9 Ways to Be Selective with Your Time and Energy for Focus and Optimum Productivity

focus and optimum productivity

At one of my mastermind meetings, we had a really great discussion about being selective with our time and energy to be able to focus and get really really productive. Quite a few of us had been wanting to de-clutter our time, so to speak, and some of us had made some great progress in that area. All of us knew that we could improve even further.

We thought it would be useful to put our heads together with any tips and tricks that we had that could help others in the group in this department. Towards the end of the session we had quite a number of great suggestions and I figured these tips would be useful to so many others. It made sense to make a blog post out of it – so here it is, courtesy of Nick Haines, Monique Blokzyl, Liz Foster, and yours truly.

9 ways to be selective with your time and energy for focus and optimum productivity!

[Read more…]

Marketing is branding

One of the reasons I fell in love with the subject of marketing was that when I did my MBA I quickly realised that marketing is the very heart of every business. Without marketing there can be no business. Non-marketing people often hate it when us marketing nerds harp on about how “business = marketing”. The thing is though, it’s true.

I cannot stress this enough, so I figured it would be good to enlist the help of two of my favourite business gurus in management and marketing in the last century: Peter Drucker and Al Ries, to drive home the message of just how important marketing is.

Peter Drucker says “A company’s primary responsibility is to serve its customers, to provide the goods or services, which the company exists to produce. Profit is not the primary goal but rather an essential condition for the company’s continued existence. Other responsibilities, e.g., to employees and society exists to support the company’s continued ability to carry out its primary purpose.”

This is at the core of marketing. Serving your customer. Because it always has to be all about the customer. You have to see things from their point of view. You have to realize what they need and what they want and that’s what you need to be giving to them. So, that’s the primary responsibility. Try to flog junk they don’t want or need and you won’t get anywhere.

Peter Drucker also says: [Read more…]

I’d like to teach the world to… do marketing ;)

We are getting to that time of year when I need to see one of my favourite adverts of all time. You remember it. That Coca-Cola ad with all the people on the hilltop singing about how they’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony :) I love that ad. To me, once I see that ad, then the holidays are coming.

I’m a singer (bet you didn’t know that – who knows, I might give you a little sample sometime lol ;) … but I’m not attempting to teach the world to sing – there are plenty of good people out there doing that ;) I do want to teach the world about marketing though. Particularly those of us who run small or medium sized businesses, where business is not just business but a lifestyle. Those of us that start a business because we have a dream – whatever that dream may be – more money, freedom, being your own boss, helping people or whatvever. That’s my passion. Helping build businesses that people love – that customers love, and that the owners love running. See, there are far too many great businesses that fail, simply because the marketing know-how is not there. And I don’t want that to happen!

It’s a jungle out there – a marketing jungle. I’m a marketing nerd. This is what I do all day in and out and I still get confused sometimes. With the internet, social media, smartphones etc. there are so many options, so many opportunities, so many potential pitfalls. So to help us all make some sense of all this marketing mess, I’ve written a book on it – hey, that’s what you do don’t you, when you want to teach? ;)

It’s my hope that this book gives non-specialists a good foundation to build their marketing on and makes sense of this whole thing. So far so good, I’ve got some great reviews from pre-reads of the book, some of which you can see on the page where you can get a sneak peek into the book: http://thoranna.is/marketinguntangledfree/

The book outlines the five main themes underpinning a solid marketing strategy and action plan: target groups, competition, branding, marketing communications and the marketing system. The plan is then to delve deeper into each of those five themes in the coming year with five more books in the Marketing Untangled series, giving you all the tools you need to master this marketing thing ;)

I do hope you’ll grab a preview. Once it’s out I’ll let you know, and for the first few days it will be available for free through Amazon – so grab the preview, keep your eyes open for the launch and grab a free copy! It really is a win-win!

Oh, and those that grab their preview can come join me in the Marketing Untangled Series Facebook Community where we talk marketing. I pop in regularly to take part in discussions and answer questions, and I’d love for you to come join me!

To your marketing success!

Thoranna

p.s. that link again – just in case ;) http://thoranna.is/marketinguntangledfree/

Owning or Renting Your Marketing

Those that have been following me for a while might accuse me of being anti-advertising. So I want to address that today.

I am not against advertising, per se. However, I want to make sure that businesses are always using the marketing activities most suited to themselves, their market and their brand, and activities that give them the best return on investment (hmmmm very much a business phrase! :) – and activities that can be measured to show that they are really delivering results and that all important ROI.

Unfortunately, many of us just throw adverts out there and don’t think enough about what we want them to do, or make sure that they are doing what we want them to do. The fact is that people need to see you (your business, product, service) quite a lot of times before they are ready to buy, and for most small businesses, getting that exposure entirely through advertising is simply too expensive. I have spoken extensively about how often people need to see you in videos. If you plan to drive your marketing mainly through advertising, you have to advertise a lot and that can get very expensive.

Another thing that non-specialists in marketing have a tendency to do with their advertising is to try to say a million things at once. The fact is that it is hard enough to get people to take note of one message in your advert and as soon as you try to get more across everything becomes muddled and the ad loses its effectiveness.

Advertising can however be a great marketing tool if used correctly. What do you need to do for that? Here are five things you need to remember when you use advertising in your marketing: [Read more…]