8-5-13 I'd like to hear your marketing questions

I am away from my office until the week of August 12.  I have been writing this Blog for well over a year, and I've covered many marketing subjects.

If there is something about which you want me to write, or if you have a marketing question, please send it to my email address: carolyntamler@whidbey.net, and I'll respond in the next Blogs that I prepare, beginning August 15.

Thank you....and I hope you're having a great summer!

7-25-13 How to use your marketing dollars most effectively

When you’re thinking about how to best use your dollars for marketing, here are the three ways I approach this:

 1)      It is always easiest to sell more to those who are already buying your product or service;

2)      You are more likely to sell to new customers who are much like the customers you already have; and

3)      It is hardest to sell to new people about whom you have little information.

Item 1 assumes that you do everything to keep your customers happy so they’ll want to keep coming back to you.

Item 2 is based on the idea that the kinds of people who really appreciate you, what you sell, and how you do business are likely to want to do business with you….once they know who you are.

Item 3 means it can be very expensive to simply place an advertisement without knowing details about the audience that will see the advertisement.

So, two wise ways to use your advertising dollars are to promote your business to current satisfied customers and to ask your customers for referrals to others they think will want to do business with you.

7-18-13 A smile is contagious and can help build your business

Shawn Achor has become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. He is the CEO of Good Think Inc., where he researches and teaches about positive psychology.

I saw a TED talk by him a year or so ago, and it really impressed me.  One of the concepts he presented is how a smile is contagious (I think I remember being told this when I was a child).  It turns out that when you smile, it actually creates changes in your brain (all positive).  When you smile at someone else, whether they smile back at your or not, their brain replicates the same responses your brain is having, mediated by so-called “mirror neurons”.

If your business involves face-to-face meetings with your customers, make sure that a smile automatically greets everyone with whom you cross paths.  Actually, this is a great practice for everyone that you see, whether they’re customers or not.

Just ask yourself: Wouldn’t you rather do business with someone whose presence makes you feel good?

7-11-13 Groups seem to function better when there’s a balance of men and women participants

I haven’t gone on the web to see if there are studies that document my experience, but in the more than 30 years I have been facilitating discussions and meetings I have observed that the proportion of men and women in a group has a significant impact on the flow of the meeting.

If the group is mostly men I see, what I call, “peacocking.”  Men seem to have something in their DNA that makes them want to assert themselves in the company of other men.  So their ideas and responses seem to be designed to make a certain impression on the other men.

A group that is dominated by women often includes a great deal of conversation that can stray from the job at hand.  Women seem to be designed to communicate, and the communication can outweigh the need for an efficient determination or outcome.

When a group is a balance of male and female energies they tend to complement each other.  Creative ideas seem to flow more easily and the  discussions are easier to direct to a consensus.

7-4-13 Do you know someone who met and married later in life?

I met and married the love of my life when I was in my early 60’s.  Since that time, I have met several others whose relationships and experiences are similar to mine.

Rich and I have been married for over 10 years, and for most of those years I have been talking about doing a series of essays, relating the stories of others who discovered that love and romance and a true partnership with another person were all possible, regardless of age.

Thanks to the urgings of friends, and a little Whidbey Island magic, I am now embarking on my Late-In-Life Love Project.  It’s an organic process at this time, but I am having a wonderful time talking with people and hearing more stories….and sharing these stories with others.

If you’d like to learn more about what I’m doing, please check the two links at the top of this page: Late-in-Life Love Project and Late-in-Life Love Stories.

And, please refer people to me who’d like to share their story with others.  I’m learning that among other things, these stories provide hope to those who are alone but still want a loving partner in their lives.