Business and Entrepreneurship Archives - Page 5 of 7

Is Your Business Stuck AF??

Is your business stagnant? Maybe you’ve even seen a downturn in sales or traffic. Sometimes businesses get stuck on old ways that used to open doors but no longer work now.

Markets and technology move fast. The digital age means that you have to stay on top of trends even more than you used to. And you have to stay in touch with what’s going on, or else you’ll lose your place.

When things get weird, I like to go back to the FOUR fundamental rules of marketing: The Four P’s.

All brands are created with The Four Ps of marketing in mind (and I throw in a couple more for good measure)

The Four P’s to Marketing are:

Product
Price
Promotion
Placement

And my extra two are:

Packaging
Perceived Value

Why the Four P’s of Marketing is Important

The Four Ps must be considered carefully and none can be left out.

Your Product – Is your product needed, wanted or relevant in the market? Maybe there was a time when it was in higher demand. Look and see who and what your competition are now. What was going on 5 years ago may be a huge difference in what the market wants now. What can you do to make your product fresh again if it’s a bore? How do your products fill a need or solve a problem now? What makes your product unique?

Pricing – How are you priced based on perceived value and your competition? Maybe you didn’t have much competition when you first started out. What does the market demand in pricing now?

Promotion – Pricing and Promotion always work well together. Promotion is based on a special price or offering. Offer something: 10% off, free shipping on all orders, red tag clearance sale, etc. Are you offering promotions regularly to keep your audience engaged? Are these promotions attractive enough to get them on board? If not, adjust your promotional strategy.

Placement Where are you showing your products? Are you marketing your products in the right places to the right audience and at the right time?

My Two Bonus P’s of Marketing

Packaging For many products in the fashion and beauty industry, the packaging is everything. Even if it’s a simple lotion or a pair of socks, what does the packaging say about your company and brand? How does it make the end consumer feel? Does it look like it could be a brand who could hang with your competition? If not, make sure it does!

Perceived value is what a customer believes merchandise to be worth when she agrees to pay (or not to pay) for ownership of the product. Compared to the real value of the product, the perceived value is more difficult to measure sometimes. But this can be achieved with the right angle of your marketing strategies. Perceived value states: This product to me is worth as much as or more than the price tag attached because of _________.

Take for example the frenzy of supply and demand. People will spend more on an item if everyone wants it and if there are is a finite amount of that product available. The perception is that this item is rare, and therefore more valuable.

eBay taught me a lot about perceived value, and how to make things look their best, because that’s really the difference between literally putting a plus-size ladies anorak on a hanger and taking a picture of it, and putting it on a cool girl and making it look like something beyond your wildest dreams that you can snag for way less than Comme Des Garçons. – Sophia Amoruso Founder, Nasty Gal

A great example of the Four Ps in action with the addition of ‘Perceived’ value is Brandy Melville. The Instagram photos, soft colors and basic styles are loved by teens everywhere. The looks are classic but on-trend right now.

The marketing is done in a way that girls identify with and the clothes are made in Italy (Perception: luxury). You’d assume by the ‘made in Italy’ label, the photos and the styles that Brandy clothes aren’t affordable. The perception is already created before you shop, so a customer is very pleasantly surprised to discover she can afford everything! From $16 tops to $20 shorts and $28 dresses. For a small price, any girl can become a #BrandyGirl

Having said that, the perceived value of products offered by a brand is also measured by the loyalty, awareness and positive association by which the brand has created in its target market.

If you want to learn how to brand like a pro, consider signing up for my free Branding 101 Course!

How to Manifest Anything You Want (Dream Job)

Should you quit your day job to pursue your dream job? You read all these articles about how to manifest money, your dream job or dream life, but it seems a lot more complex than just thinking it into existence, right? That’s because it is (well, kind of).

There is action involved, too (moving in the direction of that dream, taking massive action, creating space for it, raising your vibration to match what you’re asking for, etc.)

Prefer to listen? 👇

But, if you want to hear how you can manifest your dream job successfully, from someone else who’s done it twice, read on.

You aren’t alone in what you want. And you aren’t crazy. Manifesting what you want is real.

Can I Actually Manifest My Dream Job?

This is a question more and more people are asking themselves. And a lot of people are doing it successfully. We are in an age where a person can monetize their interests, passions, skills–their dream job!

I’m going to preface this whole blog article with this: I believe in serendipity, The Law of Attraction, manifesting, quantum energy, God, Universal Intelligence. Whatever it is you prefer to call it, it’s very real and an important ingredient of a happy, successful life. I also believe we can create whatever we want. We are creating our reality right now, every day. There are very few limitations to what we can manifest. (So be careful what you think about, and what you ask for)

According to Wallace Wattles, our minds are made up of “thinking stuff” that forms things from the formless. In other words, if you want something and truly believe it can be yours, then Universal Law states it must come in to being. Our thoughts become our actions that become things.

How to Manifest a New Career

I’ve changed the course of my life and my career a couple of times. It’s daunting and confusing, but it’s certainly not impossible. I did this using the aforementioned “Law” and a lot of hustle. If you are already doing bits of the new career you want to transition into, it shouldn’t be as difficult. But if you have an idea and you’re starting from scratch, it may take a little longer to launch and adjust.

For me, what started off as my side hustle took center stage and became my new career. I transitioned from a full-time fashion designer to branding and marketing professional because it was what I had already been doing anyway. For several years, in tandem with design, I was doing PR, digital marketing and brand building. Sometimes shifting careers can be as easy as extracting one aspect of your current career that you’re most passionate about and just doing that one thing. Niche is good, especially in a very noisy world.

Choosing to do something else with your time is essential if you’re feeling a tug in that direction. Just know that it will take courage to start the wheels turning, and faith and patience to keep them going. The first thing to do is: just start.

Never chase happiness. Pursue a lifestyle where the byproduct of that lifestyle is happiness. 🙏 ❤️ #TuesdayThoughts
— Ava Carmichael (@AvaMarieC) May 21, 2019

What Do You Want The Most?

I think what a lot of us want is freedom. It’s what I aimed for most of my life. Up until the last decade, none of us had as much opportunity as we do right now. We are living in a very interesting and incredible time where technology, creativity, and global connectivity allows us to do things we never thought possible. We are learning spiritual practices at levels we hadn’t heard before, too.

Whatever it is you love to do when you’re not working, find a way to turn that into your business and go for it.

Whether you want to blog full time, or go freelance or be a consultant, make stuff, etc., I am going to say first and foremost: There is plenty of room for you to accomplish this. The first rule is to define what it is you want and change your mindset. Erase any limiting beliefs that separate you from anyone else out there who is making awesome shit happen. The only difference between them and you is mindset. They believe they can, and so they do. “I think, therefore, I am.”

See yourself as a superhero of whatever it is you do or plan to do. Wake up every morning or go to sleep every night with your mantra of, “I AM A MASTER AT ______.” Dr. Joe Dispenza teaches us about “becoming supernatural” in his book, Becoming Supernatural. He explains in great scientific detail how our thoughts create our reality and how we must reprogram our thoughts to change our lives.

Whatever you state, you become. This works for better or for worse. So stop saying you’re fat, ugly, broke, etc! Stop the negative self-talk TODAY. (If you want to read more on this subject, check out my previous article, What The Secret isn’t Telling You)

How I Manifested My Career

I’ll tell you a little back story about my experience.

Quitting my hamster in the wheel scenario, being financially independent and working from home (or Hawaii, or wherever I found myself at the time) was my ultimate goal two years ago. And I was on a mission to make sure I accomplished this. But many, many years before this second epiphany, I found myself in a similar place.

In my 20s, I wanted nothing more than to be a fashion designer. At a party for spiritual gurus, movers and shakers, I met an incredible woman (she was the hostess of the party). She didn’t know it, but that night she would change the way I thought forever. She taught me the valuable lesson of ‘Speak it and be it.’

She looked at me and asked, “What do you do?” And I started with an unconvincing, “Well, I want to be a fashion design..” That’s where she cut me off and asked me to state out loud, right there, “I AM a fashion designer.” She watched me mouth the words aloud and gave me a gentle head nod as she reinforced the statement, “Speak it and be it; Speak it and become it.” She was a life-changing miracle.

At the time, I was a 26-year-old who had only one semester of design school under my belt. And as for personal spiritual growth, I was a mere babe. I had only read In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant. My journey was just beginning and this amazing woman was light years ahead of me. But I trusted her word beyond measure because she spoke with such conviction, and had proof to back it up. She was truly a Teacher and a Guide in my life path.

Do you know what happened 2 years later? I was hired as a Fashion Designer with no college degree for a large company in Dallas. In that 2-year timeframe after I met that wonderful woman and spoke what I was to be, I designed dozens of garments and collections for some of the largest brands in the USA, and sold over a hundred dresses under my own label I had designed from my little apartment.

But before all of that came to be, I envisioned myself as a designer, worked on myself, honed my skills, put in the work, and developed some major street cred because of the commitment I made to BE a fashion designer.

I manifested my dream job!

My career didn’t end there. I went on to become one of the industry’s best female denim designers. I managed and designed for multi-million dollar lines, created hundreds of pieces, was approached by factories, Parson’s design grads, and major companies to either show them how I created my CADS or design their denim collections.

Fast forward to 2014.

Over 10 years had passed and everything for me had totally shifted. I was no longer interested in doing corporate fashion or designing clothes. I had been juggling fashion, brand building, and social media marketing for the last several years. But now I wanted (needed) something that provided more freedom, less stress. I wanted a career that was more fluid. My current profession as a fashion designer was going to have to go to make room for the new profession I found myself in, which was helping business owners build their companies through digital marketing.

I struggled with this because so much of my life was spent in fashion design. My identity was built into it and I was having to disassemble everything and tell myself and the world a whole new story (a lesson in rebranding). Shifting gears in my late 30s-early 40s was weird.

I listened to every TedTalk and YouTube guru I could find until it finally sunk in. The overarching message behind every successful author, businesswoman/man, public speaker, motivator, etc. was this: Decide. Make yourself valuable, stick to the decision, believe in yourself 100% and be willing to go fearlessly in the direction and do the work.

I had already decided: fashion design was simply not conducive to me working from a warm beach in Hawaii or south France. It required way too many accessories (fabric, samples, rulers, mannequins, etc.) So, I got rid of everything fashion-related. I literally DECIDED, and it changed my course.

Decide: Cause to come to a resolution. To ‘cut off.’ Latin decidere ‘determine,’ from de- ‘off’ + caedere ‘cut.’

Decision Creates Change

“The principle of life is that life responds by corresponding;
your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be.” -Raymond Charles Barker (Author, The Power of Decision)

After my big decision, and after I kind of went into autopilot and started purging all of the things in my life that didn’t serve or match to the end goal, my office space was now clutter-free and I no longer had the weight of dead, expensive projects hanging around my neck. With the fat trimmed, I was able to concentrate on the meat of my goal.

Nobody ever said switching tracks in your career is easy. It was scary for me, and it had plenty of ups and downs but I believed in myself enough to know I could handle it. If this is where you’re at right now, you can handle it, too. Everything is going to feel hard at first.

Everything is new and unfamiliar, until it isn’t.

Your mind is hardwired to resist change and the unknown because it wants to protect you from danger. Become aware of your thoughts obsessively. When negative self-talk comes in, remind that voice, “I’ve got this. Shove off, please.”

As soon as you get used to the change, and the more you tell your mind to fuck off, the less your mind will stop freaking out. And you will, too. So give the changes some time to adjust but KEEP MOVING FORWARD and continue with faith to starve the fears.

Feed your faith and you’ll starve your fears.

Over the course of the next few years, I repeated what I had done before. I became a practitioner of the digital space and content currency. I read every article or book I could get my hands on about digital marketing and social media, I plugged away with blogging, building WordPress websites, working with dozens of clients on various projects, creative content, and learned how to make passive income with eBooks and affiliate networks; I learned SEO, Google Adwords, Facebook advertising and got pretty darn good at social media marketing. I was now deep in the trenches of digital marketing, and earning a good living doing it!

The Power of ‘I AM’

You see, what you want and who you want to be, or the life you want to live isn’t about asking and hoping your wish will be granted, nor is it about negotiation; It’s about YOU being the ultimate CREATOR of YOUR life and story. Doesn’t that just sound and feel awesome and limitless?

Good, because that’s exactly what it is! Don’t overthink it. Creation begins with a statement of “I AM ______ (fill in the blank with whatever it is you want to be/do).

So, my ‘I am’ in 2016 was this, “I am earning $5,000 per month and earning $100K per year by the end of 2017.”

When I said this, I honestly had no idea how, I just knew I would. And I hoped it would be from my own digital marketing business. In fact, I was pretty sure it would be. It was my BIG GOAL, after all. And a Digital Marketer is who I said I was, so the rest had to follow, right? Of course, it did. Just as it had decades prior.

Define Your Big Goal

So you have THE BIG GOAL, which is to travel, be financially independent and earning $20,000 per month (or whatever your BIG GOAL is.) Once you define THE BIG GOAL, all of the little goal steps you make along the way will be in alignment with THE BIG GOAL. Or at least, they should be. If you are faced with a decision about something, ask yourself, “Is this in alignment with where I want to go”? If it isn’t, throw it out. Stay the course!

Your Actions MUST Match Your End Goal

For example, if you want to take a direct trip to Los Angeles, California, you wouldn’t take a highway up to Montreal, Canada, would you? The same is true with your end goal. Once you’ve made your mind up for what THAT is, all decisions, actions, goals should match with your end result. Once you tell your brain where you want to go, it (and the universe) will help you in getting there. When we decide to be or do something, our brain not only sets us up to go in that direction, but we find we are accomplishing every goal along the way that leads to the big goal. Call it an energetic occurrence or whatever, but it seems to be a universal law. If you find yourself all over the place, it’s most likely because your goals and thoughts are all over the place. Remember, wherever your thoughts go, energy flows. If you keep changing up the story, the road trip is gonna be a long one before you finally get to LA.

What do you want to experience?

If you find yourself changing your course often, ask yourself not what you want to do, but what it is you want to feel or experience. Many times, we may find ourselves floundering because we are lacking something deeper and more emotional. Perhaps we are looking to address an emotional need and we do this by trying to replace it with tangible stuff or projects.

Ask yourself this question when it comes to your job or current business model: Does it serve my end goal?

The 6 key steps to manifesting what you want:

1. Deciding what you want – Decision is a powerful action. Do it without hesitation. Get clear on what it is you want.

2. Using thought and imagination to see it – visualize and see yourself in the end with whatever it is you desire.

3. Speaking it into creation – Don’t allow for negotiation on who or what you want to do, or be. Speak it. It is yours.

4. Committing to that goal 100% – This means staying focused; commit yourself to become valuable in whatever it is you want to do or be. Hone your skills, learn everything you need to learn. Honing your skills is your “side hustle.”

5. Knowing it is yours and staying the course – It may be scary or tiresome sometimes, but you have to keep pushing forward, knowing it’s coming, knowing it’s working itself out. HAVE FAITH.

6. Maintaining a positive energy field through kindness, happiness, joy, giving freely, gratitude! Be careful of what you put into your body. Healthy, high vibe foods are best. Maintain a positive circle of friends and be careful not to watch too much TV (violence, drama, or whatever feels negative or bothers your psyche)

Get out there and be fearless, write the story of your life. ❤️

P.S. If for a moment you think you can’t do what I did, drop me an email. I will get you back on track! 😉

What’s the Cost of Social Media Marketing?

How much does social media marketing cost?

This seems to be a burning question everyone is asking.

Well, the short of the long of it is this: A minimum of $2,500-$5,000 on average per month, depending on where your target audience is and what you want to achieve. Don’t be alarmed, I will tell you why the costs are as such

(P.S. If you are a Digital Marketer, please feel free to share this with potential employers who aren’t ‘getting’ the cost of your rates.)

Sometimes, you have to pay extra for PR or blog content writing. A lot of those $2,500K-$5K prices may or may not be all-inclusive deals. And it’s not unusual to find many agencies who charge $10,000 per month for social media marketing & management.

According to some data findings, the cost to create and establish just a new Twitter account with targeted Followers and a little bit of content is anywhere from $2K-$7,500.

So I guess the average $2,500-$5,000 isn’t so bad when you consider the fact that some agencies charge $5,000 – just to manage your Facebook account. Nothing else —just Facebook. Add on Instagram and/or Pinterest and you can double that fee.

$5,000 per month for a Social Media Marketer seems “high” because we spend so much time online, doing just that: interacting socially and participating in social media. Our perception of social media is “fun time”, it hasn’t registered to us that this is THE advertising platform for all businesses, it is something to take seriously and no, not everyone or an intern can just do it. Not effectively, of course.

A great social media and digital marketer is worth his/her weight in GOLD.

Wherever the audience is, advertising follows. Once it was Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, TV. Now, it’s online through our news and blogger channels and our Social Media feeds.

If we can look at it from a media platform we are used to, such as Magazines, we can truly see the value and the difference: We have magazine readers, and we have magazine creators.

We don’t see all of the behind-the-scenes magic that happens to make that content available and in our face. That is what advertising is, and what Social Media Marketing is all about.

Ok. But “Why so much?” you ask

Let’s break it down:

Graphics and Social Media Ad Creatives The cost of social media graphics and ad creatives – this includes a professional graphic designer with marketing knowledge to create visual ads that deliver results. There is a psychology behind an ad creative that works. This isn’t the job for just any Joe Schmo Photoshop Pro when it comes to creating a fine-tuned ad creative. The average salary of a Graphic Designer is anywhere from $45-$60K per year, with some earning as much as $75K.
Video Creative. A business online without video is missing a huge opportunity. If you aren’t on YouYube or have great video collections on Facebook, you might as well be invisible. Video consumption is the #1 way to reach your audience, and creators who plan, write, shoot and edit your videos are not cheap. Sorry to say this but a quality video is important. Sure, you can shoot something with an iPhone, but make sure the content is valuable and sound is 100%. A simple video can cost around $500 per video to start. If you’re super creative or resourceful, you can find options in the $100 range.
Market research This is a very important aspect of advertising. You have to zero in on your target audience. It makes no sense to shoot your product out into the universe if it’s not aimed at the right audience. Market research answers: Who is your audience, what do they want, what are they buying, what do they respond to, where do they hang out and who are your competitors?
Ad rates The costs of promoting you or your business. Ad rates are generally included in a market budget, and an average and conservative cost can be anywhere from $250-$500 a month for Twitter and Facebook Ads alone.
PR Writing and crafting the perfect pitches, reaching out to Bloggers, Editors, Magazines, Influencers, and even celebrities. This aspect is HARD WORK. A lot of PR agents I know charge $5K per month, just for PR. Nothing else.
Creating Marketing Campaigns, Calendars + Strategies. Sometimes creating a marketing campaign can take days (or even weeks) to not only research and plan but to write it out. (One simple 3-month marketing campaign I created a few weeks ago took me over 16 hours to research, create and write.) This takes a lot of time, but executed well, it pays off.
Writing Press Releases – GOOD Copywriters can charge anywhere from $350-$1500 per article.
Writing Blog Posts – Rich content blog posts are worth their weight in gold to the tune of saving you about $250,000 in Google Adwords costs. A well-written blog post with organic traffic can harness as much, if not more traffic, as an expensive Google Adwords campaign. One single blog post I wrote in 2011 has generated 256,000 hits for my blog so far. If I would have paid the average $1 CPC (Cost-per-Click) with Google Adwords, it would have cost me $256,000! ?
Blog writers know their stuff when it comes to SEO, and they craft their posts to maximize search results. According to ClicktoTweet and HubSpot, “Articles with a word count between 2,250 and 2,500 earn the most organic traffic”. A good blog writer will charge around .45 cents per word on average, so a 1,000-word post is $450. For example, this post you’re reading right now is 1,326 words (or about $600).
Social Media Manager A full time (daily) social media manager to monitor your accounts, create engaging posts, interact, respond to positive (and negative) feedback across all channels. I’m talking about a dedicated person who not only knows the ins and outs of social media, but one who works on all your social media accounts all day (Instagram, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook), and knows how to track and analyze the data. This is a full-time job and if you were to pay him or her a salary, it would probably cost you a minimum of $45K/yr. ($3,750/mo) with most being in the $55K to $65K per year bracket.

Don’t be bummed.

If you already have an established Twitter or Facebook account, it could be a little more cost effective, because you won’t have to start from scratch and what you’ll need is a social media manager to maintain and manage your accounts: (i.e. keep them flowing, interact, grow your followers, establish relationships, and build brand awareness). So, If you were to hire someone full time to manage your one account, not create contests, promotions or ads, it would most likely cost a minimum of $40K per year, which is a salary of $3,300/mo.

$750,000 = This is how much Snapchat costs were per ‘Brand Story’ ad, which is a branded post that appears within the app’s ‘Stories’ feed.

(update: 12/2015 The minimum budget for advertising on Snapchat recently dropped from $700,000+ to $100,000)

Advertising has always been costly but it’s vital to business growth.
And sometimes, businesses just aren’t ready yet.

People scratch their heads in confusion when things aren’t selling, or when customers aren’t responding. I’ve been there before. I’d think, “I’m doing everything right!” when the truth is, I was just not giving enough to my marketing budget or plan.

We all want to see fantastic results, but what we don’t see is the costs associated with the results we want. And it can be overwhelming at first, but once the momentum starts, it all starts working pretty harmoniously. Better budget for advertising = more sales = more advertising budget = even more sales, etc.

“It’s nearly impossible to do PR and Social Media Marketing on your own, unless you have tons of time, are super-savvy (creatively), and have a team to help out. Make sure you budget anywhere from 15-20% of your annual income for marketing, because a funny thing happens when you don’t do it: Nothing. Meanwhile, you see competitors with the same products as you doing it and going global. If you want to succeed, there is no other choice. It needs to be a financial priority in your business plan and must be factored in as a cost to doing business”.

In the quick moving digital world we now live in, we simply can’t wait for our audience and business to come to us. Digital and social media is where all of the attention is these days. We stream Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Amazon. We are plugged into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

This is where the audience of the world is today, and if you aren’t finding a way to reach them through these channels, you’re kind of on another planet. If you take your business seriously, find a way to either amp up your social media marketing time per day or hire a professional to help you grow your business. You honestly can’t afford not to.