A summary of things you should know about Captivology according to Ben Parr: Introduction In this episode Ben Parr shares all his insights on his book, Captivology, where he presentsRead More
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]]>In this episode Ben Parr shares all his insights on his book, Captivology, where he presents a unique understanding of capturing people’s attention.
In his book Parr reveals his latest research on the psychology and neuroscience on what attracts consumers and convinces them to support certain areas of a business product or service. The goal of the book is to help you create effective advertising campaigns, deliver high quality presentations, delegate the right jobs to the right people, and bring your product to the attention of millions of prospects.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who understand the importance of building a following but are having trouble attracting and engaging the right consumers with a product or service.
What I set out to do was not write a marketing or social media book. There is a lot of scientific research and information in this book and I don’t base my suggestions or triggers on my gut feeling. I actually went through the actual science and 1,000 research studies to truly understand the subject at a fundamental level.
I think that you can jump in and out but you are going to get the most benefit by reading it front to back.
The one thing that I’ve learned from all the research I did and all the people I interview was the masters of attention don’t try to capture attention for themselves, they try to capture attention for their projects, passions, and ideas. I want people to think of attention as this positive tool for whatever they do.
The book is divided into two key sections and I’ll describe some of the key pieces and findings.
The first part is what I call The Three Stages of Attention and I go through the new model that I found for how attention works and how we should think of attention. Everybody seems to think of attention as this kind of short-term or reactionary thing or short-term focus but that’s not really the attention and the fundamentals. Attention is really a memory construct and it goes on three stages which are immediate attention, short attention, and long attention. With these three attentions I don’t think many people think about how to walk their audience through all three, they just focus on how to get initial attention. So I talk a lot about walking your audience through those three stages of attention.
The key and the structure of the book is around seven captivation triggers and these are the seven psychological triggers that kept coming up through my research that capture your attention across all three stages. The seven triggers are automaticity, framing, disruption, reward, reputation, mystery, and acknowledgement. Automaticity understands the automatic reaction we have to certain sights, sounds, and colors. Framing is about our frame of reference and how our frame of reference based on our world experience, really does change the way in which we pay attention. Disruption is that we pay attention to the people and things that violate our expectations. Then you have reward and the reward system is one that is not fully understood. Reputation is that we pay attention to reputable source specifically experts, authority figures, and the crowd. Mystery is one of the final triggers and it’s when we pay attention to incomplete story lines and thoughts. The most prayerful trigger of them all is acknowledgment and that is when we pay attention to the people and things that provide us with validation, empathy, and understanding.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:08
“Attention is the most important currency that anybody can give you. It’s worth more than money, possession, or things.” – Ben Parr
I am the author of Captivology and also the founder of DominateFund which is an early stage venture fund that coaches startups on attention and how to capture attention for their products. My original claim to fame in the tech industry was that I was the co-editor and editor-at-large of Mashable.
I was initially inspired by entrepreneurs. When I first left Mashable and I started doing the venture fund and the kind of help that startups came to me for was all around attention. As I did my research I really came to realize that attention is the fundamental life blood of the modern economy and so that set me off the path of writing this book.
Quiet by Susan Cain
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Buy Captivology by Ben Parr on Amazon today
Visit Captivology.com to learn more about the book
Visit BenParr.com to learn more about Ben and his company
Follow Ben Parr on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Escape The Expected by Tom Trush
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
Traction: A Startup Guide for Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Simple Ways Entrepreneurs Can Attract Customers
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Get A Grip according to Mike Paton: Introduction In this episode Mike Paton takes a deep dive into his book, Get ARead More
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]]>In this episode Mike Paton takes a deep dive into his book, Get A Grip, where he discusses how to get everything you want from your entrepreneurial business.
In his book Paton shares the entrepreneurial story of two startup founders that uncovers the real-life hardships and accomplishments that come with starting an entrepreneurial business. The goal of the book is to help you understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur, how to resolve typical issues that come with running a startup, and how to create a more effective team.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are in a business partnership or own a business that is team oriented and need an action plan to improve their organizational operations.
The book is a real world, in the trenches, gritty, true story of a topical entrepreneurial organization. It’s very instructive, it’s a system full of simple practical tools, and our intent was to write this book in a way where an entrepreneurial owner or leader might read the book, see things that feel and sound familiar and be able to take the techniques to solve their own business problems.
This book is much more logically digested front to back rather than diving in and out.
Vision without traction is hallucination. And the common entrepreneurial challenge isn’t a lack of vision. The real challenge is migrating that vision into the trenches of that business, helping everybody in the organization understand it, internalize it, and own the appropriate piece of it so together everyone is executing on that vision and what you want actually happens. I believe EOS and the tools we characterized in the book is a great way to help the typical entrepreneurial leadership team get better at that fast.
The book illustrates the people who founded and are running a typical small business. There are about 35 people in this organization, it’s called Swan Services, and the founding entrepreneurs have been wildly successful in the first seven years of this business. We meet these owners when they have begun hitting a few ceilings and starting to feel as though the business is running them rather than the other way around. What the readers are introduced to are a lot of the common frustrations, challenges, and root causes of the inevitable ceiling that people who run and own small businesses hit from time to time. As the story unfolds we take a deep dive into those root causes and we watch the members of the leadership team get together in a room with the aid of a professional EOS implementer and master the tools, disciplines, and simple concepts that EOS teaches to identify, prioritize, and resolve those common obstacles and issues.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:10
“Every entrepreneurial business needs a system for operating.” – Mike Paton
I am a lifelong entrepreneur, grew up in an entrepreneurial household and today I spend all day, every day, surrounded by entrepreneurs and their leadership teams helping them implement a system for running a small business called EOS (The Entrepreneurial Operating System).
My co-author and I both individually believed that this book needed to be written. We both work in the trenches with entrepreneurial leadership teams all the time, we both are avid learners, and both fallen in love with a forum for a book and we believe that telling the EOS story using the entrepreneurial approach would be a compelling read for most of the people we surround ourselves with.
Traction: Get A Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
Buy Get A Grip by Mike Paton and Gino Wickman on Amazon today
Visit EOSWorldwide.com to learn more about the book and download free chapters
Follow Mike Paton on LinkedIn and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
All in Startup by Diana Kander
The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz
Fairness if Overrated by Tim Stevens
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Signs That You Have What It Takes to Be An Entrepreneur
4 Common Reasons Why Startup Companies Fail
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Do It Marketing according to David Newman: Introduction In this episode David Newman takes a deep dive into his book, Do ItRead More
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]]>In this episode David Newman takes a deep dive into his book, Do It Marketing, where he shares 77 instant, actionable tactics to boost sales, maximize profits, and beat the competition.
In his book Newman gives you concrete strategies, tactics, templates, and tools to regain the clarity, confidence, and control your need to succeed when it comes to marketing your business. The goal of the book is to teach you how to get noticed using the power of 3PR, position yourself as a go-to expert in your field, do social media right, generate a steady stream of referrals, and leverage enthusiastic advocates.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who have an understanding of their business and the marketing they need yet fail to see an increase in new prospects, customers, and revenue from their efforts.
My book is really different because it’s a sales driven marketing book.
This book is laid out more like a series of webpages. It’s very graphical, visual, and modular so you don’t actually need to read the book cover to cover.
The whole 280 page book can be boiled down into four words, offer value, invite engagement. Everything we talk about in marketing, sales, and business development is about offering value and inviting engagement.
We start out with the overview chapter and it’s called Marketing Rocks. This chapter is meant to take the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of marketing away. Marketing needs to be easy, effortless, and enjoyable and if it’s not you’re probably doing it wrong.
The second part of the book is about them, not you and the title is It’s About Them, Really. We talk about who are you, who is your business, and your product, services, and programs in the context of your prospects. So learning to speak prospect language about prospect problems is the first big ‘ah ha!’ insight in this second part of the book.
The next part of the book is called Learn to Speak Prospects. In this section we talk about messaging, about what to say and how to say it so that you punch through the noise.
From there we go into Expert Positioning and this really is the core of my work as a coach and a consultant. It’s positioning that business owner or entrepreneur as the go-to expert in their field. This is a combination of what I call your 3 PR game plan. And 3 PR is Personalized Professional Public Relations which is speaking, publishing, and social media. The speaking builds your visibility, the publishing builds your credibility, and the social media builds your share ability. There is a whole section on social media and about how not to be an idiot on social media.
The next part of the book is the S word and the S word is Sales. In this part I talk about an easy effortless sales process, sales tactics and how to have a trusted advisor relationship with your prospects.
In the next couple of chapters I talk about getting better leads and getting better prospects. Because when you break down the sales process so many business owners and entrepreneurs believe that if they can get in front of more people they can make more sales.
We then go into a section about eliminating roadblocks and some of this is your personal productivity, some of it is around your calendar and others is around how to overcome some common objections.
The last couple of section of the book I talk about your business DNA. It’s about really figuring out who is a great fit for you and who is not. We talk about your competition and the fact that many of times we are competing with idiots and the problem is that they are winning.
The section to last chapter we talk about personal success strategies and there we talk about what you need to do as the business owner.
The last section is about taking action and I close out the book with five marketing moves through business success which are move up, move in, move ahead, move aside, and move alone. And then we move to implementation because the last part of the book is the 21 day marketing launch plan. This plan takes all of the ideas that we have talked about and shows you how to implement them.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 6:41
“Action gives you traction.” – David Newman
I run a company called Do It Marketing and coincidentally that is also the title of my book. I work with consultants, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and independent professionals who want to do a better job with their marketing and grow their business. I live outside of Philadelphia Pennsylvania with my beautiful bride of 30 years and two kids. Our son Charlie is 19, our daughter Becca is 22 and life is an ongoing adventure.
It really was founded in my coaching, consulting, and speaking business. So many small business owners, entrepreneurs, and independent professionals are stuck. This is causing so much headache and frustration that a book like this needed to be written.
Linchpin by Seth Godin
Buy Do It! Marketing by David Newman on Amazon today
Visit DoItMarketing.com to learn more about the book and access the free exclusive content
Follow David Newman on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Trendology by Chris Kerns
Digital Bacon by Alex Rodriguez
Traction: A Startup Guide To Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks
5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Marketing and Branding
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Selfish Scared and Stupid according to Kieran Flanagan and Dan Gregory: Introduction In this episode Kieran Flanagan and Don Gregory take aRead More
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]]>In this episode Kieran Flanagan and Don Gregory take a deep dive into their book, Selfish Scared and Stupid, where they demystify the behaviors behind the failure and success of business ideas.
In their book, Flanagan and Gregory will help you design your business effectively with strategies to understand why the public fails to engage with your brand and why your product is falling short. The goal of the book is to teach you product survival tactics, how to offer customer strategic reward programs, how to turn fear into action, and how to make products hard to resist.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are struggling to get their product or service engaged with the public and need a proven system to increase their customer reach and sales.
We have been told that it was funny which our intent wasn’t to be necessarily funny but human beings are funny by nature. It’s real and it’s not speaking to ideas but instead its dealing with what is true and real for human beings.
This book is a fairly easy read and written in the order that you would approach an engagement program. It probably works best read in order but I have had people say to me that they dip in and out as well.
We need to design for success rather than just hoping for the best and relying on short term strategies. It’s also about swimming with the current of human nature because if we don’t we get exhausted, we go nowhere and we often give up.
We start the book off explaining why we really need to be thinking selfish, scared and stupid. We make the distinction between acting selfish, scared and stupid which is human beings default position. It is why we survived, thrived and evolved as a species and ended up in this dominant position on the planet and it’s just that they don’t sounds like particularly good things. We tend to deny those things in our decision making but our primitive brains still drive a lot of our decision making. The survival thinking drives the fundamental thinking beneath our decision making.
From there we move on to how to do it. We section the book into think selfish, think scared, think stupid and dive into each of those points. Thinking selfish is fundamentally about coming from a place of what’s in it for them, and we need to move from what’s in it for me to what’s in it for them. So often in business we see that people are so caught up in what’s in it me. This section is about how to understand the extraordinary power of flipping your mindset to how you can filter the world constantly into what’s in it for someone else. And by doing that you can engage your staff with not only your goals but there’s as well.
In think scared the reality is that fear drives us a lot of the time. We look at how to flip that fear that has a stay in inaction to how to create a fear of not taking action. It’s about minimizing the fear of action and maximizing the fear of in action. So what we look to do is how to make change seem less fearful and part of the way we do it is by linking it to the known. Thinking scared isn’t about making people afraid, it’s about understanding how fear drives us and making sure that fear is on the appropriate side of the ledger in terms of stimulating action.
Then we look at thinking stupid and for a lot of people this is the most challenging one. Again it’s not about being stupid, it’s about thinking stupid and what that means is looking for the most easy way to achieve an outcome. It’s about making sure that our tasks are really easy and how to reduce resistance to those tasks. We spend a lot of time on why failure happens and how to make failure difficult. Instead of relying on these ideas, relying on short term strategies, the fundamental idea of the book is how we design for success.
“We are all selfish, scared and stupid.” – Kieran Flanagan and Dan Gregory
“Make failure difficult.” – Kieran Flanagan and Dan Gregory
We have a long history in advertising and spent a long part of our lives getting a better understanding of what drives human behavior. Most of our careers have been in entrepreneurial startups and our interests are in what drives human behavior. We have a business called The Impossible Institute which is a research, innovation, and think tank where we look at the gap in what people say they do and what they actually do. In that gap we find interesting stuff about how to motivate, how to get results, and how to help entrepreneurs.
We saw so much inspiration around what was driving human behavior and so much of it was based on ideas. What we wanted to do was step back and take a look at what was really driving human beings and generating results.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Buy Selfish Scared and Stupid by Kieran Flanagan and Dan Gregory on Amazon today
Visit TheImpossibleInstitute.com to learn more about the book
Follow Kieran Flanagan on Twitter and Facebook
Follow Dan Gregory on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez | Traction: A Startup Guide To Getting Customers by Justin Mares | Hooked: How To Build Habit Forming Products by Nir Eyal
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Simple Ways Entrepreneurs Can Attract Customers | 5 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>5 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks Marketing a business isn’t everybody’s cup of tea; and even if you are great at other things, it is quite possible that you areRead More
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]]>5 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks
Marketing a business isn’t everybody’s cup of tea; and even if you are great at other things, it is quite possible that you are doing it all wrong when it comes to marketing. And that could mean the end of the road in a few years time.
If your business, albeit being a potential success, isn’t quite hitting the mark, you need to find out whether your marketing sucks! How do you differentiate between a marketing plan that works and one that doesn’t? It’s simple – just take a look at the points below.
Reason 1 – No plan: Where is your marketing heading towards? Which marketing steps work and which don’t? What do you do to replace the ones that don’t? If you don’t have a proper plan, you won’t have answers to any of these questions.
A marketing plan needs to work to achieve a set of goals, have ample research at its back, identify and use the strategies that work, have means to measure the results, and add and alter as and when necessary. Do you have such a plan?
Reason 2 – No budget: You need to determine how much you want to spend on your marketing even before you take the first step. Don’t treat it as a series of requirements – it will only lead to waste of money.
And don’t opt for the cheapest option – usually you get what you pay for. So, even if you don’t need to pay your nephew to design your business logo, its best to get a professional to do it. Remember, it’s not just a logo; it is the first step in your brand building efforts.
Reason 3 – No cohesion: A black and white logo and a multicolored website or an edgy website and a tacky business card – exactly what impression are you trying to convey? Every element in your marketing plan needs to work together to create a uniform whole.
Disparity in fonts, colors, style and any such element can confuse your target market. What image do you wish for your business – corporate, edgy, contemporary, or something else? Make sure every piece of marketing reflects this core concept.
Reason 4 – No social media: If you aren’t on any social media platform, you are losing out. Your target base is out there. And so is your competition. Failing to mix new age marketing methods using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on is sure to lead to loss.
Create a Facebook business page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, claim your Google+ page, and do whatever it takes. Make sure you update to them regularly. And remember, while Pinterest may work for a jewelry lineup, YouTube works better for a tech service.
Reason 5 – No metrics: Yes, you may think that your marketing efforts are paying off, but unless you are capable of measuring it, how do you know it for sure? Also, you have no idea which of your strategies work and which don’t.
Analyze and evaluate every step to make sure it is of any advantage. Do A/B testing to identify marketing efforts that do well and the ones that don’t. Use the metrics tools available to determine whether your efforts are paying off.
It is easy to sit back and be smug about how good you are at marketing. But it won’t be so easy once you are aware of why it sucks. But don’t despair; rectifying a mistake becomes easier when you have identified it. Take your time, and get your marketing back on track.
Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days by Jay Levinson and Al Lautenslager | Listen to Al give a deep dive here
Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Justin Mares | Listen to Justin give a deep dive here
A World Gone Social by Ted Coine and Mark Babbitt | Listen to Mark give a deep dive here
Moving Targets by Gabriel Aluisy | Listen to Gabriel give a deep dive here
Digital Bacon by Alex Rodriguez | Listen to Alex give a deep dive here
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]]>Things you should know about Hooked according to Nir Eyal Introduction In this episode, Nir Eyal shares his book Hooked where he teaches you why very few products see successRead More
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]]>Things you should know about Hooked according to Nir Eyal
In this episode, Nir Eyal shares his book Hooked where he teaches you why very few products see success and what makes consumers engage with certain products out of habit.
In his book, Eyal gives you a four-step process for figuring out exactly what you should build into your product to make it better than the rest. The goal of Hooked is to have your products bring consumers back continuously without depending on costly advertising and messaging.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are having troubles creating or getting a product to stick and need actionable steps for building products people love.
I couldn’t find that book out there that told me what resources and tools I could use to figure out what I should build into my product.
If you are working on the kind of product that requires repeat engagement then you need to have what I call the complete hook, a four step process to creating customer habits. However, even If you are building a one-time use service there is still a lot that you can learn from consumer psychology by understanding these deeper reasons that people do what they do and I believe you can get the outline of that by jumping in and out of the book. I really hope that the reader gets to the end because I believe that there is a lot here that can help people save a lot of time and energy in building their businesses.
The one principle I would want the reader to take out of the book is that your behavior is designed.
The book follows this model that I call The Hook which is basically a design pattern. It’s something that I found in my years of research that is in all sorts of habit forming products. So my research revealed this four step process which I detail throughout the chapters of the book.
The first step in The Hook is The Trigger phase. The trigger phase is something that cues the user to action; it’s what prompts the habit. These triggers come in two types, internal triggers and external triggers. External triggers are things in our environment that tells us what to do next. This is what most people think of when they think about cues to action. Internal triggers are these things that prompt the user to action and there information for what to do next is actually in the users head. So what people do when they are in a particular situation, routine or when they feel certain emotions this dictates what they do next. If your company can attach to these negative emotions, this is where habits are formed. It’s absolutely critical that if you want to build a habit forming product you have to figure out what that internal trigger is.
The next step of The Hook is The Action phase. The action phase is the simplest behavior that the user does in anticipation of a reward. If you can make a behavior easier to do you are more likely to get that behavior to occur.
Then the next chapter is about variable rewards. It turns out that at the heart of all sorts of habit forming products you will find a variable reward. I details three critical types of variable rewards found in all sorts of habit forming products both online and offline.
Finally, the last step of The Hook is The Investment phase. It’s the part of the hook that I find most companies neglect as well as where there is the most room for growth and opportunity. It turns out that this phase is absolutely critical in bringing users back and it’d defined as the step where the user does a bit of work to increase the likelihood of them returning. I detail how you can ask people to invest in the product so that they can come back in the future whereas the product gets better the more it gets used.
At the end of the book I give some case studies and I profile an app that’s one of the most successful apps in the world, the bible app and I detail how this app uses the principles of consumer psychology to keep people coming back to use it. I also talk about the morality of manipulation, that if you’re using consumer psychology to change people’s behavior, I offer up a guide for how to use this responsibly.
“Hooked gives you the blueprint for the next generation of products. Read Hooked or the company that replaces you will.” –Matt Mullenweg
I’ve started two tech companies and after my last company was acquired I dove into the more academic side of consumer psychology and habit formation which is what I’ve been working on for the past three years.
I was at my last company and was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why my customers weren’t doing the behaviors that I designed for them to do. I wanted to dive deeper into consumer psychology, into the things that people are not able to necessarily articulate and yet predictably drive their behavior. So I couldn’t find that book out there that told me what resources and tools I could use to figure out what I should build into my product.
Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
Buy Hooked on Amazon today
Visit HookModel.com for bundles of content
Visit NirAndFar.com to read Nir’s personal blog
Follow Nir Eyal on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters | Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg | Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>5 Simple Ways Entrepreneurs Can Attract Customers To Their Business You have a great product or service and yet you seem unable to attract customers to your business and makeRead More
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]]>5 Simple Ways Entrepreneurs Can Attract Customers To Their Business
You have a great product or service and yet you seem unable to attract customers to your business and make a sale. Almost every new entrepreneur faces this challenge after they start off a small business.
And the root cause of this problem is often your inability to reach out to your customers.
The lack of advertising and marketing your product or service may be drawing you back from your customers. But for a small business, with limited funds, it is often difficult to allot a substantial amount for advertising and marketing.
In such a circumstance, what do you do? Simple; you just focus on the ways to do it right. Let’s take a look at some simple ways entrepreneurs can attract customers to their business:
Tip 1: Rely on word-of-mouth. This tried-and-tested option never fails! If you can build an army of satisfied customers, it will work much better than a couple of billboards or television ads. They are the best tools of advertisement you may find.
To turn a customers into satisfied customers, you have to work on the three premises:
• Offer a great product/service – the basic necessity for a successful business
• Ensure great customer service – remember, always serve with a smile
• Offer a reward for referral – the bigger the incentive, the better your opportunity
And soon you will have a good number of spokespersons at no added cost!
Tip 2: Involve and engage. When a prospect walks in, make sure you turn them into a customer. How do you do it? Interest them with an offer, give them a free sample, request them to enter a contest, and use any other means you can think of.
People love free stuff. They also love offers and discounts. And when they get something at no cost or maybe low cost, and are happy with it, they are sure to come back and pay for it. And they are sure to talk about your business to their contacts.
Tip 3: Build a website. If you aren’t online yet, you need to be – NOW! A website isn’t a luxury anymore; it’s a necessity. If you aren’t online, you are missing out attracting the prospective customers who stick to their PCs, laptops, smartphones, tablets, et al.
You don’t really need to invest thousands of dollars to ensure a web presence. Just make sure someone who knows how to do it right does it. Otherwise, you will be stuck with a site that doesn’t work for your business.
Tip 4: Connect on social media. When Mandie Miller started off her business Got What It Cakes, she built a website. But the business only picked up once her sister put up a Facebook page for it.
Lesson learned: While a website is essential for your business, no business can ignore the reach of social media these days. Create a page on Facebook, get an account on Twitter, or add images on Pinterest and Instagram – do whatever it takes to enhance your reach.
Tip 5: Get involved. While you will always have competitors, and you will always have to keep a lookout for them, you also need to focus on collaboration. Make a list of complementary businesses and promote each other to your respective clientele.
Also, don’t forget about the community; after all, you are a part of it. Give back. Charitable or environment-friendly work never goes unnoticed. And once you are part of something big, you’ll get people interested in what you do.
It is possible to get the attention of customers; you just need to know how to do it right.
1) Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez | Listen to my interview with Cindy here
2) It’s Not The How Or The What But The Who by Claudio Fernandez-Araoz | Listen to my interview with Claudio here
3) A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger | Listen to my interview with Warren here
4) Traction – A Startup Guide To Getting Customers by Justin Mares | Listen to my interview with Justin here
5) The Seven Levels of Communication by Michael J. Maher | Listen to my interview with Michael here
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Traction according to Justin Mares Introduction In this episode Justin Mares shares his book Traction which is a guide for entrepreneurs andRead More
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Traction according to Justin Mares
In this episode Justin Mares shares his book Traction which is a guide for entrepreneurs and business owners who need help getting customers. The purpose of this book is to place business founders ahead of the competition no matter what kind of business they are running. If you are starting a business and do not have a ton of budget, this book is for you.
Our book, unlike any others out there, provides you with what we call the bull’s-eye framework which is a five step framework that helps companies determine what traction channels can work for them to acquire customers.
We provide the framework and the approach in the beginning of the book and then we do a deep dive on every potential channel that a startup could use to get traction, in the remaining 19 chapters of the book.
If you’re starting a company and don’t have a ton of budget, what you need to do is try and find a new platform or a new way to acquire users, that is not already saturated and really expensive.
In The first chapter we introduce to you that traction is now the most important thing that startups need to focus on. The next four chapters take you through the bulls-eye framework; a framework that helps founders, marketers and entrepreneurs figure out what channels makes sense for them and shows you how to run quick tests in each of the channels. We also talk about something that we call the traction split. Early stage companies fall into this trap where they think if they build a great product, people will naturally flock to them. We explain to you that early stage founders and companies should be spending half of their time on product development and the other half on traction.
After the introduction we take you through a deep dive into Viral Marketing, Public Relations, Unconventional PR, Search Engine Marketing, Social & Display Advertising, Offline Ads, Search Engine Optimization, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Engineering as Marketing, Targeting Blogs, Business Development, Sales, Affiliate Programs, Existing Platforms, Trade Shows, Offline Events, Speaking Engagements and Community Building. After covering all of these channels we wrap with a conclusion with how to think about it, we provide more resources and give founders a cheat sheet for how they can think about, approach and get traction through whatever channel works best for them.
The purpose of the book is for this to be a must read for startup founders so that no matter what kind of company you’re starting, you pick this book up, you’re automatically ahead of most individuals and then you can find the type of business/traction channel that works for what you’re doing.
“The number one reason that they pass on entrepreneurs that they would otherwise like to back is that they don’t have a good distribution strategy.” –Marc Andreessen
“Most companies don’t fail to build a product, they fail to get traction.” – Justin Mares
I co-founded two companies, one was acquired and the other a bust. Most recently I was director of revenues at a company called Exceptional Cloud Services who got acquired by Rackspace about a year and a half ago now. I recently left Rackspace and now I’m launching Traction Book which is a startup guide to getting customers and that will be coming out August 26, 2014.
My co-author Gabriel Weinberg and I both noticed that today the challenge is not so much in building a product but that companies are struggling to get traction. The inspiration in writing the book was to provide startups with the framework and tools to focus on and get traction so that they can build successful companies.
The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
Buy Traction by Justin Mares on Amazon today
Visit TractionBook.com to subscribe and get the first chapter of Traction
Visit JustinMares.com to learn more about Justin and his blog
Visit GabrielWeinberg.com to learn more about Gabriel and his blog
Follow Justin Mares on Twitter
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez | Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal | Moving Targets by Gabriel Aluisy
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Simple Ways Entrepreneurs Can Attract Customers
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Traction – A Startup Guide To Getting Customers with Justin Mares appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>Latest Books For Entrepreneurs in August 2014 The Entrepreneurs Library presents the latest books for entrepreneurs in August 2014. These books are brand new to the market and the authorsRead More
The post Latest Books For Entrepreneurs in August 2014 appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>Latest Books For Entrepreneurs in August 2014
The Entrepreneurs Library presents the latest books for entrepreneurs in August 2014. These books are brand new to the market and the authors are in line to share their insights with me. Stay tuned this month for the release of the interviews with these great books and the authors.
The Art of Shouting Quietly: A Guide to Self-Promotion for Introverts and Other Quiet Souls by Pete Mosley
The Art Of Shouting Quietly is about helping people name the beasts that hold them back – and to systematically engage with and overcome them.
This book illustrates how this can be done – with insights into what the blocks actually are, how to take responsibility for them, and how to stop blaming others for your own lack of progress. Every reader, I’m sure, will find something in the content that they will relate strongly to in respect of the obstacles and challenges in their own life.
With a solid foundation beneath it, however, confidence becomes significantly harder to rock and easier to recover when it is shaken. These foundations have many components – many more than I list here – but here are the most important ones.
Learn more about Pete Mosley | Buy The Art of Shouting Quietly on Amazon
The Creative Problem Solver: 12 Smart Tools To Solve Any Business Challenge by Ian Atkinson
Every business faces problems, and yours is no exception. Using proven, innovative techniques from some major players in the business world, this is the go-to book for every professional who wants to find better answers to their business challenges.
With its 12 simple yet powerful tools, The Creative Problem Solver will arm you with all the skills you need to not only conquer your business conundrums, but to take your thinking to an inspiring new level so you can create exciting, game-changing outcomes from the problems you face.
Each problem-solving tool is practical, effective and clearly explained so you can quickly see it will help you to:
“Hugely practical, gives you powerful new ways to think… a godsend for cracking business challenges.” — Dean Lamble, Managing Director, SunLife
Learn more about Ian Atkinson | Buy The Creative Problem Solver on Amazon
Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
The number one traction mistake founders and employees make is not dedicating as much time to developing traction as they do developing product. This shortsighted approach has startups eventually trying random tactics — some ads, a blog post or two — in an unstructured way that will most likely fail.
We developed our traction framework called Bullseye with the help of the founders behind several of the biggest companies and organizations in the world like Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Paul English (Kayak.com) and Alex Pachikov (Evernote). We interviewed over forty successful founders and researched countless more traction stories — pulling out the repeatable tactics and strategies they used to get traction.
Learn more about Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares | Buy Traction on Amazon
Dream Year by Ben Arment
What if someone could guide you, step-by-step, as you identify, plan, and launch your dream career—in just one year. That’s what Ben Arment does in his transformative coaching class, which has helped hundreds of people reinvent their lives to enjoy greater enthusiasm and fulfillment while also making a living.
Now he’s sharing his best insights, advice, and inspiring true stories in Dream Year. You’ll find out how people just like you are discovering (or rediscovering) what they were truly born to do, then following a proven process to make it real. And you’ll meet men and women such as . . .
There’s no dream too big to be beyond the power of the Dream Year process.
“The employee mind-set is disappearing like the factories where it was born. We’ll all expire if we wait for some force outside ourselves—business or government—to bring us jobs or teach us who we are or how we ought to live. Ben Arment’s Dream Year is a powerful launching pad for that mental reboot. Start here.” —Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, Do the Work, and The Legend of Bagger Vance
Learn more about Ben Arment | Buy Dream Year on Amazon
The New Entrepreneurz: Changing the Way You Play Life by Ronen Gafni and Simcha Gluck
The New Entrepreneurz provides a game-changing game-based approach to molding your mind and developing a fresh entrepreneurial mentality that focuses on working smart & on collaborative winning.
Advocating not for simple change, but for total transformation, this revolutionary resource provides a powerful platform to shift the paradigm for all those interested in running a smart purpose driven business.
The book offers:
Ronen Gafni and Simcha Gluck take you on the adventures of The New Entrepreneurz through sharing their own unique story of FreshBiz. From the sleepless night that Ronen first conceived of the game-changing board game to the now international company impacting tens of thousands around the globe.
Learn more about Ronen Gafni and Simcha Gluck | Buy The New Entrepreneurz on Amazon
What are you reading this month? Feel free to comment below or engage with me on Facebook and Twitter.
The post Latest Books For Entrepreneurs in August 2014 appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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