More Than A Few Words

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Does your home page include a compelling call to action? What do you want people to do when they come to your website? That sounds like a simple question, but the answer is often very complicated. Why? Because if you're like most businesses, you have multiple objectives for your website, but you only have one first impression. So what message and what call to action should get the top spot. One of the best ways to figure this out is to look for inspiration from your competitors. Look for companies who provide a service similar to yours. See how they use specific words to connect with their audience, as they present a unique value proposition and a logical next step. See if you can figure out who their ideal clients are based on the wording they choose and then go back and look at your

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  According to Andrea Petrone, attracting clients starts with three simple steps.  Define you niche. Don't try to sell to everyone.  Find the people who are most likely to want your services Get to know your niche really well. How are they being impacted by current events. What are their fears and frustrations?  If you take the time to really understand their world, you are in a better position to offer solutions. "Over-deliver value.  Become a resource and customers will come to rely on you.  About Andrea For the past 20 years, he has helped small and medium-size consulting firms and B2B organizations to build and scale their business. He has been in the trenches, running successful consulting firms during economical crisis.   He is a Certified Executive and Business Coach, Facilitator, Professional and Keynote Speaker, li. I live in London, UK. He works with prof

Today I want to talk about what a customer is worth because I think all too often business owners look at what a customer's spending today and see that as the only value of that customer. But if you're in a business where customers come back time and time again, you need to look at the total picture, the long term value of that customer. If that customer stays with you three or five years, there is additional sales revenue with out the sales expense, but there is more.   When a customer really knows and loves you, they are more likely to be willing to talk about you to their friends and their families This goodwill has the potential to create multiple new opportunities. So as you start thinking about how much you can afford to spend, to generate leads  you need to think about what that customer is really worth to your business.

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Where does marketing end and sales activity begin?  These days, the line is a little fuzzy as both teams rely on digital tools to attract prospects and close sales.  This week, Kyle Hammer shares some ideas on how these two groups can improve their results by engaging in active listening to customers, to the market and to each other.    About Kyle Hammer Kyle is a sales and marketing veteran with a deep understanding of strategy, digital marketing execution, and using technology to enhance brand impact. A hands-on leader with passion for solving business challenges with process, operations, and technology.

If you’re like many business owners, you started your company to do something you enjoyed. Maybe you were a chef and you started a restaurant, or a doctor who wanted to take care of people, or a marketer who enjoyed the creative challenge of engaging customers with a product. Whatever it was, you started your company to do that thing. Along the way, you figured out you also had to do sales, bookkeeping, human resources, and dozens of other tasks which take time out of your day and your week. So how much time do you really spend doing what you set out to do? It’s unlikely that 100% of your day is comprised with things that you love. At some point, you have to deal with an unhappy employee, preparing paperwork for your accountant, or calling clients who are behind in payments. But if your day is primarily taken up with things that you’d rather not do, you’re heading for burnout. And you need to recognize the warning signs and reverse course, because life is too short. Maybe you need to change your business mode

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.    You have only a few moments to make that great first impression and you won't stand out by sounding like everyone else.  You need to find a way to be first, best or different. And if you choose different, make sure your point of difference is actually relevant to your customer.    Beyond that first impression, our guest Mike Verret explains that your words will have an effect on others, so choose them carefully.    About Mike Verret Mike solves problems that plague small businesses by giving them a unique perspective of what he sees in their goals. He believes that any marketing message is wrong if it doesn’t speak to us in normal human terms. And he thinks that corporate language is absolutely nuts. Who “ideates?” We think. We don’t have “Key Performance Indicators.” We have goals. Business forgets to be human. Mike understands how consumers think, and he help

The marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features brief marketing tips and conversations with professionals from around the world.  Okay, so you’ve launched your new website and everything’s great. It looks wonderful. But you’ve noticed that you’re not getting a lot of traffic. You probably did some basic SEO when you first launched the site, now’s a great time to continue to build on that foundation by adding blogs and additional landing pages. These new pages don’t increase just the size of your website. They provide additional content and give you an opportunity to focus on niche topics to attract the attention of search engines. You’re not going to win competing against giant national and international corporations on mega keywords. But what you can do is go down these really narrow rabbit holes and focus on a niche topic to create a custom landing page. When you can focus in on a niche topic and control that keyword, you can win the battle for SEO, and drive great traff

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Before you can create an irresistible offer, you have to have a clear picture of your ideal client. Without that target your marketing and your offer are unfocused. Once you figure out who you're serving and what they want, you can begin creating offers just for them.    The offer might be a brief coaching session or audit, a quiz or workbook. The goal is to create something which demonstrates your expertise, provides real value and leaves the prospective customer wanting more!    About Diane Diane Agudelo is a Master Transformational Coach & marketing strategist for female entrepreneurs in the coaching space. Her years of experience in corporate sales have allowed her to hone her skills and teach others how to be successful on their own. Her specialty is helping clients align their values with their business life, resulting in balance and real-life success

When I was Vice President of Creative Services at Conseco, we were always out of literature for key products. In the insurance business literature is all you have to sell, so these outages would cripple our sales team. Our out of stock list was routinely close to 300 different items and climbing. While we had numerous meetings on the subject nothing ever changed. So I stopped talking about procedures and policy and asked a simple question "If our goal was a back order level of 100 what would we do?" Defining a specific target, instead of vague "get better" gave a focus to our discussions. Every day we knew exactly how far we were from our target. As an added incentive, I offered to take the print team to any restaurant in town if we reduced our back orders to 100  by September. 1. The date gave us the sense of urgency we needed to keep this in the forefront of our discussions. We kicked off every production meeting with a brief conversation about the back-order list and the ideas started flowing.  We institut

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  These days there is a lot of noise out there. With the increasing number of free social media platforms right at our fingertips.  You can share the same boring information everywhere or you can create content which shares a bit of who you really are.  Our guest Karie Millspaugh  explains " There's only you!  You are the one make and model, and there are no two of you alike on the planet, unless somehow you figured out the cloning mechanism." Your goal is to bring that unique self to social media.    One of the first questions to answer is how much do you share.  In order to create connection, you have to be authentic.  You have to do more than just shove a message down the throat of  your audience, you need to let a bit of you shine through.  Don't be afraid to show off your sense of humor, the rule of thumb is that it will increase connection with your followers

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Good marketing starts with the basics.  You need to have a plan.  Unfortunately, as we learned in the last year, sometimes life throws us a few curve balls and your year long plan goes right out the window.  That's why my guest, Tim Fitzpatrick suggests businesses use a 90-day approach to their marketing plan. While it contains all the same elements, a 90-day approach forces you to stop and evaluate on a regular basis.  Tim's 90 day plan is built on six simple elements.  1) Your ideal client 2) Goal.  What do you want to accomplish in 90 days. 3) Resources including both time and money 4) Evaluate what you have been doing 5) Focus on actions for the next 90 days 6) Set up your metrics so you will know if your plan worked.  About Tim  Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20+ years of entrepreneurial experien

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. If you follow national brands on social media, ask yourself why. Odds are it’s because the content is fun, entertaining, and engaging. Now look at your business social media account. Can you say the same thing? A small business is probably not going to be as popular as a national brand. But you can emulate what they’re doing, and cultivate an engaged social community. So the question is, how do they do it? For starters, they post regularly, if you see a business account that hasn’t posted in several days, that’s a clear sign the company is not really all that interested. And if they’re not interested, their community is not going to be interested. And remember, you can’t be a silent participant.  That's like throwing a party and hanging out in the back of the room. You’ve got to jump

he weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  These days everybody's trying to present themselves as an expert. So how do you stand out in your niche in a crowded market? Part of the magic comes from creating a visual brand. Where does the process begin to build a visual brand for yourself? In today's crowded market, anyone can become a personal brand, but only special people can become have a personality brand. A personality brand is what's unique to you. It's how you position yourself in the market and how people perceive you. In the swipe right swipe left world, we make a decision about someone in less than one 10th of a second. We are in judging all the time so you want to make sure when you are creating your business, it's driven by your personality, because that's something that you're going to find your aligned audience with. And you're showing up in a way that is authentic and honoring who you are. Ab

The podcast More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with marketing professionals from around the world. A heart-centered business has purpose and intent, connected to your superhero talent. For so many 2020 was a time for pivoting and taking drastic measures, to keep our business running. We had to move fast and we didn't always have the ability to incorporate soul and heartful side of our brands and business. Making those tough choices left many of us stuck in the day to day, but now is a great time to get back to doing what brings your joy and adds value to others. One way to reset is to look at you tasks and  see which activities you are engaged in "fill your cup"  These are the things which make you smile  and feel energized. Then look at the activities which leave you feeling stressed, or unsatisfied. If there are more of these "energy sucks" in your day, it is time to shift how you spend your time. You may still have to do things that don't  fill up our cup, but find

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Today I want to talk about patience. Because let's face it, this is something that small business owners typically don't have. We start our businesses with these grand plans, and we get out there and start marketing our product, and we expect results. But good marketing takes time. If you invest in inbound marketing and content marketing, you need to remember this type of marketing will not double your web traffic overnight. But those blog posts build value over time. And the content that you wrote a week or two ago, or even a month ago continues to be found in niches and continues to drive traffic for months and years to come. Search engines may not notice the first article you write on a topic. But once you have a series of articles, suddenly you begin to be seen as an authority. An

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world. Many business owners assume they know the answer. They believe they don't need research, but Lori Highby thinks that's a mistake. When you are making assumptions, it is like shooting darts in the dark. You may hit the target, but the majority of those darts are going to hit the wall or break a window. If you start with the facts, really get into the head of who your target customer you can craft a plan based on data and insight. Now you have a strategy to get the right message in front of the right people so they want to do business with you.  ABOUT LORI HIGHBY With a core personal value of lifelong-learning, Lori Highby has shared creative and strategic digital marketing, personal branding, and entrepreneurship lessons with people and organizations from allover. Her 20 years experience, education, and involvement range from currently owning a digital marketing a

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  This week we explore the importance of sales and marketing working together. Our guest Allan Langer explains companies that keep their marketing and sales teams separate have a lower success rate than companies which actually allow and encourage these companies to work together. The win rates are about 65% higher in those companies. It doesn't, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why that is the case. If your marketing is working it is driving leads to the company. But if there is no communication between the groups, the sales team won't know where they came from, what the demographic is or the lead came in. Without background information they are starting from disadvantage. If they understood the reasoning behind the marketing, they would be able to cater their sales presentation around that reasoning and everything becomes congruent within the comp

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Who is your business plan for? I know that sounds like a simple question, but it’s not really. As a business owner, it’s important to have a business plan that guides your operations. But sometimes you also have to produce one for other people. And those different audiences are going to want different things from your plan. For example, if you’re trying to get a bank loan, the banker is going to want to make sure that all the numbers add up. They’re also going to want to see that you have clearly thought through what could go wrong and how you’re going to pay back that loan even if things don’t turn out quite the way you expected. Conversely, investors are not going to be as interested in the numbers. What they want to see is a really clear explanation of what your business idea is, w

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Handling the mental health challenges (mostly stress, anxiety, and isolation) that come along with being a business owner. It's essential to separate your emotional state from the results, which brings you more peace of mind and ironically better results. About Craig Inzana Craig is a mental wellness advocate, media creator, and mindfulness practitioner. He is a recovering addict obsessed with self-development. wellbeing, and self-compassion. He owns a marketing agency that focuses on marketing and selling through relationships. He was previously a commission painter, a profitable filmmaker, and generally a multi-disciplinary artist.    

I happen to love things that are quirky and a little off balance. That should come as no surprise considering the fact that I named my company Roundpeg. It is this love of asymmetry and innovative shapes and sizes and styles that has really got me jazzed with some of the new web trends we’re seeing. Over the last few years websites had gotten very boxy with large rectangular images at the top, three boxes below is the preferred format. But new design tools are allowing us to create designs which break the grid pattern, creating the illusion that sections of the website seem to float and break traditional borders. We’re seeing asymmetry everywhere. This allows information that is more important to live in wider columns and layouts with unequal columns draw attention to the most important information on the page. We’re seeing lots of angles and dividers in weird shapes and sizes. If you’re ready to see a little asymmetry in your website, reach out to us at roundpeg.biz.