More than a Few Words

Great marketing starts with a strategy and a great strategy starts with questions.  What do you do if you don't know what to ask? Well Limehub  founder Raine Gaisford shares a few of the questions and a new tool business owners can use to build their strategy. 

If you want to encourage someone to buy from you, tell them how to solve their problem without you.  That might sound crazy, but our guest John Welch the co-owner and President of Skymouse Studios  explained that is a great way to build trust.  In this conversation with host Lorraine Ball, he shared some of his best tips to generate relevant content that helps you build trust with your clients. Ab...

Content answers the questions customers have as they're trying to decide if they want to do business with you. Once upon a time marketers ran television commercials and put ads in newspapers and simply waited for the phone to ring. But that was a long time ago.  It was so long ago that it seems like a fairy tale, an expensive fairy tale at that. Today, consumers fast forward through ads and change...

Contagious content is something that SOME people will find so interesting they will be unable to resist the urge to share it.  Andrea Breanna, the founder of Rebel Mouse explains we share things  because we want to show off what we know, connect with others or because something is so striking it hits our ITMO (inability to move on).  Creating contagious content boils down to emotions: Love, hate,...

It may sound crazy, but this week's guest Dr. Shirag Shemmassian says you can actually sell more when you give away free stuff.  He sat down with host Lorraine Ball to talk about how this strategy can work for any business.  How does it work?  You have to be strategic about what you give away. Think about previews of your services, or quick tips and informative guides which help prospective custom...

This is a quick marketing tip from Lorraine Ball host of More than a Few Words . Here's an interesting statistic. More than 88% of online shoppers incorporate reviews into their purchase decision. Why? Because people are skeptical. They are more likely to trust what friends and family and even strangers say about your company more than what you say The tendency to ask for recommendations didn't st...

Ken Cloke is a conflict resolution expert.  In this conversation with Lorraine Ball he shares some very simple tactics you can employ to diffuse a difficult situation.   1) Ask the other person, why is this so important to you?  Why are you fighting so hard to win.  Often when you ask that you can identify underlying issues which are really at play.  2) Take ownership of the conflict and ask the o...

If you want insight into hot marketing trends, it is best to ask more than one person.  That is exactly what Melanie Allen and Meghan Martin of Green Loop Marketing did.  They reached out to nine marketing professionals to get their opinion on what would be hot in 2020.   The result is an informative article about nine trends to watch in 2020.   The article has something for everyone from the mark...

Marketing Tip from More than a Few Words My husband is an amazing cook. He reads recipes and comes up with his own variations, blending and layering ingredients in new and delicious ways. And even though he's amazing in our kitchen, he should not own a restaurant. Why? Because he knows how to time a meal with three dishes for eight people. But expanding that to 30 dishes for 100 people require ski...

Imagine stepping on to an elevator and the person inside greets you warmly and begins to engage you in a conversation.  Does the prospect of that conversation make you smile or horrify you? The answer will depend on your communication style. Understanding difference in how we communicate can make your next sales call or employee interaction much easier. In today's conversation with Yamilette Willi...

If you want to be a consultant, you need to write a book.  You may not be a best selling author, you don't have to be.  The purpose of this book is to introduce yourself to a wider audience, to demonstrate your expertise, and establish credibility as a s subject matter expert.  In this conversation, Dr. Cindy Childress outline's the steps you need to take to get ready to write a book.  KEY TAKEAWA...

Denise Praul is the owner of Whiteboard Learning a training company that provides referral marketing training to service based business people.  Her most popular training is her program that helps business people create a Roadmap to Unlimited Referrals  She has trained hundreds of business people on how to create proactive non-client referral marketing plans to help them accomplish their sales goa...

In an effort to dominate on social media and in SEO businesses are churning out lots of content.  Unfortunately most of it is crap.   So if you want to attract people, not just search engines, you need to be a better writer than your competitors.   How do you do that?  Our guest, author Erik Deckers explains you need to read more and practicing more.   

Ten years ago when social media was kind of a new thing.  While there was a lot of research about how big businesses were using these new tools, there wasn't much information about small business so we launched our first Digital Marketing Study. A decade later, we're still asking those questions. In this episode we look at some of the high level results from our 2020 digital marketing survey . If...

Whether you are hoping to rally your team around a strategy or resolve interpersonal issues an off-site retreat or team building session can be an ideal solution.  Our guest,  Deseri Garcia of Vida Aventura, outlines several things to keep in mind before you head out to bond.  Define your objectives - What is the purpose to have the event. Make sure your team understands your objectives and outcom...

Sometimes, as a sales person heads out to make cold calls, it feels like they are trying to storm a castle.  They prepare to battle their way in the door.  My sales coach, Matt Nettleton says it doesn't have to be that way.  Armed with a series of strategic questions, and a willingness to really listen to the answers, a sales person can actually encourage prospects to lower their defenses and actu...

When you face a challenging situation, before you look outward, our guest Lauralee Hites suggestion you use the process of introspection, to look inward.   She defines introspection as the ability to examine your mental and emotional state.  And the process is easy if you start with three questions.  1) What is the story I am telling myself? 2) What am I doing to contribute to this problem? 3) Wha...

You're familiar with Braille lettering on signs and blue rimmed parking spots which make it easier for people who are differently-abled to access traditional physical brick and mortars spaces.  Now we're seeing this same idea of accessibility being addressed in the online world.   In this conversation we look at ways you can make your website more accessible to all people.  In a effort to make thi...

Ready to leave your nine to five job behind? Before you do, our guest Anna Lundberg suggestions you think about the following five elements necessary to create a sustainable business. 1. Create a vision for you business.  And this is unique to you.  Re-imagine success not as defined by others, but what you want your business to look like. 2. Get your mindset right.  This is about developing the co...

We talk, write and create messages all day long. But do our messages actually create the impact we're looking for? That was the topic of the conversation with Patrick Donadio. We discussed a six step process for communicating with IMPACT! Patrick shared a simple acronym to make it easy to remember the six steps. . I stands for intention. So why am I having this conversation? Or why am I creating t...

Before we get into the how, let’s talk about the why. Well, the easy answer is that employee profiles are great content! They are the perfect light-hearted, human-interest kind of piece that folks love to see on social media and in email newsletters and they are a great way to regularly inject content into your blog. They really don’t take that much effort, don’t have to be that long and can be fi...

As a business owner,  every day you make choices about how to spend your time, dividing it between the mundane things that have to get done, and the interesting things that move your business forward. If you find that you’re spending too much time on the mundane,  then maybe it’s time for a virtual assistant. In today’s conversation Jennifer Crawford, the founder o f Sparent ,  shares some thought...

Being a successful business owners depends on lots of things, but this week's guest Henriette Danel says it starts with just three things.  Mindset, Strategy and Action.   In this episode, she explores how these elements build on each other as you develop a strategy to attract new customers and grow your business.  More than a Few Words is part of the Digital Toolbox from Roundpeg. 

Great content does not happen by accident. The more planning you do up front, the better your results will be. In this episode, Lorraine sat down to chat with Sam Von Tobel for a timely conversation about content planning including creating your calendar, a new tool, Sharekit.io to improve the look of scheduled content, setting goals and measuring the results.  As you start your planning, think ab...

4-time Emmy award winner, Laura Bucker joins Lorraine for a conversation about stories.  How to pull the details from someone to build a story that will support your marketing messages in a compelling an emotional way.