Marketing Talk - Marketing
There are about a gazillion different marketing tools and tactics that a small-business person could use.
But obviously you can't use all of them. That would not work well, and would make you crazy.
So how do you decide which ones to use? How do you devise a plan?
I can help you with that. Give me a call at 877-901-9977.
In the meantime, here are some interesting and useful articles to ponder.
Marketing is Finding
Don’t like selling? Not many people do. Some people don’t like marketing either, because they think it’s really just another word for selling.
Marketing is not about Selling. Marketing is about creating those conditions that make Selling unnecessary.
Marketing consists of finding people that fit 5 criteria:
• They know you.
• They like you.
• They trust you.
• They want your product or service.
• They have money to pay for your product or service, and are willing spend it.
Do you believe that there are a LOT of people out there somewhere who already want what you sell, and are willing and able to pay for it? If that were true, and they knew you, liked you, and trusted you, would you have to convince or persuade them to buy?
Marketing is simply finding those people, and creating relationships with them, and bringing them to a point of knowing, liking and trusting you.
Then life gets easier. And better.
Pretty cool?
Tom’s 39 Lifetimes Rule
"There are more people out there right now who are ready to buy what you sell than you can handle in 39 lifetimes. You just don’t know their names and phone numbers."
There’s a HUGE supply of potential customers for you out there. You just need to figure out how to connect with them.
They might want what you have, and be ready and willing to pay for it, but they can’t if they don’t even know you exist.
That’s Marketing Step 1 – letting them know that you exist.
What are you currently doing to make that happen?
I Can't See You
And neither can your customers and prospects. Unless you put your photo on it. On your business cards. On your handouts. On your website. On every piece of marketing material that you have.
Ever get a business card at the networking event, then look at it days or weeks or months later, and can’t remember for the life of you who that person was? What if they had their photo on the card? You’d remember them, wouldn’t you?
How many times has someone else done that with your card?
Your photo is worth more than any amount of words, more than your logo, more than your title, more than any cute tagline.
If you don’t have your photo on everything, go, right now, to your nearest photographer and spend a little money on a professional headshot, and put it on everything.
You do want to be remembered, don’t you?
The least you need to know about marketing
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Offline marketing is shrinking. Which one are you focusing on?
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GEIO - How to Get Them to Listen
All effective marketing pieces need to follow a common formula, whether the piece is an email, postcard, web page, coupon, radio or TV ad, brochure, flyer, verbal presentation or anything else that is used to promote your business and gain customers.
There a four functions to a marketing piece: Grab, Engage, Inform and Offer (GEIO)
These functions are performed by the four parts of a marketing piece: Headline, Subheadline, Body, and Call to Action.
• GRAB – this is what a Headline does, and you’ve got microseconds to accomplish this. Headlines are critical because if you don’t grab them, then the rest of your marketing piece might as well never have been created. And once you’ve grabbed someone’s attention, you’ve got a few more microseconds to get them to the next step, which is:
• ENGAGE – this is the function of the Subheadline, to move the prospect on a bit further, to pique their curiosity a bit more, and to tell them that you’re about to give them some valuable information that they’ll be vitally interested in.
• INFORM – this is the message itself, the Body of the marketing piece. It must be concise, interesting and contain useful information that will prepare the prospect for the:
• OFFER – this function is performed by the Call to Action, where you’re asking the prospect to actually DO something – download a free report, email you, call you, visit your website, make a purchase, etc. A marketing piece that is just informative and doesn’t ask for an action at the end is a wasted effort.
So here’s the formula again:
Grab = Headline
Engage = Subheadline
Inform = Body
Offer = Call to Action
It’s a simple formula, and you can easily apply it.
Why are you hiding?
How many websites have you visited where it's all about "the company"? Yeah, most of them. There's a saying that "people don't do business with businesses, they do business with people." If that's true, then almost all websites could be dramatically improved by taking that into account.
You'll notice a photo of me on the Home page of this site. Why doesn't everyone do that? How many times have you wondered, "Who's behind this company? Who owns it? Who runs it? If I call the company, who will I end up talking to?" And you are unable to find that out, because the website is all about "the company". This is the age of "social", yet business people continue to hide behind their websites.
As for me, I have my photo on everything - my website, my business cards, and every piece of literature that I hand out. Go hire your favorite photographer to do a professional headshot of you, get your business cards reprinted, and put the photo on your website. It's not hard to do. Do it today.
Let people know who YOU are.
Why are you hiding? Who or what are you hiding from?
Marketing lessons from Lady Gaga
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Are you and your business getting noticed? Call me at 877-901-9977 and let's talk about how to make your |
Business Cards - How to Do It Right
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Call me at 877-901-9977 No, I'm not a graphic designer, and I don't sell business cards. But I can tell you how to make your cards work for you, and connect you with a designer that can turn that into reality. |
Important Questions
What is working well now?
Why is it working well?
What is not working well now?
Why is it not working well?
What people, materials or opportunities do you need to develop to make everything work better?
Why do people buy?
Do very many people make buying decisions based only on price? Nope. It’s the last on the list.
Top 5 Reasons People Buy:
- 43% buy because of confidence in the product or company
- 18% buy based on the quality of the product
- 14% buy because of the service they can get from the vendor
- 13% buy because they are offered a good selection
- 12% buy based on price
Now, total the first four numbers and you’ll see that 88% of people do NOT buy on price!
Business Cards - the Forgotten Marketing Tactic
Business cards deserve more of our attention and thought than they usually get.
Business cards don’t just provide contact information – they leave emotional impressions. Your card is YOU. And you will be kept or tossed in the wastebasket, depending on what your card looks like, feels like, and the impression that it makes on the person you hand it to. If you don’t want to get tossed in the wastebasket, here are a few things to do:
Photo: have a professional headshot taken and put it on your business cards. No arguments, no excuses, just do it. It’s best to have it cover one entire side of the card, not appear as a teensy image tucked away in one corner.
Use Color: if you dumped a collection of business cards on a table and spread them out, you’d see a lot of WHITE. With black ink. Not very interesting. Color is much more interesting. You do want to appear interesting, don’t you? Use some color.
Not a brochure: your card needs to tell in VERY simple terms what you do, but it’s not a brochure. Don’t include detailed descriptions of your services.
Don’t waste good real estate: there are two sides to a card; use both of them. Maybe contact info on one side, photo on the other. Lots of possibilities.
You are more important than your business: especially if you are a one-person show, make your name much more prominent than your business name. No one cares about your business name, but you do want them to care about (and remember) you.
No Title: don’t include official or legal titles like President, VP of Marketing, CEO, Owner etc. Instead, include a title or tagline that describes what you do, such as Life Coach, Business Consultant, Interior Designer, etc, rather than your position within the management hierarchy.
Use standard sizing: the normal size of a business card is 2" x 3.5" - do not deviate from that. Some people think it's cool to be different by having larger or smaller cards. Yes, it's cool to be different, BUT when someone tries to file your card and it won't fit into their business card portfolio because it's too large, and they throw it away in frustration, then being different is not cool.
No fold-out cards: two sides of a standard-size card are more than enough to perform the basic functions of a business card. If you need a brochure, then create a brochure.
Create an impression: your cards need to memorable, different, unique, yet simple and clean (you’ll probably have to hire a professional graphic designer to accomplish this).
Hire a professional graphic designer: Oh, yes, already mentioned that. No arguments, no excuses, just do it. Your business card is NOT a good place for you to cheap out.
Write to your dream persona
What’s a persona?
In marketing, it’s a description of the characteristics of a person who fits an idealized profile. It’s your ideal customer or client. It’s a description of the type of person you’d most like to be able to talk to, and to influence. In blogging, it’s the type of person you’d most like to have as a loyal reader of your blog.
Who is that person? Are they young, old, male, female? Do they have a certain income level? Certain interests? Certain hobbies? Do they work in a particular industry?
Going through the process of describing this “dream person” will enable you to write more effective blog posts. Identifying the persona of your ideal customer allows you to talk to that person. Doing that is much more effective than trying to talk to the world in general.
Describe your ideal customer (your dream person) as best you can. Then just write to that persona, and that persona only. Never mind everybody else; they’re not nearly as important. Write about the things that would interest that person(a), that would touch their emotions, that would be interesting and useful to them.
You may end up with several distinct personas that you want to write to; that’s OK. You might want to give them first names, and write to Bob on Mondays, and Fred on Tuesdays, and Susie on Wednesdays.
If you do this, you’ll find it much easier to come up with ideas for blog posts, and it will be much easier to craft an effective message.
Effective Communication
Effective Communication = cramming a maximum amount of information, insight and meaning into a minimum amount of space and time.
This applies to both the written and spoken word.
It means:
* keep it short
* keep it simple
* keep it concise
* don’t use unnecessary words
* make every word count
Guerrilla Networking
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From the book Guerrilla Networking by Jay Conrad Levinson and Monroe Mann: Guerrilla networking does NOT mean meeting people. It means becoming the type of person other people want to meet. Guerrilla networking does NOT mean schmoozing. It means becoming the type of person other people want to schmooze with. Guerrilla networking does NOT mean a huge rolodex. It means becoming the type of person other people add to their rolodex. Guerrilla networking does NOT mean “getting out there”. It means becoming the type of person other people invite out. Guerrilla networking does NOT mean becoming involved in others’ projects. It means starting projects that everyone else wants to be involved in. Guerrilla networking does NOT mean handing out business cards. It means being so famous that you don’t need business cards. |
Will your idea work?
Thinking about trying a new marketing tactic? Go ahead, try it.
The marketplace will tell you whether it’s good or not.
Don’t think it to death before you try it. Just do it. The marketplace will tell you if it’s a good idea.
Just like your best friend is the only person who’ll tell you that you have bad breath, the marketplace will always tell you the truth. In fact, the marketplace is the only place you can get the truth. It will never lie to you. It’s your best friend and wisest adviser.
Secrets
The Secret to Business - Find out what people want, and give it to them.
The Secret to Selling – Find out what people value, and show them that your solution is worth more to them than it costs.
The Secret to Customer Service – Listen, empathize, and tell the truth.
The Secret to Success – Find something you enjoy, that you do well, that is valuable, and stick to it.
The Secret to Wealth – Spend less than you earn.
The Secret to Happiness – Spend your time doing what you love, with people you like.
You've got 60 seconds
If you’ve been to a typical networking event, you’ve had to present an “elevator pitch”, or a “60-second commercial”, or whatever that group might call it.
If you find yourself needing to write one of these, I suggest first of all that you make it only 30 seconds. You can say a lot in 30 seconds if you don’t waste words.
Here are the basics:
* What do you do? (What are your products or services?)
* Why do you do it? (What is the need or demand that you satisfy?)
* Who do you do it for? (Who is your ideal or target customer?)
* What are the benefits to them? (self-explanatory)
Above all, make it short, concise, and quickly and easily understood. Your audience should know what you do 5 seconds into your presentation.
Same Message, Different Words
| Words are important. Words can make all the difference. In your business. Or in someone's life. In both your writing and speaking, remember that words mean things. |
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| tom@tomharris.us 877-901-9977 Copyright 2012 by Tom Harris |
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