How I plan to benefit from a lost pitch

A question from Quora was sent to me to answer. And it demonstrates so neatly why many new business people get discouraged by apparent failures. My answer shows how to play the “advantage” card from a disappointment and position yourself for future success while gaining valuable business experience from the situation.

My business partner’s dad/investors asked for a pitch, to which he said no after a while, but still plans to use some of the ideas. What can I do?

I told her this idea I had for a concept store that she just shared with her Dad who offered to invest/add it to his Group. After talking a few weeks ago, he just sent us a decline letter, but she says he & his partners may still use some of my ideas. I’m lost… and she doesn’t care.. What can I do ?

How to benefit from a failed pitch

Write back to each person, individually, thanking them very much for their time in hearing your pitch. Be sure that they understand how much of the pitch was your concept/idea. Say you’re sorry that they have decided not to progress working with you at this time.

Tell them that if they use your ideas in future you will be keen to

a) work on the project, or
b) receive a commission payment to reflect your intellectual capital investment

Tell them that this is only one of many bright ideas you have to contribute to their businesses and ask for an introduction to two other people who might be keen to work with someone of your talents.

Four days later, follow up with a phone call to each one to check they got your email and to ask for the introductions.

The outcome will be that you will probably not get any money from a) or b). But the introductions you receive will give you entry into a new circle of prospective employers and clients.

Why this works

The psychology of getting them to acknowledge your contribution (which they may use in future without paying) provokes the principle of reciprocity. You gave them something of value and now you are asking for something of value in return (introductions).

The follow-up shows that you are more determined than most (e.g. your business partner) and therefore are “one to watch” for the future who may benefit them again.

Lastly, in future don’t share your ideas with your business partner again without first gaining agreement about how they are to be used and valued.

Google Alerts

How to Use Google Alerts to Drive Business

Google alerts are an extremely useful resource for promoting your business online. First of all, if you aren’t using Google Alerts to track your business, you’re missing a seriously useful hack. They are particularly handy for staying up to date with relevant and timely information regarding your business, so you can react immediately to any publicity or news as soon as it happens.

But that’s not all Google Alerts are good for…

Google Alerts can also be used via RSS as a news aggregator on your website or blog! This is particularly useful for showing your visitors you know what is happening around you as well as demonstrating a position of authority with regards to your particular topic. Displaying the latest, relevant news results provides a great reason for your fans to continue returning to your site. Tailored, niche content is much easier to digest when it is a subject aligned with your own browsing interests. It may even help increase the likelihood of your visitors purchasing from you!

The best part about this is it can be totally automated, so you don’t have to spend time curating material. But make sure you have tested and refined your alert keywords in order to get the best results. Or, be sure to check the results from time to time in order to filter out anything that doesn’t fit with your brand.

We will be putting together a guide explaining how to get Google Alerts displaying as an RSS feed on your website shortly…

The next application for Google Alerts is a little more intricate: With a bit of research and a thorough understanding of your target market, you can even use Google Alerts to find new business!

Example: How to use Google Alerts to Generate Leads

Our client provides storage equipment solutions to the global rowing community. Although they can retro-fit single pieces of equipment inside an existing boathouse, their biggest projects come from clubs and organisations who have or are building brand new facilities. These new facilities obviously require a complete fit out of storage equipment and therefore, are our client’s ideal market. So how do you know when a new facility is built and looking for storage equipment? Timing is everything – if you find them too late, they may have already sourced a supplier and you’ll have missed the boat. Google Alerts provides the answer!

By setting up alerts with keywords such as “new rowing boathouse”, “rowing building new boathouse” and “new rowing club” for example, you get a nice summary of boathouse developments happening around the world.

Of course you have to continue your research beyond the alert itself to determine the lead’s value. Sometimes, results are completely irrelevant, and sometimes they are duplicates of material you have already covered. However, on the whole, they are incredibly useful at identifying future projects, as they are often newsworthy topics in their local area.

google alerts example creative agency secretsgoogle alerts example creative agency secrets

The next step is to track all your leads in a spreadsheet. Information such as who to contact and where they are located is particularly important. Additional research on the lead’s website often provides the necessary information to point you in the right direction.

In our client’s case, we were interested in contacting the architects of the boathouse, so that we could get involved with the club and their design process, as early as possible.

We have experienced great success building up a database of quality leads for our client in recent months. It is then up to our client to continue the dialogue with the prospective club and come to an arrangement. We have had a great deal of success converting these previously unknown prospects into happy customers, and have done so without investing hugely in advertising, outbound mailing campaigns or other conventional outbound marketing activities!

We have been able to minimise the time taken to research new sources of business through alerts and have increased the prevalence of new business, while making it easy to filter out results of no value. And as it updates you each time a new boathouse is being developed, you don’t waste time searching for them manually. A weekly check of your alerts inbox provides you with enough

Regardless of your industry or business, there’s bound to be a positive application to use Google Alerts for. Whether it is direct lead generation, building a database of bloggers and journalists to share content between, or even researching a network of businesses whose interests align neatly with your own, the uses for it go on and on.

Marketing analysis (Business vector designed by Freepik)

Getting insight from your Marketing Analysis

Data is worthless unless it has meaning. Today’s marketer has access to more data than ever.

Finally we stand a chance of overcoming the traditional hostility to marketing as being 50% wasted spend because digital is wholly trackable and spend ROI can be calculated. And yet now, when all this is within our grasp, marketers fail to transition because they don’t understand data. They don’t like data, marketing doesn’t recruit numerate graduates and so the “fluffy” attitude to our discipline continues.

This annoys the hell out of me. It is not difficult and so I make analytics required task for all the interns, graduates and new staffers joining our team.

So what numbers should a business owner and a marketer look for and how to interpret them?

Analytics is free

Google has a comprehensive analytics package called Google Analytics (GA) which is freely available and you should install it on your website. You can ask your developer to install the code in your website or use plugins such as the Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights (formerly known as Google Analytics by Yoast). There are more sophisticated packages, but start your pathway to analysis glory with the workhorse of the industry.

One of the best things about GA is that many marketing software applications integrate with it – so if you use marketing automation with Campaign Monitor or MailChimp or InfusionSoft then once it’s set up everything gets tracked with no further effort on your part.

Finding your space online

Google Analytics referralsMost businesses understand how to find and occupy a niche online – the keywords and search phrases which you want to get found for and the competing websites and brands for your business.

And so your content marketing will be resonating with others who share your niche.

The bit of analytics I love most is the incoming referrals data.

I was with a client who sells paleo food products through an online store. They had never, ever looked at their analytics account. Ever. So we took a look and found they had incoming links from powerful bloggers who had the potential to resell their products. Double Whammy – a strong incoming link sending traffic to the site plus a potential new distributor. Two easy actions for them to improve business revenues. And all it took was a look into GA.

Referrals Data Analysis

Google Analytics destination pageSo let’s go on a little journey inside Google Analytics – first looking at the Acquisition tab and then below, the Referrals sub-category. Ooh, I love this part…. look at all the websites where people have followed a link into your website…. but there’s more. Now find the pages they linked to by adding to the data display. Go to the top of the referrals page and look for this button, click on Secondary Dimension and below on the menu that appears expand the menu below “Behaviour” and click on Destination Page. Now you can see all the visitors from different sites sorted by the page they came to.

Does this help?

Oh boy yes. Now I know which content is engaging to readers, which source websites are sending me traffic and in what volumes to which pages…. I can find pages where the content gets visited regularly all the time, I can find blog posts that get very little or a large amount. This allows us to adjust what we write, which keywords, which audiences and where to share the content.

Things that you can do to improve incoming links.

If there are a range of companies sending traffic to your homepage, consider creating a landing page just for them. We have several on our website – take a look at this https://creativeagencysecrets.com/yellow/ Yes we wrote a page just for visitors from our Yellow Pages listing. It contains information that will help shortcut their journey through the site to finding what they want, fast.

You can do this too

Google Analytics queriesOther small tasks worth paying someone to do (if you don’t know how) is integrating Google Search Console with GA so you can see the Queries your website shows up for and how many click-throughs you get and what your average display rank is (page one or page 21?). So helpful.

And if you use Google AdWords – your reporting from the agency who does the work for you should include as a minimum the following data points.

• Number of leads
• Cost per lead
• Top Adverts
• Number of impressions
• Which keywords are sending traffic
• Search query

This last, search query, is really important because it shows what the potential customer typed into the search engine…. and that’s gold as far as on-site SEO goes. Same as the Queries inside GA.

There is core data which as the advertiser you need and as the marketers, we need, in order to focus our efforts appropriately.

So let’s get started as confident analytics users whose marketing delivers return on investment.

Teach yourself, get tutored or go on a course. Doesn’t matter how, just get on and do this one thing.

Identify prospects for your business (Map vector designed by Alvaro_cabrera - Freepik.com)

How can I identify prospects for my business?

Client acquisition. I need to IDENTIFY the most likely prospects for my agency. How do I do that? 

Good question and spot on…. you are in exactly the same situation as us here at Creative Agency Secrets.
My advice to you would be
  1. Focus on Local marketing…. set up SEO/SEM to be found in the metropolitan areas where you ALREADY have clients
  2. Testimonials – work these hard on Google My Business and any other relevant marketplaces
  3. Write blog posts to appeal to industry segments who could be clients e.g. I wrote this blog Top Tips for Marketing Tradesmen and got an enquiry from Vancouver, CA.
So that’s a direct answer to your question which you should be able to execute yourselves.
If you would like to buy coaching advice with more ideas for you to run as tactical marketing, we charge by the hour. I recommend having a conference call for 30 minutes every 2 weeks.

Further reading on Local Marketing tactics

Social Media Conference 2016

Get early bird tickets for the Social Media Conference 2016

Do you want to learn about Social Media to CONNECT, ENGAGE AND GROW?

Then join fellow Business Owners, Social Media peeps and other amazing people who have already registered for the Social Media Conference 2016.

Accelerate your learning of:

+ Social Media Strategy
+ Developing content that will rock your Brand
+ Using live video to project your presence
+ Networking and building online communities
+ Using Google apps to grow your business
+ Using social media to Sell to an International Market like China and the USA
+ How to sell to the new generation of Millennials
+ Combining Webinars and social media for added sales results

With table topics on:

+ Snapchat
+ Instagram
+ Facebook Business
+ Facebook Advertising
+ LinkedIn
+ Outsourcing
+ Pinterest
+ Blogging
+ Podcasting
+ YouTube
+ Facebook Live
+ and much more

If you want to grow your Business using Social Media then this is the place to be.

[button_5 bg=”orange” text_color=”dark” text=”register-now.png” align=”center” href=”http://socialmediaconference.co.nz/”/]

The Speakers

  • Amanda Jordan from Google
  • Tom Walter form Tumblr flying in from Australia
  • Robert C Stern flying in from the USA and known as the King of Live Video
  • Pauline Stockhausen – Speaker at the Social Media Marketing World in San Diego
  • Natalie Cutler Welsh and Wanita Z Fourie – bringing fabulous information from the Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. Both have been on TV, radio and newspapers
  • Andrew Baird – Digital Marketing and Business Growth Guru
  • Simon Young – creating magic in International Markets.

Networking

Fabulous opportunities to network. People have made significant business connections during the conference and friendships which extend beyond professional contexts.

Audience

Solopreneurs, small and medium size business owners, and people working in social media roles either within corporates or externally, community managers, bloggers, podcasters and anyone wanting to expand their knowledge and understanding of social media.

EARLY BIRD SALES END JULY 31. Book your ticket today for $560.00 which includes GST, full buffet style lunch for both days, refreshments, access to recordings of the conference speakers, prizes and much more.

Because the audience is geared towards the small/medium size business, payment plans are available. You can see the selection of plans here.

There’s a large contingent of International Business Owners booking and people from all over New Zealand. The seating is limited and is selling fast. Don’t miss out.

[button_5 bg=”orange” text_color=”dark” text=”reserve-your-spot.png” align=”center” href=”http://socialmediaconference.co.nz/” new_window=”Y”/]

Mystery, conspiracy or just plain busy?

I wrote the headline to a prospect who wasn’t returning my calls.

The goal was to provoke a response – I also left phone messages…several.

When you have new business pipeline deals to close, remember this one thing.

The client does not owe you the business but s/he does owe you an answer.

There are 3 possible answers – Yes, No and Maybe.

Go gettem!

Pokémon GO marketing opportunities

How Pokémon GO is influencing marketing for local business

When a business is struggling to acquire new clients or increase profits, creativity and innovation are the best tools to create a new reality. More accurately, in Nintendo’s case, an augmented reality.

On July 6th, the videogame giant launched Pokémon GO and took the lead of the download rankings on both iPhone’s App Store and Google Play by storm. Just a few days after its initial release in the US they added UK, Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to this bold move, Nintendo’s shares rose 56% in a week, setting Nintendo’s market value at unbelievable 34 billion dollars. Nintendo is also generating direct revenue by in-game microtransactions and will include adverts shortly.

What is Pokémon GO?

If you don’t know what Pokémon GO is, let me explain it while you defrost from the cryogenics: it’s a free-to-play location-based mobile game where you can capture fantasy monsters and train them to challenge other players to a weirdly cute pit fight. Using augmented reality (mixing real-world and virtual elements) with the assistance of your smartphone’s GPS and camera, the player searches for creatures while actually walking around the local streets. He can then snatch it with a PokéBall, a special contraption built to hold these monsters.

Pokémon GO screen on smartphone

Even though Nintendo is a “lovemark”, thanks to classic games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, the console war wasn’t gentle on the business for the past years. With the Japanese company losing a huge market share to Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox, many predicted that Nintendo was in a descending curve.

Buddy up and benefit

Of course it’s hard to create such a splash like Nintendo did with Pokemón GO, but just because you didn’t create the wave doesn’t mean you can’t surf it for a while. Several local businesses are experiencing an increase in sales thanks to the extra foot traffic around their shops, located close to PokéStops. A feature in the game, PokéStops are real locations in cities where players can collect rare Pokémons and items to improve their Pokémon GO accounts. PROTIP: You can request a PokéStop at your business location by filling this form. PROTIP 2: If your shop is already close to one of those sweet spots, you can buy an in-game item (remember the microtransactions I mentioned?) called “Lure Module” to attract lots of Pokémons to your location (and people eager to catch ’em all).

Pokémon GO sign outside a local shop

Sign outside a shop invites players to enter and play

But why rely on pure luck and sit on your bum waiting? Brands can also be more proactive, searching for the greatest Pokémon GO hotspots and give potential customers the opportunity to engage directly. Ads, brand ambassadors, promotional activities, you name it. Some quick thinkers are already making money by offering car rides to players in what seems to be the laziest safari hunt ever.

Now it’s up to you. Is your business going to take advantage of this massive opportunity? And what can you do to transform your local business and be the next Pokémon GO?

marketing tactic blows away the competition

Devastating marketing tactic blows away the competition

Every marketer dreams of being able to help their clients achieve an unassailable advantage over their competition. Kinda like Asterix and Obelix the ‘indomitable Gauls’ against the Roman Empire.
Indomitable Gauls make Romans wary

Indomitable Gauls make Romans wary

A Killer App for Professional Services Marketing

I dream of finding a marketing tool or service which will knock my opposition’s pitch out of the ballpark.  Today I think I have seen one.
The commercially savvy partners at Simmonds Stewart IP lawyers have provided FREE a giant set of legal templates for download.
I’m very impressed with them giving away templated legal documentation as part of their brand building.  They caveat appropriately about the use of these, but for startups, it certainly gives gigantic brand building opportunity and of course allows the prospective client to quickly bookmark their favourite lawyers’ website for future reference.
Is there an equivalent which could make your professional services business stand out in the same way? This could be a devastating marketing death-blow (Vulcan death grip?) for competitors.
Just thoughts….
YouTube accounts merge

Help! My YouTube Accounts Won’t Merge!

YouTube-logo-full_colorOne of our clients has recently taken to creating videos to showcase their products on the company website. This of course includes uploading the videos to their new YouTube account to help promote the company and the products they are selling. In doing so, they noticed the previous owner of the company had created a YouTube account with a similar name (a variation of the company name). With a decent chunk of views having stacked up on the old channel, our client wanted to know if it was possible to bring the two accounts together, since, they were essentially the same business anyway.

There were a few complications at this point: our client had contacted the previous owner of the company about getting the videos from the old channel. Unfortunately, the previous owner had not used the account for quite some time. He didn’t know what the password was and having since sold the business, his email address had been deleted, leaving his YouTube account hanging in a state of limbo, unable to be logged in and edited for future access.

As it turns out, not being able to access the account doesn’t affect the outcome – YouTube simply do not allow accounts to be merged for any reason. That’s right, if you have millions of views locked away in an account you can no longer access, too bad. They’re lost!

youtube-support-merge-accountsIf you were able get in to the account to grab the videos, the only way to get all of the videos on to the same account is by logging in, downloading the videos, and re-uploading them on the new channel. This resets the view count back to zero, erasing any clout you may have built up on the website with the older account.

Thankfully the videos in question were of lower quality, looked incredibly dated and the views weren’t substantial enough to cause any serious headaches.

The End Result?

Continue adding high quality content to the new channel, and ignore the old one.

A frustrating outcome, but a valuable lesson learned along the way.

How can you avoid YouTube account complications?

If you want to migrate videos from one channel to another, ensure you have the video file itself is saved somewhere other than YouTube, set the channel up right the first time, so that you do not need to create a second one and use an email address that is unlikely to expire (hint: Gmail is YouTube’s best friend). With these points in mind, you should be able to rescue any valuable content, but sadly you will have to forget about bringing them together and leveraging the success of the old videos to promote the new ones.

A frustration we must all  live with unless YouTube suddenly change their account settings. (Sigh).