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Bill Johnson...Taking a Leap of Faith

Bill Johnson is aged 60 and the first time business owner of Bali Recharge (http://www.balirecharge.com.au/) - a one-of-a-kind travel company offering busy people a unique 7-day Ubud experience to..

10 Ideas to Refresh your Business in 2012

The beginning of every new year is a great time to consider how you might refresh your business to increase sales, improve customer relations or develop a whole new approach to your products and p..

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Five Steps to Brilliant Storytelling

Make no mistake. Storytelling is for EVERY business. You don’t need to be a best-selling author or an Academy award winner to tell a great story. So what makes a good story? For me a gr..

10 Ways to Get more Business in 30 Days

When times get tough and business is barely trickling in, you need to get smarter at marketing your business, generating more leads and getting more revenue. It’s simply not good enough to &..

Big Marketing Ideas for Small Business

At a marketing forum for small businesses recently, I asked the 10 attendees to write down their definition of marketing. Two key words popped up in every definition - selling and advertising. It ..

Carolyn’s Top 10 Books

I believe that successful entrepreneurs have one single common ingredient – a desire for continuous learning and development. They seek support from trusted advisers and they read, read and then..

Don’t Waste Money on Bad Marketing!

There has been much evidence and research recently highlighting the fact that ‘MARKETING - how to generate a consistent flow of quality new business leads’ is the NUMBER ONE concern facing..

Is Marketing at the Heart of your Business?

Small business is the backbone of this country. Did you know that, at last count, there were an astonishing 1.8 million businesses in Australia with 0 to 20 employees? Sadly, three in five of these sm..

Target your market with pinpoint accuracy

I've had many business owners tell me their target market is any person who's breathing - with money! That's a lot of people, making it nigh on impossible to focus your marketing efforts. Another..

Three Little Secrets to Marketing Success

Hands up if you've been to a marketing seminar where the speaker promises riches beyond belief if you just follow their simple plan of action and spend thousands of dollars on their products? Sorr..

What’s your CVP, POD & WIIFM?

The heart of good marketing starts with having a powerful 'customer value proposition' great 'point/s of difference' and clearly communicated benefits (what's in it for me? - the customer). A CV..

Commonsense marketing... lessons from my yoga studio

Read on for the chance to WIN a $200 marketing pack (DVDs and books)! Last week for the first time since arriving in Melbourne, I went to a yoga class in my local area Australian Yoga Ac..

Lessons from an accountant

Last Sunday, I spent 14 hours straight working on the one thing in my business I enjoy the least – my finances. I was sorting out receipts, reconciling statements and getting my files in a s..

20 Ways to Market your Franchise

Marketing a small business can be tough and expensive. It’s a major reason why many people opt to buy a franchise. The promise of brand building and lead generation by the franchisor offer..

Secrets from my hairdresser

It’s a case of third time lucky. After two woeful experiences with hairdressers, I’ve discovered the lovely Stephanie at Huge Hair. Not only is she highly skilled, friendly and efficie..

Branding

The Verbal Brand in Action

I was at a mortgage broking conference recently and asked the guy sitting next to me what he did. His response was alarming. “I’m a mortgage broker ... unfortunately,” he replied..

What do you do? Get your verbal BRAND right...

What’s a verbal brand, I hear you say? Put simply, it’s your 5 to 10 word statement on what you do and is most often used when someone asks you the stock standard question – ‘w..

Marketing Metrics

Marketing is a Numbers Game!

I don’t know about you, but I’m approaching this year with more optimism and excitement than ever before. The marketing efforts of the last few years are really paying off for me, largely ..

Online Marketing

7 Tips for Successful Video Production

Producing a video for your company can be an exciting and potentially stressful experience. There's more to it than simply assigning a video production company to the task and crossing your finger..

How healthy is your website?

Is your website a lead generation machine? When used correctly, your website can be your most powerful marketing tool, delivering a steady steam of new business and filling your sales pipeline. U..

Top 10 eMarketing tips you must know

When it comes to websites, I’ve witnessed many small business owners make the mistake of thinking ‘build it and they will come’ without considering how to drive traffic to the site t..

Top 7 ways to get published online

With people spending an increasing amount of time on the internet, it’s vital for your business to have a strong online presence. This goes way beyond having a website – that’s just ..

Public Relations

Writing a powerful media release

I was having a conversation with a small business owner last week who was complaining he’d been wasting a lot of time writing media releases that simply weren’t getting picked up by the me..

Relationship Marketing

10 Steps to Generating More Referrals

A customer referral program is one of the most powerful tactics in your marketing toolkit, yet many business owners leave the whole referral process to chance. Like anything we do in business, develop..

Advocacy Marketing Works

Tom Peters in Thriving on Chaos recommends spending 75% of your marketing effort and budgets on building word-of-mouth referrals for your business. In other words, creating advocates who willingly..

Attention Professional Advisers.. Follow the 3R’s of Marketing

Marketing for Professional Advisers If you're a consultant, lawyer, accountant, business coach, financial planner or travel consultant, forget the old 4P's of Marketing and focus on the 3R's of M..

How to Build Powerful Alliances

Smart businesses spend as much time and effort on building alliances with other businesses for cross referral of clients as they do on marketing direct to the end user. An alliance relationship can ta..

Relationship Marketing for Mortgage Brokers

Relationship marketing is becoming an increasingly vital part of any business! DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOU? "Where do your best clients come from?" I ask the broker sitting in a coffee shop a..

Why WOM rules!

If you have a powerful word-of-mouth program backed up by a savvy, online presence, you will be the winner in the marketing game. So what’s the secret to creating more word-of-mouth business..

Turning cold-calling into warm-calling...

If the thought of cold-calling leaves you feeling dead cold, why not try warm-calling instead? Warm-calling is when you make contact with a person you’ve connected with previously or someone..

Research

Look at Feedback Cycles – Growing Your Business (Part 1)

Part 1 – 'Explore' It's easy to believe that when you have a good relationship with your clients and staff you'll understand what they like about your business and what they see you need to ..

Look at Feedback Cycles – Growing Your Business (Part 2)

Part 2 – 'Uncover' and 'Clear Your Head' Continuing on for the last article where we covered Step 1 – ‘Explore’, this time we will focus on ‘Uncover’ and &lsquo..

Look at Feedback Cycles – Growing Your Business (Part 3)

Part 3 – 'Drive Change' and 'Communicate Back' In part 1, we addressed “Explore”, creating a survey that focuses on ideas that can drive change and grow your business. Then we 'U..

Sponsorships and Charities

Small Business, Big Difference

When I ask many small business owners what their number one reason for being in business is, the typical answer is "to make money". While that seems obvious, when I probe deeper there are many oth..

Strategy and Planning

Is Going Global for You?

By Carolyn Tate - posted July 2008 Greetings from Dallas, Texas! I have just emerged from a three day conference with over 2000 women business owners. This was preceded by a trip to Doylestown, P..

Lessons from a removalist company

If you’ve ever sold your home, you’ll know how stressful it can be. Finding a trusty removalist to move your treasured possessions to your new home is just one small thing in a big list of..

Lessons from a removalist company... continued

Lessons from a removalist company…. continued In my last article I mentioned the cool direct mail tip from JJ Dash – Removals & Storage. Well it seems he’s ..

Final lesson from a removalist...

After going through the process of selecting a removalist company I can happily state I made the right choice. However, it was an enlightening study on the whole marketing process, causing me to a..

Don't become a statistic... avoid the execution excuses

I used to worry about clients that would be pay me good money to write a great marketing plan and then not actually execute it. I'd follow them up and give them as much support and encouragem..

The one page marketing plan

Like most things in life, knowing ‘what’ you want to achieve is far harder than working out the 'how' to achieve it. And so it is with marketing. While most of the marketing plans I wr..