Inspiration from a Webinar

I love feeling inspired and was lucky enough today to participate in a webinar that gave me that satisfaction. I found several action items I'd like to work on for myself and my clients! I know better than to try to tackle all of them at once, but I shouldn't have any trouble picking one to start with!

The webinar was titled 7 Steps for Small Business Success and was facilitated by John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing.

Here are my three favorite action steps!

• A strategy to grow your business. Find and describe your IDEAL customer -- not just a good customer -- an IDEAL one. An ideal customer is one that values you, is profitable and refers you. Once you find them, analyze them -- demographics, psychographics, geographics and behavior. Get a crystal clear picture of your ideal customer.
• I love that! Why are we looking only for "customers," when we could be looking for the IDEAL customers?
• A tactic for differentiating yourself in the marketplace. Copy and paste into Word the first paragraph of your website. Do the same for one of your competitors. Black out all references to both of your business names. Then, read them and see if you can tell them apart. Have your employees and clients read it for you as well. This will show you if you are making yourself stand out online. 
• What a great tool to get you to spruce up your website copy if it needs it!
• A tool for media relations. Identify five or six key journalists in your community or industry, and put them in Google Alerts so you get updates on what they write. Start commenting on their articles, blogs and send them information you have when appropriate. 
• We all know about building relationships with journalists, but I just loved the simplicity of accomplishing this tactic.

The webinar also listed a few interesting Internet statistics that you can read about in the graphic above. Enjoy!