I’ll bet you have heard most of your life that effective goal setting is essential for success.   Why then do so many of us fall short on this essential business and life skill?  The answer is complex and there are a variety of psychological reasons.

However rather than digging into the “why”, we will first quickly assess where you stand then use the following 10 tips for developing more powerful goals. Start by asking yourself these 3 questions:

1) Do I have clear, written and measurable goals for my business and personal growth?

2) Have I created specific action steps required to achieve each goal?

3) Do I regularly track and measure the progress of each of my goals?

If your answer is no the ten keys below will help you to become more effective with your goal setting efforts and achieve more measurable results in your business.

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine. Brian Tracy

In my 2005 book Success Secrets of The Online Marketing Superstars I interviewed legendary author, Mark Victor Hansen about goals.  He is the co-author of the best selling series in history Chicken Soul For The Soul knows quite a lot about developing BIG goals.   Here are his tips about goal setting:

1) Your most important goals must be yours.

Not your spouse’s. Not your child’s. Not your employer’s. Yours. When you let other people determine your definition of success, you’re sabotaging your own future.

2)  Your goals must mean something to you.

When you write your goals, you must ask yourself, “What’s really important to me?” “What am I prepared to give up to make this happen?” Your reasons for charting a new course of action give you the drive and energy to get up every morning.

3) Your goals must be specific and measurable.

Vague generalizations and wishy-washy statements aren’t good enough.  Be very specific!

4) Your goals must be flexible.

A flexible plan keeps you from feeling suffocated and allows you to take advantage of genuine opportunities that walk in your future door.

5) Your goals must be challenging, exciting.

Force yourself to jump out of your comfort zone to acquire that energy and edge.

6) Your goals must be in alignment with your values.

Pay attention to your intuition, your gut. When you set a goal that contradicts your values, something inside will twinge. Pay attention.

7) Your goals must be well-balanced.

Make sure you include areas that allow time to relax, have fun and enjoy people in your closest circle.

8) Your goals must be realistic.

Be expansive but don’t be ridiculous. If you’re four feet tall, you will probably never play in the NBA. Also, be sure to allow yourself time to get there.

9) Your goals must include contribution.

Unfortunately, many people get so wrapped up in pursuing their goals that they don’t have time in their lives to give something back to society. Build this into your goals program.

10) Your goals need to be supported.

Either selectivity share a few of your dreams with a number of people, or share all of your dreams with a select few people. In either case, you’re creating a web of support and accountability for yourself.

Open your mind to all the possibilities. Start each goal with “I am” or “I will.” Don’t even think about restricting yourself!

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Your Coaching Action Step: Review the list above and write 5-7 specific 3 month goals (e.g. 10 new clients, 1000 new subscribers to my mailing list) then write the specific steps you will take to get there and track your progress every day!

by Mitch Meyerson

We created this fun little 1 minute video to give you an idea about how Guerrilla Marketing Coaching can boost your bottom line.. Enjoy it– then check out our five Guerrilla Marketing tips for today!

5 Guerrilla Marketing Tips:

1.  Build the Human Bond: Learn To Turn Strangers Into Friends

2.  Develop Fusion Marketing Partners and Know How To Approach Them Correctly

3.  Use Your Imagination and Be Creative

4.  Give away useful free content: Download 101 Free Guerrilla Marketing Coaching Strategies

5.  Action speaks louder than words: Be consistent and lead with your passion!

Many folks erroneously believe that being an exceptional “craftsman” (e.g. financial advisor, quilt maker, therapist, fund raiser, speaker, etc.) makes them qualified to operate a business that specializes in that work.

They spend most of their time performing “the work” of the business rather than leading, planning, organizing, systematizing and/or marketing their business!

Most of us know people like these: They must be at work everyday in order to conduct businesses. They do it all: pack boxes, write invoices, make sales calls, answer the phone, fix equipment, design their own web sites, write their own ad copy, troubleshoot problems, empty the trash, meet personally with every client, and so on.

They have no written procedures, documented processes or automated systems for doing anything. Rather, their valuable knowledge, innovative ideas and sound methodologies remain only in their heads.

You also won’t find them outsourcing work, forming beneficial strategic alliances, delegating tasks to employees or seeking wise counsel from other professionals. Why? Because many entrepreneurs believe they already know what they need to know – AND they don’t want to know what they don’t know! They are “unconsciously incompetent” and if they remain that way, their business will most certainly fail.

“If they don’t fail outright, most businesses fail to fully achieve their potential. That’s because the person who owns the business doesn’t truly know how to build a company that works without him or her… which is the key.”
Michael Gerber

So what happens? They try to go it alone. They get sick. They get sick and tired. They spend half a day at the Department of Motor Vehicles. They get stretched too thin. They feel rushed and overwhelmed. They worry that they can’t do it all. They worry that others won’t do “it” right. They know that they should let go, but can’t. They worry about what it might cost them to let go. They fail to fix serious flaws. They ignore their customers. They have a short term, “put-out-the-latest –fire” mentality. They miss golden opportunities. They feel like they need to get away. They take a much-needed vacation. Their businesses come to a screeching halt…

And when they return they discover that the work has piled up and they’ve lost money, frustrated customers and missed golden opportunities. What can be done about this?

Tips for fixing…

• Realize that being a good at “something” does not mean you’ll succeed at running a business that does that work.

• Objectively assess your business skills and knowledge.

• Play to your strengths, passions and skills. Do what you do best and let others help you.  Build a team of people – employees, consultants, strategic partners, and the like – who are more skilled that you in key areas.

• Seek, and offer, support from others outside of work… family, friends and colleagues. Take advantage of the vast resources available on the internet.

• Automate!  With all of the affordable technology available today – software, phone systems, web-based programs, etc. – there’s no excuse for going it alone.  It’s never been easier to communicate with prospects, troubleshoot problems, and stay in contact with customers and the like, even when you’re not there.

The preceding post was adapted from Mastering Online Marketing by Mitch Meyerson and Mary Eule Scarborough.  Get your copy here:  Mastering Online Marketing

In this short video I will tell you how I was able to publish 4 books in one year. Sound like a lot? Here are the guiding principles you can also use to achieve more than you might have imagined. (Don’t miss the end :)

In addition to the related articles below here are some posts connect with to the video above.

1) Conflicting Intentions: Are You Standing In Your Own Way?

2) Getting The Results You Want

3) Passion

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By Denise Wakeman

When it comes to creating content, there’s a subset of four elements you want to pay attention to, and those are the four E’s: Educate, Entertain, Engage, and Enrich.

People go online for two reasons.  One: to find solutions to their problems, and two: to be entertained.  So you want to keep your content tightly focused on educating your reader about the subject of your expertise.   If you can educate with humor, you’re way ahead of the game. Let’s take each element and clarify how you can use it.

Educate. This element is straightforward. You teach, explain, or spell out how to do something. You’re providing information and knowledge. Write up case studies of successful clients or do Q&A posts, answering your readers’ burning questions about your topic.

Entertain. Being entertaining is an art and some are more successful at it than others. Humor can be entertaining when done well, and telling stories is a powerful way to entertain. Multi-media lends itself to entertainment. Use video (either create your own or find something appropriate on YouTube and comment on why it’s relevant) or audio to mix up the delivery of your content. Tying current events or celebrity gossip into your message can also be entertaining as long as it’s in alignment with your core message.

Engage. How do you motivate your visitor to go from passive reader to engaged reader? Ask provocative questions, post polls and encourage comments on your posts. When your readers click a link to comment, take a poll or request your free report, they’re no longer passive but actively engaged with you. It brings them one step closer to becoming a client or customer.

Enrich. This is about delivering something a little bit more than your reader can find everywhere else on the Web by including history, quotes from literature, or information from other authorities. Go deeper to really add something that’s going to wow your readers. Essentially, you want to make your reader’s life better in some way by helping them to save time or money, or by helping them to be happier, healthier, or wealthier.

If you can weave one or more of these elements – Educate, Entertain, Engage and Enrich — into a blog post, you’re going to have a powerful and compelling blog.

Denise Wakeman is an Online Marketing Advisor and Founder of The Blog Squad. You can learn more about business blogging on Build a Better Blog. For more information on the author visit: Denise Wakeman

With a good headline, you stand a fighting chance of having anything from minimal to overwhelming success. But without a good headline, your chances of success are next to zero.

(The following content was excerpted from World Class Copywriter, David Garfinkel’s chapter in Success Secrets Of The Online Marketing Superstars by Mitch Meyerson)

Where Most People Go Wrong With Headlines

Headlines can make a tremendous difference in the dollars-and-cents effectiveness of any piece of copy.  Changes in a headline can easily double and triple closing rates.  I know one marketer who claims he increased his sales on the same ad 18 times just by changing the headline!

Most people, unfortunately, write really bad headlines.  It’s not necessarily that they use bad grammar or spelling.  The problem is that their headlines don’t “reach people where they live.”  These headlines don’t create interest, desire, and receptivity to taking action.  They don’t do their job, so they’re not good headlines.

Here Are The Three Main Underlying Causes of Headline Problems:

1. The Headline Doesn’t Pass The “So What? Who Cares?” Test. A merely factual headline doesn’t cut the mustard, because facts by themselves rarely stir people’s emotions.  Also, when there’s a promise spelled out that the prospect doesn’t instantly see as valuable, then the headline doesn’t have relevant emotional power – and it, too, fails the test.

2. The Headline Is Cute, Clever or Obscure. You see lots of headlines like this.  They include plays on words, sexual innuendo, attempts at humor, or displays of what the headline writer thought was exquisite sophistication.  While this approach may raise a chuckle and even get the prospect reading the rest of your Web page, unless what’s being sold in the copy is directly related to the cuteness up top, a headline of this type never sets the tone and puts the prospect in the mood most conducive for taking action afterwards.

3. The Headline Means Everything To The Business But Nothing To The Prospect. If your company has just celebrated its 25th anniversary, that’s terrific!  Very few businesses last that long.  But a self-congratulatory headline trumpeting that fact has no power to motivate prospects to take action… unless the prospect has a gnawing, burning need to do business with a 25-year-old company, and is already aware of that need before he or she reads the headline.

Most headline problems can be traced to the failure of person who wrote the headline to stand in the prospect’s shoes (mentally), and see things (in his or her mind’s eye) from the prospect’s point of view.  It’s a very valuable skill to learn.  And it’s key to writing good, powerful headlines.

Tip: Learn To Adapt Great Headlines

Here are a half a dozen time-tested headlines from How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab.

Note: These headlines, modified for a particular product or service, still work like crazy today!  I’ll give you an example after each one:

1. The Secret Of Making People Like You

Example of Modification: The Secret Of Sleeping Well Without Drugs

2. Are You Ever Tongue-Tied At A Party?

Example of Modification: Do You Ever “Trip Over Your Own Tongue” During A Sales Presentation?

3. How To Win Friends And Influence People

Example of Modification: How To Create A Website And Make Money While You Sleep

Incidentally, you may think of original headline #3 as a book title.  It is; Victor Schwab wrote it for author Dale Carnegie.  But it was also a headline of a very successful ad used to sell the book!

4. Who Else Wants A Screen Star Figure?

Example of Modification: Who Else Wants ‘Killer Abs’ With No Hard Work?

5. Discover The Fortune That Lies Hidden In Your Salary

Example of Modification: Discover The Fortune That Lies Hidden In Your Basement And Attic

6. Here’s  A Quick Way To Break Up A Cold

Example of Modification: Here’s A Quick Way To Get Your Website Up And Running

Here are some key points to notice about all of them:

Each headline points to an end result, and that is what people are looking for most of the time.  Some of the end results in the original headlines:  “People Like You”; “(implied benefit: not being) Tongue-Tied At A Party”; “Win Friends And Influence People”

The headlines are made from short words.  Most are one-syllable words, and in all six original headlines, there’s only one three-syllable word: influence

These headlines both arouse curiosity and stoke desire. The copywriters probably thought long and hard about what people really want before they settled on the final version of the headline, and, they artfully arranged the words to make people reading them wonder “what’s this about?” as they felt an inner emotional tug moving them towards getting the end result.

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David Garfinkel is a business coach and marketing strategist.  Author or co-author of five books, David specializes in Explosive Growth Coaching, to help small businesses expand super-rapidly!  Find out about the five lanes of explosive business growth at World Copywriting Blog

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“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you”.  Dale Carnegie

Even though social media sites make it much easier to develop connections – a cornerstone principle for all sound marketing systems – cyberspace “followers” are not the same as cyberspace “friends.”

If your ultimate goal is to use social media marketing sites to grow your business, then it’s imperative that you turn followers into real friends – and that requires a genuine connection.

No matter how tempting it is, don’t do the opposite and mistake illusion for reality. Go the extra mile and do what’s necessary to strengthen, not weaken, the “human bond.”

How Do You Turn Strangers Into True Friends and Fans?

First realize this is not an event but a committed process of building relationships and rapport with your targeted audience… one which helps them to know, like and trust you.  When done correctly, it provides the opportunity for online business owners to achieve their ultimate objective of acquiring and retaining loyal and profitable customers.

For some of you, the conversion “journey” will be a straight and speedy highway directly to a sale … but the vast majority must be prepared to take a slower, more methodical route.

In order to achieve this, you’ll need to create an online environment that makes your audience feel welcomed in a warm and sincere way and makes it easy to take action.

It’s similar to inviting people to your homes. I’m sure that most of you greet your guests at the door with a broad smile, handshake or hug; offer them something to drink or eat; suggest they sit in the most comfortable chair; etc.

You don’t bombard them with stories about how great you are; ask them to lend you money or borrow their car or leave them on their own to wander aimlessly around your house.  This may seem like a far-fetched illustration, but hopefully, you get the idea.

Here are just some of the ways you can transform your followers into genuine friends…

• Acknowledge personal details – “ping” them on their birthdays, ask about their families and share stories about your own, offer to help them with a personal problem, etc.
• Discover the topics your followers are passionate about and mention or discuss them in your online conversations
• Provide them with warm introductions to likeminded friends and colleagues
• “Re-tweet” their “tweets” (when appropriate)
• Comment on their Facebook status
• Mention them in your blog posts and link back to their sites.

Once again, social media marketers who have with the right mindset, recognize that it’s not about numbers – it’s about people. And if you help enough of them get what they want, you’ll get what you want as well.

And remember that once you start developing your list of true fans, treat them like gold as they will not only continue to buy from you but will refer others as well.

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Parts of this post were adapted from Mitch Meyerson’s Chapter in Success Secrets Of The Social Media Marketing Superstars (Entreprenuer Press August 2010).    Sign up for our email updates so you don’t miss excerpts from the other Superstars in this collection.

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Effective marketing is a strategic mix of many factors ranging from developing a compelling message to a psychological understanding of your prospects and customers basic needs.  An important part of the mix to create a “look and feel” of your business that enhances your identity and core message.  With that end in mind today’s post is about using color in your marketing.

The colors you use in your marketing (stationery, signs, office decor, brochures, business cards)  — play an important role in engaging and motivating people. Colors make strong statements about your business. Guerrilla Marketers know that colors can sometimes speak louder than words. They stimulate emotions, excite, impress, entertain, persuade. They generate negative reactions if you don’t understand them. Lasting impressions are made more quickly than ever so consider their meaning to prospects.

While developing the curriculum for my Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Program I came across this list of color descriptions created by Jay Conrad Levinson, the Father of Guerrilla Marketing.   I think you will find it interesting.

Red evokes aggressiveness, passion, strength, vitality. In business, it is great for accents and boldness, stimulates appetites, is associated with debt.

Pink evokes femininity, innocence, softness, health. In business, be sure you’re aware of its feminine implications and associations.

Orange evokes fun, cheeriness, warm exuberance. In business, it’s great to highlight information in graphs and on charts evokes positivity, sunshine and cowardice. In business, it appeals to intellectuals and is excellent for accenting things. Too much is unnerving.

Green evokes tranquility, health, freshness. In business, its deep tones convey status and wealth; its pale tones are soothing.

Blue evokes authority, dignity, security, faithfulness. In business, it implies fiscal responsibility and security. Plus it is universally popular.

Yellow is an optimistic color that almost always evokes a positive response. Yellow gets you motivated; it stimulates creative and intellectual energy; it’s cheerful and easygoing.

Purple evokes sophistication, spirituality, costliness, royalty and mystery. In business, it’s right for upscale and artistic audiences.

Brown evokes utility, earthiness, woodsiness and subtle richness. In business, it signifies less important items in documents.

White evokes purity, truthfulness, being contemporary and refined. In business, it enlivens dark colors and can be refreshing or sterile.

Gray evokes somberness, authority, practicality and a corporate mentality. In business, it is always right for conservative audiences.

Black evokes seriousness, distinctiveness, boldness and being classic. In business, it creates drama and is often a fine background color.
Spend some time this week looking at your own marketing materials and see if there are any changes you want to make to your color scheme.

Inviting visitors to contribute and be a part of your website is a strong tactic in creating a profitable site and something that is easy to do. Conversation is a process for turning your website guests into interested prospects. It turns interested prospects into purchasers and turns purchasers into lifelong customers.

Invite your visitors to take action and do everything in your power to ensure that they take you up on your offer. Enticing customers with something that is free and part of your product is an easy opt-in conversation piece. For example:

-The attorney who asks prospective clients to call her office to schedule a free consultation.

-The weaver who wants his prospects to send for a free fabric sample.

-The dance instructor who invites her visitors to sign up for a free tango class.

All of these examples show an opportunity for conversation between you and your prospective buyer. Not only does this entice a customer to become more physically involved with your product or service, but it allows you to draw them in and see more benefits from your offer.

Another way to involve customers more closely (to increase the likelihood that they’ll return) is with interactive involvement devices like quizzes, surveys, blogs, and “ask” campaigns to engage your visitors.

Following up with customers, new subscribers, or anyone who shows interest keeps you and your product or service in the visitor’s mind.

Remember that there are many opportunities to engage your visitors through the internet. Take advantage of resources and connect with customers whenever you’re able to.

The following short story is a great example of how thinking “out of the box” can get you new business even in a tough economy.

A savvy restaurant owner knew the value of asking the question, “What other businesses do my customers patronize?“

Realizing that competition was fierce in their neighborhood this owner used imagination rather than pure marketing dollars to spread the word of her terrific food. Here was her Guerrilla strategy:

She distributed coupons for two free dinners to all the hairstyling salons within a one mile radius of the restaurant. Of course the stylists checked out the restaurant. Because the food was as fantastic as advertised … the hairstylists talked it up to every one of their customers at the salon! And as you know lots of information is exchanged at a local hairstyling salon or barbershop. News spread fast and her business became the talk of the town!

Creative huh? Ask yourself what other other businesses do your customers patronize and see if you can use this strategy in your business.

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Want to learn more low cost, high impact strategies for getting new customers and start a new business coaching others?

The next 12 week Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification starts Monday January 11 at 7EST.

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