Unless you've been living under a rock, you have watched some kind of makeover show. Whether its fashion, homes, makeup or weight loss, reality shows depicting the makeover process are very popular. I recently interviewed Gil Effron, author of How to Give Your Business an Extreme Marketing Makeover
For a high level overview of what Gil shared, read this post. If you'd rather go beyond reading and start applying, scroll to the bottom of this post, click the gray arrow, turn up the volume and enjoy my interview, using the time stamps to find what interests you most. You can use the link below to download the podcast to your favorite mobile device, or you can listen, download and subscribe via iTunes.
- Take inventory (4:04). Before you can change anything, you need to know what to change. Go into your “marketing closet” and see what's there. How are you marketing your business? What's working and what's not working? Find one or two things you do regularly that are not working well, not producing results. Once you pinpoint a few items, move to the next step.
- Analyze the processes (5:21). Once you identify a few areas to work on, dissect each step. What are you doing? What results do you expect? What can be improved about what you're doing so you can get better results? Look for what Gil calls, “points of constraint,” where there are inefficiencies hindering your goals — or just things that are slowing you down or taking up too much of your time for the results you are getting out of them. Once identify points of constraint, you can remove and move past them.
(It's hard to describe this process in a vacum, but here's a simple example, off the top of my head. Let's say you have a great newsletter, but people are not subscribing. You spend hours each week getting it ready to publish, but the numbers are not going up. Take a look at the entire “subscribe” process and identify points of constraint. Maybe the subscribe link isn't working, or maybe it's hard to find on the page, or maybe it's confusing so people aren't using it. You may ask a few people what they think of the subscribe process, and use their feedback to help you improve it. This is a simple example, and I made it up. but hopefully, it illustrates Gil's points.)
- Create your ideal process (9:00). The example above describes working backward from a goal (more newsletter subscribers) to evaluate current processes so they can be improved to achieve the goal. Duplicate the process over and over again (for example, place the newsletter subscribe link in prominent places across your websites). Maximize the value of each customer relationship, one by one.
- Create “good marketing” that supports the sales process (23:12). Gil defines “marketing” as “any activity that speeds shortens, streamlines or favorably influences the outcome of the sales process.” In the big picture, this definition includes just about everything business-related task you undertake. In our example, by placing the newsletter subscription link everywhere it makes sense to do so, you are creating efficiencies that feed directly into your sales process.
- Create a plan (26:55). Well, that sounds easy, but that's what it boils down to. After all, all the knowledge in the world does no good unless it's put to good use. Once you've followed this process for a few smaller things, you can use them for more intricate marketing processes.
It's a challenge to summarize Gil's points in text, but I do hope the above newsletter example helps a bit. To get the most out of Gils' process, you really need to listen to the podcast and read the book.
About Gil Effron
Gil Effron is the author of How to Give Your Business an Extreme Marketing Makeover
How to Listen to the Show
This post contains my paraphrases of the information Gil shared. To hear it from the horse's mouth yourself, listen to the entire 30-minute show using one of these options:
- Download it on iTunes. (It usually takes a day or two for iTunes to feed the show there.)
- Click on the arrow at the bottom of this post to listen now!
- Because I have not had a chance to load all of my shows to this blog, you can listen to hundreds of interviews from 2005 to 2010, each one as relevant today as it was when I recorded it, at my Indie Business Radio site.
Question: What makeover tips resonate most with you? Are you considering giving your business a marketing makeover? Or have you done so?
