Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Karma Marketing

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Being good to people is good karma and, according to John Fischer of StickerGiant.com, it’s also good marketing. 

John credits what he calls “karma marketing” for helping to build the small business he started out of his basement in 2000 to one of the most popular online sites for all kinds of stickers, including political stickers, custom bumper stickers, laptop stickers and more.

So what is karma marketing? According to John, karma marketing means looking for ways to change people’s lives in meaningful ways. StickerGiant does a lot of traditional marketing, such as sponsoring events, but they also go beyond the traditional to engage with customers in ways most businesses do not. Here are some of the principles of karma marketing, as practiced by StickerGiant.com:

Giving freely. StickerGiant has given stickers to dozens of bloggers and organizations, both large and small. Many of them have become evangelists, helping to spread the word about StickerGiant.

Committing random acts of kindness. John went to Twitter and registered the names of his top competitors. Then he sent the account information to them so they would own their brands on Twitter. Is that second part not what you expected? That’s exactly the point. Do you think his competitors were surprised by this, too?

Going beyond customer service. In one case, a new customer made a spelling error on a custom sticker order for her employer, and was going to have to pay for the reprint out of her own pocket. StickerGiant reprinted the stickers at their expense, saving the customer hundreds of dollars. John explains that StickerGiant breaks the mindset that says, “If I did this for everyone, I would go broke,” and provides extraordinary service, particularly in extraordinary circumstances. They couldn’t afford to reprint every custom order at no cost, but they don’t have to do it for every customer.

Saying thank you. Every custom order gets a handwritten follow-up post card. When is the last time you got a handwritten note thanking you for your business?

Asking for feedback. And really listening. Customers are often shocked to learn that not only did someone read the comment card they filled out, StickerGiant took action on their suggestion.

Karma marketing means treating customers as you would like to be treated, but it is more than that. It means going beyond the expected and doing good even without the expectation of a direct payoff.

How could you implement karma marketing in your business? Look for ways to make the lives of your customers, vendors, employees—and even competitors—better. Some may cost money in the short term, others will not. Will it make money for you? Probably so. People like to do business with people they like.

Karma marketing is about building a business that does good in the world. If you make a genuine effort to do the right thing for others, it will be noticed. And we can all use some good karma, right?

Three Simple Steps to Put Your Ideas Into Action

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As the Idea Lady, I know that coming up with a great idea is a wonderful feeling. Having a great idea is only the first step, though. Ideas are not worth anything until you put them into action. 

Putting ideas into action is where many people stumble. They may be afraid to try something new, or confused about how to get started. Or they may think they do not have the skills or resources necessary to make their idea successful.

Here is a simple three step plan for going from idea to action:

Make a plan and write it down. A big project is less intimidating when you break it into a series of small steps. If you are not sure where to start, work backwards. For example, if your project is to create and sell a new product online, one of the last steps might be to make sales. What do you have to do before that? You need to have a sales page on a website, a way to accept payments and the product itself. What steps will you have to take to put those things in place? Keep working backwards until you reach the beginning.

If you are not sure what needs to be done, then your first step is to learn. Identify the resources available to teach you what you need to know or the people who can help you.

Put dates with each of the steps in your plan to keep yourself moving along.

Forget fear. Do not let fear stop you from getting started. Do not worry about what other people will think if you fail. Anyone who would criticize someone for trying and failing probably doesn’t have the nerve to try anything themselves, so forget about them. Besides, you are not going to fail. With your plan in place, you will succeed.

Start now, and keep going. Choose a task from your list and do it. Then another, then another. Take action every day, even if it is a small thing. Do not worry about choosing the “perfect” thing to do, or getting things just-so. There is a saying that, “The perfect is the enemy of the good enough.” It means that some people worry so much about making everything perfect that they end up not doing anything. Just do what you need to do and keep moving toward your goal.

Do not get discouraged if your progress slows or your lose ground. Just get back on track and start moving forward again.

Although having an idea can be exciting, seeing it come to fruition is incredibly satisfying. Take action to make your idea a success.

Repackage Your Services for Maximum Profit

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When you sell a service you perform personally, your revenue is limited by the number of hours in each day. After all, you can only fit so many appointments into the day, and you have to eat and sleep sometime.

One way to raise your income ceiling is to hire additional people to work with you. Your staff may perform the same services you do for clients, or they may provide support to you so that you have more billable hours.

Marketing your services in new ways can increase your income while you work the same number of hours. For example, instead of performing the actual service, offer group consulting to do-it-yourselfers. Each member of the group pays a lower rate than they would pay for your undivided attention, but you make more per hour.

This works well in fields where the basic skills can be taught, but performing the service may be time-intensive. For example, a publicist could work with a group of similar clients help them develop effective press releases, then teach them how to follow up with media on their own.

Offer a seminar to share your knowledge with others. Your audience might be from your target market, or you might offer continuing education or other learning opportunities for others in your profession. You may present in your local area, or take your seminars on the road.

A new way of teaching that eliminates the need for travel is through teleseminars and Webinars. Teleseminars are courses presented over the telephone. Webinars may be strictly Web-based or they may combine Web and telephone presentations. You can teach students all over the world without leaving your office.

Keynote speakers may receive $2500 – $10,000 or more for a one-hour speech. After honing your speaking skills and material through teaching, you can have a highly marketable talk. Just a few days each month spent traveling and presenting could increase your annual income by $50,000 or more.

All of the ideas so far have still involved getting an hour’s pay for an hour’s work; however, that hourly rate may be much higher than your normal rate. If your typical rate is $200 an hour, but you have 75 people each paying $39 for a one-hour teleseminar, you will gross $2925 for that hour. Even after expenses, you may net $2000 or more. The first time you present it you will invest time (perhaps as little as two or three hours) to develop the content, but subsequent presentations will require little or no preparation.

If you really want to explode your earning potential, you need to go beyond these ideas and create products that provide ongoing income. Write a book or ebook. Record your speeches and teleseminars and sell them on CD or as audio downloads. Create a membership Web site where members get access to your articles, teleseminars and other resources for a monthly or annual fee.

Look for new ways to package and market your services, and you will find many opportunities to increase your profits.

Quick Ways to Generate Business

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You should think of marketing as something you do every day, every week, every month, for as long as you are in business. However, there are some things you can do to bring quick results. 

The next time you need to generate some revenue in a hurry, try some of these fast and easy ways to get more business from new and existing clients.

Send an email. Create an email list of customers and prospects. Only add people to your list with permission, not just because you have an email address. A great service for managing your email list is at http://www.MailYourCustomers.com/. You may wish to send an email newsletter on a regular schedule, such as monthly, or just when you have news. The email will remind them about you, and you can give them a reason to visit your web site or your location by making a special offer or other call to action. I always see more visitors to my web site after I send one of my newsletters.

Get out of the office. There are networking events every day. Head to the local Chamber of Commerce luncheon, or the after work mix-and-mingle, or the meeting of your professional association. These meetings will help you to come in contact with new customers and connect with other professionals who can make referrals to you. Even if you do not get immediate business, you may learn something useful from a speaker, or just get energized and motivated.

Call some customers. Tell them about a new product, or offer a special price when they place an order today. Sometimes just calling to thank them for their business can result in a sale when they remember that they need something from you. Consultant Marcia Yudkin says that calling a former client to ask if she could use them as a reference resulted in getting additional work from them on the spot.

Follow up on leads. If you have leads from a trade show, networking, your web site or other sources, call them to follow up. Answer their questions, offer a deal or schedule an appointment to meet with them. They have already expressed an interest, so take the next step toward closing the deal.

Distribute a press release. Find something newsworthy about your business and alert the media. Email a release to your personal media list, or get a custom media list made for you and get your release in the hands of media, bloggers and the news wires. A good release can send visitors to your web site, bring customers in the door and get your phone ringing.

The next time you need customers and you need them now, try one or more of these techniques. Then get in the habit of doing them regularly to keep new business flowing to you.

Finding New Business Opportunities

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If you are looking for an idea for a new business, a way to tap into a new market, or a product line expansion, the answer may be right in front of you. The secret is to learn to see the opportunities that exist.

An article in the Wall Street Journal told about entrepreneurs who profit by providing stylish ways to wear those security badges so many corporate employees are now required to carry. The businesses mentioned range from an intensive care nurse who sells crystal beaded holders for $30 – $50 each to her fellow nurses, to a jewelry company that has sold 100,000 badge holders at prices ranging from $10 to $300.

Although the scale and execution differ, what these entrepreneurs have in common is that each one saw a need and a way to fill it. The nurse designs and creates her holders as a side business, and turns away business because she doesn’t have the time. The jewelry company sells both retail and wholesale, and creates special holders for large customers. (Boeing wants theirs made using ball bearings!)

Both the nurse and the jewelry company started their lines for nurses; however, with the increased security in place these days, more companies are requiring the use of security cards and the demand has increased.

What can you learn from this? First, if you are looking for business or product ideas, solve a problem faced by yourself and those around you. The above businesses addressed the desire of employees to avoid those tacky lanyards and express individualism within a corporate environment.

Listen to complaints and suggestions about existing products and services. Whether customers are talking about your products and services, or you hear comments about other companies, each negative is an opportunity to create something new that meets a need.

Keep your eyes open for people who should be your customers, but aren’t yet. The badge holders were created for nurses, but found a large market in the corporate environment when employers started requiring employees to carry cards. This change created entire new markets that had to learn about the availability of the products.

Look for new uses for old products. Caboodles cosmetic cases were launched when the company learned that women were buying fishing tackle boxes to store their cosmetics. (Insert your own obvious joke about what the women were trying to catch here!) They created a line of boxes especially for that purpose in bright colors to appeal to women. Same boxes, new look, new market.

As needs and circumstances change, watch for opportunities to meet the needs of new and existing customers—sometimes by offering things they don’t yet know they need!