5 mistakes that are costing you and your Marine business thousands of dollars.
And the 5 simple steps to overcome them!
Dear reader,
What you’re about to uncover are 5 commercial mistakes that are costing Marine businesses many thousands of dollars and I’m going to share the solutions to those mistakes, so you can avoid them in your business and profit more handsomely instead.
Take the time to read this as it could make a significant difference to you and your business.
I’m looking forward to helping you on your entrepreneurial journey and that starts now, so read on!
Mistake #1. Thinking ‘marketing’ is the same ‘advertising’.
Great marketing starts with the mindset. All actions we take are based on how we think and feel. So if you think marketing is simply advertising, I understand it because that is a common misconception. But, I also know that to make transformational shifts in your business growth and performance, you need to shift what you think marketing is and grow your understanding it.
Don’t worry, I’m here to help!
Advertising is just one component of marketing. It’s a way to get your message to a large number of people. You produce one message, and many people see it. This means that when performed well, it’s a super efficient way to market your business.
But, the word ‘Marketing’ is a lot deeper and more detailed than just producing an advertisement.
Marketing is all about who you target, how you target them, what you sell, why you’re in business, how you deliver what you sell to your buyers, how much your buyers are worth to your business, how you get in front of your market, the relationships with the people within your market, how your market view your business/product/services (your brand), what offers you put to the market, how you educate your market, how you ethically persuade your market to buy from you over your competition (competitive advantage), what your goals are, what strategies you use that help you reach those goals and your day-to-day marketing activities.
There’s a lot there! But…marketing doesn’t have to be overly complicated or costly. In fact, most of the time that marketing is applied in a business, it doesn’t cost more than time and effort.
Let us start by broadening our understanding of marketing, so you can take full advantage of the power of marketing to bring greater value, growth and profitability to your business.
Mistake #2. Relying on just one or two sources of new customers or clients.
I advise my clients that this is the riskiest and least rewarding setup a business can have – when they rely on just one or two sources of new customers or clients.
It’s all too common and I don’t judge anyone for being in this position, we only know what we’ve been taught, or learnt, or seen.
Here’s what I see so often. A business will have a combination of one or two (maybe three!) of these strategies in place that provide new customers or clients.
Paid advertising.
Google search (SEO) to their Website.
Free social media posts (organic).
Word-of-mouth referrals.
A billboard.
A retail shopfront.
These are all proven strategies to generate customers and new clients, right?
Most businesses will have only one or two of these strategies, working effectively.
Now if you get one new customer in your door every six months from social media, that probably doesn’t qualify as ‘working effectively’.(Unless your business only has capacity to serve a very small number of customers each year!)
What I’m talking about are the number of truly impactful strategies your business has.
The strategies that are the lifeblood of the business.
There is a problem I see with relying on only, Google search to attract sales. This problem is that Google has a set of algorithms in place that determine the outcome of where you rank in the order of results, when someone Google searches words that relate to what your business sells.
If Google decide tomorrow that they want to change their algorithms, this could significantly impact the amount of people who land on your website and in turn, impact the sales you generate.
If you don’t manage your website properly, this can also impact your search engine results.
The same applies to free (organic) Facebook posts. Facebook heavily favours those who pay for advertising.
I worked with a client that had 15 000 ‘likes’ on their Facebook business page and regularly got less than 10 ‘likes’ each time they published a free (organic) post.
Why so little results? Facebook favours those who pay money and the posts themselves, weren’t attractive enough to their audience.
Is that an effective strategy for that business? Certainly not.
Conversely though, some business do exceptionally well with free social media posts.
In fact, I watched a business built off the back of 200 000 Instagram followers. 200k! An enormous number of followers!
And just 3 years later, they were no longer operating.
What did they do wrong? They relied solely on Instagram to bring in new business.
When more competitors entered the market and they had no strategies in place to combat this, the company fell. And they fell very quickly.
Once Instagram became saturated, the business couldn’t get enough attention on their posts and the impact of their social media declined rapidly.
They had no alternative, effective strategies in place to attract customers and could not establish any in the market quickly enough, to balance their expenses.
Like every good financial advisor will tell you when you want to invest – you must spread the risk.
The exact same principle applies to marketing strategies.
BUT the amazing thing about how marketing strategies work in a business, is when you lower the risk by introducing more and more effective strategies – you also INCREASE the reward!
This is a rule I apply when working with ALL my clients:
We must introduce more marketing strategies, that are time tested and proven to be effective.
To fit these strategies into your day-to-day business activities, usually means removing ineffective activity first.
So lets say you or your staff are spending 15 hours a week to put together free (organic) social media posts, including planning, thinking up ideas, graphic design work, proofing and revisions etc, and you’re not seeing a significant number of customers or clients being attracted by this activity AND making purchases as a result of this activity – then you have found yourself 15 hours in the week to repurpose and refocus on better performing strategies.
So, rest assured, it’s not about piling on more and more work and adding more complexity.
It’s about having clearly defined goals for business growth and performance. Then matching those goals with time-tested and proven strategies to create a clear, simple path to achieving those goals.
Mistake #3. Looking only within your industry for marketing ideas and strategies.
As marketing legend Jay Abraham says, “the biggest breakthroughs come from outside your industry”.
Why is this true?
Well, it’s human nature to look at what your competition are doing and think to yourself “they seem to be going well, so I’m going to do something similar”. I get it and I’ve done the same on occasion too.
But, If you’re doing the same things as your competition, the best you can hope for (at best!), is somewhere between 10% better or 10% worse than what your competition are achieving.
The biggest breakthroughs come from other industries.
I recently applied a marketing strategy to a client’s business in the recreational fishing industry. This strategy was adopted from outside his industry, and I customised it to my client’s business.
Being one of the first in his industry to apply this strategy, the business immediately increased the growth rate of a key asset they own, by 10-fold. All this in just a matter of weeks!
And a few months on, the rate of growth in the business hasn’t slowed down! He is simply continuing to follow the same strategy that I originally implemented and I’m continuing to work with him to tweak the strategy when necessary.
Today, thanks to the internet, you can access, view, experience and be inspired by businesses from all other industries, all around the world.
I’m not at all suggesting you copy other people’s work, word-for-word. It’s about understanding the concept and processes that sit behind the strategies and customising them for your business and your market.
And yes doing that takes a level of expertise, so you might want to seek help to make this happen in your business!
Mistake #4. Overlooking the most profitable source of new customers and clients - referrals
The most profitable, easy to deal with, easy to sell to, loyal and most agreeable types of customers and clients, are those that have been referred by others they trust, through methods like word-by-mouth or planned introductions.
Most businesses that have been established for at least a little while, will get new customers and clients from word-of-mouth.
If you’re in this boat, you’ll know how valuable these types of people are!
However, what most businesses also do, is they leave referrals up to chance. They let them happen naturally. They let them happen randomly. And they don’t know if or when or how many referrals will occur each month.
So what can you do about this, to positively control an increase in the flow of referrals?
Well, there are literally dozens of ‘referral systems’ that any business can put in place to predictably multiply the number of referrals they get each month.
What does a ‘referral system’ look like?
Simply, it’s a step-by-step process that you and your staff follow consistently, to encourage and motivate your customers and clients to refer their friends, family and associates to you.
What’s required?
As part of your referral system, you will need to communicate to your clients that (a) you actually want referrals (b) why they should refer others to you (c) who the type of person is that you want referred to you and (d) the preferred process for referring others to you e.g. an email introduction.
Referral systems, when operated consistently, are like a snowball. The more they move (the more customers and clients you expose your referral system to), the more momentum they build, the bigger and the more impactful they get - the more highly-profitable referrals you get!
Referrals systems can be implemented both online and offline. One of the most famous online is the one used by file storage/file transfer platform Dropbox. They implemented a no-cost referral system that offered their users more free data storage, if they were able to get others to join the platform too.
Without costing them a dollar, this referral strategy worked a charm! The company is now worth about $8 billion.
Mistake #5. Spending to grow, rather than investing to grow your business (mindset and pricing structures)
Spending to grow, brings a LOT of businesses pain and can really turn people off investing in marketing.
The truth is, you don’t always need to spend money to grow. In fact, some of the most profitable marketing strategies involve simple partnerships with other businesses who are already dealing with the types of people who could also benefit from the products or services you sell.
Here’s an example, lets pretend you own a business that specialises in selling lubricant oil for boat motors. If you have a great product and the feedback you get from customers is largely positive, then you know that most purchasers of your product will continue to buy from you over and over again. (P.S. Run the numbers to confirm this!)
So if you take a step back and look at the opportunities available, wouldn’t it make sense to create a partnership with a boat dealer who already sells to the exact type of people who would need your product? As part of the partnership, you could give away a free sample of your oil product with every boat purchased.
The boat dealer gets to include this value-add as part of the package they sell, and you get access to a new customer who could potentially spend thousands of dollars with your business in the long run. It’s a win-win!
….
So there you have it, 5 mistakes that you can (with some simple tweaks) reverse in your business to multiply your marketing performance and quickly grow the value of your business.
Because you invested the time in reading this, I’m going to assume you’re serious about growing the value of your business, earning more handsome profits and creating more freedom in your life to choose what you do with more of your time. Yes?
Given that, I want to invite you to access my help in a more personalised, customised and impactful way.
See, what you’ve just read, while valuable and applicable to nearly every business, is not customised and tailored to your business, your market and your goals.
And without that, I don’t believe your business will reach the heights it deserves to reach.
After all, you’re already putting in a LOT of time, energy, effort and resources.
If you had access to way in which you can multiply the performance of your business, without needing to increase any of those aspects (time, energy, effort or resources), then it would be worth exploring yeah?
And, this can all be done WITHOUT adding more risk into the equation. In fact, as I’ve outlined in the 5 points above, you’ll actually decrease risk, while increasing the reward, when you implement my changes into your business.
Win/win!
With that in mind, I’m inviting you to a complimentary 1-on-1 business growth and success planning session – with me, Nathan Tripolone (Director at Realtime Results). No price to pay and no credit card needed.
You will gain a simple plan-of-action so you can take your business from where it is today, to where you want it to be. This plan will provide you with clarity, so you can avoid the stresses and hassles involved in marketing. And you’ll be able to begin applying the plan STRAIGHT AWAY.
Here’s how the process works:
First, you will fill out and submit an application form. Don’t worry, it’s straightforward and won’t take up too much of your time.
I will ask questions to find out about your marketing and selling activities, the results of those activities, what goals you want to achieve and how quickly you want to achieve them.
Next, I will be in touch with you to organise a time and date that suits you best, to catch up for a video call.
On the call, we’ll get straight to work.
If I think we’d be a good fit and you agree… I’ll take the information uncovered in the call and I’ll apply the FULL FORCE of my expertise and skill to your help your business.
The result?
I’ll present to you a customised success plan, that is tailored specifically for your business, your market and your goals. Without costing you a dollar!
This success plan will include some quick changes you can make almost overnight, to ignite sales in your business. They’re not a get-rich-quick solution, but they are tweaks that most business owners completely overlook and they are super profitable.
The success plan will also include some more transformation changes, that will take a bit longer to implement and see a return from, but are designed to create sustainable, ongoing business growth.
If you like the plan, you might decide to do one of three things with it:
You take the plan and do nothing with it. (P.S. I really hope you don’t choose this option!)
You take the plan and implement it yourself.
You take the plan and work with me 1 on 1, to successfully implement the plan. (P.S. you’re not in any way obliged, nor will you be pressured to choose this option)
But here’s the thing.
I know you’ll be able to take the plan and implement it and find some success. In fact, if followed and executed well, you’ll probably make some serious money.
But. When you choose to work with me (option #3), you get access to me one-on-one.
Why is that important and valuable to you?
Every strategy, tactic, activity and technique that’s included in the plan, I have already worked on with many businesses before.
I don’t pretend I know everything and I’m continually looking for ways to improve my approach and ways of working. This attitude means I’ve been able to sharply refine how I operate.
So, over the course of the time I’ve spent creating and implementing these success plans, I have learnt what works and what doesn’t.
I know what to spend time doing and what to stop doing, so you can become more efficient and more effective in your day-to-day operations.
I know what to say to the market so you can ethically motivate people to buy.
I know what not to say, so you can avoid disengaging your market.
I know how to make key decisions, at speed, so you can reach your goals faster.
I know how to flick-on the growth switch in a business, so you can turbo charge profitability and results.
I know how to simplify a marketing plan, so you can reduce the hassles and stresses associated with growing a business.
And I don’t treat my clients like clients… instead, I treat them like good friends.
Throughout the process of working with your business, I will upskill you and your team by metaphorically holding you by the hand every step of the way. I will explain every step of the way, so you too can become better at growing your business and marketing.
My pricing model is based on one thing: being cost-effective to my clients.
This means you’ll never invest anywhere near the amount you’ll actually earn as a result of my help.
What you gain from working with me, will far outweigh my fees. That is guaranteed.
One amazing thing I never anticipated when I began this journey, is the incredible ways in which entrepreneurial minds think, when I arm them with the tools, knowledge and expertise that I have.
My clients end up with not only a great business that vastly outperforms its old self, but, they themselves become better strategic thinkers and seriously good marketers! I find it very rewarding to see it unfold before my eyes and of course my clients do too!
Time is money and the more time you take to make decisions in the pursuit of your goals, the more chance that other things get in the way and other factors arise that can derail you from your path to success.
It may sound extreme and disheartening, but the longer you take means the less likely you are to ever reach your goals and true potential. I know it’s a reality for most businesses, but that doesn’t need to be the case for you and I want to help you.
I only have so many hours in the day, so access to my time and expertise is limited.
Let’s make this happen!
I strongly encourage you to take that first step, fill in the application below and apply for a complimentary success planning session now!
I promise I will personally review your application and if you’re accepted, we’ll be chatting together soon!
I truly look forward to helping you and your business rise to great heights.
P.S. If we do end up on the success planning calls together and after completing them, you decide it was a waste of time (for whatever reason), then just let me know and I’ll buy $300 worth of your products or services, just for wasting your time. Yep, that’s right, if you feel I’ve wasted your time then I’ll place an order from your business to the value of $300.
What’s the worst that can happen? You get a sale worth $300!
So why am I offering this crazy, risk-free deal?
Firstly, no one has ever said I’ve wasted their time when it comes to these sessions. So my confidence in being able to help you is high.
Second, I get a real kick out of helping people decrease the stresses involved in business growth and I get a real kick out of helping people reach greater levels of success. It’s why I do what I do.
My formula to business growth and marketing has worked for soo many businesses before and it will continue to work over and over again.