10 Steps to Change Your Business Image

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With the global business continuing to evolve rapidly, companies are faced with the reality that they often have to update their image to remain relevant in the minds and hearts of their customers and target audience.

If your audience sees the same old look and feel to what you offer, they may conclude that you aren’t putting any effort into following the trends or even leading the way. Or, it may be that you have had some issues in recent months that have tarnished your business image due to a bad decision or an unfortunate turn of events in the market. Whatever the case, your audience and customer base may seek out a competitor.

How to Change Your Business Image

However, you can work quickly and effectively to stay relevant and rebuild trust by transforming your business image in these 10 ways, including numerous solutions that get you there faster:

1. Strategize on a new direction and approach. One of the most challenging aspects of changing your business image is adjusting your operating model to best suit the customer’s needs. Often, it’s hard to separate from longstanding approaches or preconceived notions of departmental responsibilities and employee job descriptions. That makes it more difficult to figure out how to redesign the structure of your business to enable it to address the current and future needs of your target market. This is when it helps to bring in a company like ON THE MARK, which assists in seeing this bigger picture and offering a new blueprint of what your business model looks like and how it can run effectively.

2. Change how you interact with customers to shape how you transform the company. Listening to what your customers are telling you about what they want and what you can change to assist them with a better experience should be part of your plan to transform yourself. When your customers see that you have listened to them and adapted to suit them, you will go a long way toward making the right changes in your strategic direction and delivery, but you will also strengthen existing relationships. You may already have that information to tell you how to transform in your available data but no way of actually knowing what it all means. A company like Salesforce can provide a CRM platform and project management system that organizes and highlights those areas where you may need to make changes or that can define how you transform your image.

3. Engage your audience with content that illustrates your new business image. Today’s audiences rely primarily on written and visual content to make their decisions about a company whether it is on a website, on a blog, or on a social media profile. This is an opportunity to leverage their interest in content to get your messages across about what defines your new business image and, most importantly, how it specifically helps them with their issues or problems. Your content becomes your new business image because it is the communication channel and conversation platform between you and your customers. They can tell you what they think of the new business image or ask questions about what that image means for them. Since it’s an integral way to get noticed and share your new image, it’s critical to have expertise in content marketing from a company like Contently, which can help you to formulate your messaging and craft the content necessary to get the best reaction to this new business image.

4. Put the new business image into your visual presentation. It helps your audience to have imagerythat represents this new business messaging because these are symbols that help your audience connect and remembers the new brand attributes you want them to know about. When you want to change your business image, it’s an opportune time to update your logo, slogan, and website in terms of symbol, color, and messaging. This is where graphic design becomes your best friend, offering a way to consistently revise all visual representations of your company. You can use tools like SummitSoft to create a logo and Wix for a website without having to claim artistic status to make a great impression.

5. Add expert talent in areas of your business where you lack skills. You can change logos and websites all day long, which will help to a certain degree with a business transformation, but it’s really the people you surround yourself with that can make a transformation stick. While you may not be in the financial position to hire a team of full-time talent, you can tap into outsource workers and freelancers that specialize in areas that can help you transform how your business operates, especially in improving technology, marketing and sales, and customer service. Look to agencies like Toptal for IT talent and iFreelanc for graphic designers, marketers, salespeople, writers and even virtual assistants. All these talented individuals can do a better job than you in these areas because it’s what they do, which then allows you to focus on those aspects of your business that you do well.

6. Put influencers to work selling your new business image to the target audience. Influencer marketing is one of the biggest areas of marketing to have a significant effect on convincing target audience members to purchase a specific product or service. With more interaction becoming virtual, consumers and businesses are relying on others to recommend and review products and services before deciding to buy them. It’s these influencers that almost become more critical to a business reimaging than trying to go directly to the audience. Influencers often have more leverage and can sell the message you want to transmit more effectively. Platforms like the AI-driven Influential connects you with the best influencers for your particular segment and helps get your business image revamp to those audience members that can most often be converted.

7. Improve the financial underpinnings of your business. Having the right financial knowledge and tools can help you transform the operational aspects of your company by increasing cash flow, informing sound money decisions, bolstering the security of your transaction systems, and adding opportunities to fund the transformation and growth of your business. Business transformation isn’t always about the public image but it is often more important to focus on behind the scenes mechanisms like anything related to company finances that can make the biggest difference. Financial partnerships are out there in the form of companies like InDinerothat provide the information and platforms you need to revamp your financial processes and approach.

8. Deploy thought leadership strategies to build credibility with your audience. By establishing credibility with your audience that you know what you are doing and have the most visionary, insightful information on a particular topic, you can drive the message of your revised business image home. Your byline and syndicated articles, as well as blog posts, can be the basis for explaining why you revamped your business image in relation to industry trends and issues that your audience understands. Aligning these can make the transition in your business image as seamless as possible and actually build greater trust because the audience sees that, as a leader, you realized changing your image would be more useful to the audience and in response to market evolution. Most industry publications accept bylined articles while news syndicates also readily accept new and relevant content.

9. Take your business image message to Livestream video. In order to get your message to the right people, you need to use the mediums and platforms where they want to hear from you. Livestream video on Instagram, Periscope and Facebook have become very popular due to the interest in consuming video content at a nearly voracious pace. You will be able to reach a larger audience with your revamp messaging and present it in a format that they are most receptive to, helping to create a visual picture of what your new image represents.

10. Plan a campaign around the business image refresh. Turn the business image makeover into an event by creating a marketing and ad campaign around it with a set of collateral designed to excite your audience as though you are launching the business for the first time or even a new product or service. In many ways, that is what you are doing. Create a set of messages to be broadcast on social media by using Hootsuite to blast it out as well as develop an email blast, blog post, and landing page on your website.

Don’t forget to track every tactic you use to transform your business image to see what type of impact it has on your audience. It may take the time to sink in so you may need to repeat some of these approaches and continue the dialogue with your customers and audience until the new image of your business replaces the previous one.

How Direct Marketing Can Improve Your Business

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With the growth of the Internet, businesses have additional opportunities to market their products on a smaller marketing budget. Those that have achieved the greatest success are the ones that have successfully integrated online marketing with other Direct Marketing channels. Why? Because Direct Marketing channels are where buyers and sellers transact business and communicate on smaller budgets without ever meeting face-to-face or touching and feeling the merchandise. To make more effective use of online opportunities, marketers should do a “deeper dive” into Direct Marketing. The most commonly recognized Direct Marketing channels in historical order are:

  1. Direct Mail,
  2. Telemarketing,
  3. Direct Response Advertising,
  4. Internet, or online, marketing.

Direct Mail

In the United States, the roots of Direct Mail can be traced to Benjamin Franklin who used it to market Poor Richard’s Almanac throughout the American colonies starting in 1732. Direct Mail continued to flourish with the creation of the Montgomery Ward catalog in 1872 and the Sears catalog in 1888. These catalogs were popular since a large segment of the American population lived outside of cities and towns that had stores with sufficient product choices. As more people migrated to cities and suburbs, direct mail became popular for those that wanted to shop anonymously or could not easily travel to available stores. In its best form, Direct Mail provides a convenient way for prospects to receive information about products they want and order them without leaving the comfort of their home or office. In its worst form, organizations send unwanted mailings to people that are not interested in the products being promoted. Of course, unwanted mailings are known as “junk” mail. Their electronic equivalent is called “spam.”

Telemarketing

Some might argue that telemarketing began with the invention of the telephone, but marketers began to use it on a significant scale in the late 1970s with the introduction of WATS lines for economically calling out to prospective customers and toll-free numbers for prospects to call in without paying for the call. This created the two main components of telemarketing — (1) Inbound (toll-free numbers are provided for customers to call in) and (2) Outbound (telemarketers call prospects). In its best form, companies use outbound telemarketing to answer questions, provide customer service, facilitate the ordering of desired products, and cross-selling (which some mistakenly confuse with up-selling). In its most hated form, strangers and robots “cold call” prospects, interrupt what they are doing, and try to sell them something they do not want. Some uses of outbound telemarketing became so annoying that a law was passed called the Telephone Consumer Protect Act (TCPA) that created a Do Not Call Registry.

Even so, outbound telemarketing can be very effective under the following conditions:

  1. Prospect has given prior permission or wants the company to call,
  2. Product is highly desirable or greatly needed,
  3. Telemarketer is skillful and properly trained,
  4. Telemarketer listens to the desires of the people that answer the phone (rather than try to keep them on the line when they want to end the call).

Direct Response Advertising

Direct Response Advertising is advertising with a goal of getting the prospect to order the product directly from the advertisement. Some examples of direct response advertising are a direct mail piece with a postage-paid business reply card that is used to order the product, a TV ad that provides a toll-free phone number to order, and an email that provides a link to order the product from a Web site.

Internet and Mobile

Perhaps the method that has caused the most explosive growth of Direct Marketing is Internet marketing. There are two main reasons for this – (1) convenience and (2) economics. Even though the Internet is only a “young adult” (in reference to the beginning of its commercial use in 1995), nothing is more convenient or economical than the Internet for researching and ordering products. Even so, those that are using the Internet and related mobile technologies for marketing would be far more effective if they better understood the other Direct Marketing methods described above. Knowing how to use the Internet and its mobile “offspring” in conjunction with direct mail, telemarketing, and direct response advertising can create a synergistic force for marketing products most efficiently and effectively. Some people live online and some people don’t. Those that live on the Internet may not be online when a company needs to get their attention. Additionally, repetition of the information off-line helps them remember any exposure online. Similarly, those that spend most of their time off-line, can learn more about products when off-line marketing drives them online. A poster in a shopping mall, a direct mail post card with a coupon, or a display in a retail store may get their attention. If these offline devices have a link or QR code, prospects can be transported to a Web site that gives them the opportunity to find out more about the product, provides them with reviews from product users, helps them find where they can buy it, and enables them to order it directly. Taking this integration of direct marketing methods further by combining them with other off-line marketing methods can give marketers the greatest power at the lowest cost.

Direct Marketing can lower sales costs.

One powerful example of integrated Direct Marketing used in conjunction other forms of marketing is in the area of personal selling. In a previous post, I talked about the importance of personal selling to success in business. When it comes to promoting products, however, personal selling is also one of the most expensive methods in a marketer’s toolkit. According to the latest studies by McGraw-Hill, it costs $137.02 for an industrial sales call and takes an average of 4.3 calls, or a total cost of $589.18, to close a sale. Since it is not possible to make a fraction of a call, the real-world cost (using 5 calls to close a deal) is $685.10. That might work for selling airplanes and satellite systems to billion-dollar clients. It would be too expensive for selling many other products. That’s the bad news. The good news is that sales people can use the Internet and other Direct Marketing techniques for some (or even all) of the calls — thereby lowering overall sales costs.

Social media

As discussed above, just about everyone is talking about using social media in marketing products. The problem is too many don’t know how to effectively do it. While “earned media” techniques such as hauling videos represent very exciting new ways for promoting products, most of them are experimental and outside the control of your business. In an effort to take advantage of social media without ceding too much control, marketers need to have some understanding of popular social media channels and how to integrate them with other Direct Marketing methods.

  • Facebook has a large number of active users (over 1.86 billion at last count) and a lot of data on users so that advertisers can better target them. Since people go to Facebook to interact with friends and family, they do not like intrusions from companies. However, a lot of friends and family recommend products on Facebook, and company pages are very popular places for prospects to learn about products, discover new uses, find discounts, and share all this with their friends. At the very least, Facebook can make more brand impressions than other media. Companies pay $5.5 million for only 30 seconds of commercial time to reach roughly 110 million Super Bowl viewers one day a year. On Facebook, they have potential to reach a much larger audience at a much lower cost every day of the week. While Facebook limits ad sizes to very small spaces so as not to ruin user experiences, good marketers can make effective use of the space allotted with concise headlines.
  • Twitter is great for those that know how to write good headlines since it limits users to 140 characters. While it accounts for much less Web traffic than Facebook and other social media, Twitter users tend to be more influential. Also, Twitter can easily be linked to other SM sites, such as Facebook, so that if you post on Twitter, your Tweet can automatically appear on Facebook simultaneously. Twitter has proven to be very effective in responding to complaints, rumors, and factual mistakes for damage control and to provide better customer service. Companies that have learned to use Twitter in this way have been able to “turn negatives into positives” and build closer relationships with their constituents.
  • YouTube provides a place for companies large and small to reach their target audience without paying the high “real estate” costs of commercial TV channels. Furthermore, YouTube videos can be shared, and if they go viral, the numbers of viewers that actually watch the commercial can rival and even surpass TV audiences. YouTube viewers can also play the videos over and over again as well as share them with even larger networks of viewers enabling advertisers to make more brand impressions and greater sales.
  • Linked In is good for business markets. The HR departments of businesses use it to find candidates, and businesses can put profiles of their products and white papers on the site, and use it to promote their business. According to Linked In, 43% of marketers have found a customer on Linked In during 2014.

Integrating Social Media

To increase the marketing power of social media, marketers should be sure to integrate it with all other direct and non-direct channels. Direct mail, telemarketing, and direct response advertising should have links to social media, and vice versa. A lot of companies ask market targets to visit their Web site and “like” or “follow” them on social media, but too often they do not provide the benefit for doing so. Similarly, social media rarely ties campaigns to off-line and other direct marketing efforts — missing opportunities for marketing synergy, making additional brand impressions, and increasing sales. Companies with effective campaigns have linked product packaging and off-line media to social and online media. In addition to asking people to “like” or “follow” or visit social media and Web sites, they have given people codes in traditional media and on product packaging that give those that make the effort a chance to win something or save money. The feedback and contact information provided is more than worth the costs of the prize, rebate, or discount, and gives the company a chance to improve the product or add contact information to their database.

Advergaming

Some companies have successfully used Advergaming as a way to tie their media efforts together. When it works best, users have to go online and off for clues that teach them about the benefits of the products and company. They have fun while they are learning, are engaged, and remember the benefits. As a result, brand impressions and reasons to buy the products are better planted in the brains of market targets.

The power of Direct Marketing

Direct marketing has grown in power for a variety of factors that include the following.

  1. Less time. Market targets are busier than ever before since they have to work harder to earn a living.
  2. Less hassles and dangers. Increasing traffic, parking costs, and other hassles have reduced the desire for buyers to go to retail stores to do their shopping.
  3. Less expensive. The costs of buying and marketing products in “non-direct” ways has skyrocketed at the same time that financial disruptions, natural disasters, and government dysfunction has forced buyers to become more frugal.
  4. More convenient. The Internet is perhaps the most convenient way for buyers to research products, comparison shop, and order from their home, office, or mobile device.
  5. Anonymous. Some buyers prefer shopping for certain products anonymously.

4 Things Every Founder Needs to Know About What it Takes to Make a Big Idea Stick

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A startup isn’t a smaller version of a big company, it’s a search for a sustainable business model


All too often, people want to see entrepreneurship as if it were an action movie. The hero, transformed by a great moment of epiphany, champions his idea despite being besieged on all sides by those who seek to thwart him. He prevails in the end by being loyal and true and never wavering from his initial vision.
That’s a dangerous fantasy. As Silicon Valley startup guru Steve Blank has often noted, a startup is essentially a search for a sustainable business model. It’s not like an episode of Mission Impossible, where you have a clear and concrete objective and execute a plan with split second precision.
In fact, it’s more like a role playing game. There are certain rules to play by, but no clear path forward or ending sequence (except, of course, for bankruptcy). Instead, you have to progress through a series of challenges while gaining experience and artifacts along the way. In the end, everyone needs to forge their own path, but here are four things you should know going in.
1. Develop A Customer Before You Develop A Product

Many entrepreneurs treat a new venture as if it was a smaller version of an existing business. You develop a product, identify a market and sell to customers. In the Mission Impossible version of entrepreneurship, once you come up with a trailblazing idea, all that’s left is to execute your plan effectively.

In the real world though, your idea will almost always be flawed in some way. So by developing a fully featured product before you test your idea with real customers, you will almost certainly end up wasting scarce resources. Then, you’ll find yourself scrambling to correct your mistake before you run out of money.

There is a better way. Consider the case of Nick Swinmurn, a young entrepreneur who thought he could sell shoes online. To test his idea, he took some pictures of shoes and built a bare bones website. When someone ordered a pair, he went to the shoe store and bought whatever he needed to fulfill the order. He lost money on every sale.
Clearly, that’s an incredibly stupid way to run a business, but it’s an ingenious — and incredibly cheap — way of testing a business model. The business Swinmurn built, Zappos, was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for $940 million,
2. Your Idea Has Probably Been Done Before

For most of his career, Jim Allison had been content to be a research scientist and had earned some renown in his field of immunology. But in the mid-1990s, he had a breakthrough idea that would change his path. His research suggested that there might be a way to unleash the human immune system to fight cancer.
It was more than just a vague concept. He had done studies on mice that had shown incredible results. They were so impressive, in fact, that he felt he simply had to get the research translated into an effective treatment. So he started going around to all the big pharmaceutical companies to try to get them to invest in clinical studies.

He had no takers. The problem wasn’t that his idea was too radical, but rather that they has seen so many similar ideas before. In fact, there had been hundreds of trials on immunological approaches to cancer and they had all failed. Many agreed that Allison’s approach held promise, but after being burned so many times, no one was willing to take another plunge.
It took three years and tons of heartache, but eventually Allison got a small biotech firm, Medarex, to invest in his idea. Today, Cancer Immunotherapy is considered a miracle cure and many believe that Allison will receive a Nobel prize for his work. Medarex was acquired in 2009 by Bristol Myers Squibb for $2.4 billion.
3. Your Idea Needs To Combine With Other Ideas

When Elance was founded in 1999, it seemed like a really good idea. Taking its name from a Harvard Business Review article titled titled The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy the founders sought to match freelance contractors and firms much like Monster.com did for full-time applicants. Unfortunately, the it didn’t gain any traction.

So the investors decided to hire a new CEO and take the company in a new direction. Instead of matching firms to freelancers, it would help companies manage relationships. This idea met with much greater success and E-Lance became a pioneer in vendor management software. In fact, it became so successful that it attracted stiff competition from the likes of SAP and Oracle.

At that point, the investors felt it was time to sell, but the new management team thought that they could build an even bigger business by combining the two ideas — matching freelancers to firms and helping to make those relationships successful. So they sold the software business and kept the brand name, a small staff and some intellectual property.

In the years that followed, those two ideas combined with even more ideas. The firm partnered with training companies to offer accreditation of specific skills, helped its customers build “private clouds” of preferred contractors and developed algorithms to create better engagements. In 2013, it merged with oDesk to form Upwork, the world’s largest freelancing platform.
All too often, people want to see entrepreneurship as if it were an action movie. The hero, transformed by a great moment of epiphany, champions his idea despite being besieged on all sides by those who seek to thwart him. He prevails in the end by being loyal and true and never wavering from his initial vision.
That’s a dangerous fantasy. As Silicon Valley startup guru Steve Blank has often noted, a startup is essentially a search for a sustainable business model. It’s not like an episode of Mission Impossible, where you have a clear and concrete objective and execute a plan with split second precision.
In fact, it’s more like a role playing game. There are certain rules to play by, but no clear path forward or ending sequence (except, of course, for bankruptcy). Instead, you have to progress through a series of challenges while gaining experience and artifacts along the way. In the end, everyone needs to forge their own path, but here are four things you should know going in.
1. Develop A Customer Before You Develop A Product

Many entrepreneurs treat a new venture as if it was a smaller version of an existing business. You develop a product, identify a market and sell to customers. In the Mission Impossible version of entrepreneurship, once you come up with a trailblazing idea, all that’s left is to execute your plan effectively.
In the real world though, your idea will almost always be flawed in some way. So by developing a fully featured product before you test your idea with real customers, you will almost certainly end up wasting scarce resources. Then, you’ll find yourself scrambling to correct your mistake before you run out of money.
There is a better way. Consider the case of Nick Swinmurn, a young entrepreneur who thought he could sell shoes online. To test his idea, he took some pictures of shoes and built a bare bones website. When someone ordered a pair, he went to the shoe store and bought whatever he needed to fulfill the order. He lost money on every sale.
Clearly, that’s an incredibly stupid way to run a business, but it’s an ingenious — and incredibly cheap — way of testing a business model. The business Swinmurn built, Zappos, was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for $940 million,
2. Your Idea Has Probably Been Done Before

For most of his career, Jim Allison had been content to be a research scientist and had earned some renown in his field of immunology. But in the mid-1990s, he had a breakthrough idea that would change his path. His research suggested that there might be a way to unleash the human immune system to fight cancer.
It was more than just a vague concept. He had done studies on mice that had shown incredible results. They were so impressive, in fact, that he felt he simply had to get the research translated into an effective treatment. So he started going around to all the big pharmaceutical companies to try to get them to invest in clinical studies.
He had no takers. The problem wasn’t that his idea was too radical, but rather that they has seen so many similar ideas before. In fact, there had been hundreds of trials on immunological approaches to cancer and they had all failed. Many agreed that Allison’s approach held promise, but after being burned so many times, no one was willing to take another plunge.
It took three years and tons of heartache, but eventually Allison got a small biotech firm, Medarex, to invest in his idea. Today, Cancer Immunotherapy is considered a miracle cure and many believe that Allison will receive a Nobel prize for his work. Medarex was acquired in 2009 by Bristol Myers Squibb for $2.4 billion.
3. Your Idea Needs To Combine With Other Ideas

When Elance was founded in 1999, it seemed like a really good idea. Taking its name from a Harvard Business Review article titled titled The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy the founders sought to match freelance contractors and firms much like Monster.com did for full-time applicants. Unfortunately, the it didn’t gain any traction.
So the investors decided to hire a new CEO and take the company in a new direction. Instead of matching firms to freelancers, it would help companies manage relationships. This idea met with much greater success and E-Lance became a pioneer in vendor management software. In fact, it became so successful that it attracted stiff competition from the likes of SAP and Oracle.
At that point, the investors felt it was time to sell, but the new management team thought that they could build an even bigger business by combining the two ideas — matching freelancers to firms and helping to make those relationships successful. So they sold the software business and kept the brand name, a small staff and some intellectual property.
In the years that followed, those two ideas combined with even more ideas. The firm partnered with training companies to offer accreditation of specific skills, helped its customers build “private clouds” of preferred contractors and developed algorithms to create better engagements. In 2013, it merged with oDesk to form Upwork, the world’s largest freelancing platform.
4. You Don’t Need A Business Plan, You Need A Business Model

For traditional businesses, strategic planning is essential. You need to anticipate demand, allocate resources and coordinate the efforts of hundreds, if not thousands of people. It takes a significant organizational effort to keep things running smoothly and meet the needs of customers, partners and employees.

Yet a startup has few of these concerns. Usually there are just a handful of employees, if any, a few partners and maybe a customer or two, if things are going well. So it’s not a business plan that you need, but a business model — a clear idea of how you will create, deliver and capture value — and there’s no way of knowing exactly what will work going in.
That’s why it’s much more important to explore than predict. Nick Swinmurn didn’t just dream up a new way to sell shoes, he tested his idea before taking the plunge. Jim Allison studied the immune system for decades before coming up with his miracle cure. Elance continually honed and iterated its model before it came up with a winning formula.

So we need to get over the myth of the heroic leader. It doesn’t take superpowers or a magical suit of armor to be a great entrepreneur. Rather, it takes the courage to begin the quest knowing that you’re just a normal person who will have to find a way through to the other side.

4 BIG Mistakes To Avoid When Your Business Starts To Grow

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Watching your business grow is a happy feeling. Nothing feels better than the sound of money flowing in your account after all the hard work you have put to bring all the pieces together, successfully creating a winning combination for your team.

If you thought getting your business up and running successfully was a big challenge, brace yourself for something even bigger. It does not end here. It’s just the beginning. When growth happens, you either make it or break it. And most entrepreneurs fail to successfully handle rapid growth. This is why more than 90% of all the startups fail.

But we are not here to talk about failure. We are here to talk about the reasons behind these failures. Simply put – we are here to talk about the mistakes entrepreneurs make when their business starts to grow, which ultimately leads to failure.

Let us have a look at them –

1) Baking that perfect plan
Bake the perfect plan

A plan is only as good as its execution. But most budding entrepreneurs are too busy gazing at the numbers that they forget this thumb rule. And this is the story of not just a growing business. I’ve been part of well established teams that still spend weeks crafting that perfect plan, leaving too little time for execution. As a result of this there is complete chaos.

According to Dan Vining, Business Lead at one of the Unites at SSOE, “Capturing a lot of detail doesn’t bring value.” He advocates the formula of sticking to the basics. In his own words, ”Stick with the fundamentals and don’t let it become a ‘science project.’ I like to follow the KISS principle “keep it short and simple.”

As they say, If you spend too much t’me thinking about a thing, you will never get it done.

2) Don’t blindly follow the masses, coz sometimes the ‘m’ is silent / Sticking to the ‘We’ll do it because everyone is doing it approach’
following

You cannot follow your competitors blindly and adopt a market strategy that they are using. Don’t forget you were able to set-up a successful business only because you were innovative enough to think out of the box and bring ideas that others could not. Staying updated with what the competitors are doing is one thing, and following them blindly is something you ought to avoid.

For instance, don’t run a television advertisement for your business just because your competitor is running one. Look at the bigger picture – your business requirements, your budget, your audience. Create a strategy keeping all these factors in mind. And then figure if running a Tv commercial fits within your requirements or not?

After all, each business has its unique set of needs. Rather than following your competition blindly, it is a far better idea to make the most of what you already have.

3) Going with the easiest hire
hiring

So your business has started to expand exponentially and you need manpower in huge number. Does that mean you will hire anyone who comes for the job? This is where even the smartest of minds can deviate from the path.

Hiring one wrong person could put the future of your entire business into doldrums. When your business starts to grow, you need to have people in the team who can take responsibilities. A smart leader must always look for self-starters, people who can take charge without you having to spoon-feed them about everything. This post on

Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony Corp., has some wise words to share about hiring the right people ,”No matter how good or successful you are, or how clever or crafty, your business and its future are in the hands of the people you hire.”

4) Neglecting what you have already acquired
customer value

Another unpardonable offense that businesses make more often than not, when they start to grow, is to neglect their existing customers. They are too busy on acquiring new customers that they tend to neglect facets of service like steadfast customer support, interacting with the existing customers and more. But this is nothing short of a SIN that you are making.

You might be amazed to know that businesses have to invest roughly 500% more resources on acquiring new customers than they do to retain the ones they already have. Looking at the statistic one can easily understand why it is important to focus on retaining the customers by giving them privileged service and support.

Your Competition Wants Your Customers

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Competition is a part of business life. Some would argue that competition forces businesses to strive to get better at what they do for the fear of losing customers to rivals. Losing a few customers periodically is inevitable. However, losing too many (especially your best customers) must be avoided at all costs.

For most businesses, the top 20% of their customers account for 80% (or more) of their profits. While much thought and strategy typically go into bringing in new customers, not enough is spent on retaining existing customers. That’s where the real gold lies.

It may be a little uncomfortable to think that some of your best customers might be looking at making a change, but it’s something you must consider if you want to avoid having it become a reality. Everyone talks about taking care of their customers, but in many instances that’s a phrase not truly backed up with action. To build a fence around your customers and keep them far away from the prying arms of your competitors, you mus truly care, protect, and guide them.

Gather customer feedback on an ongoing basis.

Most businesses put a lot of hard work into getting a new customer. But after they become a customer, little effort is put into nurturing that relationship. A customer should never be taken for granted.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day operation of your business and lose touch with what’s happening outside your doors in the marketplace. Phone calls and emails to customers can be a great way to communicate and stay connected. But to do it on a large scale can be unrealistic. Informative company newsletters and surveys can help keep your customers up-to-date and give them a way to express their needs and concerns. These efforts can provide an early warning system to catch a customer jumping ship before it happens.

Tell them what you do.

Your competitors will do anything to steal your customers, including promising the moon. You know that some of these are false claims or teasers to get their foot in the door. Some of your customers may not know that. Your job is not only to provide a great product and service but also to continually remind customers about the value you provide that your competitors can’t match. If you don’t tell them, no one else will either.

Informing your customers through educational marketing content is a powerful way to keep them engaged while differentiating your company as one that truly cares about their success (not just your own).

Where are the weaknesses?

To help plug the holes in your business, start thinking about things from your competitors’ point of view. After all, they’re always looking for any weaknesses they can exploit, so you should, too. That way, you can shore up your weak spots before they get out of hand and, in the process, strengthen your position in the marketplace.

To discover your weaknesses, talk with your customers. Ask them about the areas you could improve. Stay up-to-date with industry trends that could create a possible gap in your defenses, too. You can’t buy every bit of technology as soon as it hits the market, but you can stay informed so you can address concerns with your customers when they arise. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Be proactive in your customer communication.

“There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” ~ Sam Walton, Wal-Mart

Customer retention starts with providing great service and value. Getting to the top is hard work, but staying there requires just as much effort. Being aware of the competition while shoring up the weak areas in your business can go a long way in helping keep your customers coming back.

Monopolies and the lack of competition aren’t in anyone’s best interest. Keeping your best customers satisfied is. Use competition as a motivating factor to continually improve your services. Communicating with and showing appreciation for your customers will give you an invisible force field to keep the competition out of your backyard.

Is Guerrilla Marketing Dead?

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You may think guerrilla marketing is dead, but really it’s evolved with the times. If you haven’t done the same, then you need to take a leap forward to get the most impact from your marketing dollars.
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<strong>What is Guerrilla Marketing?</strong>
Jay Conrad Levinson coined the term guerrilla marketing in 1984 with the release of his book, <em>Guerrilla Advertising.</em> In military terms, guerrilla refers to an unconventional form of warfare used by armed civilians, often against a force with superior numbers and weaponry. It relies on surprise, sabotage, and the ability to hide among a crowd. Guerrilla marketing is a take on advertising that uses similar tactics to gain attention.

The primary advantage of guerrilla marketing is its ability to increase a marketer’s impact using less costly resources than traditional advertising. It relies on high energy, imagination, and ingenuity. The idea is to take your customers by surprise, make a lasting impression, and create the kind of buzz that gets people talking.

The following two examples will help you wrap your mind around this strategy:

1) A new, locally based beverage company posted creative flyers on light poles and other public structures all around town. These flyers looked more like graffiti than advertising. Nobody even knew what it was all about, but the images stayed in their minds. After approximately three months of bombarding the public with these images, a billboard was displayed which used the same images, but also identified the company and the product. A brand was created before anyone knew what the brand was for. This is guerrilla marketing.

2) Compare this to a strategy used by a national research organization. They created billboards and took out full-page magazine ads that compared a neurological disorder with child abduction. These fundraising advertisements included the organization’s name and contact information. The shock factor backfired and complainants formed organized protests. This isn’t guerrilla marketing. It’s simply disrespectful and in poor taste. There is a difference.

<strong>How Has Guerrilla Marketing Evolved?</strong>
If you visit Jay’s site, you’ll see that guerrilla marketing is alive and well and evolving with the times. Guerrilla marketing is online — and you should be, too. Guerrilla marketing values permission-based marketing strategies — and you should, too. Guerrilla marketing uses popular culture to make an impression — and you should, too. Guerrilla marketing emphasizes ethical communications that are also creative and unique. And that’s exactly what you need!

When guerrilla marketing first became a hit, consumers were inundated with “professional” advertisements on television, radio, magazines, and newspapers. Now, it seems anywhere and everywhere we turn we encounter ads — they’re even in public restrooms! If we were numb before, we’re deadened now.

Advertising and “traditional” marketing just doesn’t have the impact it should for the dollars companies spend. And it’s no wonder when there’s so much advertising in so many places that it seems we never get a break from it. Guerrilla marketing breaks through all that clutter by being different. Not just different from your competitors, but different from its own past.

<strong>How Can You Use Guerrilla Marketing?</strong>
You can use guerrilla marketing to get the scattered attention of your target customers by becoming a bit more creative in the ways you reach out to them. Surprise them. Capture their interest. Offer something of real value.

Remember guerrilla warfare. You can’t rush success. Guerrillas knew that. Civilians battling a superior force with superior arms would spend years, decades, even generations fighting for what they believed in with whatever means they had. Take a lesson from them.

First, know that your business is worth fighting for. Second, you won’t win the success you want instantly. Third, you need to build your credibility with your target audience (i.e. the civilians you’re saving), not with your competitors (i.e. the superior force).

With these three things in mind, break out of the marketing box you’ve fallen into and prioritize communicating with your customers. Surprise them with how helpful, genuine, and trustworthy you can be. Sabotage the competition by offering a better value with better intentions. Don’t be afraid to blend in and mingle with your customers. After all, they are the only ones who really matter. Be one of them. Help them. Build a future with them.

This isn’t a battle for sovereignty or freedom. It’s a battle for the hearts and minds of your customers. The secret isn’t a parlor trick or a timely fad. You can’t take their trust. They have to give it to you. You have to earn your customers’ trust. If you can do that, then you can evolve into the future with them right by your side.

Direct Mail Is Alive and Well, Thank You

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Marketing fads come and go. Marketers today have a bewildering array of choices never seen before. Consequently, busy business owners don’t always know who to listen to in order to find what is working most effectively right now. Everyone can claim their systems and tools are the secret to a never-ending stream of prospects and customers.

Is Direct Mail Worth Exploring For Your Business?

Have you noticed that many of the Internet companies (like Google, among others) have been increasingly turning to direct mail to advertise their services? The reason is that old school direct mail worked long before the Internet and has been working for smart marketing in businesses all along. It just happened not to be the flavor of the day, thereby not getting much attention.

Now that the furor and publicity surrounding the “free” aspect of social media marketing has settled into the reality that free doesn’t necessarily equal real customers, smart marketers are looking for real campaigns that result in real customers.

Living Together in Harmony

Leveraging one proven marketing channel is great, but taking advantage of two or more is better. As effective as one channel may be, you limit the potential impact when using a single platform. With an integrated marketing strategy, you position yourself to maximize the real potential of your campaign.

The truth is that direct mail can still deliver real results when done correctly. In fact, direct mail works even better when coupled with email marketing and Internet marketing. When coupled with other channels, direct mail has the capacity to be even more targeted, personalized, and effective than when any of these channels are implemented alone.

To make this work and deliver results, it’s very important that the messaging and branding be consistent across all the channels you use. The logo, tag line, messaging, design, and colors used in one campaign should be reinforced across all media to generate stronger results and a more powerful impression. Consistency allows each campaign to feed off the other and deliver a bigger bang for the investment.

This is how big brands are able to leverage the power of multimedia messaging. Today, with the availability of affordable, short-run digital printing, you don’t need a large budget. It’s realistic and available for businesses of all sizes.

An example of a campaign that works extremely well is a new customer campaign. Nothing shows appreciation like a nicely designed, professional-looking direct mail piece delivered to your new customer soon after they become a client. People know that an email costs nothing to send but that a direct mail piece has a real cost.

Now you can follow that up with some informative emails to educate your new customer about how you can help them solve their problems. In the emails and direct mail pieces, ask your new customer to also connect with your brand on social media. Now you can further develop a bond with your new customer by sharing your values and core messages across all media.

Marketing success is about momentum. An integrated, multidimensional campaign, implemented consistently throughout the year, keeps the marketing ball rolling forward. This allows your business to be fresh on prospects’ minds when they’re ready to buy. The more consistent your brand, marketing message, and integrated approach, the better your results will be.

Your customers consume information in different ways. You can’t guess or assume one is better than another. Showing up in the physical mailbox, in their email inbox, and on the web assures that your brand is leaving no stone unturned. Having an integrated marketing strategy assures your business will be seen and heard. If just showing up is half the battle, then implementing this multidimensional approach is your call to action to make yourself ready for new customers on the business battlefield.

Be Your Business

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Every business would like to grow sales and profits. The future of the business and the livelihood of its employees depend on it. So, as business owners, we go to networking events, make phone calls, send out mailers, and even spend time on social media. Yet growing the business is never as easy or simple as that.

Making prospects aware of your products and services is important. If you don’t do it, no one else will. But that’s only one part of the equation. There’s something far more important that needs to be done first.

When a doctor goes into surgery, steps must be taken beforehand to prepare the patient. No patient would want the doctor to arrive on the day of surgery and begin poking holes and cutting skin at random to find the issue causing the problem. Yet many businesses go about prospecting and looking for new customers in the haphazard way of the unprepared surgeon.

To win more business, first you must isolate the pain points. What’s the problem your business can solve for your prospect? The more descriptive and specific you can describe the pain, the better. Yes, it takes a little effort to find specific problems for each type of potential customer, but you should notice trends and common traits you can use to attract a wider group of prospects.

After you’ve identified the major pain points, you can present the solution your business provides to solve the problem. Now it’s time to communicate this message.

Having a focused message before you market helps attract and retain the types of customers you want in the first place. The tighter the message, the better return you’ll get on your marketing spend.

Not many prospects care how many years you’ve been in business, how pretty the customer lobby is, or how incredibly innovative and cool your brochure or website look. Your prospects care about themselves. They worry about their problems. Outline what those issues are, and then tell them how you will make their problems disappear.

Oftentimes, your prospect may not even be aware of the problem. It’s your job to show them. Maybe you can save them time or money solving a problem they didn’t even know about. This is how you can make your print communication and all your other marketing messages more powerful. Identify the pain and show them how you can make their lives better by engaging your business.

It’s your knowledge and awareness of specific problems that will earn the trust of your prospect. Customers are attracted to businesses that best educate, communicate, and present expertise in the problems they want to solve. The best way you can do that is to not just represent your business but BE your business.

Being your business essentially means focusing on your brand and what it communicates to your marketplace. Your brand is more about your message than your logo. It’s more about content than design. Once you have your message finely tuned to what your audience is seeking from your business, only then will prospecting and growing your business feel like swimming with the current rather than against it.

5 Words That Can Change Your Business

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140259547Behind the scenes of your business, you make products or deliver services. But on the front lines, where interactions with customers occur, you have to deliver more than that in order to have a dynamically growing company. You must deliver a promise and hope.

The promise revolves around the benefits your actual products and services deliver. The hope is what can set your business apart from all the other companies that promise to deliver the same things you do.

People want to believe in your company and what you can deliver, but many have become jaded due to the culture of over-promising and under-delivering that is all too common in the marketplace. To get past this wall of skepticism, you have to deliver more.

Companies like Coca-Cola, Apple, Starbucks, and Disney World took off when they figured out they were selling much more than a soft drink, computer, coffee, and theme park rides. These businesses understood that in order to stand apart from their competitors, they had to tell their brand stories in a way that resonates with customers.

Coca-Cola sells refreshment, happiness, and harmony. Apple sells a delightful user experience to consumers in a hip, cool way. Starbucks sells the “third place experience” — a place to get away outside our home and business. Disney World sells memories that last a lifetime.

The common theme among the great brands of the world is that they have found a way to transcend beyond their products by asking this simple, yet powerful five-word question:

What are we really selling?

People aren’t really interested in what you sell, but they may be very interested in the benefits you can deliver. These benefits in turn must be told in a way that attracts and connects with your target audience.

How You Can Apply This in Your Business?

You’re probably thinking to yourself that this may do wonders for big brands, but how does it apply to my small business?

  • Take a step back from the day-to-day operations of the business, and think about what you’re really selling. Railroad companies thought they were in the rail business, when they were really in the transportation business. Think about the larger implications around the results you deliver to your customers.
  • Next think about this question: What do my customers really want from our products and services? Ask your best customers why they really do business with you. Look for common themes in the answers.
  • The final step is to take the concepts you’ve arrived at and focus on what would move your best prospects to buy what you sell. Put yourself in their shoes. Ask some friends and associates if your idea would move them to act. Then test your ideas by presenting them in your ad copy in print, on the web, and in all your other marketing channels. Test until you find the winners. The sales result will show which one is the winner.

Take these five words: “What are we really selling?” Print them out and put them in a prominent place you can see every day. Your answer to the question will form the core around which your business and your marketing should revolve. Answer this five-word question in a way that exceeds the experiences your target market is seeking, and you’ll see your business grow like magic.

Do You Have a Foot-In-The-Door Strategy?

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There’s an extremely powerful strategy to grow your business called the foot-in-the-door (FITD) strategy. FITD plays on psychology to get to the sale. This strategy works well because it gets past the prospect’s natural resistance to being sold.

The process starts with getting a person to agree to a small request that doesn’t take them outside their comfort zone. From there, you build up to larger requests and bigger yeses.

Savvy business owners, marketers, and salespeople have used FITD in one form or another for years, whether they have knowingly defined it that way or not. Some may refer to this strategy as a “loss leader.” The difference is that a loss leader typically involves selling something, often at a very low price or below cost. Retail businesses have used loss leaders successfully for many years. FITD works best when the first offer is for something free.

<strong>Examples of FITD</strong>
If you’ve ever been to the mall food court around lunch or dinnertime, you’ll often see savvy restaurant owners assign an employee to offer a small sample tasting of some of the food items on their menu. When passersby accept the sample and taste it, they’ve taken the first tiny step toward a possible yes.

One interesting side note with this example: Notice that the employees handing out the samples aren’t going all around the mall or outside in the parking lot at various hours of the day. They pass out the samples to people walking through the food court at lunch or dinnertime. The marketing takeaway: offer your services to people who are most likely to need what you sell when they need it the most.

FITD has been used for many years by door-to-door salespeople in many industries, from the person offering to clean a dirty spot on the carpet to the days of the encyclopedia salesperson (remember those?) who would offer a free three book starter set.

Perhaps the most notorious example is from the timeshare industry. In exchange for 90 minutes of your time, the FITD offer is a free resort stay or perhaps Disney World tickets. Does it work? Billions of dollars in timeshares sold would seem to indicate a big yes. These techniques are meant to persuade and work extremely well. The danger comes from unscrupulous sellers who abuse the power.

FITD has been used in the pharmaceutical industry with enormous success. Pharmaceutical sales representatives leave samples of the drugs their companies sell with the appropriate doctors. The physicians in turn give their patients a free sample along with a prescription that will lead them to become a customer of the pharmaceutical industry.

<strong>What kind of FITD should you offer?</strong>
Your best FITD strategy should probably be not to “sell” anything at all. Only 2% of prospects are ready to buy at any time and less than 1% will typically buy anything on the first contact. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and ask yourself: What would I need (if I were a customer) to choose this company over the competition? What service or product can you use to let prospects ‘test’ you out that will put your best foot forward and help you make the best first impression?

<strong>Conclusion</strong>
The FITD strategy is an extremely powerful technique. If you’re not currently using it or have used it in the past and forgotten about it, it’s time to visit it again. Put together a plan to utilize FITD in your favor.

Selling successfully for the long term requires building trust with your prospects and even existing customers. The FITD strategy allows you to begin building that trust. But be careful. If it’s done incorrectly or not done at all, then you may experience the door-in-the-face result which is what you want to avoid.