Opportunities Inside Your Business: Prune Your Advertising! Cash Flow Catalyst #2
In this series, I’m talking about opportunity inside your existing business. Because a lot of times there’s sales revenue sitting right under your nose and you’re overlooking it.
When you’re in the business working in the business every day, it’s sometimes easy to miss these profit opportunities. As I’ve talked to entrepreneurs over the years, it’s been very simple for me, from an outside perspective, to pinpoint where these profit opportunities were.
I created this checklist so my readers could use my method as well.
It’s simple to go to a thing like this list and use it almost like a money hunt. Go and look for those hidden profit opportunities, those hidden, overlooked assets in the business. It’s like an Easter egg hunt for entrepreneurs!
If you are more of a video person check out the Cash Flow Catalyst series on YouTube channel, I explain everything here in a really easy to follow video.
Let’s get started on number 2: Killing your cash sucking advertising
When looking for these “hidden” profit opportunities in your business, don’t always look for more money instead, look to spend less money. Better yet get rid of things that aren’t productive.
If you had an employee in your business and they weren’t producing, what would you do? Either fix it or get rid of them, right?
In marketing and advertising, I find entrepreneurs just throwing money out there, it’s like slinging mud against the wall to see what sticks.
In the old days, before the Internet, it was a lot more challenging to track what worked then it is today. This is one of the things I love about the Internet.
In 2004 when I went all in with the Internet. One of the number one things that attracted me was that every click is measurable. Every visitor was trackable. I mean you could see everyone that’s coming to your website and it’s just gotten better over the last 10 – 12 years.
John Wanamaker said many years ago, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
Well, with the Internet that’s not actually true anymore. Now, even in the offline world, you can put a mechanic or a piece in that makes your advertising trackable. Maybe a coupon code, something they have to bring in, or a phone number they call. In the offline space nowadays, there’s almost nothing in terms of marketing or advertising that can’t be tracked.
Even with referrals. If I was going to ask my clients to give me referrals and I had an offline local business, I would give them gift certificates to give to their friends.
Why? Because I can track that.
I can see what kind of customers were brought in from the referral, so now I know to invest more money at this end of marketing.
Let’s say we buy so adds on Facebook and people go to our page, we can track every bit. We then get on the phone and close the sale.
That’s measurable and trackable.
Look at your business. If you’re spending $500 a month or $5,000 a month or even $100,000 a month on advertising, whatever that number is, look at those ad dollars and find out what’s working and not working. We go through this same process at Harbor City inc.
We have a three-step process called Tests, Scale, Manage.
So testing is where we allocate a certain number of dollars every day for 10 days.
At the end of the first day, we may look at the results and see that men responded to this ad more often than women. Then the second day we scale, we’re going to eliminate or reduce the budget to the female audience and double down on the male audience. By the end of the second day, let’s say mostly men over 45 are responding. We’re going to reduce or eliminate the lower ages and double down on the upper end.
Now you’re “pruning” your advertising, this is that manage step I mentioned earlier. You’re eliminating the old and what doesn’t work and you’re doubling down on what does work. You’re going to see exponential growth in your business.
So not only do you eliminate expenses that are unproductive, but you actually put that money into things that are working. This is huge. It creates immediate cash flow and can create a multiplying effect on your profits.
If you would like to see the rest of my tips about opportunity inside your existing business, follow this link: JPMARONEY.com/CASHFLOW
Opportunities Inside Your Business: # 1 Identify Your Best Clients
Identify Your Best Clients
I’ve been building companies for almost 30 years now. One thing I’ve found in my own businesses, as well as associating with other entrepreneurs, is that a lot of us overlook opportunity.
If you’ve ever seen anything I’ve done, you’ve probably heard me talk about how sometimes entrepreneurs can get too much opportunity. We’re always chasing the next bright shiny object.
That’s not what I’m talking about now though.
In this series, I’ll be talking about opportunity inside your existing business. Because a lot of times there’s sales revenue sitting right under your nose and you’re overlooking it.
This is because you get up every day and go through the mechanics of running the business. When this is all you’re doing, you end up missing a lot of this stuff because you’re so close to your business.
Have you ever heard the saying “Can’t see the forest for the trees”? It’s very much like that.
When you’re in the business working in the business every day, it’s sometimes easy to miss these profit opportunities. As I’ve talked to entrepreneurs over the years, it’s been very simple for me, from an outside perspective, to pinpoint where these profit opportunities were.
I created this checklist so my readers could use my method as well.
I often say that “Service to humanity is man’s greatest lot in life. We get back in direct proportion to what we give to the universe, but you’ve got to give a gift first if you want to get one back.”
It’s simple to go to a thing like this list and use it almost like a money hunt. Go and look for those hidden profit opportunities, those hidden, overlooked assets in the business. It’s like an Easter egg hunt for entrepreneurs! What’s funny is that when you get into it, they all seem really simple.
I was like “Duh, why didn’t I see that?”
The fact is is that we’re just close to our businesses and have to take a step back.
This could be great for a retreat or if nothing else, an offsite day. Maybe pull your top team members together, go rent a board room at a hotel, grab some refreshments and snacks, and pack them in there for a day. Get them away from what’s going on and the mechanics of running the business on a day to day basis. Take this checklist and go down it item by item.
If you’re more of a video person check out the first episode of my Cash Flow Catalyst series on YouTube, we are talking about the same topic.
Now! Let’s get into that list.
#1: Your existing client base
If you have an existing business, you have an existing client base. If you want to make more money from the existing business, one of the best things you can do is to look at your existing client base.
Don’t look at it as these are your customers or clients.
Look for your best clients.
You can look for things like
- They produce the greatest amount of revenue
- They come back and purchase the most often
- They give you the most referrals
- They never complained
A lot of people look at their client list and try to group everybody in together. In almost every business we have pockets of different types of clients, but we also have our best clients. The ones that bring in the most revenue, they’re easy to sell, they’ve fallen in love with your product or service. They trust you.
Look for those particular types of clients and cater to them. If you look at the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 principle, it’s not that everything is always 80/20 it could be 90/10, or 70/30. The idea behind the Pareto Principle is there are certain categories or areas that are smaller than the whole but out produce all of the rest combined.
So if you look at your client base that same way, it’s very likely there’s 10 or 20 percent of your client base that’s producing 60-70 or 80 percent of your sales revenue in your business. Look for those people and find ways to cater to them.
So if you’ve already built a customer base, think about this, you’ve already spent the money once before. You’ve already expended that client acquisition costs, generated the leads, went through the conversion process, and maybe you paid your salespeople for converting the sale.
Once you identify this category of customers that have the highest productivity, focus on them with special care. What you’ll find is that you can actually model those best clients and go find more people just like them.
That’s it for number one on my 17 part list. Check back soon for number 2.
How To Know What Your Target Customers Really Want!
Podcast Audio
Transcript
00:00 Okay. So there’s really three big areas that I talk about that you want to look or that you want to invest some time and energy. And number one is that you want to ask existing customers or clients, talk to them, ask them a question. And so you’re going to be asking them questions about what are the biggest problems or frustrations that they’re trying to solve in their life and especially as it relates to your product or service. So you can do this in different ways. One, you can survey them. So if you have a mailing list or an email list is even better. There are some survey tools out there like survey monkey and other things like that where you can actually send out a survey, uh, by email and get folks to walk through that survey and answer the questions. If you’re going to do an online survey with your existing clients or your buyers, I would highly suggest that you offer them some kind of an ethical bribe.
00:53 What does that mean? Reward them for their time? Give them something, give them a gift card, give them one of your products. Or services, give them tickets to something, something. It doesn’t have to be super expensive, but give them something that rewards them for their time because the information that you’re going to be getting back from them is super valuable. So, uh, conducting a survey is a great way to get more information. Number two, I really like these. It’s conducting actual interviews with them by phone or by video conference. The way that we produced this, um, there you can do it in person and when you’re at an event, if you’re out there and maybe get all of your clients together, if you’re a local business owner, you’re going to invite them all to a dinner or a coffee or a lunch and learn or something, some kind of a, you’re gonna invite them to some kind of a reception and that would give them a chance to interact with you.
01:44 And then while you’re interacting with them, you can ask them your questions and interview them. Just picking up the phone and talking to them is going to make you extremely powerful because you’re going to get it right from their mouth and they’re going to articulate things in a way that you hadn’t even thought of. The words that they say are actually the words that you’ll begin using in your advertising or marketing messages, whenever you get to the next step of putting together your messaging. The third way that you can ask them questions is during pre-existing contact with them. What I mean by that, if you already have a coaching call scheduled with people, if you already have some sort of a strategy session scheduled, if you already have a service call when you’re going out and meeting with your clients on a regular basis, if you run the, the route, you know, or run the traps or whatever and you’re constantly seeing your clients and you’ve already got time on your schedule with them, integrate this Q and A process into those contacts with them.
02:45 So the second way you can research a target buyer is on the Internet. It’s such a powerful tool because we have the ability to search and find things very, very quickly and we have the ability to sort of ease drop on people’s conversations. How do you do that? Well, you can go to websites and look and see what are people doing, what are they commenting? What are they saying? What are the questions that they’re asking? Whenever you look at a blog for example, and there’s comments down below the blog post, what are the things that people are saying? Because if it’s an active blog or an active blog post, you can be able to gather insights from them because they literally sat there and with their own emotions and feelings typed out what they were thinking related to that information. So find articles that are related to your topic that are related to your product that are related to the problem that these people are trying to solve and then see what kind of comments that they put down below that and also find out what kind of questions that they ask in there.
03:46 Another great place online to look is in forums. Now, in the old days we had lots of forums and forums still exist so you can look up like if you’re, whatever your business is, put that in and then forum. So if you are a person that targets copywriters, you can type copywriting forum. If you’re a person that goes after attorneys, you’d type Attorney Forum and you’ll find these on the internet. What are they? They’re communities where people go in and ask questions and then the peers share their answers to those questions. A new variation of that is groups, so on Facebook we have groups. In Linkedin, we have groups and you can go in there. You don’t even initially need to go in there and start answering questions or asking questions or posting. Certainly don’t go in there and start pitching their product or service.
04:36 Go into those groups and just be a fly on the wall. Watch the kind of questions people are asking. Watch the kind of answers that are given? Watch their reactions to those questions that are asked and the answers that are given. Watch what peers answer and additional questions that are asked, that are spun off of that, and you can get entire books of content of understanding into your markets, mean remember we talked about their psychographics, how they word their problems, what they’re wanting, their expectations or dreams, their hopes, their aspirations. You can find out what they’re interested in, what they’re reading, because they’ll say, I was reading such and such book and that it came up and this is now my question and I’m trying to solve this problem, and you’re going to, boom, there’s an author. That’s a name I could target in my marketing. So looking inside those, those groups, super powerful.
Overcoming Adversity Podcast Episode With Guest JP Maroney
Self-described as a serial business-builder, JP Maroney started his first venture at age 19. Soon after marrying, JP and his wife, Tonya, launched an advertising and marketing agency that created print media and eventually ventured into radio marketing campaigns.
At age 22, JP and Tonya created their first magazine, a travel-oriented publication called Escape Magazine. That led to JP buying a weekly classifieds marketing newspaper.
At age 25, JP Maroney lost everything — went bankrupt, and had to scramble to survive — working as a waiter, shoe salesman and pizza deliveryman. But, his fortune changed when he started publishing another magazine, then sold it in 1999.
Then JP launched yet another business as a speaker, author and publisher of training programs. Today, as co-founder and Chairman of Harbor City Capital Group, JP controls ventures in publishing, media, training, consulting and internet commerce.
A thorough researcher, writer and best-selling author, JP is the author or co-author of more than 30 books and audio/video learning systems. His articles and columns appear in dozens of print and online publications throughout the US and Internationally. He has also collaborated, organized and published business and self-improvement books with more than 70 other speakers, trainers and consultants.
A frequent keynote and seminar speaker, JP has lived through what most speakers can only “talk” about. He teaches proven principles, ideas and strategies that have been hammered out on the anvil of experience.
Advanced Email Marketing Tips with JP Maroney
JP Maroney returns to the Coachzing show to discuss advanced email marketing tips that will help you grow your business.JP Maroney – Founder and CEO of Marocom Group
JP Maroney is an American entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist with more than 25-years experience starting, building, buying, and selling companies in publishing, media, advertising, software, ecommerce, textiles, training, real estate, and consulting.
Most recently, JP Maroney founded Harbor City Capital Management, a private, boutique investment fund specializing in Digital Marketing Arbitrage. Since it’s inception in December 2013, the fund has returned better than 60% ROI.
In This Episode You’ll Discover:
- Why email marketing is critical to your business
- How do you generate leads for your email business
- How often to email your list
- How to develop great content for your email
Tips From the Episode:
- You want to keep your list “clean”
- Google knows if many people are your list are opening and clicking on your links
- You want to treat your list well so they will stay with you
- You need to make sure that offer good value to your prospects
