I Have A Question For You; Are You Your Potential Customer Avatar?

Have you started your own business and looking to increase sales through marketing? Or are you just starting out? 

I have a question for you; Are you your potential customer avatar? 

Chances are, if you have your own business, or are looking to start one, you are passionate about what you are looking to achieve, therefore, it's obvious to me, at least, that you are your perfect customer!

You are passionate, looking to grow and learn, and open to suggestions. You know what you want from the quality of products, you know what you like, what you don't like, and you also know what websites you frequent, forums you hang out in, and social media platforms you use. 

Your first step is often the hardest, you need to find out who you are!

You can do that by:

• Brainstorming by yourself on a blank piece of paper
• Completing insightful quizzes and tests like the Visual DNA tests
• Asking your closest friends and family
• Asking Facebook!

Facebook is a scarily accurate predictor of your personality and interest profile. Every post you hover over, every post you click on, every location you hang out at, any link you like etc. is captured and used to build your personality and interest profile. They then give this information to advertisers, who like you, want to target their audience and convert that interest into sales. 

How to use Facebook to identify your interests

This step is really simple. You can do this by going to a sponsored post in your Facebook feed, clicking on the down arrow (usually located in the top right-hand corner of the advertisement image) and click Why am I seeing this? 

 The next box will give you a brief spiel about why you are seeing it,

however, when you click on Manage your Ad Preferences, a detailed description pops up which is really what you are after! 

Once you have an idea of which interests will be applicable to your target audience, you can then start a targeted Facebook campaign after you have completed all the steps to get Free Organic Website Traffic First - click here to open up the related blog post.

You can enter your conversion advertisement and select the relevant interests. You can also get Facebook to suggest other keywords and see how many people also show an interest (see below).

Like every good marketing technique, you need to Start Your First Free Advertising Campaign with a SMART goal (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, Time Based)

Your SMART goal from this post is to; Write down at least 10 interests your potential customer has, and use these to kickstart your next marketing campaign within the next week.

Starting your free advertising marketing campaign

Ideally, you want to start with a free advertising marketing campaign which will flood the internet with your product or service and get the word out there. It takes 6 months to develop a good internet presence and years to become a brand. It also takes a lot of patience to perfect your art, but a successful outcome is amazingly rewarding.

The eBook, “Your Key To Success: Drive Free Organic Traffic To YourWebsite Today” contains over $480 AUD of mentoring advice, and includes different steps you can take to increase your organic web traffic which is available to purchase by clicking on the link above.

Alternatively, click here to reserve your seat at my next Webinar for only $2, so we can spend 2 hours building your Free Advertising Campaign together!

Reserve your seat today for only $2

[WEBINAR] Drive FREE Organic Traffic To Your Website Today

Six Painful Lessons You Learn When Building Your First Website

Remember how excited you were when you put together your first Facebook advertisement, and waited eagerly for your first sale? Do you remember the disappointment you felt a few days later when the first sale didn’t come? How about the feeling months later when you feel like giving up?

My name is Melissa, and I am a Mentor with Business Mentoring Australia and I personally know that feeling!

My first experience with an online business was so exciting. 

I spent months coming up with the idea. 

I was an expert in the area and uniquely placed to market the concept. 

I was passionate about innovation and transforming the community care industry, automating it, putting it in the cloud, and removing all the politics and administration that used to fill my day.

I wanted to UBER the community care industry and let clients navigate the complex system with ease, reach  those who needed it and let them speak directly with the people they need to speak to.

I was bubbling with excitement and passion but I knew NOTHING about how to build a website!

What I did know was how to expertly use Microsoft Word, so I spent MONTHS developing a word document with each page showing the outline of what I wanted the pages to look like.

• I hyperlinked pages together. 

• I developed avatar employees and clients.

• I tried to take my own photos (now I know you can download quality photos for free!)

• I researched A LOT.

I don’t regret doing this step. 

I DO regret how long I spent doing it, and the effort I went into making the Word Document look professional. 

I also regret how paranoid I was about revealing my secret, and how it stopped me from asking for help when I needed it.

I figured, I’m a smart cookie, I can navigate this crazy online world.

What I didn’t realize, is that decision made my world crumble around me!

I want to reiterate that I didn’t know ANYTHING about how to build a website, so when I found a friend of mine was building a website, I vaguely said I would like to build a website one day, and “Use Wordpress, it's so easy to use” was his advice.

That was my first layer of disappointment. I didn’t realize there were different versions of Wordpress, Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org 

I spent weeks only to realize that Wordpress.com couldn’t do what I wanted it to do. I upgraded to Wordpress.org and realized it still didn’t do what I wanted it to do, so I tried Droopal, Joomla and various other platforms which came free to trial with the domain name and premium Siteground membership …Insert frustrated scream here!

By this stage I was completely overwhelmed. Html this, CSS that, PHP something, it was all a brand new language. My "Beginning HTML5 & CSS3 for Dummies" book was not enough for me to build the website of my dreams. I was eventually quoted 110K to build only a small section of my website! As a newbie, my dreams were too high and my funds were too low! 

After 6 months of research, late nights and buzzing ideas, I hit a wall.

To make matters worse, a few days later at work, I received a sales call from a new company who was trialing this “New Product,” a fully automated suite of client and employee profiles, with online bookings which minimized the administration. 

I quickly realized the salesperson was selling my concept, I had missed my opportunity, and I couldn’t be angry, because I was no closer to starting my website than I was to finishing it!

I was just really disappointed!

This experience allowed me to learn my first five lessons in web development:

1. Planning your business outline and what your product and service will be is important
2. Don’t waste too much time on marketing research
3. Don’t spend too much time making your website perfect (it will never be perfect!)
4. When you build your first website, start small, learn the foundations and rapidly expand.
5. Get help when you need it

I have a naturally positive “can do” attitude. I wasn’t going to let this wall break me. I had a passion to have my own business, and this online world was NOT going to get the better of me!

Little did I know, my mind was going to be blown away by how much I didn’t know!

I have a Project Management background, so templates, processes and keeping things lean and simple comes naturally. So I put my Project  Management Hat on and started my own personal project!

I eagerly purchased a new binder (I love stationary!) and wrote down my SMART goal on a blank page

 “I am going to have a small online business without customers which is profitable within 6 months”

It took me a month to come up with the (very generic) idea of having my own travel blog.

I knew by this stage how to use Wordpress.com so I started with that, did some online learning to develop basic coding skills, developed my website and learnt a phenomenal amount, BUT I still hadn’t reached my goal. My website was free to run, it had only costed me the Domain name registration, but it certainly wasn’t profitable!

I learnt my second lesson in web development; customers don’t stumble across your website, you need to invite them in!

I had developed a lot of content by this stage, so I started searching for places to post my blogs, including Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.

I read about a successful blogger who makes a living with Google Adsense.

I discovered Wordpress.com doesn’t accept Google Ad sense.

I discovered Wordpress.com has their own advertising platform.

I found out my travel blog didn’t qualify for the Wordpress.com advertising platform because I didn’t have enough traffic!

I hit another wall.

By this stage, I had also stopped travelling and was back to the corporate 70 hour work week grind and had lost all motivation…so my travel blog hibernated for a few months.

A few months later, I went away for a long weekend, and wanted to blog about it! I came back and realized I had now qualified for Wordpress’ advertising platform, but I really wanted to work with Google Ad sense. That's when I found the Blogger.com platform.

It was free and could be monetized almost straight away. I also found you can monetize your YouTube feed, so I started putting together a photo slide show and publishing them as short videos.

I copied ALL my blog posts across, scheduled them and posted them one after another on social media and blogging platforms.

·         I started receiving traffic,

·         I discovered affiliate links, especially IWANTTHATFLIGHT and

·         I reached my goal of making a profit!

It was a small profit, but it WAS a profit nevertheless.

This was my first successful website, and I had not paid 1 cent on advertising!

My third lesson in website development is you don’t have to pay for advertising!

I still have the travel blog, and it ticks along in the background, however I wasn’t excited by it anymore, I was ready to take the next step to running my own eCommerce store.

I spent some time trying to find a gap in the market, and then I remembered my lesson from the first website start small, learn the foundations and rapidly expand. (Unfortunately I had forgotten my third lesson that I didn’t have to pay for advertising!)

I started looking at online shops for sale and found a consistent theme of stores utilising the Shopify platform.

I took advantage of the free trial, and found Oblero a drop shipping app.

I researched everything I could, about drop shipping and found it quite appealing.

I developed an active wear website which promoted plus size activewear as it was a gap in the market. I was so excited about having my own shop, and had grand plans for opening up a physical shop down the track.

I got sucked into an advertisement for Facebook, “Grow your 6-Figure business in 6 months with as little as $5 a day”

Looking back, I was about to learn my forth lesson in website development; Ignore the flashing lights!

It was so quick and easy to advertise on Facebook, the advertisement was set up in no time, I used a traffic ad template, because I wanted traffic right? (wrong!)

I was so excited that I had put together my first Facebook advertisement, and was literally watching the phone, waiting eagerly for my first sale! I remember opening up Google Analytics where you can literally see how many people are looking at your site, and I saw one person was, which made me jump off the couch to tell a friend of mine there was a potential buyer in my shop…. I found out after hysterical laughter, that the potential buyer was ME as I had the website open on my laptop!!!!!

It was 11 disappointing days and $55 later, when I heard the magical “DING” notifying me about my first order! 

• I was over the moon! 
• I was shaking!
• I didn’t even know how to fulfill the order and I barely had enough money in my bank account to purchase the products!!! 

My first real life customer spent $106 worth of products and looking back on everything I have learnt so far, I don’t know what she was thinking!!!

• My Facebook advertisement was terrible as it didn’t give the customer any incentive to click on it!
• The product descriptions were full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes!
• The sale price was greater than the actual price on one of the products!
• The website was sooooooooo slow!
• I hadn’t calculated my running costs into product costs so I was running my whole site at a major loss!

BUT, at the time I was none the wiser. I celebrated my first customer, and in my head I had made a profit (because at that stage, I hadn’t received a bill for Facebook!)

I had it in my mind that paid advertising was sooooo much more effective that free organic traffic. 

My non-existing marketing budget was coming out of my own pocket while I was boosting posts here and putting an engagement post there. At one stage I was getting a customer every second day. So I tried to double the add and screwed up the Facebook advertising algorithms! The somewhat effective add, became useless, and ended up costing me over $100 in trial and error attempts because I had deleted the original add and didn’t know why it was successful in the first place!

My fifth lesson was an expensive one; don’t advertise without a plan, and definitely don’t ever change a Facebook ad, instead duplicate it!

I lost 2K in a matter of months. I was getting customers in, but somehow I was running deeper, and deeper into the red and I didn’t know why.

I spent tireless nights after work redoing all my product descriptions and then realized I wasn’t making enough from each order to cover my product, website, advertising and postage costs.

  

I was sick of looking at the returned products and additional stock that I had purchased because at one point, I thought it was a good idea (for some reason) so I called it quits. I do not regret this decision at all!!!

My sixth lesson; If you loose your passion, quit and accept a loss.

It took a while for me to lick my wounds, but then my wounds had healed and I dialed up my motivation once more.

I decided to build a business built on passion!

I wrote down my 6 lessons, put a sticky note on my laptop and built Business Mentoring Australia from scratch.

I call myself a Mentor, not the CEO or the Business Owner, a Mentor, because I am passionate about helping others. I don’t want hierarchy to cloud the relationship built with my clients.  

In reality, I am the Owner, CEO, Financial Planner, Admin assistant, Payroll Officer, Mentor and Marketing Manager all in one, so why can't I pick just one to focus on to start with?

I’m here to tell you, that you don’t need to get overwhelmed, or feel like you failed. I want you to be able to learn from my mistakes and ensure you don’t feel afraid to ask for help when you need it.

So... if you are thinking of building your own website, or you have a website and you are hemorrhaging funds from advertising costs. Put a stop to it!

Go back to the drawing board, and build a solid foundation of free organic web traffic.

Like every good marketing technique, you need to Start Your First Free Advertising Campaign with a SMART goal. 

A free advertising marketing campaign floods the internet with your product or service and gets the word out there. It takes 6 months to develop a good internet presence and years to become a brand. It also takes a lot of patience to perfect your art, but a successful outcome is amazingly rewarding.

The eBook, “Your Key To Success: Drive Free Organic Traffic To YourWebsite Today” contains over $480 AUD of mentoring advice, and includes different steps you can take to increase your organic web traffic which is available to purchase by clicking on the link above.

Alternatively, click here to reserve your seat at my next Webinar for only $2, so we can spend 2 hours building your Free Advertising Campaign together!

Reserve you seat today for only $2

[WEBINAR] Drive FREE Organic Traffic To Your Website Today

Your Key To Succes: Drive Free Organic Traffic To Your Website Today

Congratulations, you have come up with a perfect idea, you have built your website and it’s time to sit back and watch the customer count click up, but nothing happens. No-one is going to your store. You think about paying for advertising, but you’re not quite ready to sink unlimited amount of funds into your website just yet.

There is so many eye-catching videos, posts, websites out there to set up an advertisement on Facebook, but they are not free. Don’t make the mistake many other first timers do and decide to spend thousands of dollars on an advertisement for little return. Yes, the Facebook advertisements do bring customers to your shop. Yes, you may receive orders, however, generally, it will give you little to no profit once the monthly statement and advertisement bills come in, if your advertisement is not setup correctly.

Rather than shut the doors of your website or online business, it is time to look at free ways to advertise. Stop thinking about closing your store, and start realising the untapped potential free marketing platforms give you.

This book won’t tell you how to come up with an idea for a website or show you how to set up a website. What it will teach you, is all the different avenues you can get free advertisement for your website.

This book isn’t an overnight success story, however, it will greatly increase your sanity with time and bring you some hope that customers will order from your website, without the expensive overheads. It will also give you an overall awareness of any errors that might be lurking around your website.

So if this book is for you, download it here. Use the helpful tips and tools to build up your customer base before heading into the land of paid advertisement.

How to successfully prevent procrastination habits from ruining your career

The end of the shift is approaching and the clock seems to be ticking away faster than it has been all day. You're frantically trying to finish a report preceding that dreaded Five O'clock deadline, you know you should be focused, however, in the back of your mind, you are cursing yourself for wasting time on menial tasks earlier in the day. 

You're so far from finishing, and you ask yourself, how did time go so quickly? How did everything go so wrong? There is one reason for your lack of remaining time, you detached your focus from the task at hand. 

Your focus disappeared for hours while you re-read your emails. There were the odd occasions time ran away, while you scanned your social media feed, you lost countless minutes with unreasonable "preparation", those coffee breaks, and when you finally did feel motivated, you turned your motivation towards the not so important tasks on your to-do-list, instead of the task you are now rushing to complete. 

Top 5 procrastination techniques

• You fill your day with low-priority or unimportant tasks instead of completing the important activities 
• You leave your task on your To-Do-List for a long time, even though it is important 
• You read the same emails, over and over again without making a decision about them 
• You attempt to make a start with your task, then you decide to make a coffee, have lunch, go for a break or socialise with colleagues or friends. 
• You justify your delay because you're not in the right mindset or mood, or it's too early, or too late in the day to start it 

Does this sound like something you do on a regular basis? 

Procrastination is a trap that catches many of us. In fact, Piers Steel believes 95 percent of us procrastinate at times. But why does this happen to you? How can you overcome the habit of delaying the inevitable? What strategies can you put in place to manage and prioritise your workload effectively? 

If you are a procrastinator, does this mean you are lazy?  

The short answer is no! The long answer is procrastination is a choice. You CHOOSE to place a higher priority on an opposing task, which is a typically an unpleasant task, however a task which has a greater amount of importance than the one you were working on. Usually, the task you chose to do, is simpler or quicker and easier to achieve. You're not being lazy because you are working on something else. If you were lazy, you would be apathetic, inactive and unwilling to complete the task at all. 

Sometimes you get away with procrastination.  

If you have been lucky, you have been able to find another time to complete the task, however, the majority of the time, procrastination makes us feel stressed, annoyed or maybe even embarrassed, especially if everyone else has completed the task except for you. Delaying the inevitable may even cause you to lose your objectives or a career opportunity. 

If you procrastinate multiple times, over a long period, procrastination can turn into demotivation and disengagement, which could turn into performance management and job loss in extreme cases. 

A word of warning 

Office politics often goes unspoken, and NO-ONE likes someone who procrastinates. Your colleagues may not say it to your face, but rest-assured, they are talking about it behind your back. When you create additional pressure for the team because you are always late submitting your part of the project, or you leave important tasks to the last minute, you are actually telling your co-workers that you care less about their welfare, than you do about getting the work done.    

Procrastination is more than an awful habit for some, it may also be a sign of a genuine wellbeing issue. For example, people suffering from ADHD, OCD, anxiety and depression may procrastinate more than others. In order to avoid coming across as insensitive, prior to kick-starting performance management, make sure you understand the reason behind the procrastination symptoms and give the staff member an adequate amount of support.

There are four steps to overcome procrastination. 

1. Recognise you are procrastinating when it happens 

2. Find out why you are procrastinating 

3. Stop procrastinating 

4. Prevent procrastination next time 

Recognise you are procrastinating when it happens 

Are you delaying a task because you had to reprioritize? If the task was delayed for a good reason, you can give yourself a pat on the back, because you were not procrastinating, however, if you complete the higher priority task, then CHOOSE to flitter around to complete other low priority tasks, then you ARE procrastinating. Stop yourself in your own tracks and begin the task you should be doing. 

If you are aware of your procrastination habits, you will start noticing them straight away and be able to tackle them, head on. For example, do you avoid tasks which are boring? Do you get distracted by phone calls, people around you, or a task which is more challenging? 

Poor organisation and time management techniques might prompt procrastination. Organised people effectively beat procrastination as a direct result of tools such as a prioritized to-do list, time managed schedules. 

Find out why you are procrastinating 

Regardless of how organised you are, you can still feel overpowered by an overwhelming task. Maybe you have doubts around your capacity or have a skill gap, and it’s easier to keep putting it off and start procrastinating until you are in a rush to get the task completed. Overcome your guilt by breaking the task down into smaller, attainable goals to give yourself solace when it comes to approaching the deadline.  

How to successfully prevent procrastination habits from ruining your career

• Procrastination is a learned habit which has not been developed overnight, it will take time and effort to be able to break the habit. You can take steps to avoid procrastinating including:  
• Know which tasks cause you to procrastinate the most 
• Concentrate on doing a task instead of avoiding it 
• Have a visual cue that reminds you to stay focused.  
• Use a prioritised to-do-list 
• Schedule time in your calendar to complete particular tasks 
• Give yourself a reward for completing the task 
• Get someone else to keep you focused 
• Complete tasks at the time of the day when you have the most energy
• Use proactive language: Using proactive language is really helpful to tackle tasks which you are prone to procrastinate over. Instead of saying, “I really should do…” say to yourself (or someone else if you can), “I’m going to”, “I have to,” and don’t let self-sabotage get in the way, instead of saying to yourself, “I’m not sure how to…” say, “I can find a way to…”
• Minimise distractions: If you are someone who is a socialite and can be easily distracted by the latest office gossip, remove yourself from the area so you can focus. Tell the people around you that you are going to focus on completing a task and ask them not to interrupt you. Schedule the task for a quieter time if possible, or come in early, stay late so no-one is around to interrupt you.  
• Get some quick wins completed to give you strength for the labour some tasks that you procrastinate about, or if you find this makes you procrastinate more, tackle the hardest task first.  
• Know your weaknesses and upskill in areas that you need to 
• Delegate if you can. The task you procrastinate about maybe another person’s strength, they may have a task that you can do for them instead.  
• Break the task into smaller portions with easily achievable goals and limit them to small bursts of 15minutes which ensures the time goes quickly.  
• Schedule the task each week, fortnight, month, quarter or annually in your calendar if it is a regular task that is required 
• Practice mindfulness to ensure  
• Set personal deadlines ahead of the actual deadline.  
• Have a winning list, which shows you all the quick wins you have had at the end of the day. This reflective technique is sure to make you motivated and realise that you do achieve a lot in 8 hours! 

In summary, procrastination may be the symptom of delaying a critical task, however generally, the procrastination symptom is only the tip of the iceberg, under the surface there is a build-up of habit-forming activities, energy levels, skill gaps, mental health issues etc.  

Procrastination over a long period of time can be damaging to your general wellbeing, and reduce the opportunities which are presented to you, such as financial gain or career openings. You will also delay a sense of self-reward for completing your job to your fullest potential.  

Procrastination is a common issue for many mentees of Business Mentoring Australia.  With a proactive mindset, positive attitude and a little effort and support from a mentor, you can easily let go of old habits and get the most out of your time. Book in your free 30-minute introductory consultation now to get a personalised list of things you can do to be procrastination-free.