Category Archives: Marketing ideas

Artists: Find your place in the market

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 How to Find Your Place in the Market: Get Paid for your Creative Achievements

Saturday, August 27, 1-4pm with Carol Naff, TACtile’s marketing leader

TACtile Textile Arts Center

You know that you’re a great artist, so why not let others know it as well? TACtile presents a workshop for artists who want to learn the fundamentals of marketing their businesses and getting results. This workshop will teach you how to identify the best low-cost or no-cost marketing solutions for your business, avoiding dead ends and pitfalls that waste your time and energy, and the basics of creating and implementing a successful marketing plan that gets results!

From a class participant: “Thank you, Carol!
 
“Your class was invaluable to me. It really helped me understand how much is involved in, successfully, turning a hobby into a business and it gave me some great tools for making it happen. I also really enjoyed all of the interaction by the participants. What a great group!
 
“Hope I see you at TACtile :)” Tish Gallagher

More information and registration at TACtilearts.org

How to Get Clients You Really Want

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Do you have a crystal clear idea of how and where to market? Are getting the results you need? Are you reaching your ideal clients?

What an honor to share my expertise at three different venues in June:

Creative Connections Expo 2011

June 9, 4:00 p.m.

visit the Expo –  2:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Visit  Expo 2011 for more information

the Expo is free and open to the public

TACtile Textile Arts Center

Special tips for artists

June 11, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Register and pay at TACtilearts.org

Visual Persuasion MeetUp Group

 June 21, 6:30 p.m.

Register at Adobe Users Group MeetUp

This workshop will help you learn how to identify your best low-cost, no-cost marketing opportunities that work. You will learn about dead-ends that steal your time, energy, and income. Carol Naff will teach you how to implement a successful marketing plan that produces results.

Presentation Agenda:

Find your keys to marketing
• See the big picture of how to grow your business
• Develop your marketing hook
• Find your target market
• Identify your best proactive strategies
• Assess the value of online efforts (Web Sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Blogs)
• Learn how to become known as an expert

You will feel empowered once you know the correct strategies to grow your business!

Get Clients You Really Want Seminar

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Get the clients you really want with clear, focused Marketing Strategies with Carol Naff

What an honor to share my expertise on Thursday, April 14, 11:30 a.m. at the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) /Denver Metro Chamber. Only $15 includes your lunch.

Do you have a crystal clear idea of how and where to market? Are getting the results you need? Are you reaching your ideal clients?

This workshop will help you learn how to identify your best low-cost, no-cost marketing opportunities that work. You will learn about dead-ends that steal your time, energy, and income. Carol Naff will teach you how to implement a successful marketing plan that produces results.

Presentation Agenda:

Find your keys to marketing

  • See the big picture of how to grow your business
  • Develop your marketing hook
  • Find your target market
  • Identify your best proactive strategies
  • Assess the value of online efforts (Web Sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Blogs)
  •  Implement a value-based enewsletter to drive traffic to you and your website (Dell and Target use these ideas)
  • Learn how to become known as an expert

You will feel empowered once you know the correct strategies to grow your business!

Register to reserve your spot and lunch at Denver Metro Chamber 

Mixing Up Marketing and Selling Conversations

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 The simple answer is that marketing prepares the ground for selling. Everything you do before an actual Selling Conversation is marketing.

Marketing includes targeting your market, preparing your message and materials, and undertaking various marketing activities such as networking and speaking.

Marketing ends when you get to the Selling Conversation.

The Selling Conversation happens when the prospect is ready to explore working with you. The Selling Conversation consists of learning about the prospect’s situation, goals, and challenges and then presenting the service that will help them reach those goals and overcome those challenges.

When people are having trouble converting prospects into clients, they are usually doing one thing wrong – they are selling before they are actually in the Selling Conversation. They are selling when they should actually still be marketing.

It’s necessary to be clear about the distinction between marketing and selling or you’ll continue to make this mistake. Here’s what most often happens:

You’re talking to a prospect about your business. It may be at a networking meeting or over the phone. The prospect is interested in your services. And then, pow, out of nowhere you begin the Selling Conversation. You start explaining about your services. You stop listening and you say too much.

Often when you do this, you blow the opportunity to ever have a real Selling Conversation because you’ve told the prospect all about your services and they’ve already made a decision. “Well, this sounds interesting but it’s not what I need right now.”

What you need to learn to do is have “Marketing Conversations” or “Pre-selling Conversations.” These are very different from “Selling Conversations.”

Let’s look at the elements of a Marketing Conversation.

  1. Someone asks what you do, and you respond with your problem-oriented Audio Logo: “I work with people who have trouble getting major projects done on time.” 
  2. They follow-up with, “Oh, how does that work?” and you respond with your Ultimate Outcome: “The clients I’ve worked with typically double the speed in getting major products done and as a result end up getting promotions and raises.”  
  3. If you can do those first two steps , you’re doing better than about 90% of Independent Professionals. But what you say next, or more accurately what  

What you don’t say is the key to keeping this a Marketing Conversation, not a Selling Conversation.  

You now have their attention and they want to know more. “How do you accomplish those results?” And here’s where most make the mistake of explaining the “process” of how you do what you do.

Don’t do that!!!

Instead, you want to tell a story. “A client I worked with recently kept getting bogged down on projects and his job was on the line. We worked together and he became the most productive person in his department. Ultimately, he got a big promotion and a raise.” 

Now the prospect is even more interested. “Can you tell me what you did to increase his productivity?” Don’t tell him. You’re saving that for the Selling Conversation. “Well, I wrote an article about that called ‘Ten Mistakes Managers Make That Kill Productivity.’ Can I send you a copy?”  

By providing more information (not on the process of what you do, but on the issues your clients deal with), you are setting up the right conditions for the selling conversation.   

Next you would send the article, then follow-up by phone to learn more about their situation. You’d focus on them and what productivity issues were impacting them. You’d tell more stories, but still, you’d say little about your process. You’re informing, not selling. All of this is a continuation of the Marketing Conversation.   

If the prospect is showing sufficient interest, you’d invite them to engage in a Selling Conversation: “John, it sounds like you’re interested in being more productive. You’re much like the clients I work with.   

“I’d like to offer you a complimentary “Productivity Strategy Session” where we’d discuss your situation in more depth and talk about your goals and challenges around productivity. And I’ll also give you more details about how my services work.”  

You have now transitioned from a Marketing Conversation into a Selling Conversation. The prospect is interested and open to exploring doing business with you. Because you’ve held back about your process, they are curious to know how it all works.

Now let’s look at this from another angle, the mistakes you make in the Marketing Conversation that could sabotage your efforts to set up a Selling Conversation. 

1. You don’t use a problem-oriented Audio Logo. You use a label such as “I’m a productivity coach.” That’s all about you. Who cares? 

2. You don’t have a powerful Ultimate Outcome. Instead, you talk about your process. “I have a coaching service where I work with people on their productivity.” See the difference?  

3. You don’t use stories, but talk too much about process: “The first thing we do is sit down and find out all the areas where you’re not productive and then we work out strategies to increase your productivity.” True but boring.  

4. When they show more interest, you don’t offer anything. Instead, you exchange cards and say something inane such as, “It was good talking to you, if you’d like to know more about my service, please give me a call.” You’ll be waiting a long time!  

5. You don’t follow-up. And because you haven’t set the stage for follow-up, it’s pretty hard to do so. What are you going to say on the phone? The mistakes you’ve made have completely undermined the opportunity to set up a Selling Conversation.  

6. Remember, all the activities of marketing, including the Marketing Conversation, are designed to get you into a Selling Conversation, but it just doesn’t happen by itself. You need to have a step-by-step strategy and methodology, executed in a certain sequence if you hope to succeed.  

The More Clients Bottom Line: You must make a clear distinction between Marketing Conversations and Selling Conversations. If you don’t, you end up trying to sell too soon and lose the opportunity to set up a real Selling Conversation.

The Biggest Mistake in Selling

A question I’ve gotten a lot over the years is, “What’s the difference between marketing and selling?”

Dopamine in the headline in the Post

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Brain’s dopamine is habit-firming

The pleasure-sensing chemical’s immediacy can keep regrettable routines locked in place. This further proves how important it is to create dopamine with positive, successful thoughts. Dopamine influences your habits, which makes it so hard to make changes. If you don’t make that shift, nothing will change. Often we expect different results even though we keep doing the same things. Learn how to replace negative behavior and thoughts.  Learn more about habits and dopamine in this article in the Denver Post.

Are you managing your business?

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Are you at the mercy of other people’s demands and agendas? Are you overwhelmed by technological disruptions? Then you are in a trap of being connected to the 24-hour technological revolution. This isn’t getting any better since more information is available every day. Have you managed it yet? Is what you are doing working for you?

Dopamine and marketing work together to produce success

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Parts 1, 2 & 3 for the science around dopamine.

When people have expectations that are met, they get a happy level of dopamine in the brain, a chemical critical to the ability to think clearly. And, when people aren’t expecting positive outcomes and get them, their levels get even higher.

The reverse is also true.

     Positive expectation + negative outcome = lower levels of dopamine.

     Negative expectation + negative result = even lower levels of dopamine.

When we have negative thoughts, our levels of dopamine decrease. This is like walking in circles when we don’t change any and all negative thoughts.

High levels of dopamine are needed to think clearly, solve problems, and make decisions. The prefrontal cortex in our brain controls these actions and requires certain levels of dopamine and other neurotransmitters to be successful. So, when fear and uncertainty crowd our thoughts, our ability to make decisions and think clearly diminishes. That is the energy we send out to the universe. Business owners identified these problems when describing why they aren’t successful.    

  • Competition
  •  Time 
  • Intimidated
  • Tough
  •  Economy
  •  Hard to do it all
  •  Not good enough
  •  Insecure
  • Overwhelmed
  • Lack of self-confidence
  • Negative mind games
  • Fear of success

When these thoughts are in our brains, we have low levels of dopamine. Ultimately, dopamine stops everyone from attaining his/her intentions or goals. Our brains respond to feelings of fear and uncertainty and they stop us dead in our tracks.

Remember, every negative thought affects whether or not we will achieve our goals.

Now when negative thoughts like fear, inadequacy, time, criticism, and insecurity come up, do a quick check in and get back on target before even thinking about making any decisions. Science proves that we need high levels of dopamine to create positive energy to attain happiness and positive expectations.

Negative  expectation + positive outcome = high levels of dopamine

Positive expectation + positive result = even higher levels of dopamine

The brain changes as a function of where we put our attention. So, every time you vent or complain or criticize, you grow new brain cells for that purpose and over time you get better at it. MRIs, in fact, have shown that the areas of the brain that control the fingers, tongue, and lips are larger in flute players. An accountant will have a larger part of the brain that controls math ability.

So, the lesson here is that we have the power to rewire our brains. Knowing you have that power, doesn’t it make you far more discriminate about how you spend your time, focus, and energy? Even paying attention to how you think?

Dopamine is produced even when we just expect desirable outcomes. It is produced when we envision it, not just when it happens. So how does it work?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is naturally produced in the body. It is present in the regions of the brain that regulate movement, emotion, motivation, and the feeling of pleasure. Dopamine stabilizes the brain activity, regulates flow of information to other parts of the brain, and controls movement. It plays a major part in the ability to achieve our dreams. We become addicted to having good feelings when we achieve our goals or even sign a new client. Since Dopamine is a chemical messenger, it is similar to adrenaline. It activates the dopamine receptors.

Dopamine has various functions in the brain. They are:

Movement: Dopamine is a crucial part of the basal ganglia motor loop. This means that it is absolutely critical to the way our brain controls our movements.

Pleasure and Motivation Dopamine is connected with the pleasure system of the brain. This means that it provides feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement that motivates us to do or to continue doing certain activities. Also, when adversive or unpleasant stimuli are encountered, dopamine is released.

Adversive = Causing avoidance of a thing, situation, or behavior by using an unpleasant or punishing stimulus, as in techniques of behavior modification.

This suggests that it is not associated only with pleasure. Dopamine is also released when a pleasurable activity is expected to happen. This tells us that the activity does not even have to actually take place for dopamine to be released. It could be more involved in ‘desire’ rather than ‘pleasure.’ Therefore, the result happens when we speak as though it has already happened… think of the vision board, just envisioning it, makes it happen…

Cognition and Frontal Cortex function

Dopamine controls the flow of information to other parts of the brain. This occurs in the frontal lobes. Disorders in this part of the brain can cause a decline in memory, problem solving, and attention. Neurocognitive functions, as a whole, suffer a downfall. 

Therefore, it is imperative to use proactive techniques such as visualization and  positive thoughts to produce more dopamine in the brain. More dopamine will act as a mood enhancer and greatly affect the relationships we develop, especially those relationships that are crucial to acquiring more clients or customers. Dopamine is critical to the success of goals, intentions, and dreams. 

Strategy: Learn what to do to increase levels of dopamine in your brain. Notice how many times you experience a negative thought. Become aware when you even think about blaming the economy or say it is ‘tough’ or ‘hard.’ Learn to eliminate every negative thought and focus on the positive.

Tactic: Visit Mariner Company for a business assessment to determine where you need to change your strategies and tactics. More information is available at Solobizmarketing and Marinerco.com. Contact me at carol.naff@marinerco.com

Run, Don’t Walk, to Increase Your Income

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Many times I’ve wondered why small business owners don’t run for the opportunity to significantly increase their business income.  You’ve heard my success stories.  They are all similar to Rick Bauman’s story, a former Coaching Group member:

“I can honestly say that while working for six months with Carol Naff, a professional coach, my website design and hosting business has more than tripled due to her coaching. I could not have reached this success so quickly without her help. My return on investment from coaching was surpassed within the first couple of months.

“Carol simply helps me clarify my goals and create a plan to achieve them. She does this by helping me see things in a new perspective and by holding me accountable for my actions. Carol helps me overcome my limiting beliefs and strive for higher levels of success.”  Rick Bauman, Arbis Inc.

If you haven’t increased your business income in the past six months, then start running to participate in my Group Marketing Strategies Games.  I realize that small business owners, who are not my clients, may not believe that coaching will make a difference for them.  So I woke up to the idea of offering a guarantee. Here’s the guarantee:  If at the end of the first month you absolutely hate being a participant in the group, you may drop the group.

Group coaching allows the shared wisdom of other professionals with the expertise of a professional coach.  Participants have the chance to coach and be coached. Because it is such a value to the participant, it adds more dimensions to coaching and accelerates achievement.

What Results Can You Expect from Joining the Group?

Ø      Clarify your goals and strengths

Ø      Balance your life

Ø      Transform your business

Ø      Achieve focus and confidence

Ø      Realize increased income

Ø      Implement proven and effective tools, concepts, and strategies

You’ll discover what your business requires in order to reach the next level and what’s standing in your way. This experience is targeted to your exact needs, and you’ll have time to talk through what’s going on for you and share it with the group. Another great benefit is the wisdom and experience contributed by the other members of the team.

How Do You Know if Joining a Coaching Group is Right for You?

Ø      You’re an ideal prospect for this adventure if you have a dream you’re passionate about and want to take your business to the next level.

Ø      You’re looking for structure and support.

Ø      You’re a self-starter.

Ø      You’re willing to experiment and are open to new ideas and change.

Ø      You’re persistent and dedicated.

If you’re taking too little action or frustrated because the action you’re taking isn’t working, then this group is perfect for you. But coaching isn’t for everyone.  It’s how the best get better.

What Are The Benefits?

Ø      You’ll identify what’s holding you back and break through to new levels of achievement.

Ø       You’ll build and implement an actual marketing plan that’s designed around your strengths, schedule, and budget. The accountability of the team experience will make you do what you NEVER would on your own.

Ø      This is an incredible value at any price, and a rare chance to transform your business and your life. You’ll receive training in marketing strategies. You’ll have the opportunity to test the viability of your ideas and plans with team members. You’ll receive help setting goals, establishing priorities, and strategic planning.

Ø      You’ll identify and break through roadblocks and resistance and get on the fast track. Your business and marketing will become an automated system—a well-oiled machine. You’ll have a support team to celebrate your successes, listen to your problems, and get you unstuck and back on the road to success. And since the group will be limited in size, you’ll get personalized attention and an interactive and creative environment.

If you’re running a business, you don’t have time to make costly mistakes. You need an edge. The power and synergy of the group and the proven coaching successes will banish isolation and inertia. Working with a coach AND a group of your peers is a powerful, transformative process.

Consistent application of new skills and strategies + accountability and support = success.

My experience is that group coaching is not only more economical—it’s POWERFUL.

It’s no surprise! It’s difficult to accomplish something big without accountability to someone. This dynamic group is ideal if you desire the tools, support, and guidance to really grow your business. This program includes:

q       A program paced in a way that allows you to absorb the information and implement it for immediate results

q       Two small group calls per month with tools and information from my business success process and coaching, support, guidance, and course correction from me and others working on goals just like yours

q       Comprehensive exercises for each step of the process complete with in-depth information such as checklists, goal-planning forms, time management planning tools, and assignments to deepen your learning and keep you in action.

q       Audio recordings of each class (so even if you miss a week, you won’t miss the information).

q       Access to a private web page containing all of the class materials, resource links, and audio downloads

q       A plan of your design for attaining your big goal and creating YOUR best strategies

q       The attention, accountability, and coaching from Professional Coach Carol Naff

PURPOSE: To help you increase your business income and your free time, while gaining simplicity, balance, focus, and confidence in all areas of your life.

PROCESS: Group coaching sessions. We will meet as a group on a telephone bridge* twice a month for 55 minutes each call. *Long distance charges are the responsibility of the participants.  One-on-one coaching also is available at a rate of $100/hour or $450 per month.

WHEN: 1st and 3rd Tuesdays from 12:00 – 12:55 p.m. Mountain Time. Or 1st and 3rd Wednesdays at 9:00 – 9:55 a.m. Mountain.

INVESTMENT: $250/month.  (If it’s not REALLY an investment for you, don’t sign up.) Inquire about special pricing to see if you qualify – only $150/month.

REGISTER: Email carol.naff@marinerco.com and request an interview.

Remember; don’t delay. If you think this is for you, please act now. I would hate to have you miss out and be put on the waiting list until the next team opens up.


WARNING: Do NOT Apply for this program unless you’re willing . . .

Ø      And able to invest the time and money that’s required.

Ø      To keep confidential the business and personal affairs of the other members.

Ø      To be honest with yourself about where you are and what you REALLY want.

Ø      To do the homework assigned.

Ø      To take responsibility for the results.

Ø      To accept the changes rapid growth and wealth could inflict upon you.

Mariner Company

Carol J. Naff

Are you happy with your progress? (think both personally and professionally)

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Think about your accomplishments during the beginning of 2010. What marketing strategies are you using? Write down 25 accomplishments. Then quickly write what you will accomplish in the second half of 2010. What needs to happen? What would happen if you could focus on just one thing? Visit www.marinerco.com for ideas and tips to grow your business.