How to Keep Your Business Healthy

Can you imagine you're ninety years old and still hiking up
mountains with your grandchildren, bench pressing more than most
twenty year olds, and making millions of dollars?

Recently Jack LaLanne, America's first TV fitness guru, turned
ninety. Not only is he still sound of mind, in great shape, he's
made millions and is still earning more.
How does he do it?

You know it is important to eat your fruits and veggies,
exercise regularly, avoid drinking and smoking and get enough
sleep to stay healthy. To that list Jack LaLanne would add, set
clear goals, exercise with weights twice a week, avoid eating
between meals and keep your mind active.

Of course you can't just eat well and skip the exercise or avoid
the drinking and smoking and skimp on sleep. Jack LaLanne is
still going strong at 90 because he does ALL the things required
to stay healthy every day.

Marketing your business requires the same comprehensive,
disciplined approach Jack LaLanne uses to stay healthy at 90. To
attract new clients and retain existing ones you need to set
goals, target a need, get attention, prompt action, grow your
network, establish credibility, provide a solution, follow up,
demonstrate value and stay in touch.
These are the ten essential steps to marketing your business.

Like a staircase, the steps are connected and you need to put
them together in the proper sequence and use each of them
regularly. A common marketing mistake is to focus on just one or
two of the above steps and hope for the best.
Joan, who owns a sports facility, called last week about her
advertising campaign. It was costing her significant dollars but
wasn't translating into new clients. What was the problem?

Advertising can help get attention but to be effective it needs
to be focused on clients' needs and prompt them to action.
Joan's advertising was focused on her solution, not on
prospects' needs resulting in a disappointing response. Once
she rewrote her ads to target prospects' needs, her response
rates and business revenue increased.

Larry's promotional efforts were working but he wasn't having
success translating all the attention he was getting into
dollars and cents. Thanks to top search engine positioning and
hundreds of links to his web site, thousands of people were
visiting his site each day. Yet, on average, only five people
per day were contacting him about his services. Larry was doing
a great job of getting attention but wasn't prompting his
prospects to action.

Your Marketing Fitness
You can have a steady flow of new prospects and clients each
month if you adopt a healthy marketing strategy. Here's how.

1. Set Goals
Regularly review your marketing. Assess what's working and what
isn't and set objectives for lead generation, client acquisition
and retention.

2. Target a Need
Focus your ads, your elevator speech and your marketing copy on
prospects' concerns.

3. Get Attention
Prospects need to know that you exist before they will contact
you.

4. Prompt Action
In order to get prospects to give you their contact information,
inquire about your services or buy your products, prompt them to
action. Use your marketing copy and your offers to get prospects
to call you, visit your web site or your store, and buy your
products and services.

5. Grow Your Network
The more qualified leads you have, the better.

6. Establish Credibility
You need to demonstrate your competence and convince prospects
to trust you before they'll make a purchase.

7. Follow Up
Old leads are cold leads. Follow up when leads are fresh. When
people contact you, send an immediate email response and give
them a call within 24 hours.

8. Provide a Solution
Make sure your products and services are the solution to your
prospects’ problems.

9. Demonstrate Value
If you want someone to buy, they need to understand the
benefits.

10. Stay in Touch
Don't let prospects forget you when they need you and are ready
to buy.

If you increased the time you spent working out each day and
improved your diet, you'd start to see a difference in a couple
of weeks. You’d be stronger and healthier.

Marketing is the same. You need to do all the right things
consistently. Start using these ten marketing steps and in a
couple of weeks you'll start to see a change. You'll find more
prospects contacting you and a steady increase in revenue.

Whether you want to be fit and profitable at 90 or not you can
learn from Jack LaLanne’s continued health and prosperity. It
just takes some discipline and knowledge. Apply both to keep
yourself and your business in good health.