“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill
Napoleon Hill outlines 13 Principles of Success in his historical book, Think and Grow Rich.
In our Inner Circle Mastermind we are currently reading this book as a group and we discuss the concepts and principles in our calls each week.
You can find out more about these Thirteen Principles HERE
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The concept of minding your own business means that while you are grinding away at your day job you need to be investing in your future and minding your own business and working on your side hustle. Pretty soon you’ll be able to walk away from your day job and mind your own business full time.
The best way to do this is through the acquisition of real estate.
Let’s take a quick look at where you are losing all your money… taxes.
Taxes have been around since 1913 in the U.S. (earlier in England). While the original intention was to only tax the wealthiest of the population, obviously that’s trickled down to the masses, including those in poverty.
Now, keep in mind the more money you make the more taxes you pay. The wealthy know a way of getting around this-form a corporation. Corporations offer tax benefits and protect you from lawsuits. To learn more about this talk with one of our business coaches or your attorney.
We’ve all heard the golden rule of Pay Yourself First.
But, many of us don’t do it. Until you learn and put this rule into effect, you won’t have any chance of getting out of the rat race. What this rule does is force you to come up with more income to pay your expenses.
There are some key areas of finance you should learn about, taking classes is one of the best ways to do this. Here are the basics you should learn:
Accounting
It pays to know how to read financial statements. When acquiring businesses or assets you need to quickly see the financial standing of the company you are acquiring.
Many grown adults do not know how to balance a balance sheet. In the long term, this knowledge will pay off for you and your business.
Investment Strategy
This skill will sharpen with experience. Talk to investors and observe how they play the game.
Market Behavior
Know the laws of Supply and Demand. No business owner can do without understanding these basic principles of the market. Bill Gates saw what people needed. Open your eyes to opportunities. Look at what sells and who buys.
Law
Grow your business within legal boundaries. Know your corporate, state, and accounting laws.
Once you know these areas of finances you can make them work for you. The rich practically invent money. You have to know where to find a great deal. Let’s continue with real estate. Look for houses in trouble or find the court in your area that handles foreclosed, police impound or other real estate situations. You can either renovate and sell or rent for residual income.
So, essentially there are two main types of investors:
You know which are the most successful. In order to be one of those people, you need to know what to look for and how to respond.
You must:
There is risk involved in every acquisition. The goal is not to avoid the risk, but to respond to the risk with confidence and a steady hand.
If you need help identifying potential money-makers, where to get the capital you need, and how to put together a smart team, try our GUIDED TOUR to gain access to our resources and tools.
Regardless of what stage you are at with your business, one of the main things you must work on is your mindset. To find true success in your life, implement the strategies in Mindset Questions: The Real Secret to Success. You can also gain daily inspiration through these podcasts.
Prepare for Lift Off!
Last time I gave you a laundry list of tips and tricks you can use to make your word of mouth program work for you. Hopefully you’ve taken a look and decided which ones are the best fit for your company, products, services and target customers, so you can put them to work in your word of mouth campaign.
We are going to wrap up this series on word of mouth where we give you the specific steps to create a word of mouth campaign.
Now, let’s take a look at those steps:
These are all amazing ways you can get the word out about your products and services and start a word of mouth campaign that takes on a life of its own. Before you can release your word of mouth campaign out into the world, you need to go through the checklist to make sure you’ve covered all the essentials.
Here’s your word of mouth campaign checklist:
These are all essential elements to take keep in mind when taking a second or even third check over your word of mouth campaigns. I hope you’ve found this series on word of mouth to be a great resource and are getting ready to put it into action for your own products and services.
Remember, if you need help with anything in this series, try our GUIDED TOUR to gain access to the best resources, tools and business coaches you can find.
Get real direction and meaning in your life with our FREE Momentum Series.
People only remember the extraordinary, strange, wild, surprising, and unusual. You need to make sure your ideas and marketing reflect these reactions. This doesn’t mean you have to have a product or service that is completely out of the norm, in fact, this could easily drive customers away. You need to have a product or service that is high quality and easily marketable, then you need to market it as extraordinary and new.
As you research word of mouth, there are some questions you need to ask along the way:
What are the users willing to tell the non-users?
There are two main reasons why word of mouth research is so important:
There is a simple formula that can help you conduct your word of mouth research. It’s called the “2-2-2” model.
2-2-2- Model
What this breaks down to is:
In these groups you need to ask the following questions:
The best way to conduct these groups is by teleconference. This ensures you’ll get a good variety of demographics for your customers and potential customers. It also allows people to feel safe and more able to express their true feelings. These teleconferences should not be conducted by you, but an independent party to avoid adding pressure to the situation.
We’re going to transition a bit and talk about how to construct a word of mouth campaign. First, we’ll take a look at the essential ingredients you need to put together a campaign. These ingredients are:
Once you have those ingredients ready to use, you should consider the situations in which your company can benefit from a strong word of mouth programs. Some of these situations are:
While most of the word of mouth tactics are positive for your word of mouth program, there are a few products to avoid using in this program. They are:
This wraps up this post on word of mouth research and how that research can be used when putting together your word of mouth campaign. If you need help with the research and a plan to use the results of that research, try our GUIDED TOUR to get all the help you need with our top-notch resources and tools.
For a FREE copy of our Fear to Fuel, 18 Proven Strategies to Turn Your Fear Into Power eBook, Click HERE and learn how to be confident in yourself.
Visit https://jeffheggie.com for more resources from Jeff Heggie
Today I’d like to discuss the science of the memes and how spreading ideas around and through society is ingrained in humans.
Memes
This refers to types of ideas that spread the fastest through society, why they spread fast and how that affects consumerism. You can use this same information to create a lasting positive impression about your company, products and services. People are more likely to try a new product or services when they feel protected and reassured by the masses.
It’s been determined that spreading ideas is essential to the survival of a society. There are 5 main situations where this occurs. They are:
Crisis
Mission
Problem
Danger
Opportunity
Think of evangelism. This is prime example of people not only spreading the word, but convincing people to jump on board and start to spread the word themselves. To do this effectively, you need to incorporate a few key things that always catch people’s eye:
News
Unique Results
The Unusual
Helping Others
Sex
Secrets
Next we are going to switch gears a little and talk about viral marketing. While, traditional marketing can be used to your advantage, the reality is viral and online marketing is the king of the castle. You can spread the word online like the plague, if you know what to do. Here are some simple steps to do this:
Find an interesting idea
Make it easy for people to experience or try
Spread the idea while people who are in close contact with others
Take advantage of existing communication methods
Develop the way of trying your product in such a way that it automatically draws more try-ers
Some great places to use viral marketing are:
Geocities
Ebay
Roger Wilco
ICQ
AOL Instant Messenger
MSN Instant Messenger
Winamp
Hotmail
“Tell A Friend” Buttons
E-Greeting Cards
There are six things everyone should be doing to benefit from word of mouth on the Internet:
Put WOM components on your website.
Assign people to monitor your viral marketing.
Place testimonials in different places on your website to walk a customer through the purchasing cycle.
Set up an email marketing campaign.
Stay up to date on what products and services the experts in your industry are recommending.
Use your website to demonstrate the great ways people are using or finding success with your products and services.
Here are other non-viral Internet opportunities to explore:
iPhone’s
Handheld PC’s
Blackberrys
And other well connected electronic devices
This wraps up the lesson on traditional and viral marketing. If you need help putting together any of the plans or successes in this lesson, try our GUIDED TOUR to get all the help you need to put these plans into action.
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Today’s lesson will talk about how word of mouth messages are delivered and how you can influence those messages.
There are essentially 3 methods of word of mouth:
When experts are talking about your products or service you will usually receive an amazing rush of sales and new customers, so obviously this is one of the best things that can happen. You can also help to facilitate this by offering free products to experts for them to review.
Expert opinions can also bring about new ideas that help to fuel new products, services, and operating systems within your company. If you take the time to change or develop the opinions of even a small group of experts, you will have the opportunity to help your market explode.
There is a standard word of mouth delivery system that, in most cases, takes a few years. But, you can speed this up into only a few weeks. The standard system is:
It’s important to know exactly who is advocating for your products and service. Take the time to find out who they are and reward them. While you may already have a customer service system for filing complaints, do you have one for compiling praise? Most likely not. If you take the time to show these people appreciation, they will help take your products and services to the top.
There are lots of things you can offer your biggest fans to help spread the word about your products and services.
Conventional media has been around forever and while it can still be effective, it’s lost a little of its luster over the last few years. There are a few reasons for this:
While these are all true, there are ways you can make conventional media work for you. For the information to be effective, it needs to be presented in the right sequence, come from the right sources, be relevant to the target customer, be credible, and be delivered at the right time in the medium.
We’re going to switch gears a little and talk about the two phases of the product adoption cycle. Traditional media is great for taking you through the information stage where you can offer the information you need for your potential customers, but it’s not so great for measuring the results of those efforts.
Without these results, you can’t fine-tune your marketing and therefore can easily miss the boat and lose potential customers and waste a whole lot of money. Once a consumer has the information they need, they’ll go through a verification process as they analyze whether or not the purchase was a good one. They generally get their information through:
Once you have the ability and are able to work through these concepts, you will be able to target your customers much better. If you need help with any of this along the way, try our GUIDED TOUR to gain access to our experienced business coaches.
Also, get my FREE Momentum Training to help you figure out your path to a bigger future.
Today we’ll cover the idea of shortening your customers’ decision-making process with positive word of mouth. There are essentially 5 stages in the decision-making process.
They are:
So, let’s take a closer look at each one of these.
From “No” to “Maybe”
This stage is really important because if your potential customers don’t even take a second look at your products and services, then you have no chance of sealing a deal. This is why you need to offer credible information and well thought out pricing, guarantees and incentives.
Investigating Your Products
At this stage they are taking a closer look at your product line to see if there is actually anything that could benefit their life. This is where you need to make sure your hard information is right out there in front for the customers to see and compare.
Trial Period
Customers often feel more at ease and ready to purchase when there is some sort of a trial in place. They usually want to try vicariously through someone else, so they don’t feel any risk involved. A good way to offer this is through demo videos, product demonstrations or a tour of your facilities. This stage may invoke a reaction of “I tried it and liked it. You should check it out.”
Make a Purchase
At this stage, they have taken the risk of purchasing one of your products or services and are now evaluating how easy, convenient, cost effective and satisfying your product or service is. At this stage a common reaction would be, “It was really easy to use and learn from. It’s really great, you should get it!”
Advocates for Yours Products
At this last stage of decision making the customer is immensely pleased with your product and often keeps using it and/or comes back for more products and services. They are likely telling everyone they know how much they like it, that they use it every day and have already (or will be) back to your establishment for more.
We talked a minute ago about the different types of purchasers. Now we are going to take a closer look at their characteristics, so you can figure out which tactics are best to use at the right stage of the decision-making process.
The Innovator
Early Adopter
Middle Majority
Late Majority
Laggard
As you can see, each type of consumer wants something just a little different depending on their personality type. The key to successful word of mouth is to target and cater to each type of consumer. If you need help identifying the types of consumers you are currently helping and how to attract the types you are lacking, try our GUIDED TOUR for the resources and tools you need to get the job done.
Also check out our FREE training, the Momentum Series, that will help you get focused on what your goals are and where you are going in life.
Next time we’ll talk about how word of mouth messages are delivered and what you can do to help facilitate that.
Today we’re going to talk about how to harness the power of word of mouth. Including the six-step process to success and the 30 (that’s right, I said 30) ways to harness the power of WOM. So, let’s get started!
There are six steps to harassing word of mouth:
The Decision Maker Matrix is based on years of trial and error by George Silverman. It essentially charts to different concerns you may come across when working with different adopters and putting together a decision process for each one.
We are now going to move on to the 30 ways to harass the power of WOM:
Use Experts
Experts can come in many forms and all their opinions should be taken into consideration when putting together a WOM campaign. Some experts to gather information from include:
Seminars, Workshops & Speeches
These venues are a perfect opportunity to gather information. People who attend these types of events are used to giving feedback, so you can use a survey or other method to gather information you can look over later. Some events to use are:
“Canned” Word of Mouth
The concept of “canned” word of mouth is using hard and online products to get feedback and offer information at the same time. Some ideas for these are:
Referral Selling
As we’ve talked about before a referral program can help with a variety of things in building your business. By using some of the following tactics and opportunities you can find out exactly what you need to do to generate positive word of mouth. These tactics and opportunities are:
“New” Media
The concept of “new” media is the use of up and coming media sources and opportunities to get the word out about your products and services and listen for the feedback about them. Here’s some of the “new” media options:
Using Traditional Media for Word of Mouth
Using traditional media is a great way to get feedback. These are still considered mainstream ways of interacting with the public and consumers. Some traditional media outlets are:
Internal Word of Mouth
As you can see there are tons of ideas you can work with to increase your level of positive word of mouth marketing. If you need help with any of this, please try our GUIDED TOUR to access our exclusive resources that can help you put this whole thing together.
If you are looking for help and direction setting your goals and the path to achieving them, try our FREE Momentum Series.
Last time we talked about the second part of word of mouth tactics which help you put together a system to help shorten the purchasing decision time of your customers which can increase your profits immensely.
Today we’re going to talk about the nine levels of word of mouth which gives you a tool to measure the word of mouth circulating around your company, products, and services. You can then see where you are getting negative or weak word of mouth and find ways to correct it.
So, launching into the nine levels of word of mouth-it should seem relatively obvious that the negative levels are, well, negative and the positive levels are positive.
Minus 4
This is the worst of the worst and means your product is creating a scandal. Remember, when the popular over-the-counter pain relievers, like Tylenol, were deemed unsafe? Yea, you won’t want that kind of word of mouth.
Minus 3
Disgruntled customers are going out of their way to convince other consumers from purchasing your products and services. They are boycotting you.
Minus 2
While not outwardly boycotting, when customers are asked about you, they will give a negative response.
Minus 1
At this level, people are mildly dissatisfied and while not outwardly talking about it, they will have an opinion if asked. Now they may purchase from you despite their negative feelings, this can be a little confusing.
Level 0
This is sort of a neutral place to be. Customers are using your products, but don’t really talk about it. People rarely ask them about it, so they aren’t sharing their opinion with others. This can be a bit of a slippery slope because you don’t want to turn that neutral experience into a negative one. In fact, you should work to make it a positive one.
Plus 1
At this level we are finally starting to work our way into the positive word of mouth about your company, products, and services. Plus 1 signifies that people are generally pleased with your products, but unless asked, don’t really say anything about them.
Plus 2
When asked, your customers will talk about how much they love your products.
Plus 3
Customers will go out of their way to talk about your products, services, company, and their shopping experience with you. This is most evident when you see how people recommend movies to their friends and family.
Plus 4
Your product is the toast of the town. There is an obvious buzz going around and your business is the place to be. People are not only talking about your great products and services, but they are talking about their shopping experience, your customer service, and how they perceive the company to help them in the future.
Some great examples of Plus 4 companies are:
We’re going to leave this lesson for you to mull over and take a look at what kind of word of mouth you are generating. If you need help with this process, try our GUIDED TOUR to get help from our experienced business coaches.
If you are a current entrepreneur and you are worried about your business and how you are going to survive in these uncertain times, or if you will survive, you need to register for my MARKETING ACCELERATED COURSE. In this five-module course, I’ll show you cost-free strategies that will increase your leads, conversions, and profits immediately.
Next time we’re going to talk about the 30 ways to harness the power of word of mouth.
