Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

4 Ways To Sell To Customers Before They Start Looking For You

Thu May 24, 2012

This is a special Small Business Week guest post from Rohit Bhargava.

Marketing is a pretty simple thing to describe. It encompasses all the things that you do to try and reach people who are seeking the types of products or services that you can provide. The only problem in traditional marketing is that you’re competing with everyone else who is trying to reach someone about the same thing. Want to guess how many lawn care businesses have amazing specials as the spring season starts?

charliecurve via Flickr

Instead of joining that same race, what if you could position your business to sell to your potential customers before they even realize they need you? Sounds great in theory – but there is a secret here and it has everything to do with YOU and your ability to build personal relationships with potential customers before they think you need them. This is the idea at the heart of my new book called Likeonomics – which focuses on why people do business with small business owners and companies that they like, and how real word of mouth, powerful referrals and unshakeable customer loyalty really happens. Here are a few tips on how to build a more likeable business, adapted from ideas the book:

1. Create An Online Micro Genius Bar – One of the greatest things about the Internet is that you can see all kinds of questions that people are asking about the things that you may be an expert in. Anything from plumbing questions to how to properly do taxes – your expertise is desperately needed. No one has the time to spend all day answering questions for free, but consider what might happen if you just spent 20 minutes a week looking at some of these questions online in forums or on Twitter, or on Facebook. By answering a few, and linking back to your website, you’re building goodwill, demonstrating your expertise, and putting your business in the position where as soon as someone needs help in your area … you’re their go to resource.

2. Forecast For The Obvious – There are certain undeniable moments in purchase behaviour that happen every year. Moms take their kids to buy back to school supplies in August. Guys desperately look for flowers around Valentine’s Day. One of the cleverest promotions I saw was someone from a local tree removal company handing out brochures near the outdoor market where we went one year to buy our Christmas tree. Not only did they volunteer to take away your tree for free after the holidays – but while they visited your property, they would look at your trees and tell you if any were in danger of falling and may need to be removed. If we do end up needing any tree removal, guess who I’ll call first?

3. Promote To Complimentary Customers – Customers of one product often become customers of another over time. People who just booked an island vacation, for example – may very soon realize that they need new luggage, or fitness classes to fit into that bikini. This may seem like an obvious connection, but those two events may be separated by six months. How could you build a relationship with that person well in advance so when they do get closer to their vacation, you’re already in their mind?

4. Introduce Your Business Through Social – The reason that so many businesses are so excited about the potential of Facebook advertiser is not really because of the super niche targeting so you can specific someone’s age, region, interests, etc. Instead, perhaps the coolest thing about Facebook is that often when you see an ad for something that a friend likes, it will tell you that your friend also likes that product or service. Built into the ad is a social endorsement from a friend. This can be a powerful motivator for someone to call your business when they do need to buy something because they see an opinion from a friend that they know and trust.

Rohit Bhargava is the author of the new book Likeonomics, a guide for small businesses (and anyone else!) to become more likeable and why that matters for business success. For an exclusive excerpt and special offer only for Duct Tape Marketing readers, visit www.likeonomics.com/ducttapemarketing

Posted by : John Jantsch on May 24, 2012 | 8:48 am

Category : Social Media

Tags : LIkeonomics, Rohit Bhargava

5 Ways to Use Online Tools to Drive Offline Sales

posted by: John Jantsch

Thu May 24, 2012

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Streamed to Microsoft Store in Santa Ana, CA

Streamed to the Social Media Club of Bahrain

To help celebrate National Small Business Week in the United States I hosted a Livestream webcast where I shared some tips for local businesses. The event was attended by over a thousand folks live and many more that gathered in 12 satellite in person events – from Santa Ana, CA to New Berlin CT in the US and in places around the world like Bahrain.

One of the most interesting things about the event is that showcased one of the ways you can use technology to create engaging events and reach people wherever they are. In a way it was the ultimate, online with offline kind of event that was the topic of the presentation.

Upward to 90% of our prospects are going online to search for products and services they intend to acquire offline locally. Smart marketers must adapt to this behavior by employing tools that make it easier for local shoppers to engage once they find you online in their town.

Enjoy this replay of the event.

Slides from the presentation

Small Business Week 2012 – John Jantsch

View more presentations from ducttape.

In 5 Ways to Use Online Tools to Drive More Sales we covered how to:

Use Online Calls to Action: Leverage calls to action on your individual website to get more of your customers to act offline.
Embrace O2O Advertising: Online advertising can easily be used to drive people to your offline business.
Employ Networked Networking: The addition of online tools and networks have made traditional networking more effective.
Form Local Social Groups: Create and facilitate local interest groups using online tools to dive awareness and sales.
Get Online and On the Go: Take advantage of mobile use to drive on the go folks to your business.

Posted by : John Jantsch on May 24, 2012 | 7:30 am

Categories : Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy

Tags : O2O, Small Business Week

Why Owning a Small Business Is Equal Parts Gratifying and Terrifying

posted by: John Jantsch

Wed May 23, 2012

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Today marks the middle of National Small Business Week in America and I find it an appropriate time to reflect on my twenty-five years as a small business owner.

Small Business Is a Path

I started my business in 1987 and I distinctly remember my friends remarking at the time that I should keep looking, maybe a good job would open up. So much has changed in the past few decades. Owning a small business is now the dream of most and surest path to living the life you were meant to live.

Owning a small business allows me to practice my passion and choose how and why and when I work.

And, small business can lead you to forks that will suck the life out of you if you blink for even an instance, if you wander into shades of moral gray, if you allow yourself to work with people you don’t respect. Head and eyes up at all times on this path.

Small Business Is a Teacher

I started my business with only one asset. I knew that I could convince people that I could help. With confidence and no plan I jumped into the laboratory of small business and made a life choice to learn and never stop.

I learned lessons from odd places like books on architecture and math. I made discoveries with the help of Drucker, Carnegie, Peters, Godin and Gerber.

Small business allowed me to feed my superpower – curiosity.

And, small business taught me that confidence is only enough to sustain. In order to grow you must seek new knowledge about your industry and about yourself everyday. My greatest fear is not the volume of new information that I must consume, it’s the specter of irrelevance.

Small Business Is a Craft

At times the whir of everyday business and noise of urgent demands can mask the fact that we get to do what we love. Because, you see, doing what you love is not a job title, it’s a choice that anyone can make. But, we small business owners can, if we are brave enough, chuck the choices that others have in mind for us and seek out and do only that which feeds our unique ability and passion.

We get to practice and get better at using the things that make us stronger, feed our families and create value in and for others.

And, we can let fear and doubt consume us. There is no plan B, there is only what our heart tells us is true and if we don’t observe that truth there are so many ways to turn our craft into the job we never signed up for.

Small Business Is a Purpose

I think that the purpose of a business is to provide purpose for the owner, the employees and the larger community of people that drawn to buy from and support the business.

It doesn’t always work this way, but it’s the ultimate opportunity. Owning a business allows you to seek the higher purpose that business can serve and build that purpose into the strategy, culture and brand.

And, the thing about purpose is that it must find you. It’s terribly hard to determine the higher purpose your business is meant to serve in a strategy planning session. It must grow like a tree from seed to sapling to a place of shade.

The most important thing is that you must be anticipating it so that you recognize it when it shows up on your doorstep.

Small Business Is a Provider

Look all around you and you’ll find small business owners creating wealth and income far, far beyond what is achievable through employment of any kind. This is the promise of true innovation, of inspiring design, of persistence, of commitment.

Small business is in some ways the easiest way to make a living and provide the financial stability to achieve your personal goals. In fact, money will only become an issue if you don’t understand that there is plenty of it, if you try to constrict the flow of it, if you don’t appreciate that it’s meant to share.

And, the greater reality is that many, many small businesses, while providing a salary and job, are worthless beyond that. Few things are sadder to me than the thought that after doing something so bold and daring for so long that there would be no wealth accumulated along the way.

Building an asset as well as a business must be the primary objective if small business is to realize its full potential.

My intent today is to both inspire and shake you – if I’ve done even a little of either, I’ve succeeded.

And, I also need to thank everyone that has joined me, taught me and contributed to my awesome adventure so far.

I hope you’ll join me today for a live webcast to celebrate Small Business Week. I’ll be presenting 5 Ways to Use Online Tools to Drive More Offline Sales and giving away over $2,000 worth of software, tickets, gift cards and books. There’s still time to register here

Posted by : John Jantsch on May 23, 2012 | 7:04 am

Categories : Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy

Tag : Small Business Week 2012

How to Create a Bold, Daring and Utterly Irresistible Pricing Model

posted by: John Jantsch

Tue May 22, 2012

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There’s a traditional, somewhat logical, pattern to how business has always been done. The seller describes a product or service, promise benefits, maybe even paints a rosy picture of the prospective buyer’s life with said product or service, and asks the buyer to pay a set price in order to acquire it.

While this how it has always been done, there are a couple of inherent problems with this model, particularly when it comes to acquiring a fairly new product or service with little history or buyer success to point to as proof of promised results.

Problem #1

The biggest problem is that the buyer is left to shoulder the entire burden of risk. What if they don’t get the promised results? What if it isn’t what they need? What if, heaven forbid, it’s not as good as the commercial suggested?

Now, some of this doubt can be dismissed with guarantees, but still, the buyer must wade through the process.

Problem #2

Because we’ve all experienced problem #1 at some point, we’re reluctant to believe the claims and value propositions of something that really may be the answer to our challenges. In some cases, we forgo products and services that we need because we just aren’t sure the price risk outweighs the value or results promised.

I believe that one of the most effective ways to address this is to look at using a fee for value or results based pricing model, particularly in the case of new services.

Imagine for a moment the competitive selling advantage of a message like this: You’re in total control – you decide how much to pay at the end of the session – based on how much value you think you’ve received.

Or this: These are the results you’ll receive, but you don’t owe us a dime until you realize them fully.

I know that kind of pricing model is open for abuse. Some people just don’t value anything the way they should, so it would require careful consideration, but I really like a couple of things that it offers.

Benefit #1

It changes the relationship between buyer and seller. This kind of offer is quite likely very attractive to the buyer because the seller is now effectively shouldering a great deal of the risk. This means the seller can and should be very picky about whom they allow to enter into such an agreement and what they require from that buyer in terms of working together. This can’t be a come on to attract people that want a deal or it will never work. This has to be a serious offer meant to remove the barrier of doubt and that comes with it’s own price – accountability. If done correctly, this method could allow you to attract more ideal clients rather than price shoppers.

Benefit #2

This is the one that might be the real reason a seller would resist this model. If you make this kind of offer and your pay day really does depend on delivering the goods as opposed to writing a great sales letter, you better bring your A game.

Imagine if your created a service in a laboratory where you started to build how it would work, how you would engage the client, what support materials you needed and what price you needed to charge in order to make a profit. Now, fill this lab with ideal clients for this service and ask them to give you continuous, real-time feedback as to the results and value they are receiving as you continue to improve the offering until they are willing to pay what you needed.

In many ways, this could be the ultimate method for developing the perfect engagement for a new service.

Once you established the ultimate value through people’s realization of results, you could benchmark and prove this value in ways that would allow you to move the model to a fee based one, but my guess is the service would be far better than the one you dreamed up in the quarterly strategy meeting.

While shouldering the risk you would get better at what you do and create services that would surpass anything your competitors would dare to offer. In fact, you would have to do this, or you would go out of business.

There are pitfalls in this model, no doubt, but if you can profitably overcome and manage them, you’ll have a tool without competition.

This kind of bold confidence in what you have to offer, if positioned correctly, sends a very strong message to the potential market about your belief in your ability to deliver results.

Taking my own advice

Like a great deal of the advice I dispense on this blog, I’m taking it myself.

I am conducting a full day live and in person workshop in Kansas City in June called – How to Build the Marketing System That Is Perfect for Your Business and I am going to employ this the model of exchanging fee for value.

Attendees won’t be asked to pay anything until after the workshop is over and they get to determine how much. This won’t be a light, stripped down version – this is me, testing what my best stuff is worth, so you can bet I’ll be prepared and you can bet I’ll ask a lot of the attendees.

If you’re interested in finding out more or applying to attend (there are two dates available, but the groups will be very small) – have a look here

Posted by : John Jantsch on May 22, 2012 | 7:58 am

Categories : Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Vision

Tags : kansas city marketing workshop, pricing strategy, results based pricing, value based pricing

How and Why I Use LinkedIn Groups to Build My Business

posted by: John Jantsch

Mon May 21, 2012

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As I’ve written here in the past, I think there are solid business reasons for participating in most social networks these days, but if your business sells primarily to other businesses, you must get more active on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is not the biggest or most talked about network these day, but when it comes to connecting with people who mean business and generating leads, few can compare to the power of LinkedIn. A study conducted by Hubspot earlier this year suggested that LinkedIn is “277 Percent More Effective for Lead Generation than Facebook and Twitter.”

While those numbers were taken from their user base, my experience suggests that the professional decision maker audience that prefers LinkedIn is much more prepared to participate in the kind of traditional authentic networking that leads to lasting business relationships than any other network.

The power tool on LinkedIn is Groups. For me this is the closest thing to the proven offline networking groups that exists online today. Groups can give you access to people and discussions related to an industry, topic or even geographic region. Working LinkedIn Groups effectively is a solid way to build a network and generate leads.

Back up to that last sentence and dwell on the word effectively. Effective networking is about providing value, sharing, helping and informing – it’s not about spamming, promoting and selling. Participate in the latter before you’ve earned any credibility and your efforts won’t gain any steam.

Join groups

Currently LinkedIn allows basic members to join up to 50 Groups. Find industry, topic and location specific groups that contain concentrations of people that you would like to network with and join them. Spend time looking at the level of participation and conversations. If all you find is updates with members promoting their businesses move on as this group will be of little benefit.

LinkedIn has a “groups you may like” function that suggests groups based on your current profile and connections.

Ironically, the best groups for lead generation are those that don’t tolerate blatant self-promotion.

Connect with members

Once you’ve joined a group, you have a natural common connection with each group member and LinkedIn gives you the ability to connect based on the mutual group membership. It’s a little thing, but it’s a step beyond simply saying you want to connect.

Reach out and make some connections and very simple introductions as to why you joined the group.

Look for active members and add relevant replies to a number of posts. This starts the process of some one on one conversation and, since your replies are publicly available to all group members, you can use this technique to demonstrate that you have a lot to offer.

Create groups

Once you get the hang of Groups you should consider creating your own topic group. This is not a company group, it’s one that is set up to discuss a topic that your prospects, customers, partners, and even competitors might find worthwhile.

A word of warning – if you want your group to grow and give you the ability to benefit by virtue of your status as the group’s manager, you have to commit the time to curate, moderate, stimulate and facilitate group participation.

You must add starter content that gets people talking. You must participate in conversations. You must promote. And above all you must not tolerate spam and self-promotion. Tell people this is you intent up front, give them one warning and kick offenders out. If you don’t set this tone from the very beginning you’ll group members won’t want to stick around.

To get the most from your group manager role create a landing page on your own website that promotes the idea behind the group and encourages visitors to join. This will deepen your connection to the group and help people better understand what the group is all about.

Lastly, use, but don’t abuse, the announcements function. As a group manager you can send direct announcements to all group members via email. This is a great way to continue to keep your group and its activity front and center.

Five notes

Once you start to get more active on LinkedIn make it a habit to reach out to five connections each week with the sole purpose of saying hi, thank you, I see you got a promotion, wonder what you’ve been working on, etc.

I’ve done this in the offline world with handwritten notes for years and the impact is dramatic and long lasting.

I can’t tell you how often this simple, personal touch has led to business – even though that was not the intent in any way.

It’s amazing how relationships bloom when you genuinely care about people.

Posted by : John Jantsch on May 21, 2012 | 7:55 am

Categories : Referral Marketing, Social Media

Tag : LinkedIn Groups

What If Your Customers Could Talk to Your CRM

posted by: John Jantsch

Fri May 18, 2012

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I spend a lot of time talking to and about the stuff that we do to make it work now. So sometimes it’s a real treat to get to talk to someone that’s so far out ahead of most of us in their thinking that you pretty much just listen with your mouth open when they talk. (I would put my conversation with Kevin Kelly in this class)

Recently I had a chance to visit for a bit with one of those folks – Doc Searls. Doc is senior editor for Linux Journal, alumnus fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and co-author of the seminal work – The Cluetrain Manifesto with Rick Levine, Christopher Locke and David Weinberger. (Look for our conversation in a coming episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.)

In 2000, Searls and company painted the road map for what was coming only to have it high jacked to some degree by marketers that misinterpreted the manifesto as a foreshadowing of social media. When Cluetrain told the world that markets are conversations, they meant, I fear, that we as marketers should have an actual conversation and not simply listen and react in ways that tailored our marketing conversations to the research we are now able to obtain via social sharing. (Click on this search for “markets are conversations” and you’ll get an even grimmer sense of this.)

In Searls’ latest work, The Intention Economy, he returns to the notion of conversations but puts the onus and control firmly in the hands of the consumer and not the organization. A great deal of the work that Searls was engaged in at Berkman surrounding the notion of something that’s become known as Vendor Relationship Management or VRM.

The idea of VRM is drawn from the traditional customer relationship language, but shifts the management aspect to the customer instead of the organization. In a VRM environment, the customer controls a great deal of the data and experience and is the determining party in how much or how little is tailored to their wants.

One doesn’t have too look to far out into future space to imagine a technology that enables customer to interact with CRM platforms in a way that allows them to decide what to share, what to update and what to request.

Can you imagine how powerful this type of true conversation could be?

The real hurdle is data trust, or lack of, but I believe we are sitting on a privacy bubble.

So, at what point do we rebel against being used as part of Facebook’s product? At what point do we start to demand the ability to control our own health records? At what point do we tell CVS to shove the little stupid rewards card and start to spend only with those that accept markets are conversations and that relationships are not data.

Enable true intentions in your customer relationships and open your organization to a world of commerce that does not currently exist.

Posted by : John Jantsch on May 18, 2012 | 6:10 am

Categories : Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy

Tags : Cluetrain, CRM, Doc Searls, The Intention Economy, VRM

Who Doesn’t Need Great Free Stuff?

posted by: John Jantsch

Thu May 17, 2012

0 Comments

Next week is National Small Business Week in the United States and to help celebrate all things small business I’m holding a live webcast where, among other things, I’m going to give a number of lucky participants some awesome business tools like:

A copy of Premise Landing Page Software from Copyblogger
A copy of the Ultimate Marketing System from Duct Tape Marketing
A year access to Live Plan from Palo Alto Software
A year of Spring Metrics Smart Conversions
A year of Nimble CRM
A Pro Membership to Marketing Profs
Tickets to Social Media Explore Events
A bundle of books, iStockphoto credits and more

But, in order to have a chance to win one of these great prizes, you have to attend our small business educational webcast event being held Small Business Week Webcast with John Jantsch Wednesday, May 23rd at 11am CT (http://worldtimebuddy.com to check time zones)

I’m going into a television studio and broadcasting a live streaming video presentation on the very important topic – 5 Ways to Use Online Tools to Drive Offline Sales.

We all know that prospects today do their research online, even if they fully intend to buy a product or service offline. In this session I’ll share some great ways to use the new breed of online tools to drive your prospects into your offline stores, meetings and presentations including:

Online calls to action
O2O Advertising
Networked networking
Local social groups
Online and on the go

Join me for what will prove to be a fun and informative celebration of small business – heck, I might even get my guitar out and sing a bit. (No promises on that one.)

To sign up and reserve your seat for the show – Register Here (While you can’t win any of the prizes unless you attend, we will record the event and provide an archive for all that register.)

I addition, some of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultants are holding local networking and watch events and providing additional education – find a local event near you.

Do you know other small business owners that might need this important information? Why not share this post with all your small business friends?

And a special thanks to our sponsors for support of this event!

Posted by : John Jantsch on May 17, 2012 | 9:32 am

Categories : Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy

Tag : Small Business Week 2012

5 Reasons Why Landing Pages Are a Must

posted by: John Jantsch

Wed May 16, 2012

0 Comments

Online marketers have used the term “landing page” for many years to describe a sales tactic focused on getting people to take one, specific action. Today, landing pages have simply become a required element in the marketing toolbox for every imaginable business, including local brick and mortar types.

Example of a personalized lead capture landing page

A landing page is just the page people land on because an ad or email directed them to that specific page as opposed to your site’s homepage.

Effective landing pages make it very clear what a visitor is going to get from a page and how to get it. That’s it plain and simple. There are many great articles on how to create better landing pages (including this one from Unbounce) but today I want to focus on why you need to create and use landing pages as a core online tool

Local content

One of the best ways to get your site to rank higher when people search locally and on mobile devices is to have lots of local content. Creating landing pages that feature very localized, down to the neighborhood perhaps, content is a great way to start building the local content and link necessary to have your pages move up in the search index for local search.

Social content

Sending your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook connections to landing pages that are personalized to each network is a great way to deepen the connection. By running Twitter and Facebook feeds on these pages and acknowledging the connection with those that come from those networks you will also find a much higher degree of engagement in those networks.

Smart content

By creating landing pages that address the specific market segments, product segments or key content segments for your business you can begin to better funnel people to the specific types of content they desire. Using a tool like Survey Funnel in conjunction with your landing pages could allow a visitor to tell you what they are looking for and be directed to specific content based on their choices.

Lead capture

Landing pages are your lead capture workhorse. If you have a great eBook or free workshop to promote you may want to create signup forms for most of your web pages, but your signups will soar when you create a page that details, sells and demonstrates the benefits of acquiring your free report. A landing page with video, audio, images, descriptions and very intuitive call to action is a must for lead capture campaigns.

Advertising conversion

Any form of advertising will be much more effective if it is targeted to a page that contains nothing but content that supports the message in your ads. The more relevant the page to the ad, the more effective. Smart marketers constantly experiment with ad and landing page combinations, including creating keyword optimized pages for specific groups of PPC ads.

Get Premise

There are many resources geared towards helping you create landing pages, but my favorite at the moment is Copyblogger’s Premise. I run my entire website on WordPress and Premise is a WordPress landing page plugin that gives me total flexibility in the creation of landing pages. The tool includes predesigned configurations for sales pages and opt-in pages and is very easy to configure and style. A tool like Premise is a must if you plan to take today’s advice to heart.

Posted by : John Jantsch on May 16, 2012 | 7:25 am

Categories : Duct Tape Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing

Tag : Premise

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