Introducing Rod Moore on Attraction Marketing

[Barbara Gabogrecan]

Rod Moore is considered to be Australia’s leading Attraction Marketing Specialist – but he wasn’t always. Like most of us, he started off as an employee in Real Estate and then had an ‘entrepreneurial seizure’ and decided he wanted to be a life coach. He studied with Cliff Howard and believed that if he was better qualified, people would ‘beat a path to his door’. Of course that didn’t happen.

Rod finally came to understand that people did not want a life coach; they wanted solutions to their problems.

Rod believes the number one challenge for small business is how to attract more clients. Most small business owners struggle to identify the right marketing solution to help them attract enough clients. Rod has developed a blueprint for you to easily identify your target market, create irresistible offers for them, and attract them into your marketing funnel.

In these discussions you will walk away with a clear plan on what you need to do grow your business by as much as 119% in the next 90 days - attracting more clients than you can handle.

I would like to welcome Rod and hope that you all enjoy and learn from what he has to share with you.
Barb

[Rod Moore]

Thanks Barbara for the introduction

'119% Business Growth In The Next 90 Days Following 3 Easy Steps'

Over the next 7 days I want to discuss with you how any small business (including yours) can grow their business by as much as 119% in 90 days. The good news is you can do this by focusing on incremental improvements in just three areas of your business. This is the basis of our Attraction Marketing System which is a proven marketing system for small business owners.

The obvious question that comes to mind is this ... 'Is it really possible for YOU to grow your business by as much as 119% in 90 days?'

Having worked with hundreds of small business owners in the last five years I can tell you with absolute certainty that it is possible for you. We have had clients grow their business by as much as 10 times in six weeks. Here is the key though ... you will need to focus on implementing the right systems into your business.

Whats great is that you do not need to make huge changes in your business in order to achieve 119% growth. In fact all you need to do is make incremental improvements of just 30% in the three key areas of your business that we will be discussing over the next week. Anyone can make 30% improvements in these three areas if you make it a priority and a focus.

So the three key areas we work on in the Attraction Marketing System are:

1/ ATTRACT More Leads
2/ CONVERT More Leads Into Clients
3/ INCREASE The Value Of Each Client

In order to be successful in any business you need to firstly have a SYSTEM in place to ATTRACT leads to you. Then you need a systematic way to CONVERT those leads into clients. Finally you need a SYSTEM to INCREASE the value of each client to your business.

For most small business owners the starting point is attracting more leads. Chances are good that at the moment your business is not attracting anywhere near enough leads to you. So this is typically where we spend most of the time with our clients.

Lets look at some examples of how this might unfold.

eg Personal Trainer

Lets assume a Personal Trainer currently has a business with the following numbers:

- Leads Attracted Per Year 360 (30 per month)
- Conversion Rate 10%
- Number Of Clients Per Year 36
- Average Value Of Each Client $1,500
- Total Revenue For Year $54,000

If we apply just a 30% increase to the three key areas (number of leads attracted, conversion rate & value of each client) then this is what the new numbers look like:

- Leads Attracted Per Year 468 (39 per month)
- Conversion Rate 13%
- Number Of Clients Per Year 61
- Average Value Of Each Client $1,950
- Total Revenue For Year $118,950

So as you can see just by making an incremental improvement of 30% the end result is a massive $64,950 increase in revenue for the year. This same process applies to practically every business.

Lets break this down into a little more detail and ask some questions.

In the example above the personal trainer has gone from attracting 30 leads a month to 39 a month. This is an increase of just 9 extra leads per month. The question is this ... 'How realistic and achievable is this?'

Is it possible for a personal trainer to increase the number of leads by 9 a month? Yes of course it is. It might be as simple as writing a more compelling headline on an ad, or better signage on his studio ... the point is an extra 9 leads attracted per month is EASY.

So what about an increase in CONVERSION rate from 10% to 13% ... is this possible? Again I say this is easy to achieve. It could be as simple as knowing what questions to ask prospective clients and what order to ask them in. Just a little planning and thought into how you work with prospects and the sales process you take them through is all that may be needed for you to improve your conversion rates.

Finally we have to ask the question ... is it possible to increase the value of each client by 30% in this case by $450? Again the answer is of course its possible. This could be achieved by something simple like selling a total solution that includes protein powders and other supplements instead of just selling time.

I am sure from the above example you can see how simple it can be to get a big increase in revenue in your business. The key is that the improvements in the three key areas compound upon one another to create the net effect of 119% growth.

Again I want to stress that practically any business can achieve this sort of growth as long as the are willing to implement some new ideas, and new strategies.

Over the next three days I will go into details about what to do to achieve a 30% increase in each of these three areas 1/ Attract More Leads, 2/ Convert More Leads Into Clients and 3/ Increase The Value Of Each Client.

For now though here is what you can do (you will get the most value out of this information by following along and completing the action steps):

1/ Work out how many leads you are attracting each month. Look at the first three months of 2010 and work out how many leads, enquiries, phone calls etc you received from prospective clients. Total this number up and then divide by three to give you an average number of new leads per month. It is vital that you know this number and track it in your business.

2/ Next we need to identify your conversion rate. This is easy to do ... first calculate how many NEW clients did you sign up in the first three month of 2010. Now divide this number by the total number of leads you had and multiply the result by 100. This will give you the % conversion rate.

3/ Finally work out the average value of each of these new clients to your business. So total up the dollar amount spent by these new clients and divide this by the number of new clients giving you the average value of each client.

Once you have done this you should have a number for each of the following:

1. Average Number of Leads per Month
2. Average Conversion Rate
3. Average Value of each new Client

Now lets work out our goal of increasing each of these numbers by 30%.

Simply take each of these numbers and multiply them by 1.3 giving you the:

1. Target Average Number of Leads per Month
2. Target Average Conversion Rate
3. Target Average Value of each new Client

This gives us our goals to aim for.

In tommorrows post I will break down our process for step 1 ... Attracting More Leads.

[Barbara Gabogrecan]

As a non number person Rod, I find this approach of yours completely 'scary'.
I know it has to be done, but because I am so adverse to numbers and working out the math - it is just an impossibility for me.

Now, I can cope with knowing how many leads; and how many actually purchase something; and then try to increase those numbers.
For others like me, who are not really looking to increase their business by $119% - is it OK to just want to increase your business (regardless of by how much)?
Then the next week/month, increase it again.

I understand that I may not be going to make a 'bang' in the 90 days - but to me it is a bit like losing weight.
If I try to loose too much, too quickly I am likely to 'fall over';
but if I am steady and sure, then the results will come; and are more likely to stay.
Can it work this way in business with attracting clients too?

Cheers
Barb

[Rod Moore]

Barbara ... thanks for your comments. Natutrally you choose how much you want to grow your business by The 119% growth is used as an example of what is possible. The great thing about being a business owner is that you get to choose ... so if you only implement some of the ideas we share with you then you will still experience growth in your business of course.

Now I completely understand not being a numbers person. Neither am I ... however I know that it is difficult to improve that which you can't measure.

So how about this as a starting point. What about if you just started tracking how many new leads are coming into your business on a monthly basis? This doesn't require you to be a numbers person ... it just requires you to keep score. Keep score of how many leads you have coming into your business each month and aim to implement some of the ideas we will be sharing with you so that you increase this number from month to month.

This is something that anyone in business can and should do ... even those of us who are not numbers people

[Rod Moore]

Welcome back to our discussion on how to grow your business by 119% in 90 days. Yesterday I outlined what the looks like from a numbers point of view. We also discussed the three key areas of your business to focus on.

Today I want to start outlining a blueprint for you on how to actually implement this.

So we will be talking today about the first step which is ...

Step 1 - ATTRACT More Leads

Attractng leads to your business is critical. Most small businesses have no lead generation system in place. They rely on word of mouth, or hope to meet someone at a networking event who they can sell their product or service to. This is okay but unlikely to enable you to grow your business.

If you want more clients you first need to attract more leads.

You will need to attract more leads than the number of clients you are looking for.

When working with our coaching clients we invest a large amount of time on lead generation because ultimately this is the key marketing skill. Your ability to attract quality leads to you determines the overall success of your business.

As we start to look at the process of attracting leads there are a number of questions that we have to address. The first of these is ...

'WHO do you want to ATTRACT?'

You need to be really clear on who it is you want to attract to you as a lead. Not everyone is a prospective client and the more you can define who your target market is the more effective your marketing to them will be.

We have found that it is easier to attract leads from a specific niche market than a broad general market. Now some become concerned when they consider narrowing down their target market to a very tight niche fearing that there will not be enough clients out there. In most cases we have found the opposite to be true ... when you focus in on a narrow niche and become the recognised specialist within that niche you become more ATTRACTIVE to them than a generalist is.

So this is the starting point ... getting clear on WHO you want to attract to you.

By getting clear I mean getting to really understand them. Identify their personal characteristics, their hopes, dreams, fears. Understand what keeps them awake at night. What is the one big PROBLEM that this target market all share that you have a SOLUTION for.

One of the exercises I give my coaching clients is to write out a list of 100 PAIN points experienced by this target market. In other words, 100 different ways of expressing the problem, challenge or obstacle faced by your target market that you can provide a solution for. Now you may not ever get to a list of 100 but you will find that going through the exercise and trying will help you to really get to understand your target market at a deeper level.

Once we know WHO we are looking to attract the next step is to ask ...

'WHAT will make you ATTRACTIVE to them?'

Chances are good there is more than one business out there providing the same products or services that you provide, right? So how will you make your business ATTRACTIVE to the target market? How will you stand out and attract more prospective clients than your competitors?

This is really easy when you understand your target market. Here is the key ...

You will become highly attractive to your target market when they see that you have a SOLUTION to their PROBLEM!

As obvious as it sounds this is the key to differentiating your business from the crowd and standing out. You want to shift all of your marketing to focus on this. You want to stop marketing you and your business and start marketing a SOLUTION to the PROBLEM experienced by your target market.

If you do this you will become highly attractive to them.

Why? Well practically every business markets themselves. Look at their ads in the local paper, or visit their website and all of their marketing focus is on you the business owner.

The problem is your prospective clients do not care that much about you ... they only care about themselves. So you need to switch the focus of all of your marketing materials and advertisements to focus on providing a SOLUTION to their PROBLEM.

So you want to get really clear on what solution will be highly attractive to your target market.

Once we have narrowed down WHO our target market is and we know WHAT will make us attractive to them we need to start thinking leverage by asking the question ...

'WHERE can I find them as a GROUP?'

Most small business marketing is focused on finding out target market one by one by one. This is a long slow boring process. If you can find the target market where they have already gathered together as a group you can create massive leverage.

So where do they gather together as a group?

Well chances are good you will find them in locations like:

- Associations
- Subscribed to an industry magazine
- Another supplier has them as customers
- Online forums
- Online Social Media sites
- Attending Trade Shows
- Attending Industry Conventions
- Within a geographical location
- On someone elses prospect list
- List borkers
- Specific networking events
- Membership in different groups
- Attending training / seminars

The list is endless and the above is designed to get you thinking about WHERE you might find them already gathered togethers as a group.

If you can find your target market already existing as a group somewhere then the process of attracting them just became a whole lot easier. All you need to do is position your marketing within that group.

This can take many different formats ... it might be that you do a joint venture with a non-competing supplier who already has your target market as clients. Lets look at an example ... lets say you are a Copywriter and you decided to focus on writing copy for Financial Planners.

The burning question you would want to be asking yourself is WHERE are Financial Planners already gathered together as a group.

There are many possibilities ... the Association of Financial Planners, directory listing in Yellow Pages etc. What if you came across a computer systems business that just focuses on systems for financial planners? Someone who has been servicing the Financial Planner industry for many years and has hundreds of clients. Is it possible you could form a joint venture with them so that they endorse you to these Financial Planners?

Can you see how, through the formation of a joint venture like this, you can have access to marketing to Financial Planners as a group rather than one by one?

Now of course there is some work to set up the joint venture but the investment of time will be more than worth it.

So in summary you want to spend some time and look closely at:

- WHO you want to ATTRACT to you as potential clients
- WHAT will make you ATTRACTIVE to them
- WHERE can you find them existing as a group

Set aside half an hour today, lock the door, turn off the phone and spend some time really thinking this through. We have found that the more time you invest getting clear on this the more ATTRACTIVE you become in the market place.

Tommorrow we will move to more practical application of this information including how to gain visibility within your target market, how to make them an Irresistible Offer that they are magnetically drawn to, and how to capture them into your marketing funnel.

[Peter O'Connor]

Hi Rod - this is great stuff!

A question for you - Not all businesses will have a leads/prospects list to begin with. For someone just starting out in their own business, what would you suggest they do to start their own list? I feel there are many out there who just don't know what to do first. If they had a plan they could follow, it would greatly simplify the process for them.

Can you give a step by step plan on how to "start" a list?

Regards

Peter

[Geoff Haw]

Hi Rod,
I really enjoyed your presentation on Attraction Marketing to MCEI last week in Doncaster, so it's fantastic to see you following these issues through in our forum this week. Thanks for taking the time, and more importantly, for sharing your knowledge and experience.

It seems to me that one of the great limiting factors of small businesses - and I'm referring to those with say 1-3 people only - is that the pool of knowledge and experience available to determine the best marketing strategies for their particular enterprise is limited to 1-3 heads - in many cases. Hence the enormous value in being proactive and seeking advice and guidance from those who do know more than us. Most of us seem to develop theories based on regretted strategies as to what type of marketing does NOT work, rather than being bold and seeking new strategies that can or do work.

Yes, I'd be glad to see you follow up Peter's comment on the steps involved in developing 'lists'. Obviously too few of us spend too much time on re-cycling (or re-jigging in a minor way only) our previous practices.

I like your key words yesterday - attract, convert and then increase. A logical development.

I also feel that one of the most consistent failings of owners of such small enterprises is that of failure to follow up after putting out initial 'feelers' or publicity. I know that as we become bogged down in the daily life of running the business, actually producing the goods and/or services that are our bread and butter, we sometimes lose sight of the 'big picture'. I sometimes think that the 'cost' of hiring an assistant to do the drudgery and administration might be more like an investment, as it frees us up to do the things we need to do in growing the business.

I think that this especially applies to looking ahead... we need to be marketing now for work 3-6 months down the track, or else when business dries up because we have 'been too busy' to market, we'll be left high and dry.

In a way, I understand where Barb is coming from in not enjoying the 'maths' of attracting clients. At the same time, I can see why any systematic approach demands such (very small) disciplines. Our accountants and auditors want us to leave a trail of paper for all finance, so it obviously makes sense to have a similar mentality to attracting clients.

You suggested that we 'set aside half an hour today, lock the door, turn off the phone and spend some time really thinking this through. We have found that the more time you invest getting clear on this the more ATTRACTIVE you become in the market place.' Excellent advice! I use a 'time map' over the week, where I allocate times to particular tasks. Otherwise it can be a matter of just 'keeping busy', yet at the end of the week finding that some essentials have not been done, or done adequately. I call it the principle of "The urgent things getting in the way of the important things".

But back to the main game as you have raised. Where do we find our 'target clients' as a group, and how do we make ourselves not only attractive, but more importantly, IRRESISTIBLE, to them. Determining what clients' needs and emotions want is the key, so that we can fill that need. I look forward to reading more from you tomorrow.

Thanks, Geoff

[Anthony Taylor]

Hi Rod,
Thank you for posting on the forum - giving your time to respond to some more in depth thoughts.
Many of our sme's and larger corporates struggle with the time component of marketing - can you elaborate what sort of time resources are required to grow your business by say 119% (its a number thats is going around)?

Also many business are usually locked into work around's surrounding their marketing efforts and introducing a new marketing system of generating leads means changing systems and people changing behaviours - how do you manage / assist people to change out these work around/make do systems?

cheers
Anthony

[Rod Moore]

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

@Peter - Peter you asked about building a list for those who do not have one. What I am talking about in Step 1 - ATTRACT more leads is list building. Yesterday I went over getting clear on WHO you want to attract and why they would be attracted to you. This is the starting point especially for those with no list because what I have found is that there is a huge difference between having a list vs having a list of highly targeted prospects who see you as someone who has a solution to their problem. So what we are talking about yesterday and today is list building.

@Geoff ... thanks for your thoughts. You have made some interesting observations especially with time to implement. As a business owner it is easy to get caught up in working IN the business and never have time to work ON the business. If you allow this to happen then you remain stuck in that place forever. So we have to practise a little discipline and block out time to work ON the business inculding the development of more effective MARKETING SYSTEMS. If your market is based on your own manual labour efforts then your success is subject to those efforts.

You asked where you find your target market as a group? Well there is no better place to start your research than at Google. Go to Google and search for:

- Forum XXXXXXXXXXXXX
- Magazine XXXXXXXXXXXX
- Networking XXXXXXXXXXXXX
- Association XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
- Trade Show XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Where XXXXXXXXXXX is your target market. You just need to invest the time into research. You would be amazed at how many different groups already exist. Sometimes you may need to be creative. For eg a Financial Planner looking for clients who are affluent baby boomers getting ready to retire might start looking at the Porsche owners club for instance.

Yes making yourself irresistible to your target market is critical ... it is so easy to do this and I will share some examples with you shortly.

@Anthony ... with regards to how much time is required ... well that of course depends on your business and what you already have in place. It depends on what marketing you have in place right now and how effective it is. It depends on the products and services you currently have available and the responsiveness of the market to these products and services.

Yes you are right introducing new marketing systems into a business definitely means change. You only want to do this if you are looking to attract more clients and grow the business. I have found from experience that it is usually best to involve all of the stakeholders into the implementation of the new system as opposed to at the strategy development end

[Rod Moore]

Yesterday we talked about Step 1 - ATTRACT more Leads to your business. We started our discussion by getting clear on WHO we want to attract and WHAT will make us attractive to them. Then we talked about WHERE you can find your target market as a group.

Again I want to stress the importance of actually sitting down and working through these areas before we move on. Do not be like the small business owner who mistakenly believes that everyone is your target market. You simply will not be attractive to a broad general market who are all out their looking for specific solutions to their problems.

Today we are going to look at how do we now attract our clearly defined target market and have them give us their PERMISSION to market to them over time.

We need to start out by looking at what Seth Goddin calls 'Permission Marketing'. In his ground breaking book of the same name Seth talks about the importance of building a database of prospective clients who have given you their permission to market to them and build a relationship with them.

No doubt you have had the experience of attending networking events and meeting people. The next day you start receiving promotional emails from them trying to sell you their stuff. There is nothing more annoying especially if you attend a number of events than to constantly receive un-invited marketing emails.

On the other hand when you market in the right way your target market will give you PERMISSION to market to them if they perceive you have the SOLUTION to their PROBLEM.

So now that we know WHO they are, WHAT will make us ATTRACTIVE to them and WHERE they exist as a group lets turn our attention to attracting them.

There are three things we need to focus on in this stage of our system:

1/ Irresistible Offer
2/ Lead Capture & Database Building
3/ Visibility Strategies

By now you are probably realising that this is a step-by-step system and each step depends upon you having done the previous step.

Lets take each in turn:

1/ Irresistible Offer
==============

First of all ... no one likes being sold to. We all love to buy.

With this in mind the worst thing you can do in your marketing & advertising up front is try and sell to your prospective clients. You trigger their own programmed negative responses to being sold to.

Marketing needs to be thought of us a series of steps not a one hit approach.

So we want out prospects to be attracted to us and take one step closer to us and in doing so give us their PERMISSION to build a relationship with them and market to them over time.

We do this by making them an IRRESISTIBLE OFFER!

So what is irresistbile?

Well lets say you are a Taxation Specilaist for Small Business. Lets say your target market is those small business owners who are struggling with their tax returns and compliance issues because you know you can charge a premium for this service.

So your target market has a PROBLEM and you have a SOLUTION.

In order to create an IRRESISTIBLE OFFER you might start by creating a CD where you are being interviewed on '7 Key Strategies Small Business Owners Can Use To Avoid Paying A Fortune In Tax and Penalties'

Now your target market small business owner who has issues around tax ... do you think they are going to want to hear this information? What if you gave it away for FREE? Would that be irresistible to them to want to get a copy?

Of course it would.

Consider my business Profit Minute ... we help small business owners ATTRACT more clients.

What would our irresistible offer be? What about a CD and report titled '119% Business Growth in 90 Days'. Do you think that would attract our target market? Absolutley it does.

So you want to create an Irresistible Offer for your target market that talks about the SOLUTION to their PROBLEM. There are many different formats this could take. The fastest to get started and get going in the market place is a CD interview.

The key point here is you want to create an offer of information that helps your target market to find out more about the solution to their problem. What is exciting is that when they listen to the CD, or read the report, or do both they start to sell themselves on YOU and why YOU are the expert.

2/ Lead Capture & Database Management
=================================

Once you have your irresistible offer in place the next step is to make it available for people to request it from you. You will want to do this via a LEAD CAPTURE page. This is a seperate web page that has just one job ... making your irresistible offer and then capturing their details into your database.

Here are some examples from my business;

http://www.ProfitMinute.com/freecd

http://www.AttractingClientsOnline.com

http://www.AttractionMarketingCoach.com

It is worth visiting these pages and observing the fact that there is only one thing you can do on these pages ... either say yes to the offer (thereby giving your permission) or no. There is not a hundred links to click on. It has one single focus.

A good lead capture page should convert at around 25% to 30% ... so if your lead capture page is not converting at these levels then you need to either improve the offer, or focus on attracting more qualified visitors to the offer.

You will also need to have your lead capture page connected to an autoresponder system or other back end database system. It is out of the scope of this discussion to go into details here.

3/ Visibility Strategies
=================

From this point forward all of the outbound marketing you do should not be about you. The only thing you want to market is your IRRESISTIBLE OFFER. To do this you need to create what I call VISIBILITY in your target market.

A high level of VISIBILITY is essential. If your target market do not know about you then none of your marketing efforts will work. So you need to seek to create VISIBILITY through a number of strategies.

Here are some of the visibility strategies we teach our clients to put into place:

1/ Speaking
2/ Publishing
3/ PR & Media
4/ Networking Events
5/ Paid Advertising
6/ Internet Marketing
7/ Referral Strategies
8/ Direct Mail
9/ Trade Shows & Expos

As you can see there many different strategies for gaining visibility amongst your target market and making them your irresistible offer. Each one of course requires their own in depth discussion.

What we recommend to our clients is that you pick out 2 or 3 visibility strategies and set about mastering these as opposed to trying to do them all at once.

So this again is a high level overview of the process for attracting more leads to you.