Hank's Business and Marketing Tips: Recent Episodes
Hank Hoffmeier
Marketing is moving faster than ever, and if you are a solopreneur or a corporate professional, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new tech tools popping up daily. I wanted to sit down with someone who has seen the industry evolve from the ground up. In this episode of the HMBT podcast, I am joined by Bob Cargill, an adjunct professor, author, and seasoned social media consultant who has worked with over 500 clients. Together, we take a look at the modern marketing landscape, discussing everything from AI avatars to the enduring power of classic direct response channels.
The Balancing Act: AI and the Human TouchBob emphasizes that while embracing AI is absolutely non-negotiable if you want to keep from falling behind, it should never come at the expense of genuine human connection. Basic communication skills, empathy, and good people skills are more critical now than they have ever been. We chat about how entry-level and highly repetitive tasks are easily handled by automation, meaning professionals must lean heavily into their personal brands to stand out.
Overcoming Camera Shyness and Creating ContentA common hurdle for many professionals, especially those transitioning out of corporate roles to start their own businesses, is getting comfortable on camera. Bob and I share practical strategies for getting started without a Hollywood production budget. Whether you start by recording behind-the-scenes B-roll and adding a voiceover later, or by experimenting with realistic AI avatars through platforms like HeyGen, the key is simply to begin. We agree that imperfection is often what endears you to an audience because it makes you relatable.
Choosing Channels and the Return of TangibilityWhen it comes to distribution, Bob shares why LinkedIn remains his top recommendation for business, even if X and Instagram hold a special place in his creative routine. Interestingly, we also dive into a fascinating counter-trend: a growing digital backlash among younger generations. As audiences experience screen fatigue, old-school, physical mediums like direct mail and vinyl records are making a major comeback. The lesson here is clear: be channel agnostic, stay consistent, and focus on delivering real value rather than obsessively chasing algorithm trends.
Key Takeaways đ¤ Partner with AI, but Keep it Human: Use automation to handle repetitive tasks, but double down on empathy, storytelling, and the communication skills that machines cannot replicate. * đĽ Embrace Imperfection on Camera: You do not need an expensive production crew or a flawless script. Showing up authentically and taking people behind the scenes builds trust faster than a overly choreographed video. * đ¤ Leverage Smart Content Creation Tools: If you are hesitant to be on camera, start with voiceclones, audio narrations, or custom avatars to scale your output without the stage fright. * đ Slice, Dice, and Repurpose: Create long-form content like podcasts or blogs, then chunk them up into snackable snippets for social media to get the maximum return on your time investment. * đŚ Donât Overlook the Physical:* As digital spaces become overcrowded, tangible marketing channels like direct mail are experiencing a resurgence because people crave something real they can hold.
ConclusionBuilding a visible, authentic brand requires consistency and a willingness to adapt to the tools of 2026 and beyond. If you enjoyed this conversation with Bob, make sure to pick up a copy of his book, 20 Jobs, 20 Lessons, on Amazon. Donât forget to subscribe to the HMBT podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and leave us a review to let us know your favorite takeaway from todayâs episode!
And remember, if you need to verify your email lists to keep your data integrity high, check out Kickbox. Use the code HMBT to get 5,000 free credits and start cleaning up your list today!
https://youtu.be/FiMShBg5FVgAudio:
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dana Newell from Benton Newell Communications. Dana is a rare executive âunicorn,â operating as both a fractional CMO and COO to help organizations scale smoothly. While we usually talk about how to get more marketing content and campaigns out the door, Dana brought a perspective weâve never really tackled on the show: the operational consequences of moving too fast.
In a world where we are constantly told to ramp up lead generation, launch massive campaigns, and flood every channel, Danaâs guiding principle is simple yet profound: Fix the slow leak before you build the big fire. If you are rushing a robust marketing strategy out the door without checking your back-end infrastructure, you arenât scaling your business, you are simply marketing a broken promise.
We dove into the hidden bottlenecks of the customer journey, the vital need for clean data, and why your own employees are the best resource for finding whatâs actually broken in your office. This conversation was a wake-up call for anyone who thinks a great ad campaign is enough to sustain long-term business growth.
The Financial Sting of a Broken Customer JourneyMany of us focus heavily on customer acquisition, but we rarely look at what happens in the âmessy middleââthe space between a customerâs first touchpoint and their final delivery. Dana pointed out that in the rush to scale, businesses often skip the steps to test their own systems. Imagine spending thousands on a high-performing ad campaign, only to find out your automated onboarding sequence is broken, or your call center is dropping leads.
Because the back-end operations canât handle the front-end marketing volume, your customer sentiment plummets. Suddenly, you arenât just losing new leads, you are hemorrhaging existing clients and tanking your online reputation. Dana suggests conducting an Operations Readiness Test before launching any major strategy, ensuring your systems can actually fulfill what your marketing promises.
What Are Your Reviews Really Telling You?With customer sentiment being tracked publicly on Google, Reddit, and social media platforms, negative feedback can break a business overnight. I asked Dana about the relationship between public reviews and internal operations.
The reality is that a bad review is rarely a marketing problem; itâs almost always an operational failure. Dana shared a striking story of a client whose Google rating was sitting at a dismal 2.7 stars. By pausing the aggressive marketing, going under the hood to fix the back-end fulfillment issues, and restructuring the team, they brought that score up to a 4.5 in just six months.
Pro Tip: Donât guess what your customers are experiencing. Run a âsecret shopperâ test. Have someone outside your business walk through the entire journey from signup to delivery to take screenshots, record videos, and catch the outdated logos or broken links youâve become blind to.
The âInvisibleâ Dangers of Departmental SilosYour sales, marketing, and operations teams might all want the business to succeed, but if they are operating out of different playbooks, they are actively working against each other. Dana highlighted two major areas where these silos create friction:
- Playing in the Sandbox: Operations often gets defensive when marketing reports fulfillment issues, while marketing gets frustrated when operations asks for more promotion on a product they arenât ready to scale. They must stop talking at each other and start talking with each other in unified feedback loops.
- Ignoring the Frontline: Your executive team looks at the business from 30,000 feet, but your frontline staff lives right where the customer experiences the brand. If you want to know what is genuinely broken in your processes, skip the board meeting and run a focus group with your daily operations employees.
Key Takeaways Fix Before You Flood: Marketing gets people through the door, but operations dictates whether they stay. Never launch a robust marketing campaign until youâve tested your infrastructure to handle the volume. đ ď¸ * Reviews Follow Operations: If your online reviews are hurting, look at your fulfillment, not your ad copy. Fix the operational bottleneck, and the positive ratings will naturally follow. đ * Run a Voice of the Customer Review: Take a cue from my days at EyeContact and hold regular cross-departmental meetings to review support tickets, transcripts, and customer criticism together. Iron out the challenges as a unified team. đŁď¸ * Build Systems Before You Need Them: Most small businesses operate in a reactive firefighting mode. True sustainability comes from mapping out your growth and building scalable infrastructure ahead of time. 𧹠* Leverage AI for Brainstorming:* If you donât have the budget for a full-time âunicornâ executive yet, use tools like Gemini or ChatGPT. Feed them your industry and current workflows to brainstorm potential operational bottlenecks you should prepare for. đ¤
Final ThoughtsScaling a company should be done sustainably, not hastily. Lead generation and go-to-market strategies are incredibly important, but they mean nothing without retention. Take a moment today to look under the hood of your own business. Talk to your staff, audit your automated touchpoints, and make sure the customer journey you are building is one that actually makes people want to stay.
If you want to hear more from Dana Newell, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit BenNewcom.com. And remember, if you want to keep your data integrity high and ensure your marketing is hitting real inboxes, check out Kickbox. Use the code HMBT to get 5,000 free verification credits and start cleaning up your list today!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0QVmLrfP5k&feature=youtu.beAudio:
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Natasha Davis from Impact Branding Consulting for episode 306 of the HMBT podcast. Natasha is a heavy hitter in the world of business and legal strategy, helping organizations scale with confidence by focusing on risk reduction and governance. While we usually talk about how to get more content out there, Natasha brought a perspective weâve never really tackled on the show: the legal consequences of moving too fast.
In a world where we are constantly told to create 100 videos a month and flood every channel with blog posts, Natashaâs guiding principle is simple yet profound: Respect the pause. If you are rushing content out the door without a strategy for protection, you might be building a house on someone elseâs land, or leaving your own doors wide open for intruders.
We dived into the dangers of intellectual property theft, the realities of AI ownership, and why your employees might be accidentally giving away your âsecret sauce.â This conversation was a wake-up call for anyone who thinks a signed contract or a Secretary of State registration is enough to keep them safe.
The Financial Sting of Hijacked ContentMany of us focus on making sure we donât infringe on others, but we rarely think about protecting what we create. Natasha pointed out that in the âgo, go, goâ era, we often skip the steps to secure our own assets. Imagine spending years building a framework, a course, or a brand, only to find someone two states over has trademarked your logo and tagline.
Because they took the legal steps you skipped, they can send you a cease and desist order. Suddenly, you are legally barred from using your own work. This isnât just a headache, itâs financially crippling. Natasha suggests that for every minute spent in strategy, you save ten minutes in execution and potentially two hours in legal liability.
Does AI Content Belong to You?With the rise of AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT, everyone is looking for shortcuts. I asked Natasha the million-dollar question: If I use AI to generate a blog image or copy, do I own it?
The short answer is no. Current laws are rapidly catching up, but generally, you donât own AI-generated content because itâs sourced from existing data available to the public. To copyright something created with AI, you have to prove significant âoriginal authorship.â
Pro Tip: If you are a freelancer or agency using AI for client work, disclose it. Natasha shared a story of a client who felt cheated because an agency used AI for âinspirationâ without mentioning it. Authenticity and ethics are your best currency.
The âInvisibleâ Dangers in Your OfficeYour team might be your greatest asset, but without clear policies, they can also be a legal liability. Natasha highlighted two major areas of concern:
- Platform Ownership: If an employee creates work for you using their personal AI account ($20/month plan), you might not own that data. If they leave on bad terms, your content leaves with them. Ensure you have âwork for hireâ agreements that clearly state everything created on company time belongs to the company.
- Data Leaks: Be extremely careful about what is uploaded to public LLMs. If your staff is feeding âsecret sauceâ recipes or private client data into an AI to summarize it, that data could potentially be used to train the model.
Key Takeaways Strategy Saves Seconds and Dollars: Every minute of planning prevents hours of legal battles. Donât let speed to market compromise your security. đĄď¸ * Registration Isnât Protection: Registering your business name with the Secretary of State does not protect your intellectual property. You need trademarks and copyrights to truly own your brand assets. đ * The âTrade Secretâ Rule: If itâs proprietary, label it âConfidentialâInternal Onlyâ and explicitly forbid uploading it to any AI platform. âDo not shareâ and âdo not uploadâ are two very different instructions. đ¤ * Read the Fine Print on Agencies: Some creative agencies embed clauses stating they own the work they create for you, even though youâre paying for it. Always read the contract before signing. đ§ * Use AI for Verification:* Just as you use AI to create, use it to protect. Upload contracts to tools like Gemini to have them explained in plain English and to flag potential red flags. đ¤
Final ThoughtsScaling a company should be done strategically, not hastily. Speed is important, but not at the cost of your foundation. Take a moment today to ârespect the pause.â Review your contracts, check your teamâs AI usage, and make sure the assets youâre working so hard to create actually belong to you.
If you want to hear more from Dr. Natasha Davis, you can find her at NatashaDavisVisionary.com. And remember, if you need to verify your email lists to keep your data integrity high, check out Kickbox. Use the code HMBT to get 5,000 free credits and start cleaning up your list today!
What is one area of your business where you need to ârespect the pauseâ this week? Letâs talk about it in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj81lCtza3oAudio:
Is the â0-click worldâ making websites obsolete? đ
In this episode, I sit down with Roger Williams from Kinsta to debunk the myths about Wesbites, AI and WordPress. We dive deep into why your website is actually the âfuelâ for AI answers, the importance of web accessibility, and how managed hosting can save your business from technical nightmares.
đĽ SPECIAL OFFER: Use code HMBT at Kickbox.com to get 5,000 FREE credits to verify your email list!
In this episode, we cover:
â Why AI chatbots actually make your website MORE important.
â The âTriple Threatâ of website accessibility.
â How Kinsta manages security and performance for WordPress users.
â Pro tips for using staging environments and automated backups.
Connect with Roger: đ Website: https://kinsta.com đ LinkedIn: Roger Williams
https://youtu.be/ayWy0KCNfGYAudio:
Peter Cholnoky, CEO of E-Hawk, joins me for a conversation about a topic that might not sound flashy but is absolutely critical for any online business: lead risk and data integrity. While most marketers focus on the quantity of leads, Peter explains why the quality of those leads, and the metadata behind them, determines your actual success.
The episode explores the sophisticated world of âsmelling enginesâ (Peterâs term for his firmâs analysis tools) that sniff out high-risk signups in real time. We discuss the transition from reactive spam traps to proactive risk scoring, the hidden dangers of free email accounts, and how businesses can use metadata to customize their risk tolerance, much like a car dealership at a credit bureau.
From identifying bot patterns with AI to the âtoilet paper vs. iPadâ rule of e-commerce friction, this conversation is a deep look into the infrastructure of trust. The core message? Stop manually sifting through garbage. Use data to automate your defense so you can spend your energy on actual growth.
Key Takeaways1ď¸âŁ đľď¸ Risk Is More Than Just an Email Address While checking if an email is deliverable is a great start, true risk assessment involves looking at the whole profile. E-Hawk analyzes over 500 metadata points, including IP addresses, phone numbers, fingerprints, and domain age, to build a complete lead profile.
2ď¸âŁ âď¸ Customize Your Risk âThermostatâ Every business has a different risk appetite. An adult entertainment site might welcome disposable emails, while a B2B SaaS company would see them as a red flag. The goal isnât necessarily to block every lead, but to score them so your CRM or e-commerce system can decide how much âfrictionâ to apply (e.g., allowing a high-risk user to buy toilet paper but not an expensive iPad).
3ď¸âŁ đ¤ Using AI to Fight AI The bad actors are already using AI to create sophisticated bot attacks and move periods around in Gmail addresses to create thousands of âdisposables.â To stay ahead, Peterâs team uses AI to attack their own systems, training their models to recognize the latest patterns before they hit your forms.
4ď¸âŁ đ Donât Spend $5,000 to Fix a $1,000 Problem Peter offers a grounded perspective on fraud prevention: assess what the fraud is actually costing you. If youâre a small shop getting a handful of leads, manual review is fine. But once you scale and bots start leveraging your infrastructure to send spam or steal products, that is when you need to automate your âbouncer at the door.â
5ď¸âŁ đ§ The âBusiness Email Onlyâ Debate Should you block Gmail leads? It depends. While enterprise whales rarely use free accounts for serious inquiries, smaller businesses might miss out on a âwhaleâ by being too restrictive. A better move is to allow them but watch for other red flags, like a disconnected phone number or a suspicious IP address.
6ď¸âŁ đ ď¸ Ditch the âChief PowerPoint Officerâ Mindset We touched on productivity tools that actually move the needle. Peterâs team lives in Slack and Claude rather than long email chains or decks. He even shared a tip for a âSlack CRMâ that keeps everything in one communication hub, proving that efficiency is about staying where the work actually happens.
7ď¸âŁ đ Everyone Needs a âsmengineâ Peterâs internal âsmelling engineâ checks data every six minutes to see if a domain that looked okay at signup has suddenly turned malicious. In the modern landscape, data isnât static. A lead that is âgreenâ today might be âredâ tomorrow, and your systems should be agile enough to react.
đŻ Final ThoughtsThis episode is a reminder that marketing and sales are only as good as the data they are built on. If youâre filling your CRM with âgarbageâ leads, youâre wasting your teamâs time and your companyâs money. Take a look at your data patterns, identify the friction points, and donât be afraid to lean on partners who specialize in keeping the internet a safer, cleaner place.
Make sure to check out E-Hawk!
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://youtu.be/Eeb9_ZlBxIM?si=JqArOZmnvGG1pNBcAudio:
*Joshua Harrell, Chief Revenue Officer at WorldVia Travel Network, joins me for a conversation that starts with travelâbut quickly becomes a masterclass in modern marketing strategy.*
The episode explores how travel has shifted from a luxury to a priority for many families, why experiences now matter more than possessions, and how travel advisors are making a comeback in a DIY world. Joshua shares his journey from retail cosmetics to leading revenue growth in the travel industry, highlighting what marketing really means today: driving revenue, not just producing content.
From Disney overwhelm to European river cruises, from email marketing ROI to TikTok Live authenticity, the conversation connects travel lessons to real-world marketing principles. The core message? Stop chasing shiny tactics. Focus on strategy, storytelling, and measurable revenue impact.
Key Takeaways1ď¸âŁ âď¸ Experiences Are the New CurrencyFamilies are prioritizing travel over material gifts. Exposure to different cultures and perspectives creates long-term valueâpersonally and professionally. For marketers, this reinforces a bigger truth: people buy transformation and experience, not just products.
2ď¸âŁ đ§ Travel Advisors = Strategic Guides (Not Order Takers)The pandemic revealed how complex travel can be. Consumers increasingly value expert guidanceâespecially for premium or complicated trips.
The business lesson?
Your customers donât just want access. They want insight, strategy, and protection from mistakes.
3ď¸âŁ đŻ Strategy Beats Shiny ObjectsJoshua emphasizes that marketers often get distracted by the newest tools, acronyms, or platforms. Whether itâs AI discoverability or the latest algorithm change, the fundamentals havenât changed:
- Know your audience
- Tell a compelling story
- Build a system that drives revenue
- Measure what matters
Marketing tasks without strategy lead nowhere.
4ď¸âŁ đ° Marketers Are Revenue DriversThe shift from CMO to CRO isnât just a title changeâitâs a mindset shift.
Marketing is not about colors, fonts, or tweets. Itâs about:
- Generating leads
- Supporting sales
- Increasing revenue
- Finding overlooked opportunities
Every marketer today carries revenue responsibility.
5ď¸âŁ đ§ Email Marketing Still Wins on ROIDespite new platforms and AI tools, email marketing remains the strongest ROI channel.
Why?
- You own the audience.
- Itâs measurable.
- It drives conversions.
- It builds long-term relationships.
Consistency matters more than complexity.
6ď¸âŁ đĽ Authentic Video Is a Massive OpportunityTikTok Live and short-form video are changing how audiences connect with brands. The barrier to entry is low, and authenticity outperforms polished perfection.
People buy from people.
If you can explain your product in a room, you can go live.
7ď¸âŁ đ Travel Expands Perspective â So Does MarketingExposure to new cultures builds empathy and awareness. That perspective makes better marketers because marketing is about understanding human behavior.
Travel teaches:
- Cultural nuance
- Storytelling depth
- Emotional drivers
- Comparative thinking
The broader your worldview, the better your marketing.
đŻ Final ThoughtsThis episode blends business strategy with life perspective. Travel broadens your thinking. Strategy strengthens your marketing. And revenue is the ultimate scoreboard.
If youâre stuck in tactical mode, this conversation is your reminder to zoom out, clarify your strategy, and focus on what actually drives growth.
And maybe⌠book that trip while youâre at it.
Check out Joshuaâs Book: Travel Marketeering on Amazon.
Find Joshua on Linkedin
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://youtu.be/r5INfN4lCpwAudio:
In this lively and insightful episode, I sat down with Victor Julio Coupe, Head of Business Development at Kensho Media and host of The Squared Table podcast. We talked about how email outreach and sales strategies are evolving in 2026âespecially in the world of iGamingâand how personal branding and authenticity are now more critical than ever. From cringe-worthy cold calls to genius video messages, Victor brought stories, strategies, and a whole lot of heart.
We also unpacked how AI, oversaturation, and poor targeting are damaging trust in sales outreachâand what to do instead. Spoiler: it involves showing up, being human, and yes, sometimes asking for âone kiss only.â đ
đĄ Key Takeawaysâď¸ Email is Still KingâBut Only If You Respect It Email remains the most controllable and reliable outreach channelâbut itâs often undervalued or misused. * Victor stressed the importance of list quality over quantity*, personalization, and relevance.
đ§ Stop Spray-and-Pray Outreach Donât mass-email conference lists if people donât know your name or brand. Itâs lazy, and it hurts your sender reputation. * âJust because you can doesnât mean you should*.â Targeting starts with thoughtful list building.
đš Use Video to Humanize Your Brand* One of Victorâs best-performing tactics: short, energetic video messages on LinkedIn before conferences. * Video builds connection, familiarity, and breaks through inbox noise. Tools like Bonjoro and BHuman make this easy.
đ§ââď¸ Build Your Personal Brand, Not Just Your Business People trust people more than faceless brands. In 2026, personal branding is a non-negotiable* for sales pros. * Even if youâre not camera-ready, start small: write, comment, share thoughts. Consistency beats perfection.
đĽ Conferences Need to Catch Up* Conference organizers should allow speakers/sponsors to submit short intro videos pre-event. * This helps with brand recognition and warms up leads in a human, value-driven way.
đ§ Know Your Audience (and Yourself)* Cold calling may work in the U.S., but not everywhere. Know what fits your region and your style. * Victorâs superpower? Being authentic, upbeat, and approachable. Figure out what your brand voice is and lean into it.
đ¤ AI Isnât the Enemy, Sloppy Outreach Is With AI-generated spam on the rise, real, human-crafted messages* stand out more than ever. * Personalized, relevant outreach = higher response rates. The âDear Sir/Madamâ era is dead.
đŻ Final ThoughtsThe episode wrapped with a challenge: Start building your personal brand today. Whether itâs posting on LinkedIn, recording a short video, or simply replying with heart, taking small, consistent actions builds trustâand trust leads to conversations (and conversions đ°).
Victor said it best:
âIf you donât ask for the kiss, you canât get the conversion.â đ
đ Donât Miss It:
Listen to his podcast: The Squared Table
Find Victor on LinkedIn
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://youtu.be/Iz7byCBwZcQAudio:
đŹ In this episode, I speak with email deliverability expert Matthew Vernhout of Email Industries to break down what really determines whether your emails reach the inboxâor land in the spam folder. The conversation kicks off with the most critical factor: your data quality. 𧚠If youâre using clean, first-party, permission-based email lists, youâre already ahead. But if youâre purchasing lists or using scraped data, expect problems. They discuss express vs. implied consent, global email regulations like CASL, GDPR, and the consequences of bad dataâincluding poor reputation, spam traps, and honey pots. đ The golden rule? âDo good things, good things happen. Do bad things, bad things happen.â đĄ
đ The second half digs into technical must-haves like SPF, DKIM, and DMARCâwhich are now mandatory for bulk email senders thanks to new standards from Google and Yahoo. They also unpack BIMI, which lets brands display their logo in the inbox (â a trust booster) and why subject lines still matter for engagement (â avoid âYour Weekly Updateâ or overusing emojis). The episode wraps with practical advice: donât rely on AI or guesswork to fix deliverability problems. Instead, work with professionals who can perform audits, diagnose issues, and rebuild your sender reputation đŞ. As Matthew says, think of it like digital physiotherapy for your email programâsometimes you just need a wellness checkup to keep everything healthy. đ§ đ
Key Takeaways:
- âď¸ Start with clean, first-party, opt-in data.
- đ Always authenticate your email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- đ BIMI can boost brand trustâbut only if your reputation is solid.
- đ¤ Be cautious of AI-generated email summariesâthey can mislead recipients.
- 𧪠Test, monitor, and donât DIY your deliverability when things go sideways.
Final Thoughts:
Email is hard. But it doesnât have to be impossible. With the right practices and guidance, your emails can reach the inbox and convert. Avoid shortcuts, respect the rules, and if youâre in doubtâget expert help before your emails vanish into the void. â
Connect with Matthew on Linkedin
Check out Email Industries here
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://youtu.be/awbu0mMQ4x4Audio:
For episode 300, I am joined by email marketing legend Dela Quist for a no-holds-barred conversation about the misconceptions surrounding email frequency, deliverability, and value. Dela, known for challenging conventional wisdom, makes a compelling case for why email is a branding tool, not just a sales mechanism, and how marketers often misunderstand frequency and engagement.
From comparing the inbox to Netflix đŹ to debunking deliverability myths tied to inactive subscribers, Dela shares decadesâ worth of strategic insights with real-world examples and humor. His key message? Sending more email isnât bad, sending irrelevant or inconsistent email is. This episode is a masterclass for email marketers who want to build stronger email strategies backed by logic, not just best practices.
đĄ Key Takeaways: đŹ Frequency is not the enemy: Most brands under-mail their subscribers. The belief that you can âsend too many emailsâ is rarely backed by dataâitâs mostly based on fear or outdated thinking. * đ Engagement doesnât mean open rate alone: People might ignore an email for months and then search for it when theyâre ready to act. Gmail knows this and doesnât necessarily penalize you for low open rates. * đ§ The inbox is like Netflix: People save, revisit, and search for emails the same way they binge their favorite shows. Donât assume an unopened email is a failed one. * đť Inactives are misunderstood: Brands often waste money reacquiring lapsed customers through paid channels when they could simply continue emailing themâat a fraction of the cost. * â Every subscriber should get at least one email a week: This provides a baseline for performance metrics and ensures youâre in the inbox when the subscriber is ready to act. * đ Gmail isnât stupid: Their algorithms consider behavior across the Google ecosystem (search, maps, store visits) to determine deliverabilityânot just whether someone opened your last email. * đŤ Never email addresses you didnât collect directly: This is the fastest path to getting flagged. Confirmed opt-in remains the gold standard. * âď¸ Your ESPâs shared IP reputation mattersâbig time: For small senders, a solid ESP with a strong deliverability track record can make or break your email success. * 𧎠Focus on long-term brand building, not just short-term conversions*: Email is a powerful branding channel, but marketers often underutilize it because itâs âtoo cheapâ to be taken seriously.
đ Final Thought:Delaâs approach is refreshingly pragmatic, ditch the myths, focus on value, and treat email as the most cost-effective branding channel in your arsenal. Whether youâre a startup or an enterprise brand, thereâs something in this episode that will challenge the way you think about email marketing.
đ Want more from Dela? Connect with him on LinkedIn or visit delaquist.com.
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx1cE2Zcun8Audio:
Former âKickboxerâ Jack Wrigley joined me on this episode to talk about staying focused and developing real relationships. Iâve always admired Jackâs blend of sharp business insight and genuine relationship-building skills. Heâs currently the President of Omnivery, a secure, high-deliverability transactional email platform, and in this episode, we tackled something a lot of people are thinking about right now: how to stay focused and thrive in a noisy, uncertain business climate.
We started by talking about how businesses can get pulled in a million directions with AI, remote work, shifting budgets, and all the other distractions out there. Jack emphasized the need to double down on your core values and mission, not just writing them out, but making sure theyâre baked into how everyone shows up to work every day. I added a few tips on how to keep those values top-of-mind, like automating monthly Slack reminders, adding them to your workspace, or even incorporating them into your custom GPTs if youâre using AI tools.
One thing I loved about our conversation is that we both believe good leadership doesnât just flow top-down. Jack pointed out how powerful it is when people are empowered to articulate how their work contributes to the companyâs mission. I completely agree, leadership happens at every level. Whether youâre a founder or an entry-level team member, your ideas matter.
We also got into the nitty-gritty of email marketing and cold outreach. Jack didnât hold back, heâs not a fan of cold email, and I get it. Deliverability is harder than ever, inboxes are tighter, and honestly, most cold emails just donât land. Instead, he encourages brands to build trust through content, storytelling, and relationships. I shared some of my thoughts too, if youâre going to do cold email, make it thoughtful, personal, and extremely targeted. But more importantly, find ways to make people come to you.
And we couldnât have an episode without touching on networking, one of Jackâs superpowers. He broke down his no-pressure approach to connecting with people: walk into a room, be curious, and lead with genuine interest rather than an agenda. Itâs a refreshing reminder that real relationships still matter more than flashy pitches.
đ Key Takeawaysđ Stick to your mission and values
Donât just write themâlive them. Print them out, set up reminders, and make sure they guide every decision.
đŹ Leadership isnât just top-down
Empower your team to connect their work to the bigger mission. That kind of buy-in is how great cultures are built.
đ§ Cold email is getting harder to do well
Focus more on building relationships through valuable content and let potential customers come to you.
đ Storytelling still works (and always will)
People connect with stories, not features. Make storytelling a consistent part of your brand voice.
đ¤ Great networking isnât about angles
Approach every interaction without expecting something in return. Ask questions. Be interested, not just interesting.
đŻ Email with purpose
Whether itâs for marketing or transactional, make sure your email strategy is secure, relevant, and aligned with your brand.
Connect with Jack on Linkedin.
Make sure to check out Omnivery for your transactional email needs!
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5siRnJ2X3tkAudio:
In this episode, I sat down with Tricia Babischkin, a true expert in email strategy, to talk about how to stop wasting time with broad, generic email campaigns and start getting serious about segmentation, deliverability, and using data that actually means something.
We cut through the fluff and got real about what makes email marketing work today, treating people like people, not just entries on a list. We talked about how most businesses are still too focused on vanity metrics and not nearly focused enough on behavior, engagement, and actual value.
Itâs not just about sending more email. Itâs about sending better email to the right people.
â Top 5 Takeaways
- Stop Sending to Everyone
Treating your entire list the same is lazy. Segment by behavior, lifecycle stage, or value. If someone hasnât opened in a year, stop pretending theyâre engaged. - Use Real Data, Not What People Say
Forget preference centers. What people do (clicks, purchases, site behavior) is far more reliable than what they saythey want. Build profiles from real actions. - Deliverability Isnât Just a Tech Problem
Itâs not just about SPF or DKIM. If your content sucks or youâre blasting disengaged users, your inbox placement suffers. Good strategy = better inboxing. - Personalization Is Anticipation
Itâs not âHi, [First Name]â, itâs knowing what I need before I realize it. Use behavior and purchase patterns to anticipate what someone wants next. - Respect Your Non-Email People
Some subscribers just donât want emails. Thatâs fine. Reach them through SMS, paid ads, or DMs. Email isnât the only channel, and for some, itâs not even the best one.
Final Thoughts
If you want better results, you need better strategy. That starts with listening to your data and building campaigns that respect your audience.
And if you want a real strategy session, Triciaâs offering an hour of free consulting. Seriously, take her up on it.
Get a FREE hour of consulting here
Connect with Tricia on Linkedin.
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKnSJIb_JcAudio:
In this episode of the HMBT podcast, I sit down with strategy and marketing consultant Henk Wolff for a no-fluff, high-value conversation that bridges the worlds of iGaming and email marketing. We dive into Henkâs background in turning around struggling online casinos and scaling growth using smart retention and acquisition strategies. He brings a sharp, operator-first mindset thatâs not just valuable for gaming companies, itâs relevant for any business trying to build loyal customers and optimize marketing channels.
We covered a lot, from retention tactics and lifecycle marketing to some of the wild creative strategies Henk uses interesting strategies to revive dead email lists (yes, a fake password reset email that actually works). It was refreshing to swap email marketing strategies with someone whoâs seen the front lines of an industry where attention spans are short and margins are thin. We even joked our way into a new business idea: the Henk & Hank toothpaste, powered by bluetooth chips and behavioral data.
Whether youâre in gaming, retail, SaaS, or running your own ecommerce site, youâll walk away from this episode with fresh perspective on how to think differently about retention, lifecycle campaigns, and segmentation.
â Key Takeaways:𧲠Retention is everything. In high-churn industries like iGaming, Hank looks at 30-day cohort data to spot leaks in customer retention. Smart segmentation and onboarding automation make or break performance.
đŠ Creative reactivation campaigns work. Hankâs âDid you forget your password?â email trick sounds simple but drives real logins and engagement. Especially useful for aging or dormant lists.
đ§ Segmentation isnât optional. You canât send the same email to a VIP player and a casual user. Tailor content based on behavior, balance, and lifecycle stage. Lazy email blasts are a waste.
đ Marketers forget the middle of the funnel. Everyone obsesses over top-of-funnel growth, but neglecting the middle leads to leaks and lost revenue. Onboarding and lifecycle content need more love.
đ¤ Use AI and voice like a tool, not a toy. We talked about the rise of voice interaction and local LLMs for research, productivity, and daily insights. Ignore these tools at your own risk.
Connect with Henk on Linkedin.
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ARR60SmwwAudio:
I sat down with Dan Nottinghamâfounder and CEO of Plan C, and the brains behind Am I Credible, an AI platform that evaluates the credibility of content in real time. We had a great conversation about what credibility really means in todayâs digital world, especially for those of us in marketing, content creation, and business leadership. With so much information (and misinformation) flying around online, how can we make sure our content is trustworthy? Dan shared why credibility isnât just about fact-checking, itâs about context, perception, and responsibility.
Right out of the gate, Dan and I got into why credibility matters more now than ever. With so many people relying on social media and AI tools to consume, and create, content, itâs easy to lose sight of whatâs actually true. We talked about how Am I Credible helps solve this problem by giving content a score from 1 to 10 based on a variety of factors like factual accuracy, context, and delivery. Itâs like a spellcheck, but for your reputation.
One thing Dan said that stuck with me: just being technically right isnât enough. If your content is misleading or overhyped, even unintentionally, it chips away at trust. Thatâs a big deal for marketers, especially when weâre using AI to create blog posts, emails, or video scripts. You donât want to hit âpublishâ on something that sounds great but is factually off, or worse, feels like a bluff.
What made this episode really fun was how practical it got. Danâs tool can give instant feedback before you publish a post or hit send on that campaign. It even helped him revise one of his own blog posts from a 3 out of 10 to a 9 out of 10 just by changing a single sentence. Little things like that make a big difference in how your audience perceives youâand whether they trust you enough to engage or buy.
â Key Takeaways: Credibility isnât just about accuracyâitâs about how your content feels to your audience. Overstatements and missing context can tank your trust factor. * AI is a great tool, but it still needs oversight. Donât assume everything ChatGPT spits out is ready to go. Check it. Verify it. Then publish. * Trust drives engagement. Whether youâre sending emails, posting on social, or writing blog content, people are more likely to stick with you if they trust what youâre saying. * Consider making credibility part of your marketing metrics. You can actually track credibility scores over time and see how it correlates with growth in things like email open rates, website traffic, or conversions. * Try it for yourself. Dan built Am I Credible* with both casual users and businesses in mind. You can use it as a guest or go deeper with pro features, APIs, and integrations.
Check out Am I Credible here
Connect with Dan on Linkedin.
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpWt9WWHF_oAudio:
I was luck enough to speak with Lucky Kannon, the engineering lead behind Zohoâs deliverability toolsâincluding their custom MTA (Mail Transfer Agent), email validation, and inbox placement systems. Together, we pulled back the curtain on the technical side of email marketing and explore how these unseen systems keep campaigns running smoothly and landing in inboxes.
Lucky breaks down what an MTA really is and why itâs critical to email marketing success, comparing it to a digital postal system that routes and delivers millions of messages efficiently and securely. From IP throttling to adaptive delivery tactics, he shares how Zohoâs tools manage large-scale email operations with precision.
Later on, we discussed the future of AI in email marketing. Lucky envisions a world where marketers no longer have to log into dashboardsâsimply prompt an AI assistant to craft and send campaigns automatically. But with opportunity comes risk, we discuss how bad actors could misuse automation, underscoring the need for ethical AI use and emerging security standards.
Finally, Lucky highlights data as his favorite part of email marketingâthe foundation for smart strategy, personalization, and performance optimization. Remember that even imperfect data (like open rates) still offers insight and should guide marketing decisions.
Key Takeaways:
- The Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) is the backbone of bulk email deliveryâthink of it as the post office for digital mail.
- AI is rapidly changing how marketers create, send, and analyze campaignsâbut responsible use is essential.
- Data is the most valuable resource in email marketing; use it to understand behavior, drive conversions, and refine strategy.
- Continuous learning is keyâemail marketing evolves constantly, and staying informed keeps your campaigns effective.
- Tools like Zohoâs suite make it easier than ever to run an entire business efficiently, from marketing to finance.
Connect with Lucky on LinkedIn!
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fjv6ybiCaYAudio:
This was a great discussion with Scott Cohen from Inbox Army about the state of email marketing, the pitfalls businesses fall into, and where the channel is headed. Scott stresses that many brands are addicted to constant promotionsâthe âpromotional drugââbut real success comes from balancing offers with automation, education, and customer experience.
Scott highlights the âbig threeâ automation flows every brand should have in place: abandoned cart, welcome series, and post-purchase communications. He also emphasizes the importance of storytelling, brand values, and customer trust in a crowded marketplace.
We also discuss the future of email, where it will integrate more deeply with SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, and direct mail. Despite competition from other channels, Scott believes email will remain the backbone of digital communication thanks to its low cost, flexibility, and role as a digital paper trail. And I agree!
đ Key Takeaways
-
Break Free from the âPromotional Drugâ â
-
Too many brands rely solely on discounts and daily offers.
-
Promotions drive revenue, but over-reliance reduces long-term engagement.
-
Automations Drive Real Results
-
Top three automations:
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Welcome/onboarding series
- Post-purchase updates (shipping, usage tips, follow-ups)
-
These flows build trust, reduce buyer anxiety, and recover lost sales.
-
Email Should Educate, Entertain, and Build Value
-
Every message should provide more than a discount: share stories, reviews, product features, and company values.
-
Consumers want to buy from brands that align with their beliefs.
-
Email is Still Powerful (and Misunderstood)
-
Marketers underestimate its role as the âbackstopâ for other channels.
-
Data proves email often drives or amplifies conversions even when attribution looks weak.
-
The Future: Multi-Channel Ownership
-
Email marketers should also own SMS, WhatsApp, push, and other opt-in channels.
-
Together, these build a unified customer experience with email still at the core.
-
If Email Vanished Tomorrow?
-
Scott would shift to SMS and WhatsApp because theyâre permission-based, direct, and not dependent on algorithms.
-
Direct mail is also resurging as a way to stand out in a digital-heavy world.
-
Why Scott Loves Email
-
The instant feedback loop: opens, clicks, and conversions show whatâs working.
- It balances creativity with measurable results.
- Plus, the email industry has a strong, passionate community.
Check out Inbox Army
Connect with Scott on Linkedin
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Z9Ux5BCwsAudio:
In this episode, I sat down with Al Safati, CEO of Clarity Digital to talk about how SEO is changing and evolving.
With over 26 years of experience in digital marketing, Al knows the ins and outs of SEO better than most. We first met at Digital Summit in Dallas, and this conversation felt like a continuation of that great exchange about search, content, and email marketing.
Is SEO Still Relevant?Alâs answer was clearâyes. Traditional SEO still drives a significant amount of traffic, especially for transactional searches and local business queries. But AI is reshaping how content gets discovered and consumed. Marketers who ignore SEO risk disappearing from both search engines and AI-driven platforms.
The Foundations Still MatterEven as AI summaries and overviews become more common, the core elements of SEO havenât gone away:
- Technical SEO: Keep your site crawlable, fast, and user-friendly. Page speed and mobile performance remain crucial.
- Quality Content: Original, useful content is more important than ever. AI thrives on context and depth, not keyword stuffing.
- Digital Footprint: Your brand presence across the webâpodcasts, guest articles, social postsâfeeds into AI models. Donât limit yourself to your website alone.
Preparing for AI-Driven SearchAl shared three key areas marketers should focus on as AI search grows:
- Concise but complete content. Cover all aspects of your product or service without relying on bloated copy.
- Useful FAQs. When they answer real customer questions, they help both traditional search and AI systems understand your offerings.
- Reputation and sentiment. What people say about you on Reddit, forums, and review sites influences AI-driven overviews.
A Shift in MetricsOne of the biggest takeaways from our conversation was how KPIs are changing. SEO success wonât just be about rankings and traffic anymore. Instead, marketers need to think about multi-touch attribution and how different channelsâSEO, AI search, email, and socialâwork together to drive results.
The TakeawaySEO is not dead, but it is evolving. Marketers must balance the foundations of traditional SEO with the new realities of AI-driven search. That means embracing technical best practices, creating original content, expanding brand presence, and monitoring reputation across the web.
As Al put it, âIf you abandon SEO, youâre going to disappear from the AI map.â
Connect with Al on LinkedIn
Visit the Clarity Digital website here
Get 5,000 free Kickbox credits with the code HMBT
https://youtu.be/6pTwosspGlMAudio:
In this episode, Hank and Bolaji discuss effective demand generation strategies where they emphasize the importance of understanding audience needs, creating engaging content, and fostering brand affinity before guiding potential customers into the marketing funnel.
Highlights:
đď¸ Engaging Content: Craft content that resonates with the audience, placing them at the center of the narrative.
đ ď¸ Solve Pain Points: Businesses should focus on providing immediate solutions to urgent problems (painkillers) rather than just general benefits (vitamins).
đ Brand Recognition: Build a memorable brand through slogans and consistent messaging can enhance customer recall. đ¤ Nurture Leads: Effective demand generation involves guiding potential customers with targeted information that addresses their specific needs.
đŁ Memorable Messaging: Using humor and catchy phrases can enhance brand recall, as shown with examples like Crazy Kevin Powell.
đ Understanding the Market: Itâs crucial to identify when potential customers are ready to engage, rather than pushing them prematurely into the funnel.
Watch Demand Wars â https://www.TACKnetwork.com/demand-wars
Connect with Bolaji: https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/bolaji
Video
https://youtu.be/kMlnWP87tN8AudioL
Summary
Steven Schneider, co-founder of Trio SEO, joins the show to discuss the significance of blog content and SEO strategies for businesses. We discuss the effectiveness of quality blog writing over quantity, advocating for a strategic approach to content creation and SEO.
Highlights
đ Quality over Quantity: Focus on fewer, high-quality blog posts to ensure better SEO results.
đ¤ Avoid AI Pitfalls: Relying solely on AI-generated content can compromise quality and brand integrity.
đ Strategic Content: Blog topics should align with a broader strategy, not just random ideas.
đ Basic SEO Practices: Prioritize site architecture, mobile optimization, and essential pages for better SEO performance.
đ Backlink Importance: Building a strong backlink profile is crucial for improving domain authority.
âąď¸ Page Speed Matters: Fast-loading sites enhance user experience and are favored by Google.
đ Continuous Improvement: SEO takes time; patience and a commitment to quality will yield long-term benefits.
TrioSEO:
Website: https://trioseo.com
TrioSEO Linkedin Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trioseo/
Stevenâs LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schneis/
Get three free articles (Value of $1200!) by going to the website and signing up
Video:
https://youtu.be/lpbxmM-HZRgAudio:
In this episode, I speak with Adam Tsang, a serial entrepreneur with various business ventures including restaurants, a media production company, a PR firm, and an e-commerce product. Adam discusses his journey from owning a single restaurant to managing multiple businesses, emphasizing the importance of people and processes. He shares insights on identifying entrepreneurial talent, the necessity of having a clear problem-solving approach, and the benefits of e-commerce.
Key Takeaways1. Entrepreneurial Journey: Adam shares his experience starting and managing multiple businesses, highlighting the transition from a single restaurant to a diverse portfolio. 2. Importance of Processes: Successful entrepreneurship requires setting up strong people and processes to ensure scalability and sustainability. 3. Identifying Talent: Adam emphasizes the importance of finding and nurturing entrepreneurial talent and leadership skills within his team. 4. E-commerce Focus: He discusses the shift towards e-commerce and the effectiveness of platforms like TikTok Shop for expanding reach and boosting sales. 5. Problem-Solving Approach: Identifying and solving problems is crucial for starting and growing successful businesses. 6. Content Creation: Adam shares strategies for effective content creation and marketing, tailored to different platforms and audiences.
Follow or Connect with AdamWebsite: https://adamtsang.com
X: https://twitter.com/adamtsang
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAheIUJLk47iW_lueDVNN7A
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uknowadamtsang/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Z4FPVzEh3M9dBQ5YWMhAH
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uknowadamtsang/
Video:
https://youtu.be/Bh-Zi3Bv52MAudio:
Scott Cox of STX Consulting joins the show to talk about about strategies for being productive and successful in the current economic climate of 2024.
Key points:
- Small businesses have a big opportunity compared to large corporations by leveraging technology, AI, and remote workers to increase productivity while keeping costs low.
- The ability to run a âmicro-businessâ as a solopreneur with just a few remote support workers allows more freedom and flexibility.
- Instead of trying to scale a traditional business, the new model is building systems and processes so the business works for you, not you for the business.
- For employees, developing unique skill sets and thinking differently is critical to standing out.
- Manage your time effectively by living by your calendar and schedule. Have a support system of partners/workers to keep you accountable.
- Take calculated risks and do things that scare you, like traveling or changing locations. Having systems in place allows freedom.
- Invest in coaches, consultants and personal growth, even in tough economies, to gain new insights, avoid pitfalls, and outpace competitors.
Scott discusses his experience living as a digital nomad in Southeast Asia and the benefits of a lower cost of living. He shares how he structures his time, relies on remote workers, and designs his business to align with his desired lifestyle.
Highlights* đź Importance of treating work as work * đ§ââď¸ Maintaining work-life balance * đŤ Setting boundaries for a healthy mindset
Website: https://www.stxconsulting.co/
Video:
https://youtu.be/HzpWzHntXa4Audio:
In this episode, Mike Abramowitz from Better Than Rich shares insights on how entrepreneurs can achieve time freedom and work-life balance. He introduces the Time Rich Six framework consisting of boundaries, communication, systems, playbooks, team, and technology.
Highlights
đ Business is a vehicle for your life, not your entire life.
đą Understand what season your business is in and be intentional with your actions.
â° Conduct a time audit to determine the value of your time and delegate tasks below that value.
đź Delegate administrative tasks first, then focus on marketing, fulfillment, sales, and leadership.
đ Use the Time Audit Workbook to identify low and high-value activities and receive a free 90-day delegation planning session.
Website: https://www.betterthanrich.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betterthanrich
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betterthanrich
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betterthan_rich/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BetterThanRich
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/betterthanrichshow
Twitter: https://twitter.com/betterthan_rich
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@betterthanrich
Free Workbook: https://www.betterthanrich.com/90dayplan
Video:
https://youtu.be/pJDGcFQeIIcAudio:
In this episode I speak with Mike Maynard on how to outsmart the big guys with ABM.
Mike is the CEO of Napier, a PR and marketing agency that helps tech companies sell more to other businesses.
ABM (Account-Based Marketing) is about identifying the most likely customers for your product and focusing marketing activities and budget on them. It involves understanding the target market and creating personalized content for specific companies.
Highlights:
It is important to understand the market and identify the companies most likely to buy from you.
AI tools, like chatbots, can be used to enrich data and help identify the target market.
ABM involves understanding the buying process and the decision-making unit within the target companies.
Building personas and understanding the pain points and motivations of potential customers can help create effective ABM campaigns.
Personalized content and targeting specific companies can lead to better results in ABM.
In larger organizations, it is important to identify the influencers and decision-makers to get them on board with your solution.
Napier Website
Mike on LinkedIn
Video:
https://youtu.be/_uohcH4-tgkAudio:
In this episode, I speak with Cloe Luv, Renaissance Woman and Success Coach. She helps ambitious entrepreneurs launch or scale their businesses to 6-7 figures.
We discuss the importance of mindset, authentic storytelling, and the transformational moments that lead to success in business.
Highlights:
đĄ Mindset is crucial for success in business. It involves having a positive attitude, finding the bright spots, and staying ready for opportunities.
đĄ Authentic storytelling is a powerful tool for connecting with your audience and building a loyal following. Sharing your brand story and transformational moments can inspire others and help them see themselves in your journey.
đĄ Listening to your feelings and understanding where they are coming from can guide you in creating a strategy for addressing challenges and pursuing your goals.
đĄ Everyone has a story to share, regardless of their background. Your experiences, challenges, and achievements can resonate with others and attract the right audience to your business. Donât underestimate the power of your unique journey.
Website: cloeluv.com
Email: cloeluvbb@gmail.com
Check out Cloeâs books:
The Branding Handbook
The 365 Gratitude Journal
Connect and follow:
Video:
https://youtu.be/AoDqaflVRoQAudio:
In this episode, I interview Danielle Perlin-Good.
Danielle is The Soul-Aligned Ghostwriter and an award-winning, best-selling author. She empowers thought leaders to amplify their lasting legacies by unleashing their nonfiction content, creating a profound impact, and transforming lives. With a wealth of experience, she has contributed to over twenty books, ranging from memoirs and thought leadership books to business and personal growth books. Additionally, she provides book and story coaching, editing, and consulting services to C-suite executives, ensuring their messaging is concise, beautiful, and genuinely authentic.
Since 2008, Danielle has built an impressive portfolio that includes hundreds of articles, books, social media content, e-newsletters, and more. Her journey began with working overnight shifts at the Chicago Tribune Company, but her talent and dedication soon led her to excel in corporate digital marketing roles. Notably, she contributed her expertise to Albert Whitman & Co., a prestigious childrenâs publishing house.
Harnessing a powerful combination of mindset techniques, exceptional editing, and adept interviewing skills, Danielle brings her unique touch to the table. She incorporates quantum healing modalities to ensure her clientsâ transformative journey results in a beautifully crafted and publishable book that they will cherish for a lifetime.
Danielle enjoys various activities in her free time, like swimming, yoga, spinning, cycling, and boxing. She loves being outdoors and spending time with her husband and two children, cherishing precious moments together.
Join us as we discuss the role of a ghostwriter, the importance of storytelling, and the value of thought leadership platforms. We also touch on the saturation of content online and the significance of listening in todayâs digital age.
Highlights:
- Ghostwriting is a collaborative process where the ghostwriter helps individuals and executives share their stories.
- Ghostwriters rely on the stories and experiences shared by their clients to create compelling content.
- Developing a thought leadership platform is essential for establishing expertise and credibility.
- Building strong relationships and trust is crucial in growing a thought leadership platform.
- Active listening is a vital skill in todayâs digital age, where distractions and shiny objects abound.
- Paying attention to clientsâ needs and feedback is essential for providing effective support and services.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellebperlingood/
Website: https://www.thesoulalignedghostwriter.com/
Video:
https://youtu.be/CbJoJIOxmhMAudio:
In this episode, I am joined by Jennifer Best, Vice President of Marketing at AAE Speakers Bureau. Under her leadership in 2022, AAE launched the inaugural Speaking Industry Benchmark Report, bringing transparency to the speaker booking process between both the meeting organizers who book them and the speakers who delight audiences.
Top Takeaways:
- Public Speaking Benefits:
- Public speaking is a valuable skill for personal and professional development.
- It provides a platform to share expertise, educate, and inspire audiences.
- Starting Small:
- Begin with local opportunities like community events, schools, or Chamber of Commerce gatherings.
- Practice and build confidence gradually before aiming for larger conferences.
- Removing Filler Words, Use Pauses and Gestures:
- Focus on eliminating filler words like âumâ and âsoâ to enhance the professionalism of your speech.
- Consider attending workshops or hiring a coach to refine your speaking skills.
- Integrate pauses strategically, allowing the audience to absorb information and enhancing overall communication.
- Think of pauses as logical breaks, creating a rhythm in your speech.
- Utilize gestures authentically to enhance your message.
- Pay attention to audience cues; adjust your approach based on their reactions.
- Finding Speaking Opportunities:
- Explore opportunities with local organizations, non-profits, or industry associations.
- Utilize a CRM to track and submit proposals for speaking engagements.
- Niche Topics and Speaker Coaches:
- Identify a niche topic to stand out in the speaking industry.
- Consider working with speaker coaches or organizations like the National Speakers Association (NSA).
- Working with a Speakers Bureau:
- Understand the role of a Speakers Bureau, which connects speakers with event organizers.
- Different Bureaus have varying business models, including exclusive representation.
Remember, public speaking is a continuous learning journey, and each opportunity contributes to your growth. Whether youâre just starting or aiming for larger stages, the key is to be authentic, practice consistently, and embrace the journey of becoming a confident and impactful speaker.
Download the latest Speaking Industry Benchmark Report and to be notified in January when the next survey launches, vist https://go.aaespeakers.com/speaking-industry-benchmark-report/
To learn more about AAE Speakers, visit https://www.allamericanspeakers.com.
To submit a speaking profile for consideration on AAEâs website, go to https://aae.link/add-speaker
Articles:
7 Speaking Topic Trends to Watch in 2024: https://www.allamericanspeakers.com/blog/7-speaking-topic-trends-to-watch-in-2024/
Impactful Communication: Jennifer Best Of AAE Speakers Bureau On 5 Essential Techniques for Becoming an Effective Communicator: https://medium.com/authority-magazine/impactful-communication-jennifer-best-of-aae-speakers-bureau-on-5-essential-techniques-for-a76b560a8cf0
Find AAE on the socials @aaespeakers
Learn more about Kickbox and get 100 free validation credits: https://kickbox.com
Video:
https://youtu.be/2ljhkxbpCsYAudio:
In this episode, I speak with George Kocher about growing a business.
Key takeaways:
- The importance of tracking and analyzing your marketing efforts to identify what is working and what isnât.
- Cast a wide net and experiment with different marketing channels to determine the most effective ones.
- Create unique and authentic content to stand out in a crowded online landscape.
- The necessity of planning, executing, reflecting, and iterating in both business operations and marketing campaigns.
- Overcoming challenges and setbacks in entrepreneurship and staying persistent.
Overall, this content provides insights into the mindset and strategies needed to successfully grow a business and improve marketing campaigns, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, analysis, and authenticity.
George Kocher is a data-driven leader with experience building and managing high-performance sales and marketing teams.
After graduating from Cornell University, George worked as an Analyst at Barclays Capital and VP of Business Development at Sunspire Health where he helped to grow the organization to 16 locations and an eventual sale to Kohlberg Private Equity.
After Sunspire Health, George took over as VP of Business Development for Lakeview Health, a portfolio company of The Riverside Company where he also helped within their healthcare fund.
He currently serves as the Founder and CEO of Brand North, a digital marketing & growth consulting agency that focuses on applying sophisticated marketing strategies and technical solutions to local businesses and national businesses within behavioral healthcare.
In addition, George is also very active in crypto, web3, and NFTs as the Founder and CEO of 3zy Labs.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-kocher/
Bio: https://georgekocher.com/about/
Video:
https://youtu.be/1ABeCkN4dsMAudio:
In this episode, I am joined by Catherine B. Roy, an internationally recognized business and personal growth coach, bestselling author, podcaster, and keynote speaker with the mission to help you do what you love, empowered by your own freedom.
Catherine specializes in helping Coaches, Consultants, Business Owners, Entrepreneurs, and Companies to grow their businesses online.
Catherine enjoys the distinction of being an official Forbes Coaches Council member, MENSA member (IQ>156), also officially certificated by the Goldman Sachs 10 000 Women Program, and has received many thought leadership awards, 4 years in a row.
Catherine is the author of LHM Business Coaching, LHM Personal Growth Coaching, and eLearning platform LHM Academia where you can find LinkedIn Decoded eBook, the LHM 963 Business Accelerator Program, and the LHM LinkedIn Business Accelerator Program.
Her latest book, Live from Your Heart and Mind, is an international Bestseller, and she is also the founder of the LHM System, a holistic approach to personal and professional growth that emphasizes love, happiness, and mindfulness.
She has clients in 30 countries and her work has been featured by Forbes, Goldman Sachs, TEDx, Microsoft, Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and others.
Her most popular work went viral and reached 1.2M people in less than 10 hours and her social media counts for over 100K followers while a Google search shows more than 40 million results for her name.
In this episode we talk about LinkedIn and AI: optimizing your LinkedIn heading, posting advice and general advice on how to use LinkedIn and AI to help you succeed.
Even I learned some great tips!
Connect with Catherine on LinkedIn.
https://youtu.be/qfM6wLI6KMIAudio:
Ken Countess from Ken is Email joins me to talk about ensuring that you have a healthy list of email marketing subscribers. Ken's Website: https://www.kenisemail.com
Video:
https://youtu.be/5fB9qYS102U
Audio:
I had the chance to meet up with Brian Glibkowski, PhD to discuss how sales is a two way street. Well any conversation should be a two way street.
Make sure to check out Brian's Framework and book about Answer Intelligence (AQ).
Connect with Brian:
On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glibkowski/
Website: https://www.raiseyouraq.com
Has a chance to catch up with Chuck Hester recently and wanted to get his advice on growing your network now that we are able to meet more in person.
Website: https://www.chuckhester.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckhester/
Video:
https://youtu.be/r4vvT78qyqo
Audio:
In this episode, I talk about my trip to Statesboro and Savannah Georgia. I had the opportunity to frequent many restaurants and had different experiences at each one.
Customer service can make or break a business and if you do not make the experience good, you will not thrive as a business. You can get away with mediocre products and services coupled with excellent customer service, but not with poor products and services matched with a poor experience.
Do everything in your power to provide a great experience.
Video:
https://youtu.be/cimu4_CDyuU
Audio:
In this episode, Lina Rugova talk about three things that you should focus on in 2022 for marketing and branding a business. You will be surprised about Lina's pick for the number one item! Listen and learn!
We mention numerous tools that will help you this year such as Wordpress, Elementor, Wix, Squarespace, Canva, Coolurs.com, Fiverr, SEMRush, Moz, Google Search Console, Uber Suggest, Screaming Frog, Google Business Profile.
Webinar that I did with Annie Franceschi: https://www.icontact.com/resources/videos/email-marketing/make-your-mark-branding-webinar/
Connect with Lina:Website: https://atlasstart.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linagrugova/
Video:
https://youtu.be/l2kPnO_w74I
Audio:
I am joined by Jen Capstraw. Jen is a speaker, consultant, trainer, and email geek who sent her first email campaign in 2002. Jen serves as president/co-founder of Women of Email, a nonprofit org with 6,000+ members aimed at promoting leadership and cultivating professional growth among women in the email industry.
We talk about the future of email marketing and how Women of Email helps empower women in the email industry.
Women of email: https://womenofemail.orgWoman of email Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenofemail/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jencapstraw/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jencapstraw/Twitter: https://twitter.com/jencapstraw
Video:
https://youtu.be/_TcLWPacIWw
Audio:
After starting my project on stories about how the pandemic has changed people, I noticed a post on LinkedIn from Danielle Gray, The Content Whisperer. The post was everything that I was looking for in regards to my project.
I reached out to Danielle to see if she would be on the show and tell us her story, but she said that she would not be able to anytime soon, but that I could use the content.
Well, I did. Here is her story, narrated by me.
This is the image that went along with the post and if you want to connect with Danielle, here is her is the post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6868941203769978881/
Video:
https://youtu.be/YsmQu4AO_2g
Audio:
In this episode, I am joined by Traci Philips, The Innate Coach. She is an Executive Leadership & Performance Coach to Visionaries.Â
We discuss being viewed as a leader in a virtual world. There are a lot of challenges, but is can be done, which is what we talk about.
Traci has a live show on Facebook every other Wednesdays with co-host Wulwyn Porte. It includes unscripted conversations around life and breakthroughs. Real conversations around real stuff. The show is called Eavesdrop in the Moment. Find them on Facebook and YouTube.Â
Eavesdrop in the Moment:Â
on Facebook:Â https://www.facebook.com/eavesdropinthemoment
On YouTube:Â https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV7sqv4v-3fNVVK_tgHM_7g
Traci has new book, Looking IN: Discover, Define & Align the True Value of Your Life, Leadership & Legacy. Check it out on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Discover-Define-Leadership-Legacy/dp/1952481333/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=traci+philips&qid=1638714381&sr=8-1
Learn more about Traci on her website www.theinnatecoach.com
Video:
https://youtu.be/bbsla1eDAQw
Audio:
I am joined by Jennifer Nesploa Lantz, VP of Industry Relations and Deliverability at Kickbox as she talks about how the pandemic has changed her and how she is dealing with the change.
Video:
https://youtu.be/0INJMNeziPo
Audio:
This week I talk about making sure you are happy while working. I recently purchased a coffee mug that keeps my coffee warm and the charging pad will also charge my iPhone and AirPods. I also purchased a 32 ounce water bottle to help me drink 120 ounces of water per day!
Find something that will make you happy while you work!
Hurkins Smug
Albor 32 Ounce Water Bottle
Video:
https://youtu.be/isAXo1LwtYM
Audio:
And..we're back!! I hop back behind the mic to talk to John Hayes about Email Marketing.
Twitter: John_W_Hayes Facebook: www.facebook.com/becomingtheexpert
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-hayes-2772965/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/John-W.-Hayes/e/B009X7UEXO
The time has come. It is not you, it is me. We need to breakup.
I am going to be taking a break from the show for a while, so there will be no new episodes in the near future.
I would love to hear your feedback on the show and maybe learn what your favorite episode was. Drop me a line at hank@hankhoffmeier.com.
I hope the show was enjoyable for you and provided you value.
Until next time!
https://youtu.be/5idtEk2-5zA
Audio:
I am joined by Christi Lowe, an Emmy Award Winning Video Producer and owner of Christi Lowe Productions.
Christi and I start by discussing what kind of video works. And that is tricky because it depends on what kind of business you have. It is the kind of video you create that matter. Using brand stories can be powerful. Get people to know you. What is your why? It helps people know, like, and trust you.
If you sell products, show your product and tell us how it works.Â
Rather than going through a bunch of industries, Christi and I played a word game where I mentioned an industry, Christi provided a short answer. It was so much fun!
What we proved is that everyone can create videos!
If you currently do not create videos, make sure to start small and easy. Harness your knowledge and passion. Start investing time to learn how to create videos and also start with what you have as far as hardware, but upgrade as you go along.Â
Next, we played myth busters where I asked Christi about audio and video. Which is more important? Christi says the imagery, but also mentioned both are key to great videos.Â
I showed some hardware I have such as a phone gimbal and Rhode Video Microphone. Again, use what you have and buy new hardware when you can.Â
If you are currently creating videos, but want to do better, Christi provides four tips.
-Do not use shaky video. Use a gimbal or tripod
-Make sure that your videos are not blurry. Most cameras have auto focus
-Coloring is important. Make sure that your footage has the right color temperature
-Use a decent microphone for good audio.
As a bonus, Christi mentioned having a plan for your video. Create a storyboard of what you want to say and include. We also discuss using a teleprompter. If you use them right, they are great, but make sure not to sound like you are reading off one!
Christi has a five part master course with over three hours of course material, all very practical tips that Iâve learned in her 30+ years of video marketing.Â
Video Marketing- why and whatVideography - practical hands on tipsAudio basics - hardware and strategiesEditing - basics of editingCell Phone - all the previous classes but specifically geared toward using your cell phone
Learn more about Christi and what she does:
Website: https://christiloweproductions.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christilowe/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristiLoweProductions/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/christilowe
Learn more about Christiâs Master Course teaching SMB owners how to create their own amazing business videos - Pro Tips For Amazing Business Videos: https://christiloweproductions.com/how-to-make-great-videos-for-your-business/
https://youtu.be/TKc-FEUDc6E
Audio:
In this episode, I am joined by Traci Philips, The Innate Coach. She is an Executive Leadership & Performance Coach to Visionaries.
We discuss the importance of defining your rightful Zone of Brilliance so that you know what seat and lane you are meant to be in. Issues with productivity, culture fit, connecting with your market/ideal client and "job hopping" (job satisfaction/fulfillment) can often happen when we are misaligned and/or don't know where we truly thrive (where our value is most valuable and valued).
Is life about what you achieve? Should your achievements define you? Are we human beings or human doers? We should not strive to be valued by our achievements, rather it should be based on our Innate Brilliance.
It's possible to excel at something, but not like what you do. Our brilliance is meant to form and inform what we are here to be and do. It allows us to develop passion for what is meant to be meaningful to and for us. By doing what you are created explicitly to do, you will be more successful and happy.
Learn where you thrive in order to shine a light on your brilliance. You have to remove the traditional thinking that working hard brings success. Traci likes to ask people what others see in them that they simply don't in themselves. That is one of the key places to start in finding and defining your brilliance. Traci is able to read people through their language to determine both their brilliance, as well as what is holding them back from showing up in it. She then is able to help her clients recognize, understand and own what is core and innate to them. Who and how you were prior to your conditioning and the pressures and expectations of the outside world hold the key to your true brilliance and legacy.
In our conversation, Traci defined me as a visionary, and it was an eye opening moment for me to discuss what that means. I have a lot of ideas, but struggle with execution. For me to be effective, I need to work with a company that can benefit and harness my visionary work style, and I believe that I am currently in that type of role.
Are you doing what you should be doing? Are you in alignment with what you excel at or are you in your Zone of Brilliance? Some people fall into the trap of the traditional entry level jobs that have linear progression that does not fit the person they are, but does fit the needs of the organization and how it's run.
Donât settle. Get out of your comfort zone and into your Zone of Brilliance. What is it costing you to settle for less than what inspires and drives you? Is it Money? Your health?
There needs to be alignment in what you love and what you do. Stop being âfineâ. Do what you love so you can accomplish more. The money will come when you do what you love.
It is much more risky to live outside your Zone of Brilliance. What do you want to leave as your legacy? You miss 100% of the shots you do no take. It is okay to take risks and it is okay to fail. Life is risky, but you can have great success if you're willing to align with who you're truly here to be and what you are genuinely meant to do. Too many people are playing it safe. Grab life by the horns.
Traci has a live show on Facebook every other Wednesdays with co-host Wulwyn Porte. It includes unscripted conversations around life and breakthroughs. Real conversations around real stuff. The show is called Eavesdrop in the Moment. Find them on Facebook and YouTube.
Eavesdrop in the Moment:
on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eavesdropinthemoment
On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV7sqv4v-3fNVVK_tgHM_7g
Traci has new book, Looking IN: Discover, Define & Align the True Value of Your Life, Leadership & Legacy coming out later this year. Make sure to check it out when it is available on Amazon.
Learn more about Traci on her website www.theinnatecoach.com
For me, it is time for my annual physical. I wanted to take this time to encourage you to set up time to check in on your physical and mental health.
With everything that we have going on, including a pandemic, it is easy to become stressed and overworked to the point that we are not taking care of yourself.
Most times, your body will communicate with you and let you know if something is wrong, but there are times when people ignore what is happening, or maybe we do not place an emphasis on our health.
In order to be successful, you need to be healthy so that you can enjoy your success. Make sure to take care of yourself and make your healthcare appointments today!
Make sure to pay attention to the voice space. Whether it be podcasts, digital assistants, or new apps like Clubhouse, you need to know that this is a growing space.Â
Sure, you need to create video and text marketing content, but voice is the new frontier.
Then there is Youtube Shorts, vertical videos under 60 seconds. Not everyone has it, but it might be work looking at this feature when it is more widely available.Â
https://youtu.be/L-1K0tgSRHs
Audio:
Larry Long Jr. joins me again to talk about leadership and other topics. Larry is the Director of Collegiate Sales at Teamworks and Founder of The Midweek Midday Motivational Minute.
Get ready for some mic drop moment because Larry brought his golden microphone this time!
Leadership is your actions, heart and mind. Do not get caught up in titles. You need to inspire people and help people on their career journey.Â
You can be an individual contributor and empower others to do great things. It is our responsibly to be a role model. Look at your sphere of influence and determine if you are stepping up to the plate and knocking it out of the part when it comes to leadership?
Do you take care of your mind, body, and soul so that you can lead others?
Opportunity is everywhere. Look for the chances to make change and help others succeed. But make sure you are successful before you can help other success.Â
With the pandemic, it is hard to stay motivated. Larry and I discuss what you can do to stay focused.Â
There will always be something that happens in live that can deter motivation. Make sure that you turn to things you like to do. For Larry, it is golf. Maybe for you is it yoga or something.Â
Larry likes to meet with groups of people on Zoom to find motivation. Find a cheerleader in a mentor to give you a swift kick to get out of the funk.Â
Process what you are going through. Make sure to look for the good, the great, and the wonderful in every situation.Â
When it comes to Zoom fatigue, think of your camera as a window to the world rather than a spy device. I mention that it is ok to not always be looking at the camera with on a virtual call. You can take notes, itâs ok to do that.Â
Also, make sure to say yes to more things rather than complaining or saying âbutâ. There will be so many opportunities this year to become great and succeed.Â
Larry encourages us to save the day and do not waste this time! Carpe Diem! We never get this time back and life is short. No more Netflix and chill, we are revoking your hall pass from the dumpster fire of 2020.
Larry wants you to participate in his #3MinuteChallenge where you should reach out to someone in your network to reconnect with them and make them feel special.Â
Find Larry on LinkedIn and make sure to mention my show!
Larry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/longjr7/
https://youtu.be/UvpfEAnreGk
Audio:
This week, and next week, I am joined by my old friend Larry Long Jr, Director of Collegiate Sales at Teamworks and Founder of The Midweek Midday Motivational Minute.
I am enthralled with Larryâs energy! He might actually have more energy than me. Is that even possible? Other than high energy, we have a lot in common.
I have been pushing people to do better and do more. Larry gave us a lot of words of wisdom in the two episodes he recorded with me.Â
Larry like people that like what they do and are passionate about doing it. Work on whatever day is today. What every day starts with âYâ. I streak starts with one. Just get started! Be a go getter and go giver!
We are reminded that we are all in sales. Even as a dad as Larry tells us. Be a match maker rather than a sales person. Match things together. A need and your product or service. Ask questions and listen, then figure out how to make a match.Â
Sometimes there is not a match, but it is. your job to help a prospect find what they need. Be genuine and caring. You never know, it might turn into referrals.Â
The difference between contacts and contracts is the letter âRââŚ.Relationships. Build brand equity and brand awareness. It helps nurture business. Go out and plant relationship seeds.Â
I jump in and talk about learning what makes people successful rather than wondering and being jealous of people that have more than you.
Larry said that success leave clues. Look to do things that make you feel fulfilled. Do not do things that make you angry and grumpy. Do what makes you happen. It is not always about the money.Â
It is important to learn from other peopleâs success and mistakes. It will help you grow faster.Â
Later, we shifted gears to talk about leadership, but I only teased it in this episode. Make sure to tune in next week for Larryâs thoughts on leadership and more!
Find Larry on LinkedIn and make sure to mention my show!
Larry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/longjr7/
https://youtu.be/mFRSfp0GMUQ
Audio:
I am joined again by John Espirian this week. Here is a link to last weeks episode: https://hankhoffmeier.com/hmbt-262-winning-the-linkedin-lottery-part-1
He is the relentlessly helpful technical copywriter, all-round LinkedIn nerd and author of Content DNA.
John writes web pages, blog posts, case studies and LinkedIn profiles for B2B clients.
Find John at espirian.co.uk or follow him on LinkedIn.
In the last episode, we discussed important items that you need to update on your LinkedIn profile.
I asked John some strategic questions about using LinkedIn. The first was about using hashtags in posts. Hashtags will help increase visibility of your content. The optimal number of hashtags is between 3 and 9. Mix highly followed hashtags as well as combine them with personal brand hashtags.
Next, should we tag people in posts? John says to be careful with âtag wallsâ. Make sure the content is relevant to who you are tagging. Do not tag simply to tag to try to obtain engagement. If you tag people and they do not respond, you can be dinged by LinkedInâs algorithm.
What John recommends is taking the link to a post and send it in messages instead rather than tagging them in a post.Â
Here is a breakdown of social media users, as per John: 1% of users are creators, 10% are contributors and about 90% will be silent and not really engaged. Basically, many people are content stalkers and receive value from your content, but may not show any signals.
Keep posting, because people see it, they just might not always engage. Be to good to ignore.Â
Another myth buster is that links posted in the first comment perform better than posting it in the body. As per John, posting the link in the body will not have negative consequences. It used to be popular to post in the first comment, but does not really help much now.
Pro tip: Post your content without the link, wait a few moments, then edit the post and add the link. Your content will actually get a boost!
Next, we talk about posting similar content on LinkedIn and on your blog. Will Google punish you if you post the same content on LInkedIn that you posted on your site? This is a myth.
Best practice would be to post on your blog and then use Google Console to index the page. Once it is indexed, you can post your content somewhere else safely. Google will know that what you posted first is the original.Â
Another recommendation is to tweak the headline and also add a note at the bottom of the LinkedIn article that tells readers where the article first appeared.Â
The big value in LinkedIn is that you can treat it like a golf course. Conversations turn into customers. Talk to people on the course, and talk to people in your stream and in messages on LinkedIn.
Make sure to use audio messages to send personalized memos. It is a great way to stand out and show people you care about the conversation you are having with them.
This was the point where I asked John to hold me accountable to updating my headline and about me section on LinkedIn. I encourage you to find an accountability parter on this. If you missed it, we spoke about updating and optimizing your LinkedIn profile in last weeks episode. Also, make sure to find Johnâs magic word in his about section!
Connect with John!
Johnâs Website: https://espirian.co.uk/blog
LinkedIn: https://espirian.co.uk/blog
Book: Content DNA: https://www.amazon.com/Content-DNA-consistency-congruence-everywhere/dp/1916206239
Link to last weeks episode: https://hankhoffmeier.com/hmbt-262-winning-the-linkedin-lottery-part-1
https://youtu.be/isFfk7WQYqI
Audio:
In this episode, I am joined by John Espirian. He is the relentlessly helpful technical copywriter, all-round LinkedIn nerd and author of Content DNA.
John writes web pages, blog posts, case studies and LinkedIn profiles for B2B clients.
Find John at espirian.co.uk or follow him on LinkedIn.
John and I talk about LinkedIn extensively today. LinkedIn should not be treated like other social networks. You need to put in some work to use it successfully.
Make sure that your profile is as optimized as possible. John breaks down some important but overlooked items. LinkedIn should not be treated as solely an online resume. Two items to look at right now is your headline and about section
Make sure your headline is Interesting, informative and Intriguing. It should be a conversation starter.
Your about statement is just as important to optimize. John tells us about a secret word that he includes in his about statement. Make sure to check his about me section and connect with him. It is advisable to personalize your connection invitation so that you have more chances of a successful connection. Those that know me are aware that I do not accept blind invites.Â
Only three lines of your about statement are above the fold, before the content is hidden behind the âread moreâ link.
I love this quote from John: âContent tells, but your profile sellsâ. Go out and update your profile today!Â
More people are looking more at LinkedIn profiles on a mobile phones. The visible character limit is small, so be short, sweet, and interesting.
With the the LinkedIn algorithm, dwell time matters. The longer and more people read content of yours, you will obtain more visibility. Post often, use video and document posts. It will help with engagement and favorable placement in the feed.
This was part one of this two part interview with John. Make sure to check in next week for part two!
Johnâs Website: https://espirian.co.uk/blog
LinkedIn: https://espirian.co.uk/blog
Book: Content DNA: https://www.amazon.com/Content-DNA-consistency-congruence-everywhere/dp/1916206239
https://youtu.be/ZxycWt2RFiI
Audio:
Irene Diamond calls herself a âPain Reliever & Mover-Improver for businesses and bodiesâ because she helps both get out of pain and moving!
In 1995 she founded San Francisco, Californiaâs very first Wellness Center, Diamond Pain Relief & Wellness that enjoys referrals from other health care providers from across the country.
Irene leads seminars and trainings for clinicians on the rehabilitation method she developed, Active Myofascial Therapy ~ The Diamond Method so they, too, have the powerful ability to provide fast, effective, life-changing results for their clients and patients.
She also mentors and provides consulting services to the massage, physical therapy, chiropractic and other wellness practices to attract affluent appreciative clients through her Dream Practice Mastery Academy.
Irene is a frequent guest author for many professional massage, physical therapy and orthopedic publications and associations. She is an in-demand speaker and presenter sharing business-growth strategy; and clinical education.
Irene and I talk about standing out from the crowd as well as finding the perfect client
No matter what you do, you need to have a marketing mindset to grow your business.Â
When it comes to finding the right clients you might want to work with anyone in the beginning to obtain some experience to learn who you want to work with.Â
Irene tells us to use the Client Selection Triangle. A triangle has three points:
Do you like themDo they have something you can relieve or help them achieve?Can they afford your product or services
If prospects meets all these items, they are the perfect client or precise fit. This will help you in so many ways. More good reviews and a lot of referrals. Clients that are not a great fit may not have a good experience and can have negative outcomes.Â
Next, we talk about pricing and how it is not always âsee you laterâ if a prospect does not meet your pricing options. Maybe you need to look at market demand and maybe adopt. It is not always specifically the price, there are other factors that we discuss. You also need to work on the Know, Like, Trust factor to crate a better connection with prospects.
Make sure to give clients and referees something to YAC ("Unique Appeal to Clientsâ) (UAC) about. Stand out from the crowd. To do this, find something that makes you different, but it has to be unique. What is unique about you or what you do?
Identify who your dream clients are and give them what they want. That will help you give them something to YAC about. And make sure to not verbally vomit on people, which means to be selling all the time and talking for the sake of talking.Â
Pro tip: Go to Yelp and look at one star reviews for feedback. Find out what your competition is bad at and do that better. People will YAC about that!
Irene has a book coming out called Design Your Dream Practice. You can learn more about that and her website at www.IreneDiamond.com.
Small business owners and Therapists can enroll in a gift mini course: âHow To Attract Affluent Appreciative Clientsâ at www.IreneDiamond.com/affluent"
https://youtu.be/bXWWjy2GEqw
Audio:
It is a new year! It should be a new you as well! Stand out from the crowd. Make some changes. Be niche.
https://youtu.be/oc0-RehYKGk
Audio:
In this episode, I am joined but Lou Everett and Sherri McManus of the Lou Everett Group.Â
Lou and Sherri are known for their highly effective coaching, teaching, and speaking on the importance of personal growth and how it impacts our Influence as a Leader. With more than four decades of combined experience in training, coaching, and leadership, they also have received training and mentoring from well-known and successful coaches and teachers from the likes of Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, John Maxwell, Jack Canfield, Paul Martinelli, and are Certified Leadership Coaches and Corporate Trainers.Â
Lou was introduced to leadership at an early age when is mother would listen to Tony Robbins in the car. He then went on to realize he was born to help others build leadership skills. He feels that we need to break the leadership handbook that exist today.
For Sherri, she was the littlest in her neighborhood, but she was in charge of everyone. She took advantage of positional leadership. It seems that she took a similar route to Lou.Â
We then chatted about the difference of communicating and connecting. Leadership is about influence, it is about nothing else. How do you influence with communication. You need to connect with people and audiences. Simply talking means nothing.
There are five factors the great communicators and leaders use.Â
Relationships-who you knowInsights-what you knowSuccess- what youâve doneAbility- what you can doSacrifice - how you lived
You can learn the skill of connecting with people. It does not happen through osmosis or in one day! It is a daily process. Look at other successful communicators and connectors to emulate and learn from them. You can also work with a mentor or coach.
Become aware that everyone is a leader and can lead in some way. We all want to connect.
Diving in to the item of sacrifice, it comes down to how you lived. It is based on stories. People relate to stories. Lou and I are public speakers and we know the power of stories.Â
Everyone has stories, but we do not tell them enough. If you work on that, people will relate to you. They will admire and listen to you and your stories. Stories to not need to be your own, you can use other peopleâs stories. Sometimes stories that are not your own can be more powerful than those that are yours.Â
Stories can help produce your ability, and people will want to connect with you because of your abilities. Your abilities need to be visible so that people can find you. get out there and become visible! Â
Lou and Sherri help people become better versions of themselves. They work with individuals where they are and help them get to where they want to be through the empowerment method. Find out more about the Lou Everett Group:
Website:Â https://loueverettgroup.com
LinkedIn:Â https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-lou-everett-group
Facebook:Â https://www.facebook.com/theloueverettgroup
Instagram:Â https://www.instagram.com/theloueverettgroup/
The History of Your Future: 30 minute free conversation with the Lou Everette Group:Â https://calendly.com/theloueverettgroup/historyofyourfuture
https://youtu.be/EGjmUjpsZ8g
Audio:
I am joined by Lawrence Berger, Sales Trainer, Speaker, Author, Poet, Podcast Guest, and Performance Coach.
In a year where the pandemic has tired us out, mentally and physically, we need to look at ways to stay refreshed and focused.
To stay focused, we all need rest. Sleep is important. Too many entrepreneurs feel like they have to work 18 or more hours a day. You will not be productive if your mind is not focused.Â
We have all heard of Fight or Flight, but Lawrence talks about Rest and Digest and how it affects us a humans. Get rest and also digest what you you are doing, relating to focus.Â
We then move to the topic of deep work. You need to focus on what you are working on with no introductions for a certain period of time, say 20 minutes, then take a 10 minute break. It will help you focus on your work and also produce quality work, helping you meet your goals.Â
Also, make sure that you budget come time in for fun and breaks. Without fun, you can burn out. Go and block some time off on your calendar for breaks. Also make sure to plan some fun in your life.
Lawrence says, in order to get what you want done in life, you need to be alive to do it. He goes on to use the acronym F.U.N., which stands for Forget Unhappiness Now. Life is meant to be fun and enjoyable. Take PTO and mental stress days in the new year.
Lawrence is a success coach and he helps others realize their dreams. He can help you emphasis your talents and passion to be successful in 2021!
Get in touch with Lawrence via email: Lberger0127@gmail.com
https://youtu.be/ZBwfwNRObd0
Audio:
In this short episode, I want to help you hit the ground running in 2021 and get more brand exposure.
Look at submitting guest blog articles and being a podcast guest to help your visibility. You have a lot of great information to be shared, and you need to make sure that other people can help you spread the word!
https://youtu.be/07UgjzTG0tQ
Audio:
I am joined by Peter Burkin- Owner Message to Billions. We met on the Facebook Group, Masters of Reinvention. Peter is a life coach, master of self flow, and a Passion Test facilitator.
We dive into why you should not be doing anything in business alone and how a coach or mentor can significantly help you. You should work with someone that has been where you are going. It is also like having a second brain!
Also consider joining a mastermind group where you can learn from an expert as well as the other meeting participants. It is kind of a knowledge share. Together everyone achieved more, or as Peter says, together everyone achieves miracles.
You are who you surround yourself with, so find people that you can learn from and succeed.Â
We shift to how people are pivoting in the pandemic and that you should find a coach and also be a coach! Always be paying if forward. Even if you cannot afford a coach, look into bartering if you have something to offer, physical or knowledge.Â
Find a passion for what you do so that you work is always rewarding, but remember that you need to work hard for the reward!
Website: www.messagetobillions.com
Email: pburkin@gmail.com
Contact Peter for a free 15 minute consultation!
https://youtu.be/8-HwUg5VCig
Audio:
Another quick tip today. I subscribe to the Stacked Marketer newsletter, which has a lot of great marketing information. In a recent email, there was a section where Jason Bradwell, host of B2B Better and Author of B2B Bite tweeted about having employees share company related posts before they where shared by the company and how they had better engagement.
I thought this was a good idea and also encourage you to do more different things. What will you do?
Here is a link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/JasonRBradwell/status/1332290328850796544
https://youtu.be/Qi8r-Ph7ltI
Audio:
Today, let's talk about finding topics or ideas for creating content. I mention the site www.answerthepublic.com, where you can search for a topic and find out what questions people have around that topic.
Use this site to help you create more and valuable content for your audience!
https://youtu.be/Oi5JRFzkNVg
I am joined by Josh and Cel, co-hosts of the Unstuck Institute Podcast. They are both millennials and entrepreneurs that were stuck in a day job that they did not like and did not know how to take the next step to start over or start a business of their own. They have helped people become unstuck and I asked them to come on to the show to talk about how you can become Unstick yourself.Â
We all get stuck and we spoke about âgetting unstuck:
Ready is a lie:
Many people hold themselves back because they are not ready yet or what you are working on is not perfect. That is a lie. Put yourself out there and see what happens. Go for it! Make sure that you do not have any regrets spoke about many things that I launched were not really ready, but they are out there into the world.
How to get unstuck:
We spoke about key ways to get unstuck. Take baby steps. DOnât quit your job or jump all in to a project. Make progress over time. Do something for five minutes a day. It is less scary to start something new with a smaller time commitment. You will be developing a habit to do what it takes to get unstuck. You will be amazed at the progress you can make if you just get started.Â
You also need to reflect on what you are and want to do. Make sure that you have a desire and passion to do something. Give yourself grace. Building skills is a good thing regardless how long they stick around in your life.Â
Making your dreams happen:
Dream big! What do you really want? Write it down. Josh and Cel are offering a complimentary life book to help you become unstuck. This is where you can write down your goals and know where you want to be. Plan it out. Make sure to review your goals, because your plan acts as a compass. I mention using a vision board and Cel says it is in the life book! Download it.Â
Website: https://www.unstuck.institute
Podcast: https://www.unstuck.institute/podcast
Link to Life Book: www.unstuck.institute/lifebook
https://youtu.be/rErUpTxwK1g
Audio:
What does it take to become a leader in this new virtual world that we live it. It might be hard for people in entry level positions to become team leads or managers. Let's talk about some things that might help.
https://youtu.be/0-JD6neUgas
There is only nine weeks left in the year. Did you give yourself a hall pass for 2020? If so, it is time for a reality check.
https://youtu.be/jPUw7-Vv7wA
In this episode, I am joined by Tim HughesÂ
He is universally recognized as the world leading pioneer and exponents of Social Selling and he is currently ranked Number 1 by Onalytica as the most influential social selling person in the world.Â
He is also Co-Founder and CEO of DLA Ignite and co-author of the bestselling books âSocial Selling - Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakersâ and âSmarketing - How To Achieve Competitive Advantage through blended Sales and Marketingâ. Both published by Kogan Page.
We talk about social selling. Many people think that social selling is âselling onlineâ, where it is more about developing relationships on social media in order to sell.Â
With social selling, you can:
Increase sales by 30%
Reduce sales cycle by 40%
Tim mentioned that you need three things for social selling:
A great profile on LinkedIn
You need to connect with people and develop relationships
Publish consistent content
We then dive into the fact that you need to be providing value when you post and communicate online to build KLT (Know, Like, and Trust).
Nurture your network rather than talking at them.Â
Most marketing campaigns have a beginning and an end. But creating content has far more residual value. Â
We also bring up posting personal content on LinkedIn and I feel that the new LinkedIn Stories might be a good place for that and helps humanize your content.
Timâs Book: Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers: https://www.amazon.com/Social-Selling-Techniques-Influence-Changemakers/dp/0749478012
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/timothy_hughes
EMail: tim@dlaignite.com
https://youtu.be/Okskbt1Dd-g
I am joined by the communications expert, Trisha Lewis. If you want to be listened to more and have people engage more with you, you need to listen to this episode.
We hop right in and talk about what people struggle with when they communicate.Â
One challenge is having your voice heard in meetings by overthinking how you will be judged.
To rectify this, make sure to know how to listen well and speak with clarity. You need to find a balance of both. I mention some of my experiences in the past.Â
Then we spoke about communicating at networking events. Relax and use humor to start discussions. It will help you break the ice. If people do not respond to your efforts, move on. It was not worth your time then.Â
To get better at communicating, use role play. I love to facilitate role play sessions! Learn how to speak with knowledge and authority by practicing.Â
Trisha offers up a couple of strategies that she uses, including TOTO: Try Observe, Try Observe, vulnerability weaving, conscious tweaking.
You can also work with coaches, mentors, and accountability partners to help you communicate better. Also, keep Trisha in mind ;)Â
I love the idea that Trisha uses an alter ego, Investigator Lewis. I encourage you to find your alter ego!
The Make It Real Podcast: https://www.trishalewis.com/make-it-real-podcast/
Website: https://www.trishalewis.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trishalewistalk/
https://youtu.be/Tc9uzzlGI3E
In this episode, I am joined by Adam Mendler, CEO of The Veloz Group
Adam is a serial entrepreneur, writer, and speaker with a national platform on business leadership.Â
Adam is on a mission to create better, more resonant leaders by distilling lessons learned from building three successful businesses in three different industries and from interviewing hundreds of Americaâs top leaders.Â
We talk about leadership in todayâs environment. Times are tough right now. We have reasons to be upset, frustrated, and sad, but we have to remember to stay positive and control what we can. Your mindset and how you spend your time can be controlled.
When something bad happens, it is ok to reflect on that, but do it for a short period of time and then move on. Make sure to adapt to your challenges rather than complain about them.Â
Here are a fe things that Adam has done to get through this pandemic:
Stopped watching cable news. It has not been great for his mental health.Set personal and professional goals
We also discussed what Adam has learned from numerous top leaders in the country. Adam has had many leaders on his podcast, 30 Minute Mentor Podcast, where he has learned a lot.Â
He has learned that leadership is universal. It is your job to inspire and motivate others using persuasion. Life long learning is also key to being an effective leader.Â
Learn from your failures, but you need to try new things. Remember that failure is not permanent.Â
Lastly, Adam tells us the importance of building your personal brand and what it can do for you. Writing blog posts and being a speaker will help more people learn about who you are and âexpands your brandâ. But remember that you are also your brand.Â
Website: https://www.adammendler.comAdam meddler
Podcast: https://www.adammendler.com/podcast and https://www.thirtyminutementors.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/adammendler
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/adammendler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/adammendler
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amendler
https://youtu.be/TiExwmetDLA
I am back to providing a tip for this week. I was recently tagged in a post on Facebook where a person was asked what email service provider to switch to since they had an issue with emails going to spam.
Let's talk about that.
https://youtu.be/u3xoIlKKv3Y
Nina Froriep from Clock Wise Productions joins me to talk about great video content.Â
Nina is a visual storyteller, video democratizer and has 30+ years experience as filmmaker and producer. Today, she enables mission-driven entrepreneurs to grow their company with consistent and easy-to-implement video content through one-on-one coaching and peer-learning.Â
Nina focuses on mission driven entrepreneurs in the services field. She helps them grow with consistent video content. She helps make it easy.Â
Getting started is easy, use the technology you already have and when it comes to editing, there are free and paid programs and apps to help you crate professional looking videos. We discuss some of them.Â
To be consistent, you need to have workflows that help you deal with your âvideo demonsâ. Nina, developed a challenge system that helps her clients get into the habit of developing consistent content.Â
We also discussed posting to LinkedIn vs Youtube natively and video metrics.
LinkedIn:Â
Website:Â http://wwwclockwiseproductions.com
Make sure to inquire about the content challenge!
https://youtu.be/fc9FELYCXbE
Michael Hession with Private Banking Strategies and an authorized practitioner of IBC (Infinite Banking Concepts)
Letâs talk about money. Some people are losing money, while others are making money.Â
Make your money work for you. Start to think about and handle your money like a bank would.Â
Michael talks about investing money in fully underwritten life insurance mutual funds. It is a safe investment and there is guaranteed growth.
Stocks and 401k investment can be risky, but can also be lucrative in certain times. One thing with IBC is that you can always have access to your money, where with stocks and 401k, it is more complex and usually involves fees.Â
Email: Mhession64@gmail.com
Website: privatebankingstrategies.com
https://youtu.be/8LLaWUlgZyw
Liz Bull from LizBull.com joins me to talk about managing stress and losing that dreaded COVID Weight. Liz offered up some great information and techniques that I even found to be helpful!
Make sure that you eat less food/drinks that have sugar. Nothing soothes better than sugar, but you need to stay away!
Recognize that stress is there, because it affects everything. We were taught to just deal with it, but it needs to be dealt with. We are all dealing with losses. Rub your arms soothingly to de-stress yourself.Â
We can also âmake a panini our of our headâ, as Lis would say. This was a great technique to calm yourself and focus.Â
Another technique is âtappingâ, where we tapped close to our heart and breathed until we felt better.Â
We also discussed getting better sleep with you are a deep creative thinker, like myself. I tend to think about everything that I need to do and I end up dreaming about it. Liz told me to write down what is on my mind to help create a brain dump. This will help clean your mind.
Magnesium can also help you get a good nights sleep. Liz recommended a couple of products.Â
I loved that Liz had a great planner page that reminded me of the one I created for myself. Write down your important tasks! Here is a link to my daily planner: https://hankhoffmeier.com/downloads/daily-planner.
Website: https://www.lizbull.com
Make sure to grab Lizâs e-book: 10 Biggest Fattest Weight Loss Lies Ever! https://www.lizbull.com/10-biggest-weight-loss-lies-e-book/
Make sure to book a breakthrough call with Liz!
https://youtu.be/cLCkJXBTxow
I am joined by Josh Cary, VP Marketing at Joyous Green and previously with All Things Barbecue.Â
We spoke about video marketing, with a focus on YouTube. How to put together an affordable video setup, what you need to focus on to rank with the YouTube algorithm , and how to build and deploy a community to help you sell.
Start with having videos about your products and services, then start working on other content. That is how they find you.
Youtube has a great community where you can develop influential and inspirational content. You need to take advantage of the community aspect of marketing. Reddit also has a great community that you can take advantage of.Â
It is important to engage with your audience and reply to comments, but you can also let your community assist with that.Â
When creating content, play into your audienceâs bias, ideas, and fears. Find where people are already gathering around an idea. It could be quality or support.Â
When you want to be found on Youtube, the keyword you want to be found for needs to be in the title and your description is solid.Â
Click through rate and thumbnail are important in helping you rank on Youtube. Once you get the clickthrough, you need to develop quality and engaging content.
Links:
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/thejoshcary
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejoshcary/?hl=en
All Things BBQ: https://www.atbbq.com
Daniel Shiffer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwjZLzqHYImv4oCJQcZ8Hig
https://youtu.be/o9TVvR6sHfw
Audio:
Dr. Waldman is a recently semi-retired licensed clinical, forensic psychologist in Phoenix, Arizona.
We discuss ways to run your business, especially if you are not a retailer ore commerce based business.Â
It is important to know your customers and if you to not know about the process of running a business or handling marketing, you should learn a little about it or hire someone that does.Â
Make sure to be the expert in your niche. Know how to talk about it and obtain interest early on in any conversation. Create a powerful statement that presents you as the expert to work with.Â
Dr. Waldman tells us about a strategy he used where he would get in front of groups that can help him grow his business. Learn how he does this and how you can take advantage!
Website: http://www.toppheonixpsycologists.com
https://youtu.be/HBBo42I1uX0
I am joined by Michael Knulst from the Digital Growth Group.
Michael is known as a growth oriented leader who is specializes in delivering lasting performance at the sharp end; Where your business meets its customers.
Michael has:
Built 3 multimillion dollar companies in less than 3 yearsâ time each;Generated more than 75 million dollars in salesSpoken internationally on many stages
We discuss how to grow your business and keep it in business.
Take a step back and take a look at your business foundation. Your business starts with you. It will mirror you in many ways.Â
Make sure that you work with a coach. You need to pick the right coach for you so that the relationship is fruitful.
Look at the value that your business offers, tangible and intangible.Â
Remember that business is all about you. Cause and effect. You will reap what you sow. Be a good leader and set a good example.Â
Michael@thedigitalgrowthgroup.com
Website: https://www.thedigitalgrowthgroup.com
https://youtu.be/tMKe8MCwzC0
Even though tax season is gone, you still need to think about planning all year round. Wendy Casserra, owner of Taxpectations joins me to give some advice and we also talk about tax myths.Â
Donât wait until April to start planning or doing your taxes. Make every Monday âMoney Mondayâ.Know what deductions you can take so that you do not leave money on the table. Create a dedicated email address to send your receipts to for better organization. Know about what deductions to take on your taxes.Make sure that you have your business correctly (LLC or S-Corp)
Check out Wendyâs Money and More show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkHsqecip7TtjE1j06dVopw
Website: https://taxpectations.com
https://youtu.be/g7UAvDUrXOI
Larry Wilson, Founder of Wilson Method Communications Training joins me this week.
Larry is an Emmy nominated television performer, communications trainer and 2017 Comedy Magician of the Year. My Wilson Method training is the culmination of all that I learned working with the biggest stars and celebrities in the world for almost forty years.
You are always selling yourself, even if you are not in sales. You also need to be entertaining.Â
Warren Buffett says to increase your value by 50%, you simply need to improve your communication skills, both written and verbal. The more communion you do, the better you get.Â
The Wilson Method is based on working with Hollywood stars. They get what they want out of life and we need to model their behavior. Focus on technique.
We hear some great stories about well known celebrities and how they are able to communicate effectively.Â
Larry tells us what we can do to improve our communication skills and increase our value by at least 50%, like what Warren Buffet said
Make yourself impossible to ignore. Use a variety of techniques to make people feel like they are seen and heard.Â
Larry Wilson Communuctions Expert on Facebook
Free Content: https://thewilsonmethod.com/remote
Website: https://thewilsonmethod.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaSHo32deIE
I am joined by Jeremy Hass, President of Stash-It Self Storage. Stash-It a new way for people to make money by renting out storage areas that they are now using. It could be their garage or driveway.
Jeremy and his co-founder started the business with their own money and grew it from there.Â
We also talk out tips and lessons learned from being an entrepreneur as well as a new side hustle that everyone can do.
Website: https://www.stashitselfstorage.com
https://youtu.be/BV0Zo6V5Klo
Alison Katschkowsky joins me this week. She is a fitness and self care coach--and the founder of the Fit Life System--a unique 6 step fitness program.
She started her business 22 years ago with no reserve cash and a clean credit card and used organic marketing, social media, referrals and partnerships/strategic alliances. Sometimes the things that are low cost work better than spending thousands on other methods. Marketing doesn't have to be hard or expensive--you have more tools at your disposal than you think. Â
Referrals and social media are great ways to grow your business. Alison used a Facebook community to get attention and helped springboard her business. She offered free training to offer value and to start a relationship.
Use free information as a lead magnet. Then have other content that is more valuable to offer.Â
When marketing and doing sales, you have to speak directly to the problem. It is not about you and what you want to sell
Alison gives some tips on how to use social media to find and engage with people.
She attributes her success to being of service to others and being able to reinvent herself. There is an opportunity in every challenge.
Email: cufitnesspt@gmail.com
Website : https://www.cufitness.com
https://youtu.be/zDctqGBaMNk
On the show today is Anna Felix, the Smart Money Strategist with Calchoice Financial
The topic is how to be smart with money. Grow your money in and effective way by using a private reserve account this way you always have access to it.
Make sure that you have an emergency fund in case of emergencies, at least six months worth of expenses. Everything above and beyond that should be invested so that it is making money for you. Your money needs to be consistently growing for you.Â
Especially is you are looking to save for retirement, you need to have a plan and goal. Anna explains what you need to be doing.Â
As a business owner, make sure that you pay yourself first before investing back into the company.Â
We also discuss the rules of taking money out of a 401k (CARES Act) and the difference of having a private reserve account.
We did not get into real estate investing, which we wanted to talk about. I will have to bring Anna back on the show in the future!
Make sure to check out Annaâs websites and reach out for a free consulation:Â http://www.calchoicefinancial.com and http://www.calchoiceinvestments.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afelixsmartmoney/Â
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-felix-calchoice/Â Â
Video:
https://youtu.be/ybNbqwSOSN4
Audio:
Dr. Kevin Cordi - national storytelling consultant. He was raised on oral storytelling as his parents shared with him and his five brothers and sisters tales of West Virginia.Â
We discussed the importance of using narrative as influence and the process of story.
We are all wired for story, but are we answering the wiring? Â
Just some of the great tips that were provided:Â
âSilence before soundâ is important because you need to have an integrated connection with your audience. Think and react in storyChange and the resistance to change. You can even use story in email marketing! Just be natural in your communication.An elevator pitch that is detached from the person. You need to use narrative. An elevator is an environment that people want to get out of. Think about that. Donât rush your delivery.Donât ask people what they do for a living. Dr. Cordi asks people what brings passion into their lives and he gets interesting replies.Use âtell meâ to invite a larger conversation.Be comfortable to be able to get to sound.
Website: http://kevincordi.com
Book: Playing With Stories and You Donât Know Jack: A Storyteller Goes to School:https://www.amazon.com/Kevin-Cordi/e/B00KB2BEQ6
https://youtu.be/sNgajy8ec38
Today I am joined by USA Today bestselling author Russell Nohelty as we discuss how to build an audience from scratch. We owns both the Wannabe Press and The Complete Creative Training academy.
You have to know your audience well enough so that you can offer the right product and services. Russell says that there are three parts to business:
AudienceProductMaking a profit
Market to the right audience and get to now them. Look at your best customers if you are in business or if you are starting out, start talking to people to learn about what they need and want and ask questions. Find someone that likes you, but not enough to lie to you.Â
Learn the psycographic information to help you sell and market your product or service. Using demographics helps you learn how to market too, but not the how.
In sales, people know they have a problem, but the do not know how to solve it. Make sure you craft messaging from what you learn from people to you speak to and get feedback from.
Wannabe Press Website: https://www.wannabepress.com
Russellâs website: https://www.russellnohelty.com
The Complete Creative Website: https://thecompletecreative.com
Audience Building Webinar: https://thecompletecreative.com/audience/
https://youtu.be/V2LdAcv5_48
I am joined by John Molyneux, the Sales Samurai at JM Consulting
Everyone is always selling something, even if you are not in sales. You are always selling yourself. Relationships need to built. Sales is meeting people half way.Â
Make sure that you are asking for the sale. Always be closing, but make sure that you are not verbally vomiting on people.
Another tip is to follow up with people, both for the sale and even after the sale. Be genuine. Be human and learn from each interaction.
Johnâs Podcast, Success Breeds Success: https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-success-breeds-success-show/id1501059450
Schedule a 30 minute Ice Breaker call with John: https://johnmolyneuxSBSS.as.me/?appointmentType=14670953
Check out Johnâs Youtube Channel:Â https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQRhRcXNpK1Bp8Ak90aE31g
John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-molyneux-0142b6184/
https://youtu.be/7PBFGYdA4wg
I am joined by Tracy Hooper, personal stylist. We discuss how to look good and professional when using video in your business and marketing.
She helps entrepreneurs and business people look great for all their online visibility, whether thats for their marketing, presenting or leading virtual meetings. At the moment the main topic she talks about it looking good on video calls, so that you look professional for your industry and make an impact in your meetings.
Discussion items:
Tracyâs hack: make sure to use the âtouch up my appearanceâ in Zoom!
Use the equipment you have to make things better
Lighting and sound is important
What to wear on camera - some great dos and donâs here
PDF guide - Clothe Yourself In Confidence: https://tracyjaynehooper.com/clothe-confidence-1
Website: https://tracyjaynehooper.com
https://youtu.be/DoRZInfaHj4
Mona Tenjo, CEO and Co-founder of Work On Your Business
We talk about how to work on your business instead of drowning in it, best systems to support your business growth online, tracking your numbers, growing your business by delegating tasks, anything related to productivity, things to consider when selecting software or providers.
The golden rule is to work on items that make you money/profit.Â
The topic of working from home with children also came up. You can still be productive!
Use virtual assistants to help get some tasks done, but you need to use them right.
Get in touch with Mona for a free 30 minute session to see where you can be more productive!
Website: https://work-on-your-business.com/
30 minute session: https://calendly.com/workonyourbusiness/discovery-session
https://youtu.be/ZybOZMQZUpc
Karese Laguerre RDH, OMT. Myofunctional therapist and author joins me to talk about the importance of good health, wellness and sleep.
Self care is the foundation in success in business and life.Â
Make sure to get a good nightâs sleep. We discuss the myth of getting eight hours of sleep. Do you need eight hours?
We then discus C.A.R.E: consistency, airway management, relax, and efficient. Listen to the episode to hear about this great method of getting a great nightâs sleep!
Karese mentions she really likes what she does because she has an unexpected impact on others. We should all love our jobs so much that we affect others in a positive manner.
Link to my LinkedIn post about my standing desk.
About Karese:
Karese, like many parents, suffered in silence while her children struggled with the symptoms of undiagnosed sleep and breathing issues. One visit to a pediatric dentist changed the trajectory of their lives. Already a Registered Dental Hygienist (RDH), Karese, trained with Sandra Holtzman, Lois Laynee and Sarah Hornsby to establish her orofacial myology knowledge. With this initial training and numerous others, in a few short years she has not only resolved all her children's issues, but helped hundreds of patients, children and adults alike, discover how great life can be functioning on full. Her private practice, The Myo Spot is now a leader in the quest for myofunctional therapy awareness and public education. Her latest published book, Accomplished, delves into how to sleep better, eliminate burnout, and execute goals. Karese's mission is to transform and positively impact as many households as possible through dynamic breath, brain and body work.Â
Accomplished: How to Sleep Better, Eliminate Burnout, and Execute Goals can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084F7HMK3#
Website: www.themyospot.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_mt3CXqqNs
I am excited! I am participating in a challenge to get booked to speak on five podcasts in five days. The challenge was presented by Steve Olsher, publisher of Podcast Magazine and the Facebook Group he runs called Masters of Reinvention.
I go on to talk about challenges. I mention a few that I had recently, like shingling a roof and building a desk.
Make sure that when you challenge yourself that you stay motivate and see the challenge through!
Email marketing is the most affordable and profitable marketing channel. Make sure that you are using it to get through the pandemic. Here are a few tips.
I bring on a special guest in this episode to talk about the pandemic from a child's perspective. This guest has been on in the past. Here is a link to that episode.
Make sure to keep your webpages updated. Look especially at your About Us and Contact Us pages.
Create an animated Gif of yourself for your IG stories? Take a video of yourself in front of a solid background that will be easy tp remove the background. Then upload it to Unscreen.com. The file will be processed for you and you simply download it. You can the copy and paste the gif sticker on your story post!
Here is an example:
Nathan Hirsch from OutsourceSchool joins me today as a repeat guest. He first appeared in episode 133.
Nathan is an entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. Most recently, Nathan co-founded FreeeUp.com in 2015 with an initial $5,000 investment, scaled it to $12M per year in revenue, and was then acquired in 2019.Â
Today, Nathan is a co-founder of OutsourceSchool, a company working to educate entrepreneurs on how to effectively hire and scale with virtual assistants through in-depth courses.Â
Nathan has appeared on 300+ podcasts, is a social media personality, and loves sharing advice on scaling remote businesses.
I ask Nate if he things companies hiring right now and also how companies can use virtual tools to manage and hire employees.Â
Right now is a good time to hire a virtual assistant and Nate tells us the difference between hiring a follower, doer and expert.Â
Nate tells us his thoughts on the future of freelancing.Â
Site:outsourceschool.com
Main Course: outsourceschool.com/cracking-the-va-code
Don't forget to stay positive. We will get through this. There is light at the end of the tunnel!
Be helpful and ask for help.
Today, I talk about the "Please Disease". This is where you want to please everyone. I do not think that there is a cure for this, but here are some tips in case you suffer from this.
What happens when you try to please everyone:
Decreases your focus on the right thingsSlows down progress toward your own goalsROI can be incorrectly judgedSometimes, no one is a winnerTendency to burn outCreates fragmented thoughtsMay make you besoms disorganized and frustratedYou may end up disappointing peopleÂ
What can you do about it:
Say no more oftenDetermine the ROI of the askSee if someone else can do it or if the person that is asking can outsource itPick and choose based on your bandwidth and validity of the askYou cannot please everyone and if you try, you will end up losing.
Make sure to choose wisely based on what you will get in return. New skill, recognition, value, good vibes.Â
Go out and help, but know youâre limited.
We should be using any extra time we have to obtain knowledge and learn new skills so that we can build financial security. My content consumption habits have changed since working from home full time, but I am trying to find ways to adapt. Listen to this episode to hear about my struggles and what you should be doing.
I am joined by Steve Wagner, Senior Marketing Manager at Webbula.
Webbula is the industry leader when it comes to data quality: email hygiene, data appending, and audience data solutions.
We talk about data email marketing data hygiene. From point of collection to list hygiene later on. The importance of adding quality data to your marketing platform matters and you should be following best practices.
Not following best practices can hurt your email deliverability, or ability to get into the inbox, rather than the spam folder.
Right now is the time to use social media to grow your email marketing list. Use your social channels and social media ads to get attention and drive up your subscriber list!
Lastly, Steve and I talk about some tips on converting more with your email campaigns.
Make sure to check out www.hankhoffmeier.com/live for a new series called Hang With Hank!
Learn about Webulla!
Website: www.webbula.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/webbula/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/webbula
Facebook: https://facebook.com/webbulapgh
Steve:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenbwagner
Savana Rose Woods from Authenticity Marketing joins me and we talk about websites and marketing.
Top Website Tips
If you do not have one, you do not exist. Your website also needs to be optimized for mobile.People will leave your site in under three seconds if they do not find what they are looking for, or if your site is not appealing.It takes time to get traffic to your site. Make sure that you have a strong call to action. Having a newsletter sign up form is also a must have.Â
We discussed the Magic Marketing Triangle:
The foundation of the triangle is a website, which includes a blog. One of the sides would be Email Marketing and the other Social Media.
Create content once and use it in multiple ways (via the Triangle).
On SEO:
If you are a small business, use good old marketing skills such as networking, email marketing, and trade shows.
For your website, focus on meta tags, your website description, and keywords. Look at your data and results monthly.
Make use of Google My Business and Yelp for more exposure. Â
Offer: Ebook- 10 tops tips for creating a great website. To get this offer, email Savana@authenticitymarketing.com
$100 off a website build. Go to Website: https://www.thewebsiteatelier.comÂ
Telephone: 805-471-1914. Call for a consult or pricing
Michael Joliat joins me this week. He is the Principle Owner of Tailoj Marketing. Listen in to hear about how he conceived the name for his company as well as a great discussion about marketing.
Tailoj Marketing offers database solutions to marketing problems. Micheal has a background in economics and statistics as well marketing, advertising, and public relations degree.Â
We spoke about marketers needing to use automation and also the importance of using data to target your audience. Stop âblastingâ out your messages where you treat everyone in your audience the same. You need to give them something they need.Â
Make sure to get more data on your audience. You can use surveys to obtain this information. Maybe offer an incentive. Michael mentions that you might already have data in other platforms and you can integrate with other platforms or export the data to make better discussions.
Use add on sales to boost ROI and profits. We use the example of selling sheets and offering more pillowcases, because you know that you only get two and everyone has four pillows! Use purchase information to help you will add on sales.
Social Media Advertising:
You can make money running social media advertising campaigns. You do not need a large budget and it is worth exploring.
Run some ads, boost some posts, and use look alike audiences, which are audiences like the one you upload. I mention using a list of email subscribers that have not opened in a while as a custom audience for Facebook so that you serve ads to them to try and get them to re-engage.
I hope that you have watched an episode of Spill Your Guts, or Fill Your Guts from the Late Late Show, because I asked Micheal to rank the ROI for the following advertising platforms:
Tik TikFacebookInstagramPPC
Direct to Consumer Marketing:
WIll your audience feel compelled to buy from you? Donât be blinded by the process. Make sure you keep your audience in mind. Stop promoting what YOU want to sell. Make people want to buy what you are offering.Â
Use your network of marketing groups to get feedback on your campaigns. You do not have to go at it alone.Â
Website: https://www.tailoj.com
Email: m@tailoj.com
LinkedIn: Mike Joliat
Olga Andrienko is the Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush. Together with her team she has built one of the strongest international communities in the online marketing industry. Olga has expanded the SEMrush brand visibility worldwide, bringing more than 90% YoY growth from top 10 new markets. She currently leads all SEMrush branding across over 50 countries, ensuring marketers all over the world have the access to the best software to run effective online marketing campaigns.
In 2018 Olga was mentioned among the 25 most influential women in digital marketing by TopRank. She speaks at major marketing conferences and her quotes on online user behavior appear in media outlets such as Business Insider and Washington Post.
SEM Rush is an Online Visibility Management Platform: SEO PPC, Social Media and competitive research. Trusted by over 5M marketers worldwide.Â
We spoke about SEO (Google Search) and what matters in 2020, such as:
Why video is important for SEOÂ How small business can leverage voice searchWhy website load time mattersKeyword adviceWhy you need to have subtitles on your videosHow the Corona Virus (COVID-19) may drive more webinars, live video, and virtual conferences
Tools:
InShot- add text and subtitles to videoClipScribe - Add titles and subtitles to videosYouTube- adds subtitles automaticallyWave- Audiogram creatorLumen5- Create animated video for blog posts or other text
Contact Information:
Website: http://www.semrush.com
Blog: http://www.semrush.com/blog
Connect with Olga:
TwitterFacebookInstagramLinkedIn
I am joined by repeat guest, Lauren Williams from the Imperfectly Phenomenal Woman Podcast. She was on the show in June of last year. It was Episode #177 where Lauren was just getting started with her podcast and it was great to catch up again to speak about her successful growth and challenges with podcasting.
She spoke about how I helped her start her podcast and she returned the favor by teaching me a thing or two about marketing and podcasting.Â
It was during this discussion where I handed out the first Hankâs Tip of the Year award! Totally made that up on the spot, but it is now a thing.Â
Listen in to see why this episode is award worthy!
Website: https://www.ipwomanpodcast.com
Viv Conway from Ace the Gram was on the show to talk about growing your Instagram account. They have been very successful. We also talk about the future of Instagram in 2020 and if Instagram is ruining tourism.
About Ace the Gram:
Two millennials on a mission to help everyone reap the infinite benefits of nailing Instagram. Viv Conway and Tasha Meys (maze) have over 200k net followers on their personal Instagrams and have worked with clients from 70 followers to 1.9 million followers across Australia, the USA, the UK, and New Zealand.
They have discovered firsthand how building a dedicated Instagram following can significantly accelerate the success of your personal brand or business.
Tash is an Instagram influencer who has created content and worked on campaigns with multiple brands across New Zealand, Australia and America. She uses her skills in content creation to create thumb stopping creative Instagram pictures for your brandsâ Instagram - and can teach you her tricks of the trade.
Viv successfully built her own sportswear brand on Instagram. Through her own experience, Viv learned the best techniques for influencer marketing and has grown multiple accounts from from zero to 30k in less than a year.
Acethegram.com
Podcast
iTunes
Today I am joined by Greg Meade, one of the co-founders of Crossnet.Â
I was introduced to Greg through Nate Hirsch, former owner of Freeup, which was on episode #133
Crossnet is a four way volley ball game that in just a short years have: Surpassed 2 million dollars in sales.
Is already in 2500+ schools
Is sold on 25+ mainstream offline and online retail chains
Greg and discussed how to build a business and sell a product or service:
Become visible
Be confident in your product and service
Become visibleKnow that it is a journeyDonât be scared to grow your businessIs done better than great? Your productDiscussed the process of selling into schools- use your network and get the KLT goingWe also spoke about marketing your product or service
Contact Greg or Crossnet:
Greg@crossnetgame.cominfo@crossnetgame.comWebsite: www.crossnetgame.com TwitterFacebookYouTube
After I presented at Pubcon Austin, I decided to sit in on some of the other sessions. Here is a snippet of Katy Katz's talk about social media content.
Katy Katz on Twitter
Marketing Refresh website
Growing a network and a business takes commitment. Not only from you, but from those you want to sell to and connect with.
The Content Whipserer joins me today to talk about creating effective content.
What does it mean to be a content whisperer? It means being able to work with different personalities and use techniques to get content out of them.
Tips:
Need to be present, that is where you find the content. It comes down to mindfulness. Recognize what is around you and know your audienceRemove distractions when trying to create content.Use the What, So What, and Now What process;What- What is the topicSo What- Why is this important to my audienceNow What- What do you want people to take from your content?
It is important to marry good content to good visuals. Make your content scannable.
Parting thoughts from Danielle: Even though is it not always easy, stay true to yourself!
Connect with the content whisperer:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellegraymba/
Twitter: @DanielleGrayMBA
Website: https://www.dgmarketingco.com
In this episode, I am joined by Chris Herndon, founder of Lead Out Strategies. We talk about turning donors and customers into raving fans by having a sense of community, belonging and being entertaining. We also talk about the importance of building a customer community and celebrating your fans, what NHL Hockey players and broadway musicals have in common, and why curiosity is underrated.
Reach out to Chris on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @Herndo
I recently took a look at my book reviews and noticed that the last one that I received was a one star review. My book is not for everyone and I understand that. While disheartened, I know that some people may want more information.
This reviewer was looking for more in depth information and possible some metrics. That is good feedback for a follow up book.
Make that that you are encouraging feedback, good and bad. It helps you grow personally and professionally. The feedback can help you improve or keep doing what you are doing.
Forget about your 2020 goals, you need to worry about other people goals.
Many people normally set goals to lose weight, make more money, or maybe eat healthy foods.
Another thing people do is they start to cull their email subscriptions. They will tend to start looking to get rid of emails that they no longer want to receive.
Let's talk about some things that you need to look at with your email marketing campaigns to keep them relevant to your subscriber base.
Make sure to check out my Youtube Channel!
Wishing you a Happy New Year. Start planning goals and do not create resolutions. Use the if x then y strategy for success and live a harmonious life!
Today, I had a conversation with Jason Touw. He is new to the area and is looking for his next career move here in the Raleigh area.
Together, we discuss online sentiment and how to deal with negative posts/mentions on social media.
Twitter: @JasonTouw
Website: www.JasonToauw.com
Many entrepreneurs and small business owners take their foot off the gas during the last two weeks of the year. You should be doubling down to avoid slackluster results in 2020. Do the things that your competitors are not doing. Learn some ideas in this episode.
In this weekâs episode I talk about spreading holiday cheer to your customers and vendors.
On this episode, I am joined by Ashley Morrison from Abundant Marketing. We talk about our opinion on expert advice, how marketing is not black and white, social media algorithms, Tikitok, Instagram and more!
Visit their website and follow Abundant Marketing on social media: https://abundantmarketingsm.com
Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving week and holiday season.
Two tips this week about TikTok and riding social media hot streaks.
Last week, I attended the Internet Summit Conference in Raleigh NC. I attended numerous sessions and captured some of them for you!
Here is a snippet from a talk that Tom Shapiro of StrataBeat gave on improving your conversions. Here, he talks about using emotions to help with conversions.
Sam Itin from Martech Data Lab joins me to talk about using and analyzing data in marketing.
I met up with Will Mendoza at the AMA Triangle Job Fair and asked him to share some knowledge. I met will through a meeting that I run for the AMA Triangle, Transitions Mastermind. It is a group that meets once a month to help support marketers in transition.
Some people tend to do things on the fly, others like to analyze. What type of business person are you?
My thoughts are that you need to have a partner in three areas of your life:
PersonalProfessionalMarketing
Listen to the episode for more information.
If you want to create more video content, but hate to be on camera, look at a tool called Lumen5.
In this episode we talk about what you surround yourself with can help you be successful.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket by building an audience on one platform? What happens if that platform's business model changes or it disappears? What can you do? Listen to learn more.
This episode is to help you celebrate you. Makes sure to stop and think about what you have accomplished and plan for a successful future.
Rant time? Do you know someone that complains about not being successful, not making enough money, not being able to live the life they want to live? I recently had an experience that made me want to rant about that. Hear about that and get some encouragement to crush it this week and beyond!
In this episode, we talk about email marketing segmentation and how you can obtain data to help you do it more and better!
Make sure to take the opportunity to enjoy yourself when traveling and visiting new areas. I am just now returning from New York City where I was speaking at Mailcon and I took the opportunity to see some cool areas of the city. What opportunities are you taking advantage of?
Today, I am joined by Keith Washo. Keith lives in Raleigh, NC where for the last two decades has worked in sales & marketing for leading technology companies in Silicon Valley like Creative Labs, SanDisk, and Qualcomm.Â
His the author of the books,"The Heart Of Success", sharing wisdom on growing your professional and personal life the right wayÂ
and "Good Things Come From Hard Times", sharing advice on overcoming adversity.
We discuss a few chapters from his book, The Heart of Success, including these:
-Chapter 6 Successful Careers - talk about adding valueÂ
-Chapter 7 work life balance- blend ( for me is ie being harmonious)
-Chapter 8 learning from failureÂ
Website: http://www.keithwasho.com
Book: The Heart of Success Book on Amazon or TheHeartofSuccessBook.com
What is your âplus oneâ? For me it is when I add just a little extra to something I am doing. It usually ads more value. Maybe something like adding more to an email that helps the conversation further, or helping someone in need, even though I am busy.
Summer is here and it should not be the lazy days of summer when it comes to marketing. Make sure that your subject lines are on point. While your competition is taking a Summer break, win over the hearts and opens of your subscribers!
In this episode let's discuss how people surround themselves with enablers, detractors, and flat-liners.
This week I am joined by Misty Wilson, the President Elect of the AMA Triangle. Misty talks about how listening is crucial in leadership and the importance of reviewing analytics.
Sometimes you need to take a step back to see the full reality of things. I just returned from a two week vacation in California where I was able to remove my "marketing lens" and see things differently. I recommend you do the same. Take a listen for more details.
In this episode I am recording while on vacation in Yosemite National Park in California. While here, I was being âobservantâ.
This meant that I was observing nature, the plants, water, and wildlife. I made sure not to interact with them in a negative way so that it would effect change and ruin the beauty for generations to come.
In business, it is also important to be observant. Listen to the episode to learn what I mean by this.
In this episode, I talk about planning and making decisions. While spending some time in Los Angeles, I see how the business of the city makes people do some strange things.Â
People tend to make last minute or late decisions. Donât let this happen to you. Make sure that you plan ahead. Set goals and do research before you buy a product or service for your business.
On this episode, I am joined by Lauren Williams. I met Lauren through my volunteer efforts with SCORE. Lauren is from New York and reached out to me to help mentor her through the launch of her new podcast: The Imperfectly Phenomenal Woman. The podcast will break down the unrealistic expectations that society places on women.Â
I am sure that the podcast will be a success. I spoke with Lauren about the process of starting a podcast, and as usual, we encourage people to get get started! That can be a podcast, blog, or just content in general.
Lauren is looking for people to become part of her "launch team". If you are interested in helping Lauren launch her podcast, head over to www.hankhoffmeier.com/lauren to sign up!
It never fails, there is always someone that asks me about using a purchase list for their email marketing campaigns. Letâs talk about it.
In this episode we talk about how you can be helpful or distractive when it comes to customer service and your business or in how your employees interact with your customers.
In this episode we talk about fear and rejection. These two items are holding you back. You need to put yourself out there. Ask for things. Do things. You cannot grow and succeed if you do not take chances.
In this episode, I talk about what I learned at the AMA Summit in Chicago. A great group of people came together to learn how to become more successful and serve those in their markets.
It is great when people can share information about successes and challenges that will help others. This is something that we should all do often!
With a society focused on success and riches, we seem to forget to have fun in business and in life.
Make sure to use humor and add a little bit of fun into your daily grind.
I open this episode by asking how many of you only talk to people only when you want something.
This is true for many people, both as a person and a business owner. Make sure that you are always reciprocating. If not, you are doing more harm than good. You need to help others with their needs and wants while also fulfilling yours.
In this episode, I talk about how email marketing is still the best marketing channel. I recently spoke with some prospects that realized this and so should you. Listen to find out why.
In this episode I call out those that gravitate toward social media and tend to forget about content marketing in the form of blogging.
The organic reach that your social posts will receive is low, about 2%. Of course, you can pay to have your post boosted or run ads to get in front of more people, but why do that?
By having a blog, you can add content that will be picked up by Google in search results. The thing is, the more new content you have the better. You should post at least one blog post per week, if not more.
If you do not have the time or talent to create blog posts, you can always hire someone to do it. I encourage you to start a blog or if you already have one, start posting more!
I recently heard Daniel Lemin talk at the Internet Summit about the book that he co-authored with Jay Baer titled Talk Tiggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth.
Many businesses do not do anything to stand out. What you need to do is make sure that your brand is somehow memorable. I discuss a few examples in this episode. What can you do to stand out?
Today, I am joined by, Rob Ainbinder. He is the CEO of Why People Click, a digital marketing and advertising company. He helps his clients attract, persuade, and convert online.Â
We talk about email marketing, SEO, and PPC advertising.Â
One of the most overlooked aspects of marketing is using PPC. rob and I try to break it down for folks that are looking to get started.Â
We also talk about the importance of using Google My Business, how to get Google reviews, and using Google Analytics.Â
Here are the links for show notes:
GA URL builder:Â https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Why People Click.com www.whypeopleclick.com
Twitter:Â https://twitter.com/robainbinder
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robainbinder
https://www.instagram.com/robainbinder
Article that explains how to obtain Google reviews:Â https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-way-pump-up-your-google-reviews-hank-hoffmeier/
Do not be afraid to create goals. It is better to have a goal and not meet it rather than not have any goals whatsoever. You are limiting yourself by not having any goals. Even if you fail to meet a goal, it is the experience and what you learn along the way that matters.
After attending two conferences last week, Pubcon and High Five, the overall message that I brought home was that marketers need to do better at asking questions and listening to their clients and prospects. Listen to the episode for more.
This is part two of my discussion on sales with an old high school friend and sales professional, Janine Loweth.
Janine is used to working long term sales cycles and she shares ideas on being patient, using perception, and overcoming fear when selling.Â
In this episode, we offer the following sales tips: Getting attention when selling Leaving the right voicemails Have good follow up skills Have strong branding Have a vision for your company Set realistic goals Ask questions and listen when selling
In this episode, I am joined by an old high school friend and sales professional, Janine Loweth.
Just like last episode we talked about sales and how you can close more business. Janine is used to working long term sales cycles and she shares ideas on being patient, using perception, and overcoming fear when selling.Â
This is the first part of our discussion. Make sure to tune in next week for part two!
For todayâs episode, I am joined by Lilly Ferrick, CEO and founder of Lilly Ferrick LLC, which provides comprehensive sales solutions to companies on outsourced and fractional engagements.Â
Basically, Lilly helps fill the top the sales funnel.
Lilly and I talk about some ways that you can fill the top of your sales funnel.Â
Tips:
Business owners or sales people need to hit numbers. Create goals and make sure to meet them. Listen to the episode for more detail and some great encouragement!
Stay motivated. It is too easy to be pessimistic while thinking about sales activities. You need to push through and meet your numbers and goals. If you do not, you will not succeed and grow your business.Â
Top activities that you need to do to fill your funnel
Outbound calls Marketing lead generation Network LinkedIn (connect and engage)
Connect with Lilly at www.lillyferrick.com. Listen to the episode for more ways to connect with Lilly!
This episode is a recording that Marilyn Shannon and did while eating breakfast at Cracker Barrel. We talked about how people want to be successful, create goals, but struggle with getting started or completing them. Marilyn had some advice for us.
I recently had a painful experience trying to hire someone to do some work on my roof. Contractors are notable for not returning calls, showing up for estimates, and asking for the the sale. This time is was amplified and it made me think about how many businesses and business owners do not follow up with prospects and clients. On average, Â you should reach out 7-8 times, but many stop at one!
Listen to my experience and make it habit to follow up.
Today, I talk about a great customer service experience that I had at a restaurant. Do you wow your customers?
I am always saying that you need to be creating more video, but I think that some people are taking it to a new level. I have seen a lot of shaky and poor quality footage. So, my new message is "create more decent videos"!
This episode is about doing more networking in 2019. I also mention the tool meetways.com to find a place to meet between two locations.
More notes from the Internet Summit conference. This is about recycling and reusing content for your business.
In todays episode I speak about a workshop that I attended about the power of story in business. Stories help you sell more and become more trusted. Listen to the episode to hear what I learned and how it can help you.
Today, I share some more more information from Pubcon. When it comes to websites, speed matters. Your website needs to load fast so that you do not make visitors leave your site. There is something called AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). In this episode, learn what it is and how to use it.
While speaking at Pubcon a while ago, I heard Joe Poluzzi talk about content marketing. Make sure to consistently create content and have a plan. In this episode, I spell out the formula that will help you and provide some other tips.
Around the holidays, you need to attract attention.
I remember an article I wrote about having a welcome series in place for the holidays. First, if you do not have a welcome series for new email subscribers, you should create one. If you do, you should think about creating a special one for the holidays, to drive more sales.
Listen to this episode to learn more.
It has been a while since I have posted. There has been numerous reasons why you have not heard from me, but let's not get into it.
I am back. I am going back to audio only and will start sharing again. Thank you to my loyal subscribers and welcome to those of you that just tuned in.
I am taking my own advice and will just get it done and put myself outside my comfort zone. Make it happen! that is the tip of the week!
Audio:
This is an excerpt from a recent video.
4 Reasons Email Marketing is Effective
It is Personal and Powerful
You can use the recipients first name to make the email feel personal Add a signature to an email to build trust Use other information to personalize email such as weather or product and services information
It is affordable and  Profitable
Email Marketing had a 44x ROI Has a better ROI than other marketing channels Has a historical value Incurs a monthly fee rather than per interaction
It is Relevant
Email addresses are used everywhere Can be consumed on a computer, phone, or tablet
It is Adaptable
It grows with you - frequency and cost Allows you to analyze results and adapt
Audio:
People like what is familiar. They do not like the unknown.
When you run a business, you want to deal with the familiar when speaking with customers and prospects. Discuss what is familiar, the results will be much better.
If you are solving a problem or meeting a need, speak about what they know.
If you talk to the familiar and have a common thread rather than injecting unknown or unfamiliar information into the conversation, you will build more trust. They will open up more.
This strategy can be used when speaking on stage, during a sales call, while networking, and when talking with friends and family.
Find the commonality where you are still knowledgeable to be able to push the conversation forward. Once you have built some trust, you can start to inject some unfamiliar content. They are going to open up and offer more information and answer more of your questions.
Remember, it is about them, not you!
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Audio:
Wordpress 5.0, a large overhaul over the current platform, is almost out. Did you know that almost 30% of all websites are ran on Wordpress?
5.0 is forcing business owners and wed developers to look at their website to see if websites are ready for the change.
As a business owner, you should not be forced to check on your website, even if you do not use Wordpress.
Make sure to check for broken links, that all your pages work, SEO keywords help you rank, and see if there is anything that you can optimize.
Audit your website or hire someone to do it every few months to ensure that your visitor experience and web presence is the best it can be.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Audio:
Today, I talk about the importance of having videos for your products or services.
Video is the most consumed type of content, especially on mobile.
By explaining your products and services visually rather than through just sound and images.
Pro tip: make sure to use captions/subtitles since many platforms start videos muted. With text added, people can still get your message.
Donât worry about the quality of your videos, you will get better with practice!
Make sure to check out the email marketing podcast by iContact at www.icontact.com/podcast
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
I know that it has been a while since I have created an episode. This is because I have been traveling internationally. I either had some time or technology challenges that hindered me from pushing out some content.
Today, I would like to share a few tips on working while traveling.
- Check internet speeds prior to arrival for hotels, Air BNBs and Gites
- Research co-working spaces for hours, rates, and internet speeds
- Learn about cell phone plans, costs, coverages, and miscellaneous fees
- Bring the right adapters or converter as well as multi-port/plug blocks
Make sure to check out my new podcast on iContact located at www.icontact.com/podcast
Read my latest blog about co-working in France at www.hankhoffmeier.com/blog
Audio:
Today I am joined by Kirk Deis from The Bug Squasher and Treehouse 51. Kirk, came on to the show to share some lessons he learned while starting up and running two businesses. I am recording this episode while I am in France and Kirk is in Newport Beach, California. We are both dealing with the heat in different ways. Kirk mentions a line from Matt, a person on his team; âHow do you know what you donât know?â You will not know it until you are in that situation. Kirk started an agency, Treehouse 51 and learned that running a business is not easy. He says that there are so many things to think about when you are not working a 9-5 job. It is important to learn from other people's mistakes. Kirk talks about a lesson he learned when he brought on a new client when they were hungry for work. They did work for a client and they liked it. When he sent the invoice, the client wanted to work with them more. At least that is what he thought. They ended up going silent and not paying the last invoice. Be careful of âdangling carrotsâ, or the promise of ongoing work. The lesson is that when you work for a client, have a contract and credit card on file. You need to protect yourself, even when you are hungry for work. Another thing is to commit to your pricing, donât fluctuate or compete on pricing. We both know that you need to start somewhere, but just be careful. Once you have your company built up, you can hold steady on your price and convey that through your value statement. There is value in free, but it should not be a loss leader or cause you to be unprofitable. When it comes to client meetings, you need to have a scheduling process and decide if you will charge for discovery calls. You can easily spend a lot of times having meetings with clients, and it could take away from your profit generating opportunities. Kirk says to try to get some money up front for project work. This helps if the client ends up skipping out on you. At least you got paid for the work you did. Once you build a positive reputation and have a great portfolio, asking for money up front should not be an issue for a prospect, it is just normal. Building a portfolio of example work is important. It should not just be a hard copy or a PDF, you should share portfolio items on social media as well. I mention the book by Matthew Pollard, The Introvertâs Edge: How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell Anyone, where he discusses how doing business in China is different than in the US. In China, long-term business relationships are the norm. They really do not have short-term contracts. Relationships and trust are crucial. Using video to communicate can help you build a great relationship and trust with clients and prospects. It makes you more human. Kirk talks about a tool called Loom to talk to clients using video. I mention SoapBox by Wistia. I asked Kirk what one of the business successes he has had as a business owner. He said that he is proud of the teams that he has built with both companies. We both know that finding talent is very difficult. You need to have employees that are passionate about your cause. Last, we discussed hiring and finding the right people. Be careful of candidates that self-label themselves as an âexpertâ. You can teach skills, but not a work ethic, so hiring someone that can learn a skill is appealing if they have a great work ethic and passion for what they do. You can reach Kirk at www.thebugsquasher.com and www.treehouse51.com and use the contact us button. Check out the new podcast by iContact, Talkinâ Bout Email!
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Audio:
I am still in France, I find that everything is a little slower, eating, talking, and mostly when you shop. Expect longer lines and do not expect that eager salesperson to approach that is eager to "help." I think that we can take the message to slow down a little bit. By slowing down, you can let your customer think and absorb. It could be information on your website or products in your store. Give them a few moments, then engage with them. Engage verbally if you have a store, or with a pop-up form on your website. Give them time to get to know you first. Listen and learn what the customer wants. Then you start to build a relationship. Short story: I went out to dinner in France to celebrate my 17th wedding anniversary, and most of the staff did not speak English. There was one waitress that spoke great English. We found out that she worked as an Au Pair in Cary, NC, right near where I live! Small world! She served us well and I gave her a generous tip. Tipping is not very popular in France. Also, I am excited that iContact has launched a podcast: Talkinâ Bout Email. I am joined by John Hayes of iContact and we hope to have on customers and other influencers. You will learn about what's up in the email marketing world. Give us a follow and subscribe at www. icontact.com/podcast. Â
Audio:
Have you ever heard the phrase: âItâs foreign to me?â Well, it means something that is not understandable or is confusing, or you are afraid of it. I am working in Carcassone France this week and have had some challenges. At a co-working place, I found it hard to communicate about the hours, connect to wifi, and figuring out how to print something out. I was able to figure it out with persistence and patience. How about you? If something does not make sense or confuse you, do you just back down and shut down? Donât. Part of my job at iContact is to help clients to find workarounds to resolve challenges and problems so that their email campaigns are successful. Donât let things be foreign to you. Find the core issue and remove the stressor and friction. I was able to find someone that spoke English and French to help me out, but that was not on the first day. Remember donât let things be foreign to you, learn, adapt, and change to get things accomplished. Â
Audio:
Today, I am recording in Carcassone France. I am splitting my time here with vacation and work.
It is important to take time off every now and then to recharge. People have different ways of recharging. Some people like to totally disconnect and others take shorter breaks. Find out what is best for you and take the time you need.
I try to take enough time to relax, but I often feel creative and enjoy what I do. That makes it enjoyable. At times, I need more time to recharge, and others only a day or so.
Stay inspired and hungry!
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Audio:
Have you ever been to a co-working space or start-up incubator? If not, you need to check one out. It is a great opportunity for you to network and also get your brand in front of people.
You can also brainstorm new ideas for new products and services with people you may meet there.
Audio:
The other day, I was speaking with a small business owner. She was telling me how she does competitive research. She is in a niche marketing (wigs) where there are high margins. This means that you always have to be on your toes and need to be able to adapt quickly.
She finds ways to offer more value and ensures that her pricing is competitive. She follows what her competitors are doing on social media and even signs up for their emails.
If you are not doing competitive research, you are doing yourself a disservice and may even be putting yourself out of business.
My challenge to you is to:
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Go out and do a competitive analysis yourself.
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Hire someone to do a competitive analysis. Someone like iContact, agency or freelancer can help you.
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Audio:
I went to the beach this weekend. On the way, I stopped at a convenience store to get some water and snacks. I ended up locking my keys in the trunk.
I recently read a good book titled Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life, by Gary John Bishop. It is a really good book.
In the book, Gary talks about expecting nothing and accept everything.
Since I locked my keys in the trunk of my car, I had to get into the car, and then into the trunk.
Two good samaritans ended up helping me out. The first one had a coat hanger, but we could not get it between the door jam and the frame. The second worked for a car dealer and had tools for this type of scenario. One was a plastic wedge and the other a small inflatable airbag. He put the items in place and then used a rod to try to pop the trunk. Since the keys were in the trunk, it did not work. He was able to open the car though.
After some research on Google, I found that I could disconnect and reconnect the battery while holding down the trunk button to open the trunk. It worked!
I offered the two good samaritans money for their time or refreshments, but they declined. I also had a neighbor finish cutting my lawn when my lawn mower broke down a couple of weeks ago. He also did not accept any money not even for gas.
I did not expect any help, but I accepted it when it was offered.
Many business owners expect to sell to potential customers, or just expect them to do business with them.
People do business with those that they know, like, and trust. Ask questions to help your customers. Have little check-ins to see if they are ready to buy from you. Don't expect business from them, but accept it when they do want to buy from you.
I hope my lesson helps you learn how you can use accepting and expecting the right way in your business.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Can you believe that have the year is over? Six months of 2018 are gone!
What are you doing? What did you do? What did you accomplish? What did you not accomplish?
I am sitting in a Starbucks that is located in an old bank. I am actually sitting in the bank vault, which made me think of finances and then planning. I am here to plan out the remaining six months of my year. It is important to plan often.
Without a plan, you will go through the year not knowing or not measuring how successful you have been, what challenges you have, and what changes you need to make so be successful.
Sit down and look at your results, successes, and challenges. Write out a plan and find an accountability coach to help keep you honest.
The year is half over. Get to it!
Audio:
When it comes to branding and marketing your company, there is nothing better than using video. If you are not currently using video in your marketing campaigns, on YouTube, or just have video on your website, you are missing out on opportunities to engage with your audience. Donât be afraid of getting in front of a camera or say that you do not have the right equipment. If you have a cell phone with a camera, you have the equipment. If you have a personality and a passion for what you do, you can get in front of a camera. You can always hire talent or a use people in your organization to help get you started. In todayâs day and age, we are in a video revolution. Humans are visual by nature. More than pictures, videos help convey your message more clearly and in a more engaging fashion. There are studios and videographers that can help you create professional videos for YouTube, your website, and for social media. Using live video is also important. Shoot video of you, employees, products, and services. Walk around and capture some live video. Make sure that it is engaging and that you are thinking about your audience when recording. Make sure to use video to engage with todayâs savvy consumer. Rather than use still images, engage with video! If you have not gotten started with video, give it a try. If you have been doing video, see what you can do better
Nate Hirsch from freeeup.com joins me today to talk about outsourcing, being productive, and more. Nate helps small business owners run their business better.
Nate took a look at the other outsourcing companies and found they took a long time to deliver project work. With Freeeup, only the top 1% of applicants are chosen. They offer 24/7 support and if for any reason the freelancer quits on a project, they will reimburse you.
Lori Bruhns always talks about doing what you do best and delegate the rest. I feel that you need to have people help you in business, because you cannot do everything.
Nate says that you need to have two lists. The first is everything that you do on a day to day basis and order it from easiest to hardest. Start taking the easiest things off your plate as you grow. As a business owner, you need to be focusing on the big stuff, not the small items.
The second list includes things that you are not good at, but you are doing all the time. You should then start to hire professionals to handle those items. We know that it is hard to admit your weaknesses, but successful people do this well and surround themselves with knowledgeable people that can get work done.
One of the biggest myths of being an entrepreneur is that you need to know everything. Hiring people that can handle items that are not in your core competencies is a very smart move. Hiring freelancers is a great idea for small growing companies.
The gig economy is exploding right now. If you have project work, a freelancer will work out well for you. You should think of it as an investment rather than an expense.
Nate talks about hiring one person and loading them up with a lot of work and having them be responsible for everything. What if something happens? Maybe they leave or become sick. This will severely impact your success through loss of work and customer suffering.
Also, donât be afraid to cultivate your replacement. It is ok if others in your company or who you hire knows more than you. Just because you know more about something is not security. You need rockstars to help you in business!
Learn from your mistakes and share your knowledge. That is how you will succeed. It will be your passion and influence that will allow you to always be successful.
Develop an incredible, transparent culture in your business. This will motivate your team and they will feel like they are part of the team and work with passion.
Finding a good freelancer may sound daunting, but should not be. Nate has a five-step process that he shared with me.
- Define what you want to hire for
- What does your perfect person look like (skills , passion, hours, etc)
- Develop a good interview process
- Set proper expectations
- Develop a feedback loop
This process will also work with hiring someone full time or maybe even a mentor.
Remember, you cannot do everything, and if you do, you everything will be watered down.
Donât forget to build relationships with people you work with. You may end up working with them again and three will be a shorter or maybe even no vetting process.
Foa r small business owner, it is important to gather information about how you can solve problems. Use a process:
Get all the information - find out what the problem is and how it came about Create a plan - have a plan for success Have a prevention plan - make sure that you learn from mistakes and do not let them happen again
Nate mentioned diversification. All business owners need to invest in their future. Diversify your income, have backup plans, and solve problems as they come up so that you are always successful. Look for low risk, high reward opportunity items and fail fast. If you do not take a change you will always have regrets.
You can reach Nate at Freeeup.com. His calendar is there and you can set up time to speak with him about your company and needs. He is offering a $25 account credit for listeners of HMBT. There is no sign up or monthly fee to have an a...
Information is power. The more you have, the more you know, the better you can run your business and succeed. You should always be asking your customer or potential customers what you can be doing more of or what you can be doing better. There is no better way to know what you are doing well or what you can improve or keep doing to succeed, than by using surveys. Surveys allow you to make changes to meet the needs and expectations of your clients and prospects. I was hoping that you would take a survey about this podcast. You can go to www.hankhoffmeier.com/survey. Thank you in advance!
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Audio:
Have you ever had a negative thought? Many of us have and a lot of us do all the time. What you want to do is stop thinking about what can go wrong. Start thinking positive and be an opportunistic person. The reason for business goals is so that you can focus on what you need to complete. While you are focusing on your goals, you do the activities and tasks that will help you complete your goal. If you think negatively and keep thinking negatively, you will find reasons or there will be elements that will get in your way and detract from meeting your goal and you may not try to complete it right or on time. Maybe you are building something. You might think that you do not have the right material or the time to complete the project. What you need to do is make sure that you have all the materials, by planning correctly and make sure that you are doing all the steps necessary to complete the project. By thinking negatively, you are training your brain to not do the things that are necessary to complete your goal and not doing things that make you more successful. Think about it, when you are positive, you are happier and more positive things happen to you. You also affect people around you when you are positive or negative. If you are negative, your energy can be absorbed by others or people will know that you are negative or in a bad mood and feed into it. Have a positive energy. If you are having a bad day, try to remain positive to try to overcome the negativeness. Give someone a high five, a hug, or speak with someone where you talk about something positive. Maybe talk with a friend or family member where you can reminisce about something positive. Reset your mindset. By thinking that something is going to go wrong, there is more of a chance that you may will it into existence. Think positive and do not think about what can go wrong. You may have setbacks, but it is how you deal with it that matters.
Audio:
When attending conferences, I feel that it is important to attend the reception events and any other activities involved with the show that involve networking. I recorded this episode while attending the RXInsider conference in Providence, RI. I attended the reception event and the dinner the following night and met some great people. I like to learn about new industries and what people are passionate about. I like to learn how I can help them and how they may be able to help me. I also want to support what they are doing and hope they will do the same. I feel that not enough people go to these networking events and tend to only go to the sessions. They are missing out on an opportunity to grow their network and learn new things. Do you go to the networking events at conferences? Â
Audio:
I want you to stop and read the signals. As business owners and professionals, we have busy schedules. We tend to rush through things. These days, when most people read, they read fast or skim. They do not absorb what is around them. We fail to absorb and read what is right in front of us. I received some signals recently. When I took a trip to the Key Island in Florida a couple of weeks ago, I did not have access to the internet and the cell phone service was not so good. I took that as a signal to calm down, slow down, and absorb on what information I was taking in. This allowed me to spend time with my family and create content during some downtime. I was at a department store with my son the other day and he wanted to try on some hats. He found these two blue matching baseball caps and asked me to try them on together. We took a selfie. I took this as a signal that he wanted to spend more time with me and desired attention. Also, the other day, I was in Greensboro, NC, where a tornado touched down. There was a lot of damage. A school lost classrooms and a church had the whole roof ripped off, and there was a lot of debris that I could see. I feel bad for the people that live in the area and hope for the best. The signal here is to cherish the time you have and spend time with those that you love. As a business owner, you need to read the signals from your customers and listen to feedback. It is also important to read the signals from your family to make sure that you are spending enough time with them and not placing them last. Signals can also relate to cash flow and stress. Yoga and meditation can help with the latter. Read the signals, filter them, and react accordingly. Identify, process, and do what the signals are telling you.
Audio:
How many chat clients or social media channels do you use? The more you use, the more distractions you have. Make sure to cut down on the number of platforms you use, or chat clients you have installed on your computer.
You can also increase productivity by turning off your cell service and wifi while working on projects so that you can focus and avoid interruptions.
Think about it, if you become distracted, you will work slower and potentially make more mistakes.
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Audio:
I will be in Florida on vacation when this airs. As a business owner or professional, it is important to take a break. You can use downtime to think about and set goals. Dwell on what you accomplished, reset your expectations and, plan for a successful future.
Audio:
It is about time that I had Dorien Morin- van Dam with More In Media on the podcast. Dorien and I both spoke at ConvergeSouth last year. Wow, so much value in this episode! I should have had her on earlier!
Dorien and I spoke about repurposing content. to begin with, it is a struggle for business owners and marketers to create content. After you put the content out in the wild, what is next? Dorien asked me what I do with content, and I admit that I post content, then forget to repurpose it. I guess the first step is to admit that you have a problem?
Before you create content, develop a strategy and plan. What channels do you want to post to. If you create video, it will probably live on YouTube or Vimeo. What you should do is embed the video on your website or blog, then also have the video transcribed. This helps with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
If your video is long, you can piece out some of the "thoughts", or snippets to share as "snackable" content. You should also upload the video natively to each channel. In other words, upload directly to Youtube, then directly to Facebook. If you do not, your content will not be prioritized in the feed. Spread out the content over time. Take similar content and post to Facebook one day, the next day to LinkedIn, then share a snippet, go on Facebook Live to talk about your video on another day. It all works together! You can also take still images of your video and share them by creating "pinnable" content for Pinterest.
Dorien talks about using old content. Take a blog post, and then make it into a video. Either record a video of you talking or use a tool like Lumen5, which is a tool that takes text and animates it to images or video.
Another thing you can do is use quotes from your content. Instead of consistently having to think about what you are going to create and post, you can repurpose content you already have. Remember, quality over quantity.
Slow down and use content you have, rather than always spinning your wheels creating more and more content! Make sure that you use a similar format with your content, like branding and the look and feel of your video.
I talk about how I should be pulling excerpts from my book to help get the content out there. Rather than trying to sell my book, I should be sharing the information in the book and how it can help people.
I asked Dorien to recap her talk from ConvergeSouth about archiving and organizing old content so that you can find it easy. Most people create content and save it. Dorien uses DropBox to store her content. She is huge on tagging her content so that she can find it later. She used folders to organize content. Onc folder is for user-generated content, one for each client, and more.
It is also important to clean up your files. Delete old, unnecessary files. Backing up your content is crucial. Both Dorien and I know this is important and have numerous backups of our content. You should as well.
Using your personality in content is helpful. You should be creating your own stock photos. Think ahead of time and have some photos (and maybe video) of something to do with your business. This could be your store, office, products, vehicles and more. You can then use them for quotes and in posts. Put a list together of holidays or themes that you might want to use later on. Generic photos can be used with text overlays.
I am now encouraged to repurpose my content! Older content will not resurface on its own, you need to do it! I need to find an accountability partner to ensure that I do this.
Oh, and one more thing. Dorien spoke about email newsletters. When she creates an email, She uses the theme (images and content) on different channels to help use the content everywhere and make them work together. You can say the same thing, just say it in a different way on each platform.
It is important to reach your audience where they are. People consume content on different channels at diffe...
In this short episode, I cover reaching your customer first and lifestyle marketing.
When it comes to reaching your customer first, before your competition, make that you provide value through blogging, customer service, and social media. This can be knowledge, information or tips. You can provide information about a product or service. Create engagement and trust for when someone is ready to buy, they would want to buy from you.
Use automation to get in front of your audience first. Use information and data to help trigger messages at the right time. Take advantage of your customers' emotion or even time of day to help convince people to buy from you. You can also trigger a message when someone visits your website. This might mean that they are interested in working with you our wanting to buy a product.
With customer service, greet people right away, use proper etiquette, and provide helpful and valuable information. If you use a chat, look into chatbots to help improve response rate and help save you time. If you interact with customers quickly and make life easier for them, you will set yourself apart from your competition. It is hard to find companies that put customer service first these days.
With lifestyle marking, you want to appeal to people and how they live. It is the things they like and how they want to be treated. Solve a pain.
Develop personas, which is identifying the "type" of person that buys from you. One persona may be a male 30-40 years old that likes exercising expensive meals. Another may be a 20-25-year-old female that is into yoga and is also into milkshakes.
Make life easy for your customers by catering to there lifestyle. Do not make them go through numerous steps to learn something or buy from you. Appeal to the emotions of your personas and that you understand them. Help them make a decision.
Use lifestyle marketing to appeal to your audience and make sure that you are the first to reach your customer!
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Audio:
Josh Dodson is my guest today. He is the Director of Research and integrated Marketing at VisionPoint Marketing.
We discussed marketing strategy vs. tactics. Strategy is a guiding principle for the tactics you use in marketing. Tactics are the specific thing you are doing with marketing. It could be Facebook ads or maybe Google Adwords. It is when you get into the weeds. Strategy helps guide you toward your goal.
First, start with a goal, then develop a plan to reach that goal. Next, use the tools at your exposal to execute the plan. If you follow a plan, it will be more effective and reduce mistakes.
There are times when you can do something out of scope, like an Instagram Story post or tweet. An example from Josh's article is targeting alumni; you need to define parameters to help you target your audience better. Then once you are in the moment, you can decide if you should execute an unplanned post. One thing is that your message needs to tie into what you are saying, how you are saying it, and who you are saying it to.
Targeting is important. Making sure to send the content to the right person, at the right time. It will help with effectiveness.
Josh talks about statistical significance. It is crucial to be able to identify what element of your marketing is working and what is not. Use tracking parameters (Google Analytics, UTM), to help learn about what is happening on your website. When you add that on the front end, you can see what is happening on the backend. In other words, you will be able to analyze the customer journey.
By learning what your website visitors are doing, you can tweak your plan and adjust your goals.
Josh concluded, by saying there is a temptation to do the exciting things without planning, but you need to establish your guiding principles to make your job and results easier in the long run. Plan for success and execute for conversions.
Visit VisionPoint Marketing's website: www.visionpointmarketing.com They help with marketing for higher education.
Josh on Twitter: @joshuaDDodson Link to article: Higher Ed Marketing 101: Strategy vs. Tactics
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Audio:
The power of referrals. Most people rely on word-of-mouth referrals. That means that they are being reactive and waiting for those referrals to roll in. Even though word of mouth referrals can be enough, you can always have more and more money. Referrals are the most powerful form of obtaining customers, because it is free.
My friends at New Velocity told me that 88% of people are willing to provide a referral, but only 8% of people ask for them. Make sure that you are on LinkedIn and have a well rounded, professional profile. You also want to share valuable content.
On LinkedIn, start looking at customers you have and who they are connected with. If they are a good client and they are happy, you can reach out to them and ask them to connect or introduce you to someone that may potentially be a customer. A good tip is offering to write up an intro letter for your connection to save them time. They will be more willing to help you out. You can even offer a bounty for any referrals.
Referrals are very powerful. Do not underestimate them.
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Audio:
Attending conferences can be informative and educational. Today, I am going to talk about how I prepare for a conference.
Here are the things that I do to prepare for a conference.
Research the talks that you want to attend. Don't stress yourself out by needing to make last minute decisions for those breakout sessions. Most conferences offer apps that you can use to plan your day and also create a schedule. Otherwise use your smartphone or write them down. Post to your social media networks to see if there is anyone else going that you know and try to meet up with them. Reach out to speakers and try to meet and connect with them. Maybe you can even get a selfie! Find out where the networking party will be so that you are ready. Take good notes so that you can go back and review later on. Make sure to record an links or social media profiles that the speakers share. Find good restaurants near the conference location to pick good places and know if they only take reservations When you get back, make a video or write a blog post about what you learned about the conference.
Here is a list of items that I bring to a conference
Backback- to hold all my stuff Laptop- so I can get to what I need if something comes up iPad mini- for taking notes, and saving my iPhone battery iPhone X with rig and mic- so that I can take videos and pictures External battery- to charge my gadgets Cords- for connecting things Business cards- to facilitate networking Mints- to keep my breath fresh Pens- multiple pens for writing stuff down
That covers what I do to prepare for a conference. If you are looking for an email service provider, use code HMBT for a $30 account credit with iContact. While I am speaking today, I am offering my book, The ABCs of the Customer Journey: A Beginner's Guide to Automation, Branding, and Customer Service, free on Amazon.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Audio:
Diana M. Needham, The Book Shepherd, joins me today. I met Diana at a LinkedIn Live networking event and really enjoyed speaking with her and learning how she helps people get books published. Diana works with her clients to not only write a book, but market it, and obtain the result that they really want.She is the owner of Needham Business Consulting.
Diana works with business leaders, small business owners, and service professionals that have a big message to share and want to use that message to grow their business. A book can be a very powerful marketing strategy and lead generation tool that helps you stand out from your competition and position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Most of your competitors may not have written an article, not to mention a book! Consider your book as your $4 business card that can be leveraged not only as a product to sell but a tool for attracting ideal clients, referral partners, and new opportunities.
I mention my book writing process.. There were challenges, but I received help along the way. It really is a team effort!
I asked Diana about how someone could write a book without it being so daunting. Her answer? Start by identifying the biggest challenge your ideal customers have. Your solution (which can be steps to follow or key concepts you teach) become the chapter content.
Your last chapter should not be a conclusion. It should be ânext success stepsâ. What do you want the reader to do now? Is it to call you, set up an appointment, or visit your website for your newsletter or free gift? If you do not move your readers to your email list, you canât follow up, deepen the relationship, and move them to the next step to do business with you.
There is no better time to be an author. You can use a book to promote your products, services, and website. Especially with digital books, you can add hyperlinks to direct readers where you want.
How is a book more powerful than social media, email, or press releases? A book shows people what you know, not just what you do. Use your book to share your personal story and examples or case studies of how youâve helped clients.
You need to get your book out there! At times, offering it for free for some time can generate reviews, which may help others buy your book. Diana mentioned someone that is doing a library tour and a book signing tour to raise awareness. You can use events and conferences to network and promote your book. Offering your book as a gift and sending your book through snail mail allows you to obtain physical mailing addresses, which are much more valuable than an email address alone.
Make sure that your book looks professional. It needs to have a professional cover and professional editing. I share about how my first book was self-published and the quality is not that great, but that I worked with professional editors, layout artists, and a graphic designer on my second book.
As you begin the book process, there are key questions to ask (and answer) to build the right foundation for success with your book. Some of those questions are: Who is your ideal client? What is the biggest problem they have? What is the end result you want?.
I admit that I am good at âvomiting on paperâ, then going back and clean it up. You just need to get the content out of your head and heart and on paper. Your first draft will be crappy (letâs be honest, everyoneâs are!), but you can get help to polish it. Editors are trained to do just that. My editor really helped me a lot! The right editor has your best interests at heart and while some feedback may sting, it is all intended to help you create a better product that will get the results you want.
âThe person that changes the most through this process is the author,â DIana shared. When we write a book, we become more clear about our message, approach, and process. We gain confidence in our abilities and skills. Recognition and opportunities follow.
I am joined today by Barbara Hemphill, owner of Barbara Hemphill LLC, to discuss productivity
The average employee spends 19% of their time looking for what they need to do their work. It you take a company that has 20 employees at an average wage of $15 an hour, that represents a loss productivity cost of $115k dollars a year. Research shows that 80% of what we keep we never use, and the more we keep the less we use. The reason people are wasting time is that they are always looking for things.
Barbara likes to help people declutter. We talk about ho digital clutter can become overwhelming and I talk about how I use a variety of services to hold digital files.
Barbara tells us that clutter is postponed decisions. Organization by itself has no value. It needs to be something you use to get something done. Use the acronym, SYSTEM (Saving You Space, Time, Energy, and Money). You need to have a system to be organized. Barbara has a five-step process called the Productive Environment Process. Barbara also heads up The Productive Environment Institute.
A productive environment is an intentional setting were people can accomplish their work and enjoy their lives. Your environment is your desk, your brain, your computer desk, and anywhere you need to get things done.
Productive Environment Process
- State your vision
- Identify your obstacles
- Identify your resources
- Design and execute your plan
- Sustain your success
While discussing number 3, we had a sidebar on having people help you and the GTY (Greater Than Yourself) mentality. Barbara said the phrase "together we are better". Research shows that we are 76% more likely to accomplish a task if you have an accountability partner.
Practice makes permanent. Make sure to go through the PEP process and try to make it habitual.
I talk about how I use both digital and analog to-do lists and how I am trying to move to using one mechanism. Barbara talks about to-do lists and how many people keep it in their head. She has never met anyone that was comfortable with their productivity that had not resolved the issue of paper vs digital calendars. You can have anything you want, but not everything.
There are so many tools out there and you need to come up with your own system. Barbara uses a planner pad and a digital calendar. Develop a system and make it become a habit.
I developed my own planner page that has all the elements that are important to me. What I need to get done, what I am grateful for, how much water I drank through the day and if I exercised, and more. Check it out here. On the digital side, I use iOS tasks to track small items.
Sometimes it is the little things. Some people plan the night before and others in the morning. Barbara tells us a story about how she would try to clean up at night before going to bed, but one morning she decided to clean in the morning instead. She said that it was more enjoyable, especially with coffee and music.
When you have a task to complete, try to get it done as quickly as you can to get it out of the way. I mention the book Eat that Frog. For me in my role, I feel that my mantra is "organized chaos" and that I am all over the place. Barbara said that she thinks that I am productive. She is too kind.
If something has been on your list for too long, you need to do an analysis. What is the worse thing that can happen if you do not do something or throw away a piece of paper on your desk? That can help you clean up your to-do list. Also, how can you make your task easier so that you can complete it?
Barbara said that 80% of people feel like they have a book in them. The problem is getting it on paper. I mention that people that have not written a book come up to me and try to tell me how I should have written my book. But they have not written a book! Both of us encourage you to write a book. You can start by writing articles and also find people to help you.
I recently viewed an ad from someone looking to promote a workshop on chatbots and how they are going to be an email marketing killer. I signed up because I wanted to see how this person was using chatbots.
First, I needed to provide my email address to sign up for the workshop. That shows you that email marketing is still powerful. Next, I started to receive a lot of bot messages and at times, I felt like it was interrupting my day. I needed to keep going back to Facebook Messenger to interact with the bot.
For me, I do not think that chatbots are ready for prime time. Messenger is really meant for friends and family and at times, to speak with businesses, if you initiate a conversation. What I experienced was different. I received messages every couple of days.
You can use a chatbot on your site or on your Facebook Business Page to help answer FAQs, but I would hold off on using it to nurture prospects until it is ready for prime time. I have been using ChatFuel for a while and also know Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey, through my work at iContact. You should check them out!
Email Marketing is still the best channel for marketing.
iContact discount code: HMBT for $30 off
Book: The ABCs of the Customer Journey: A Beginner's Guide to Automation, Branding, and Customer Service
*Edited to include MobileMonkey
If you are using email marketing to promote your business, you need to clean your list every six months to a year. You do not have to just remove subscribers from your list, you can send them a series of about three emails to try to win them back.
You can use a subject line of say "Are we breaking up?" for the first email to try to get them to open the email and engage with it. Ask your subscribers if they want to continue to receive your emails. You can then send them two more emails in an attempt to salvage them.
The most important reason that you want to have a clean list, is that it will help you with your email deliverability. More of your emails will get into the inbox. Email providers like Gmail and Yahoo are looking at what your subscribers are doing with your emails and if they are engaging with them. If they are engaging in a positive manner, they will send more of your emails to the inbox. If they engage in a negative manner, it will lessen your chance.
Forms of engagement would be opening, clicking, forwarding, starring, marking as important and also removing your email from the spam folder, marking as "not spam". Negative engagement would be ignoring, unsubscribing, deleting marking as spam and bouncing. This type of engagement hurt your inbox placement.
Identify people who have not opened your email in a while (six months to a year) and run a re-engagement campaign. Remove the subscribers that do not show they still want your emails. You can always add them back later when they show interest.
If you would like to talk about best practices for list hygiene, let me know.
Audio:
Eric Megert, a comedian, talks about how to use comedy when you are a business owner. Maybe while selling or just going about your day.
What does it take to become a successful comedian? Eric said perseverance and the ability to fail (bomb) is important. I mentioned that I discussed failure in a previous episode. Don't be afraid to fail.
Also, look at your verbiage and how you talk. You need to get to the point as soon as possible. When selling, in comedy, and when speaking to an audience, it is about them and not you. Your communication needs to be valuable and you need to get to the point as soon as possible.
We then discussed improv and using it to help make improvements in sales. Eric said that he talks about his family and relationships when on stage. He shared a quick joke with us.
I asked Eric about one thing that he learned from comedy. He said to be introspective and do not believe the hype. He mentions someone he knows that opened for Dave Chappelle one night and then went back to his job the next day washing cars. There is always going to be someone better than you, but you still need to get out there and do your thing and age does not matter.
You are never too old to learn and improve. Keep reading. Make sure to keep your brain stimulated. I mention an article about doing things that you are not used to doing, like brushing your teeth with your opposite hand that you normally use. This forces your brain to adapt and think. It will help with keeping your brain stimulated and responsive.
Eric said to check out the NC Comedy Festival in February if you are in the area.
You can follow Eric on Twitter: @no_research
For a $30 account credit with iContact, use code HMBT.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Audio:
Jerel Bonner from Corralling Chaos joins me to today to talk about brand promises. I met Jerel through LinkedIn. He is knowledge broker that can help general managers and senior executives form teams that deliver on the brand promises.
Companies need to think beyond having a unique selling proposition. This is why you would buy one brand over another. A brand promise is what a customer would get if they buy a product or service from a company, not what makes them different. Zappos was discussed as an example in regards to their well-known return policy.
Employees should be hired into a company to deliver the brand promise to the customer. We Also discussed the employment promise and why employees would want to work somewhere.
I talk about hiring people that are effective at their job, but they also need to be warm. They need to be able to show customers they care. Sending thank you cards and gifts to customers can help build relationships. I also talk about how good Apple is with fixing or replacing computers.
Jerel said in order to build a brand promise, employees need to know what to deliver to the customer. You have to know your strategy. How are you different from my competitors and which behaviors deliver your brand promise? Look at the behavior that makes the action deliverable. Maybe it is sending a card, or having employees show up on time for meetings.
Jerel said that what makes the United States great is a willingness to be coached, which most international companies do not have. Micheal Jordan became successful because he was willing to practice a lot.
Make sure that you and your company keep the brand promise front and center. These four things are important when making successful decisions: know the client, the customer need, the brand and the market.
I talk about iContact and how we help our customers. That is our brand differentiator. I felt that our brand promise is that "We help you succeed...". Jerel said that the story of how we help customers is our brand promise. After some discussion, we tweaked it to "We help you succeed through the effective use of email marketing. Whether you need support or marketing consultant, we are here to help you increase conversions".
I then talk about my speaking pitch, which is "Through the use of email and social marketing, I give all marketers what they really want, to acquire more customers, increase revenue and avoid costly mistakes". The brand promise would be that I help marketers reduce mistakes.
Building a brand promise is important. Make sure to sit down and develop one
Jerel and his co-founder, Ted Benson (E. Benson), can be found on LinkedIn. Make sure to mention this podcast when connecting. I mentioned that I do not accept non-personalized connection requests. It is important to be able to show value to someone that you want to connect with.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Audio:
Happy New Year! I hope that you were able to plan some achievable goals that will help you grow this year. I hope that you will also be able to network more this year.Good luck with your goals.
Let's talk about failure. People are afraid of failure. I think that you should "double your failure". It is important to fail because you learn from your mistakes. At times you will make a mistake and never make that same mistake again, and others you may repeat. After a while you will be able to develop a habit to stop that mistake.
Learn from your mistakes Don't be afraid to fail Don't be afraid to try something new
To help learn about avoiding mistakes, you need to reach out to people in your network and ask them about mistakes they have made in the past and what they learned from them. If you learn about other people's mistakes, you may be less likely to make the same ones.
I hope you find this post insightful enough to go out and create failures that you can learn from.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Audio:
This is the second part of my discussion with Brandon Hatcher of Social Remedy Marketing. Make sure to listen to part one, which is episode 113.
We jump to where Brandon talks about 'being on social media". Many business owners have told Brandon that they did not think that their potential customers were on social media. They tend to think that their demographic may not be on certain social media channels.
Demographics for social channels can change, so it is worth creating and posting content for most channels. You also want to have an archive of posts so that people that visit your profile can see the historical posts.
If you do not get involved now, you will lose business to those that are on currently on social media. Take it easy and try it out. There is a lot of material out there like blog articles and videos to help you learn about social media. You can also speak with and hire experts.
There are also tools like Hoostuite and Buffer that will help you post to numerous channels at once. For the most part, Brandon likes to post directly to his channels. We discuss the difference between posting directly or using a tool as well as frequency.
Brandon wraps up by discussing Instagram and Snapchat. He urges business owners to try these channels out even if you do not think that your demographic is there. Take social media seriously and learn as much as you can.
I ask Brandon if a business owner should pay an agency or someone to help them with social media. He said that it is not all that important. He does say that it is important to use paid ads to drive people to take and action. You can also find and work with influencers. They can be affordable. Influencers are people that will help you with brand recognition by promoting your business. I mention this in episodes #42 and #51.
We discuss using the explorer feature in Instagram where you can search for people posting in your local area. Once you find some relevant posts, you can comment on their posts to gain visibility. It is important that you engage with other users on Instagram. You need to provide value on social media.
I mention not worrying about how many people that you see engaging with you because you need to provide the same value to one or 100 people.
For content, you can use content like pictures of your work or workplace. You have more content than you think. Start off with what you are comfortable with. Don't worry about the quality, people care about what value they receive, not how good it looks or feels.
Instagram is not only for photos, you can also post long-form text on Instagram. I mention the account Before5AM. The owner, Joe Duncan, is good at breaking up the text and I discuss how he does it since Instagram does not support paragraph breaks. Listen and learn.
Speaking about 5am, Brandon and I talk about cheating by getting up early and beating your competitors!
This wraps up my two-part series with Brandon Hatcher. Like with many of my discussions, they can go on forever!
Reach out to Brandon:
www.socialremedymarketing.com _BrandonHatcher on Instagram
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Audio:
Brandon Hatcher with Social Remedy Marketing joins me for a two-part series to talk about creating content for social media. I met Brandon at Converge South a couple of months ago. Converge South is a technology and creativity conference in Winston Salem, NC. I sat in on his session and was impressed with his storytelling skills as well as his message on creating content.
When it comes to content creation, don't worry about how you look or how you sound. Just create content. Brandon talks about getting involved with social media around 2005. He saw social media as a way to show off his art and passions. Over the last decade, he has been learning about social media and now wants to help others learn how to succeed online.
How can a small business owner take their passion and use it in social media?
Brandon says it does not matter what it is that you are passionate about you need to document what you do. Make videos about your products or service. It could be a finished product, time-lapse video, how-to or tips about your service.
If you document enough, you will have content that you can chop up and use on various channels at various times. "Keep the cameras rolling" and obtain as much content as possible.
Sure, content creation is not easy but needs to become habitual. You need to either find the time to create content or you can use a content creation company. Keep in mind that there is not such a thing as having or posting too much content.
When you start to create content, you will find that you start to fill up your hard drive. I am running into that issue now and need to start storing it on a separate hard drive. PSA, no matter where your content is, make sure that you back up your data!
This is the first part of my discussion with Brandon. Tune in next week for the next episode, #114.
Reach out to Brandon:
www.socialremedymarketing.com _BrandonHatcher on Instagram
Audio:
Chris Daltorio from New Velocity joins me today to discuss sales. New Velocity is a sales and leadership development firm. They work with companies of all sizes. Chris likes to help companies grow by helping people become the superstar version of themselves.
As a small business owner, your passion alone is not enough. Having sales skills will be crucial to your success. Chris talks about working with NCIdea, an organization that provides grants to small businesses. By speaking with budding business owners, he found that even if they have an excellent product, it will not sell itself.
You can look at growing your sales skills or even outsource some of your sales efforts to help get your product to market. I mention a phrase that I heard from Lori Bruhns, "do what you do best, and delegate the rest". Learn to outsource what you can even though you may feel that you can or need to do it yourself.
I mention a recent workshop that I did at the RTP Frontier where I spoke to small business owners about email marketing. Out of the 40 people that attended, about 30 have not started using email marketing yet, which made my presentation that much more important.
Question: How much time should be dedicated to sales for a small business owner?
Chris went over to his really cool light board to provide some great information. Make sure to check out the video version on Youtube.
Imagine a 5x5 grid with 5 time slots for Monday through Friday. This means that you have twenty-five 90 minute chunks to focus on high yield activities. They can be used for a variety of things, not just sales. Make sure to focus on your important activities. Take a look at your "chunks" and if you are not using enough of them correctly, you are wasting time. Business owners spend around 7 hours a week focused on sales. If that is you, make it count.
Chirs also created a visual with 4 quadrants, which he calls the Eisenhower Principle since he came up with it. It can also be called the urgent/important matrix.
Quadrant 1 is what is urgent and important. These tasks take up the most of our time since they are important. Quadrant 2 are things that are not urgent but are important. For a small business owner, this would include sales, prospecting, and focusing on referrals. Quadrant 3 are items that are urgent, but not important. This would include handling deliveries, software glitches, and pop up meetings. Quadrant 4 items are neither urgent or important. This could include checking social media, fantasy sports. These are things that are not getting us closer to our goals.
When you say you do not have time, you should take a look at and reduce the amount of quadrant 3 and 4 items you work on. Make sure to work in chunks without distractions and also spend time working on more quadrant 1 and 2 items.
We move to changing habits to be able to work in 90-minute chunks. Chris says to start with one and then work up from there. He talks about M.I.T. (Most Important Tasks), where you should plan the 5 most important things at the end of the day that you need to do the next day. I talk about thinking about and brainstorming on tasks right before you go to bed. If you try to plan the same day, you will have too many influences and distractions injected into your planning.
As a small business owner, what does it mean to provide value?
Chris said that value is an overused term. He uses the example of Sharktank and the feedback that is provided on the show. Chris tells us that we need to look at our product or service through your customer's lens. You need to really hone your message to provide value to the recipient rather than what you are proud of or think is valuable. Your customer will determine value.
Chris goes over his "value grid" that can be used for sales conversations. The grid has 4 components: mitigate risk, make money, cut costs, or escalate efficiencies. How would your offering align to one of those categories?
This is a special episode of Hank's Marketing and Business Tips. Recently, I have been talking about how most people slow down and let off the gas during the holiday season and that now is the time for business owners to double down so that you can beat your competition. By doing so, you will be able to start the new year off very strong! I have a year-end challenge for you. If you have been listening for a while, you know that I have been pushing you to create content. I have had and will have numerous episodes on this. What I want you to do it so go over to my Facebook page and post a video. Yes, I want you to create content! Post a video and say the following:
Tell me who you are and what you do Talk about how you are going to grow your business in the new year and help set you apart from your competitors Optional: tell us one thing you learned from watching HMBT Optional: Plug yourself or your company
Consider yourself challenged! Head over to Facebook.com/HankFHoffmeier and post your video! I will have show notes at hankhoffmeier.com/alexa in case you need the list of requirement. Let's have some fun!
Audio:
Today, Timothy Robbins and I talk about content creation. His company, Today Creative, is a content creation company. They create content for customers to help with inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is using content or marketing tactics to drive traffic or leads back to your website.
You can use informational and valuable content to share in hopes to raise awareness. I bring up the fact that not enough businesses use content marketing. Timothy said that there are strategies that you can use to create content. It can be simple. Use your phone and laptop to create. Use it. You will be your own biggest critic, but people will see the value of the content and not the quality of the sound or video.
Creating content can take a lot of time, but it helps customers get to know you and builds brand loyalty. You can use video or podcasts, which are a great way to provide a personal touch. Podcasts are becoming more and more popular, so you should look into it.
We discuss working with and paying for a content company or consultant. What you are paying for is the knowledge, experience, and expertise. You need to work on your business rather than in it.
Working with an outsourcing company can be convenient and helps save time. It might be difficult to outsource a podcast since it should be your voice, but a content company can come out and record some audio. They can also edit it for you.
If you are going to work with a content company, make sure to work with someone that you can trust to convey your brand message. Do some research.
Timothy's last tip is to just go out and create content. Don't worry about the end result. You can always do it over.
Website: www.Todaycreative.co
Email: hello@todaycreative.co
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4B4ghRIT-E[/embedyt]
This was an impromptu recording with William Meredith, the owner of five franchise locations of Learning Express Toys in the Raleigh NC area. I asked William what a small business owner needs to keep in mind when running a business. He said that business owners need to keep an open mind. Also, reading books and listening to podcasts would help you grow as a business owner and you need to realize that others can help you. I elaborated by adding that business owners should keep an open mind, learn from mistakes, and should not be afraid to try new things. Next, I asked what lead to Wiliam's success. He said that the main thing is that he surrounds himself really good people. You cannot do everything on your own. You need people that care to help you. He mentions using the A.C.C. method: Attitude, care, and competence. If you find people that have all three, they will push you as well as you need to push them. I have found that his staff is very passionate about what they do, which is important. If you are local, make sure to look for Learning Express. Learning Express Blog: www.lexpblog.com [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR7vyuP2Sgw[/embedyt]
Now that the end of the year and the holidays are upon us, we tend to focus on other things than our work or our business. You should always be planning for the week, month, quarter, and year. I have already met with my wife and planned some of our goals for next year and I will devote some time to plan my professional goals in December. Make sure that you have created your personal goals before you develop professional goals so that there are no conflicts. What made me think to create this episode was a meeting I had with Annie Franceschi from Greatest Story Creative, whom I met while speaking at a local event where I spoke about running webinars. I also found out that she also belongs to a speaking group that I am a member of. We had time to catch up and have a get to know you call yesterday and what resonated with me was that she said that she uses the month of December to plan for the new year. She does not work with clients during this month so that she can truly plan effectively. I thought that this was awesome. I also heard a similar message on John Hayes' Podcast: Becoming the Expert. In Episode 51, John talks about using December to plan and maybe learn new things. Make sure to take advantage of any downtime you have toward the end of the year to plan or learn new things. If you are thinking about starting a business, this is a good time to start planning so that you can hit the ground running in 2018. What are you going to plan, how will you plan it? How will you use the time you have to become successful and creative? [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wacDbc56FRY[/embedyt]
Case studies are a great tool to add to your marketing efforts. Case studies are written documentation or a video that explains how you helped a customer. Basically a success story. Create a study where you were able to help a customer save time or money or maybe just made them happy. Add details like metrics and quotes.
You can share case studies on your website, blog, and social media channels. It is a great way to build rapport and trust with potential clients. People will trust you and learn how they will become successful or happy by working with you.
Go out now and find a client that will be willing to help you create a case study. You will be happy you did so.
Make sure on subscribe in iTunes, Google Play, or TuneIn so that you never miss an episode. You can have your Amazon Echo/Alexa play the latest episode by saying: "Play Hank's Marketing and Business Tips on TuneIn". You can also join my email newsletter by texting "Hank" to 345345. Each month I send out an update great things to read and listen to along with updates about me.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzMh_LEwpMk[/embedyt]
The phrase "focusing on those that ignore you" is pretty powerful. To find and attract new customers, you need to find people that have not heard about you and your business. You can use social media ads and blog posts to gain attention. You can also network to increase your brand awareness. Build your LinkedIn network to help grow awareness and visibility. Just make sure that you have something of value to offer people in your network.
My upcoming book, The ABCs of the Customer Journey: A Beginner's Guide to Automation, Branding and Customer Service, speaks about this (branding) at length. Find people that are not intentionally ignoring you, but are not aware that you exist.
Make sure on subscribe in iTunes, Google Play, or TuneIn so that you never miss an episode. You can have your Amazon Echo/Alexa play the latest episode by saying: "Play Hank's Marketing and Business Tips on TuneIn".
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyPxhWiZEf0[/embedyt]
Many small business owners still struggle to see the need to use digital marketing. They do not realize that using social media and other forms of digital marketing is very powerful.
You need to be where your customers are, and that is online. It is not important to be on every social media platform, but you should double down on the platforms that make sense for you. Maybe that is Facebook or Instagram.
You can always hire someone to help you with your social media. This can be an intern, college student or virtual assistant. You can also hire an agency.
Make sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or TuneIn so that you never miss an episode. You can have your Amazon Echo/Alexa play the latest episode by saying: "Play Hank's Marketing and Business Tips on TuneIn".
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiIi_OVDan0[/embedyt]
This episode was recorded in a public place, a Dunking Donuts. The reason being is that I wanted to be able to put myself out there and put myself out of my comfort zone.
This ties into a challenge that a completed for a group I belong to on Facebook for speakers. Throughout the week, I was to do a Facebook Live video on the group's Facebook Page. There was a different challenge for each day. One of the challenges was to speak for 60 seconds without using the word "I". Another was to record in a public place, with people watching.
Make sure to challenge your self and think outside the box. Do things that you normally would not do to help your business grow. It could be adding a new product or service offering.
Also, make sure to find someone to talk to about your ideas so that you can learn ahead of time if your idea is solid. I would be happy to connect with you if you need a second set of eyes or ears on something.
If you would like to join my email newsletter, you can text "Hank" to 345345. I sent out a monthly journal that includes some curated information that I find as well as updates about me. I share great blog articles, podcasts and some general thoughts.
Make sure to subscribe in iTunes, Google Play, 60db, or TuneIn so that you never miss an episode.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oNKTxv_cHE[/embedyt]
I was recently on a Facebook group and someone posted the question, "Do you have to work hard to be successful"?
Working hard means you are doing the wrong things and failing. What you need to be doing is work smart and passionately. Yes, you will work long hours and spend money. Working hard means that the things that you are doing are "hard". Why is that? Maybe it is because you are not knowledgeable in what you are doing or maybe doing tasks that you should delegate. Use Fiverr to do some of the things that you can offload.
You need to become knowledgeable in the things that you are doing so that you can optimize your efforts and energy. If you are forcing things to happen or forcing yourself to complete tasks, there is something wrong.
Again, work smart and optimize your outcomes. Always learn about how you can be working better on your business rather than in it. Working hard does not equal success.
Also, use people in your network to help you become knowledgeable and help hold you accountable. They can, at times, sure up your weaknesses. If you have a strong network, they will be willing to help you.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGn1LgyloR0[/embedyt]
Today, I am joined by Jonathan Orcutt of Driven Landscapes Franchising. I met Jonathan on a Facebook Landscaping Group. I still like to keep my finger on the pulse of the landscape industry since selling my landscape company last year. Jonathan came on the show to give us some insight to being a small business owner and also some information on buying a franchise.
Jonathan started his company in 2012 at 26 years old. He worked eight years in corporate America, but decided that he wanted to control his own future. He felt that the landscape industry was very fragmented, like the wild west. Jonathan said that the landscape industry is currently at $78B.
Jonathan wanted to build a million dollar company, and two years later, after meeting that goal, he wanted to share his passion of working with small business owners by offering franchises. He said that he was able to become scalable and obtain successful results by using systems and marketing that work.
"Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure" - Tony Robbins. Jonathan has earned his first million dollars, but does not feel completely fulfilled. He wants to share his success with other business owners.
For people looking to start a franchise, Jonathan said that some of the benefits will be the same in most industries. The first thing is buying power. Business owners will be able to able to obtain discounts on products and services they will need to run their business.
Second, you will get a blueprint on how to run and scale your business. There is no guesswork. You will be able to follow the steps that helped Jonathan's (or any) franchise grow, eliminating potential mistakes.
Next, you will have consulting along the way that will help you make decisions and grow your revenue. Jonathan believes in mentorship. He works with a mentor himself. I then mention the book Greater Than Yourself by Steve Farber. Make sure to mentor up and down.
At the end of the day, when you buy a franchise, you will have a turnkey business where you will not have to reinvent the wheel. You will be able to grow your business faster and cheaper. I think that Jonathan and I coined new term. The Three M's: Manual, Mentorship and Money Power. That is what you get when you buy a franchise.
On the flip side, franchise owners need to pay a royalty. But that can be offset by the savings from the buying power and growth in revenue. The revenue growth should outweigh the royalties.
I finally ask what drives Jonathan. He said that family comes first. His wife and daughter mean the world to him. He also said that he has a strong entrepreneurial passion, which is his internal drive. He really wanted to pay it forward and help other small business owners.
Jonathan can be reached on his website and through Facebook.
Website: www.drivenlandscapesfranchises.com Facebook: Driven Landsapes
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZCs1gz_aOs[/embedyt]
Sr. Integrated MarCom Executive, Content Marketer, Keynote Speaker, LinkedIn Workshop Leader, and Voice Over Talent, Chuck Hester joined me to talk about LinkedIn. Chuck is your go to guy for anything related to LinkedIn.
Chuck gave us his top three things ( really 4!) to do on LinkedIn:
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Create SEO rich content for LinkedIn. Make sure to use the right keywords in your headline, summary and job experience. LinkedIn has it's own search algorithm and you want to optimize for it the best you can.
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Connect: Do not send generic LinkedIn invitations. Make sure to personalized your invite.
- Community: Develop a community of people that will elevate your network.
- Content: Update your status regularly. Use video when you can. It is becoming more popular. Make sure to post content that is of value to your audience. It is not about you, it is about your audience. LinedIn is not Facebook, keep your personal stuff on that channel.
Chuck Hester on LinkedIn- Make sure to personalize your invite! Also, check out Chuck's articles on LinkedIn
Chuck facilitates monthly workshops on how to use LinkedIn effectively and also does one-one-one training.
Now get out there and network!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvy5Td9tCvY[/embedyt]
Most people make the mistake of jumping right into a conversation by selling.
Today, on my blackboard, I wrote âServe, Donât Sellâ.
First, you need to develop a trusted relationship with your audience.
Then provide value to them through information, assets and network introductions.
Determine if you can help them with a business pain they have and if your solution fits.
If everything is aligned, you will have a new customer. If it is not a great fit, then you still have a relationship with your audience and there may be opportunities in the future. Your audience can also become brand advocates without buying from you.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K--NEZ30fK4[/embedyt]
In this episode, I discuss brag vs. Humblebrag.
The definition of humblebrag is "people's use of false modesty as a context to tell you just how great they are".
Urban Dictionary describes humblebrag as: "Subtly letting others now about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or "woe is me" gloss." and gives the example of: "Uggggh just ate about fifteen piece of chocolate gotta learn to control myself when flying first class or they'll cancel my modelling contract LOL :p #humblebrag"
When is comes to being a business owner, you should brag about certain items. It can be a new store opening or maybe winning an award like best restaurant or maybe a customer service award. It is good to brag about these types of accomplishments. If you want to humblebrag, be careful in how you do it.
I also discuss how complaining is viewed as being negative and you should not really do that.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEtyJgyHUek[/embedyt]
Today, I am asking my Amazon Alexa subscribers if they like long form or short form content better. Hank's Marketing and Business Tips started out on the Alexa only and were only about 1-2 minutes in length. I also posted about five times per week. I am not creating content that is about 5-15 minutes in length, includes guest hosts an is also on iTunes, Google Play and Youtube.
If you are an Alexa listener, please tell me your preferences. You can reach me at: Hank@hankhoffmeier.com, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
I had the pleasure of bringing Professorjohn (PJ) from The Muscle Memory Group on the show today. I met PJ while speaking in about email marketing in Phoenix, AZ. He and I spoke about marketing for some time after my speaking session. He is passionate about what he does, just as I am about marketing. It was a not brainer to have him come on the show! John is in the fitness industry. He helps personal trainers obtain clients and runs a successful training company. The fitness industry is at a disadvantage when it comes to serving the community as a whole. He serves the individual, the community and the industry at large. He has been called the personal chef to trainers. His mission is to educate people on fitness life skills. We start out by talking about how consumers are more empowered than ever and how building relationships with buyers is crucial. You cannot rely on appearance alone and using old tools. The old school way of selling was a "one call, one close" type of transaction. Not anymore. Customers have many more choices and want to get to know whoyour are and what your skillset is before makeing a decision. As a business owner, it is important to be healthy. Even though you may work a lot of hours,  you can still make healthier choices when you eat, rather than just picking up fast food. Value your health. The same goes for your business, provide value and optimize your business workflows. Learn to optimize and plan your final desired outcome. Your marketing campaigns need to be cohesive. Show your customers that they are all important and that business is not transactional. Provide more value and customer service than you ever had in the past. PJ talks about how he offers a fitness savings account as what we deem a rewards program that provides value to his clients. Rewards build habits and make people want to do more business with you. Branding is an important element of a business. We discuss using colors and ensuring people know your vision and goals. I give an example of Baker Roofing having the motto, "At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good work." Offering a free trial is not something that will set you apart from your competition. It is what you do when people are trying your product or service that matters. Offer great customer service. PJ says that he lets the consumer set the price. He will then offer value to the people he works with, making them become a loyal customer. Being the cheapest is not always the best way to do business. People will perceive value in different ways, try out different pricing or discounts. Do not undersell yourself. After a discussion about health, we talk about how just creating videos solely to make money is not a good practice. You have to create buyer pride, as PJ explains. Inform, educate and innovate. When it comes to your business, do not only offer lower prices. That may cause you to make bad investment decisions when it comes to tools and reinvesting in your business. You need money to make money (to invest). PJ talks about what he offers to his clients, which is packed with value and great information. He is out to change the personal training industry! Back to branding, I mentioned speaking with small business owners at a small business expo. There were two buckets of business owners. The first were ones that could quickly and efficiently tell me what their business does. Then there were others that were not able to help me understand what they did. Once they walked away from me, I struggled to know or remember what they do. Professor John has a book coming out. It is currently in pre-release and the name is The Non-Exerciser's Guide to Nurturing Your Soul's Journey: Get Your Skinny, Find Your Awesome. He is gathering email addresses where he can provide a first lesson start kit. The book will have a lot of originally mastered information. Send an email to myunwantedbodyfatinfo@gmaill.com with the subject line HMBT Book to be added to t...
In episode 12, I spoke about Google My Business. It is a tool that Google offers to help be found on their search site. It offers the ability to show your location, hours and pictures of your business.
Google now allows the ability for business owners to post to their business page/listing a la Facebook style.
You can post on your computer or phone. For a computer, you can go to Google.com/Business. On your mobile phone, you can download the app on Android or iPhone.
General posts are removed after seven days and event type posts are removed after the event day.
Post to your Google My Business Page often and have fun with it!
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
While attending a small business conference in Phoenix Arizona, I met with a lot of small business owners. What I found was there were people that were either really good at telling me what they do, or they may have needed to go home and work on it. Every day that passed, I thought about how many business owners may be going around providing poor elevator pitches. An elevator pitch is a description on what you do, that can be delivered in 30-60 seconds. If I am in an elevator with you, you should be able to tell me what your company does before we move between a few floors.
Today, I want to help you create a great elevator pitch.
- Identify your goal: is it brand awareness, is it lead generation?
- Focus on the problems that you solve and how you can help people. Bonus: Add information or a statistic that shows the value in what you do.
- Be memorable: what do you want your audience to remember most about you?
- Communicate Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition): identify and communicate what makes you, your company, or your idea, unique. This should be communicated right after you tell me what you do.
- Engage with a question:Â make sure that it is open ended. You will not receive helpful information from a yes or no answer and people may not be willing to give an honest answer to a yes or no question.
- Put it all together
Here is what my elevator pitch would be:
"I am a strategic insights manager for iContact. I help small and mid size businesses learn how email marketing and marketing automation can help grow their business. I provide value through information, written and verbal on how businesses can obtain a 44x ROI with email marketing and use marketing automation to increase qualified leads by 451% .
Tell me, what kind of results are you seeing with your email marketing campaigns?"
Behind my on the wall, I have a small chalkboard that I write daily thoughts on. Today's thought is about Apple's event today. Apple is good at building anticipation for their products. I wrote on the chalkboard: "Apple EventDay : How do you build anticipation your company." Think about that and let me know about your elevator pitch or how your company builds anticipation in the comments.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
It is great to work from wherever you are. While traveling in Phoenix, I needed to get some projects completed. I decided to take the time while I was alone to work on some items that I would be able to focus on. I worked from the hotel room some and then by the pool bar.
My tip is to use the time you have wisely. If you are alone, you may be able to focus more. While on a train, plane or Uber, you can get some work knocked out. Even if you have a busy day, you need to find some time to focus.
Sorry about the quality of this video, but I wanted to get my message to you.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF5Vp0fJuH8[/embedyt]
In this episode, I talk about putting positive vibes out into the universe. I give an example of someone putting out negative vibes and how karma caught up with him. Don't let this be you!
How you think and feel can affect outcome and also affects others around you. Be positive and put out positive vibes!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX-3nNQ0-ew[/embedyt]
Ken Wood joins me in this episode to discuss having a proper value proposition, having a competitive advantage and how to understand your target market. Ken is the CEO and founder of Roar Marketing Concepts in Raleigh, NC.
I met Ken at a meetup and we then met a few days later and had a great discussion about marketing, which sparked his appearance on the show.
Ken opens up by saying companies need to have a marketing strategy. Start by defining your business goals and what it is that you want to achieve. We talk about how Ken helps his clients formulate strategy.Offering value to your audience, even when they are not ready to buy yet is a good strategy to use.
The goal of a well-defined marketing strategy is not revenue. You need to look at how your target market achieves their goals and develop your marketing around that. You need to convey how you will provide value to customers. We talk through a couple of examples and how to formulate a good value proposition. Remember to ask yourself, who your customers are, where are they, where to they congregate, what do they care about, how do they get their information. Also, look at how your prospects buy a product or service.
We also discuss the client first vs employee first and client second mentality.
Another thing that we talk about is gauging the size of your target market. You want to look at the total addressable market and also your served available market. There is a difference and you need to identify the market size you can handle. Start small and smart, then grow from there. Hope is not a marketing strategy.
Why should customers choose you? That is the question at hand. You need to understand your competition and how you can sell against them. make sure to have focused differentiators for when you speak to potential customers. You can outsource the work for competitive intelligence by using services like Fiverr.
Ken can be found at www.roarmarketingconcepts.com Find them on Facebook and Twitter @MarketingRoar
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59kw6XxQx-E[/embedyt]
Justin Streuli, the Director of the North Carolina Entrepreneurship Center at UNCG, joins me today to talk about starting a business. The center is located in Greensboro NC and serves as a bridge between the campus and the entrepreneurial community. They also help any small businesses thrive.
We briefly speak about what it means to be an entrepreneur, then move on to the main discussion.
I asked Justin for some advice to run a business efficiently and avoid pitfalls. He said the days of writing a long business plan are over and the lean approach is more efficient. Get out and speaking with potential customers to see what their pain points and needs are. Justin calls it the "matching the value proposition with the customer segment".
Building a foundation is also crucial before you get started. Make sure to have a funnel built so that you are able to attract, obtain, and nurture leads. Having a website is very easy to build on your own with many free tools available.
Linked in is a still a great place to find potential customers. There are other free sites to locate and research companies. Such as Manta. Networking in person is also a great way to build awareness for your business.
When collecting information, you want as much data as possible, but you should be careful about asking for too much information up front. You can start with a name and email address, then later, ask for more information to fill in the gaps and help you target more.
Some challenges people have when starting out is the lack of capital. Getting that first $1,000 to $10,000 can be hard. Learning the ins and outs of business is also something that people feel can be a challenge, but there are resources available.
Don't start a business based on financial reasons only. Some businesses can be started with little to no money at all, but may not be something where the owner is not knowledgable or passionate about. You should choose a niche where you have an interest and can become knowledgeable. This most important thing is to like what you do.
The most valuable resource you have is time, so don't wast it. Do your research and plan ahead. When starting out, small business owners may have to wear many hats, but make sure to hire people or virtual assistants to help you when you grow. Make sure that you work on your business rather than in our business.
Our last tip was to get out and network!
You can find Justin at startup.encg.edu. You will be able to learn about what the entrepreneurship center is all about.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBGyeqsgh4A[/embedyt]
John Hayes Joins me from Portugal but lives in Lincolnshire England. He is a marketing strategist and author of the Becoming the Expert series of books. He discusses the holy trinity of marketing: blogging, email marketing, and social media. Your marketing starts with branding your company on your blog, then use email marketing and social media, in that order. His three items compliment the three topics of my book, which are automation, branding and customer service.
John's first tip is to have a company blog. It is the pulse of your company. Marketing is about solving problems and you can use your blog to help publish information about solving the problems people have and gain their interest.
By publishing on your blog, you can have a sign-up form to collect contact information for your email marketing campaigns. You can then post valuable information on your social media channels to engage and nurture sales. I mention the importance of providing valued content. We also talk about sending the right message at the right time to the right person and then the power of referrals
I then ask John about creating valuable and quality content when you do not have a lot of time or money. He says that you should never guess what your client's problems are. If you know what your client's problems are, you can create the right solution and content. Before you start creating content, start speaking with your clients and find out what their problems are. This will help you save time and money.
I talk about having a focused value statement that will help you focus on your customer needs. We then moved on to encourage the listeners to "Just Do It". John mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk and how he started with video creation. Everyone starts somewhere.
you can find John on:
Twitter: John_W_Hayes Facebook: www.facebook.com/becomingtheexpert Amazon: John W Hayes
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96M3VlJ-nX8[/embedyt]
Audio:
I am joined by Jennifer Goodwin of InternetGirlFriday. She has been running a marketing agency for 15 years and also runs a charity.
Jennifer gives us some background about her career and her veteran charity. We discuss pushing through and finding someone to hold you accountable. I mention Lori Bruhns, my business buddy. Jennifer relies on her awesome office manager to help her with goals and deadlines. I loved her statement: "Together we win, separately, we are competing."
Once we got to the the main conversation, we spoke about having a proper foundation. We discussed the importance of building a funnel before you start marketing. You need to have a landing page with an offer such as a cheat sheet or a coupon. This will be your lead magnet, because you can obtain an email address and possibly other information, so that you can market effectively. Jennifer said that websites get you online and smart websites get you results. Combine your website with a funnel for optimal success. If you are doing tons of activities on the internet or hiring someone to help with leads, make sure that you have a proper funnel set up. Do not spend on ads until you have a funnel set up.
We also discuss using Facebook Messenger as an option for Facebook Ads as well as Facebook bots. People spend 40% of their day on Facebook. You can use a Facebook bot to help feed your funnel.
Jennifer recommends reading two books by Russell Brunson. The first is DotComSecrets and the other is Expert Secrets. That will help you get started with setting up funnels.
You can reach Jennifer for agency or marketing needs at www.internetgirlfriday.com
Facebook : Jennifer Goodwin Charity: A portion of her revenue goes to supporting veterans with marketing needs. She also donates much of her time helping veterans build websites and advertise. She is looking for sponsors to help buy a bus to be able to mobilize. Learn more here.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78E1quXcxcY[/embedyt]
Today, I have Jason Guigno and Corey Jeffreys from TriangleCast on to provide some entrepreneur advice.
Jason talks to soloprenuers and budding entrepreneurs about using content related to questions or information that you are asked about all the time. This could be monetized. Find that nugget of information to develop your funnel or create a report or form template to earn revenue.
Corey can be found at CoreyJeffreys.com. He talks about how you just need to "do it" if you are looking to start a business. He tells us about meeting Jason and starting the TriangleCast podcast.
Some of TriangleCast's episodes provide information about how to start a business. You can find items such as legal items, websites and more. Check out the older episodes.
Jason and Corey wrote a book, Bend, Break, Hack: Podcasting without Permission. Check it out if you are looking to start a podcast.
Follow TriangleCast on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. You can also go to their website to view blog content and podcast episodes. You can also subscribe on your favorite podcast application.
The video version can be watched here.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdrSinZoGfQ[/embedyt]
I went to a sales MeetUp last night. You can look into joining a MeetUp Group at www.meetup.com, I recommend it. You can find one for your industry or area of interest. It could also be a skill that you want to improve, such as sales.
Here are the top three takeaways from the meeting I attended:
Create a pain: Find something that your client or prospect is missing out on or needs and offer a solution to the pain. This will help you solidify your product or service as a must have.
Next Steps: Make sure to identify your next steps in the sales process. Get a commitment from your prospect or customer on follow up dates and next steps. This will prevent them from going dark. There is a sense of commitment in regards to following through.
Ask for the sale: Do you actually ask for the sale? Many people do not. They will just say "let me know" and put the ball in the client or prospect's court. When you submit the proposal or have an interest in a service, ask for the business.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B37Fw_wnwS0[/embedyt]
I recently wrote an article about network envy. This is when people become jealous about other people's success. I also spoke about imposter syndrome. This is when someone does not feel as though they will be perceived as being knowledgeable. They think that they will be seen as a fraud.
I go over some things that you can do to help with both afflictions:
Develop skills Use a mentor/ or mentor someone Read and learn more Be positive Have and offer respect
A video version can be viewed here.
I am joined by Marilyn Shannon, a best selling author, speaker, and coach. You can connect with her at www.marilynshannon.com. Check her book out: In Just One Afternoon, Listening Into the Hearts of Men.
Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities. Look for unique opportunities. Keep the doors open. Do the things that you like to do and fit your life. While you are there, you are still who you are, but you can be on the look out for an opportunity.
Go into the environments where people understand you and you understand them. Always listen and do not always talk. We discuss going to networking events and using LinkedIn. Build relationships and alliances. Think outside the box.
Follow Marilyn on Instagram and Twitter.
Watch the video version here.
Today we talk about embracing your fundamentals. You need to have SOPs in place for sales, marketing and customer service. If  you have employees or plan on hiring employees, you need to follow fundamentals.
In today's tip, I discuss asking customers for referrals. This can be verbally or digitally. I recently had a security professional come to my home and when he left, he asked for referrals and was going to knock on some of my neighbor's doors to see if they needed security.
Make sure to offer rewards for your referrals and to the referees. You can use a referral program and offer points or a flat discount. There is software you can use to facilitate a rewards program.
Do you have a referral program in place? I would love to hear about it.
Transcription: Hello everybody. Thank you for joining me to discuss having fun with customer service and providing value.
I recently went on a trip in the Northeast, including Maine, Cape Cod, New Hampshire and parts of Canada. It allowed me to unplug a little bit and pay attention to what small businesses were doing when it comes to customer service and providing value. One thing that stood out to me was going for ice cream. When I was paying for my order, the cashier asked me for a favor.I said sure, be happy to help, what can I do? She handed me my receipt and said: "we value our customers so much, I was hoping to get your autograph". I thought that was great way to have a little fun with your job and also show your customers a little bit value and fun. I liked it. Hopefully other people like if she did it for other folks. I think that her personality was very outgoing, very helpful and she liked to have fun with your job.
While eating out at a seafood restaurant, I noticed that the restaurant had bug repellent outside in the waiting area to use if there was a long wait for tables. Not only did they have bug repellent, they also provided an organic option other than the ones that we know of and get from major stores, just in case you are worried about chemicals on your skin, or if you have children and you do not want them to use bug repellent. I thought that was providing great value so that people will not be scratching their itches while they are eating. Rather, they will be able to enjoy their meal.
On the other side, during my flight back from Rhode Island to North Carolina, I was on a flight that was not full. I noticed the stewardess walk over towards me and approached a couple that was sitting across from me. They had their luggage stored away and personal belongings at their feet. The stewardess asked if that was their belongings and if they have any bags. They said yes. She said: "Can you follow me and grab your belongings"? There really was no explanation as to why she needed them to go with her and she started heading towards the front. Apparently, they got upgraded to first class and were able to sit there for the remainder of the flight. The stewardess did not give them any information ahead of time in regards to this upgrade. I think would've been a great opportunity for the stewardess to tell them ahead of time what she was doing. What could have happened is the folks in the seats could have become combative thinking that there was an issue or that they are being treated wrongly. I could have started an argument.
If you run a business or you have people that are client facing, make sure they are transparent and provide as much information to your customers as possible.
I just wanted tell you those stories about my trip and I have more content coming out in regards to the things that I viewed, learned and absorbed while I was on vacation that could pertain to marketing.
Thank you.
Transcription: Hello everybody. Thank you for joining me today . Today's quick tip is get to the point. Whether it's sales, marketing, blogging, or making videos, you do not want to have lengthy content so that people tune out and not listen to what you're saying. Whether it is providing information, trying to sell a product, or trying to sell yourself, make sure your succinct in your messaging so that it comes across powerful, knowledgeable, and most portly interesting.
That's one of the reasons why I keep my tips short. so that you can implement them and get the information needed in a quick fashion, rather than watching a 20 minute video and not absorbing as much the information as possible.
I hope that helps. See you during our next tip. Have a great day.
Transcription:
Hello everybody. I wanted to provide a quick update to you. I am going to be rebooting my marketing and business tips. What I'd like to do is start including some video, more content, and possibly more interviews.
To do that it is going to create more work, more time on my behalf, and on behalf of my guests. What I'm going to do is start recording my tips less frequently; not every single day. Your feed will not update as often as they have been.
I hope that you understand this and still choose to listen to my marketing and business tips moving forward. If you have a feedback, please let us know www.HankHoffmeier.com. You can drop me a note there or just search Hank Hoffmeier on Google so that you can either tweet me, post my Facebook page, or use whatever channel that you feel that you want to send me a message on.
Get ready for some more great content, just a little less frequently. I hope to see you there. Thank you.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip. Thank you for joining me today.
What I would like to talk about is starting somewhere. Everyone starts somewhere in business, right? Maybe you start with one product, or maybe you have a service and you start with one customer and you grow from there. When you start using email marketing you start with one email subscriber, or maybe a few. But everyone starts somewhere, and you grow.
The basic thing you need to do is be consistent with growth. Make sure that you are doing everything you can to increase the amount of customers you have, the amount of email addresses your acquiring, if using email marketing, increasing the amount of followers you have on social media, the amount of value that you are putting out there. Whether it is something free in conjunction with a product somebody bought, free shipping, or maybe a little prize or a little bonus. It could be valuable information such as a white paper or video.
Just continue to look at how you can add a +1 to everything. That is something that I live by, is pausing when I look at communicating with someone, sending an email, putting out content, What I do is, I normally take us to take a step back and stop and say "how can I add a +1 to this?", " how can I make this slightly better so that it is received by the recipient, my customers, vendors, partners etc.". "How can it be received better?" Make people feel that I am engaged, that I really care and I want to provide value.
So, take a look at what you are doing. Remember that everyone starts somewhere, and you grow. And you grow by doing things better. You look at what you are doing and you make improvements. You add more value. You add more products. You add more or a better service. Do things differently. Provide something that is unexpected, whether it is just communication. Whether it is financial, or if it is product related. Give people something to talk about. Wow them. That increases your brand awareness, your word-of-mouth referrals, your overall integrity increases, and people start talking about you more and they may tend to want to work with you more.
Again, start somewhere, grow, teach others, provide value. I know that I am rambling, but hopefully this hits home. Everything starts somewhere, right? We were born into this world, and then we grow as a person, and we become better. We become more professional, then we start to own businesses, and we spent time with families, and then we retire and enjoy life. You we grow through life, where as you grow through business. No better way to do that than to keep improving and don't stop.
Thanks for joining me today. Head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa for some previous tips and subscribe on iTunes. Make sure provide feedback were necessary so I can keep improving these tips for you.
Thank you.
Transcription:
Thank you for joining me on Hank's marketing and business tips.
Half the year is over. How well you doing in your business? Have you taken a look at your financials? Have you taken a look at how well you are doing? What goals did you set in the beginning of the year if you started in January? Or, you know, if the year reset in January, are you where you want to be in running your business?
Now would be a good time to reset those expectations and create new goals, if you have not. Maybe you created some goals in January and you are still working on them throughout the year. But  what we need to do is redefine them, set new parameters. Whether it is actual deliverables, what you want to see, or maybe it is the timeframe. Maybe you allotted six months, and six months has gone by and you are not finished, you can extend that out a few months, because it is still a viable goal, right?
Make sure you set more goals. Maybe look at doing your review and setting goals quarterly rather than yearly. It is really easy to lose track of what you are doing, being involved in the day-to-day operations, or being busy with work to really turn around and look at your goals and measure your performance. Pat yourself on the back of you are meeting or exceeding them, or trying to find ways to turn around if you are not. But as long as you are identifying and reviewing your goals to be forefront in your mind and you will be able to keep honing in on them, and be successful. Maybe what you could do is work with an accountability partner to help ensure that you are paying attention to your goals and working on them as often as possible.
Thank you for listening. You can listen to previous tips to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can also subscribe on iTunes.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Last week, I had Mike Mabe on, and he is a local leadership consultant. I really enjoying having some lengthy conversations with him. We talked about spending quality quiet time, absorbing information, reading, or spending time with family, as well as health.
It is important to take a step back and decompress from the stress of running a business, or doing work and making sure you are pressing the reset button. But also making sure your transparent as well as being honest in your business, this way your customers and employees can relate to you, the value you are trying to bring the marketplace. They will trust you more and more when it comes to your communications, whether it is internal or through social media, or advertising. It is building that brand recognition.
Make sure you have a well rounded business plan and have some really focused goals when it comes to not only working hard and working long hours, but you are dedicating time to recognizing what your customers are doing, as far as providing feedback and purchasing from you and your employees may be providing information feedback on how to run your business better. And more importantly, what you doing is you are spending time focusing on yourself. Â Nurturing your brain, letting your brain relax and rest so that you are focused, so you really can engage in what you want to and need to do each day to run a successful organization or company.
I thought those discussions with Mike were were spot on, and I hope to have him on again future. I had Lori Bruns on a few weeks ago and she provided information about being productive. Make sure you are listening to those tips that they provided, as well some the information that I am providing to help you along the way become a better leader, a better business owner, and person in general.
Make sure to go HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa, and also subscribe on iTunes to listen to previous episodes. If you are subscribed on either, I Â appreciate it and I will see you next time.
Transcription:
Hello. Welcome to Hank's marketing and business tips.
I am going to give you three things to do today. First thing you need to do is go to Facebook right now. Go to your Facebook business page and post something. Post picture, post a national holiday, like national cupcake day or something. You can Google that, but post something!
Second, let's over to Instagram and let's go search for some hashtags that are related to your business  and start commenting and liking other's post to get the engagement going and build your followers.
And last, what you want to do is write some thank you cards. If you have any customers or clients that recently interacted with you, bought from you, or you used a vendor for something, write them a thank you card and mail that out.
So, two are digital, and one is analog. Go do those today and build those habits of posting, commenting and finding people to engage with, and using handwritten notes to keep that relationship going with customers and vendors.
Make sure to go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa to listen to previous episodes. If you are not subscribed, or do not get them every day, you can get them every day through iTunes, by subscribing.
I hope that you are having a great day and great week. We will see next time.
Transcription:
Thank you for joining me on Hank's Marketing and Business Tips today.
If I was to ask you to tell me your elevator pitch, would you know to say? If I was to meet you somewhere and I seem like I was busy, and I just asked you "what you do?", how would you respond?
You need to make sure that you have a short description to provide to someone that will inform them you are, what you do, and what value you can offer the marketplace. For me, I would say, " interesting you ask what I do. I help small and midsize companies become successful with digital marketing. Is there anything I can help you with, right now?". Usually the response is: " No. not not right now, but that's interesting, what you mean by digital marketing? And it sparks a little bit of a conversation around digital marketing and how I operate in that realm. It usually turns to social media, marketing automation, and email marketing. We can discuss pay per click ads, websites, or anything else.
So, mine is short and brief, and I have a question at the end. Maybe it's not perfect, but it works for me. So, what would work for you? Make sure that you have a value statement in there that describes what you do or what product you offer, and how it's gonna help the person you are speaking to, or marketplace. If you not have an elevator pitch right now, make sure to work on one. Write one down this week.
A few episodes ago, I asked you to write down a goal. If f you did not write down that goal, or if you were too lazy to do that, maybe what you can do is turn this into your goal. To create an elevator speech within the next five days. This way you have it. Put in into the notes app in your phone, so you can rehearse it, and you can really hone in on delivering that an impactful manner, were does not seem robotic.
So, make sure that you develop a great elevator speech that is very short, sweet, gets to the point, so you can hand them a business card if you meet them in person, tell them your elevator speech, or maybe if you meet them online, you can type that into a box or an email and send them your virtual card, which is LinkedIn. A connection on LinkedIn. And be on your way to developing a relationship with that person. And hopefully they become a client, customer, or business partner.
Thanks for listening and I hope if you have received value and want to receive more information and this the first episode you are listening too, make sure to go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can hear previous episodes as well as subscribe on iTunes. You can add me to your Amazon Eco or Alexa, if you want to call it that. You basically say "add Hanks marketing and business tips" to Alexa and she will add it and when you come home, say: "what's in the news?", and you will hear me every day.
So, thank you for listening and will see next time.
Transcription:
Hank Hoffmeier here with Hank's marketing and business tips.
Today I would like to just inform you about how I prepare and record my tips. I record these on the fly, without a script. I tend to have my best thoughts, ideas and innovations when I'm just talking off the top of my head. I do not write a script, or read from a script, or try not to, because I feel that is not the genuine Hank Hoffmeier. One thing is very important in business and life in general is to be genuine. If someone does not like you because you are genuine, then that is their loss. You should not have to change who you are to be perceived as someone you are not, or try to become liked or consumed.
Hopefully like this format. I tend to transcribe them using a couple pieces of technology. It is not always perfect. I know some people that write out their scripts ahead of time and that is the transcript, and then they read from it. I do not like that flow. So, this is how I record my tips. I thought I would let you know. There are times there is some rambling, especially when I am talking to other people, like when I talk to guests on the show. I tend to go on and on. But that is just me.
Do you like it? I would like to know. Let me know by commenting on my blog posts, because these are turned into blog post as well as posted on iTunes. So, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and comment on specific posts, or you can send me a message on social media.
I definitely like some feedback on how it's going since I am bout 70 episodes in, just to see how well were doing. The numbers look pretty good as far as people listening, so, hopefully you guys are receiving value from this. Provide feedback if you can, otherwise just keep listening and I will keep recording.
Thank you.
Transcription:
Welcome back Hank's marketing and business tips.
Let's talk about customer service. Or really, let's talk about replying to comments. When is the last time you checked Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and really honed in on comments where people are actually trying to address a concern, or may be praising your brand. Do you reply? Do you engage with them? Nothing makes people feel better than when there is a one-to-one conversation.
When you reach back out someone has a concern, or is this praising you, they like the fact your replying back to them. Now, if you have a a lot of volume when it comes to comments and messages, it is hard to reply to all of those, but make sure trying to do as much as you can. You can always outsource some of your replies, or have someone in your organization help you.
There is nothing better than engaging with people that are trying to voice their opinion to you, or provide information to help you be a better company or business. So, go out today and make sure you looking at tweets, you are looking at Facebook comments, you look at your comments on Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and you are engaging with people. Maybe there are not a lot of people that are commenting. Maybe you can try to ask questions on your social channels to elicit those types of engagement and then reply to them. There is no better way to learn about making your company better by getting outside opinions, feedback, and comments. Use your audience to help you grow your business.
Make sure to subscribe on iTunes. You can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa to listen to previous recordings. Share this with a friend. Tell him about me. Let me know how I can be doing better through my social channels, this way I can listen to you and make this a better session, a better recording.
Thank you very much.
Transcription,
Welcome back to Hank's Marketing and Business Tips.
Let's talk about earned media today. A lot of people think "earned media" is when you put something out there, like an advertisement or a post, and helps you obtain customers or clients. Wrong. Earned media is basically generated when your content receives recognition. Basically. it could be something that people take and run with and share, or provide word-of-mouth referrals, but is typically not paid. You not paying to put something out there. It cannot be bought or owned, in other words.
A blog post made by you, putting blog post out there, you would consider the earned media. Well, it is actually paid media because. it is actually you putting something out there and it is costing you something, right? Time. So, don't confuse paid content or something that takes time or money with earned media. Earned media means you earn the attention of someone, they did something without being provoked. Maybe they did stumble upon something you, are doing or they share your brand name, that is going to be a little bit more of the earned media.
Then obviously, you have paid advertising, which is totally different where is your putting stuff out there and paying for it, such as pay per click ads, and Facebook ads, but really what you want to do is grow your earned media attention. You want people to start organically talking about you so that you become more relevant and more interesting to people, organically, and they find you and trust you more.
It has been great talking to you about earned media today. I look forward to the next tip. And if you want to listen to previous tips, go to HankHofmeier.com/Alexa, and subscribe on iTunes. We will see you again soon.
Transcription:
Thank you for joining me on Hank's marketing and business tips today.
Quick! Write this down. Write down a goal that you want to accomplish this week. What is it? When does need to be completed by? How long will it take? Will the correlate? In other words, how long you think it is going to take and when you want to complete it? Is the same? Is it one week? One month? Etc.
Write it down, post it somewhere, so that every morning when you wake up, you see that goal and you are going to work on it. That's how things get completed, that's were success success comes from. You need to identify goal, work on it every day, if you can, until it is completed. Have someone hold you accountable. Tell a few of your friends or business buddies about your goal, so that they can hassle you and ask you how you are doing on your goal.
The point of this is, I want you to identify something you need to do, and I want you have somebody hold you accountable to that. And I am pushing you to do that now. So, I am your first accountability partner. I am going to ask you to create that goal and tell you to write it down and get started on it. Then ask someone to keep reminding you about that goal and get it done.
Let me know how you doing on that goal in the comments or send me an email. I definitely want to hear about that.
So, that was a quick tip for today. We will see next time. Make sure to listen to previous tips on HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. I would love if you subscribed on iTunes.
Transcription:
Hello! This is Hank with Hank's marketing and business tips. Thank you for joining me today.
When is the last time you looked at your social media assets? What I'm talking about is you cover photo, your profile image, your canvas, or whatever you want to call. When was last time you updated that? Is it professional? Does look good? Make sure you are using consistent branding when it comes to your website and social media channels. I just finished writing a chapter in my book discussing that. Branding is important, you want to look professional and have consistent colors content and information. Som if people start to look around on your website, follow you on social media, they are seeing a lot of the same branding as far as colors, logo, content etc., and your personality, right?
If it is disjointed, people will start to ignore what you are putting out there, you will lose them, they will unfollow you, that will not follow you to begin with. So, you might ask me "well, you know, I just upload an image that I have laying around, or in my phone to my Facebook page and for a cover photo or profile. Take the time to have a logo created if you are new in business or if you are small. You can also have cover images made. Use sites like Fiverr.com . It will cost you $5 to $10 to get something really professional done. I used Fiverr last week to have a Facebook cover done, just because I did not have time to create one. As my business buddy, Lori Bruhns would say. "do you do best and delegate the rest". Within about two days, I can have cover photo that I did not even have to open Photoshop to do.
I delegate, I am able to get professional looking images created for me. This way I can focus on providing value to you guys listening. Such as recording these tips, putting out content, talking to clients, speaking, etc. So, again, make sure you doing a refresh every now and then and that your imagery on your website and social channels is not stagnant. Go change them now. Go put a reminder out there and say "I need to change my branding". Not necessarily branding per say, but what aligns with your brand as far as imagery and logo.
Make sure to subscribe on iTunes:Hanks marketing and business tips, and go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa to listen to previous tips. But I will keep according if you keep listening.
Have a great day.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip
I'm happy and sad at the same moment, because I am joined today by Mike Mabe, who is with NSL Coaching. He is a business and life coach. I enjoyed our conversation on the last four tips and I hope we can do this again in the future. But today is the last tip from Mike and we want to do is round out the conversation. We went from business, to getting a little more personal with finding quiet time to allow you to reset, decompress, and focus on what you want to do personally and professionally.
Today we are going to focus on another part of importance in being in business or some personal items, is being healthy, right? We need to strive to be healthy.
So, Mike, when you talk to people and you coach them, you talk about health, what do you discuss?
Mike: What I point out to them is at my age of 70, I do not take any medicine. No pain pills. No cholesterol medications. Heart medicine. Blood thinners. It is rare, doctors tell, me for a man my age to not take something. That I have never taken prescribed medications. I have had serious surgeries and would not take any painkillers. They would give them to me, and I took him out in the backyard and bury them.
Now how does that come about? That is not just pure chance. It is the way we tend to our bodies, both mentally, and physically, and with what we take in. And eating and drinking and the rest we receive. It is my desire to see others emulate going through life without prescription drugs dependency.
There are way too many people at young ages taking drugs, prescription drugs that are offered by doctors. I believe that a lot of it is unnecessary. Find a way to live your days without the need for chemicals. And that is with proper rest, with exercise, peace of mind. And that is brought about by the interactions with people, with family, and with beliefs, so, that is what I want to emphasize with passion. Find the key in your life and in your leadership and your managerial roles to steer clear of chemical drugs, medicines, and we were not made to become needed to live a fulfilling and joyful life.
Hank: Now, I think it is important to know that not everyone can enjoy great vast life that is not dependent on a lack of drugs or being fully healthy at all times. Heredity plays a fact, genetics, right? There are going to be some people that will be affected by disease which they do not control, right?They can have the most healthy habits, but still be stricken with a disease. So, can you talk a little bit about, okay, if you fall into the category, how do you still have that healthy mindset to help you still be successful and live a happy life.
Mike: Well if you are among the unfortunate who have inherited the condition, or if you develop something in life that is unfortunate or accidental, learn to attend to that condition and compensate in other areas that will cause you to flourish and blossom. And be efficient and effective. Do not use that that condition as an excuse of why you are not achieving the desired results and other aspects of life.
Hank: I think what it comes down to is mindset, right? If you produced an obstacle, many people get a negative mindset and they try to find ways to, number one, develop excuses. And number two, they feel sorry for themselves, therefore that they start doing things that are not going to be productive and they are not gonna produce the right results.
It is going to allow you to drown in that negativity and not allow you to be as successful as you can. I think when you have a positive mindset, and you see that challenge as something that you maybe can not overcome. In some ways, maybe you can, but I think if you can work with it, right? There so many success stories come out of challenges and obstacles in life. People that are amputees that overcome. And some of these Olympic athletes that have an amputated leg that still compete.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
I am again joined by Mike Mabe from NSL coaching. Welcome back Mike.
Mike: Thank you, Hank.
What we want to talk to the folks about today is a worklife balance. Making sure that, I guess, you are happy in life and happy and your job, which is very important. So, hopefully everyone will enjoy today's topic. So, Mike, why don't you tell us a little bit about how to balance your life?
Well, the family, business, leadership balance needs to be looked at and evaluated and make sure that you are not devoting too much time to the business and forgetting the family, the children. Be deliberate in making sure that you're spending time at home with the children, with the wife or husband, because it is going to strengthen you to take on the next day and be able to belly up to problems on the job.
By having the contentment and the peace and the satisfaction that you will get from family, work on that. Make sure it is quality time. And just don't hang out with your buddies in your off time. But be available for tending to family.
Hank: I think it is important to discuss how in today's society there are so many people trying to start their own business, they are trying to become entrepreneurs, or they are trying to work their way up in a company or in the organization they work for. And you will always hear the terms hustle and grind. I live that mantra, but I have my own definition of hustle and grind. To me, hustle and grind does not mean working 10, 12, 15 hours a day. It means really focusing on work when I'm actually doing the work and making sure I'm choosing my projects and goals and completing them. Not just working hard for long periods of time but dedicating myself to the project I'm working on. And basically, grinding is hustling when you don't feel like it.
There are times when I feel like not doing anything, but I push myself to do so. So, when we talk about a worklife balance, I think you need to really have your priorities set. You need to spend quality time with your family. You need to spend quality time on the work you are doing, whether is it your own business, or the company you work for, because like you said I think it creates a well-balanced life that helps you reset each aspect of your life. So, when you are working, you are not being stressed by what is going on with the family. And when you re with your family, you are not being stressed out with what comes from work.
Not saying it becomes separated, but it allows you to detox, or decompress, right? So any further thoughts on worklife balance?
Mike: Quiet time. Quiet time where contemplation can take place. Where ideas can be coming from wherever, and then being processed through your mind. And inspiration is incubated there. Do not be too busy with anything, reading, watching television, movies ,meeting folks constantly on the go, checking the iPhone emails, text messages.
That needs to be set aside for maybe an hour a day where you are sitting alone in a dimly lit room, early in the morning while the family is still in bed asleep. It is a great time to receive whatever is going to be coming into your mind during quiet time.
Hank: I think that is great, and I have been trying to do that more, and I really want you to hold me accountable to that, Mike, because I think there is that fear of missing out her FOMO when the alert goes off on your phone. So, I always have my phone on silent. When I first bought my Apple Watch, I always always get the notifications, when someone is trying to reach out to me, or sending a message, I have a notification on LinkedIn or something like that. So, I have learned to kinda not ignore them, but you know they are there, and go go back to them later. Early this morning, I was having breakfast with Mike, and I think within a 15 minute period, I got three notifications, tapping me on the wrist with my watch.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
I am again joined by Mike Mabe with NSL coaching. It is always a pleasure talking to Mike.
We are going to provide you another tip, and this one is going to be about transparency. In yesterday's tip, we kind of touched on that topic. But Mike, can you allude a little more or give us some more detail around why it is important to be transparent when you're operating business?
Mike: A leader is going to be transparent, or he is always going to be communicating, or giving off signals that people around him, the customers or the employees are gonna pick up on. Â And they are going to decide, is this leader or business owner genuine and original. Can he be trusted? Can I depend on this person? And that is going come through artificially, or is is going to come through realistically and genuine. Tt needs to be genuine and sincere, and not make-believe. So, realize that You need to work on being transparent enough that people will know it is not fake, that you are really genuine and sincere about whatever it is that you're dealing.
Hank: There are always going to be people that will feel like a leader is not transparent enough, no matter what, even if a leader is being as transparent as possible. How do you feel leaders, business owners, can come across as being honest and genuine? Not just trying to be transparent, but ensure that there is that trust on the side of either customer or an employee?
Mike: By being consistent day after day. And so people can receive a promise or an intention from you and then see it coming to reality tomorrow.
Hank: So, I think it is basically in your mind you need to be sure that you are gonna be able to share any aspect of what you are doing, working on, goals, your your mission. Maybe even your profitability. There are many great leaders, or business owners that share profitability information or revenue information with their staff, and sometimes even to the public. So, I think it is great to be transparent, and something I strive to do is listen a lot and speak with transparency and honesty.
So, I appreciate Mike coming on today and giving us that tip. Definitely check out his website NSLcoaching.com. He is a great business coach and has some great life experiences. If you do not want to work with them as far as being a coach, you should talk to him about his life experiences. It is very enlightening but he is definitely a great coach and someone that you should think about working with.
If you would like to hear previous tips, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also subscribe on iTunes. See you tomorrow with another tip.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
I am once again joined by Mike Mabe with NSL Coaching. You can visit his website at nslcoaching.com. He is a business and life coach. Mike is here to talk to us today about inspiration so welcome back, Mike! Can you tell us a little about the inspiration? And how to use that in business.
Mike: Thanks, Hank. Always a pleasure to be with you. The most important attribute of a leader is the ability to inspire. And that can be done through words, through actions, through written communication. But usually is done face-to-face and it addressing a group or individual.
The passion that is in our voice, the way we come across, and communicating with the mission and the direction that we want the organization to go is going to cause people to get excited, and want to participate and want to be recognized. So, inspiration is the most important way for a leader to be recognized and be respected, if they have that ability.
Hank: I think one thing that is important from leadership in business, whether you are an owner or a leader, or manager is being transparent about company goals. No better way to do that is to share your passion, right? Why do you want to run a successful organization? Is it to make money? No. For most part, people start companies because they have a passion for something. So, if it is helping the world with something, or helping a local community with something, or providing the best possible product or service in whatever niche you are servicing.
I think if you share that passion and inspire your staff ,or inspire yourself every day, you will become more and more successful. I think you need to take a step back and find out what your passion is and put some work tracks around that share that with either customers or your staff, if you have any. So, I think that was an awesome tip, making sure that you are inspiring yourself and others every day. This way you stay motivated, and most importantly, you motivate those around you, your customers and your employees. Would you say that is a good summary?
Mike: It is a very good summary. Thank you.
Hank: Great. So, Mike is gonna be with us for fewer episodes, and hope you will join us for those. He is with NSL Coaching, that is nslcoaching.com. Reach out to Mike. He has nothing but wisdom and knowledge to share, and he loves to do so. That is his passion.
If you like to hear previous tips, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa.You can subscribe on iTunes as well. We hope that you are receiving value from these tips, and will see you again tomorrow.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip
This week, I am going to be joined by another special guest, Mike Mabe. Mike Mabe owns and operates NSL Coaching. He is a business and  life coach here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We are recording from Fourth of July park in Kernersville, North Carolina, so you may hear some ambient noises, but the weather is great today. I think it is a great time to have some discussions.
So, Mike, I wanted you to introduce yourself and tell us about you and your background, and why it is important to have a business and life coach.
Mike: Thank you, Hank. I am Mike Mabe, age 70. I have accrued wonderful life experiences in business, marriage, family and my  association with you for 17 years is been enlightening and inspiring and good.
I am a retired business leader in a large corporation senior manager in charge of quality control for some very familiar products, consumer products. There I lead and supervised and manage to lots of people over the years and I came good at it, and was respected.
And that is what I want to do to help others today who are starting out like I did many years ago. An to give them some coaching so that they can take shortcuts to accruing the leadership abilities that I acquired over a long period time, through military service, through business, and university, students, and substitute teaching  that I am doing in high schools today.
Hank: One thing I have learned about you is you are investing, and I use that word loosely, because you invest yourself, you invest in your family, you invest in the future of people, right? So, whether it is students because you do substitute teaching, whether it is people you meet like me, where I think we have a mutual benefit of learning from each other, or if we are talking about marketing or business, we are each learning something from one another when we have our frequent interactions, whether online or in person.
I highly believe in hiring people or buying tools to help you and your business grow. A lot of times people say "why should I hire a business or life coach" and numerous times of hear "I cannot spend the money on that". They would rather budget their money towards other things, like marketing or advertising. Where IÂ holistically believe, yes, you spend money on advertising but you should also looking into improving your leadership skills, your business skills, your knowledge, your business acumen.
What would you say to someone that that is hesitant about working with a coach in general? Whether it is business, life, or maybe even a personal trainer if you looking to get fit. What is the benefit of using or working with a coach.
Mike: The tagline of my business is "keep improving, don't stop". So many people, when they graduate from college or high school, they think they got it made. They learned what they needed to learn to live out their life. But that is shortsighted, and we all need to keep improving, even to the end. And the way we do that is by investing in activities that we can do ourselves, reading, traveling, meeting people, getting involved in community organizations. But also, we need to take a look at having someone personally spend time with us, watch us, and then get feedback. Positive feedback that is intended to help us grow to be a more respected person in the character that we are accruing.
There is no more important asset for an individual or a company than our name. The name we were given at birth by our parents, or the name that people know us by. People begin to assign meanings when they hear a name. Honesty, dependability, and all those attributes that cause us to take on an image that people can rely on. And we need to stay directed at those attributes of character that contribute to meaningful citizenship, important family member, and the friends that we will have or the friends it will meet us and want to get close to us because o...
Transcription:
Hello everybody. Thank you for joining Hankâs Marketing and Business Tips.
I have a quick one for you today. Do you wish that you had more customers? Doesn't everyone? Do you have a Facebook page? If you do, have you looked at Facebook marketing? If not, maybe you should.
One thing he could do is start building and add, and then walk away from that ad or just post some items to your Facebook page. Every now and then Facebook will send you a note saying they will give you credit to do some advertising. There is a free way to try that out. Usually, they offer about $10 to spend in advertising.
I actually did an ad recently that did not cost me a penny, because I took advantage of Facebook's offer and boosted one of my posts about my tips. I was able to promote that to about 3000 people, and I got some engagement, and I think my listenership increased because of that. It was because I started a post and published it on my Facebook page and then was offered $10 to boost that post.
Like I said, at times they will offer you different things to try to do some advertising. But also, if you do not receive an offer, go ahead and to try to spend $10, $20 on a Facebook ad, because you can highly target on Facebook, whether it is geography, interests, demographics, you can really hone in on the audience that you are looking to attract. If you are a local service provider, like a landscaper, or electrician, you can focus on your area, on people that are homeowners within an area that have a certain salary range. If you are selling products online, your reach can be a little more broad. It can be related to whatever items you sell or services you sell.
Facebook ads is definitely something to look at. Pound for pound you to get more return than you would for Google's pay per click ads, and is becoming more more popular. The more you wait, the more expensive it is going to get, and the better you competitors are going to get at running ads. So, I encourage you to look at Facebook ads.
If you have questions, or want a walk-through, let me know. I would be glad to help you out. Reach out to me on the website, HankHoffmeier.com. You can listen to previous tips there. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes. You can comment, you can send me an email. However you would like to engage as far as feedback or questions about Facebook ads.
Hopefully, that I was helpful. I look forward to recording future tips and we will see again next time.
Transcription:
Welcome back to Hank's Marketing and Business Tips.
Today I would like to further my discussion about email marketing, and take it a step further. Let's talk about web design and email marketing and mobile devices. With more than half of email opens on a mobile device and a high amount of website visits on a mobile device, you really need to ensure you have a mobile responsive website. As well as a mobile responsive email template. If you do not you probably will suffer in two ways.
The first way is you can alienate your viewers, whether it is email or web. If they cannot easily consume the content you are sending to them, either on the web or through email, they are going to ignore your content, they are going to leave your website, that are going to delete your emails. You want to make sure that that value is there, and it is easy for them to consume and read that content.
Also, your SEO or email deliverability can suffer if you do not have a responsive template or website. Most of these providers, as such is Google as far as a SEO, inbox providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, they are looking to make sure that the user experience is optimal. So, on the web side, Google Yahoo, they are going to ding you if you do not have a mobile responsive and fast loading website.
On the email side, that coding could make or break your inboxing, and more importantly it could break or not look well on the phone, if you are sending huge emails or wide emails, and long emails to a phone. So, make sure you are looking into that. Make sure that you use the proper tools. If you do not use a web designer or someone to code your emails, there are great tools, iContact provides you with templates and layouts that are mobile responsive. There are other tools to do that for email.
And on website design side, you have Wix, you have WordPress. They all provide web friendly or mobile responsive templates out of the box, so you can easily do that without hiring someone. Of course, if you want to hire someone, they will make sure it is optimal, and it will provide the best experience possible. Just make sure you have mobile versions or responsiveness when it comes your website and email.
That is all for today. Go to HanksHoffmeier.com/Alexa. Please listen to some previous tips. Offer me some feedback and comments so I can know how I am doing and provide you with more value. You can also subscribe on iTunes. And, will see you during our next tip, but hopefully are doing well with your marketing efforts now.
Transcription:
Hello everybody. Welcome to Hank's Marketing and Business Tips. I hope you are having a great day.
I have been having a lot of discussions around networking, productivity, business leadership. Today, I would like to take a step back and talk about email marketing. Of course, I work in email marketing day in day out, so it is about time that there is a tip about email marketing.
One thing I learned is people that do not use email marketing effectively or have not used long do not follow many of the best practices. And, a lot of times they think that they can purchase lists or buy a list, or you know using the addresses of people that bought from them and to start sending them emails.
Well, yes, you can do that, but there are some negative repercussions to that. When it comes to email marketing, you need to make sure you Are sending relevant and engaging emails to people. The reason being is number one, there is the human factor. People are going to tune out if you are sending them emails that they did not expect, or if they are not of value. they are either going to mark  your message as spam or they are just gonna totally ignore your emails, which does not help you in any way, because you will not be able to sell to them, correct?
So, another thing is algorithms. Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, all these email providers employ algorithms. And what they are doing is are looking at what types of email you are sending and how to engaged your subscriber base is. Let's correlate that to credit score. Let's say you are sending emails, and you have 100 recipients, and all of your recipients are engaged. Most of them are opening emails, clicking on links in there, maybe forwarding your email, starring it, etc. They are engaging with those emails. So your credit scores is high, right?
So, at this point you know Gmail, Yahoo, they are looking at your credit score and saying, "hey, this is a relevant sender to have good credit score, let's keep their emails in the inbox", unless someone has been marking a spam, they will no longer get those emails. With Gmail, they will still receive it, but it will be in their spam folder.
So, let's say over time, your emails are not as great as they could be, you are not looking at people that are not engaged and what happens. Let's say only 50 or 60% of your list is engaged, looking at and opening, clicking your emails, right? So, now your credit score is a little bit lower, you have a tarnished credit score. Those providers, especially Gmail, take a look at that, and what they are going do is, They are going to say that you are an irrelevant sender, and they will send most of your emails to spam folder. New people that sign up, they are going to receive that email, but it will be in the the spam folder. Especially in Gmail. And other people to start marking your messages spam and your inbox rates can go down, your sales are going to suffer as an effect.
So, best practices are to perform list hygiene by cleaning your list every now and then. To do that, what you would do is run a report of people who have not opened an email long time, send them a couple emails with a subject line like "are we breaking up?". Have content such as "I noticed that you have not been opening emails from us please come back and save 20% of the coupon code". Try to get them to reengage, and if not, go and remove them, because, like I said, that will affect your "credit score".
So, and the end of the day, what you want to do is keep that credit score high, send relevant and valuable information, so people are engaging. Now, you might say, hey I know that I have a bad credit score, nut emails are still are going to inbox for a good amount of people. Yea, Â if people are engaged, Â if there is a small amount of people that are opening your email, starring, marketing it as important, etc., they are highly engaged, there is a chance they will continue to receive those emails in the inbox.
Transcription:
Welcome back to Hank's Marketing and Business Tips. Keep in mind you can always hear other tips that HankHofmeier.com/Alexa.
Today I like to talk to you about involving the right people in your network. I know that Lori Bruhns and I spoke last week about growing your network and making sure you are spending time networking, but today like to discuss a little bit more about make sure you massage those relationships you have with other people.
Make sure you're frequently trying to either meet with people personally for lunch or coffee as well as maybe a virtual coffee with someone through Skype or something like that. Make sure that you are talking to people that are to pushing you and hold you accountable. Talk to people I can offer you advice. There might be things you can offer them, as far value that will allow them to want to talk to you and have it be a relationship that is two-sided, rather than one-sided, when one person is getting value.
I had lunch with some folks last week. One was a person that I haven't physically met with in almost seven years, but worked with him in the past. It was great catching up and we both asked each other how we can help each other, and we plan do some things. I hope to have him on the show later on, maybe in a few weeks. I will be on vacation soon, so I am taking a little time off for that. I will have some tips recorded for everyone of course.
Make sure your building strong relationships, surrounding yourself with people that can help you in your organization. Sure up some of the inefficiencies you may have a as far as knowledge, so you can learn from them. Maybe have them help you. Maybe down the road they can partner with you on a project or something and that they can amplify your brand or your brand voice.
So, I cannot stress the importance of building strong, valuable, engaged network, this way you have people that you can go to during good times and bad.
That is all for today's tip. I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned, next week we have Mike Mabe coming. He is a leadership coach in Winston-Salem North Carolina. I really enjoyed talking to him and some of our conversations were a little bit lengthy, but they are valuable, so stay tuned for those next week. Thank you.
Transcription:
Welcome to Hanks marketing and business tips.
I the pleasure of speaking with Lori Bruhns, a local business and success coach last week. Those episodes aired all last week. One thing that resonated with me was the fact that she said "do you do best, and delegate the rest". I truly believe in that. I actually had some opportunity this past week to utilize some outside resources for graphic design as well as some other administrative tasks that I needed to complete.
One thing that is important to do is make sure that you involve the right people and the right talent to help you further grow your business. There will be times where you have weaknesses or do not know how to do something. Do not feel like you need to shore up those weaknesses. You can hire somebody to take care of those tasks and do those items for you and still succeed.
At times you will save money to do it yourself, but keep in mind that you probably need to learn how to do it, possibly by tools to complete that task, where if you maybe need it infrequently, you can actually pay for and you are saving a lot of time, which does equate to money.
Again, delegate some items that you can and take things off your plate, this way you can focus on your core strengths when it comes to your business.
If you want to listen to previous tips, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa or you can subscribe in on iTunes just by searching for Hank's Marketing and Business tips. Otherwise we will see you during the next tip.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip/ Thank you for joining us today.
I have Lori Bruhns with me today, Â she is a local business and productivity success coach. She has been providing us with tips during the week and today we are gonna wrap it up with some information about networking and helping each other out in business.
Hank: Welcome back Lori.
Lori: Thank you so much for having me back on this last day and I am excited to talk about this particular topic. I like to call it the know, like, trust factor. So, when working with my clients, I always reiterate the following:
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Who you know is just as important as what you know. For example, when I receive a LinkedIn request, I look at their profile, whom they are connected to and most importantly how we can support each other.
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Organic and authentic connections are crucial. When I meet someone new, either through LinkedIn or at a networking event. I take it a step further by asking them for meeting, either in person or virtually. The other day I was asked, "Lori, you have so many LinkedIn connections, how did you connect with each one individually"? My response? Â "I made it a priority". Which leads me to:
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Know, like and trust equals everything. Having a one-on-one personal connection with each person I meet helps me to know them and them to know me. Once we learn about each other, there is a like, trust that is built, which in turn leads to referrals, testimonials, and most importantly sales.
Hank: That is awesome and some great information. I know you and I always talk about GTY (greater than yourself). If you don't have the book please buy and listen to it, but it is all about helping others raise the bar become better, professionally or personally. I know you and I have been working on that a lot, so do you have anything to add when it comes to greater than yourself.
Lori: Absolutely. I call you my business buddy all the time and it is because you and I collaborate for the betterment of each other.Where I have a weakness you mean by strengthening it, and I hope I do the same for you. So, we collaborate together and make each other better.
Hank: That is awesome! So that wraps up my series with Lori Bruhns. That does not mean that she will not be on for future episodes. Stay tuned and I hope to have some more special guests down the road.
I hope you are enjoying these tips, I enjoyed recording them. If you would like to hear previous tips, head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also subscribe on iTunes, just search for Hanks marketing and business tips. That will conclude today's tip and will catch you next time.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip
I am again joined by Lori Bruhns, a business productivity and success coach. She is here to provide value by telling you how you can be more productive in running your business.
Hank: Thank you for coming aboard again, Lori.
Lori: Thank you, Hank, for having me again. Today tip is "mindset matters". Â This means shifting your perspective on your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. When I work with my clients, I help them understand that the way they think about their day will affect their day. For example, many many of us say "I do not have enough time in my day". When I work with my clients, I help them shift their words to something like this: "I have plenty of time to accomplish all that I need to do today". So, the mindset that you have for your productivity, daily, weekly and monthly truly does matter.
Hank: That is great. So, we are going be recording a few more tips to stay tuned. If you like to have a free 30 minute consultation call with Lori, head over to her website at LoriBruhns.com/jumpstart. That is  l-o-r-i-b-r-u-h-n-s.com/jumpstart.
If you would like to hear previous tips, head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa, or you can subscribe on iTunes. If you have any feedback for this or any episode you can send it to hank[at]hankhoffmeier.com.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip
I am once again joined by Lori Bruhns, a business productivity and success coach and she is going give us a tip on how to be productive.
Lori: Thanks again for having me Hank, IÂ appreciate this. So, today's tip is called "buffering your tasks". When you are setting up your calendar, I like you recommend buffering one task to another, meaning put in 1 to 2 minutes of time so that you can do it brain shift from one task to another. For example, if your first task requires you to be on the computer, and your second task needs you to use your verbal skills, it is good to have a one to two minute buffer time, so that your mind can shift from tactile to verbal.
Hank: That is awesome. Lori is available to work with small business owners. So if you are just getting started or have been in business for short period of time and would like to talk to Lori for 30 minutes, for free, please head over LoriBruhns.com/jumpstart. That is l-o-r-i-b-r-u-h-n-s.com/jumpstart.
That is all for today's tip. If you want to hear previous tips head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and will see you on the next episode.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
I am joined today by Lori Bruhns. She is a business productivity and success coach. What I like for her to do is provide some tips that will help you be more productive in running your business.
Lori: Thank you for having me today Hank.
Hank: No problem. I was hoping that you can provide a quick tip to someone that wants to be more productive.
Lori: Sure. When working with my clients, I like to help them know that their skills are what they need to harness to have a successful business. So, my number one tip is do what you do best, and delegate the rest.
As entrepreneurs, we have a lot going on within our business and within our lives. Â If we can learn to harness we do best, and delegate the rest, will be more efficient and effective in growing our business.
Hank: When you talk about delegating, can you tell the folks listening how they would go about delegating and what are some of the items that I can delegate as a business owner.
Lori: Sure. So, when I say delegate I am talking about tasks that do not increase your ROI immediately. For example, something like bookkeeping. Â Yes, you need to get it done, but not necessarily by you. If you can delegate bookkeeping and do what you do best, such as marketing yourselves, sales calls, closing the deals, I highly recommend that. So, once again, do what you do best, delegate the rest. And the way you figure it out is what tasks he gives the most ROI.
Hank: How about some social media content, content in general, or maybe doing some mailings or phone calls, like using a virtual assistant to help with some of those tasks. Do you think that that something that could be done?
Lori: Actually, that is one of the best ways to utilize delegation. Having someone that knows you and your content really well will help you reach more people more quickly efficiently and effectively.
Hank: That is awesome. Lori will be around for a few more tips, so stay tuned.
We hope that you are having a great day and that is all for today's tip. If you want to hear previous tips, head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also find me on iTunes. Â I will see you next time.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
I actually do not have any information for you today. But I wanted to announce that I will be having Lori Bruhns, a local business and productivity coach on my tips sessions to help you and provide you with some free tips on being productive with your new business.
So, during this week, let's call it "productivity week", Lori is going to join me and provide some insightful information.
Hank: Thank you for joining me Lori and we look forward to the upcoming tips. Can you tell us a little about yourself and what it is that you do and how you can help business owners?
Lori: Sure, thank you so much for having me this week. I'm very excited to share my knowledge and help your audience be successful entrepreneurs. As you stated, I am a business, productivity and success coach. I work with entrepreneurs in the first 12 months of business helping them create an ideal business model that will help them attain their entrepreneurial goals.
Hank: That is great. So, during our tips, Â she will provide some useful information as well as have a special offer for you. So, please stay tuned and I look forward to providing these tips for you and next week will go back to our regularly scheduled program.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip. Thank you for joining me today.
What I like to discuss is writing effective copy for social media, your website, or for your blog. There are some tips that I am gonna provide to you today that will help you engage more with your subscribers or readers and also engage with them better.
One of the first ones I want to discuss is speaking your fans language, or your readers language. What you want to do is mirror the types of content that they want to read and also lead them into the direction that you want them to perceive your content and think about your brand, if that makes sense.
So, the first thing you need to do is ensure that you are creating personas, which is something I discussed in a previous episode where where you basically identify who your key consumer is and look at maybe what their age demographic is, what their needs are, what their desires are. Then what you want to do is create that type of content that is going to relate to that demographic or persona. You might want to is lead them into thinking a certain way about your product or service. I read about a study in 1974 at University of Washington where people wanted to study the reliability of eyewitnesses. They use certain statements to see what the outcome was for the study.
They had some statements written down for groups of people about a car accident. The first one said, "about how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other". The next one said, "about how fast were the cars going when the cars collided into each other". Next they said, "about how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other ".
There were a few more conditions or statements that changed certain word or group of words to make the accident sound slightly different. When we look at the results of the study, people tended to have different answers based on what statement they read. Basically, when they heard "smash", the amount of people that thought it was a serious accident or how fast they were going was higher when you use the word smash. Hit and bump was lower, and then there was also a word used that was "contacted", which actually had the lowest amount of responses or or the lowest speed related to the accident. Smashed being the highest and then contacted contacted being the lowest.
These are words that you can use in your marketing. It can be verbs and it could also be adjectives that describe a product or service that make people feel a certain way about how they are going to perceive your product or service. Will it do a good job? Will they be happy with it? Is it sturdy? Is it fast or is it slow, depending on what it is. Make sure that you are using great content and leading words to describe your product and service. Most importantly you want to offer a solution. Make sure that if you have a product or service, don not just put out a statement saying, "hey this product is on sale for 20% off". How does it solve a need I, or have a problem I have.
Make sure using descriptive language again to describe your product and service. You want to use active words when you are writing, this way people feel like they are engaging with it. Make sure that you write in the first or second person. Make sure you don not write in a passive tense Write in a future or present tense say, "this product is awesome and it can help you do X". If you start talking about how I help people in the past there may not be enough relation there to make someone feel excited about it. Say, "you can enjoy this on the lake". Let's say you are selling life preservers or floats for little children. Say, "your children will never have to worry about swimming again". Make it feel like there is action going on when you are talking about your product and service, make it active.
You might want to imply scarcity to your product and service if it is something that you offer as far as produ...
Trascription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Today's tip is about Facebook stories. Facebook stories is very similar to stories on Snapchat as well as  stories on Instagram. Have you checked those out yet? Have you used stories? Well if you have, you may find that if you have a younger demographic you are seeing some success. Maybe even if it is a little older, you are engaging also.
But try i if you have not, because it maybe in a way for you to put content out there for brand recognition and create a little bit of fun with your marketing. With Facebook stories, your story sits at the top of the application and people click on it and see your short stories that only last short time.
The thing about Facebook stories is you are able to add a little bit of flair to them, something called frames and stickers. Add frames to your video and images and it is fun to play around with. Another thing you can do is create a branded Facebook frame. Â What you can do is open the Facebook camera effects homepage and create a frame that would be branded towards your company. Think of it as being your logo or slogan you have and you can allow people to use it as well as put it onto your own stories.
I think it is a great way to brand yourself a little bit further, have fun with marketing by using stories to see if it is effective for you and create some more business and more dialogue around what you have to sell.
Make sure that you are checking out stories, whether it is on Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook and try out the Facebook Frames for Facebook.
That is all for today's tip. You can always look at previous tips or listen to them at HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and you could also subscribe in iTunes to my podcast. Thank you for tuning it will catch you next time.
Transcriptioin:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip.
Let's talk about the landing pages and SEO. When it comes to having your business found on the Internet, people are searching Google or other search providers to find products and services that they are looking to do business with.
Did you know to 76% of searches are on Google? So, what you want to do is make sure that you optimize for Google and looking at your keywords and your description, making sure that you have relevant content for the folks that want to do business with you and your description matches ultimately what the goal of the consumer is.
Each search that someone does starts with intent, they are intending to do something, they are intending to do research, or intending to buy from you. Once they find you on the Internet and go to your website or landing page, make sure that the copy is Relevant to #1, your ad and #2, the description of your website and #3, that it is very understandable as far as what your product or service has to offer.
There is many times I have went to website and I do not know what the company does or exactly what they sell because it is not very clear on that page that I visit. So, that was really just a quick tip about make sure everything is flowing correctly. I have previous tips about SEO and landing pages, but I really want to tell you make sure that you know that searches start with an intent and a basically is a flow. They intend to find a product or service. They are going to research that. They are going to search the Internet for it, and then they are gonna click through to your website or blog or maybe find you on social media. Everything you are discussing or your content needs to be related to exactly what your mission is and what your  brand is all about. What products and services you have to offer. Make it very very understandable. What is the value of working with you? Why would I want to choose you over a competitor?
Just in sure that you know that everything matches when it comes to the flow, from somebody thinking about a product or service, searching for it, going back through to the content that you have. Do not forget that after someone buys from you that you are following up and asking how everything is and that you have excellent support in place to help them if there is a question or challenge. Or, if you are service based that you are following up to find out how everything went and build that relationship to help nurture repeat purchases.
If you would like to listen previous tips, head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. Please subscribe to me on iTunes, Hanks Marketing and Business Tips. That is all for today's tip. Hopefully we will see you next time and if you have any feedback for us, you can send it to hank@HankHoffmeier.com. Thank you.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip.
I had the pleasure of going to a conference in Miami Florida for some franchise owners in the haircutting industry. One of the speakers was Jack Mitchell who owns Mitchell Stores in Connecticut He was discussing his book, Hug Your Customers: Still the Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results.
Now, Jack was not talking about physically hugging your customers but providing personalized and thoughtful experiences for your customers so that they remember you, and remember that you care about them as a customer and do not treat them as a number.
I holistically believe in this type of mentality, and is actually something I am writing about it in my new book. Customer service is essential, people want to be heard and they want their needs met. The most that you can do that by providing the best possible customer service will help you succeed and grow your business and most importantly, keep client you have and produce repeat business.
Now, how can you "hug your customers"?  You could do things that may help them remember you. You can do something by going above and beyond, and helping your client more than they anticipated or thought that they would receive. Make sure that your support and refund policies, if you have one are above average so that clients remember that you have their best intentions in mind or your best intentions serving them. Help them no matter what and they really enjoy the experience they have with you.
Remember that people remember the experiences they have and they not only take that into account when they are buying a product or service, but they will tell other people. Make sure to check out the book, Hug Your Customers, by Jack Mitchell.
That will be all today's tip. If you missed previous tips and would like to hear them, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also find me on the iTunes store. Thank you for tuning in and we will catch you next time.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
What I would like to discuss today are keywords. Keywords are found in advertising, as well as on websites. Most times people will choose keywords that are closely related to their business, and at times create some that might correlate to their business, but they are not very well-known or may not be closely (100%) related.
What you can do is use a keyword tool such as Google's keyword tool to help you find similar or like keywords to use in your advertising, whether it is pay-per-click, or setting up audiences on Facebook ads, as well as in your metadata on your website: your keywords and description. Using a keyword tool will allow you to use keywords you find more or help you fill out a landing page or website page  by having the tool scrape your site, pull out terms that are there and provide more. Or list a category and a tool will provide options to you.
This is a great tool to help you not only find keywords for advertising and websites, maybe even help you create content, whether it is a blog, video, or other written type of communication. So again, you should look at Google Adwords tool to help you obtain some new keywords to use in your advertising on your website or within your ads. Just Google keyword planner from Google and you will find it. Then you will be on your way to crafting better content for your ads, marketing, and most importantly have better targeting.
That is all for today's marketing and business tip. If you would like to listen to previous tips, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and also subscribe on iTunes. W will see you next time.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip. Thank you for joining me today.
I was recently at a conference where I heard a speaker from Yelp discussing their platform. Did you know that only 1% of yelp users leave reviews? That means many people are searching Yelp for a product or service or restaurant, which is what they started out as, or are well known for, but it is a great way for you to have your business be visible and have some reviews of your product or service to make people trust you. These reviews are not allowed to be removed or edited, but you can reply to them.
Maybe you can try to get a better conversion than 1% of general users leaving tips or reviews for your establishment or company. The first thing to do is make sure that you claim your business if it is already there, or create your business on Yelp so people can find you, learn about your hours, your location, and most importantly read some reviews.
It is important to know that you don not want to push people to give you a Yelp review or compensate them for that. You wanted to be organic. But you can let your customers know that you are on Yelp and say it would be nice if you go over there and look at our listing and maybe leave a review. But do not entice them to leave a positive review or compensate for that.
If you are not on Yelp, make sure that you are looking at getting on there and creating your profile. If you want to pay you can get some more features and opportunities to drive more traffic to your website or brick and mortar location. If you are already on there, make sure you are optimizing your listing as well as you are looking at and responding to those reviews.
Good luck if you have a yelp listing. If you have any questions, let me know.
You can always listen to previous episodes by going HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also subscribe to my podcast Hank's Marketing and Business Tips on iTunes. We will see you next time. Hopefully receiving value out of these tips. If you have feedback, please send it to Hank@HankHoffmeier.com.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Today we are going to give you four reasons why you should be using Instagram Stories. Instagram is a great marketing tool, especially with the visuals they have, the ability to comment and like, and then also using hashtags to help you become found on Instagram. But when it comes to using some lesser-known features, Instagram Stories is one of those.
Maybe you are not currently using Instagram Stories because it takes a little bit more work to create them and they are only viewable for 24 hours. So why should you use them? The first reason is it is cheap. You do not have to pay to use this feature and it is something that will sit at the top of the app for people that are following you, encouraging them to click on your story and look at those short snippets of video or images. It is a little bit more immersive because when somebody goes to your stories they are actually looking at your stories or group stories and hopefully will finish out all of the content that you created, creating a little bit more engagement.
Next it is gonna promote deeper connections. It is going make people feel like it is a little bit more one-on-one and not just scrolling through looking at different people's posts. Maybe you will get some more reactions or engagement. Most importantly obtain that brand recognition.
I will also help you can connect with Millennials. Millennials right now are the highest users of stories. So if you have a younger demographic, or a younger persona, which I have mentioned in previous tips, you definitely want to use Instagram Stories. Hopefully if you are not using Instagram Stories, I may have encouraged you to try it out a little bit more. See if you can obtain some better success on Instagram using Instagram Stories.
Make sure to check out previous recordings at HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also subscribe on iTunes. I look forward to recording the next episode to provide you value. If you have any feedback, please send it to Hank@HankHoffmeier.com.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip.
In episode number 42, I discussed local influencers. Influencers are people that you can find I can help promote your brand. Sometime still do it for free, and other times it is paid. You may see this with well-known celebrities pushing products such as clothing, perfume, or something else, in return for compensation.
You might ask , how do I get started with using influencers. You can reach out to people that you find say on Instagram where influencers possible popular and what you can do is ask them to help your brand. Maybe you can offer them something, or maybe you could do a trade or barter in reference to whatever you want them to advertise.
There are also influencer marketing agencies. So, if you do not want to do the legwork or feel like it is a little bit difficult, you could find one of these influencer agencies to do the work for you. You tell them what your goals are and your budget and what they will do is align you with someone that will be able to effectively promote your brand, product, or service, thus growing your brand.
Look into these influencer marketing agencies and see it is if it is something that you would be able to help grow your business and promote your brand further.
That is all for today. If you would like to hear previous tips, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can also subscribe in iTunes. We hope you are enjoying these tips. they are created daily, except for the weekends. See you next time we record the next episode.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with my marketing and business tip.
Today I do not actually have a tip for you. It is more of a rant about customer service. I have been hearing more and more about customer service, especially during a conference I went to. There where numerous people discussing customer service, successes and challenges, as well, thinking about the book I am writing, which is hopefully coming along well in the next few months.
When we talk about customer service there some stats; I heard 86% of customers pay for better customer service. If you have a higher priced product or service, but the are gonna receive more out of that experience receive better customer service, they will pay for it. 70% of customers will do business again with a company that resolves their complaints. Are you quickly reaching out to people have questions or concerns? As well, are you following up with reviews that you received online? Those are great ways to engage back with people that are trying to give you signals. This way you can make changes in your company or organization for the better
Make sure that you are using proactive customer service, in other words, do not be reactive. Don't wait for people to complain. Make sure you are reaching out and asking people how their experience was with your brand.
Make sure you looking to see how you can further engage with your customers by maybe asking when their birthday is, or maybe special days in their life, or maybe some of their preferences. Make sure you are focusing on customers so that they feel like they are having a one-on-one interaction with you as a brand, rather than being a number. Make sure that you are expressing your appreciation for their loyalty, if they are a loyal customer. If somebody keeps buying from you or keeps, doing business with you make sure you notice that and appreciate that. Tell them that you appreciate that.
Dig into some of the things that they are doing and asked them questions so you could talk to them about their day, their needs, etc. A lot of times we tend to just have transactional conversations or relationships with our customers. Get to know them even if you are a high-volume online retail seller, drop a quick note or send an email asking about their purchasing experience. Drop handwritten note in one of your shipments. Maybe you can pre-write generic thank you cards to send to your shipping provider, if you use a shipping provider.
61% of people say the risk of negative sentiment going viral can be handled with social care. Make sure that once again you are reaching out and you are trying to resolve those signals.
I have more customer service, but I will save that for some future tips. If you want to hear previous tips that are in relation to a lot of the topics, go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa's. You can also subscribe to my podcast on iTunes. Hank's marketing and business tips.
That is all I have for today. You will definitely hear more for me about customer service, so we will see you next time.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Today, I am going to discuss longtail keywords for voice search. In episode 18, I discussed using longtail keywords to help you keep your costs low when it comes to pay-per-click advertising. If you own a flower shop and you use the word flowers for pay-per-click advertising, the cost for that may be very high because there is a lot of competition for that keyword if there is a lot of competition around you. What you can do is use longtail keywords and what you might be able to do is say "flowers for weddings in Manhattan", if that is where you are located.
Those longtail keywords will help keep your costs low, as well as help you find folks that are using longer terms or phrases to find you.
Today, what I like to talk about is the use of digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa, Google Home, and any other type of voice assistant that you can use to do searches or enter text. People these days are picking up your phone, talking into it, and saying "find me a florist nearby", "I need to buy flowers for a wedding" or "find me a local restaurant".
So, what you want to do is capitalize on that and make sure that you have some longer phrases that make sense on your website, so that people will find you based on those voice searches, if that makes sense.
It is taking longtail keywords and helping you adopt that, so when people do voice search they will find you. It is a great opportunity and I think there is nowhere to go but up for voice search. Make sure you are capitalizing on that by having longer phrases and keywords on your blog, website, and anywhere else that people can find on the Internet.
That is all for today tip. As usual, you can always listen to my previous tips on HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can find me on iTunes as well and subscribe to my podcast. We hope you are having a great day and make it a great week. Talk to you next time will record an episode.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with marketing and business tip.
Today we are going talk about content for your marketing efforts.
Many marketers or small business owners struggle with thinking of content to post on their blog, or make videos. One thing that you can do is any events that you go to such as a training, maybe a conference, seminar, webinar. What you might want to do is take some good notes and go back and write content or maybe a vlog or video blog about those events that you went to.
Make sure that if you are directly using content that was shared with you that you give credit to the author or speaker by using a quote. Otherwise taking the content that you learned/absorbed and took notes on and turning into your own words is plausible. You can write out a blog post in reference to what you learned in reference to training, conference information, or just information that you learned in general about your specific industry.
Make sure that you write content to be not so long but yet not too short. Maybe about 400-800 words will probably be ideal for a blog post. And maybe 2 to 5 minutes for a video probably would be beneficial to your audience and allow them to absorb the material without fatigue out.
So, hopefully you can find some more content and this tip was helpful as far as using information that you are gaining from a training, conference, webinar, seminar, etc., to allow you to fill more content on your blog and in your videos.
That is all for today's tip. If you would like to hear previous tips, you can head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. And of course you can always tune in on iTunes and subscribe to the podcast.
Thank you for tuning and we will see you next time!
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip. Thank you for tuning in.
Today, what I would like to discuss is shopping cart emails. If you have an online store and you have a shopping cart platform such as Shopify or something else, there is something called abandoned shopping cart emails. This means someone puts a product or products into their shopping cart and then they leave your website to either do something that they have to take care of, or maybe they went to when your competitors sites and are looking to compare pricing or maybe shipping costs.
What you want to do is lure them back to finalize that purchase, Whether is is  just a reminder that they have something in their shopping cart, or maybe entice them to convert by offering a discount by saying "hey, come back complete your purchase and save 10%, complete your purchase save 10% use coupon code XYZ ".
A lot of times people use email marketing to try to persuade people to check out once they abandon their shopping carts. There is a lot of speculation around when should that email be sent, should be right away, within half an hour, within hour? Should wait four hours, wait a couple days? My school of thought is that you should send it pretty quickly, because if they are shopping your competitors, maybe you will be able to catch them and lure them back for that conversion.
If you wait maybe about half an hour to an hour, give them some time to think and maybe they will go back and check out on own. But if not, entice them to convert by giving them a discount for checking out, this way they do not pull the trigger when it comes to your competitor's website.
So, hopefully you learned a little bit about shopping carts and shopping cart abandonment emails. You can use a marketing automation tools like iContact Pro to help you with that or there are other platforms out there that can help.
If you have a questions, please let me know at @HankHoffmeier on Twitter, or you can look me up on LinkedIn.
That is all for today's tip. You can always view or listen to previous tips on HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa, as well as subscribe to my podcast on iTunes. Thank you for tuning in
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with marketing and business tip. Thank you for tuning in today.
What I would like to discuss is a term called "below the fold". What the term "below the fold" means is content that is below the area that you could see on a computer or device, so it is below the fold, if that makes sense.
What has been preached by marketers is that you want to keep your most important information, visuals, or content above the fold. Pretty much right where someone is going to see it when I first land on your website, or on your blog, whether on a phone or desktop computer or laptop.
This is also important in email marketing. When somebody opens an email you want to have your most important information or call to action at the top so people see it. Now there is a new mentality going around that people full tend to want to scroll more, especially on mobile devices. So, the best thing to do is test different content on your pages or in your emails or whether init is blog post, and see if people are scrolling.
There are ways to measure if people are scrolling or not. One way would be to check your links and see how popular your link clicks are, whether its above the fold or below the fold. Or maybe when the action is downloading a white paper, or viewing video. You can detect the clicks on those links to see how popular they are. For the most part, I probably would recommend putting the best call action above the fold, but don't be afraid to put some items below the fold as well because yes, people are scrolling more and they are used to doing that, Especially with their social media feeds such as Facebook and Instagram.
They are still scrolling to get to more of the post that they want to see or information. So, people are used to scrolling.
I would love love to hear your input whether or not you think scrolling is popular and if it is important to have your your most important content above the fold, or maybe down below the fold. But the most important thing to do is test it to make sure you know it is optimal for your audience.
That is all for today's tip. I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to hear previous tips you can go to Hank,Hoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can also subscribe on iTunes. We hope to see you there, otherwise thank you for turning in.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip for you today.
What I want to discuss is customer personas and how you should go about developing one and using one.
A customer persona is mapping out information about who your ideal client is. And that is going to be using information that you either currently have or that you can obtain.
What you should do is make a template either on paper or maybe an Excel or Word document. What you want to do is give that persona say a name, "John". Do they have a job title or something that you can use to further describe them?And then you want to jot down some information about where does this ideal client work; what are details about the role of its business-to-business, or even if it is business-to-consumer you want to take that into account or maybe what are some of the things that they do outside of work, hobbies and sports.
You also want to look at some demographics. You want to identify the age range, the gender,  a salary type of information gap from maybe $30,000 to $60,000. Is that your ideal client? You could look at location, where do they live? education? what type of family do they have? The most importantly what kind goals and challenges does this persona have so that you can market effectively to them.
You also want to look at values and fears and once you have all that information and what you can do is develop your marketing message for this persona. Write that down for that specific persona persona. How are you gonna speak to them? What tone? What type of personality? What type of content are you going to going to send that person? And lastly, what type of elevator elevator pitch can you develop for this persona?
There might be situations where you will have different types of personas for your business. Maybe there are three different types of personas that will buy from you. You can also develop whats called a negative persona. These are people maybe that will never buy from you so you, so you want identify who they are so that you do not create content that would really be in tune with that audience, because what you want to do is make sure that you are optimizing your content and your marketing messages for your ideal personas.
That is all for today's tip. If you have missed a previous tip, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa or you can sign up on iTunes to download podcast.
Thank you for tuning in.
Transcription: This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Today let's talk about videos and how to make them engaging for your audience. One thing that you can do is use video for is to make how-to videos. If you sell a product, you can explain how to use your product, and why it is effective, and why it is valuable.
If you are selling a service, it could be basically a review of what your service entails, referrals or testimonials from current clients.
Video is a powerful way to get your message across and people love to watch videos. Most importantly what you want to do is make sure that they are engaging, maybe even fun. There is nothing worse than having dry content in a video because what will happen is people will tune out early and close the window, therefore making your message ineffective.
Make sure that you record your video edit it, make sure the sound is professional and have somebody look at it, whether is is a family member or friend. Run it by them or maybe a couple of people to ensure you have a quality video that you can post.
That is all for today's tip. If you missed the previous tips, and would like to hear them, go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa or you can go to iTunes and subscribe to the podcast.
Thank you for tuning in and hope to see you next time
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip; thank you for tuning in today.
Let's discuss building community ties or community relationships. If you have a local business, or even an online business, you still want to make sure that you are building relationships within your communit,y so that your brand-name can be forefront of peoples minds.
One thing that you can do is participate in local event such as Habitat for Humanity, or maybe roadside cleanup. And what you could do is #1, meet people and network with them. You can wear your T-shirt and hand out business cards with your logo and information on them.
You can learn a lot about your community, and maybe find out how people can support you, as well as you can support them. Trust me, building a strong community relationship goes a long way.
That is all for today's tip, it was a quick one.If you want hear previous tips, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa, and you can also subscribe on iTunes.
We hope to see you for the next tip and have a great day. Thank you.
Transcript: This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Thank you for tuning in today. What I would like to discuss is objections. Whether you are an online seller, brick-and-mortar, business-to-business, or sales person, Â you are going to deal with objections. People working object to buying from you, talking to you, and buying your products and service.
What you need to do is plan for objections. Write down every possible objection that you think you can overcome in your business. What you should do is plan to have a reply for all of those rejections. So, not only when you are speaking to someone verbally will you have a quick reply and a value statement for each objection that you could have thought of to possibly convert to a sale or relationship, you will be able to write effective copy for your website that will help you automatically overcome objections to help convert someone to buy from you online.
You might consider an FAQ page on your website to handle many of the objections that you may encounter. I hope that you'll be able to plan for your objections overcome them, resulting in more sales for your business
That is all for today's tip. If you like your previous tips you go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa, and you can also subscribe on iTunes. That is all for today. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcript:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip for you today.
What I would like to discuss local influencers on Instagram. You may have heard the term influencers; people that you can reach out to, to either pay them or just kindly ask them to share content in relation to your products or services. Because, if they have a strong social media following, that will help raise awareness for your brand
What you could do is search Instagram, in the search feature, for posts near your location. This might help you find local influencers that will help boost your brand locally. Especially if you have a service that is locally organized, or if you have a brick-and-mortar location.
What you can do is actually ask to physically meet with some of those influencers as well, and maybe maybe offer them a free product or maybe some free service in relation to your business, if it is service related.
So, again what you could do is head over to the Discover area of Instagram and search near you for posts that will help you find local influencers that can help promote your brand.
That is all for today. If you would like to hear previous tips, you can head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa, or you can subscribe on iTunes. Either way, we hope to see you again soon. Thank you.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip for you today.
When is the last time that you had an excuse? Especially when it comes to business. What is your last excuse that you did not get something done, did not complete something, or something didn't sell? Did  you have a plan? If not, you might want to think about that for the future.
Most people have excuses, but they don't have a plan. If you have a plan, you should have a roadmap to success. You should be able to overcome obstacles and find reasons to overcome any possible excuses that you will have. Make sure that you are planning for success, and that you are thinking about things that can happen that would challenge you, or pose an issue, or problem, therefore you can put that plan into place and have alternate versions of what your roadmap or plan looks like to get around those excuses, this way you do not have to make them anymore.
Remember, motivation is key, but discipline is what is more important because motivation is short-lived and you want to make sure that you are disciplined enough follow your plan through and have alternatives to possible challenges.
I hope that was inspiring to help you develop more of a plan when it comes to either marketing, running your business, budgeting, or anything. You can even relate that to your personal life as far as exercise or eating healthy. So make sure that you have a plan so that you do not end up having excuses.
That is all for today's tip. If you would like hear previous tips, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa, as well subscribe on iTunes. I hope to see you for the next tip. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
What I would like to discuss with you today is something that happened to me recently that made me really think about pricing and value.
I needed to have a jacket altered recently, and I needed to take in. I brought it to a tailor that I have known to produce good quality in the past it has been given to me as a referral from friends. I brought the jacket in and paid a lot of money, but for some reason the sizing was not correct and the work has to be redone and I hope that the jacket turns out okay.
In the meantime, I have another jacket that needed some more alterations in a different aspect, and I decided to try a different tailor. This happened before I knew about the issue with the other jacket. So, now what happen is the cheaper tailor, the second one, I was actually very satisfied and happy with the results. And the one where I paid pretty much double the first tailor ended up not being what I needed, what I wanted, as far as fit and feel. It was a little bit tight, so I needed to have them taken back out a little bit.
So the moral of the story is just because something is more expensive does not mean it is more valuable or be of better quality. So when you have a product or service you are offering, make sure to price it right. Just pricing your product and service higher does not mean people think it is quality or be of value. They are going to determine that on their own and you will have a specific sweet spot when it comes to your pricing. You will need to determine that based on how people are reacting to the results of your product or service, with the pricing you are offering.
That is all for today's tip if you love to hear previous tips please head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa otherwise you can also subscribe on iTunes.
We hope that you are enjoying these tips. and we will see you the next time.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Are you struggling with content to share on social media or how to write blog articles? A great tool is Pocket, GetPocket.com. This is a great tool that allows you to curate articles and read them later. They have a browser extension as well as an iOS and android application where you can find articles on the internet, or someone emailing them to you, finding them on social media or through a news site. What you can you do is "Pocket" those website articles or blog articles and read them later.
Another cool feature is it can actually can read out the articles to you via text to speech, through robotic voice. What this will do is allow you to consume the content and then create your own version for your social media channels. Or maybe you just want to share that article out to your followers on social media.
It is a great tool to use, GetPocket.com is where you can find it, and again if you are looking for content, it is a great way to source for that and send it out on your social media channels. So check out GetPocket.com.
If you would like to listen to previous tips, please head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa as well as subscribe on iTunes. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcript:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
If you are using Twitter, make sure that you are retweeting people that follow you, basically helping them become found and obtain more followers and maybe they will return the favor for you.
Also, make sure that you thank people who are reading your blog articles or consuming your content. If someone tweets out a blog article that you created or if they re-tweet you, reach out to them and thank them. You can search for these terms such as your blog title or your username, which with your username, you should receive an alert through the application on your mobile device or on Twitter itself, but it is harder somebody just takes your article and shares that out.
So, again what you might want to do is search for mentions of your title or keywords in your title and thank those who are sharing that information; make them feel good about it, this way they want to do that more.
What you want to do and is important to do, is create brand advocates on Twitter so when it feels like you are connected with you and psychologically when they see something you post, they will be more apt to share that information.
That covers that covers today's tip. If you would like to listen to previous recordings, please head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa or you can subscribe on iTunes. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
A lot of times people are creating content and putting it out on their social media channels, using it on blogs and, also using that content and marketing.
One thing at they fail to do is think like the recipient. Many times, people that create content create it the way that they want it to sound. They are not thinking about how the recipient is going to receive it, or how are they are going to read it. What you should do is make sure that you are reading it from the recipient's perspective. Make sure they are going to receive value. Make sure that it flows correctly and also check for spelling and grammar errors. I covered that in a previous tip.
So again, just make sure that you are creating content that your users, and your customers and clients want to you want to consume this way it will become engaging and they will comment like and share your content and ultimately buy your product or service.
That is all for today's tip. If you would like to listen to previous tips, please go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa or you can subscribe on iTunes.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
If you are new to running Facebook ads, be careful about how you look at your results. If you run an ad and you found it to be successful, do not go ahead and just automatically throw a lot more money at it. In other words, you do not want to increase your ad budget by more than 10 to 30%.
By doing that or more than doubling your spend, you will throw off the algorithm process that Facebook uses to serve your ads. Â In the long run, your ads will not be as successful as they were the first time.
What you want to do is slowly increment your spend up, maybe about 5 to 10%, and make sure not to make other changes to your ad or your spend for at least 24 hours. Let the settings "bake in" and let the results show for themselves and then go ahead and make some changes.
So again, just a reminder be cognizant of what type of changes you are making to spend and copy on your Facebook ads.
If you like to hear previous recordings please head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa or subscribe on iTunes. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Do you want to have more viewers or have your YouTube videos show more in search results? Don't we all?
Well, let me provide a couple tips for you to make sure that you are doing the best you can with your YouTube channel. When it comes to what is popular and what is shown in search results, YouTube is looking at something called "watch time". In other words, not only did somebody find and watch your video, but how long did they watch it and possibly how many videos did they watch on your channel.
What you want to do is increase the playtime. One thing that you can do is link to a playlist rather than one specific video in your channel, this way if someone is interested in watching your videos they will successfully watch more than one video causing your channel watch time as well as your video watch time to increase.
Sometimes people will hit play on an ad and then walk away from their computer and what would happen is the next video start playing, then again the next video start playing, and that will give you some more play time.
Another thing is you should do is use titles and thumbnails that accurately reflect your content. This way someone does not start watching your video and then find out that it is not really what you advertised it to be.
Use "cards" throughout your videos is another tip. It is basically a way for them to follow you on social media, or check out other videos you may have that you want to show them. Again, your playlist is one thing that you could show with cards.
Make sure that you are creating content based on long-tail YouTube keywords. So, not only cooking if your chef, you might want to say "best cakes for birthday party". If that is what your videos about, use that longtail keyword and it will help your video become found on YouTube .
Hopefully those tips are helpful and hopefully you will obtain some more success on YouTube.
If you would like to listen to previous recordings please head over to Hankhoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can also subscribe on iTunes.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip.
Today I would like to cover a social media tool that will help you curate, post, and schedule social media posts. There is a website called Calendy.co. C-a-l-e-n-d-y.c-o.
It is a newer tool, but it is actually very powerful and allows you to add calendars. In other words, calendars for Calendy are groups of your social media profiles like your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. What this tool allows you to do is to go ahead and create posts, preview them how they would look on the actual social media channel, schedule them, and most importantly if you have someone else doing your social media for you, you can have them create them in this tool and then request permission or approval to post those calendars or posts.
They also offer tips and post ideas especially for national holidays and other things that might be popular that you can go ahead and just repurpose and post on your social media channels. It is a pretty cool tool. I think it is very easy to use and it is worth checking out. Again, Calendy.co, c-a-l-e-n-d-y.c-o.
That is all for today. If you would like to listen to previous recordings please go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa,otherwise you can subscribe on iTunes. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcription: This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip. When it comes to business in today's age, we are all using digital technology. We are using cell phones, iPads, computers, websites and many other technologies that take us away from face-to-face or verbal, maybe even written communication. It is very important that every now and then you do some type of written recognition. Whether is is a thank you for an employee or maybe a thank you card that goes out to your customers or potential customers, trust me, writing a handwritten note or handwritten card can go along way. Make sure to do this every now and then. Post a reminder to write these thank you or notes of gratitude to your customers employees at least once a month. They will be grateful and it will help build a stronger relationship. If you like to listen to previous tips, you can head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and you could also subscribe on iTunes.
Transcription: This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip. When is the last time you listen to client feedback or asked for it? Many times, were too busy prodding along and developing our next marketing campaign, fulfilling customers' orders, or servicing clients. We need to take a step back every now and then and ask our audience, customers or clients what they want and how they feel about our products and services so that we can make changes to better ourselves and to offer more value and better quality. It is not the whole time that you can receive this feedback organically from your clients or audience so what you might want to do is poll them. Use a Facebook post, use a Facebook poll, Twitter poll, or a Survey Monkey survey can be sent out via email. Or you can verbally ask people that you talk to on a daily basis that use your product or service and how you are doing and how you can improve upon your value and what you want to provide to your audience and clients. So again, just make sure that you are listening to your audience and clients and always trying to improve upon what your current doing. If you would like to listen to previous tips you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa where you can also subscribe on iTunes. I appreciate you tuning in hope to see you next time.
Transcription: This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip When it comes to Instagram, there are plenty of times where you see other posts that you may want to share with your audience. There is an app called Repost that allows you to just do just that. What you do is when you see a post you would like to share, what you can do is click on the three little dots on the top right of the post and click on the "copy share URL". What will happen is once you open the Repost app, those images that you copied the share URL for will show in the Repost app and allow you to post them to Instagram. It will give the credit to the person that posted the image first unless you pay for the app and you can remove any type of branding or recognition for the author. I would recommend going ahead and letting people know who originally posted that image so that you can give them credit. I hope that helps you with sharing others posts on Instagram and helps you become more popular and more viral on Instagram you'd like to hear previous tips please go to Hank Hoffmeier.com/Alexa and also subscribe on iTunes I hope that helps you with sharing others posts on Instagram and helps you become more popular and more viral on Instagram. you'd like to hear previous tips please go to Hank Hoffmeier.com/Alexa and also subscribe on iTunes If you would like to hear previous tips, please go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and also subscribe on iTunes.
Transcription: This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip. When is the last time you read a book to help you become a better business person or leader? It is a great idea to always be learning and always stay on top of the skills that you need to improve upon. Maybe you don't have time to read a book, so you can use an audio version and use an app or website called audible.com where you can listen to books while you are exercising, walking or maybe on your daily commute. That is one thing I do is I listen to audiobooks and podcasts on my way to and from the office, which is about 45 minutes away. I use every spare time that I have to learn a new skill or decompressing. I try to switch up the content I listen to from something that I like that is more personal to something that is business-related; whether social media or leadership. so make sure that you're always absorbing new information and learning so that you're becoming better than your competitor and becoming a better person if you would like to listen to previous tips you can go to Hank Hoffmeier.com/Alexa where you can sign up on iTunes for this and the podcast version I think you for tuning in and hope to see you next time So make sure that you're always absorbing new information and learning so that you are becoming better than your competitor and becoming a better person. If you would like to listen to previous tips, you can go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa, or you can sign up on iTunes for the podcast version. I thank you for tuning in and hope to see you next time.
Transcription: This is Hank Hoffmeier with the marketing and business tip. If you are looking to use flat graphics or icons for any of your marketing campaigns, whether it is email or social media, Google AutoDraw is a great tool. Google AutoDraw allows you to scribble image on the screen, and Google will do its best to match up your scribbling with an actual picture or icon. Not only can you draw images that have outlines, you can color them and make them look really professional. You can start drawing a picture of eyeglasses. AÂ round circle, connect them together and make frames, and Google recognizes that and shows you images of glasses. i It is a great way to create some quick graphics or flat graphics for your marketing campaigns, so check out Google AutoDraw. If you want to hear previous episodes of my tips please head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa or subscribe on iTunes.
Transcription: This is Hank Hoffmeier with a marketing and business tip. Instagram is a very popular social media network and one thing is very challenging is to have your posts become very popular or obtain a large audience. A while back, I had a tip on using hashtags to help your post become found. But today, I would like to talk about something called "Instagram Pods".  Instagram pods are basically a group of like-minded creatives who agree to comment like each other's work in hopes that it will become more visible to other users. Now, there are some rules to these Instagram pods. You are not allowed to use emoji, you really need to put quality into your posts. What this could ultimately do is help boost more engagement on your posts. One downside is there is a possibility that only folks that are within your industry or niche are the only ones seeing these posts if the only warning ones engaging with your posts are the folks in your pod. It is definitely worth trying to find a group that can help boost the engagement for your posts and maybe augment that with some organic posts. Something possibly you can try. again it's called Instagram pods you can search for it and do a little more research so I hope that helps if you like to hear previous tips you could head over to Hank Hoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can also subscribe on iTunes Again it is called "Instagram Pods" and you can search for it and do a little more research, so I hope that helps. if you like to hear previous tips you could head over to Hank Hoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can also subscribe on iTunes If you would like to hear previous tips you could head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can also subscribe on iTunes.
Transcript:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
Remember intent is a great thing, but intent plus action gets things done. Many times, business owners will  have goals and will actually plan out what they wanted to for the coming week or coming month, but what they fail to do is act on those goals.
So, make sure that you have clear and concise goals, apply timeframes to those goals so you know when they need to be completed. Have a partner or champion that is going to encourage you to complete your goals. Remember to celebrate your successes.
If you do all of this you will complete your goals and you will be successful.
That is all for today's tip. If you missed any previous tips and would like to hear them please go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also sign up for my email newsletter where I will deliver my marketing and business tips directly to your inbox. Thank you for listening.
Transcript:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
When it comes to online marketing, especially with serving ads, What you want to do is make sure that you are building an audience of people that you can retarget. Retargeting means serving ads to someone that is ready engage with you. If someone comes to your website, looks around and leaves, you may want to serve them and ad later on because they have showed some interest. They may be interested in coming back and buying from you later on.
One thing that you can do is put in Google Analytics or Google AdWords pixel on your website where you can track traffic. Also you should put a Facebook pixel on your website. This is something you can do through Facebook Ads, without buying ads by the way. You install your pixel whether it is Google AdWords or Facebook to start building an audience.
Facebook and Google will start tracking people that go to your website, and put them into what they call an audience. So, whenever you are ready to, or if you are ready now, you can start designing, building and serving ads to people or visited your website, entice them to come back to you, to contact you, or buy your product and service. It is great way to keep people looking at you,, your brand and your website.  People that come to your website and leave, you can attract them back.
So again, make sure that you are looking at retargeting using tracking pixels for Facebook and Google.
That is all for today's marketing and business tip. If you have missed previous tips, and would like to hear them, head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also sign up for my email newsletter and I can deliver my tips directly to your inbox every day. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcript:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
I like to discuss website SEO or search engine rankings. If you have a website, Â you want make sure that you have a secure website. In other words, you will need a certificate for security, or security certificate. This is something that you can obtain through your website hosting provider and it allows you to secure your domain and website.
Many websites that have a shopping cart integration or sell products and services have a secure website. This ensures that data is not stolen. One way that you can tell if a website is secure is you can look in the URL field in the top of your browser and if there's a padlock there and that means it is secure. Or there is HTTPS at the beginning of the URL. That also means it is secure.
So if you have a secure site, Google is going to give you a little bit more of a boost for search engine rankings. If everything is even with your competitors as far as SEOÂ and they do not have a secure site and you do, you will get a little bit more of an edge on your competitors. S
Take a look today and see if you have a secure site. If you do not, go ahead and buy one through your hosting provider and sometimes there are ways to get one for free. If you have a WordPress site, there are ways to get a secure certificate.
That is all for today's marketing and business tip. If you missed previous tips and would like to hear them, please head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. And if you would like to receive my tips by email every day, you can sign up for my email alerts. Thank you for listening.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
Today I like to talk about a tool that can help you with your marketing. The site is called niftyimages.com. What you can do is nifty images is that you can create personalized images such as birthday cards or gift card images, or anything that you want to put any type of custom information that you can use as a merge field, such as a name, email address, title onto an image to make someone feel like it's directed at them.
They also have a countdown timer so if you have a limited time offer for a service or product, you can create a countdown timer. Now, what you can do is you can take the code that you are given once you complete your image for a countdown timer, add that to say an email and if you are using an email service provider, Â what you can do is use the field for first name, name, or email address and that information will be pulled in and be customized and personalized for them. Â And then the countdown timer will be just a snippet of code that actually counts down to the time that you put in in regards to something expiring, like a deal or sale.
So again, check out niftyimages.com. It is a great way to provide some great value through email and making it feel personalized.
If you havee missed any previous tips and would like to listen to those, please head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also sign up for my email newsletter where I can deliver my tips directly to your inbox every day. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcript:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you.
I would like talk to about customers today. One thing that you need to do is to be sure that you are aware of what your potential customers short and long-term goals are because when you are advertising or providing content to your potential customers you want to meet the needs they might have now and possibly down the road.
What you can do is share content or talk to them in a manner that meets those goals and provides information that will help them understand if they need your product or service now or possibly in the future and remember you when they do.
That is all for today's tip. If you want to listen to previous tips, please go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can also sign up to receive my tips in your email inbox.
Transcript: This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
If you work with people and customers that have competitors, especially in the B2B market, you want to ensure that you learn about your customers competitors. What you be able to do is make sure that your product, service or information is helpful in combating competitiveness as well as ensuring that your clients succeed in whatever it is they are either going to resell or use from you. Your information may help them beat their competitors, and they are gonna be grateful and happy, and may become a long-term customer.
So make sure that you are using Google, Google alerts and many other tools to look up the competition of your clients.
That is all for your marketing and business tip for today. I hope to see you next time.
If you missed any recordings and would like to hear them, please go to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also sign up for my email newsletter, where I will deliver my marketing and business tips directly to your inbox every day. Thank you.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
One thing you want to make sure you are doing is providing value for your customers and clients. And this may be providing information or maybe product for free. It does have to be expensive or does not have to be lengthy.
If you're providing value as far as information, Let's say you are a plumber. Maybe you want to be creative and share a video about how to unclog a toilet. People will appreciate that and then when they have a clogged toilet, the will view your video and what they will do is unclog the toilet. But when their basement leaks they are going to think of you to come and clean their basement and repair a faulty pipe, possibly.
Make sure what you are putting out there is relevant and it is useful to your audience. If you can provide a free product or something, make sure that is useful and maybe has your branding, so they can remember who you are.
So once again, make sure you are providing value to your audience as well as helping them to buy something when they are ready to, but do not push them. If you would like to hear previous Alexa tips, head over to Hank Hoffmeier.com/alexa. You can also sign up for my email newsletter, and I will deliver my tips right to your inbox every morning, in case you missed one.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
Today I would like to review a app that I use to create inspirational images and just images with text on them. It is called Typorama. I use it on iOS on my iPhone, and what you can do is choose the images that you have on your iPhone, that you have taken, or you can choose stock photos that come free with the app once you pay $4.99. There is a free version that you can use, but there are limitations to it.
Once you choose your image, you are allowed to add text and  have many different styles and fonts of text. You can choose the size that you want to create it for, whether specifically for Facebook, Twitter or maybe Instagram. What you could do is also make the image darker or lighter, you can add a watermark or logo to the images. So what you could use great really great images that have text on them and you can also reuse those images and place text with different style different fonts on them and you can save it to your camera roll, email it to yourself, or share it right to social media. So that is type Typorama and it is a great application to help you boost your Instagram followers or provide value through images as well as post on Facebook on any other social media channel of your choosing.
If you would like to listen to previous tips, please visit HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also sign up for my email newsletter and  I will deliver the tips right to your inbox so you can listen to them if you missed them here on your Echo.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business tip for today.
When you are writing content for your website or your blog, make sure you are checking spelling and grammar. There is nothing like having a lot of errors on your page that makes your website or blog look unprofessional. Make sure that you take a break after writing some content, go back and read it later so, that you can look at your content with fresh eyes and catch any mistakes.
It is easy to leave mistakes in your content if you read it right away after creating it. Â Another thing is you might want to have somebody else read your content before you publish it, or put it out live.
That is all for today's tip. If you want to listen to other tips, you can head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. And you can sign up for my email newsletter where I can deliver my tips to your inbox in case you do not have time to listen to those. Thank you very much.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you.
Today I would like to talk about keywords, for when you're using keywords for pay per click advertising. If you are using Google Adwords and you were putting out ads based on keywords, what you'll notice is popular keywords cost a lot of money.
What you might want to do is use something called long tail keywords. Let's say you are a wedding planner, what you might want to stray away from is directly bidding for "wedding",  because if you bid for "wedding", you can pay a lot of money. It could be four or five, maybe eight dollars per click. Where is if you put in a "wedding planner in Graham North Carolina", that is going to be a little bit cheaper. Or if you put "wedding planner affordable", or "affordable wedding planner", that was going to be cheaper than just "wedding". So, make sure you do some research and look at what people might be searching for when they look for products and services that you have to offer and use longtail keywords to help keep your costs down.
If you would like to listed to previous tips, you can head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also sign up to receive my tips in your inbox daily.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
When you have people going back to a product or service that you were looking to sell, you want to make sure using a specific landing page for your audience to view. Â What this means is you do not want to detract from the message or the item that you're trying to promote.
Let's say you are selling a certain type of sneaker and you drive them back to the main page of your website and have to really navigate ti get to that product, or where they can buy it. There is a good chance that they will decide not to buy your product and leave your website. So you want to make sure that page really has information about that sneaker, if that is what you are selling, and compelling reasons to buy that. Maybe it's a discount or maybe it is the features.
So, make sure that you are providing value on that landing page so it converts in the best possible manner. You can provide links back to other areas of your website in case they are not interested in that product, this way they can navigate to those items.
That is all for today's marketing tip, and if you want a listen to more you can head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa and you can view previous episodes as well sign up for my email newsletter that goes out every day with the recorded tips in case you do not want to listen on Alexa or just do not have time. Thank you.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tip for today.
What I would to discuss today is your website. If you have a website you want make sure you keep the copyright information at the bottom of your page up-to-date. Especially now that we are in a new year, 2017, if you have 2016 in your copyright in your footer, make sure you get that updated there is nothing that will deter people from buying from you if you were an e-commerce website and you're looking to sell products than having outdated copyright or SSL certificate, which is a secure certificate on your website.
Make sure both of those are up-to-date, but most importantly, the copyright is a good way to make people trust that are buying from you and that you are keeping your website up-to-date with information and security.
If you missed previous tips, you can head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa to hear previous tips as well as sign up for my email newsletter where I can deliver my tips directly to your inbox.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tip for the day.
If you work at an office or have a home office, it is great to have a lot of oxygen available. Not only for you to breathe, but to keep you in a good mood. Not only oxygen in the air that is coming from the trees, but a good idea to have a plant in your office. A live plant in your office that can provide fresh oxygen, to keep your mind fresh and focused on what you're doing and create great energy for you.
Also drink water and make sure to water your plant.
That is my quick tip for today. If you would like to listen to previous tips, you can head over to HankHoffmeier.com/Alexa. You can also sign up for my email newsletter to receive my tips directly in your inbox.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tip for the day.
Make sure to use video with your marketing campaigns. Live video is a great way to obtain attention and get people to react very quickly to what you are doing and what you are recording. What you want to do is go ahead and set up an idea and start recording on either Facebook Live, Instagram, Twitter. Then you can basically have people jump right in and start a conversation with you.
Don't worry, because once you finish recording, that media is saved for historical purposes and people still can find that later. So, you have two options, or  two opportunities to be found and have your content engaged with while you are doing it live as well as the archived or the saved version.
Happy recording and I hope that your videos are a success. Some ideas would be doing how-to guides, maybe an "about us" video, or just telling some stories about your business or personally.
Did you miss an episode? If you want to hear past episodes of my tips, go to hankhoffmeier.com/alexa.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tips for the day.
If you are using Twitter, make sure to send out your tweets multiple times during the day. Since there is so much noise on Twitter, you want to make sure that you are getting in front of your followers. And what you can do is either use a slightly modified version of your tweet, or you can take the same tweet and tweet it out, maybe once in the morning and once later on in the evening, very few days.
If you have evergreen content, which is basically content that is always going to be relevant. You might want to schedule that out a few times through out the month or year.
Another thing that you can do is retweet yourself. You can wait a few days and go ahead and look for your tweet and retweet it out to your followers again.
That is all for today's Marketing and Business Tip. If you want to look at the archives, please go to hankhoffmeier.com/alexa.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tip for the Day.
Are you looking to have your website or business be found more prominently in search results, especially with Google? Well, Google my business is a great way to showcase your business and show up prominently in search engine results.
What you need to do is make sure you have a Google My Business account, fill out your profile and information describing your business, and of course add some images. What you will then do is once you save that and verify your business, you will be able to show people your hours of operation, what services you offer, and most importantly, it will highlight any reviews that you have from Google.
You want to encourage people to leave positive reviews. This will help boost your search engine results as well. One great thing that this does is when somebody searches for keywords that are closely related to your business or directly searches for your business, your listing will show prominently on the right-hand side in a large box and will have all the information I described earlier, such as your business description, hours operation, and of course, those reviews.
So, what you want to do is head over to Google now create a Google My Business profile or account, and you will be on your way to have your business shown more with search engine results and outshine your competition.
if you have missed previous recordings of my tips, you can head over to hankhoffmeier.com/alexa to listen to more. Thank you for tuning in!
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with a Marketing and Business Tip for you today.
Today's tip is in regards to mobile websites. If you using pop-ups on your websites to obtain email addresses to send newsletters to, you need to be careful. If on the mobile version, that pop up, if it is covering a lot of real estate on the page and blocks the actual content, Google is going t0 punish you. It's called "interstitial", meaning it blocks a majority of the content on the page. And if you're using an interstitial pop-up, what is going happen is, you are gonna be dinged for search engine optimization or results. In other words, you will not show up as much as your competition would if they are following the guidelines.
This was introduced mid last year and is becoming more and more prominent. Â So, not only do you want to have a mobile version of your website or mobile responsive type of website, you want make sure you do not have any obtrusive pop-ups that cover a lot. especially on mobile.
If you missed previous recordings, and would like to hear those, please head over to hankhoffmeier.com/alexa, but that is all for today's tip. Thank you for tuning in!
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tip for the day.
Did you know that you can pin tweets to your Twitter profile? This is a great way to highlight information or a tweet that you want to show to your followers.
What you need to do is head over to your Twitter account and basically look at a tweet that you want to pin and there will be a little down arrow or chevron that you will click on or choose. From there, what you would do is choose "pin to profile". Don't worry you can unpin it when and if you need to, but it is a great way to highlight some of your tweets.
I hope that was helpful and if you've missed previous recordings and would like to hear them, head over to hankhoffmeier.com/alexa.
Transcription:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business Tip for the day.
I would like to talk today about hashtag holidays. A lot of people talk about hashtags, or the # sign before words when you are using those on social media, and yes, they are becoming more popular on Facebook.
Mostly on Twitter and Instagram are they very popular.  What you could do is use hashtags to join into conversations that are already popular or create your own, but most importantly use hashtag holidays or holidays that either you make up or that align with your business industry. Ones like your National Cupcake Day if you own a bakery or National Outdoors Day if  you are a landscaper.
There is a lot of unique offerings out there as far as national holidays. You can just do  Google search fun national holidays and there will be one for every day. The other day I used Happy Chips and Dip Day and basically gets people engaged with your content.
Try to be relevant to what your business is doing or at least make it fun. But #holidays are good way to supplement content and also augment what you're doing with the actual national holidays it just makes you have a better personality as well as have a fun and engaging type of post for someone to view, listen to, or share which is very important.
So, make sure to use hashtag holidays in some of your upcoming social media campaigns.
If you missed previous recordings and would like to hear them, please head over to www.hankhoffmeier.com/alexa  and you can listen to my other recordings.  Thank you for tuning in today!
Transcript:
Hello , this is Hank Hoffmeier with another Marketing and Business Tip.
Today's tip is very simple. Don't forget to celebrate your successes. Many people tend to dwell on the negative, or the fact that they need to grow their business and do not celebrate the successes they have. Even if it is a small success, pat yourself on the back, reward your employees if you have any, make sure that you're having fun with whatever it is you are doing with your business. Whether it is marketing, buying and selling products, working with other clients, and anything related to your business.
Make sure that you reward yourself by going out to dinner every now and then or maybe find something that you really wanted for some time. But most importantly, don't forget to reinvest in your business. Maybe buy something fun for your home office for your office.
That is all for today's tip. I hope to see you again soon!
Transcript: Thank you for tuning into Hank's Marketing and Business Tips.
If you have client email addresses, did you know that you can upload them to Facebook and serve ads to them? You have probably seen these types of ads when you go and shop at Amazon.com. Maybe you are looking at a product, leave Amazon and go to Facebook. Then you see that same product that you viewed in your Facebook feed.
This is known as retargeting. You can take a list of contacts you have and upload them to Facebook and serve them custom ads. You can install a pixel on your website and retarget people that come to your website and try to get them to reengage with you, buy your product or service, or start working with you.
Facebook Ads is an effective way to convert more customers and to keep your brand-name in front of them. Ff you don't know much about it, Facebook has a lot of help articles on how to run Facebook ads. You can also reach out to me, Hank Hoffmeier, and I will  help you the best I can.
That is all for today. I hop you have a great day!
Transcript:
Thank you for tuning into Hank's Marketing and Business Tips. Even though you are busy working all day trying to grow your business, don't forget to treat yourself right, keep your body healthy, drink lots of water, exercise often, and eat the right things so you can be successful in your business. Stay in a good mood, and keep your mind in the right mindset so that you can be effective for your business as well as your customers.
That's all for today hope to see you for the next tip!
Transcription:
Thank you for tuning into Hank's Marketing and Business Tips.
Today's tips is in reference to Instagram posts. Have you ever seen a post that had a large amount of texting or spacing between the paragraphs. It makes it a lot easier to read. This does not happen if you are using Instagram. After typing out your post there, they tend to remove those spaces. I have heard, that by simply using a notes app or the notetaking app and iOS on your iPhone that you can create your post and have spacing. Then you paste it into Instagram and you'll magically have your spacing.
Well I noticed lately that this is not really working as much as it used to. Every now and then I will get lucky and the spacing will be there, but here's a tip when using the app. Look at your keyboard on your Android or iOS device and look for the number key which is the "123". When you switch to this format you should see the return button on your keyboard. When you are typing, you can use that and click it twice and then you will add actual spaces.
I also use dashes correctly. My preference is to use a notetaking app and use my return there. What I will do is hit return and then I'll add it (-). Then hit return again and that should add spacing. I like doing it outside the app because the section to add your description to Instagram is a very small, where I can work in a larger environment in the notes app. Then I copy and paste it into the Instagram app and it should work for you.
That is all for today's tip. I appreciate you listening. Please comment and share, as possible. Also review us in the Alexa app. See you next time.
Transcription:
Thank you for tuning into Hank's Marketing and Business Tips.
One thing that is important is to make it a habit to go through your website and check out process at least quarterly. what you want to do is look at the experience of your visitors through your customers eyes. After all, the experience is for them not you. Too many times, websites are designed with the owners wants in mind, but not the customers needs.
You can look at your Google Analytic data to check your bounce rate and see how the flows with your checkout process. The bounce rate is the amount of people that leave your website after visiting only one page. They do not go on to consume other pages.
For the checkout process, use analytics so you can look at each step of the customer journey and make improvements to increase conversions. I worked with a client to increase conversions by 32% for a Mac diagnostic tool by changing how they offer the physical version as an up-sell. The client had a separate page in the checkout process that asked the customer if they wanted a physical DVD mailed to them for the software that they just ordered. They can download it there, so there was too much friction in this process.
By changing to a simple checkbox during the checkout process, they were able to streamline the whole experience and made the journey more fluid for the customer.
That's all for today's tip and appreciate you tuning in. Â See you next time
Transcript:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your Marketing and Business tip for the day.
Today's tip is going be business related. Many of us that on our own businesses struggle with accounting and keeping up with receipts. One thing is digital receipts. If you receive receipts via email there is a great way to keep track of those which ones you may have printed out or which ones you may have put into your accounting software.
What I do is use a Gmail address. And what you could do is you can append something to the end of the Gmail address to use as a tag so you can then sort and then un-label them or further label them in the future.
I use hankhoffmeier+receipts@, and when I receive that email in my inbox it will actually have a tag of "receipts" in there so I know that I forwarded that to myself as a receipt. When I go in there and I and print that out I can go in to take the tag off or I can actually tag it with "receipt printed", which is what I do, I do the latter.
Hopefully that will help you organize your receipts for accounting with your business moving forward
That is it for Hank's Marketing and Business tips for the day.
Audio Transcript:
This is Hank Hoffmeier with your business and marketing tip of the day.  Are you looking to grow your Instagram followers? If so, I found a great resource for you. Instaheads.com is now in beta and you can download their beta application to help you find followers.
How this works is you can create hash tag searches. You can use multiple hashtags, to find people that you would like to have follow you, and what you can do is like their posts and comment on their posts. You have the ability to sort and preview the posts that you want to participate in.
You can also find competitors followers and engage with them to try to get them to follow you as well. The application handles multiple accounts and it helps you with scheduling so you do not hit the Instagram follow limits and also comment limits. It also provides activity stats. The service is free and they're saying that they're always going to be free so if you want to check them, out at Instaheads.com.