Karen Skidmore's Kick-Ass Blog | CanDoCanBe

Hey! We've Moved to a New House!

Thank you so much for subscribing to my blog here on typepad.  I have had an absolute ball over the past three years writing this blog and I know some of you have been subcribers since the very beginning.

But the time has come and I have now set up everything under one roof.  My main site www.CanDoCanBe.com has now become a wordpress site and the time has come to say a sad farewell to typepad.

And I would be honoured if you re-subscribed.  I have kept my Kick-Ass Blog tag line - I was tempted to start completely afresh but it seems that the kick-ass tag suits me too well! So it's coming over with me!

You can either go and check out my new blog at:

CanDoCanBe.com/Blog

or you can subscribed directly to the new RSS feed by clicking here

If you have had enough of me :) I will not be offended and wish you all the success in your business. 

Thank you once again for your comments, thoughts and valuable contributions over the past few years and I hope you continue to share on my new blog.

Warm regards,

Karen

Why building snowmen will help you attract clients

I live in a cul-de-sac.  It’s a quiet road with only 30 odd houses but we rarely see each other.  It’s a classic example of modern day life, everyone works and we all go about our busy lives, driving in and out of the road in our cars.

Today was different.  Today we were snowed in and no-one was going anywhere.  And with both children at home because of school closure, the best way to spend the morning was to get out there and build snowmen.

I phoned up two neighbours and invited their children to come and help us.  Within 15 minutes of being out, one of the other neighbours came over with 2 bright red toboggans.  We have never met each other in the 7 years of us living in this road and yet the snow brought us together, not only in a conversation, but with an exchange of her grown-up sons’ treasured possessions.  

Another 30 minutes later and 2 other children come bounding out of their house to join in the fun.  This family moved in about 6 months ago and we had never met.  Within another 30 minutes I was sharing a cup of tea in their kitchen with both the mum and dad, being shown around their house.

Today I have had more conversations with my neighbours than I think I have had in the seven years of living on my street.  And the only reason being was because we were spending time out in the street, being visible.

Why am I sharing my day with you?  Running your own business can be a very lonely business.  Stuck in front of your PC, returning emails and hiding in your home office.  Not conducive to making you very visible.

To attract clients you need to be build relationships.  And to build relationships you need to visible.  Whether that is going out to network meetings, being active on Facebook or getting articles published in your industry’s magazines; visibility is crucial to attracting clients and building your business.

Where could you go and build a snowman today?

Marketing Drip Feed is Essential to Survive This Year

As we begin 2009 there will be no doubt that one of the reasons why some businesses will survive and others fail, will be the consistency of their marketing.

Many self-employed professionals have relied on referrals over the past few years.  They have built up a strong reputation and enjoyed a steady flow of client.

But, with the economy in a downturn, it is easy for those referrals to dry up.  Their clients may cut budgets or have decided to spend their money on other resources. And the steady flow of clients stops.

On the other hand, there are many, many coaches, consultants and trainers who have been marketing consistently - month in, month out, irrespective of how busy their are with clients.

And it will be these businesses who will not only maintain their flow of work, but probably gain a little more as some other businesses go under.

Marketing is not an activity that happens once a month.  Nor is it something that you do every Monday morning, to kick start your week.

Marketing needs to happen each and every day, drip fed in to your working week so you maintain visibility and your potential clients think of you when they are ready.

Recession for Some, Opportunities for Others

I was walking past Robert Dyas at the weekend and stopped to read their poster in the window.

Woolworths may be gone, but their customers still need to buy household stuff.  And as you can see from this photo, Robert Dyas are keen to pick up an increased market share.

Are you worried about the recession and concerned about business?

Or are you doing something about it and being proactive like Robert Dyas?

It may be recession for some, but there are plenty of opportunities for others.

Are your clients eating more beans and less organic?

Yet more figures have come out today highlighting the downturn of our economy and how retail customers are changing their shopping habits.

The BBC are reporting that there is an increase of 22.6% in Baked Beans sales and 11% decrease in the amount of organic foods purchased. 

Not surprising really when everyone, me included, is looking at prices more carefully and making decisions on how they can decrease the price of their shopping basket.

But what about your clients?  Have you been able to take a step back and work out what your clients are doing at the moment?

People haven't stopped spending - they are just spending their money more wisely.  And this will be true of your clients, too.

So either get a survey out or pick up the phone and call a few target clients.  It doesn't matter what you actually do to find out, but find out you must.

Find out what your clients are spending more on and less on.  And you can still grow your business by offering more beans instead.

The 5 Marketing Rules for 2009

When the global economy seems to be on meltdown and all around you, you are reading, watching and hearing bad news, it’s easy to get dragged in to a negative mindset. 

If it’s happening to M&S and Woolworths, than it can happen to you, too!

Wrong.  As a self-employed professional who runs your own business, you have many advantages over the big brands.  You probably have very little in the way of overheads.  And you have the ability to be flexible and highly adaptable.  There is no reason why you can’t be successful whilst others around you get sucked down.

But there is no question you are going to have work smarter.  Not harder – just smarter.

These are the marketing rules that I am abiding by this year.

1. Be Focused.  Now we are in full flow social media marketing, it’s easy to get dragged in to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, spending hours clicking links and watching videos.  But ignore these marketing tools at your peril.  Embrace these tools but be focused. Have a plan for each one, automate as much as possible and focus your time so you have the conversations and get straight back to your other marketing and business actions.

2. Be Proactive.  Don’t just wait for business to come your way.  This year you have to go out and get amongst it.  Follow every lead up, reply to every email, return every call.  If you get complacent or feel like a duvet day, then expect your competitors to be the winners.  Be bold, be brave, be proactive.

3. Be Niche.  If you haven’t embraced the rules of niche marketing, then this is the year to.  Woolworths is a great example of what not to do:  they tried to be everything to everyone and just couldn’t compete with the likes of Tesco and Amazon.  The more focused you are on what you offer your target clients, the more likely your marketing is going to reach out and grab their attention.

4. Be an Expert.  Once you know your niche, make sure you own it.  Write articles, speak at conferences, be at the right events, get interviewed.  Become the one person that your potential clients think of when they have the problem you are able to solve.

5. Be Positive. Even when you may feel down on a Monday morning, make sure you are telling everyone how great business is.  If you are active on Facebook, Twitter or your blog, it is especially important that your messages are upbeat and positive.  Be honest, by all means, but if you feel crap and write about it from a negative point of view on the internet - its there for ever.  You want to attract potential clients – not repel them!

What rules do you have for marketing this year? Add your thoughts as a comment below.

Promote Less and Charge More

One of the easiest ways of making your business more profitable is to stop offering lots of choice and put your prices up.

Offer "affordable" and "low-cost" solutions to your clients and it is easy to get caught in the trap of constant promotions.  You can see this happening on the High Street at the moment.  Big retailers are offering pre-christmas sales and slashing their prices.  But the low margins mean that they have to get large numbers of customers through their doors to hit their sales targets.

When you run your own business, this is a strategy that rarely works.  It's hard to attract the high numbers of clients you need to make the profits you want.

Here is a simple example using workshops to show you what I mean.

Half-day workshop tickets sell at £45
Delegate rate & room hire cost you £10 per person
Gross Profit per person £35

To make a total gross profit (and remember you still need to take in to account all the cost of promoting the event, work book printing, admin support, etc) of £500, you need a minimum of 15 tickets sold. 

Full-day workshop tickets sell at £195
Delegate rate & room hire cost you £40 per person
Gross Profit per person £155

To make the same £500 gross profit, you only need to sell 4 tickets.  If you sold 15 tickets, you would make a gross profit of £2325.

You would have to run at least 4 half day workshops to make the same gross profit as running one full day workshop.

Which workshop programme do you think will take less of your time to make £2,000?

(Please note, these calculations are simplified.  Do make sure you work out your net profit carefully when running events and don't get caught out by focusing on your gross profit per person!)

Writing a Marketing Plan for Your Small Business: The 3 questions you must answer

Whether you are just starting up your own business from home or have been working for yourself for several years, a clear marketing plan is essential to not only show you what you should be doing to attract clients to your business, but also to keep you on track.

A marketing plan is really quite a simple document to produce.

There are far too many complicated templates that can be downloaded off the internet or got from a business book.  And when you feel you may to produce a 20 page document it can be the fastest way to put off the whole planning process.

There are only 3 questions that you need to answer in your marketing plan and they are:

1.  Where are you now?

2.  where are you going?

3.  How are you going to get there?

And they need to be in this order.

Too many people jump in to the “how are you going get there” question and get bogged down with marketing strategies and tools that, frankly, may not help you bit.

Start with the easiest question of all “where are you now?”. Not only will this help build your confidence up (after all, you should know the answer to this question without much thinking!), it will give you a baseline from where to start building.

The second question “where are you going?” is designed to focus you on targets and goals.  Where do you want to be this time next year?  How many clients do you want to managing?  How many hours do you want to be working? How much money do you want to be creating?

Your destination needs to specific.  It needs to be something that you can measure.  It’s got to have a timescales.  And it’s got to be realistic and something that you know is achievable. (Yup, you’ve guessed it - it has to a SMART goal!).

Once you have your SMART desination, you will find it far easier to answer the third and final question “How are you going to get there?”.

So forget about mission statements and synopsises.  Get to the basics and focus on what’s going to work for you on a day-to-day basis.

How do you request friends on facebook?

How many social networking sites are you a member of now?  There is every chance that if you are active online, then you are just not a member of one site, you are a member of probably 3 or even much, much more.

And if you are an active online social networker, are you building a friend list of thousands or growing organically?

Everyone on the internet may have different strategies and ways of building their brand online - but how many of these people network online the same way that they do offline?

Most social networking sites, such as facebook and LinkedIn, have the facility of letting you add a message when you send out a friend request or invitation to connect (wording depending on which site you are on).  Yet, hardly anyone uses it.

If you were are at a face-to-face networking event, would you consider barging in to a group of people and start shoving your business card in to everyone's hands?

No, probably you wouldn't. (At least I hope you wouldn't!)

You would introduce yourself.  Probably shake a hand and ask who the other person was.  You would start a conversation.

So, why can't people do this online?  It seems too easy to go down a big list of contacts and click the friend request button in the vague hope that the other person will confirm that request quicker than you can wink.

Now, if you are building a mailing list so that you can start sending out sales messages, then you go for it.  You may as well start shoving business cards out at networking events and hiring a team of telesales reps to call from a list of yellow pages.  You will get the same hit rate!

If you are networking online and using the social networking sites to build your brand, raise awareness of your business and generally reach out to potential clients and customers, then stop and ask yourself how you are inviting people to join your network.

If you would shake someone by the hand and introduce yourself at a face-to-face meeting, do the same online.  It may take longer in the short term, but the relationships will be stronger in the long term.

Reviewing & monitoring your marketing is boring, right?

Everyone always seem hungry for new ideas on how to attract clients do their business, don't they?  They want to know the latest web-tool to use, the next social networking site, the new way of reaching out to a new target audience.

But how many of you take the time to step back and review what you have done already?

I know reviewing and monitoring can often be viewed as the boring bit.  The annoying admin that needs ticking off.

But it's got to be done!

There is no point going out and discovering the latest and newest (is there such a word!!) way of attracting clients if you haven't taken the time to work out what is working for you now.

Even this is just a monthly exercise.  A couple of hours on the last Friday of every month where you check your web stats and the number of subscribers to your blog or newsletter.

Even if you just have a piece of paper stuck to your desk where you scribble down how your new clients and customers get to hear about you.

You don't have to have complicated systems - a basic excel spreadsheet or form to be filled out by hand will keep you on track and help you work out what is working (do more of!) and what is not (stop doing and try something different).

Now, which day did I say I was going to do this myself this month?!!!