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Dec 7 2010
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7 Little Words That Sum Up the Entire Marketing Machine

Marketing is essentially getting someone that has a need to know, like and trust you. Of course then you must turn that know, like, and trust into try, buy, repeat and refer.

That my friends is the entire practice of marketing summed up in seven little words that make up what I call The Marketing Hourglass.TM

The idea behind the hourglass is that you look at each of the seven stages and intentionally plan products, services, processes and touches that logically move prospects along to the point where they become customers and then receive such a remarkable customer experience they become repeat customers and referral advocates. I talk a great deal about building your hourglass in my book The Referral Engine.

If you do nothing but spend the time to fill in the blanks in each of the stages in the infographic below you will be miles ahead in your thinking about a simple, yet powerful approach to your marketing. Feel free to print, share and use the graphic to help build your marketing hourglass

Click on the image to enlarge and get a bird’s eye view of your entire marketing machine.

Image Credit:CreditLoan.com

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Plans, Marketing Strategy Tagged With:
Nov 4 2010
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Installing a Selling System

weakest link

Image Credit: _-=Dreemreeper=-_ via Flickr

When asked to consult with a business, and challenged to make the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time, I always go to work on lead conversion first.

Lack of any asemblance of a systematic approach to selling is the biggest weakness for most small businesses. The focus of marketing is almost always on generating more leads. While leads are certainly important, the obsession with generating them consumes a significant amount of time and money.

Installing a sales system, one that everyone involved in selling in the organization operates, is the fastest way to improve overall marketing results. (I’m assuming you’ve also narrowly defined your ideal client, created a significant way to differentiate your business, and are consistently building trust through educational content.)

The end result with every business I’ve ever worked with was that we dramatically reduced the number of leads they were chasing (decreased expense) while also dramatically increasing the number leads they were converting to customers (increased revenue.) I’ve seen lead conversion rates go from 3% to over 50% when all of the parts of a total marketing system work together.

If you’re moving prospects logically through what I call the Marketing HourglassTM you will see that by the time they get serious about a buying decision they’ve already sold themselves. This approach almost makes selling a non issue and delivers stunningly high conversion rates.

Below are the essential ingredients needed to operate your lead conversion system

  • Discovery – You must have a planned response when a lead asks for more information. I know this sounds obvious, but few businesses do more than react. In order to move prospects you must have a call to action, education plan, and filter that helps qualify and direct leads to the next step. This is a significant step and one that can help you stop chasing the wrong leads while also giving your an opportunity to create a unique experience. Interrupt the norm for your industry here and you’ll help further cement how you’re different.
  • Presentation – Once a prospect determines they need to know more about your specific offerings, either by way of a demo or sales call, it’s important that you have a set way to present your organization. This is a point where many sales folks go out and try to answer the questions that prospects have. The problem with this approach is most prospects don’t know what questions they should have; so it’s really up to you to start adding value in the relationship by presenting what you know is useful, while also discovering their unique challenges. This is part scripted, part art, but it should be practiced consistently across the organization.
  • Nurturing – Depending upon the buying habits of your ideal customer or sales cycle for your particular industry, you will need a systematic approach for keeping leads that are starting an information seeking process warm as they move towards a buying decision. This is a place where technology can certainly help you make automated contacts via email or snail mail. Creating planned education events such as online seminars and peer-to-peer panel discussions is also another very effective way to nurture leads and continue to educate.
  • Transaction – For many in selling, the game ends when the customer says yes. Your lead conversion system must be created in a way that delivers the same experience once a prospect becomes a customer as was delivered throughout the courting period. The best way to do this is through a planned orientation process where you continue the educational approach by teaching the customer how to get the most from what they’ve agreed to buy. This can be through simple training video or a more elaborate new customer process, but this important step leads to a smooth transition from prospect to customer and often sets the tone for additional purchases and referrals.
  • Review - Your selling system won’t be complete until you create a process that allows you to measure and communicate the results your customers are experiencing. One of the best ways to do this is through some form of a planned results review process. By setting the expectation for this process up front you send a very strong signal that results matter, but you also get the opportunity to address issues that didn’t go as expected and collect client success stories and testimonials from your happiest clients.
Filed Under: Lead Generation, Marketing Plans, Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing Tagged With:
Oct 26 2010
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5 Ways to Let Prospects Sample Your Brilliance

sample

Image credit: avlxyz via Flickr

One of my favorite things to do is visit my local Whole Foods on a Saturday morning. On top of getting a kick out of the mix of people-watching, there’s also a pretty good chance I’m going to be able to put an entire meal together from all the suppliers and farmers on-site passing out samples of their products.

See, Whole Foods and just about every grocer I’ve ever visited, understands that every 4th or 5th person that tries Jim Bob’s Lavender Kissed Cantucci di Prato is going to buy several packages. In most cases, they are counting on these being people who have never done so before. The hope, of course, is that this taste will lead to a sale, which will lead to getting you hooked for life.

The key here is to lower the barrier to entry; by either making the offering free, or creating a lower risk way to try a version of the offering. Any business, including service businesses, can tap into the power of sampling with just a little bit of creativity.

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Filed Under: Lead Generation, Marketing Plans, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: ,
Oct 4 2010
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What Kind of Business Should I Start?

The title to this post is a question I receive often. So many people want to start their own business these days but, are at a loss as to what to do.

It’s a tough question really and one that needs to be approached as many things in life – from a strategic standpoint first.

See a lot of folks just want to jump right into tactics – what’s hot, what can I make money doing, what are my skills, what’s my background – but that’s only part of the equation.

The first thing you must answer is this – What do I want out of life?

I know, I know, it’s only the biggest, scariest, hardest question on the planet and that’s why so many people just skip it.

Here’s how that applies to your business though.

There are two kinds of businesses, generally, from a strategic standpoint – the business of passion and purpose and the business of profit and practicality.

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Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Plans, Marketing Strategy, Vision Tagged With: , ,
Jul 26 2010
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A Convenient Truth

EasyLast week I wrote a post on a subject I’ve been fascinated with of late called the Evolution of Commitment. The general idea of the post was to suggest that with all of this free information and free versions of products available it’s become more challenging to get someone to commit to your offering. I asked readers to tell me what gets them to pull out their wallet and commit and several themes arose.

One word that came up time and time again was convenience. It does seem that people will spend their last dime to get something that makes life easier, more convenient, and that’s something marketers must factor into every aspect of their business. It’s not always the best product that wins. Often it’s a good product that is easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to acquire that wins.

We often get stuck running our business in a ways that are most convenient for us and not so much for the very people we need to attract – customers. Some of the greatest innovations available today reside in making something – a product, service or entire industry – more convenient.

Convenient business

Take a look at all of the ways a prospect could find you and contact you. Are your contact details on every page of your web site? Do you have outposts in places like Facebook? Are your local search engine profiles enhanced with useful information? Do you offer multiple forms of contact – email, web form, click to call, IM? Can prospects get additional information without having to pick up the phone?

Convenient products and services

Do you have versions of your products and services tailored to every size and budget? Do you have trial offerings? Do you offer automated training to help customers get the most from your offerings? Do you give access to your products and services in ways that prospects want them – smart phone, online, offline, iPad, iPod?

Convenient delivery

No matter what your product or service you can always find new ways to give customers the ability to acquire it on their own terms. This is an area where growing use of the mobile device is just begging for innovation. I’ve been offering my podcast free of charge for years. Recently, I created a iPhone app for the podcast that’s available for $2.99. While the same information is available for free, hundreds choose to download and pay for the app for the convenience of getting the content delivered the way they want it.

Convenient message

This is a tricky one. If it’s hard to understand what you do that’s unique, what you stand for, why I must have what you offer, there’s going to be convenience friction. One of the best innovations in this area lies in paring your message down to the simplest terms possible.

Consider this About Us message from software service provider 37 Signals as a fine example of a convenient message – “We believe most software is too complex. Too many features, too many promises. Instead, we build simpler web-based software with elegant interfaces and thoughtful features you’ll actually use.”

While I think most would consider this an obvious topic, it’s not always an easy one to put into practice. What a customer thinks is convenience may not be what we think it is. In fact, it’s often hard for customers to tell us what it is. You’ve got to experiment and constantly push everyone in your organization to consider innovation through convenience.

Filed Under: Marketing Plans, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: ,
Jul 16 2010
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Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

Brian Halligan, co-author of Inbound Marketing and David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing and PR, have joined forces and blended their love of marketing and the Grateful Dead to extract lessons from the band’s thirty some year run to write – Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. You can order copies now from Amazon for early August shipping.

The book project itself is, like the Dead, a bit unorthodox in that the authors kept the entire writing process a secret and are just announcing the book to the public today although it ships in a couple weeks. The book was written and produced in a matter a months (a year is often considered a quick turnaround for a book.)

Brian and David did an online seminar on April Fool’s Day – you can see the slides from Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead here

I met up with David at a conference in Washington DC and captured the video announcement below.

David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan take us on a trip with the Grateful Dead to learn how the iconic band can teach us all how to market and have more fun.

FYI: The song playing in the background of this video is Sugar Magnolia. The song was first released on the 1970 album American Beauty, and made its live debut on June 7, 1970 at the Fillmore West in San Francisco

Filed Under: Marketing Plans, Referral Marketing, Web Marketing Tagged With: , ,
Jul 7 2010
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Mobile Payments As Marketing Strategy

mocapayThe mobile device continues to evolve and one trend that’s finally picking up steam in the US is the act of making and accepting payments via mobile payment systems. Mobile payments are already very common in other parts of the world where less infrastructure friction (read: entrenched industries that don’t want to change the game) allowed for faster adoption.

The question marketers of all kinds need to start asking is if their customers are mobile, how mobile does the business need to be? I get push back every time I mention text messaging and SMS, but like it or not you can’t sit this out, you’ve got to start getting serious about every aspect of mobile marketing, including this one.

While mobile payments may seem like just another way to accept money, much like checks and credit cards, I think you’ll start to see integration that other forms of payment don’t offer. It’s tough to integrate with someone’s checking account, but on a mobile device loaded with a database, GPS and compass, well, you’ve got the makings of a location aware loyalty program with the ability to offer loyalty specials and club and membership perks through an electronic wallet kind of approach.

The first adoption will come with more convenience. Recently, I was selling books at an event attended by eBay sellers and was able to offer “bump” payment with the PayPal iPhone app to those that wished to pay that way. No credit card reader, no paper slips, instant transfer, and more secure than written forms. Of course the person sending the money must have the same technology in order to play.

I’ve signed up for and ordered my Square account and reader – a tool that plugs into the iPhone, iPad or Android headphone port that reads credits cards and allows merchants to accept mobile payments without the need for a credit card terminal or technology from the sending party.

Companies like Colorado based Mocapay have begun to offer creative approaches to mobile payments as a part of the overall marketing puzzle. Using the tool you can push out text messages to encourage purchase, personalize follow-up messages and track and reward frequent purchases with rewards programs.

Filed Under: Marketing Plans, Social Media, Web Marketing Tagged With: , , ,
May 3 2010
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Make Marketing a Data-Driven Habit

marketing timeMarketing, perhaps the most important function in a business, often gets pushed to the end of the to do list by whatever seemingly urgent needs that crop up during the day. To give marketing the attention it deserves you must make the practice a habit.

The New York Times Magazine published an intriguing piece by Wired contributing editor Gary Wolf titled The Data-Driven Life.

The article introduces individuals who track and measure every aspect of their life, sometimes using the data collected to break habits and achieve goals.

Take for example Robin Barooah — a 38-year-old self-employed software designer from England. A few months ago, Barooah began to wean himself from coffee. His method was precise. He made a large cup of coffee and removed 20 milliliters weekly. This went on for more than four months, until barely a sip remained in the cup. He drank it and called himself cured. Unlike his previous attempts to quit, this time there were no headaches, no extreme cravings. (You may also find Borooah’s own article, The Quantified Self, a fascinating read)

The story continues to introduce others who take the idea of logging their life activities to a freakish level, but I couldn’t help wonder if business owners should take a data-driven, although perhaps a bit more moderate than some of the folks in the Times article, approach to how they spend their time?

What if for the next two weeks you logged how you spent your time at work. You could track it on a spreadsheet or simply make up some paper forms from a calendar program that would allow you to jot what you did in 15-30 minute increments. If you take the two week challenge I think you’ll be blown away by how much time you waste doing things that are not very fruitful, including spending little or no time focused on marketing.

If fact, if you want to make this time measurement more meaningful add dollar value data. At the end of each day go back over your log and assign a value to the work you did. One of the easiest ways to do this is think about what you would need to pay someone else to do the work. So, making a sales call might be high dollar work, while getting and filling the copier toner might fall somewhere else on the scale.

Now, to make this all come together you’ve also got to peg your “Make What I Need Number.” This is essentially your goal income divided by 2080 (that’s 40/hr week for 52 weeks). This computation creates an hourly need to make number and just might help you better understand what work you should be focused on doing yourself and what work you need to find someone else to do. For example, if your goal income is $150,000, you hourly need number is around $75/hr. Double your goal income and your hourly number becomes $150/hr.

In my experience marketing work is some of the highest long-term work a business owner can do, even if that’s the work of managing others to do the tactical aspects such as design and implementation. When you get a baseline on how your actually spending your time you just might gain the insight and leverage to start focusing on and measuring time spent in the marketing department. You might begin the practice of scheduling daily marketing appointments with yourself and weekly marketing meeting with your entire team. This is how you achieve your goal income and this is how you build marketing momentum.

Image credit: Robbert van der Steeg

Filed Under: Marketing Plans, Vision Tagged With: ,