Hank's Business and Marketing Tips

Nate Hirsch from freeeup.com joins me today to talk about outsourcing, being productive, and more. Nate helps small business owners run their business better. Nate took a look at the other outsourcing companies and found they took a long time to deliver project work. With Freeeup, only the top 1% of applicants are chosen. They offer 24/7 support and if for any reason the freelancer quits on a proj...

Information is power. The more you have, the more you know, the better you can run your business and succeed. You should always be asking your customer or potential customers what you can be doing more of or what you can be doing better. There is no better way to know what you are doing well or what you can improve or keep doing to succeed, than by using surveys. Surveys allow you to make changes...

Have you ever had a negative thought? Many of us have and a lot of us do all the time. What you want to do is stop thinking about what can go wrong. Start thinking positive and be an opportunistic person. The reason for business goals is so that you can focus on what you need to complete. While you are focusing on your goals, you do the activities and tasks that will help you complete your goal. I...

When attending conferences, I feel that it is important to attend the reception events and any other activities involved with the show that involve networking. I recorded this episode while attending the RXInsider conference in Providence, RI. I attended the reception event and the dinner the following night and met some great people. I like to learn about new industries and what people are passio...

I want you to stop and read the signals. As business owners and professionals, we have busy schedules. We tend to rush through things. These days, when most people read, they read fast or skim. They do not absorb what is around them. We fail to absorb and read what is right in front of us. I received some signals recently. When I took a trip to the Key Island in Florida a couple of weeks ago, I di...

How many chat clients or social media channels do you use? The more you use, the more distractions you have. Make sure to cut down on the number of platforms you use, or chat clients you have installed on your computer. You can also increase productivity by turning off your cell service and wifi while working on projects so that you can focus and avoid interruptions. Think about it, if you become...

I will be in Florida on vacation when this airs. As a business owner or professional, it is important to take a break. You can use downtime to think about and set goals. Dwell on what you accomplished, reset your expectations and, plan for a successful future.   [youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0IwW_ezfqg[/youtube]   Audio:  

It is about time that I had Dorien Morin- van Dam with More In Media  on the podcast. Dorien and I both spoke at ConvergeSouth last year. Wow, so much value in this episode! I should have had her on earlier! Dorien and I spoke about repurposing content. to begin with, it is a struggle for business owners and marketers to create content. After you put the content out in the wild, what is next? Dori...

In this short episode, I cover reaching your customer first and lifestyle marketing. When it comes to reaching your customer first, before your competition, make that you provide value through blogging, customer service, and social media. This can be knowledge, information or tips. You can provide information about a product or service. Create engagement and trust for when someone is ready to buy,...

Josh Dodson is my guest today. He is the Director of Research and integrated Marketing at VisionPoint Marketing . We discussed marketing strategy vs. tactics. Strategy is a guiding principle for the tactics you use in marketing. Tactics are the specific thing you are doing with marketing. It could be Facebook ads or maybe Google Adwords. It is when you get into the weeds. Strategy helps guide you...

The power of referrals. Most people rely on word-of-mouth referrals. That means that they are being reactive and waiting for those referrals to roll in. Even though word of mouth referrals can be enough, you can always have more and more money. Referrals are the most powerful form of obtaining customers, because it is free. My friends at New Velocity told me that 88% of people are willing to provi...

Attending conferences can be informative and educational. Today, I am going to talk about how I prepare for a conference. Here are the things that I do to prepare for a conference. Research the talks that you want to attend. Don’t stress yourself out by needing to make last minute decisions for those breakout sessions. Most conferences offer apps that you can use to plan your day and also cr...

  Diana M. Needham, The Book Shepherd, joins me today. I met Diana at a LinkedIn Live networking event and really enjoyed speaking with her and learning how she helps people get books published. Diana works with her clients to not only write a book, but market it, and obtain the result that they really want. She is the owner of Needham Business Consulting. Diana works with business leaders, s...

I am joined today by Barbara Hemphill, owner of Barbara Hemphill LLC , to discuss productivity The average employee spends 19% of their time looking for what they need to do their work. It you take a company that has 20 employees at an average wage of $15 an hour, that represents a loss productivity cost of $115k dollars a year. Research shows that 80% of what we keep we never use, and the more we...

I recently viewed an ad from someone looking to promote a workshop on chatbots and how they are going to be an email marketing killer. I signed up because I wanted to see how this person was using chatbots. First, I needed to provide my email address to sign up for the workshop. That shows you that email marketing is still powerful. Next, I started to receive a lot of bot messages and at times, I...

If you are using email marketing to promote your business, you need to clean your list every six months to a year. You do not have to just remove subscribers from your list, you can send them a series of about three emails to try to win them back. You can use a subject line of say “Are we breaking up?” for the first email to try to get them to open the email and engage with it. Ask you...

Eric Megert, a comedian, talks about how to use comedy when you are a business owner. Maybe while selling or just going about your day. What does it take to become a successful comedian? Eric said perseverance and the ability to fail (bomb) is important. I mentioned that I discussed failure in a previous episode. Don’t be afraid to fail. Also, look at your verbiage and how you talk. You need...

Jerel Bonner from Corralling Chaos joins me to today to talk about brand promises. I met Jerel through LinkedIn. He is knowledge broker that can help general managers and senior executives form teams that deliver on the brand promises. Companies need to think beyond having a unique selling proposition. This is why you would buy one brand over another. A brand promise is what a customer would get i...

Happy New Year! I hope that you were able to plan some achievable goals that will help you grow this year. I hope that you will also be able to network more this year. Good luck with your goals. Let’s talk about failure. People are afraid of failure. I think that you should “double your failure”. It is important to fail because you learn from your mistakes. At times you will make...

This is the second part of my discussion with Brandon Hatcher of Social Remedy Marketing . Make sure to listen to part one, which is episode 113 . We jump to where Brandon talks about ‘being on social media”. Many business owners have told Brandon that they did not think that their potential customers were on social media. They tend to think that their demographic may not be on certain...

Brandon Hatcher with Social Remedy Marketing joins me for a two-part series to talk about creating content for social media. I met Brandon at Converge South a couple of months ago. Converge South is a technology and creativity conference in Winston Salem, NC. I sat in on his session and was impressed with his storytelling skills as well as his message on creating content. When it comes to content...

Chris Daltorio from New Velocity joins me today to discuss sales. New Velocity is a sales and leadership development firm. They work with companies of all sizes. Chris likes to help companies grow by helping people become the superstar version of themselves. As a small business owner, your passion alone is not enough. Having sales skills will be crucial to your success. Chris talks about working w...

This is a special episode of Hank’s Marketing and Business Tips. Recently, I have been talking about how most people slow down and let off the gas during the holiday season and that now is the time for business owners to double down so that you can beat your competition. By doing so, you will be able to start the new year off very strong! I have a year-end challenge for you. If you have been...

Today, Timothy Robbins and I talk about content creation. His company, Today Creative , is a content creation company. They create content for customers to help with inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is using content or marketing tactics to drive traffic or leads back to your website. You can use informational and valuable content to share in hopes to raise awareness. I bring up the fact that n...

This was an impromptu recording with William Meredith, the owner of five franchise locations of Learning Express Toys in the Raleigh NC area. I asked William what a small business owner needs to keep in mind when running a business. He said that business owners need to keep an open mind. Also, reading books and listening to podcasts would help you grow as a business owner and you need to realize t...