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Mind Your Own Business!

The concept of minding your own business means that while you are grinding away at your day job, you need to be investing in your future and minding your own business. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to walk away from that day job and mind your own business full time.

The best way to do this is through the acquisition of real estate.

Let’s take a quick look at where you are losing all your money… taxes. Taxes have been around since 1913 in the U.S. (earlier in England). While the original intention was to only tax the wealthiest of the population, obviously that’s trickled down to the masses, including those in poverty.

Now, keep in mind the more money you make, the more taxes you pay. However, the wealthy know a way of getting around this-form a corporation. Corporations offer tax benefits and protect you from lawsuits. To learn more about this, talk with one of our business coaches or your attorney.

We’ve all heard the golden rule of “Pay Yourself First”.

But, many of us don’t do it. Until you learn and put this rule into effect, you won’t have any chance of getting out of the rat race. What this rule does is force you to come up with more income to pay your expenses.

There are some key areas of finance you should learn about. Taking classes is one of the best ways to do this. Here are the basics you should learn:

Accounting

It pays to know how to read financial statements. For example, when acquiring businesses or assets, you need to see the company’s financial standing quickly.

Many grown adults do not know how to balance a balance sheet. But, in the long term, this knowledge will pay off for you and your business.

Investment Strategy

This skill will sharpen with experience. Talk to investors and observe how they play the game.

Market Behavior

Know the laws of Supply and Demand. No business owner can do without understanding these basic principles of the market. Bill Gates saw what people needed. Open your eyes to opportunities. Look at what sells and who buys.

Law

Do everything you can to grow your business within legal boundaries. Know your corporate, state, and accounting laws.

Once you know these areas of finances, you can make them work for you. The rich practically invent money. First, you have to know where to find a great deal. Let’s continue with real estate. Look for houses in trouble or find the court in your area that handles foreclosed, police impound, or other real estate situations. You can either renovate and sell or rent for residual income.

So, essentially there are two main types of investors:

1. Those who buy pre-packaged investments
2. Those who create their own investments

You know which are the most successful. To be one of those people, you need to know what to look for and how to respond.

You must:

1. Find a good deal other people have missed.
2. Raise the capital needed for the transaction.
3. Put together a svelte team to execute the plan.

There is risk involved in every acquisition. The goal is not to avoid the risk, but to respond to the risk with confidence and a steady hand.

If you need help identifying potential money-makers, where to get the capital you need, and how to put together a smart team, try our GUIDED TOUR to gain access to our resources and tools.

Search & Implement

People only remember the extraordinary, strange, wild, surprising, and unusual. You need to make sure your ideas and marketing reflect these reactions. This does not mean you have to have a product or service that is completely out of the norm, in fact, this could easily drive customers away. You need to have a product or service that is high quality and easily marketable, then you need to market it as extraordinary and new.

As you research word-of-mouth, there are some questions you need to ask along the way:

What are the users willing to tell the non-users?

• Exactly how do your customers describe your product?
• What are the non-users willing to ask the users?
• What are the things they need to know but are unwilling to ask?
• What happens when these issues are raised?
• Exactly what do your prospects have to know to trigger purchase?
• Exactly how do your customers answer the objections, concerns, and qualms of your prospects?
• How do your customers persuade their friends to use your product?
• How do your customers suggest they initially get to know or try your product?
• What warnings, safeguards, tips, and suggestions do your customers suggest to your prospects?
• Are your sales messages, positioning, and important facts about your product getting through and surviving word of mouth?
• What messages do you need to inject into the marketplace to turn the tide in your favor and how will you deliver them?

There are two main reasons why word of mouth research is so important:

1. To get the real impression and feedback from customers
2. To define word of mouth itself and the concept it creates

There is a simple formula that can help you conduct your word-of-mouth research. It is called the “2-2-2” model.

2-2-2- Model

What this breaks down to is:

• 2 groups of customers
• 2 focus groups of prospects
• 2 mixed groups (enthusiasts & skeptics)

In these groups you need to ask the following questions:

1. What would you tell a friend?
2. How would you persuade a skeptic?
3. What questions would you anticipate from a skeptic?
4. How would you answer their objections?

The best way to conduct these groups is by teleconference. This ensures you will get a good variety of demographics for your customers and potential customers. It also allows people to feel safe and more able to express their true feelings. These teleconferences should not be conducted by you, but by an independent party to avoid adding pressure to the situation.

We are going to transition a bit and talk about how to construct a word-of-mouth campaign. First, we will talk a look at the essential ingredients you need to put together a campaign. These ingredients are:

• A superior product.
• A way of reaching key influencers in your marketplace.
• A cadre of experts willing to bat for you.
• A large number of enthusiastic consumers.
• A way of reaching the right prospects.
• One or more compelling stories that people will want to tell to illustrate your product’s superiority.
• A way to substantiate, prove, or back up your claims and how the product will work in the real world.
• A way for people to have direct, low-risk experience, a demo, sample, or free trial.
• A way of reducing overall risk, an ironclad guarantee.

Once you have those ingredients ready to use, you should consider the situations in which your company can benefit from a strong word-of-mouth program. Some of these situations are:

• When there are credibility problems
• When there are breakthroughs.
• When there are marginal improvements.
• Where the product must be tried in large numbers or over time.
• Where there is a high risk in trying the product.
• With older or mature products that have a new story that people tend to ignore.
• With unfair competitive practices such as spreading rumors or telling lies about your product.
• When there are governmental or other restrictions on what you may say or claim directly.

While most of the word-of-mouth tactics are positive for your word-of-mouth program, there are a few products to avoid using in this program. They are:

• Products where a seminar would not provide meaningful added value.
• Products that cannot be tried and where there is no consensus among experts.
• Products that are clearly inferior, without having a compensating superiority for similar products.
• Products that are so personal or emotional that rational discussion is irrelevant to the decision.
• Products where the decision value is so small (low price/low volume) the medium will not be cost-effective.

This wraps up this post on word-of-mouth research and how that research can be used when putting together your word-of-mouth campaign. If you need help with the research and a plan to use the results of that research, try our GUIDED TOUR to get all the help you need with our top-notch resources and tools.

Science of the Memes

Today I’d like to discuss the science of memes and how spreading ideas around and through society is ingrained in humans.

Memes

This refers to types of ideas that spread the fastest through society, why they spread fast and how that affects consumerism. You can use this same information to create a lasting positive impression about your company, products, and services. People are more likely to try a new product or service when they feel protected and reassured by the masses.

It’s been determined that spreading ideas is essential to the survival of a society. There are five main situations where this occurs. They are:

• Crisis
• Mission
• Problem
• Danger
• Opportunity

Think of evangelism. This is a prime example of people spreading the word and convincing people to jump on board and start to spread the word themselves. To do this effectively, you need to incorporate a few key things that always catch people’s eye:

• Sex
• News
• Unique Results
• The Unusual
• Helping Others
• Secrets

Next, we are going to switch gears a little and talk about viral marketing. While traditional marketing can be used to your advantage, the reality is viral and online marketing is the king of the castle. You can spread the word online like the plague if you know what to do. Here are some simple steps to do this:

• Find an interesting idea
• Make it easy for people to experience or trial
• Spread the idea while people who are in close contact with others
• Take advantage of existing communication methods
• Develop the way of trying your product in such a way that it automatically draws more try-ers
• Some great places to use viral marketing are:
• Geocities
• eBay
• Roger Wilco
• ICQ
• AOL Instant Messenger
• MSN Instant Messenger
• Winamp
• Hotmail
• “Tell A Friend” Buttons
• E-Greeting Cards

There are six things everyone should be doing to benefit from word of mouth on the Internet:

• Put WOM components on your website.
• Assign people to monitor your viral marketing.
• Place testimonials in different places on your website to walk a customer through the purchasing cycle.
• Set up an email marketing campaign.
• Stay up to date on what products and services the experts in your industry are recommending.
• Use your website to demonstrate the great ways people are using or finding success with your products and services.

Here are other non-viral Internet opportunities to explore:

• iPhone’s
• Handheld PC’s
• Blackberry’s
• And other well connected electronic devices

This wraps up the lesson on traditional and viral marketing. If you need help putting together any of the plans or successes in this lesson, try our GUIDED TOUR to get all the help you need to put these plans into action.

Decoding WOM Messages

Today’s lesson will talk about how word of mouth messages are delivered and how you can influence those messages.

There are essentially three methods of word of mouth:

• Expert to Expert
• Expert to Peer
• Peer to Peer

When experts are talking about your products or service, you will usually receive a fantastic rush of sales and new customers, so obviously, this is one of the best things that can happen. You can also help to facilitate this by offering free products to experts for them to review.

Expert opinion can also bring about new ideas that help fuel new products, services, and operating systems within your company. If you take the time to change or develop the opinions of even a small group of experts, you will have the opportunity to help your market explode.

There is a standard word of mouth delivery system that, in most cases, takes a few years. But, you can speed this up into only a few weeks. The standard system is:

• First impressions from an expert
• Organized trial of your products or services
• Pooling peer experiences

It’s important to know exactly who is advocating for your products and service. Take the time to find out who they are and reward them. While you may already have a customer service system for filing complaints, do you have one for compiling praise? Most likely not. If you take the time to show these people appreciation, they will help take your products and services to the top.

• Some of the ways you can show them appreciation are:
• Invite them to a customer appreciation dinner
• Offer to videotape their testimonials
• Ask to interview them for feedback to improve with
• Offer them a premier customer membership
• Ask them to join a referral incentive program

You can offer your biggest fans lots of things to help spread the word about your products and services.

Conventional media has been around forever, and while it can still be effective, it’s lost a little of its luster over the last few years. There are a few reasons for this:

• Expensive and doesn’t necessarily return results
• Boring, lacking something fresh and new
• Too short of a time slot to offer enough information

While these are all true, there are ways you can make conventional media work for you. For the information to be effective, it needs to be presented in the right sequence, come from the right sources, be relevant to the target customer, be credible, and be delivered at the right time in the medium.

We’re going to switch gears a little and talk about the product adoption cycle’s two phases. Traditional media is great for taking you through the information stage where you can offer the information you need to your potential customers, but it’s not so great for measuring the results of those efforts.

Without these results, you can’t fine-tune your marketing and can easily miss the boat and lose potential customers and waste a lot of money. Once a consumer has the information they need, they’ll go through a verification process as they analyze whether or not the purchase was a good one. They generally get their information through:

• Direct experience with the product
• Interaction with peers using the same product
• Experts’ experience
• Scientific journals and other resources
• Independent reviews and opinions
• You can accelerate this process by:
• Providing your own demo’s and free trials
• Offer them indirect experience through the experience of others
• Offer a good true story that can be passed around

Once you have the ability and are able to work through these concepts, you will be able to target your customers much better. If you need help with any of this along the way, try our GUIDED TOUR to gain access to our experienced business coaches.

WOM Meets Customers Head-On

Today we’ll cover the idea of shortening your customers’ decision-making process with positive word of mouth. There are essentially 5 stages in the decision-making process.

They are:

1. Give the product a chance and transition from a “no” to a “maybe”.
2. Check out the options and investigate the different products available.
3. Observe the product to check for potential benefits, features, and operations to see if there is a fit with their needs.
4. Become a customer and purchase their first item. They will be discriminate with their first product as they form their opinion of you.
5. Purchases again and starts spreading positive word of mouth as an advocate of your products.

So, let’s take a closer look at each one of these.

From “No” to “Maybe”

This stage is really important because if your potential customers don’t even take a second look at your products and services, then you have no chance of sealing a deal. This is why you need to offer credible information and well-thought-out pricing, guarantees, and incentives.

Investigating Your Products

At this stage, they are taking a closer look at your product line to see if there is actually anything that could benefit their life. This is where you need to make sure your hard information is right out there in front for the customers to see and compare.

Trial Period

Customers often feel more at ease and ready to purchase when there is some sort of a trial in place. They usually want to try vicariously through someone else, so they don’t feel any risk involved. A good way to offer this is through demo videos, product demonstrations, or a tour of your facilities. This stage may invoke a reaction of “I tried it and liked it. You should check it out.”

Make a Purchase

At this stage, they have taken the risk of purchasing one of your products or services and are now evaluating how easy, convenient, cost-effective, and satisfying your product or service is. At this stage, a common reaction would be, “It was really easy to use and learn from. It’s really great, you should get it!”

Advocates for Yours Products

At this last stage of decision making the customer is immensely pleased with your product and often keeps using it and/or comes back for more products and services. They are likely telling everyone they know how much they like it, that they use it every day, and have already (or will be) back to your establishment for more.

We talked a minute ago about the different types of purchasers. Now we are going to take a closer look at their characteristics, so you can figure out which tactics are best to use at the right stage of the decision-making process.

The Innovator

• Wants to stand out from the crowd
• Know what’s hot and trendy
• Likes “strange” or “weird” new products
• Wants to be the first to try and will talk about it animatedly

Early Adopter

• Driven by excellence
• More concerned with possibilities than realities
• Always looking to be a leader
• Always looking for a new vision

Middle Majority

• Wants to be perceived as competent
• Concerned about practicality and easy comparisons
• Needs an easy way out if not satisfied
• Wants products that meet the industry standard

Late Majority

• Generally skeptical and wants to know the risks upfront
• Needs to shop around for the best deal
• Needs a support system
• Wants what everyone else has

Laggard

• Needs it to be completely safe and traditional
• Needs reassurance that nothing will go wrong
• Won’t try new things unless it’s the last resort
• Will search for loopholes and problems
• Wants to use it in the standard industry way

As you can see, each type of consumer wants something just a little different depending on their personality type. The key to successful word of mouth is to target and cater to each type of consumer. If you need help identifying the types of consumers you are currently helping and how to attract the types you are lacking, try our GUIDED TOUR for the resources and tools you need to get the job done.

Next time we’ll talk about how word of mouth messages are delivered and what you can do to help facilitate that.