Give Prospective Customers a Plan of Action

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One of the greatest mistakes marketers make is to assume that interested prospects will automatically know which steps to take next when they receive a marketing piece in the mail, via email, or from a salesperson. Without a clear plan of action, many of your prospects will simply discard your marketing piece and move on to a different company…most likely your competitor.

Too many people assume that once a prospect shows interest, the next step is to close the sale. But rather than rushing to that conclusion, perhaps the best thing to do is to field any questions the prospect might have. Once your prospects are more informed, they will be able to make an educated decision about pursuing your products and services.

With that in mind, here are some phrases (and related information) you should include in your marketing materials to let prospects know you are there to help, not just make a buck:

  • Stop in and see our products! Include an address, business hours, and directions for reaching your building. Make sure you include a Google map on your website or landing page, as well.
  • Call and ask for more information! Include a phone number, contact name, extension number (where applicable), and hours. If you have an after-hours phone number, include that, too.
  • Call to set up an appointment! Again, provide all of the pertinent details, including the best time to reach you.
  • Send us an email to request more information! For email and web-based communications, provide a link to a simple contact form where prospects can enter their details and receive confirmation that their request went through. On print pieces, include an email address, and consider adding a QR code that links directly to a contact form on your website.
  • Visit our website for more information! Make sure you provide your full website address. Again, consider a QR code that links to your homepage or (better yet) to a landing page designed specifically for the promotion you’re running, with additional details about your products, services, and any current specials you have available. An FAQ page is also helpful here, and don’t forget to include full contact details so the prospect can easily reach you with questions.

Making yourself available to answer questions and provide your prospects with more information will make a positive impression and help boost sales.

Are You Building Your Business Like a House of Cards?

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You know the game.

You start with a deck of playing cards and slowly begin to stack them together, carefully leaning one card against another at just the right angle, until you’ve created a solid wall of cards. You build the house higher and higher, one card and one row at a time, all the while moving around carefully so the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down.

Building and growing a business can sometimes feel like building a house of cards. If you have one or two clients providing the bulk of your revenue, your business can begin to feel as precariously unstable as that playing card wall.

Wal-mart is a giant corporation. Stories abound of how they’ve made and also broken some of their vendors. But you don’t have to be a Wal-mart vendor to find your company in this tricky situation. No matter how safe you think your relationship with a large account might be, life tends to throw you curveballs. There are no guarantees. If that one large account leaves for any reason and you face ruin, then you have built a house of cards.

After the initial start-up phase is over, running a successful business becomes a matter of managing risks. Having a few clients account for the bulk of revenue can happen slowly over time, or it can come about in a flash. The role of the owner and directors is to recognize the inherent risks, then go about managing them.

The obvious solution is to find more clients in order to broaden the customer base. The trick is to do this while managing larger customer expectations and not failing in product and service delivery.

No one said being a company owner is an easy thing to do.

In financial circles, astute financial planners recommend owning a predefined percentage mix of stock and bond funds based on your age and risk tolerance. As you add more funds, the percentages can get out of balance in one part of the portfolio. A periodic review shows which part is out of balance. The solution is to sell the overloaded part and buy more of the other in order to bring the portfolio back into balance.

Owning and running a business correctly is similar to having a financial portfolio. You must understand and realize what your goals are at the beginning and review them regularly. Successful owners realize when one metric has gone out of balance and take immediate action to bring it back in line.

A business built like a house of cards will have no choice but to crash back down to earth no matter how high the stack has grown. Broadening your customer base while providing excellent customer service and product delivery will ensure that no wind of change will affect your business.

When you do that, you will have the added bonus of sleeping much easier at night.

Are You Doing Too Much?

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Once a business is established, it’s common practice to add products and services in the name of diversification and the desire for more profits. It’s a wise business move to choose products and services that will appeal to customers you’re already doing business with.

But what’s the point of diminishing returns? When does adding more products become less profitable or even start losing you money?

Lego is known for its beloved interlocking toy bricks. The company has been around since 1949. You and your children have probably built many fun projects using their colorful, iconic blocks.

As with many other successful brands, Lego decided to diversify. The Denmark-based company added games, movies, clothing lines, and six themed amusement parks (Legoland). Lego added many new colors to the primary colored bricks originally available. Costs were added at a much higher rate than new profits to pay for all this diversification.

The once very profitable company began bleeding red ink. A new CEO (Jorgen Vig Knudstrorp) was brought in to fix the problem. One of the first questions he asked was this: “What do we need to stop doing?”

Beginning in 2005, Lego sold the theme parks and whittled down half of the brick colors. They became more efficient and creative at doing what they were good at by concentrating on less rather than more. By the end of the same year, Lego was profitable again.

Sometimes the answer to doing more is to actually do less. Doing less frees up time and resources to concentrate on the key products and customers that bring you the bulk of your profits. If you have too many services or products, start considering what things you should stop doing, so you can focus instead on what really matters.

If Sales Are Slow…

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You’ve probably heard the saying, “People like to buy, but they don’t like being sold to.” But you may wonder what it really means.

It means that people are buying what you sell. It means people are spending money. But it also means that people are only willing to open their wallets and part with their money if one condition is met first. That condition is met when you’ve presented a clear value proposition.

Wikipedia defines a value proposition as “a business or marketing statement that describes why a customer should buy a product or use a service. It is a clearly defined statement that is designed to convince customers that one particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem than others in its competitive set.”

In plain speak, this means a prospect won’t buy from you until the value of your products and services is clearly presented in such a way that the decision to buy is second nature. This value must also be superior to what competitors are offering.

This value proposition doesn’t mean lowering your price or being the cheapest in the marketplace. That’s typically a losing value proposition. A winning value proposition is one where you add benefits that others can’t or won’t match.

Once you’ve defined your winning value proposition, it’s time to clearly communicate that statement with your audience via all of the marketing and sales channels available to you.

Sales will improve dramatically once you’ve articulated a clear and powerful value proposition. You’ll know it’s the right one when your prospects feel like they’re buying from you, not just being sold to.

Content Marketing: An Age-Old Strategy that Still Works Today

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Content marketing has become one of the buzzwords in the business marketing world. Many claim this is a new way to market. That is not correct. Providing valuable content to lure prospects and visitors has been around for a while. The distribution channels for this content may have expanded recently, but the strategy has been around for many years.

One case in point involves a tiny electronics firm in Seattle. The company opened in 1954 as Magnolia Stationers and Camera Shop in the Magnolia Village shopping district of Seattle. The owner, Len Tweten, loved music, which eventually led him to move the business into the world of high-fidelity audio. This transition over time also prompted a business name change to Magnolia Hi-Fi.

High-quality products and commitment to service were just a part of the overall plan to grow the business. Being a small business with no real marketing plan or budget, Magnolia Hi-Fi decided the best way to differentiate itself was to educate prospects with valuable information about the Hi-Fi world. To do this, the company introduced stereo buyer’s guides (over 30 years ago), which provided educational content and answers to commonly asked questions on buying audio equipment.

The buyer’s guides set Magnolia Hi-Fi apart from the competition. They also positioned the company as leaders and experts in their field in the eyes of their audience.

Did this content marketing plan work?

The tiny store grew into a small chain, which was acquired by Best Buy in December of 2000… for $87 million! In 2004, the Magnolia brand was incorporated into Best Buy as a store-within-a-store, known as Magnolia Home Theatre.

Content marketing works. It works best when you use multiple channels to distribute and share your content (print and digital work in perfect tandem for this strategy). Creating valuable content your prospects are looking for takes some work and resources. But don’t overlook the rewards that can come from that work. It may not net you $87 million, but it can prove to be nearly as valuable.

You can read more of the details behind this remarkable story <a href=”http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/09/this-7-step-content-marketing-plan-earned-an-87-million-paycheck/” target=”_blank”>here</a>.

The One Radio Station You Should Tune To

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57436356There’s a radio station you may have never heard of, but it’s one you need to tune into each and every day if you really want to grow your business. It’s called WIIFM, and it stands for “What’s In It For Me.”

Yes, this is a fictional radio station, and yes, it’s a bit cheeky, but the message is one you can’t ignore. Your customers are being bombarded with messages every single day. The only messages that will register are those which adhere to the WIIFM principles.

You must clearly spell out what’s in it for them, or your listener will quickly tune you out.

Here’s a good quote to remember from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales:

“It’s actually surprising how many people don’t follow this simple guideline of courtesy. I often get long, tedious emails from people explaining to me in great detail how I can help them and how great it would be for them if I would work on their project, or endorse it, etc. But they fail to consider my context. Why should I care, and even if I do care, why should I act on this rather than any of a thousand other things?”

This is what your prospects and customers are thinking every time you broadcast your messages. So recall this quote when you sit down to create your message, whether in print, web, social media, or any other communication channel.

Are You A Little Bit Country or Rock n’ Roll?

To understand what your prospects want to listen to or what they regard as important to them, you need to speak with and understand your customers. Pick up the phone, conduct surveys, go visit your customers, and take them out to lunch or coffee. There are many ways to find answers to this very important question.

Rome Was Not Built In One Day

Pablo Picasso painted over 5,000 drawings and images that very few people cared about at the time. But during the same period, he also created masterpieces that the world loves to this day. Don’t expect to find answers the first time you visit a client. Keep asking, probing, and analyzing your findings until the answer becomes crystal clear.

Seth Says

If you’re not attracting the right prospects to your business or converting them into customers, selling products, or building a strong brand in your community, it may be because you’re not clearly stating what’s important to your audience. Seth Godin said it best:

“Ten years later and the ego pendulum has clearly swung in the direction of the virus. That’s what we brag about and what is too often measured. How many eyeballs are passing by is a useless measure. All that matters is how many people want to hear from you tomorrow. Don’t try to convert strangers into customers. It’s ineffective and wasteful. Instead, focus on turning those momentary strangers into people eager to hear from you again and again.”

Favorite Station

Building and growing a lasting business brand takes a little work. Attracting audiences that care about what you have to say comes down to providing value for the type of audience you want to attract. You now know how to find out what they care about. Take those findings and craft the type of messages your listening audience will never want to tune out. When you do that, your channel will become one of the coveted favorite stations of your listening audience.

Why You Need a Competitive Advantage

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A successful business follows one core marketing concept: “Find a need and fulfill it.” However, there may be many players offering similar services and products in your field. This is where having a competitive advantage can lead you to the top.

To be in the top 10% of your field, you need more than just a competitive advantage. You must also communicate that advantage loud and clear through everything you do.

Competitive advantage is defined as “a superiority gained by an organization when it can provide the same value as its competitors but at a lower price, or can charge higher prices by providing greater value through differentiation. Competitive advantage results from matching core competencies to opportunities.”

In other words, when you create a competitive advantage for your business, you can win either by charging less than your competitors through improved efficiencies or by charging higher prices than others because of the added value you provide.

In 1985, Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, wrote the definitive guide called Competitive Advantage. In his book, Porter defined three ways companies can have a competitive advantage:

  1. Being the Cost Leader: offering lower prices than your competitors by providing a reasonable value while still making a profit. Wal-mart is one company that’s famous for this strategy, but Costco may have mastered it even better. Low prices are in Costco’s DNA and have become the company’s competitive advantage. Costco still charges just $1.50 for a hot dog and a fountain drink. As prices increased, Costco began manufacturing its own hot dogs in order to keep the prices low. Massive buying power and a super-efficient distribution system, coupled with a lower-overhead warehouse business model, have allowed Costco to remain a leader with this strategy.
  2. Differentiation: providing products and services that stand apart from your competitors. This strategy involves creating a brand that clearly communicates how your company delivers value in a way others can’t match. The result is a product or service people are willing to pay more to receive. Starbucks has mastered the art of charging higher prices than its competitors by selling more than coffee. The company sells a brand and overall coffee-buying experience others can’t duplicate. Buying a Starbucks coffee includes the atmosphere the company creates for its customers. It’s an added value the company’s thousands of locations “sell” and which customers continue to buy into every day.
  3. Focus: providing your products and solutions to a niche target market that you know well. With this strategy, you understand your customers’ pains and problems better than your competitors. Therefore, you can offer the best solutions at the best price. Apple understands its target audience. While others have tried slashing prices to remain relevant, Apple has been able to innovate and charge premium prices because the company understands who its market is.

Where does your business fit in these models?

If you haven’t defined your competitive advantage or aren’t clear what it could be, first answer these questions to help refine your search.

  1. What is it exactly that you provide? What problems do your services and products solve? Be crystal clear on the products, services, and solutions you provide.
  2. Who are you serving? What is your target market? Who are your ideal customers?
  3. Who is your competition? This could include local businesses or Internet-based companies. It could also include services and products from other industries that your customers are purchasing to solve their problems.

Once you’ve completed these steps, the research phase is done. Now you must analyze your findings in order to discover where your products and services can realize a competitive advantage. The answer may not appear right away, so you must continue to revisit the process until it becomes clear.

Once you’ve found your competitive advantage in the marketplace, it’s time to communicate that advantage in every marketing piece and everything you do until it becomes a part of the DNA and culture of your company.

Lessons from the Humble Shopping Cart

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In 1937, Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain, noticed that customers would stop buying more groceries when their arms got too full. He decided the solution would be to create something that would help his customers and, in turn, help him sell more groceries.

Sylvan and an assistant took a wooden chair, put a basket on it, and added wheels to the bottom to form the first crude shopping cart.

But the new invention didn’t catch on like Mr. Goldman had hoped. Men thought the carts were too feminine, and women said the carts reminded them too much of baby strollers. It seemed like the only folks using them were the elderly.

Instead of giving up, Mr. Goldman hired some young male and female models to push the new carts around Piggly Wiggly. The greeters would point out the models to the skeptical shoppers and explain the benefits. In a short time, the shopping carts became very popular, which in turn made Mr. Goldman a very wealthy man.

Here are a few lessons you can apply to your business from this story:

  • Pay close attention to your customers and how they use your products and services.
  • Observe and ask questions.
  • Determine what you can do to make customers’ lives better when using your products and services.

Sometimes an increase in revenues comes from simply helping your clients in small but meaningful ways, like the humble shopping cart.

Start Spreading the Word

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When it comes to making introductions, first impressions are very important. Whether you’re introducing a new business location, new employees, or even a new product or service, introductory marketing pieces are a great way to make a lasting impact.

A professionally printed introductory piece can establish credibility, build report, and pique interest. However, it’s important to remember that this is simply an introduction. Give readers adequate details, but don’t overwhelm them. Instead, develop it as a lead-in piece that entices readers to learn more.

The creative options for direct mail introductions are endless and can include letters, postcards, self-mailers, statement stuffers, personalized note cards, brochures, or even a simple folded flyer. In addition to direct mail, you can distribute introductory materials at trade shows and other events, include them with purchases, or deliver them door-to-door with eye-catching door hangers. To increase staying power, consider including an elite offer, coupon, exclusive invitation, or tear-away business card that recipients can use to keep your information at their fingertips.

If you need ideas or want help getting started, give us a call today. Our creative team would love to help you start spreading the word!

Please Give Me a Call

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With the recent explosion of marketing avenues available to businesses, it’s easy to forget some of the fundamental building blocks that go into making a company successful. Take, for instance, that telephone in your office. It may not be as sexy or new as social media, but it packs a much bigger and more immediate punch than tweeting or Facebook posts! Perhaps the most important method of communicating with your clients and prospects is still that little old telephone.

The phone connects your business with your audience in ways that email and social media can’t. The sound of the human voice and the interaction between two people on the phone can never be replicated or replaced by any other medium. That interaction can either increase or decrease your business in terms of traffic and revenue. Most callers will base their decision about whether or not to do business with your company on how they are treated on that phone call.

No amount of marketing and PR can overcome a negative experience on a phone call with your office. So before you move forward with any new marketing, make sure all that effort doesn’t go to waste when a prospect calls your business.

You can either pay someone or ask a friend to call your business and pose as a potential customer. Have the calls recorded. Review these recordings on a regular basis, and share both the positive and negative calls with your staff, along with items you find that need to be corrected. These are extremely valuable training times. It takes a little effort on your part, but the rewards will pay off for many years to come.

By making sure that all callers experience a positive event when calling your business, you have a strong pillar to continue building your successful business.