Although that seminar is pretty much focused on strategy, questions always seem to take us down the “Facebook Rabbithole.” The number one question I get is: Do I really need a Facebook Page (used to be called a Fan Page)?

This is an important question for many independent professionals. Real Estate agents, consultants, sales professionals, etc. all fall into a similar category. Their friends and their business associates all tend to mush together. For that reason, many people try to use a regular Facebook (personal) profile to promote their business.

The first think I advise them is Facebook’s rules dictate that a personal profile is not to be used for business. I know people who have had their Facebook account shut down and we all want to avoid that!

But the people who really get fixated on using their regular Facebook profile for business are people who “kindof-sortof” use Facebook for marketing. They tell me that it is okay because all their friends know they sell real estate (or whatever else it is they do).

That is where a critical mistake is made. People think social media is a great way to connect with people they know. That is true for their personal world. But for business, the key to social media is to connect with the people that you don’t know (yet)! For business, you don’t want to connect with just Aunt Susie. You want Aunt Susie to share your great information will all her friends (who are strangers to you) and have them connect with you too!

When you have a goal of connecting with strangers, it becomes very clear that you need to keep your personal and professional interests separate on Facebook! Once I explain that to Constant Contact seminar attendees, it becomes crystal clear!

The good news is you don’t need to spend a lot of time on these tools. Here are some great helpers that will maximize your results, while minimizing the time you spend!

One of my favorite tools is www.Nutshellmail.com. This FREE program takes everything that everyone posts on your most popular social media sites and put them all together for you in one, easy to read email. I get my NutshellMail email delivered to me every morning at 8 am. That way, I can scan over the email and see what everyone has posted on my social media accounts. You can even reply back to people’s posts directly from that email!
Using NutshellMail saves me a ton of time because I don’t have to bounce between Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, etc. to see what people posted on my accounts. I love talking about NutshellMail in my Constant Contact seminars. Whenever I talk about it, there is a huge sigh of relief from the crowd!

So, if you want to use social media for your organization, but worry about not having enough time to spend checking your accounts, NutshellMail is the solution for you!

Professionals who do a lot of business networking are probably familiar with the idea of a self-introduction. The best self-introductions have people salivating to do business with you! That is what you need to aim for. Bad self-introductions can ensure people will NEVER do business with you. The problem is most people with bad self-introductions never know why they can’t get any business!

What is a self-introduction? Some people call it a “30-second commercial.” Others call it an “elevator speech.” If you aren’t familiar with the concept, a self-introduction is basically a brief way of telling people how you can help them and their friends.

Even if you do no business networking at all, it is vital to have a good self-introduction. You’ll need it even when you interact with people in your personal life. Those people are great sources of referrals.

In my role as a marketing expert, I’ve seen many great self-introductions. I’ve also seen a lot of horrible ones! What is the difference between a good one and a bad one?

A good self-introduction is tailored for the audience. If you are in a structured business networking group, your introduction should be clear and direct. If you are in a social situation, the way you talk about your business should be a bit more subtle.

A good self-introduction will also change according to the needs of the person (or group) you are talking to. For example, if you are a financial planner, a retired person will have different needs than a young, newly married couple. You self-introduction should be tailored to your listeners.

A good self-introduction will ask for referral. “If you know anyone who….” is a great line to use. If you are in a business networking situation, a referral bid is expected and very appropriate. If you are in a social situation, you need to appear more casual when asking for referrals.

A good self-introduction will be memorable. The point is to have a self-introduction that people will remember so they recommend you to their friends and associates

In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about how people are motivated by two factors:
1.    Avoiding pain
2.    Moving toward pleasure
I described how two grocery retailers, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods, use pain-avoidance in their marketing strategy.

This week, I am describing how the same businesses also use pleasure to appeal to their customers. Interestingly, the pleasure-motivators these two stores use are pretty similar!

Both retailers appeal to the consumers’ sense of self-righteousness. They appeal to their sense of pride.

When people shop at Wal-Mart, they are very proud of the fact that they are saving money. They brag about the great deals they got. Wal-Mart’s commercials even show how we can be super-consumers, i.e., buying things we really don’t need and still save money!

When people shop at Whole Foods, they are also very proud. If you are at their house, they announce that the cookies you are enjoying came from Whole Foods. They let you know the cookies have no preservatives, trans-fats, or whatever else Whole Foods advertises.

The two very different stores use pride (which is a pleasure motivator) in a very similar way!

Why would people want to use your services or buy your products? What would they brag about to their friends? Are you saving them time? Are you saving them money? Do you make them feel like a movie star or an athlete? Do you help them feel like a great mom or help them feel like a great buddy to their friends?

Take some time to think about what good feelings you can create for your prospects. Then decide how you can weave those feelings into your marketing presentations.

With some careful planning, you can appeal to people by letting them know what pain you can help them avoid and what pleasure you can help them find. When you have that figured out, you’ll have mastered one of the keys to marketing success!

1. They think you will help them avoid pain.
2. They think you will help them find pleasure.

Savvy marketers use these two motivators very effectively. With a little thought, you can use them in just about every marketing tool you have for your business.

To see how this works, I’ll use an easy-to-understand example: Buying groceries.

You can buy groceries at Wal-Mart. You can buy groceries at Whole Foods. Often times, you can buy the exact same product at both stores. However, the motivation for shopping at the two stores is very, very different.

Both of these retailers have excellent marketing strategies. They both use pain and pleasure very, very effectively.

In this week’s newsletter, we’ll look at how they use pain as a motivator. In next week’s newsletter, we’ll look at pleasure.

Wal-Mart lets people know they can help avoid the pain of high prices. Wal-Mart constantly reminds us that spending too much on food, clothes or electronics is wasteful.

How wasteful is it? If we spend too much on peanut butter and paper towels, we won’t have enough money to buy toys for our children or host a party for our friends, or get a really huge big-screen TV (we’ll only be able to afford the smaller big-screen TV).

Whole Foods takes a different approach. They let us know we can avoid the pain of buying food that is bad for us and / or the environment. By buying a box of cookies at Whole Foods, we are somehow preventing a heart attack and saving cute little seal pups!

(Just so you know, I’m not picking on either retailer. I shop at both stores, depending on what pain is most important to me at the time.)

What does this mean for you?

What pain points do your prospects have? How can you lesson (or eliminate) that pain for them? To get you started, here are some of the most common pain points.
1.    Not enough money
2.    Not enough time
3.    Poor health (or fear of becoming ill)
4.    Fear of making a bad decision
5.    Fear of looking foolish
Figuring out how you can help solve these problems will be a great way to boost your marketing efforts. How can you help people save time or money? Can you help them feel better? Can you assure them that if they use your services, they will look and feel smarter or more confident?

Next week’s post will talk about pleasure points and how you can use them to boost your efforts even further!

This holiday was particularly exciting for me because my new Quick Start Marketing Program is complete! The program provides the solutions to the marketing problems I hear about most often. It includes:
•    An 80-page guide book titled How to Attract Bigger, Better Clients.
•    An 18-page Quick Reference Guide that compares the pros, cons and costs of the most common marketing and advertising activities.
•    An interactive Marketing Budget Planner that helps you measure the effectiveness of past marketing activities and plan for future activities.
•    Printed instructions for the Marketing Budget Planner
Now that the program is complete, I am in the final stages of updating my website, checking my links and ensuring the ordering and shipping process is streamlined.

Look for a big announcement with all the details next week!

How to build your sales by getting better quality referrals
You probably know referrals are a great way to get new clients!

But how do you get good quality referrals? If you have been in a business for a while, you have probably gotten some great referrals and some not-so-great ones.

What is the difference?

When you call a good quality referral, they say something like, “Oh, I’m so glad you called. Bob told me about you and I really need your help.” Don’t you LOVE to hear that?!

If you call a referral, and they say something like, “Who are you? What do you do? Who gave you my number?” you know you’ve gotten a not-so-great referral. It might be considered a “warm lead” (meaning someone you both know gave you the referral’s contact information), but the chances of you ever getting business from that person are pretty slim!

Here’s how to turn a not-so-great referral into a quality referral.

The next time a contact gives you a referral, ask your contact to call the referral first. Say something like, “Thanks for the referral, can you do me a favor and let him know I’ll be calling? That way you can tell him about me and he won’t be caught off-guard when I call.”

The next day, follow-up with your contact (by phone or by email) to be sure he contacted the referral for you. That will ensure the referral is waiting for your call.

When you start turning casual referrals into good, quality ones, you’ll find that you close more sales, make more money and enjoy your business and life more!

What happens next?

If you are like many professionals, you send him a quick note or email the next day. You tell him you enjoyed meeting him and look forward to doing business together.

Then what happens?

For many people, nothing else happens. Unfortunately, many busy professionals get so caught up to today’s projects that they don’t make the time to keep up with the prospects they met last week or last month. The prospect fades away and is never heard from again. The sale is lost.

Keeping in touch with prospects is one of the most important parts of marketing. Yes, you had a great conversation with your prospect. Yes, he said he’ll call you next month. But people have short memories and lots of distractions in their worlds.

Perhaps your prospect truly wants, needs and can afford your service, and fully intends to call you in a month. But during that month, he tore a tendon playing tennis, his son failed algebra (again) and his boss went on vacation, leaving all the work to him. All of a sudden your prospect has a lot more to think about than how great you are!

If you want to make the sale, you need to have the follow-up.

Depending on the nature of your business, it is important to keep in touch with your prospects AT LEAST once a month. For some businesses, you’ll want to keep in touch every day!

The easiest way to follow-up is with email. You can send personal emails to your prospects, or you can send email newsletters to them. Personal emails can go through your normal email service (Outlook, AOL, etc.) If you send newsletters, you are better off using a newsletter distribution service. Using a service will help ensure you stay compliant with Federal Anti-SPAM laws. Click here to preview one of the easiest, most cost-effective email newsletter services. This is the service I recommend to most of my clients.

While email is super-easy, it isn’t necessarily super-impressive. If you want to really “Wow” a prospect, send him something personal like a greeting card via regular mail. If you are quick, you may still have time to drop a 4th of July greeting card in the mail to your key prospects. If you miss that holiday, send a happy summer card instead. The effect will be just as nice.

Regardless of what type of system you use, remember, The Fortune is in the Follow-Up! Don’t let those interested prospects fade away because you have gotten pushed to the back of their minds. Remind your prospects that you are there for them. You’ll find that over time, your close-rate improves and your sales grow!

I did some research and devoted a full 40-hour week to working on a proposal. I did some more research and emailed the proposal out to several different agents. To my shock (and horror), three of the agents immediately responded asking for more details. I had no more details, and the project died a quick death!

The agents who contacted me also wanted to know how I was planning on promoting my book. What? I thought that was the book publisher’s job. It turns out, I was mistaken. Even in the literary world, creative people are now expected to take an active role in marketing and promotion.

Recently, I stumbled upon a great resource for authors who need guidance with self-promotion: http://www.diyauthorpromo.com. This great site has loads of information that authors need to help get started in their own promotion. All though it is geared toward authors, I found that the articles on the website are also relevant for other self-employed professionals.

The site’s creator, Connie Cox, did a fabulous job of pulling together all kinds of resources. She is also available for individual consultations and speaking engagements. If you are interested in promoting your writing, check out the website and contact Connie at Connie@diyauthorpromo.com.

WIIFM?

Have you ever seen that term? It is the basic question that is number one with all customers: What’s In It For Me?

It doesn’t matter how spectacular your product or service is. When you approach a prospect, they always have the same question: What’s In It For Me?

Knowing this is how people think can make a dramatic difference on how you market your business.

Take a look at your website, your brochures, and all your marketing materials. Analyze your sales pitch. Do they let your prospects know how your product or service will make their lives better? Or do you spend most of the time talking about how great your company is?

There is nothing wrong with talking about yourself and your company! But do it in a way that shows your prospects how you will make them feel smarter, happier, richer, more appreciated, etc. In fact, the WIIFM you focus on may appear to have absolutely nothing to do with your product or service. But…it will show your customers how buying from you will make them feel better about themselves.

Here are some examples:

“Having your teeth whitened will make you look younger and healthier. Your prospects will see you as vibrant and energetic. People will want to do business with you.”

“Attending our yoga studio will help you become more centered and relaxed. You’ll be better prepared to deal with daily stresses. Your family will really notice and appreciate the fact that you are calmer and happier. That will make everyone in your home happier.”

“Our company is a world leader in financial advising. When you tell people you are using our services, they will know you are smart enough to choose the best. They’ll ask you lots of questions and see you as an expert.”

Determining the features and benefits of your business is vitally important. So is getting inside your prospect’s head and figuring out what is going to motivate them to buy from you. Spend some time thinking about this. When you make a few simple changes in your marketing materials or sales presentation, you’ll find your success rate will skyrocket!

In those two roles, I helped develop a number of different products. I spent a lot of time promoting the features and benefits of the products.

In my current role as a marketing consultant, I hear a lot of people talking about the features of their product or service, but often people forget to talk about the benefits. In fact, the opposite should be true! It is the benefits that convince people to buy.

What is the difference between features and benefits?

Features are the facts about your product or service. Benefits are what feelings people will have when they use your product or service. Here are some examples.

Feature: This house has four bedrooms and three bathrooms.

Benefit: Because this house has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, everyone in your family will have plenty of space. Because everyone has enough space, your family will be happier.

Feature: This copier has four paper trays.

Benefit: Because this copier has four paper trays, you won’t have to spend as much time messing with it. That means you will be more efficient. Your boss will appreciate you more because you are being more productive.

Feature: This annual computer repair service contract includes unlimited visits to your home or office to fix your computer.

Benefit: When you have this annual computer repair service contract, you can feel confident that you’ll never miss another deadline because of a computer problem.

Features are important. Your prospects need to know the facts about the product or service you are providing. Features help people compare different options.

But when you let your prospects know how great they will feel when they use your product or service, you’ll experience a big difference in your sales. Won’t that feel good?