Jun
24
20 Tips To Success
Filed Under Small Business | Leave a Comment
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Success Tips
Most people want to be successful in life. There are goals set and then the hard work begins to reach those goals. The question is what is success? Actually, success can mean different things to different people.
For example, a person that owns their own oil changing service for vehicles might set their level of success at servicing 50 cars a day while someone who loves music might consider success as cutting their own CD. In addition, success does not always have to involve money. Success could be getting a good grade in a difficult class or learning how to bake the perfect chocolate cake.
Success comes in all different shapes and sizes with one common denominator. Success is important and it takes work to reach.
Regardless of what your specific success is, there are ways to surpass your goal. We have put together 20 tips that can be used for any success. These are ways to better yourself as a person, proven methods you can apply to reach success.
•1. Realize your Potential
In order to succeed at anything, you need to see that you have the potential to reach your goals. For example, if you want to be a recording artist but have no singing ability, having success in this field is not likely. However, if you love working on cars and have a real talent for fixing engines and transmissions, and to you, success would mean working for NASCAR, you have potential to learn and achieve that success.
•2. Don’t Look Back
Everyone has failures or mistakes from the past. To have success, you need to learn from your past and value those difficult lessons but do not every dwell on the past. Simply move forward and make better, more educated decisions from the lessons learned.
•3. Dare to Dream
To succeed, you need to have dreams and aspirations. Be honest with yourself as to what you want out of life and what you want to give of your life. Allow your mind to dream and think big.
•4. Business Plan
Create a Business Plan as your very first step if you are planning to build a business. Whether you will be searching for investors or not, this plan will be the blueprint to your success. The Business Plan will consist of market trends, financial planning, competitive analysis, exit strategies, marketing and promotional options, everything about your goal. When going before an investor, you will be required to have a Business Plan. This is by far the most important document of all. If your success were something personal, you would not need to create a Business Plan although a project plan would be a good option to allow you to keep track of everything involving your goal.
•5. Don’t Give Up
To reach success, you have to persevere. Even Thomas Edison had to learn this. When he was creating the incandescent light bulb, it took him more than 10,000 times to get it right. Keep striving even when it becomes challenging.
•6. Have an Unstoppable Attitude
You need to have determination. With good intentions, there may be a close friend or family member that feels it would be better if you focused your attention in another direction. Uphold your unstoppable attitude, determined to succeed.
•7. Stop the Complaining
You might think there is no correlation between complaining and success when in fact there is a connection. When you are spending time complaining about the obstacles you are facing, you are wasting so much time being negative that you are actually loosing chances to move forward. Instead of thinking of challenges as problems, think of them as opportunities.
•8. Focus on Something you Like
To increase your chance of succeeding, you should concentrate your efforts on something you enjoy. When you start out, make a list of everything you find interesting. Then in a second column, write down the skills you have in relation to each of those items. This will help you narrow choices down based on interest and skill, which gets you started in the right direction for success.
•9. Change your Circumstances
You have a choice in life to accept your position or change it. If you choose to plug along in life hoping that something will change for the better, you will not get very far. Always remember that when it comes to changing your circumstances, you can - you have that power. As an example, women who are in abusive situations often feel controlled and powerless to get out of the situation. They have the same choice of changing their circumstances as you do. If your circumstances lower the chances of success, you need to change them.
•10. Have a Plan
Even if it is flimsy to begin with, you should construct a plan to include goal, milestones, deliverables such as contracts, business plans, etc., and accomplishments. This will provide you with a visual as to what you are working for, what milestones you have successfully met, and where you need to do better.
•11. Accept Responsibility
You need to accept responsibility if you make a bad decision or fall behind in your plan. Let us say that you have set some firm milestones that need to be accomplished in order for you to move to the next step. However, you got tired of working hard and took some time to play, which is fine as long as it does not affect your goals. Now months have passed and you are way behind schedule. This delay has closed several doors of opportunities. Who is to blame?
•12. Be Happy
A positive mind and happy, upbeat attitude will help you succeed. It has been proven in many studies that a person living in a happy state generally gets much further in just about everything they do. This relates to attitude. Just as bad attitude can pull you down, good attitude and a happy, healthy mind will help you meet your objectives.
•13. No Shortcuts
An old cliché states, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” This should be your motto. When you want to succeed, you cannot afford to take shortcuts. Taking shortcuts leads to imperfection and inadequacies. Always strive for the best, even if it requires a little more time and effort.
•14. Have Courage
Depending on what your specific success is, it may take courage to arrive at your desired destination. For example, if you have a dream of being a writer and to you, that is success, but according to your long line of family members who have all gone on to be doctors, the only success in their minds is if you follow down the medical path. This means you will have to have courage to stand up for what you believe and desire to do, even if it means disappointing family.
•15. Be Excited to Learn
Referring back to the analogy of Edison, when asked about his failures by a young boy, Edison commented, “Young man, I didn’t fail 9,999 times, I discovered 9,999 ways not to invent the light bulb.” As you work toward your specific success, always enjoy opportunities to learn, even if it takes longer than you think it should.
•16. Share your Success
Although this may be more at the end of the process, it is important. When you finally do reach your success, use your experience to teach, guide, and mentor others so that they too might succeed.
•17. Seek Input
Whatever your idea of success, conduct a “sanity check” throughout the process of reaching your goal. This should be done with someone you trust and who is themselves successful. Ask them to provide honest feedback about your success and as you move through different milestones, bounce concerns or new ideas off them to help keep you on the right track.
•18. Toxic Poisoning
No, we are not talking about actual poison but toxic people that can poison. Unfortunately, it would be great if close friends or co-workers could share in your success but all too often, there will be someone who is either dealing with the “green monster” of jealousy or has a case of the “I knew that” syndrome. If you are serious about reaching your goal and being successful, you will need to rid your life of these people. While you may not be able to get them out of your life completely, you should avoid them as best as possible. If this is a person, you see every day, keep your goals to yourself, and avoid that specific subject.
•19. Be a Good Listener
To succeed, you need to learn how to listen first. Pay attention to other people who have enjoyed successes in their life, attend seminars given by people that can motivate and encourage, or be open to hearing that a particular idea is not a good one. Good listening takes time to learn but in the end, it will be your greatest tool.
•20. Birds of a Feather
If you have a goal of being a best-selling author, find friends and mentors who either have achieved that same goal or are also pursuing a successful writing career. It is important to surround yourself with people that can associate with your goal and passion, people who understand the burning desire to succeed and can encourage when you meet with disappointments.
Jun
15
How To Use Email For Marketing
Filed Under Ezine Marketing | Leave a Comment
The Right Way to Use Email for Marketing
There is only one ‘right’ way to use email lists for marketing purposes and that is to use it with a list of prospects who have contacted you first. This is what is called an Opt-In list. What it means is the consumers have opted to include their email address in a mailing list which means that your mails are not considered spam because they were ‘opted’ for. Here’s why.
Your contacts will not complain about receiving valuable information from you. They welcome the opportunity to receive many different types of emails such as:
* ‘last minute’ reminders
* special offers
* hot information about new products
* news ‘from the very hub’ of their industry
* product/website updates
* even links to affiliate ‘like’ sites
Here are some more key tips to keep in mind when trying to build your own email hot list.
1. Capture Addresses
You can only email your customers if you have their addresses, so start collecting them now. Make sure there is a prominent place for an email address on all customer response forms you use both online and offline. It helps when you use software that is designed to hold multiple email hot lists so that you will only have to input the information once.
2. Use ASCII Text Only
Keep it simple. Include lots of white space in your messages. Use headlines and sub-headlines. Don’t overuse words that are in all capital letter. Make it easy for the readers to scan and to read.
3. Use Wide Margins
Limit yourself to 55/60 characters or less per line because it is simply more attractive to the reader and it helps you to point out anything that you want to draw attention to.
4. Deliver Your Most Important Information First
Key benefits and sales points must be communicated in the first screen people read because many readers do not read an entire email whether they opted in for it or not. If you save the good stuff for the end of the email or try to capture a reader’s attention by leading into it, you will do nothing except lose business. Think about it; would you want to have to hunt around for the best part?
5. Make The Subject Line Your Headline Too
This is what people are going to see first. If your headline is strong, crisp, and compelling, they’ll open your email. Concentrate on this all-important element. For example, if you are offering a free gift with purchase, your subject line could read “FREE gift for you!” I don’t know about you, but this would get my attention if it is from a web source that I signed up for.
6. The Shorter the Better
Unlike other kinds of sales writing where long copy outsells short copy, the standard for email sales letters are different. Think about the way you sort through email, especially when you have a backlog of messages. The time you spend online is generally short. Respond to this new business medium by keeping your emails just as short.
7. Test
Keep a good record of your responses by testing one element of your email at a time. Start with the subject line. Test headlines, body copy, layout, and the PS. at the end. Successful marketing copy is always tested, one element at a time to make sure those things are running smoothly and to get rid of the stuff that is not working.
Today the largest companies online including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and many, many more are using acceptable and responsible commercial email. If they can do it, YOU can do it too.
Start building your opt-in email lists today!. I would suggest that you keep it simple to begin with, and build a growing text file of email addresses. But ultimately you will want to personalize your messages, because it substantially increases your response. Gather as much information as you can when people contact you, such as the readers name and apply it to the email, but at a minimum capture their name and email address. In time, this list will become highly profitable for you. The list is the most important aspect of any successful email marketing campaign.
8. Use Autoresponders
When you are contacting your clients through emails that require a reply from the reader or a sign up or order form etc. you should be sure to include an autoresponder that will let your client know that their email was received. You can find many different types of software that will do this for you. If for no other reason; than so that you can free up some of your time.
NOTE: Refer back to pages 34 to 38 for the best autoresponder software and service options.
Writing an Autoresponder Message that Gets Results!
The autoresponder is fast becoming the hardest worker of Internet marketing. With the autoresponder, you can deliver your sales message or other information to all of your clients very quickly. And you can deliver it 24 hours a day to any
Internet email user in the world. This must sound awesome right? But you might be wondering how you can create an autoresponder message that gets real results.
Here are some methods of power communication that will give you the success that you crave. I know this because I have used them. It is great for emails, letters, mailbot copy, World Wide Web content, ads and more.
1. Focus on the reader, not yourself
Your message should be about the customer’s needs and how your product will fulfill those needs, not about how wonderful you are and how great your product is because in the end it is all just your own opinions and it turns people right off.
Don’t focus on yourself and your life too much. Take a look at my first few paragraphs above. How many times did I talk about “you” and “your” as opposed to “I” and “me”?
2. Make it personal.
As with any sales letter, you have to write your autoresponder message as if you were having a one-to-one conversation. Pretend you’re sitting down to talk to a friend. Allow your message be friendly, animated and informal. You can even use some slang if it’s appropriate.
3. Be sure to Emphasize the benefits.
Rather than thinking of yourself as selling a product or a service, think of yourself as providing real services to your clients. If you want to know what the benefits to these services really are here is what you should be asking yourself.
“What does the customer get out of my product?”
The answer should be something like “more time,” “more money,” “more fun,” “an easier life,” “better health,” or “greater safety.”
Benefits and features are two different things. Feature are: “This computer has a Pentium 4 processor.” A benefit is more like this: “Lightning-fast Pentium 4 processor means you get more work done in less time.”
4. Include a “Call to Action” in your response.
You need to know exactly what you want the reader to do after reading your message and then tell them to do it. Ask yourself these questions: What do you want? Do you want a reply by email? A visit to your Web site? An order called in to your toll-free number? Let the user know what responses you want, and let them know in a compelling, urgent, benefits-oriented way. Include complete contact information, and triple-check it for accuracy.
5. Offer useful information.
One good autoresponder strategy is to offer a free report that offers useful information but including a sales message and an “advertorial” approach.
For an example, distribute a report, “10 Tips for Selling on the Internet and the Web.” Tell the user how to order your book on the subject etc. you can even include an order form. Readers will not resent your pitch because they got so much value from the report.
6. Use correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.
You tell the world whether you’re a professional or an amateur by the quality of your marketing communications. Take the time to edit your autoresponder message for errors. If you’re terrible at grammar etc. get someone who can edit it for you.
7. Create a better layout to make it easier to read.
Since a mailbot message is delivered in plain ASCII text, your design capabilities are going to be very limited. Here are a few tricks you can use to make your message a bit more readable:
* For a headline, use ALL-CAPS and insert a blank line before and after it.
* Use short paragraphs, say 5-7 lines at the most (100 words).
* Set out all of your material in bulleted lists its easier to read.
* Use “white space with catchy headlines” to center important material and call attention to it, like the following does:
Now available:
Solid strategies for “Affiliate Marketing”!
Send any message to ken@profitdot.net
Warning: Don’t get fancy with your script fonts because not all computers are the same.
8. Don’t Break the law.
False advertising is still illegal, even if you’re on the Internet. In many countries, pyramid schemes (MLM) and chain letters are illegal. You should assume that all tax and licensing laws in your town, state, province, country and so forth still apply. If you’re not sure about something, check.
9. Read feedback people send to your autoresponder.
A good autoresponder system will send you a copy of the request every time someone sends for your report. With most systems, the user doesn’t have to type anything in the body of their message when they send in the request; however, they usually do. By reading the message and replying to the user personally, you may increase your chances of selling to that person because it shows that you are listening.
If you create a strong, well-written, persuasive message, your autoresponder can help you increase your sales and fulfil any and all of the goals of your email marketing effort, which will certainly make it a whole lot more worth while
Ken Mathie
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