We’re having a birthday party for my son tomorrow.

That means the house will be full of little kids running around all hooped up on cake and ice cream. Yippee.

Actually, I’m pretty excited about it. As much as I’d love to invite you to the festivities, lack of space and the fact we probably didn’t make a cake big enough to accommodate everyone means you probably won’t be there. In spite of this, I still want you to benefit from the party.

As a result, I’ll be offering something very special starting tomorrow at 1pm and going until Sunday at midnight. I can’t reveal all the details right now, but check back tomorrow afternoon to get the low down.

I’ll see you tomorrow for the virtual party!

Once again another weekend has snuck up on me and I hate to admit it, but I’m totally unprepared for it. I don’t know about you, but it always seems as if I start off the week with a ton of things I need to get accomplished and as Friday approaches, the list hasn’t gotten any shorter. In fact, it often seems as if it’s grown a little!

Fortunately, it’s growing because as I’m knocking things off the list, other things are being added. In fact, I’m constantly on the lookout for ways I can take advantage of a new opportunity that’s presented itself, or tweak one aspect of my business to make it better, or add an additional service that won’t require too much effort on my part but could add a ton of value for my customers and more revenue for me. So in short, even though my list never gets completely vanquished, I see that as a good thing.

Which brings me to your business. Are you constantly on the lookout for new opportunities? Do you have your eyes open to things that would be a good compliment to the business you’re already in? Are you networking with other service providers and talking about ways you can cross promote each other’s business or provide additional services to each other’s customers?

What about looking for ways to tweak your business to make it better? What does your voicemail message say? Have you listened to it lately? When someone calls do they hang up feeling as if they’ve called a competent professional that will respond to their inquiry promptly and courteously?

How’s your customer service? Do you have the processes in place to quickly address any questions, issues, or concerns your customers might have about your service? Are they able to get in touch with the person they need to speak with quickly and without having to jump through hoops?

When was the last time you looked at the value you’re providing your customers? Is there something you could add to your service mix that your customers would perceive as valuable? What about the existing services you already provide? Is there any way you could enhance it any to add more perceived value?

These are all excellent activities and questions you should periodically ask yourself in order to continually be improving your business. You never want to rest on your laurels and think you’ve got everything ‘perfect’ because that’s when problems will start to creep in on you.

Also, you want to constantly be working ON your business, not just in it. Working ON your business will allow you to make continuous improvements that will allow you to become the dominant service provider in your target market.

Well, we’ve made it to the end.  Today I’m going to share with you deadly marketing mistake #7. 

While the previous 6 mistakes are understandable and can be forgiven, this is one that is inexcusable. As mentioned previously, customers are the lifeline of any business and the only way to get new customers and get more out of your existing customers is through marketing. Throwing some marketing materials out into the marketplace, watching them fail or produce marginal results and the saying ‘oh well’ is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

As an entrepreneur, you have two primary responsibilities. The first being the primary product or service you provide, which in this case I’m assuming is lawn care, landscaping, fertilization, seeding, irrigation, or any other green industry trade.

The second responsibility you have is the marketing of your chosen trade. I doubt seriously that you would settle for producing a shoddy product or providing marginal service. So why then would you settle for anything less than the best with your marketing efforts?

Marketing is one aspect of a business that should never, ever be outsourced or delegated. You should constantly be studying up on marketing and how to better market your business, especially direct marketing, as this will provide the biggest bang for your marketing dollar. There are countless resources available online, through books or magazines, or in your library that can help educate you on how to market your business more effectively.

An excellent resource to help you better understand how this game of marketing works and to help you be more effective at creating marketing materials that work is my 100+ page book and audio seminar found in my ‘7 Little Known Steps to Putting an End to All the Marketing Mayhem, Madness, and Miscues’ (http://tinyurl.com/j42dy) 

Now, this certainly isn’t the end all be all when it comes to marketing, but it’s definitely a great start if you’re fed up and tired of wasting your hard earned time and money on ineffective marketing.

So to recap today’s deadly mistake, you should CONSTANTLY be studying and updating your marketing know-how.  If you’re serious about taking your business to the next level, it’s definitely something you should schedule time for each and every day so you can become as proficient at your marketing as you are at your lawn care and landscaping.

Well <$firstname$>, that brings us to the end of this series.  I truly hope you’ve gained a lot of insight on how to be a better marketer of your service.  While these 7 mistakes we’ve discussed are easy traps to fall into, they are also easily avoided by following many of the steps that I’ve outlined the past few days.

Before we get to today’s ‘deadly’ marketing mistake, I’d like to take just a few minutes to review the things we’ve discussed previously.  Since this is to be the 6th installment of the 7 Deadly Small Business Marketing Mistakes, the five deadly sins we discussed previously are as follows:

  Mistake #1:  Trying to copy ‘big business’ marketing tactics

  Mistake #2:  Confusing ‘branding’ with marketing

  Mistake #3:  Asking your marketing materials to do too much

  Mistake #4:  Not asking your marketing materials to do enough

  Mistake #5:  Not being specific enough with your market or not picking a niche

Today’s lesson is another common mistake made by all businesses, big or small.  This one is what I call the ‘Yellow Pages Syndrome’. Open up your local yellow pages and turn to any section. Upon examining a handful of ads, you’ll quickly notice that the same message is repeated over and over and over again. They may use different words, but they’re essentially saying the same thing.  There’s really no way to distinguish one company from another, other than the phone number.

Don’t be guilty of this sin!  You absolutely MUST differentiate yourself in such a way that your prospects can see that you’re different from everyone else.  You want them to be able to pick your company out of a lineup of all the other lawn care or landscaping companies, otherwise you could get lost in a sea of sameness.  Definitely not a good thing!

Now, by differentiating yourself, I mean find something about your product or service that sets you apart from your competition and then make that the focus of your marketing message. That doesn’t mean that you need to go out and invent some new facet of your business. It simply means you need to find one or two things that really matter to your target market that you do better than anyone else and then you focus your marketing message on those things.

Instead of simply listing all the services you offer, just like every other company does, go into detail about one of the services you provide.  Tell your prospects why you use the equipment you do.  Or tell them how you provide a written report on the status of the lawn after every service call.  Or tell them how you do a free lawn analysis once a month and provide a list of recommended actions in order to help them maintain a lush, green lawn all year long.

So, what if you don’t think you have or do anything special that could set you apart from your competition?  Find something!  If you’re so busy right now ‘mowing and going’, then you need to take a few moments to think about your business, what makes it special from everyone else, and then start focusing on that.  Otherwise you’ll end up always competing on price and trust me, that’s not something you want to be competing on if you want to have a thriving business for years to come.

Finally, at every opportunity you have, tell your prospects how you’re different from the competition, why you have what they’re looking for, and why they should do business with you instead of your competition.  Focus on this differentiating factor in your marketing materials and you’ll soon be standing head and shoulders above everyone else when it comes time for the ol’ lineup.

Today’s marketing mistake is another one that is quite common among small businesses. Heck, most businesses make this mistake, big and small. That is the mistake of trying to be all things to all people. In other words, they haven’t selected a niche to serve.

Now I’m know you’re probably saying, ‘I have selected a niche.’ However, just because you have a lawn care business and you service lawns for people that don’t want to cut it doesn’t mean you’ve picked your niche.

So what would be defined as a niche? Good question. A niche is any group of people that have common characteristics or interests. For instance, attorneys could be considered a niche. People that enjoy quilting are a niche. People living within a certain postal code could be considered a niche. Pink haired males that drive El Camino’s could also be considered a niche.

One of the biggest keys to building a successful business is to quit trying to serve everyone and just focus on serving a smaller, but tightly targeted group of people. You’re probably asking yourself, how is narrowing my potential target market going to help me be more successful?

Well, by narrowing your focus, believe it or not, you’ll position yourself to do significantly more business. That’s because your marketing will be laser targeted and you’ll be able to attract a much higher quality of customer. Plus, you’ll find that you can quickly become the sought after name when it comes to your particular niche. 

How do you make this work for your lawn care or landscaping business?  Well, the first thing I’d suggest is finding a ‘farm’.  This is basically your ‘niche’.  It’s a carefully selected group of people you want to target and market to over a period of time.

Defining this ‘farm’ is one of the most important steps you’ll ever take as a business owner and I guarantee it will improve the results of your marketing almost instantly.

As you’ll recall from the previous message, the 3rd deadly marketing mistake is asking your marketing materials to do too much. Well, #4 relates to your marketing materials as well, but this time it’s not asking your marketing materials to do enough.

I know, I know. That may sound like it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you consider what mistake #3 is, but let me explain.

If you’ll remember, by asking your marketing materials to do too much I mean expecting them to move your prospects immediately from A to Z. The way to avoid that is by having multiple steps in your marketing process that progressively move the prospects from A through Z.

In order to make that happen however, your materials MUST be specific about what you expect your prospects to do. It must be spelled out in such a way that there’s no way anyone could ever get confused about what you expect them to do next.

So many times I see marketing materials that are soft and spineless when it comes to telling prospects what to do. Don’t be guilty of this!

So how do you avoid making this deadly mistake? Well, if we combine mistakes 3 and 4, you would have a multi-step sequence and in each step you will tell them EXACTLY what you expect them to do.

For example, let’s say you have a yellow pages ad with the goal of having prospects call a recorded message line, on which they leave their name and address if interested, and then finally you have a sales letter that you mail out to those leaving their name and address. That’s an example of a multi-step marketing sequence.

Now, to avoid making deadly mistake number four, in the yellow pages ad you tell your prospect to ‘Call (800) XXX-XXXX 24hrs a day for A Free Recorded Message’. At the end of the recorded message, you will say, “Leave your full name, company name, mailing address, and phone number and we’ll rush you a free report about ‘XXXXXXXX’. And finally, at the end of the sales letter you send out, you include a message that says, ‘Call us before XX/XX/XXXX to take advantage of these special offers. You can reach us at _______ to request your free estimate and to schedule your free services’. 

You see, in each step of the process you’ve very clearly laid out what you expect your prospect to do. There’s no confusion and they’re not left to ask themselves, “What do I do now?” 

Well, we’re over halfway through the 7 deadly mistakes. I hope that you’re finding them very beneficial and that they’re causing you to examine your own marketing efforts to find ways to improve them.