Podcast: Brendan Nichols Tutorial – 7 Steps

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Why is Brendan Nichols Australia’s Millionaire Mentor?

Recently I received an email from Brendan Nichols sharing with us an audio tutorial he created. If you don’t know who Brendan Nichols is I recommend visiting his website at brendannichols.com. In my previous post I talked more about Brendan and how he has been my coach who has helped me create a successful e-commerce business online.

This is what others have said about him:

Brendan’s radical, low cost, straight to the point, marketing strategies have been applied by his many grateful clients around the world. This straight-talking entrepreneur is famous for cutting to the chase and showing you the fast track to wealth and success.

As a student of Brendan Nichols I am proud to share with you his audio tutorial and you will find out:

• 2 basic ingredients you must know for your marketing to succeed
• The No. 1 key to succeeding in the money making business
• How marketing is vital to accelerate your wealth creation
• The power of leveraging your existing assets
• and much, much more.

So download, sit back and enjoy Brendan’s audio tutorial.

Tyrone Shum
Business Student

Getting Business Offline – Partnership Marketing

Most business owners who run Internet businesses heavily rely on generating a majority of their revenue from customers online. That means they are potentially missing out on opportunities found offline. This is why I want to explore in this post the idea of partnership marketing, which will compliment any Internet business.

What Is Partnership Marketing?

Partnership marketing is a strategic way to aligning one’s business with other organisations and businesses to equally expose partner brands to one another’s customers. Typically these partnerships are formed when two or more companies find value for their customers in each other’s products and/or their services. This type of partnership marketing is happening all the time on the Internet and an example online is John Chow’s partnership with Market Leverage. John Chow has an audience that Market Leverage can promote their products and services to, which in turn John Chow also receives greater exposure through Market Leverage’s existing client base. This makes it a win-win situation for both businesses.

Then we come back to the offline world and partnership marketing is about finding people who offer complementary services and products that work alongside your business or help expand the offering for your customers. Some more examples could be an arrangement between an electrician and a painter, or a hairdresser and a beautician. As you can see both businesses compliment each other and provide additional value to a consumer over and above their experience compared to just one product or service offered to them.

Where Can You Find These Partnerships?

The best way to find partnerships is to go about it the old fashion way – network with people by getting out, mixing and meeting them personally. It is about your brand being seen and the benefits are substantial. It gives you and your business the opportunity to:

• Introduce your brand, your products and services and your company background
• To learn new ideas and concepts for your business
• Find out what is happening in and outside of your market
• Meet new people
• Be referred
• Find new suppliers and consultants
• Generate new leads and prospects who could be your potential customers
• Connect with people who you know and like
• Increase your sphere of influence

Through networking you will be able to also establish new ideas and share your thoughts, so be prepared to listen and learn. It’s also a great way to present your Internet business in a personal way.

Why Is Partnership Marketing So Powerful That Makes It Work?

When we start our Internet business, we have found that finding a customer and building a relationship with them is the key to creating a sale. Without customers you do not have business. The same is true, without a relationship with potential business partners your Internet business will struggle to grow and it will eventually die. This is what makes partnership marketing so powerful. Most business relationships start off either in reputation or directly in sales by referral or word of mouth. In my personal experience, 80% of the business that comes into the Dragonboat business comes from referral or word of mouth due to the business relationships I have build with clients over the years. This is also known as third party endorsements and is usually spontaneous, objective, honest and free! Therefore it carries more weight than most other marketing tools available. Additionally I still believe that face to face contact is vital to any Internet business.

How To Manage Partnership Marketing Effectively?

When you establish a partnership with other business and create a program that will benefit your customers you will want to manage it correctly. Here are five tips to help you:

1. Brainstorm what you can jointly sell and who can sell if for you. Are you finding businesses to partner with formally or informally? What other businesses around you have the same target market? What are your expectations of return on investment (ROI)?
2. Find Your Partners that have already build a database and would benefit from your business offer. Your offer should be win-win for both businesses and the customer.
3. Create great sales copy and provide your business partners with the sales pitch and the related promotional material. Make it easy for your business partners to promote your products and services. The less work they have to do the more likely they are to promote your business.
4. Continue to look out for new business partners. Once you have established a few business partners, continue to recruit new partners to add to your business. It helps to cast your net out and to have back up business partners just in case others do nothing with your products and services.
5. Look after your business partners. Contact them regularly, update them with new promotions and changes. Give them tips on how to successfully promote your products and services and how it will compliment their business.

Review and Monitor Your Partnerships.

Keep track of where you get your business from through scripts you can implement on your website or when you give a link to your business partners. Make sure you are measuring your responses from customers and to track your business partners who are bringing you the most traffic to your website. You can always reward them for their efforts when you are able to get good statistics and the results. That way you can be sure where to spend your time and resources on.

Good luck and get out there!

Tyrone Shum
Partnership Marketer

12 Sales Effective Marketing Tips

MARKETING YOUR INTERNET BUSINESS may already be your strength, or you are struggling and just getting by. No matter how your business is performing everyone can benefit by exploring some low cost marketing opportunities that will help grow your business. You don’t have to spend loads of money on advertising, it just requires some creativity and planning. Furthermore, not only does it add more dollars to your bottom line in money not spent on advertising it can also boost your confidence. Here are 12 tips for you to implement into your Internet business.

12 sales effective / low cost marketing tips:

1. Press Release – send a story about yourself relating to your business via email to a newspaper or magazine relevant to your industry. A story will increase your businesses public awareness and credibility and it is free marketing for you as well. Don’t forget to include  a professionally taken photo of yourself.
2. Send Email – contact your existing clients and offer them something via email to entice to visit your website.
3. Public Speaking – offer a presentation at your local service club like Rotary or Leagues and ask if they would be interested in allowing you to present a subject of interest. Don’t do a sale pitch, offer something to people that will be of value and record the session to use for later public broadcasts. You can also use this in your credentials to show people you have spoken in public and is good for press releases as well.
4. Keyword Marketing - not enough businesses use this method and it’s low cost as long as you set your target and budget correctly. You can buy keywords relating to your business from as little as 5c per word. Be really specific and make sure your target audience sees your advertisement.
5. Post Advertisement On Noticeboard - your local shopping centre, schools, universities will have noticeboards for you to post up notices and advertisements. Use them and take advantage of them because many people still read noticeboard and give them an incentive to call (maybe include a tear off at the bottom of your notice).
6. Networking – join a business club or a forum in your area sharing the same interest. Attend these events regularly and swap business cards.
7. Setup A Stall – sometimes just setting up a store at your local fair or market creates brand awareness for your business and is a great opportunity to talk to people in the community and hand out brochures to offer your products or services.
8. Cross-Promote – contact other businesses that offer complimentary services or products to yours and work out a co-operative marketing strategy to promote together. It’s a win-win to help each other out.
9. Promote On Your Car – A very cost effective way if you drive around a lot. You can purchase magnetic signs to stick on your car with your business details. You will definitely get people looking because not enough people do it.
10. Give Away Vouchers – When a consumer purchases your product or service give them a discount voucher for their next purchase to entice them to come back to spend again.
11. Talk To People – Don’t worry, they’re not going to bite you! Talk to your friends and acquaintances, they will be more than happy to refer your details if you approach them nicely.
12. Write A Guest Post – This is becoming more popular across the Bloggersphere where you offer to write an informative article for other bloggers. They may have readers that you want to attract and they are interested in what you have to say, then it’s a great way to market your Internet business.

Try to implement a couple of these ideas over the month and test your results. The best way to find out if they work is to ask your customers when they contact you, “How did you hear about us?”. This is the best way to measure and learn from your customers as it can help you determine what is working and what is not. It’s all about trial and error to find the best marketing method for your Internet business.

Tyrone Shum
Marketing Tipster

NEIS – Part 2: What Do They Teach You In The Course?

I’ve just completed the NEIS course including going to the panel and getting my documentation approved. It was very exciting leading up to the day and also a very long anticipation since finishing the course material two weeks ago. Over the last two weeks it was time to finalise the business plan and to compile any other documentations required. By the time you go to the panel, you will have submitted:

• 2 bound copies of the business plan with attachments
• 2 copies of the executive summary

What Do They Teach In The Course?
Each BEC (Business Enterprise Centre) is different and they will have different trainers with different teaching styles. Essentially they have to follow the course outline provided from the government agencies. By the end of the course you will have compiled a business plan. Don’t fret though, because they provide you with a template and you just focus on getting the information into the business plan. The topics they cover over the few weeks to assist you with the business plan are:

• Management and Finance
• Marketing and Promotion
• Operations
• Insurances
• Presentation skills for the Panel

Management and Finance
This was a crucial component of the course and I found it quite easy to grasp as I seemed to find crunching numbers fun and naturally part of me (I loved Maths at school by the way). In saying this the most important part of finance I learnt was being able to work out how much it will cost to stay afloat in my new business and when would breakeven point occur? Knowing this gave a good indication for how realistic my expectations were and it is a goal for me to achieve.

Apart from learning how to calculate the breakeven point, there were other calculations required such as:

• Personal & business assets and liabilities
• Startup funds required
• Personal & business cost analysis
• Personal & business cashflow forecast
• Personal & business balance sheet forecast
• Business profit and loss forecast

All of these calculations required us to find exact numbers from our personal finances to come to an accurate forecast and helping us see what is viable for our new business. By the end of this section I found a lot of people struggled in the class and had to come to ask me because the trainer kept using me as an example. (I felt privileged to help and it did reinforce what I needed to know for myself)

The management section dealt with the entry and exit conditions of the business. We looked at how to ask minimise business risk through purchasing insurance and also making sure we have protection for our intellectual property. A lot of times businesses overlook these small little things, and when issues arise it may be too late. These could have been easily avoided if the appropriate business protections were in place from the start.

Marketing and Promotion
I enjoyed learning about this topic because it was the creative side of the business. It was the complete opposite of finance and was a fresh change. The trainer provided a lot of information and was very interactive with the class. She really impressed everyone when she remembered everyone’s name on the first day and could use our businesses as examples in all of the marketing topics she covered. The following topics covered in marketing were:

• Market research & market information
• The marketing mix (4 P’s)
• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Place

It was very important to understand our market first and to do thorough research on what consumers wanted before approaching the market with your product or service. This allowed us to determine what our competitors were doing and if there was enough demand for our business to enter the market. I definitely found it applicable and learnt how to design a marketing strategy that would cater for my business.

Operations
There are some things in business that you just have to do, and it’s not dollar productive but important in keeping your business operations running. It’s the behind the scenes work, such as book keeping, tax, insurances, payroll, managing and analysing your finances and so forth. All of these components are essential in keeping the business running and this was the final topic in the course that we had to complete for the business plan. I found it to be quite bland but important and I’ve already decided to outsource the paperwork to a book keeper to allow me to spend more time on marketing and promoting the business.

Insurances
This was a very brief one hour talk from an Insurance Broker who offered advice on what necessary insurances were needed to run each and every one of our business. Each business had different needs and we were recommended to speak to seek Insurance Brokers to save time in finding the appropriate insurance for our business. For my business I only needed Public Liability Insurance which is compulsory before starting my business with NEIS. When I start to hire staff, I will add Worker’s Compensation Insurance and keep abreast of what protection I may need for this business later on.

Presentation skills for the Panel
In the third week of the course they brought in a professional speaker named Melanie Wass from Natural Consulting. She explained to us previously from other panel interviews most candidates did not perform well and they lacked strong presentation skills. Therefore they wanted us to succeed and hired Melanie to give us some basic pointers on how to sell our business to the panel and get approved to be on the NEIS program. Some of the questions we had to ask ourselves were:

• Who are you?
• What’s your business?
• What do you really do for people? (think benefit, think big)
• Who do you do it for? (who’s your main target market?)
• What’s your Tagline?
• Your 30 second pitch?

After answering those questions and writing them down, we were asked to memorise them and make sure we were prepared to present them to panel, as that’s what they will ask us. Additionally when Melanie told us that some people have turned up to the panel in T-shirt and shorts, I found it quite amusing. She emphasised to us the importance of presenting ourselves in business attire and projecting our voice clearly. I felt quite comfortable with everything she said and just waited until the day of the panel presentation.

Feedback And Comments
So after going through this comprehensive course I feel a lot more confident in starting my new business and will be keen to share more of my experiences with other. If you have any further questions about the course, please add your comments below.

Also, BEC have the following alliance partners supporting the NEIS programme that can assist you with the business and may have special packages for anyone part of the NEIS program:

Tyrone Shum
NEIS Participant