Small Business Articles from Duct Tape Marketing

Do You Deliver on Your Brand Promise? (2 of 3)

For the past few years, the media has been sharing businesses’ complaints about the lack of qualified workers. Recruiters and business leaders moan about poor work histories, poor skills, and poor attitudes. The labor pool is overflowing with poor quality candidates. What’s a business to do?

The 3 mistakes businesses make that effect long term success

No matter how great your logo or strategy, if you don’t deliver on your brand’s promise your business will flounder or die. Neither is what you want.

Tips for research you can do to raise your profitability.

Why are some clients more work than others? People who drain your energy and sap your strength aren’t worth it. Doing basic research to better identify the bull’s eye in your target market will allow you to start letting go of these low profitability accounts, get more energy, and increase your overall profits. The biggest benefit in doing this research is it’ll give your marketing team and sales staff more clarity about who you’re trying to reach so you attract more of those enjoyable and high profit clients.

Market research is obtained by systematically collecting and analyzing data about your target market, competition, industry, geographic area, or other key information segments that could have an impact on your business and decisions you’re trying to make.

Many leaders feel that they know their businesses, their customers, and their industries better than anyone else and therefore know what should be done. The leader may ask their team for input, but unless a culture is created that encourages people to freely share their thoughts, and unless the leader is truly open to information from the staff, the information or ideas shared may simply reinforce decisions the leader has already made.

Taking the time to do some basic research can prevent costly mistakes and can generate more revenue. Even if the thought of doing research gives you terrifying flashbacks from high school or college, as a business leader you’re certainly interested in saving money, not making mistakes, and in generating more revenue.

More efficient and effective use of time.
No matter what the price of gas, time is truly the most precious resource we have. There are only 24 hours in a day and only a fraction of that time is spent actively producing at work, so we have to maximize that time as much as possible. We all know that time is money and we’ve all had instances when we spent hours, worked overtime, missed meals with families, got stressed, did our best, and yet, a project didn’t produce the hoped for results. Often, an outsider could analyze what happened and show us we didn’t plan enough or obtain enough data before beginning.

Although there’s time invested in conducting and analyzing the data, it’s time well spent because we can make better decisions, create better plans, and do a better job of executing them with solid data.

Create messages that touch the prospective consumer and motivate them to action.
We’ve all seen commercials that made us laugh, some that made us think, and some that touched our hearts. How many of them stuck with us enough to remember the company? The average consumer is exposed to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of messages each day. How many of them produce the desired action? Most don’t make clear what the consumer is supposed to do.

When the designer and the copywriter are provided with clear information or are able to obtain clear information about the targeted consumer, the visual and verbal messages are crafted so both of them touch the heart and inspire action. Understanding the demographics (the physical characteristics of the population including age, sex, marital status, family size, education level, geographic location, occupation, etc.) and psychographics of your target (the elements of the lifestyles, interests, behaviors, thinking, and attitudes of people) allows you to invest a little more on the overall quality of the message and its delivery system because fewer people will actually get them. While the cost per prospect / lead may go up, the higher return rate more than makes up for the additional cost per piece.

Creates a stronger bond between you and your customers.
When you understand what your best customers want, you can provide more of that. Once you have created a solid pool of clients, you want to invest in retaining them and in increasing their purchases with you. You can develop your satisfied clients into your best sales force and brand champions. They should be treated well (with outstanding products and service, and special treatment) and rewarded (for referring others, for sticking with you, for the high value they bring to the business).

Customers who have a strong emotional connection are more likely to stay with you, refer others, and buy more.

Your next step is to review your procedures for capturing information about your best current customers and consider how you can use that information to make better decisions, lower expenses, raise revenues and increase profits.

And don’t forget: We’re here to help you do just that.
About Abiah
Abiah is a brand strategy / full-service marketing firm whose unique, proprietary research process creates and revitalizes brands that resonate with their target markets, leads to increased brand awareness, develops strong customer loyalty and improved market share. Visit our website (www.abiah.com or blog www.brandreturn.com) to view our portfolio, read our case studies, and begin to imagine how we can help you.

To grow your brand call 609 653 2233.

www.abiah.com. Please share this article with others as long as you retain our website links and About Abiah statement in its entirety.

What are Your Marketing Decisions Based On? (Part 1)

We all like to think we base our decisions on hard facts, but that’s not always the case. Business leaders will talk about doing their due diligence prior to making a decision; but in reality, when it comes down to it, what really pushes us to select one thing over another is our feelings.

While instinct and intuition do play a role in business (stories abound of business people who refused to pay attention to the facts and created a success out of what should have been a disaster), 9 times out of 10, cold hard facts and reality cannot and should not be ignored.

This new mini-series of BrandReturn™ (our newsletter’s new name) will introduce the basic concepts of business and market research, share some methods of obtaining data, and prod you to begin collecting data and analyzing that data.

Market research consists of two primary categories: primary data and secondary data.

Primary data is made of information obtained through focus groups, surveys, and observation.

Secondary data is provided by another group, such as the Census Bureau, a professional association, or think tank. A problem with using secondary data sources is their information may not relate to your target market or geographic area.

Obtaining primary data yourself is time consuming and can be expensive; but how much money have you or your company wasted on advertising or activities that ended up not generating the business you thought they would?

You already have some primary data in your customers’ buying patterns. If you don’t have a system that provides you with mechanisms to breakdown data into various groups, then you need to begin investigating how to acquire one.

Here’s an example of how data review and analysis can become important:

A large hotel was experiencing an increase in revenue but not an increase in profit.

As the hotel began to study expenses, it discovered that managers were over-scheduling employees on the weekends and even paying overtime to deal with the expected increase in customers that marketing was driving in. Naturally most business would come in on the weekend and the facility would staff up on Friday afternoons and evenings. When check-in data was examined, management discovered that most visitors were checking in on Saturday morning. By making scheduling adjustments and cross-training employees, the hotel was able to use fewer employees to handle the influx of customers. More employees were given time off on Friday nights, raising employee morale which resulted in improved customer service. Soon, expenses were down, revenue was up, and most importantly, profits were up.

None of that would have happened if management didn’t take the time to look at the statistics, analyze the data, and make adjustments.

Surveys can also provide important information a business can use to improve the customer experience, the employee experience, or extend the brand through additional product offerings.

Surveys are labor intensive since they take a bit of time to create, administer, then compile and analyze the data. If spending a couple of thousand dollars can lead to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or more in revenue, it’s money well spent. The same can be said if that investment saves you from spending even more money to invest in something that your customers don’t want (and remember: Customers don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.).

There are lots of ways to conduct a survey. The method used depends on what data you’re trying to obtain and what customer segment or segment of potential customers (or former customers) you’re trying to reach.

For example, if you own a bricks-and-mortar store, you can ask your customers to complete a quick comment or survey card while you package their purchases. Of course, they may not be as entirely honest as they could be since you’re standing in front of them and, assuming you read the card right after they walk away it’s not anonymous (you could have them drop it in a box for an extra level of anonymity).

You could also mail surveys to customers (with a self-addressed, stamped envelope or SASE), try phone surveys (you can just imagine how hard they are to conduct), or email surveys. All of these techniques have pros and cons and we can’t stress enough that the method you pick should be the best method to be used with the population you’re targeting. If your customers are in a certain age group who are not heavy internet users, an internet-based survey administered through email would be a mistake.

Focus groups can be a great source of information but you’ll need to consider how you recruit the participants, what characteristics (demographic and psychographic) should your participants possess or not possess, and what will you give them as an incentive to attend.

That’s right. You have to incent people to attend. Only the rarest of the rare will participate in a focus group just because it sounds like a fun thing to do. Even surveys need some level of incentive to increase participation. Including a SASE is a bare minimum. No one is going to provide the envelope and postage to complete a survey for your business.

We hope this introduction to research has motivated you to begin thinking about your decision process, the information you’re collecting, and how research could possibly benefit your organization.

In our next issue we’ll discuss how research impacts advertising and marketing decisions and how it gives you more bang for your buck.

About Abiah Designs
Abiah Designs is a brand strategy / full-service marketing firm whose unique, proprietary research process creates and revitalizes brands that resonate with their target markets, leads to increased brand awareness, develops strong customer loyalty and improved market share. Visit our website (www.abiahdesigns.com or blog www.brandreturn.com) to view our portfolio, read our case studies, and begin to imagine how we can help you.

To grow your brand call 609 653 2233.

www.abiahdesigns.com. Please share this article with others as long as you retain our website links and About Abiah Designs statement in its entirety.

Even though this is the last issue in our series on mindset, the topic itself is always there because every action we take is born from a thought we had first. What we think comes from how we think. For example, becoming successful starts with thinking you’re going to be successful, which was born from the idea that you can be successful. No one goes into business thinking they’re going to fail.

In parts 1 and 2, We convinced you you’ve got to have a website, and we’ve shared some things to consider before having one designed, so now it’s time to think about how you can generate revenue 24 / 7.

How Your Thoughts May Be Limiting Your Success (Part 2)

In part 2 of our 3 part series on mindset, our goal is to continue to challenge you to consider how your own thoughts and thinking patterns may be keeping you from experiencing the explosive growth you want in your business.

As owners and leaders of a growing business, you may begin to feel like a juggler in the circus who has to keep a bowling pin, a machete, and a melon in the air. Dropping any one of the items would be ugly and could even prove disastrous.

Are you the CDO (Chief Doings Officer) in your business or the CEO (Chief Executive Officer)? As leaders or owners in a business, it can be very easy for us to get caught up in the doing. Frequent comments we hear are: “It’s just easier for me to do it” and “No one else can do it.” While those statements may be true, believing them is holding you and your organization back from the potential success you could have.

As a business grows, it becomes critical for you to make the determination of what do you absolutely need to do (that no one else can do) and what do you need to hire other people to do for you. For example, you started a retail clothing store for a variety of reasons, including a flair for fashion and skills for selling. You didn’t open that store to become the chief bookkeeper and head custodian. Why are you still doing the accounts yourself (whether you use QuickBooks or not) and why are you cleaning the bathroom? If you weren’t doing those things, how else could you be spending your time?

The next time you’re about to perform a task that no CEO would perform, say to yourself the following: “Every time I say ‘yes’ to something, I say ‘no’ to something else. By saying ‘yes’ to performing this task, what am I saying ‘no’ to?”

In the book, Now Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton share evidence demonstrating how people naturally excel at things that use their innate skills and talents. Our creator gave us a skill set that’s unique to each one of us. By investing time and effort to do tasks that call for talents that are not natural strengths, you frustrate yourself, limit your effectiveness,
and add to your stress level.

This week, make it a point to really consider what part of
your business you truly love and what tasks you are best at. Investigate ways to delegate the rest. Training you provide to staff members is an investment in them and in your business. You get the payoff down the road with increased retention (development opportunities are typically among the top three reasons people stay with an employer), improved morale, lower stress, and improved business performance. If you
have no staff, consider getting an intern, or even a
virtual assistant.

In our next issue – the final one in our mindset series – we’ll discuss the importance of appearance and how it impacts your customers.

About Abiah Designs
Abiah Designs is a brand strategy / full-service marketing firm whose unique, proprietary research process creates and revitalizes brands that resonate with their target markets, leads to increased brand awareness, develops strong customer loyalty and improved market share. Visit our website (www.abiahdesigns.com or blog www.brandreturn.com) to view our portfolio, read our case studies, and begin to imagine how we can help you.

To grow your brand call 609 653 2233.

www.abiahdesigns.com. Please share this article with others as long as you retain our website links and About Abiah Designs statement in its entirety.

As business owners and professionals, we made the decision to open our business for many reasons. The first one is (or should have been) because we have a love of what we do. We want a worklife focused on what we love doing and what we’re most skilled at doing. The second reason is often that we want control over our lives: We don’t want someone telling us what we’re worth.We want to control our schedule. We want to control our life.

Can a Website Help Grow Your Brand? (Part 2)

In our last issue, we gave you a persuasive argument why you need a website to grow your brand. Today we’ll share some key things to consider before designing a site.

The very first step in creating a website is to identify the overall purpose of the site. This is important because it will impact the overall structure and mechanics of your site. For example, will the site be predominantly an information sharing vehicle or an e-commerce site? (E-Commerce is a fancy way to say “selling stuff on the internet.”). You may want to start out with an information site that will grow into an e-commerce site, but that should be thought about before the site’s created.

Once you’ve decided on the overall purpose for your site, you and the design team (yes, it really takes a team to build a site) work together to determine the top 1 or 2 goals of the site. This step is important because the goals drive the design as well as the copy that’s written.

One of the goals should be to capture visitors’ email addresses. This is important to build “your list” for future marketing purposes and is critical in permission-based or opt-in marketing.

Permission-based / opt-in marketing is really the professional and preferred way to market on the web because it keeps you from being perceived as a spammer. People who have given you permission allow you to send them periodic emails with the understanding that they can “unsubscribe” or “opt out” any time. This concept is so important that we’ll spend an entire newsletter or two just on the topic of permission-based marketing.

The second goal of the site should be to sell yourself. People do business with those they know, like, and trust. Chances are good that prospective customers won’t buy from someone the first time they visit a site. The individual or company needs to build up trust with the site visitor.

Once the purpose and goals of the site have been determined, the next step is to consider the site’s content and lay that out page by page. This process is referred to as creating a storyboard and it allows you and the design team to consider how information will flow on the site. While people don’t always move through a site logically, the information needs to flow in a logical manner so the site is easy to navigate through. With a website, simple is definitely better than complex.

Once this point is reached, the copywriter starts to write. Writing for the web is much different than writing for anything else. The primary reason is technology and multi-tasking have made everyone very impatient. Readers want the facts and not a lot of fluff. They also won’t waste time waiting for elaborate graphics to download, clicking what they feel are too many links, or searching for the information they want. If they can’t find it simply and easily they’ll give up and visit your competitors.

The overall tone of web copy is different from print copy too. While it’s important for the copy to convey the overall tone of your brand, it should still be written in a conversational style. This is done to help prospective customers know, like, and trust you.

In Part 3 of our website series you’ll get ideas for expanding your offerings to increase revenue and we’ll introduce a very important element in creating an effective website -- search engine optimization.

About Abiah Designs
Abiah Designs is a brand strategy / full-service marketing firm whose unique, proprietary research process creates and revitalizes brands that resonate with their target markets, leads to increased brand awareness, develops strong customer loyalty and improved market share. Visit our website (www.abiahdesigns.com or blog www.brandreturn.com) to view our portfolio, read our case studies, and begin to imagine how we can help you.

To grow your brand call 609 653 2233.

www.abiahdesigns.com. Please share this article with others as long as you retain our website links and About Abiah Designs statement in its entirety.

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