Know-How Exchange : Strategy

A message to Randall of Monmark Group.

I will remind you that I was limited to a small space in a comment, and covering all aspects of the problem isn't that easy - especially when I was on the point of going to bed. Please bear this in mind when you see my comment and think "ah, there's another aspect to this", and then say that you don't agree with me. That doesn't make me wrong, and it does make you right.

Just my two cents.

Wow....so many responses I am overwhelmed but first I would like to say thank you mgoodman for breaking it down for me. I would like to respond and answer each one of your questions and responses but since I have no clue how to answer each one. I will just start by answering mgoodman here and hopefully someone will tell me how to answer each person who responded individually or is it done as a whole? Please bear with me, as I said I am not computer savvy in the least. :) Okay so mgoodman you said take one step at a time...1.who is my target audience. I think my audience would be anyone who is an adult and especially those with children. Okay, let's just say you know how...people get traffic tickets and then end up having those tickets go on their driving record and then their insurance rates go up? Or people sign contracts all the time without really knowing what they're signing and then end up getting in trouble because they didn't know what they were signing and then they end up in a legal mess? Or have a simple legal question or just want to know their rights but they never know who to call because lawyers are so expensive? Any and all would be my target audience I would think. Any person with "life happening".
2. Where do they live? Anywhere in the U.S. could be helped with this service. 3. Gender-would be either. 4. Age- would be anyone from 18 to 80 I would think. 5. Income- I think this service would help any income level from someone who makes $8 an hour to the rich. That is the great thing it bridges the gap to make top law firms in the country available to ALL people for pennies on the dollar.
I hope this answers the questions that you have posed to me. And your advice is spot on...because I was getting dizzy trying to think it all at once. So thanks so much. Stephanie

So we are talking prepaid legal? that is a hard sell. Especially if you are not going to narrow your target. You need to be lazar sharp in your marketing. And while it is true most people could be your target-- you can't just shotgun blast marketing.

As far as tickets on a driving record... I have seen people spend a lot of money to get something removed. If they pay a fine, court costs or take a class. Its on there.

Okay so after reading all the posts it looks like you can't send to each person directly or mortiaty wouldn't have posted here to monmark group, right?So this message is to CarolBlaha... thank you so much for your soothing, calming advice. I must say that I am very nervous being a newbie to the business world and all. So okay, I will make a list of ten goals and set them in motion. So true about not being able to fully market the business by myself. Thankfully, this is all about team work and my sponsor, as well as his sponsor are both helping me and talking to people for me. The company also has weekly meetings and luncheons in my city so I plan to go to those especially now that you suggested it, as did my sponsor. I have also joined my local BNI chapter, which my sponsor said to join. I haven't been to my first meeting yet but excited and nervous to go. And yes, ma' am I agree that I can't help others til I first succeed. Which I really want to because I want to help others. My special niche someday will to be to help other single mothers. Thanks again. Stay Blessed!! Stephanie

Now single moms, now you are narrowing your target. How about single moms with concerns about dead beat dads? Now instead of going to BNI, you can go to groups that work with single moms and child support issues.

So when you say narrow my target group down...you mean like just talk to real estate agents or just talk to sports coaches or single moms? Is that what you mean? I guess I was thinking that everyone could use this product...so why not just talk to all I meet? Or is that just too hard?

Sorry I guess I was typing while you responded so I guess you answered my question. But does it have to be sooo narrow?

when I was in the flooring biz I could look out my window and every building I saw could use my product. But to market shotgun would have been wrong. I found the sweet spot, the area where my products really shined and spent most of my marketing there. I didn't ignore the rest of the world and I'm not telling you to either. You will get a share of a mix of biz. But know the sweet spot and spend most of your time there.

The issue with legal issues is most people don't think proactively, they call a lawyer when there is trouble. Often too late to prevent and all they are doing is damage control. So look for areas where the pain is. A single mom has her share of it. So instead of spending your time telling people who have no pain to think ahead-- you can go to a group in pain and need help. And its not a small group. Part of marketing is to know the market-- just google "how many single moms with dead beat dads" and you'll see a zillion resources, including FB pages just dedicate to this.

I did tell you this will be a hard sell. And there are free resources to single moms. But in legal advice like anything thing, you often get what you paid for.

Its also not the only niche you can target. My point is instead of thinking "adults with kids" think of the groups in pain and ready for a cost effective solution to get a lawyer. Bankruptcies, foreclosures, wrongful discharge. And go where those people are.

Thank you...thank you....thank you. Okay I see your point you have been the most helpful. I will look for where the pain is and start targeting as well as working on my ten marketing tactic for my thirty days. I guess I can go to google to find out more about marketing tactics, right? Since I know none! :) Also what is a FB pages? And an MLM someone mentioned that but don't know what it is. Thanks again. Stephanie

FB is facebook -- here is one dedicated to single moms with deadbeat dads. And this is only one of many https://www.facebook.com/pages/Single-Mothers-Deadbeat-Fathers/194608904076.

MLM is Multi Level Marketing. What you are doing. You are marketing this service and you will be recruiting those to market under you.

Stephanie, Howie Jacobson (https://askhowie.com) has a lot of advice along the lines of what Carol is suggesting. There is a lot of free stuff on his blog, and a lot of videos you can watch.

My feelings are that you are daunted by professional marketers and their long words. Believe me, if you spend a few days in Howie's company, you will begin to see otherwise. If you take Carol's advice and tailor your advertising/marketing to one specific niche - you will still have advertisements that speak to everybody, only not quite as much. Only remember that they wouldn't be so interested anyway, if you get what I mean. As I say, Howie Jacobson has a lot on his site just about how to do this. He'll give you a lot of confidence too, he's that kind of guy.

FB = Facebook, by the way. There's some advice out there (including Perry Marshall that I mentioned - and he wrote a book about it too).

To your success! Oh, and make sure you have fun too.

Any Guerrilla Marketing Book will speak to you about targeted marketing. And it will be in the library and in very simple language. Guerrilla Marketing is all about low or no cost marketing tactics that will benefit someone starting out and help you build a sustainable business.

It's going to take time and money to reach your target audience, so what you want to do is focus your resources on a narrow, specific group that you believe is likely to be most receptive to what you're selling. When you try to go after everyone, you spend a lot of time reaching folks who are not likely to buy, when you could have spent that time on more qualified prospects. (Same for money, too, of course.)

If you think of your market as being everyone in the U.S. who is between 18 and 80, that's going to be more than 200 million people. If you only spend $1 to reach each of them with your message, it will cost you $200+ million! On the other hand, if you select just single moms in the state of Arkansas (for example), you'll spend a small fraction of that amount -- and probably get a much better response because you're offering a solution to a very real and specific problem they have.

Gosh...Thank you so much Carol and Mortiarty for your advice. So this is going tosound horrible but I don't have a FB page!! As a matter of fact, I am pretty strongly against them. So do I have to go out and get one now? I hope I can market in other ways and still get my point across. Carol...thanks for the tip I will go to the library and check the book out. Mortiarty...you are scaring me to death!! :) But, I will go to the blog and look up Perry's stuff, as you mentioned before. Thanks to both of you for such sound advice and for responding to my question. I'm sure they sound a little silly to you guys.

Point taken mgoodman...I will definitely narrow it down because even if I had it I don't want to sped $200 million dollars at all. So I guess the real work begins.

If you haven't already done so, start interviewing people who you would consider to be your potential customers. Don't try to sell them anything, but do try to determine: 1) if they perceive the need for your offering, 2) if they're willing to pay for it, and 3) when they'd likely want to buy it (now, when a specific problem arises, etc.). That research will give you some of the details necessary to better market your offering to them - even if it's only at networking events, face-to-face.

Ok Jay Hamilton-Roth...I like that idea a lot. So I just need to formulate my questions to find out if they would buy it? And who would buy it, right? Or just by talking to them I will get my answers? I am looking forward to networking. I don't get to get out with the "adult folks" too often so it will be fun. So in all I hear from everyone who has responded research, research, research!!! It just seemed like a no-brainer to me.

If you read my first comment, my thoughts are that there is no such thing as a no-brainer. My friend is out of business because he thought his invention was a no-brainer, and he lost a lot of money and his home.

So be the wise one, and Jay's ideas are sound, the point is to listen carefully. Too few people do that, and doing that will put you miles ahead of anybody else. Once you get a feel for what people are saying to you, you will be able to phrase your ideas in their language. That is one element of guerilla marketing, by the way.

Have fun!

And if your time is worth money, you can replace $200 million with the number of hours it would buy, and you'll see that you still need to narrow the target audience.

You can't sell the solution to a problem if you're not 100% sure what the problem is. So, you need to figure out what your offering is the solution to. That's why you need to talk to people to better understand the world through their eyes. To you, you've got some magic elixir. But to them, it might look like snake oil. To market yourself, you need to accurately understand what value you add, and to who, and when.

Putting ideas in their language is a basic element of sales. Targetting and knowing your market you will automatically know the words to use. I don't think in my certification as one of the less than 300 Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coaches we ever made claim to that.

You are getting a lot of good info. You can't sell a solution without identifying the problem. People buy because of pain and you are putting them out of their pain. OFten they don't even know they are in pain. So you often have to point out the problem and the solution. Back to the point of active listening.

This active listening will also let you drill deeper when people say "I don't need this" Until you probe, they really don't know what they are saying no to. So when you interview people for research, don't be put off by the "no". They don't know they do need the service and that is what sales is about. You have to find out what keeps them up at night.

As in the single mom, they may be saying "men are deadbeats" My dad was, my uncles, my best friends baby daddy. So this girl is simply accepting her fate not knowing there are options. She doesn't know she's in pain, to her, its just the way it is. Also learn to handle price objections and the difference between empathy and sympathy. Yes, it is going to cost her money, money that is important to her. But she needs to spend it to get the advice that will better the life of her children.

As you can see this is a much bigger question than you imagined.

Such a nice tips are given above for making market for your business.

Aside to Carol. "Putting ideas in their language is a basic element of sales." Why then do so few people - and that includes professional marketers - actually do this??

M-- that is very hard to teach. It is something you have to develop, and many say its something you are born with. But I think it can be taught. Just in the last week I had two coaching sessions with different managers about this. Its active listening, and listening as a whole is becoming a lost art. Its knowing your customer and knowing your target market. Too many of these messages are sent out broadly, shot gun. And as you suggest, they miss the mark.

Well I want everyone to know that I AM a good active listener and I am very good at following directions. I have been sitting here with my pen and pad writing down ALL the marketing tactics, books, websites, tools etc. Please be sure that I will interview people, I have narrowed down my "target market" to people in pain. Then I have narrowed it down some more to single moms in pain because THAT group speaks to me and while my children's father is well involved I know plenty of people who struggle with this each and every day. I plan to learn the right language to speak to them with and I plan to find the right tools to market to them. My time is worth much more than money so I will utilize my time to learn what I need to, hone my audience and become lazer sharp so I can help others by relieving some of their pain. Thanks to all who truly took the time to give me sound advice. I do believe that most people are coachable IF they are willing to put their ego aside and really listen to the advice given.
Stephanie

You'll do well Miss Steph, now get out there and sell something!

Steph, go for it!! Make sure you have fun. It's infectious, and helps pain in the most incredible ways. Listening is an important start, it's an important way of finding out if you're going in the right direction - and it's great when you've done and your clients are thanking you.

Carol - you say " It is something you have to develop, and many say its something you are born with. But I think it can be taught." There is a big problem in our day and age - the imagination is not connected to what we are doing. That is the key here, and learning how to use this immense and incredibly nebulous capacity is something that logic simply cannot grasp. Listening is the first stage in recognizing the limitations you have put on your thinking - and realizing that there's more to life.

You are right that it can be taught, with adults they need to want to learn - that's the difference. If they don't, won't or can't - then you can't help them. And it's that simple. I could go on.

Now I have two more questions...no one ever answered me about FB. It is not essential that I use it, right? And how do I give out the points? I mean do I check each response I liked? Because say moriarty and carol who have responded to me repeatedly do I check all your responses or just one of your responses? I hope someone understands what I am trying to ask. I guess I just want to make sure everyone got credit for the points who were really helpful to me.

Awarding points is up to you. The total number of points (500, in this case) will be split evenly among all the responses you check. If you want to award equally to, say, 4 people, you can just check one of the responses from each of those people. Or if you want to split the points based on how helpful each response was, then check all the responses you thought were helpful. Each checked response will then receive an equal share of the total points.

It's strictly up to you.

Hi Steff,

Facebook is a subject in its own right. It's great for engaging with people who you wouldn't otherwise get to meet. You can advertise on it too - Perry Marshall has a book on Facebook use and advertising with lots of serious tips. I really wouldn't bother with anyone else if you are still starting as he is a very good communicator, and knows how to put difficult topics in easy-to-grasp language. If it isn't Perry himself, it's one of his pals, Tom Meloche who set up a business solely on Facebook advertising - so it is possible. Between them, there isn't much you need to know.

Anyway, have fun - and a great weekend!

On points, it doesn't matter if you check all of an authors responses or just one. They just divide up the points.
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As far as FB, I'd embrace it. Its free. You can also do a blog but many of the free sites will shut you down if you are promoting a biz (I just found out from someone who had all their content deleted).

FB isn't what a lot of people think. The people I connect with are all professional and professional about their responses. I have connected with people I hadn't kepts in touch with in years. I have 3 pages, my personal, one to promote my hobby/biz and another just started for an artist group I recently created. Linkedln is another -- less social and you might prefer that. I don't care for Twitter. My best advice is to just look thru both sites. I gave you a link created for deadbeat dads and moms, start there and look at what is posted. Find what who in your social network is connected. And see if its right for you.