How to get and keep the action habit

By action I mean doing things that make a difference and move you forward – rather than the everyday admin or ‘busy work’. As a good client of mine who’s a specialist in this area tells me … success is all about scheduling your priorities, not prioritising your schedule.

Taking regular action on the important things, taking action on our intuition, taking action that supports our goals. This is what we want – but often we beat ourselves up because we fail on a regular basis! So, what can we consciously do to keep in action? Here are the four things that I see working most often:

1. Invest in one-to-one coaching and mentoring. Reflecting on my own experience of being coached last year, I realised that the number one benefit for me was that it got me into the habit of taking action. And not just during the 3-month period of weekly sessions – months later the habit is still with me and just gets reinforced the more one-to-one contact happens. Quite often when we think about coaching the first benefits that come to mind are things like the support and accountability, but the acid test for me is if this all results in you taking action.
2. Join or set up a Mastermind group – with a leader that creates a space for growth. This helps us be inspired to take action and have the confidence to do so. It’s a different environment and experience to one-to-one work – you may prefer this or you can do both as each can help you achieve different things, especially if there are some things you are uncomfortable dealing with in a group (however supportive that group may be). You can also set up a more informal Mastermind group where you regularly meet with a group of likeminded business peers to share ideas, find solutions and swap practical tips on what works and so on.
3. Co-create something. This is the business equivalent of having a running or exercise partner. When we are co-creating an event, a product, or service or maybe even a joint blog or talk, then our energy rises and expands, we have someone to play with, it increases our sense of commitment – and it’s just more fun.
4. Get a shot of inspiration – pick up the phone or meet up and talk to someone. When we sense a slow down, a degree of uncertainty or become unsure of our ‘next step’, then sussing out what is working for someone else is often just the boost we need to get us moving again. If you are starting to struggle with something, take a look around and see who appears to have got a handle on it and give them a call for a quick chat. This could be someone you know well, someone you just met or even someone you see online who looks like they know what they’re doing – my experience is that most people are flattered to be asked … and you’ll get a lift from their enthusiasm!

Above all remember that action becomes hard when what we are trying to do is related to a goal that is out of alignment with our values – what we stand for, the person we are in our heart and soul. So, if there is some action that you are really, really struggling with right now, just sit with this thought for a short while … be honest, and you will know if this is true for you. If it is, then that’s actually another, slightly deeper aspect to address!

If you have some “action” tips of your own to share, please do post them here. I’d also like to hear about your success stories with coaching, Mastermind groups or co-creation – maybe we could even co-write something about it?

You may also like: What to do when things go wrong

Find out more about marketing coaching and business mentoring with me

What’s the one thing that would make the biggest difference to you in 2012?

I’ve noticed a lot of people I meet or talk to for the first time tell me how they want more focus or direction. Some may even use the ‘S’ word … as in ‘I think I need to look at my business more strategically’. And others say things like ‘I never do much planning’ – in the same breath as ‘I never seem to find the time’.
 
Quite often they then carry on with a list of things in their business and indeed their life that’s not working or going wrong … or describe a situation that they’ve lived with for a long time but wish they could change.
 
Approaching a new year is a popular time for many to reassess and re-evaluate and several clients have come to me this month for just such a review session (another popular time is the Spring). Many more specifically set aside time over the holiday period to plan. Even those with young families and busy households often find that the complete break from the office routine allows the mind to throw up unexpected ideas and thoughts – at the most unexpected times.
 
So whatever your circumstances over Christmas and into the New Year, here’s just two questions to ponder in a quiet moment … 

• What’s the one thing that would make the biggest difference to you in 2012?
   
• What would life be like if you could achieve it – with complete success?

Ok, that’s a good start at doing some ‘conscious thinking’ … which is my simple definition of ‘being more strategic’!

If this prompts any specific thoughts, please do share them with me.

You may also like: Strategy … can it be that simple?

Why a strategic approach to website content pays off

Over at Noisegate Media, Ben has been writing about one of our recent joint projects and highlighting why this particular piece of web development was so successful. At the formal review last week it was good to hear that the client team enjoyed the whole process as much as we did!

There is no doubt that the new Gateway Energy site is as good as it is because of the time and effort we all invested in planning it.

Taking a strategic approach is relatively easy – it just requires a framework or a process, a little head space and some conscious thought.

If your web site is the hub of your online presence, then developing it must include good design, robust technical deployment and, crucially, a clear roadmap for content creation and management … including integrating it with social media, PR, and all your other marketing efforts.

In developing Gateway’s content strategy and site specification, we  involved various members of the client’s team – the people working at the sharp end who have day to day contact with actual customers.

This is because it’s the visitor experience and journey that’s at the heart of a good site. What matters is content that people want to read, use and share … and being able to get to it easily and quickly.

Your website is not a puff piece for your ego.

From your perspective, you want to be able to update content and add to it and publish it and share it. You may even want to earn income from it. You therefore need a technical solution that allows you do this easily and quickly.

Otherwise your website just becomes a barrier – something difficult, to be fudged, fixed and wrestled with.

Top tips for developing a serious, hard working website

1. Spend time planning your website. What must it achieve, what role will it play in your overall marketing? What actions do you want visitors to take? Start with a clean sheet. Stop grabbing all your printed materials and trying to make an online jigsaw out of it. And avoid taking your current site and just adding to it – that’s a missed opportunity.
2. Work with people who know what they’re doing and can actually help you create your strategy. Testing the user experience with friends and clients is good, but be aware of their limitations. They’re unlikely to know enough about your business or best practice at large to make an effective contribution. You risk ending  up with a hodge podge of suggestions based on individual personal preferences.
3. Buy the best you can afford and make sure the technical platform is a) sound and b) capable of handling your needs as they evolve. You want a solution that positively encourages you to create and publish fresh and engaging content – with no fear of mucking it all up. The Gateway Energy site is a Content Management System which does clever stuff with content to create changing, context rich pages – you post it once, it  gets used dynamically over and over again. And, my, it looks good too. Why is that? Could it be the clear, clean, crisp look, consistent font and colour scheme? Simplicity and clarity is preserved from adulteration – no one can introduce odd random panels, font styles or weird colours and the site can never become crowded with competing messages.

Even just a little time and extra budget invested wisely at the start can make a big difference – and save you money, hassle and much fiddling around time in the long run.

Have you recently developed a new website and have a tip to share? Or are you thinking about a new site and have a question to ask? Do let me know …

 You may also like: Six tips for creating great online content

Six tips for creating great online content

As opportunities for marketing on the web develop, multiply and become more sophisticated, the greater the requirement to stand back and ensure the right amount of thought and planning goes into managing the content you are publishing online.

It’s no longer enough just to have a website, a few scattered directory listings and a couple of social media accounts which get the odd update or posting when you “have time” or have a bright idea for an article or want to promote an event or offer.

The key to success is to think of a single web based canvass populated by multiple, interlinked tools and opportunities – rather than a number of separate things that just happen to take place online.

Here are my 6 top tips for creating great content that gets found, read, acted on and shared. 

1. Choose and tailor your content (what you write about and share) with your target audience in mind. It’s about what they want to know, read about and share – not what you want to tell them.
2. Choose your tools (website, blog, social media … ) with a clear purpose in mind. Are they the best ones to help you achieve what you want to achieve? Are they a match for your tone and style?
3. In terms of social media, find out where your audience gathers (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ecademy …) and connect with them there in a way that is appropriate and engaging. If you hate the very thought of all this but growing numbers of your customers are increasingly using social media sites, then you’re likely to miss out over the longer term – because your competitors will be active there for sure.
4. Plan your content. As well as topics and themes, what proportion are you going to originate yourself and how much will be sourced elsewhere and shared? What are those sources, how and how often will you tap into them?
5. How will you write and re-purpose a key topic? For example, a serious “expert voice” article for your website (or as guest writer for someone else) vs a chatty personal opinion piece for your blog (or someone else’s) vs a series of Twitter tips. Can you link this to a book review on LinkedIn, or ask or answer questions or contribute to a “group” discussion?
6. Take time to understand how to maximise the effectiveness of key word phrases to appeal to your audience and also search engines – from meta tags and browser titles to body copy, headlines, and linking text.

And finally … New tips and techniques emerge all the time but in this era of “conversational marketing” always remember to keep to the basic principles of good communication and build your content strategy around listening, engaging, and sharing.

How a simple model can transform your thinking

Way back in time a simple model was developed to explain how persuasive communications (advertising or selling) works.  First published by Strong in 1925 and attributed to St Elmo Lewis around 1898, AIDA has indeed been around a long time pre-dating the boom years of the advertising agency (think Mad Men) when mass broadcast became king.

Its message endures – because, frankly, it works. And it’s versatile. You can apply it to your marketing as a whole, to your sales process … right down to an individual sales letter, web page, or blog post. Or practically anything else you can think of where you want to persuade someone to take an action – buy, call, read on, click, share, tweet.

You’ll find it in most marketing communications texts and mega successful marketers whose time sells for thousands of dollars an hour use it to this day.

So can you. And it can change your thinking forever. Not least because it actually makes you do that – think. This is all about conscious marketing and conscious writing.

So here it is. In this version I’ve put an extra letter to make it AIDCA.

Awareness (or Attention)

Interest

Desire

Conviction

Action

When we are thinking about buying something we first become aware of it or it grabs our attention.

Then we develop an interest in it. Mmm, that could work for me. Well, I’ve never seen one of those / heard of that before.

Then we get a desire for it – we really, really want it.  Wow, that would really solve my problem with xyz! That would look just great with my new shoes / next to the 52” plasma screen. We are moving away from the purely logical to the more emotional – from the head to the heart.

Then sometimes reality kicks back in at the “conviction” stage. Do we really want this?  Is it the right time? Is there a better option out there? Can I afford it? How can I pay?

Conviction triggers our intention and converts it into action – i.e. we buy.

If we accept that our customers or clients will be going through this thought process when making up their minds about buying from us, there are 2 key factors at work that will influence their behaviour at each stage.  I call these the 2 Cs – comfort and confidence.

As a general rule of thumb, you need to be giving your prospect the comfort and confidence they need at each stage in order for them to keep moving and take the next step.

What do they need to hear from you, experience or feel?

Many people make the mistake of throwing all their efforts at raising awareness of their product or service and then hoping that, if they’ve done enough of it, some of those exposed to their initial message will end up buying. 

Some will, but this “front end” approach is unlikely to be sustainable or to provide a regular, predictable stream of customers.

If you’re getting less happening at the “action” end than you would like (if you see what I mean), then you may have some gaps to fill – a piece of information or an experience that appeals to the head or the heart may be missing. You may have a queue forming, waiting to tip over into desire, conviction or action!

If reading this has struck a chord or prompted you to make changes to your marketing, do leave a comment and let me know!

Other related posts:

What to do when things go wrong

Is marketing more about process than creativity?

Go to the Toubleshoot Your Marketing webinar where I talk about AIDCA with Jean Maund and explain how to use it to review your marketing, and identify any problem areas … and then work out what to change or improve.

Nurturing student enterprise

A couple of weeks ago I went along to THE Store in Dunstable (the new hub for Central Bedfordshire College’s Art and Design courses) for the private view of an exhibition called Type Can Speak. I’d been invited by clients Martyn Dolbear and David Flynn of Xcaliba, a specialist print management company, who had teamed up with the College a few months earlier after searching for a local education “partner” to take on a graphic design brief.

It was refreshing to see the enthusiasm from all sides, especially at a time when we’re used to just hearing complaints from “business” about how poorly equipped graduates are for the world of work.

Here was a company willing to support students by giving them a real business brief and by working with them and mentoring them throughout the process.

The aim of the project was to produce a book featuring typography and the role it plays in creating innovative and inspiring design. You can read more about the project on the Xcaliba blog.

Project collaboration with a local college is something I quite often suggest to clients but which all too frequently meets with a lukewarm response. They think it will be too difficult to organise or fear they’ll invest a lot of time and effort only to get poor results which they are unable to use. Interestingly some also feel that they’ll be taking advantage of students who take part for no financial reward.

At the Type Can Speak event College representatives and students were of one voice on this point – the “real world” experience of a project like this is simply priceless.

It is true though that the business commissioning the project must be prepared to give it their all and devote the same care and attention to briefing and developing the project as they would in a real commercial situation. They also have to be fully engaged in supporting learning, giving constructive feedback.

At its best this is a valuable exchange of experience and talent rather than cash.

Higher Education Tutor at Dunstable, Celeste Henney, says

“Students benefit in many ways from ‘live briefs’, this includes the meeting of realistic deadlines and developing communication skills both by email and in face to face meetings. They get to understand a little of the commercial restraints and restrictions inherent within real world projects, such as cost considerations. More importantly it is the pressure and challenge of having to impress a client that benefits them most. It helps to motivate the students who in this case have exceeded our expectations, really working hard and coming up with ideas that are original and unique to each of them.”

If you are interested in typography, you can order your free copy of the Type Can Speak book from the Xcaliba website. All the student contributions are also available as prints – sure to brighten up any dull wall! Xcaliba have set up a print ordering portal (using a version of their own “web to print” solution) with all proceeds going to the students.

If you have thoughts to share or tips on how to create successful student project collaborations, post them here! I’ll be talking more about this with Martyn Dolbear very soon …

Strategy … can it be that simple?

I was catching up with a long time friend this week about our respective businesses and we realised after about half an hour that a theme was emerging. We’d covered how the year was whizzing by, the challenges of juggling time and an increasing array of tasks and how it was easy to feel you were falling behind when it came to “new” ways of marketing – with social media taking centre stage.

How do you keep up to date, let alone put new ideas into practice? How to deal with sense of being out of your depth and overwhelmed?

Then she said an interesting thing. “Still, this is all right up your street – with your focus on helping us stand back, think and take time to work it all out before jumping in and running about in a mad panic – or just sit there paralysed by fear and confusion!”

I’m not the first nor the only one to advocate consciously setting aside time to think and plan, to reconnect with the big picture, tune into your intuition and see the wood for the trees. And I do understand that fizzing sense of panic when there seems just so much to get to grips with, so much to do.

However, the rapidly evolving digital world offers so much in terms of marketing, especially for the small business and entrepreneur, that it’s a shame if we start to see it as a big problem rather than a major opportunity.

More than ever, the principle of regularly tuning in to the big picture and taking time to start with the strategy before considering the tactics (what we will actually do to achieve our business goals) is key.

Where we currently are with our business is irrelevant because we can reclaim this space (and our sanity) at any time. 

Recently I was delighted to read a piece by the fabulous E-Myth team called Strategic Work Made Simple, so I’m including a link to that here because it’s one of the best explanations I’ve ever seen. I especially like the angle that strategic work is nothing fancy nor scary – just mainly about thinking …

How to get ready to do your best work … it’s all about you

Business success with EFT, hypnosis, goal mapping and more

You may well think that my best tip for a successful business is to have a great business and marketing plan and back it up with first class technical execution. After all you will have heard me “talk” about that a lot

However, that is only part of the picture. You may have the best, most creative plan in the world but the key to success lies in your head and your heart.

Without the confidence and emotional staying power, you could be struggling to realise the results and therefore the life you most desire.

Keeping ourselves in good shape is something that often comes up in my coaching work with business owners. So today I’m sharing the 4 steps that I personally use and giving you some signposts to the people and techniques that help me the most.

1. Gain clarity around the vision for your business and your life in general. The more clearly you can truly see and feel this vision the better. Meditation or some meditative type of activity will help here – anything that helps you clear and calm the mind and get in touch with or reconnect with your vision. At this point avoid stressing about how you’re going to make this happen – just connect with what it would feel like to have this vision as your reality, right now.
2. If at this point you feel anything other than excitement or joy, then stop and reflect. If you are feeling any negative emotions – anxiety, fear, panic, lack of motivation – then this is a sure sign that you have resistance at some level to what you are asking or seeing. Use a clearing technique to understand and then release this resistance – EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or hypnosis are the two techniques that I personally use.
3. Make sure you are actually setting down your vision and your top line goals. Research shows that those with written goals are much more likely to achieve them (there are good reasons for this – maybe we’ll look at that another time). Crucially, choose and use a goal setting technique that actually works for you. I use a combination of writing a hypnotic script (because I like words) and goal mapping (because it uses words and images and works with the power of both the left and right side of the brain). Visualisation also works well here.
4. Make these 3 activities an integral part of your day-to-day life. Repetition and consistency work – and because, well, life is always changing and new challenges and opportunities arrive all the time … so we want to be agile and fit enough emotionally to manage and make the most of them.

Do you want more?

If you want to explore any of these techniques in more detail, here are some of the people I have personally experienced, trained with, or worked with.

EFT Master, Jacqui Crooks

EFT Master, Carol Look

Motivational hypnotherapist, Nicola Menage

Brian Mayne’s Goal Mapping

Goal mapping with Jenny Stewart of One Thought

If you have experiences or thoughts to share on this topic, I’d love to hear them!

Conscious marketing with Sister Snog

Thanks to Paula Gardner of Do Your Own PR for this interview with Hela Wozniak-Kay, co-founder of Sister Snog.

What I like about this is that they know why they are using certain marketing tools – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, email marketing, and of course all things PR. There’s a deliberate purpose at work here. And they are learning from the doing of it.

Read the interview on Paula’s blog and remember to sign up for her newsletter if you want more like this!

Is marketing more about process than creativity?

We often think that successful marketing and promotion requires nothing but a great creative mind. We have visions of teams of exuberant advertising executives striving for the next Eureka moment in late night brainstorming sessions amid scattered pizza boxes.

Creativity – though a key component – works within the overall business and marketing framework. And marketing is a process just like any other business process. That’s why successful franchises work – the “business-in-a-box” complete with all the relevant processes (operational, financial, people, marketing, sales) which you follow faithfully to the letter.

In other posts I’ve talked about creating a marketing process – for me that’s essentially what marketing planning is all about. So, at some point you might create your process starting with a blank sheet. However, if your business is up and running you will already have a process, whether created by accident or design.

Maybe you overlooked planning your marketing consciously using a process approach, but you still have some sort of process taking place – even if all you’ve done is select a few marketing activities and put them into practice.

Something is happening. Some people are finding out about you. Some people are developing an interest in you. Some people really want what you have to offer. Some people are buying from you.

But are the results all you want them to be?

Or are you successful, but sense you could achieve so much more?

Here’s what to do. Take a large piece of paper (a piece of flip chart paper is good) and draw. Plot the steps your customer takes on their journey to buying from you.

• How do they find out about you and what you do?
• How do they develop their interest in you and what you do?
• What happens to turn their interest into raging desire?
• What factors come into play to covert then to actually buying from you – what final boxes do they have to tick?

What are you doing to make sure this journey is as easy and trouble-free as possible? What marketing activities and tools are you using at each point? What information are you providing? What are you doing to connect with both their head and their heart? What are you doing to give the right information and evoke the right feelings at the right time?

Draw, observe, think, and learn.

This is the start of the marketing review and planning activity I call “troubleshooting”.

More coming soon … remember to subscribe to this blog to receive an email as soon as new posts are published.

From  www.webopedia.com to “troubleshoot” is

“To isolate the source of a problem and fix it, typically through a process of elimination whereby possible sources of the problem are investigated and eliminated beginning with the most obvious or easiest problem to fix.”