If you’re not a big football fan, then you may not have watched yesterday’s exciting Super Bowl.  The New England Patriots were favored to win by 13 points over the NY Giants to cap off only the 2^nd undefeated season in league history.

However, someone forgot to tell the Giants they weren’t supposed to win. 

And according to the TV rating folks, yesterday’s game was the most watched Super Bowl EVER.  I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but it was definitely watched by an INSANE amount of people

Now, as you probably already know, the commercials are a big part of the broadcast.  In fact, I’d venture to say that just as many people tune in to view the commercials as tune in to actually watch the game.

I saw most of them and while some were definitely worth the hype, there’s one that stood out to me because of the marketing savvy behind it.  You see, I’d say most of those ads were a complete waste of money because all they were doing was trying to build an image or their brand.  If you’re a big company with mult-millions of dollars to spend that may be okay, but in terms of ROI, it’s HORRIBLE.

In my opinion, the best ad of the day in terms of getting people’s attention PLUS getting them to actually take action was the one by GoDaddy. 

You see, they capitalized on a lot of the media attention they’d received in previous years with their scandalous spots and took it a step further because of the ad they WEREN’T allowed to run.  Did that stop them from running it?

Well, sort of.  Instead of airing the actual ad during the Super Bowl, they aired another ad that teased the actual ad and told people to go to their website to see the actual ad.  This gave them multiple exposures to their target market, PLUS once someone sees the ad online, they’re already there on the site ready to take action.  Overall, it’s pretty ingenious.

Now, as it relates to marketing your own business, there are a couple of things you can pull from this.  First, capitalize on any media attention or exposure you get.  While you probably won’t get the HUGE attention GoDaddy got, it’s still possible to generate a little bit of buzz.

Second, view each ad as a separate step in the process.  GoDaddy didn’t try to sell anything on the ad that actually aired during the Super Bowl.  Instead they tried to get you to go to their website to view another ad.  Then after you watch that ad, a special offer is presented to you, which is the next step in their process.

Finally, they used a celebrity to help endorse their product.  Now, I know you’re probably saying there’s NO WAY you could do that with your business, but actually, celebrity endorsements carry quite a bit of weight.  And finding a local or regional celebrity is a whole lot easier than you think AND these endorsements actually do carry quite a bit of weight.

I know this is a subject I haven’t talked about much before, but you’ll probably hear more about it in the future because it really can have a huge impact on your marketing.

Alrighty, well that’s all for today.  I hope this week is a fruitful one for you and if you have any thoughts about the commercials, I’d love to hear them!

Do you follow politics at all?  Well, just in case you don’t and have hiding out in a cave for the past few weeks, the process that will determine who the candidates for President next year is now in full swing. 

The voters in Iowa kicked things off last week and today the folks up in New Hampshire are taking there turn at making their pick for the Republican and Democratic nominees.

Now, I’m not going to talk about any one particular candidate, but I would like to draw some comparisons between this whole campaign process and marketing your business.

If we examine the results from the Iowa race last week, we’ll find a perfect example of good marketing in action.  You see, on the Republican side, underdog Mike Huckabee who was the former Governor of Arkansas and a former Baptist preacher beat out the very well funded former Governor of Massachusettes, Mitt Romney.

Now, if you followed the race at all you would know that Romney outspent Huckabee by 20-1 according to some sources in on advertising.  Yet when all the votes were counted, Huckabee won by roughly 5%, a somewhat sizeable victory.

If we look at this from a marketing perspective, the way I see it is as follows:  Huckabee did a better job of matching his message to the market.

You see, just as Republicans talk about the 3 legs of the party, being social, fiscally, and foreign policy conservative, there are 3 legs to the marketing stool as well, the right message, to the proper market, via the appropriate medium.  And in a nutshell, Huckabee did that very, very well.

Now, I’m not giving Huckabee an endorsement here, but what he did very well was create a message that resonated very well with his target market.  It didn’t matter how much money Romney had to spend, he just couldn’t overcome the market to message match held by Huckabee.

So, when it comes to your marketing, you don’t have to spend the most to get results.  You simply need to match carefully your message to market and the results will follow.

One last note.  As I mentioned last week, the $29.95/mo price for membership in the Lawn Care Champion’s Circle is jumping up to $59.95/mo on January 15^th.  And once that price is gone, it’s gone forever.

So, if you know you need to be a better marketer, but still aren’t sure what that means, or aren’t sure how to create winning marketing systems, join the Champion’s Circle today and get the tools, resources, and insight you’ll need to dominate your target market in 2008.

You can get all the details about the Champion’s Circle right here:

www.LawnCareChampionsCircle.com

Well, I’m off to check on the New Hampshire primary results and who knows, maybe I’ll even have another marketing lesson to share out of this one in a few days!

Every smart business owner recognizes the importance of marketing.  Unfortunately, it’s often seen as a necessary evil instead of the vital ingredient to growing a thriving, successful business that it is.  In fact, marketing is often times an after thought, only considered when things have slowed down and there aren’t enough new customers to keep you busy.

While there are many reasons for allowing this to happen, not a single one is excusable.  There is NEVER a good reason for neglecting your marketing to the point where you have to start anew every month.

One of the ways to ensure this doesn’t happen is to create and implement a magical marketing system. 

Now, I know you’re probably thinking a system is something better suited for an NFL offense, a complex organization, or complicated engineering process, but when done correctly, your business truly will benefit from a carefully designed marketing system.

As a matter of fact, not only will a marketing system help you keep your pipeline full of interested, qualified prospects, it will also

Save

You

Sweat

Time

Energy, and

Money

In a nutshell, a marketing system can make your life as a small business owner INFINITELY better thanks to more new customers with less stress, hassle, and headaches than what you’re traditionally used to.

Now, in order to create and implement an effective marketing system there are a few key ingredients to consider:

1.     Know What You’re Trying to Accomplish

As you can imagine, it’s impossible to create any type of system if you don’t first have a plan for what you’re trying to accomplish.  So the first step is to know what it is you’re after.

Perhaps your goal is to produce better qualified prospects?  Or maybe you want to convert more prospects to paying customers?  Or you need to retain more of your new customers for longer periods of time.

Whatever your marketing problem, chances are you can create and implement a powerful marketing system to solve the issue IF you first know what it is you’re trying to accomplish.

2.     Create a Map of Your Sales Process

Once you know what it is you’re trying to accomplish, your chances of creating an effective marketing system are greatly enhanced when you lay out visually each step in your sales process.

Now I’m not talking about some fancy, multi-colored, multi-box drawing that makes you go cross-eyed by just looking at it.  It can be a simple outline of every step in your process or it could be something drawn on a cocktail napkin.  The key is to simply draw out your process.

What happens when someone comes in contact with one of your ads?  What action are they supposed to take?  If they DO take that step, what happens next?  What’s they resulting action they’re then supposed to take?  If they DON’T take the first step, do you have a follow-up process in place to continue educating them?  How many follow-up steps are there and what are they?

These are all questions that need to be clearly articulated to give you a better understanding of what you need your system to do.  Actually draw the process out to give you an unmistakable visual map of the process.

3.     Use Marketing That Can Be Tracked and Measured

In order to know how well your system is working, you need to employ marketing that can be tracked and measured.  It doesn’t do any good to spend time and money on marketing methods that can’t tell you how well they’re working.

The whole idea of creating a marketing system is to create a process that once set in motion produces a consistent, predictable result time after time.  However, if you don’t know what the results are, you won’t know if what you’re doing works or not. 

4.     Test, Test, Test

Again, the idea of creating a marketing system is to create a process that produces consistent results and as a small business you need these results to be consistently GOOD.  The only way you can get good results is to constantly test different aspects of your marketing and make the necessary adjustments and changes until you arrive at the best combination of elements.

Don’t be lazy.  Test, test, and test some more.

5.     Start Small and Scale Up

In your quest to produce consistent results, it’s important to pace yourself out of the gate.  If you blow through all your resources right off the bat trying to perfect the system, you won’t have enough left over to arrive at the winning combination.

Always start small and scale up as you begin seeing profitable returns on your investment.  Direct response marketing is the best way to do this because it allows you to run small tests, gauge returns, make adjustments, and test again. 

If you’re serious about growing your business and know your marketing has been an afterthought for too long, now is the time to create your very own magical marketing system.  One that once set in motion, delivers consistent, profitable results in the form of a steady stream of interested, qualified prospects for your business.