“The only things that will change you from where you are today to where you will be in five years from now, are the people you meet, the dreams you dream and the books you read”…

We are reading Bill Bartmann’s book “Billionaire Secrets to Success” and wanted to share his secrets to success with you. In his book, Bill teaches us 9 rules of the road and says that “In order to succeed-you don’t always have to know ‘how’ but you must know ‘you will.’

RULE #1: Make sure that it is your goal that you want to achieve

True success is achieving your goal; not one set by someone else. You are not here to live up to someone else’s expectations of you, you’re here to live up to your expectations of you.

RULE #2: Don’t label it a ‘goal’ call it a promise

If you change your focus, you will change your life. A promise carries a deep emotional attachment and will cause your mind to give it priority filing.

RULE #3: Clearly identify your promise

To hit a target, first you must see it clearly.

RULE #4: Identify your personal motivator

Don’t forgive your enemies for their sake; do it for your sake. Determine why you want to achieve, become or have this objective and remind yourself every day.

RULE #5: Create a promise plan

Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses. This promise plan needs to contain a clear and concise statement of your promise along with the details of when, where, why, how and who of accomplishing this promise.

RULE #6: Review the promise plan regularly

Opportunity meets you at your level of expectation. Create a visual reminder of your promise plan and put it somewhere where you will come into contact with it every couple of weeks –With your check book, pile of bills or even in a picture frame on your desk.

RULE #7: Tell yourself that you will succeed

Quit talking about what you can’t do and start talking about what you CAN do. This positive affirmation becomes a source of data that your mind can call upon if and when it develops doubts about accomplishing this objective.

RULE #8: Tell others your promise

No one succeeds alone. Telling your promise to others increases your commitment. It also helps you to enlist the help and support of those you will need to assist you in accomplishing your promise.

RULE #9: Envision the result

I’ve seen this movie before, I know how it ends! We can use our mental vision to feel the results of accomplishing our objective before it has been achieved. As we engage our mental vision we are bombarding our senses with the feeling of success.

What do you all think?

Learn how to create a company brand that reflects your customer experience and master the art of branding!

Brand design is more than creating a logo or designing a business card. Essentially it communicates your message to your target audience and positions you in your industry. Does your brand communicate your purpose? The objectives that a good brand should achieve include:

• Delivers your message clearly
• Establishes your credibility
• Makes an emotional connection with your prospects
• Motivates the buyer to take action
• Concretes user loyalty

A strong brand is imperative to success in any business, as the battle for consumers intensifies every day. It’s important to spend time investing in researching, defining, and creating your brand. Your brand is the source of a promise to your consumer and is a fundamental building block for all marketing communication.

Your image is everything

Brand design is about designing the experience customers have with your brand. With each exposure to your company brand, customers start understanding exactly what your company is about. This is why it is important you project the right image with your brand design.

Define your purpose not just your promise

To get the edge in today’s market, company branding needs to communicate your brand’s purpose. While a brand’s promise conveys WHAT your company has to offer, your brand’s purpose communicates WHY your company is here. Purpose-driven branding drives home the message of why your company exists and why it fills a void in the market.

Your customer owns your brand

If your brand successfully achieves its purpose, your customers will make an emotional connection with the personality of your brand. Successful brands will usually fit into one of the 5 dimensions of brand personality including sincerity, excitement, competence, ruggedness or sophistication. How well you evoke company personality will determine how successful your brand is.

There are many social media networks out there however for today let’s focus on Facebook and Twitter.

What is Facebook? What is Twitter and how are they different?

In a nutshell….Facebook is where you go to network with people you already know whereas Twitter is where you go to connect with people you SHOULD know.

Facebook is a fantastic networking tool and is a great way to stay in contact with friends and keep them updated on your life, business and shared interests. Many companies great and small, have developed business pages and invited their friends and customers to become ‘fans’. Businesses can run competitions through Facebook as long as they direct ‘fans’ back to their own website. This is a great way to market an impending event or promotion and create awareness of your brand. The best thing about Facebook is that word spreads like wildfire and if you know how to market yourself the right way, Facebook could be your biggest asset!

Twitter is a little different from Facebook as the main goal is to ‘follow’ and be ‘followed’ by people and businesses with similar interests to you – that you don’t already know. Twitter has the power to connect you with likeminded people from all over the world and develop international relationships with people you otherwise may never have come in contact with. Twitter allows you to monitor your own brand and see what others are saying about you. It’s a great way to keep updated on the latest advancements in your industry and see what your competitors are doing!
Whether you choose Facebook, Twitter or both to enhance your online business presence, you’ll need to keep in mind that they are different, so consider this before implementing your social media campaign.

As a business owner, there is an important formula you need to be aware of in order to find social media success. The secret to a successful social media campaign is what we like to call the Social Media Triangle. To find out more about the Social Media Triange, click here to tune into our Web TV to watch our latest video which shows how to get the most out of your social media campaign.

Yes you may be a good jeweller, dentist, stockbroker, builder or photographer but having a particular skillset does not automatically qualify you to having a successful business. Running a business however is a specialised skillset of its own and must be learnt like any other skill.

The 4 Cornerstones of A Successful Business Are:

1. Your Knowledge

The knowledge that you have acquired through life experiences forms the basis for anything that you want to achieve in your business. Successful people are not more successful than you because they are smarter, they are successful because they know more. They have educated themselves about the rules of running a business and making money in the school of life.

2. Your Marketing

Nothing moves on this planet without being sold. Whether what is being sold is a product or an idea, it requires someone to sell. A simple product can monopolise the market purely on the strength of a marketing campaign. Good marketing enables your business to have a competitive advantage as it is something that is not easily replicatable.

3. Your People

Your people are your greatest resources. It isn’t your brand, your equipment or your products but your people that drive your business. Look after your people, your people will look after your customers, your customers will look after your business and your business will look after you. It’s that simple.

3. Your Systems

McDonald’s is not the number one restaurant in the world because they have the best tasting burgers. They are the number one restaurant because they have the best business systems. By implementing systems in your business, you can transition from being paid for your time to being paid for your ideas.

These four cornerstones are what being in business really means. By harnessing the competitive advantages that you have in your knowledge, your marketing, your people and your systems, you will be well on your way to building a real business.

We consider web design to be a science and believe that with the right formula, any business can achieve success online. There are a few deceptively simple secrets you can apply to your website to attract new business.

All good websites should be created to be intuitive, scannable, make an emotional connection with your customers, while being search engine friendly and the ultimate goal should be to convert your prospects into customers. These all need to be put into consideration to ensure your website is successful.

MAKE IT INTUITIVE: A successful website is one where your prospects don’t have to guess where they need to go – they intuitively know. We recommend websites offer a prominent pathway for prospects. The best websites are inherently simple with a clear call to action.

MAKE IT SCANNABLE: When a prospect arrives at your website, you have a small window of opportunity to make your impact, (usually about 3 seconds). The entire website, from the design to the photos to the website copy must be easily scanned. If your website cannot communicate its purpose within 3 seconds, your website has failed in becoming a customer magnet.

MAKE THAT EMOTIONAL CONNECTION: The photos and colours chosen are extremely important. For example, if you are attracting a younger female audience, the photos and colours must appeal to that audience. Similarly, if you are wanting to attract an older demographic, specifically choose photos with older people. With the advent of video marketing, videos are proving to be an important way you can instil confidence in your prospects and develop that emotional connection.

KEEP IT SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY:  All successful websites must be developed from the ground up to be search engine friendly. Each member of the website team, from the designer to the developer to the search engine optimisation expert must work in unison to ensure your website gets found the search engines.

MAKE SURE IT CONVERTS: While ensuring your website is found on the search engines is important, all the traffic on the world is pointless if the traffic doesn’t convert into new business. Your website should clearly show prospects how to take the next step and make it easy for them to contact you….The rest is up to you!

As social media starts becoming intertwined into our daily lives, companies are starting to see the value in connecting with their customers via Facebook and Twitter.

Finding social media success involves connecting and relating to customers on a more meaningful and deeper level. The three stages of social media marketing including broadcasting your messages, interacting with customers and engagement. 

Broadcast

You’ve seen these Facebook Pages and Twitter feeds. The status updates look automated. The posts are not meaningful. While broadcasting your message is an important first step in any social campaign, unless genuine interaction and engagement occurs, your social media will simply become a copy and paste exercise.

Interact

An important element in a successful social media campaign involves interacting with your customers.

However, true social media success is more than just responding to questions that are asked of you on your Facebook wall. It also means engaging with your customers online.

Engagement

This is the pinnacle of social media success and occurs when your clients and customers see you as the expert in your field. Being engaged from a social media perspective also means being genuinely interested in what your customers have to say. It isn’t simply a matter of doing social media because it is the “in thing” to do.

So how does engagement occur on Facebook and Twitter? By genuinely connecting and by relating to your customer’s needs and wants. Your customers do not care what you know but they do want to know that you care.

Social media is an excellent rapport building exercise and by doing more than spraying or broadcasting your messages online, you will start putting the human back into your digital life.

Gain Attention

• Be bold, ask the questions no one else ask, but you know they want to!
• Sometimes it’s the most confronting truth full statement that causes conversation. If you don’t reel your readers in with that catchy lead line, you won’t catch them reading any further
• Catchy headlines, CAPITALS and figures can also warrant you the attention you’re after.

Focus on the reader/consumer

• Your focus is their focus. Human nature has it that individuals are interested in themselves – their goals, problems, hopes, fears, dreams and aspirations.
• Your products potential is determined highly on the client’s wants and needs and the ability it has to solve one of these problems.
• Be clever with your writing and target the viewer as an individual referencing to them as ‘you’

Stress the benefits of the product or service

• Whatever you do, don’t focus on the negative to much. Rather what the product or service can do to benefit in the situation.
• The marketer’s job is to sell!
• Don’t waste your time justifying, your product is great, it is the product they NEED!

Establish your credibility

• Maintain your customers, show them how you are superior to your competitors
• Testimonials – truthful ones boasting your services!
• ‘If our product worked for this consumer – it can work for you too’

Call to action

• Be clear, what do you want customers to do?
• Have a clear, easy and direct link between your offer and response mechanism!
• Keep your customers attention span, quick and punchy is the key!

Get readers acting ASAP, make it easy, interactive and engaging and you will hold the key to success!

Engaging and witty copy is a great way to keep your readers interested. Witty one-liners also will maintain your readership!

Personalisation

Be personal, level with your readers and show them the way rather than dictate. Your reader is here to get information off you and trusts that you will provide. Be casual, like you’re having face-to-face conversation. After all casual conversation is a great way to build rapport and lasting relationships.

• Imbed your friendly nature in your writing.
• Be who you expect your readers to be!
• Address the reader as you – it creates the illusion that the copy was written directly for the reader.

Links will also help you in your writing ventures so you don’t have a string of long, boring copy.

Links take you from website to website and keeps the momentum going for readers. They shed extra information on a topic, advancing your train of thought.

A site with more links is a site that your readers will look to for further information. In other terms – they’ll return!

Speak the truth – Be genuine with your web copy. Reading reviews that have no personal touch or relatable element will not translate.

Readers will not always relate to the polite review but the honest review the said the restaurant food wasn’t that great. Say it like it is.

Your genuine nature will show through in your writing and give you instant credibility.

Show not tell

Copy is terribly boring when you have to read like your being dictated too, or being told everything you already know.

It’s important to say something new and refreshing in a new light.

Be descriptive, use illustrations and don’t just say your product or service will save them money.
Show them! Use an examples and illustrations.

Give the reader something to engage with and your web copy will be a success!

• Tell stories – it’s what we do… what did you do on the weekend?
• Web TV videos are a great way to show your clients success stories!