When I first started my blog, I often wrote about the time I spent in Cyprus and my hope that one day I would be able to make more than fleeting visits.
The last two years I’ve been making a conscious effort to ensure that any new business opportunities I got involved in didn’t tie me down to the North West of England, so that I could have the freedom to travel – perhaps to Cyprus, perhaps elsewhere.
At the beginning of this year it dawned on me that despite that effort, I was still here, firmly rooted in the North West of England. Why was that? What was stopping me? Taking time to reflect I realised that there was always a bit of unfinished business, a loose thread or a half chance – either business-wise or of a romantic nature – that I was waiting to see through to its conclusion. In most cases the conclusion was a big fat zero. It made me realise that if I wasn’t careful, I’d spend the rest of my life on the starting grid, always waiting for the right deal, the right guy to come along so that I could move forward with my life.
So instead I have made a choice – to move forward with my life anyway, trusting that the right deals will come along and that the right guy is already out there living his dream and that my new momentum makes it absolutely inevitable that we will meet.
It started as a thought – thinking about moving to Cyprus. Then I started to share the idea with a few friends and the more I talked about it the more the idea felt good – and the more I felt I had to go through with it because I’d told people I was thinking of doing it (what a wuss I’d seem if I didn’t go).
In my blog posts in the coming weeks I’ll be tracking my progress with the impending move – both in terms of the practical steps, but also shifts in mindset and beliefs that occur along the way…….
I spent this last weekend on a personal development workshop in London. A topic that was briefly touched upon really struck a chord with me.
Often we are encouraged to review and improve our habits. Whether it’s giving up smoking, improving our diet, getting more exercise or taking action in business.
We are what we repeatedly do
- Aristotle
Repeat the same pattern of behaviour until it becomes an unconscious habit, something we do without thinking. That is the conventional self improvement wisdom.
Almost every sales and marketing consultant will tell you that you need to ‘touch’ or interact with your prospects multiple times before they will buy.
As the number of marketing messages each of us is exposed to rises almost daily, so the number of touches needed grows too.
Conventional wisdom suggests seven – your prospects have to be exposed to your message at least seven times before they will buy from you – though this figure appears to be rising.
When it comes to internet marketing, the accepted way to tackle this is to use a variety of means to drive targeted traffic (suspects) to your website, where your landing page (be that a special squeeze page as they’re called or a conventional home page) encourages them to interact with your website in some way so that you can capture their email address and convert them into a prospect. Once you have their email address, you can then send a series of messages to build the relationship and eventually encourage your prospects to buy from you.
It’s a tried and tested process used the world over and there are endless articles, books and indeed websites dedicated to how to maximise the traffic to your website, the conversion of that traffic into prospects and those prospects into customers.
But no matter how good you get at internet marketing you are never going to achieve a 100% conversion rate. The overwhelming majority (as many as 99%) of people visiting your website will stop by, have a quick look and move on somewhere else – no matter how well designed your website or how targeted the traffic.
So if 99% of people who visit your website are just passing by and don’t leave you any clue as to who they are, how are you going to keep in touch with them? After all, they were interested enough to stop by in the first place…
What if you could stay in touch with those people somehow, and ensure that they continued to see your message the seven, ten, twenty or fifty times needed to convert them into a prospect then a customer? What if you could keep in touch with them for a year or more? Do you think you could eventually sell quite a few of them something?
Welcome to the wonderful world of Re-Marketing.
There has been something of a revolution going on in the last year or so but it hasn’t really hit the headlines. A number of advertising networks have grown, Google being the biggest (yes, those guys again!) that take smart advertising to a whole new level.
In traditional marketing, a key factor is working out where your suspects and prospects hang out – which newspapers and magazines they read etc. – so that you can ensure your message is strategically placed.
Pay-per-click advertising took that to a new level – now you could get your advert in front of suspects and prospects at the very moment they were searching for what you had to offer.
Re-Marketing is the next generation.
Every computer on the internet has a unique address, an IP address. It’s what web servers use to send you the pages you request when you type in a URL or click on a link – the computer equivalent of your house number and postcode, if you like. Google Analytics and other web tools allow you or your website team to capture the IP address of every visitor to your site – whether they buy from you, subscribe to your mailing list, browse a while or just click straight past to somewhere else.
What Re-Marketing does is create a way for your message to follow that IP address around the internet and for your message to miraculously appear on other websites that your visitor browses.
So someone could visit your website today but not interact. Then tomorrow they are browsing the BBC website and lo and behold there’s an advert for your product or service on that website. How spooky – they were only looking at your site yesterday! A couple of days later they follow a link to read an interesting article on the website of their favourite national newspaper – and “look at that, there’s that company again! Wow, these guys must be doing really well, they’re everywhere! I really must go back and have another look at that website…”
One of the great benefits of Re-Marketing is that it is laser targeted. Your advert is only displayed to a small audience – those who’ve visited your website (and you can niche down even further than that) – and because you are being so targeted in when your advert gets served, the cost of clicks is much lower than if you were bidding against your competitors for a broader audience.
Another benefit is that it gives the impression of ubiquity. The majority of internet users aren’t that tech savvy, and won’t figure out that your ad is only being shown to them because they’ve already been on your website. In their mind you’ll be on the BBC, Sky, Google, Yahoo, MSN, The Times, their favourite specialist magazine site etc. And being associated with those big brands that they trust, being seen to be hanging out in all the right places, does wonders for your credibility and brand awareness – as well as the more direct effect of interacting with those previously untraceable suspects and turning them into prospects and customers.
So integrating Re-Marketing into your marketing strategy can deliver real benefits.
It’s something I’m going to be exploring in more detail for some of my websites – so when I start to implement it you’ll definitely be seeing me around!
According to the latest Pension Trends data from the Office for National Statistics, the total amount saved into pensions fell from £20.9 billion in 2007/8, to £18.7 billion in 2009/10.
On the surface, this may appear to be a worrying trend, and as such the Governments pension reforms, due to come into force in 2012 seem timely and prudent. Essentially every UK employer will have to provide a pension scheme for their employees and auto-enrol them in it, deducting a minimum contribution from their salary.
However, I see things rather differently.
In my opinion, saving into a traditional pension, intending that to be your only source of income in retirement is incredibly risky.
But unfortunately Government doesn’t think in the same way and so all employees are going to be forced to save in this way.
Sadly 99.9% of them will never understand just what a risk they are taking.
We often hear reports about stock market volatility – and therein lies the problem. With pension funds invested in stocks, shares and other paper assets, they are always at the mercy of the stock market – which is overwhelmingly influenced by sentiment over any ‘hard’ factors.
Add to this the fact that with a traditional pension you declare ‘game over’ at the point of retirement and you are at the mercy of time and timing.
A 63 year old Virgo, receiving his pension statement in July 2007 would have seen his fund riding at an all time high. Come his 65th birthday in September 2009 his pension fund would be worth less than half its 2007 value.
He’s gone from imagining how he’ll spend his retirement to wondering if he can afford to. If he retires, his pension pot buys him an annuity. That means his money is no longer invested – it’s just a pot that he’s drawing out of with nothing more going into it. He can never get a better pension.
He can only improve his finances by working or refinancing his home.
The stress of all this leads him to an early grave. His widow, in many cases, now only gets 60% of the pension. When she goes, so does the pension.
When you invest in stocks and shares, if the company goes bump you lose your investment. All you had was a piece of paper. When the company is no longer there – neither is your investment.
That’s why I don’t invest in stocks and shares – unless it’s a business which I have some influence over. Last time I looked, no matter how much I spend at M&S or Sainsburys or Royal Bank of Scotland, I don’t get much of a say in what they do next.
If I don’t have control or influence, then I am speculating rather than investing – yet this is what the Government is wanting the UK population to do.
They’ve made a mess of the state pension, now they want everyone to fend for themselves – but they are encouraging, or even forcing, people into a retirement plan that is based on an increasingly volatile stock market.
So while the news that people aren’t investing as much in pensions because of the recession seems like bad news, actually there could be a silver lining to that cloud.
I just hope that before they get the available funds to start investing again, they gain the financial intelligence that should be taught in schools, and realise that there are far less risky ways of building a retirement income.
As yet another busy week flies by – and best laid plans of progressing certain projects fall by the wayside as a constant stream of emergencies and distractions divert your attention and resources – it’s easy to get to the end of the week and feel you’ve accomplished nothing.
To Do lists and Goal lists are essential but sometimes life has a way of sending us off in crazy directions and it’s easy to forget that while we didn’t cross items off our lists, we actually achieved a whole lot of other stuff.
So as well as having a To Do List, think about writing down what you actually did as well as a way of recognising your achievements.
Another important factor is Celebration.
So often when we do achieve something, we just tick it off the list and move onto the next item without pausing to reflect and celebrate.
Watch any football match, from the Premier League down to kids in the park and you will see the team that has just scored a goal take time out to celebrate. Yes, there’s only 90 minutes of play in the game but they take a few precious seconds to celebrate a goal before continuing with the match.
The act of celebrating an achievement gives it significance, it reinforces it as a positive experience in our mind and in our psyche. The Law of Attraction states that we get what we focus on. So giving attention to our achievements, however small, sets the wheels of the universe in motion to drive us towards more success, just as staring at our unachieved To Do list with a feeling of failure is likely to have us focusing on, and therefore receiving, more failure.
I find that even in what we think of as failures there is a success to be found, recognised and celebrated. Instead of focusing on the failure, search for the achievement, the success it contains.
It is said that Thomas Edison had almost a thousand failed prototypes for the light bulb. His view of each of these was that he’d succeeded in finding another way NOT to make a light bulb.
Isn’t that so much more powerful?
It does seem sometimes as though the Battle of the Sexes has become as deeply entrenched a conflict as anything going on in Afghanistan.
Individual experiences coupled with the media representation of both genders means the barricades between us are growing ever higher.
In trying to achieve gender equality (a noble aim) we have instead lost sight of the special value that each gender has. I cannot speak for all womankind but I think the original idea with Women’s Lib was for us to feel valued, able to express ourselves and be given the same chances in life to develop our talents, fulfil our dreams etc. Unfortunately it got hijacked by the ‘all men are bastards’ brigade and equally men’s natural tendency towards conflict & competition meant they felt threatened by our desire for independence and rebelled against it.
As a single woman who would dearly love to be in a relationship with a man again, I find the whole situation very disappointing. It seems that at my age (over 40) many single men have been burned by their previous partners and aren’t willing to risk that again. They equate a relationship with nagging, arguments, being bossed around, not being allowed to see their mates, and having to walk on eggshells around a highly strung, high maintenance harridan for whom they will never be good enough.
And so they either spend all their time with their male friends and actively avoid the opposite sex or they become players just using women like they use disposable razors. Which in turn feeds fuel to the dual fires of ‘all men are hopeless’ and ‘all men are bastards’
Sadly a lot of women have behaved like that – nagging, bossing, being high maintenance – mistaking argumentative for assertive. Which means that women like me (and I know far too many) – who have a lot of love to give, who value the gender differences and actually want a man who is a man – are missing out because our ‘sisters’ have bashed them into either submission or rebellion.
It truly saddens me that so many have chosen to shut themselves off from love. To love and be loved in return, in the intimate way that two adults can share, is one of life’s greatest pleasures and greatest accomplishments. And as such it deserves another try and another ad infinitum.
I hope they will find a way to let go of the sadness from their previous relationships and open up to the wonderful possibility of meeting someone where all they have to give is more than the other person would ever ask from them. Where both partners can enjoy their similarities and savour their differences.
So if I may be so bold, can I propose we lay down our weapons and preconceptions, step out from behind the barricades onto neutral ground and get to know each other all over again – I think we could have a lot of fun together!
I contributed to a discussion on the 4Networking forum the other day. A fellow member was considering setting up a referral programme to win new clients but had heard there were pitfalls and wanted some opinions.
Having written a long reply (as usual 
) I thought I’d write a post for my blog on the subject (thereby following one of my pet philosophies of ‘create once, use many times’!)
I think referrals are becoming an increasingly important aspect of marketing and new customer acquisition.
The rise of social media, coupled with a growing mistrust of both officialdom and advertising, mean that people are increasingly making their buying decisions based on the opinions and recommendations of their friends and trusted contacts.
For any referral programme to succeed it has to be easy – both for the referrer to make the recommendation and for the company to manage the reward that follows.
There are many different types of referral system and depending on the nature of your business and your revenue model, some may be more suitable than others.
Delivering a great product or service at a great price to your customers naturally means that many of them will recommend you without needing any reward or incentive to do so – you just need to encourage them to do that. “If you enjoyed your meal tell your friends, if you didn’t – tell us” is often seen in restaurants. Adding social media share and like buttons to your website is another great way of getting your existing customers and prospects to tell their friends about you.
Another kind of referral programme involves rewarding your existing customers by giving them discounted or free products and services. This could be a one off reward or you could have the amount increasing the more people they refer or the more business those referrals generate. Of course, you have to make sure the business gained generates enough revenue to cover the cost of delivery of the discounted/free rewards as well as improving your overall profitability – otherwise at best, there’s no point in running the scheme, or at worst it could be your quickest way to go out of business!
A third kind of referral programme involves rewarding existing customers by giving them rewards outside the scope of what you sell. These should have a high perceived value but a low cost of delivery. Examples may be vouchers for special offers at other businesses or retail outlets, bottles of wine and other luxury items.
That leads on to a fourth kind – cross referral between two complementary businesses. Rather than your customers referring clients to you, you refer your customers to a strategic partner and vice versa – e.g. the hairdressers gives a voucher for money off a manicure at the local beauty salon while the beauty salon gives a voucher for free cut with any colour treatment at the hairdressers.
Then there are affiliate programmes where the people referring business to you aren’t even customers necessarily. You pay them a percentage of the sale generated or a flat fee for each new client.
I’ve become an affiliate/referrer for quite a lot of the services I use on a day to day basis. I’m the kind of person who mentions great things I’ve found anyway, but receiving commission, discounts or freebies just adds a nice touch. Of course, my reputation is vital to me so I’m only ever going to recommend companies I respect and products/services I genuinely believe in.
So to summarise, a referral programme needs to create a win for everyone – you, the referrer and the new customer. It has to be easy for referrals to happen and easy for you to track them and reward the referrers.
So have you tried a referral scheme for your business? Has it worked well? What problems did you encounter? I’m planning more detailed articles in this area so it would be great to know what information might help you.
Oh and if you’ve enjoyed this article, why not share it with your friends!!
For those of you who don’t know me so well, I am a very spiritual person.
The other day, faced with a mounting sense of overwhelm, and yet another disappointment on the romantic front, I decided to get back in touch with an old acquaintance of mine. A few years ago, I trained as a Spiritual Healer and John, had been one of my tutors.
I was sharing with John how every time I met a great guy that I was attracted to, I’d just reach the point where I was thinking ‘Mmmm I would like to see a lot more of this guy’ when he would suddenly start to go quiet on me – then I’d realise it was me initiating all the contact so I’d back off to allow him to resume the chase, only to have him disappear altogether.
Why does this keep happening to me, I asked John. John shed some light on it for me:
The unconscious mind exists to fulfil our every desire. It takes the thoughts, emotions, words and actions of our conscious mind and body and seeks to bring into being all that matches. It deals in absolutes – hot or cold, black or white – it cannot handle ambiguity, it needs a clear outcome to aim for.
John got me to imagine a set of old fashioned scales. Now, picture all the negative things that have happened in past relationships as being in one pan of the scales so they are tipped over to one side completely. Then my conscious mind has created the desire for a new loving and fulfilling relationship with a great guy. As I meet someone who interests me, all the positive experiences I have with him, all the fun, the romance etc starts to fill the other pan of the scales, and the scales start to shift.
Eventually the pans are perfectly in balance – equal amounts of negative and positive energy. To the unconscious mind this is ambiguous. So it throws up a question, a situation to get guidance as to which way the scales should be tipping.
Just as I reached that ‘he’s great, I like where this is going’ stage, my scales were in perfect balance. So my unconscious mind created the situation where there was some uncertainty (the guy starting to go quiet) to get some feedback from me as to which way to move the scales.
I then started to worry that things were going wrong, so my unconscious mind (which is there to fulfil the desires of the conscious mind) took that as a signal that I wanted the negative outcome that I’d had previously – so through a combination of the situation and my reaction to it, that’s what I kept getting.
Now that I understand that better, I can be more aware and when my unconscious mind sends me a challenge to test which way I want the scales to tip, I can ensure that I give it a very clear, resounding and unambiguous sign.
I guess the same applies in business – we set off on a course of action only to hit a hurdle. Too often, we give up and resign ourselves to the ‘I knew it wouldn’t work’ self-recrimination. Perhaps by understanding that we are just at that tipping point where our efforts are about to move us from past failure to future success will ensure that we keep going and send a clear message back to our unconscious mind – Success Please!!
Like so many experts, Richard has been providing his skills to his clients by exchanging his time for their money. It's a classic business model that is probably the most frequently adopted by new entrepreneurs - what am I good at doing that I can get paid for? But this model creates a number of problems......
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California, USA, 1849 – there’s gold in them there hills and almost every man, woman and child capable of wielding a shovel or shaking a pan sets off to seek their fortune.
But what most failed to recognise is that there’s a reason gold is so valuable – it is rare. With thousands of square miles to mine and hundreds of miles of streams to pan, the chances of staking a claim to the right patch of ground, and then actually finding the gold buried there were incredibly slim. Yet still they rushed.
Meanwhile, a few savvy individuals recognised the bigger opportunity – if all those people wanted to dig for gold, they were going to need the tools to do it. So why not sell them to them?
And so while thousands lost rather than found their fortune, a handful of entrepreneurs figured out how to really make money out of the gold rush – by selling all the tools and equipment that the gold diggers needed.
So, when you look at your own business with an objective eye, are you digging for gold or are you selling shovels? Are you doing all the hard graft or are you selling the enabling products and services so others can toil for themselves?
If the main income in your business involves you exchanging your time for money, I can pretty much guarantee that you are digging for gold. Equally if you are the one taking all the risks, you’re probably digging for gold.
Here are some examples:
| Gold Digging | Shovel Selling |
| Doing below market value property deals | Selling below market value property deals |
| Doing lease option property deals | Running courses on how to do lease options |
| Staging Homes for Sale | Selling an e-course on how to start your own home staging business |
| Renting holiday accommodation | Running a website portal for holiday home owners to offer their accommodation |
| Anything where you want people to pay you to do something for them | Anything where you sell them your knowledge so they can do it themselves |
Now there’s nothing wrong with a gold digging style business – as long as you understand that’s what you are doing and appreciate that you have to dig a lot of dirt before you hit gold, and that plenty of other people are also digging around you.
But transforming your business into selling shovels – or introducing an element of shovel selling – can have a significant impact on profitability, the ease with which you do business – and your overall lifestyle.
Michelle McDines is an entrepreneur & property investor with a passion for startup businesses, the internet, passive income and wealth creation. Having built an international property portfolio, Michelle's main focus today is on her entrepreneurial activities.
