to write the tips and useful information in advance and put them into a series of emails that the customer receives over the next few days or weeks. But, once you’ve done that, a potential customer will receive this series of emails over time from you even while you’re asleep.

And it will happen with every new customer without you even thinking about it. You’ll be perceived as being helpful and useful and you’ll be building a relationship with your potential customer while massively reducing the time you take on this activity.

You can even set up a series of emails so that everytime a customer purchases a product or service from you, they get emails automatically to encourage them to purchase more from you.

I’m only giving you a brief introduction to autoresponders here, but the power of them for building a relationship with your customers and reducing the amount of time you spend doing your marketing is immense.

So, where do you go to get an autoresponder? Well, there are a number of packages already out there including Constant Contact, 1ShoppingCart and theautoresponder to mention but a few. Have a look at them and see whether they are for you.

But for now, just consider the benefits that autoresponders could make to your business – if you understand that, you can definitely take your business to the next level – automatically!

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small businesses on their marketing and to people starting up in business.

What are you running a business for?

Last week, I was sent an article (thank you to the person who sent this to me by the way) which was on the subject of "What are you running a business for?" - in other words if you're putting in all this hard work and can't go off and enjoy yourself occasionally, what's the point?

Reading through the article made me realise that what I'd written on my earlier blogs over the last couple of weeks might have been misconstrued. You see, I'm actually very clear on what I'm running a business for and what I want to get out of it.

Up until fairly recently, what I wanted to do was get the business to a point where it was established and to where it could start to run without me necessarily being there. We've now done that and the next phase is to put structures in place to support it over the next 5-10 years so that the business grows; we can provide service and quality to more people and so that the business is not reliant on me.

As we enter this new phase, it's presenting its own challenges and I am being tested and I'm writing about my experiences because a) we are all human and b) I hope my experiences will be useful to others going through the same situation.

But, I haven't lost sight of why I'm running the business or what I want out of it for me personally or what the end goal for the business is - although it may seem like it at times. Knowing why you're doing things and what you're running a business for is a vital question - but to take time off and go out for lunch etc occasionally is often not the prime reason for everyone. Without a doubt for me, it's much more than that!

Is it a good idea to have some time off from your business?

Yesterday, I went out to lunch - which was lovely by the way and I really enjoyed it. That's the second time in three weeks that I've done this, but it's unusual for me and I think I've only done this twice since the business started.

Yes, sure I've gone out for business lunches and met clients etc, but going out for lunch for pleasure during work hours is completely alien to me.

What's worse is I didn't do any work when I came back either (shock, horror)!

And do you know what - I didn't feel any guilt at all. I've worked incredibly hard this year and have decided it's now high time to start treating myself. Not every day, but every couple of weeks or so - especially when I've worked hard.

I read an article recently about taking time off to recover BEFORE you start on a major project and maybe the author was right - I feel much better this morning and ready to get cracking.

It's easy to feel guilty about taking time off when you're supposed to be working, but if you deserve it, don't! I guarantee it will make you feel better and more motivated and you'll want to do more work as a result.

Tell me what questions you want answered...

Thanks for signing up for our free call on "Using articles to promote your business" - if you haven't signed up yet, you can do so by going to: http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/articlecall.htm

For you to get the most out of this call, I'll be trying to answer as many of your questions about writing articles to promote your business as I can.

If you'd like to ask a question, just leave a comment on this blog and I'll make sure I cover it during the call. Don't worry, you can stay anonymous if you like - just indicate this in your comment below.

Thanks and I look forward to you joining me on the call on Tuesday 3rd November between 2pm and 3pm GMT.

Have you taken action on your marketing yet?

I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day about our newsletters. He said he received them and I asked him whether he found them useful. He said he did, but mentioned that 70% of what I included, he already knew.

Good point, I thought – but often it’s not about what you already know is it? There’s very few new things in this world, so the chances are fairly high that you’re going to come across what I cover somewhere else.

The point really is this – even though you heard my messages before or come across them somewhere else, have you actually done anything about it? Have you taken any action on your marketing?

Now, I know we’re all busy; I know we’ve all got things we need to do and get on with, but if you don’t take action on your marketing and put into place some of what I talk about, you’re missing a massive opportunity for your business.

I’m not exaggerating when I use the word ‘massive’ here. If you’re getting business and you’re doing little or no marketing, just imagine what could happen if you actually did some marketing?

There are usually three things that stop small businesses doing any marketing – I thought I’d cover them in this article and then (hopefully) you’ll have no excuse and you’ll have to get on with it.

Reason number 1 is the fear of being too busy. People really talk themselves into this one. If they got tons of new customers from doing some marketing, how would they cope with the extra workload?

I can understand this fear to some extent. After all, you may not want to take on anyone else and you may not want to get that big in your business.

But, let’s also be realistic here. The chances of you being snowed under with work after doing some marketing are very remote. If you did some marketing today, it would take between 2-3 months to actually see the results of that marketing. You would also be able to see business increasing and then choose to scale down your marketing accordingly.

When people give me this reason for not doing marketing, I always tell them that we should get them to the point of being too busy first and then we’ll worry about it. Getting too busy will take a lot longer than you think and doing a bit more marketing than you’re doing already is unlikely to get you to the point where you need to employ someone else – it is likely just to even out the peaks and the troughs, which is probably not a bad thing.

Reason number 2 is not knowing what to do. When you first start in business, most of us try the traditional marketing methods of advertising, cold calling, direct mail or leaflet drops and networking. If these don’t work as well as we want them too, it’s very difficult to know what to do next.

If you’re not sure what to do next to market your business, most of us fall back to relying on word of mouth and referrals in order to get business.

What if I told you that there are over 100 different methods to get business, most of which cost nothing at all to do? If you’d like to see 50 ideas to promote your business, just drop me an email – details at the bottom.

Reason number 3 is just not having any time to do marketing. This reason is an accumulation of the first two reasons – in that, because people don’t know what to do and they’re worried about getting too busy, marketing doesn’t look very attractive to them.

Consequently many small business owners find lots of other things to do before they get on with doing any marketing. And as I said earlier in this article, if you’ve got customers with little or no marketing, you probably do have lots of other things to do too.

With this reason, I would suggest a couple of solutions. The first is to get yourself a marketing coach who will work with you to keep you motivated on marketing. I’m putting together a new membership group launching in 2010 called The Marketing Gym to address this very problem – more about this shortly.

The other solution is to get a company to do your marketing for you – again I’m very happy to have a chat about this – just give us a call.

The simple fact is that even though you know that you should be doing all of these things I talk about, it’s hard to actually get motivated to do them. The first two reasons for not taking action are relatively easy to sort out, but if you really haven’t got the time to concentrate on marketing, drop us a line. That way, your marketing will get done, leaving you time to do what your best at – running your business.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small business owners on their marketing and to people setting up in business. If you’d like a free copy of our 50 ways to promote your business, just email us on helen.dowling@exceptionalthinking.co.uk

Learning to let go

Last week was a tough week emotionally. For the first time, I had a real appreciation of why, when larger companies are asked to participate and give money to charities and organisations, they say "no" more often than not. It's because they don't have the time, energy or money to participate in everything.

Sadly though, the charities and organisations that are asking very often don't understand and get angry with the response given back to them.

I realised how these companies feel because last week I had to face the same situation. My natural tendency is to get involved in things and say "yes" to voluntary activities. This was fine when the business was young and getting involved helped me to get known and to get established.

But, we're not in the same situation anymore. The business is growing up, meaning that we haven't got as much time as we once did. It's more important now more than ever to stay focused on where we want to be and what we need to do to get there, rather than being distracted by things that take us away from this.

As a consequence, I'm slowly learning that we have to say "no" to more things, be firmer and not let people take advantage, but this is tough for someone who's been used to being helpful and getting involved.

Last week, I had to deal with 5 situations that really tested my resolve and because I'm still learning to say "no" I didn't handle the situation as well as I could have. It was tough emotionally and the team and I felt a bit demotivated.

So, time to move on this week - let go of the past and move the business forward. Be firm and don't agree to things that take my focus away from this. I'll let you know how I get on.

How to use articles to promote your business

Have you ever longed for people to knock on your door wanting to do business with you? Um – doesn’t often happen does it?

Actually that’s not quite true. There is a way to get people knocking at your door, but it doesn’t just happen by itself. You need to influence this. And how you do that is to build relationships with people so that they perceive you as an expert and know, like and trust your approach.

That sounds so easy doesn’t it? Well, I know it’s not. One of the best ways to help people to perceive you in this way though is to write articles.

Articles are great for loads of things. They’re great for building your reputation as an expert in your field and they have the added advantage that once you’ve written one article, you can then use it in tons of places.

Some ideas of where you can use your articles include in your newsletter, in other people’s newsletter, post them on-line to build your presence on the internet and on social networks, send them to the press, include them in a book, put them on your blog, send them out to your clients and contacts as useful information or you could swap your article in exchange for people’s contact details on your website.

Just in the last few months, articles that I’ve written have been included in three books (two are still being published, but one is on the bookshelves as we speak), got me several clients and I’ve also been ask to speak in several places too. How much free publicity is that?

I’m not telling you this to boast – I’m telling you this so that you can realise that writing articles is a powerful marketing tool that can really help you pitch yourself as an expert in your field. After all, do you think your clients would rather work with an expert? Yes, of course they would!

I’m constantly amazed though how many things put small businesses off from writing articles – from what to write about to where to put the article when it’s finished. And I’ve often heard people saying that an article takes them weeks and weeks to write and as a result, they’re put off from writing any more as it’s too time consuming.

The message I want to give out with this article is this. Articles are great – they can be fantastic for promoting your business, giving you the status of an expert and you can use them time and time again in different places. But you need to keep writing articles. You can’t just write one article and be done with it – you need to keep writing them and getting them out there.

So, because people seem to find articles really hard to do, I thought I’d talk to you about them on a call happening on Tuesday 3rd November between 2pm and 3pm GMT. You can get all the details by going to www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/articlecall.htm It’s a free call and on it, I’ll be breaking down everything to do with writing an article including:

· What to write about
· Who to write the article for
· How to come up with a great title that people want to read
· Where to use your articles
· How to get started with writing an article
· Keeping motivated so that you keep writing
· How to get an article written and completely finished in ½ an hour
· Getting business from writing articles

If you’d like to join me, just register for this call by clicking on www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/articlecall.htm. As soon as you register you’ll receive all the call details and I’ll remind you again shortly before the call too. Don’t worry if you can’t make the date or the time either – if you register for the call, I’ll give you access to the recording afterwards.

Make sure you don’t miss out on this call – register by clicking on www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/articlecall.htm

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small business owners on their marketing and to people just setting up in business.

Talking till I'm blue in the face

Ahhh! How many times do I have to repeat myself?

I have talked before about BUILDING a relationship with people before you ask them for something and yet I have two requests in the last two weeks that want me to just do things for people even though I don't know them, trust them or know anything about them.

Both of these requests have been to speak on our workshops. Fact is, it takes a lot of time and effort to get bums on seats for these - why should I let someone come along and take advantage of that and speak on it when we've done all the hard work? Oh and did I mention these people want to be paid for speaking as well!!

As you can see, I'm pretty passionate about this subject.

Please, please, please remember that most small business owners have NO time, are VERY busy and if you want something out of them, you really need to think about what's in it for them. Why should they do something that benefits only you?

These business owners could have said:

• Would you like to run a workshop together - we can both jointly market it to our lists?
• I'm happy to come and speak for free
• In return for me speaking at your event, I'd like to invite you to come and speak at mine

And so on...

Then, I might have been more willing to consider this. But, until the day comes that some small businesses actually think about more than themselves, I guess I'm just going to be posting furious posts about this subject.

Anyone else experienced this?

Should you advertise?

Advertising is one of those things that just about every small business owner considers at some point. After all, that’s how big companies promote their businesses, right? So, shouldn’t you be doing it as well?

Well, while advertising has its place in promotion, it has a number of drawbacks which means it’s often not the best method for small business owners. Let’s have a look at some of these.

Firstly, advertising is great for generating awareness of your business. It tells everyone who you are and what you do and people will notice you and realise that you’re around. However, while it’s great for building awareness, it’s not too good at getting customers. Only 1-2% of people seeing, listening or watching adverts actually buy directly from the advert.

Secondly, advertising needs to be repeated often in order for it to stand any chance of being effective. You need to be repeating it at least three times: let’s face it you might see the advert and mean to do something about it, but not get around to it. And if you need to repeat it, this can become effective.

Which brings me to my third point, advertising is a pretty expensive way of doing marketing – the average cost of an advert in your local paper (and I’m talking about a small advert here) is around £150+VAT. If you need to repeat your ad at least three times, that’s £450+VAT before you even start. And if you do radio or television advertising, the costs can end up being astronomical.

With all these drawbacks, my preference isn’t to advertise, but to concentrate on free or low-cost methods of marketing that have the same impact. After all, if advertising is better for awareness than getting customers, believe me there are at least 50 different ways I can think of, just off the top of my head that will create the same result, but cost nothing to do.

Having said that, there are some good deals around at the moment if you negotiate and are not afraid of walking away if you can’t reach the price you’re prepared to pay. And there are quite a few places where it’s very cheap to advertise and might well be worth exploring. For instance, church magazines tend to be very cheap to do as do adverts in post offices or supermarkets.

Advertising in the yellow pages is also free and is a must for all small businesses – remember yellow pages is where people go if they know your name but can’t remember your contact details. Don’t be tempted to pay for an advert until you know it works. If you get business from a free advert, you’ll definitely get business from a paid advert in there. Test it first.

If you’d like a copy of my 50 free ways to promote your business which is now a 14 page factsheet, please feel free to contact me on helen.dowling@exceptionalthinking.co.uk

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice for small business owners on their marketing and to people setting up in business.