Recent Articles Published by Elizabeth Walker and Ken Burgin
16 Ways to Grow Your Business Without Spending Money
Want to grow your business—without spending a lot of money? Here are 16 free or low-cost growth strategies you can put into place right away. Read more »
Three Magic Questions That Drive Sales
Some of our best business conversations happen in the most unlikely places, including our daily walk to the local coffee shop we fuel up in, and the dog park where Liz takes her border collie, Mike. One of our dog park buddies is a woman we’ll call Mary. She’s a self-employed consultant who knows we’re... Read more »
The Astonishing Power of 3rd Party Endorsements
When looking for a product or service they’ve never used before, what do people most often do? Ask someone who has had experience with the product or service of course. This would include taking the advice of an unbiased product review. By “unbiased” we mean reviews that are not paid for, or supported in some... Read more »
The Single Biggest Mistake Small Business Owners Will Make This Year
Did you know that small businesses could actually double their sales by simply following up with leads and contacts? That’s right: 99 percent of small businesses do not consistently follow up with their prospects and customers. Look at the math: If you close 25% of 100 leads or sell to a quarter of 100 store... Read more »
How to Choose a Marketing Company
You are thinking of hiring marketing professionals for your organization. Many people use an RFP—Request for Proposal—process as a way to feel confident of making a good choice. But beware! There are pitfalls in the RFP process that are easy to fall into. If you’ve never worked with a marketing professional, or this is the... Read more »
10 Ways to Market When Cash is Tight
Chances are, at some point in your business’s development, you are going to be a little tight for cash, so here are ten low-cost ways to market better that we’ve worked out with help from Joanna L. Krotz, co-author of the “Microsoft Small Business Kit.” Stop servicing break-even customers By now you know this is... Read more »
Questions That Sell
We are working on a new campaign for a client and spent a few hours today looking at competitive web sites, ads and brochures. After about three hours we looked at each other and said, “Can you remember anything any of these companies said that stands out?” Ken said, “I bet if I took all... Read more »
10 Steps to Unleash Your Lead PR Machine
Take a systematic approach to small business public relations. PR (public/media relations) is a powerful small business-marketing tool. By PR, we mean getting positive press mentions about your firm in local, trade and national publications. These mentions are so powerful because they are seen to come from unbiased third parties, so they are more believable.... Read more »
What to Do With a “Cold” Lead
We have a client who has so many requests for quotes on his desk he is way behind on filling them. At first this seems like a problem we would all like to have. So many leads we can’t get to all of them! But there is a down side to this story. Our client... Read more »
What’s Your “Active Ingredient 90”?
When I was growing up in the 1950’s, Shell, the petroleum company, was advertising that their gasoline contained “TCP” an additive that increased horsepower and made an engine run better. There was no reference to fuel economy that I can recall—who cared? Fas was about 25 cents a gallon! Anyway, Shell sold a helluva lot... Read more »
How Changing an Email Subject Line Added 56% in Sales
We subscribe to Marketing Experiments.com for its marketing research results. We get to see data we can trust on issues of real importance to our clients—like this investigation into how to make the subject line of an email work best. It’s common sense to say that emails reaching out to clients and prospects won’t work... Read more »
7 Ideas Owners Must Consider About Succession Planning
Statistics show that 70 percent of entrepreneur-owned businesses do not survive the founder. Did you work this hard, for this long, to see your life’s work implode? One of the most important features about good marketing process is its impact when it comes time for the owner to move out. Whether you plan to sell... Read more »
A Marketing Tool that Works Day and Night — 24/7
You expect a business to have a telephone. Well, these days, a business is expected to have a web site as well—it’s a credibility issue. And although it’s a complicated subject, once launched, what could be easier than using the internet to spread your marketing message, educate your prospects, and convert prospects to clients? In... Read more »
Why Small Businesses Won’t Double Their Revenue This Year
Part of the fun we have in our practice is hanging out with small business owners. These people are smart, driven, competent and experts in their chosen industry. We always learn something, and we are always in awe of how successful they are at doing something we couldn’t imagine even understanding, let alone doing for... Read more »
Writing a Successful Sales Letter
Our friend Dave called last night, he’s started a small engine repair business and he asked us to review a sales letter he’d written. Dave’s letter was actually pretty good; the only problem was that it did not give a really good reason why anyone should do business with him! There was no incentive; no... Read more »
The Never-Fail Recipe for Ads That Work Like Crazy
It’s always surprising to us to see so much advertising, especially in print, which does not work. It simply doesn’t contain the ingredients needed to successfully communicate with customers. If you make a cake, you don’t leave out any ingredients—right? Then why leave out an important part of your advertising message? With a small budget... Read more »
Connect the Dots—Use Your Website to Make Your Ads Work Harder
Right now in Canada, almost 85% of the population uses the Internet and it’s safe to say this number will continue to expand. So why wouldn’t you use your web site to support the advertising you do in all other media? You do have a web site, right? Here’s the scoop: If you read our... Read more »
Use Two-Step Direct Response Advertising and Stop Wasting Your Ad Money
Many business owners say things like, “We seldom advertise because it doesn’t give us any results —it’s a waste of our money.” And you know what—for these people this is probably true. The ads they are running are not designed to produce tangible results. Most advertising does nothing to motivate a prospect to act—it’s simply... Read more »
What Good Is Your Marketing Without a Strong Idea?
When we present a seminar to a group of business owners, we always ask, “Who here is in the marketing business?” The answer usually is, “Just you.” It’s really a trick question because the simple fact is: anyone who operates a business of any kind is in the marketing business. Otherwise how would you build... Read more »
How to Grow Your Ideal Clients by 25% with Zero Cost of Sales
We are rabid fans of growing loyalty among ideal clients over pretty much any other tactic. It’s the lowest cost sales activity you will ever engage in, since you are already doing business with them, you already know what they want and need and you can easily find out if they are being wooed by... Read more »
