Friday 24 May – 11am UK time (03:00 am L.A, 08:00 pm Sydney, 06:00 am New York, 06:00 pm Perth – sorry guys!) (sign up for the webinar even if you can’t make the live call as we’ll send out recordings) Have you put tons of time and energy into getting more likes on your ...…
You’re busy, right? Of course you are, all women business owners are busy and if you have kids then you can quadruple the workload. Let’s talk about how you can become a productivity superwoman. We’re always looking for ways to get more done, to save time and to simplify things and yet often we just ...…
A couple of weeks ago one of the ladies on my Girls Mean Business Facebook Page emailed me in a panic. She had a business selling bags and Facebook was her sole method of marketing. She had over 4000 fans on her page and was doing pretty well. Then one day Facebook shut down her ...…
It’s May already – how’s your motivation now that we’re nearly half way through the year? Remember all those New Year’s resolutions? You had plans to take on the world and make 2013 a year to remember. You were going to get tons of new customers, make a load of money (and lose a few ...…
And How Can You Use It To Sell More?…. I had a lovely surprise yesterday. One my clients, a lady who took my 30 Days to Boost Your Biz programme last November messaged me on Facebook with a great testimonial. This is what she said: “Hi Claire I know you’re promoting your latest ’30 days’ ...…
Do Some Of Your Customers Make You Feel Like This? Girls, I’m talking BAD Customers. You know the ones – your heart sinks when their number comes up on your phone. They’re a nightmare to deal with. They pay late, question every bill, nitpick your work and get all dramatic if you mention putting up ...…
Manage your Contacts Effectively You’ve been networking and met some great business people and come home clutching a fistful of business cards. Do you have a system for dealing with them so that you can actually find and use the details again, or does your Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) consist of a pile of ...…
This is not the blog post I expected to be writing this week. I was all geared up to send you a blog on a marketing topic but then I had a nasty shock last week. I became the victim of a cyberbully. And actually that word sounds too ‘grand’ to describe the person who ...…
Yeah right. Would we ever expect Ryanair to consider offering a loyalty card? No, and why should they, Ryanair is a booming business which has grown and grown. Seasoned Ryanair customers, by now, know what to expect from a Ryanair flight. It’s probably taken a few journeys to teach us what they want from us as ...…
If you’ve been a Girls Mean Business fan for a while, especially if you signed up to my mailing list at some point, you’ll know that I’ve had my email marketing software challenges! I have specific requirements for my e-marketing software: It needs to allow me to easily segment my subscribers into sub-lists so that ...…
As you know it’s much, much cheaper and easier to retain customers than get new ones. However it’s easy to get stuck in a rut and just keep selling the same things to the same customers, until they drop off the radar or decide to sample the competition. And who can blame them?! When was ...…
Last week’s blog on ‘Creating killer copy’ looked at why it’s important to know who your customer is when you’re writing copy for your business. In part two, we look at why, to write good copy, you must write with purpose. Ask yourself key questions such as, how and where are you going to use ...…
I think we’ve all experienced the blood, sweat and tears of trying to come up with a killer headline or attention-grabbing call to action, especially if writing falls outside of our comfort zone. Writer’s block can stop the most experienced of writers in their tracks, so, when circumstances dictate that we wear our copy writing ...…
Sometimes in life, our mindset can be the biggest obstacles to our own success. We talk down to ourselves, limit what we can achieve, play it safe, under price, under promise and over deliver. If we heard someone speak to our children the way we speak about ourselves (even in the privacy of our own ...…
Get It Done! I’ve talked quite often in recent blog posts about the pressure we women find ourselves under to be everything to everyone. Some of that pressure is external and some of it comes from within. Wrapped up in this is the feeling that we have to present a perfect, unflappable face to the ...…
Does your ‘About me’ page of your website tell your personal story? Do you ever use your own experiences to promote your business or as a part of your marketing? While telling your back-story isn’t right for every business, it can be a powerful tool for engagement. After all, people like to buy from people. ...…
At the time of writing, there are 9,804 likes on ‘The Girls Mean Business’ Facebook page. Each of these likes represents a woman in business. It also means that I see a lot of pages, some that use Facebook well and others that are missing opportunities left, right and centre. For this reason, I wanted ...…
How many of you outsource to other suppliers or service providers? Is it something you do regularly or on an ‘as and when’ basis? Have you even considered the possibility of outsourcing? As entrepreneurs and business owners, many of us like variety and want to try our hands at different things. Some come naturally, others ...…
I always tell people when they ask what I do that I help women business owners who are ‘stuck’ to move forwards and grow their business. I’m currently working with the second cohort of ’30 days to boost your biz’ ladies and they’re having ‘a-ha’ moments all over the place. They’re thinking about their ideal ...…
It’s a theme that comes up on my Facebook page and with the ladies I coach again and again. Pricing. For many of you, just the thought of getting your pricing right makes your blood run cold. What should I charge? How do I set my pricing? How will I know what’s right? What if ...…
Make 2013 the year with a plan As this is the last blog post of the year, I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask you to take stock of 2012. What have you achieved this year? What lessons have you learned? What were the highs as well as the lows? What makes ...…
The big day is very nearly here and I can’t wait. My little girl, Chloe, is practically bouncing off the walls and we can all feel the magic in the air thanks to her wide-eyed excitement. I can’t wait for tomorrow, to make some special memories and recharge my batteries. I imagine you’re ready for ...…
Wow, only eight sleeps to Christmas! Are you feeling the excitement yet or wondering just how many balls you can juggle before one of them drops on your toe? You need to automate! For many women business owners, this is an understandably stressful time. If the children aren’t off school yet, they will be soon. ...…
At busy times of the year like this, it can feel as though the only thing our calendar has to tell us is how much we have left to do and how little time we have to do it. Our never ending ‘to do’ list and non-stop round of meetings, deadlines, appointments, school activities and ...…
Are you frustrated by your marketing, which seems to be giving you mediocre results? Do you have a mixture of customers – some ‘good’ and some ‘bad’? Do you get stuck when you’re writing e-newsletters and website copy? Hmmm, my diagnosis is that you don’t have your ideal customer pinned down. Your ideal customer is ...…
Christmas is a few weeks away. My little girl’s school has a school fair, a nativity play, carol service and parents’ evening within the next fortnight. We’re off on holiday before Christmas, but before then we have a house move, so I’m surrounded by boxes and spending every spare half hour chucking ‘stuff’ into said ...…
Blurry? A little out of focus? Not farsighted enough?…. You might have guessed that I’m not talking eyesight here. I’m talking about your business vision. The thing that keeps you going forward when you start to wobble. The thing that helps you to remember why, oh why you are doing this! The thing that sits ...…
Yes that’s right. It might seem a little harsh, but it will be the making of you! You might have seen me mention Mind Monkeys and monkey chatter on my Facebook page – I do, often. In fact today’s marketing tip was about ignoring the monkeys rather than letting them talk you out of what ...…
In my 30 Days to Boost Your Biz group we had a bit of a detour from the schedule over the weekend. We started talking about how to get some more money in before Christmas – but rather than just talking about doing this in our business, we also talked about other ideas for topping ...…
For many years I was stuck. In various ways, but still stuck all the same. First I was stuck in a job I hated – I used to have to get up at the crack of dawn, drive 14 miles, stand on a dismal railway station platform to get a train – after an hour’s ...…
I often talk about giving away something for free on your website in order to entice and encourage your ideal customers to sign up to your email list. Out of all of those options, the easiest is often the free report. A free report on your website is a great way to encourage people to ...…
What’s the point of a Facebook page if not to get discussions going? It’s great to build your fan base and increase the number of likes but what are you going to DO with them when you get them to your page. I often see pages that have been updated once or twice and then ...…
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if you do a good job for someone then they would tell everyone how good you are? A common myth about getting referrals is that if you do a good job for your customers, referrals will come automatically. Hmm, wouldn’t that be lovely? And it can happen, but it doesn’t, ...…
I recently carried out a survey on my Facebook page and found that only 22% of the women business owners who responded said that they had a marketing plan in place for their business. So why wouldn’t you have one? I know it sounds like something that only BIG businesses need…You’re probably thinking ‘Who? Little ...…
Is yours a SERIOUS business or LIFESTYLE business? I asked that on my Facebook page recently and it sparked a debate that is still raging! What do you mean by ‘serious’? they asked; ‘Can’t it be both?’ they asked. Some people got defensive, others starting justifying their business. It’s strange that a simple question can ...…
“But that’s so OBVIOUS! Why didn’t I see it??” is one of the most common reactions I get when working with new coaching clients. Whether it’s related to their ideal client, their compelling marketing message or just areas of their business where they are leaving money on the table, they just can’t see it until ...…
What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of building trust with the search engines so that they return your website higher in the search results when a user searches for what your website has to offer. This is accomplished by making sure your website is easy for the search engines to explore, ...…
Have you ever wondered how some people seem to make money hand over fist, whilst others struggle year after year just to pay their bills? Perhaps you know someone for whom life and business just seems to flow, opportunities drop into their lap, and everything just seems to go their way. But what if I ...…
Phew that’s another school holiday over with. No matter how much you love your kids, it’s always a relief to pack them back off to school and reclaim your working week! So it’s September already. Where did the time go? I can remember sitting there last New Year (by the pool in the Canaries) thinking ...…
We have around 70,000 thoughts a day. About 80% of these are repetitive, unconscious, often negative and self-deprecating thoughts. This is often referred to as ‘The Monkey Mind’. Generally this little fella picks up speed and volume when you are close to doing something new and different – like expanding your business through launching a ...…
Pinterest seems to have become the new ‘must have’ marketing tool. In a very short space of time it’s taken the social media world by storm, with thousands of us ‘pinning’ our favourite images every day into this virtual online scrapbook. If you’ve never used it, it works like this – by ‘pinning’ images to ...…
My e-newsletter ‘The Biz’ is a little late today. I normally get it out to you first thing on a morning, so that you’re set up for the day with some inspiring quotes and useful advice. But today was different – something else was more important and I figured you wouldn’t mind. My mum usually ...…
When I started up my men’s makeup business several years ago we had a real challenge on our hands to source products to sell. This was a REALLY niche market and something we knew virtually nothing about but we loved the idea. I was in charge of sourcing products and the first thing I did ...…
The number one reason why most business owners fail to keep in touch with current and past customers is that they don’t want to appear to be a pest. Staying in contact with existing customers is crucial for developing ongoing relationships and to making sure your customers continue to buy from you. But that line ...…
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Before you think about doing any marketing or even spending time developing your product or service, you should know your WHO. In other words, your “WHO” is more important than your “WHAT”. Once you know your “WHO” you have found your ideal customer, your target market. If you can focus on ONE type of person ...…
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Segment your database! It sounds simple and it is. If you want to tailor your messages then you need to work out how detailed your segmentation needs to be. Can you break it down into Food Manufacturers in the USA or just in California, or even just San Diego? The level of detail you reach ...…
Remember when technology swept us away with inventions that had the promise of greater efficiency, allowing us to get more work done resulting in more leisure time? In reality, Facebook, Twitter, social media, IPhones, Ipads, Blackberries…they all have us connected 24/7, and yet we’re actually working longer and harder than ever. Welcome to the era ...…
I was doing some interesting research on ‘color’ and ‘business branding’ this week. While some of what I read was pretty ‘Wack-a-doo’…some made a lot of sense and I thought it would make a fun topic for business owners. Do you think the colors you select for your website and marketing materials make any difference? ...…
