Marketing Archives - Pick a DirectionPick a Direction

The Quickest Way To Get Your First Hundred Email Subscribers

I began collecting emails for my book launch a year in advance. During casual conversation I would mention what I was working on. If someone seemed interested, I would offer to add their email address to my list. I added one or two at a time, nothing magical about the process, but the list grew steadily.

I had collected my first 100 emails by the time I made first contact with the list – roughly six months in advance. My website was live, the Facebook page was streaming with content, and launch day was in my sights. I shifted my focus to using social media channels instead of leveraging personal connections to gather emails. I directed people to my website and I showed off all the fancy promotional pieces I had been working on. The list’s growth was slower than sap running from a Maple Tree in winter.

As the months passed I could see the book launch coming into focus. Extensive research told me that my email list would be the most important part of launch day; the bigger the list, the more books I could sell because I had their undivided attention. But my list’s growth was still unimpressive.

Finally, after I tried everything in my bag of tricks, I went back to what got me started. I started scrolling through my phone and individually texting people to ask if they’d join my list. Results were… fantastic!

I kicked myself for not sticking with this. Not only were people quick to respond, over 90% of them said they’d join my list. It grew by 50% by the time I scrolled to “Z” in my phone. Then I took it a step farther and asked a few of my true fans to send out their own text messages. I knew they deeply cared about the project and/or me and they would be willing to help. I wrote up a simple text that read:

Hey ______, my friend Mike McCann is writing a book set to launch this fall & I think you’d enjoy it. He asked if I knew anyone who was generous enough to consider joining his email list for pre-launch updates. Of course, I thought of you. It’s a true story of hope set around his 2005 college football team. If you’d like to join, send me your email or check out http://believeeg21.com. If not no worries, just thought you might like the book. Take care!

I asked those influencers (four or five of them) to text some of their friends and family. The strategy continued to work. When the experiment was complete, the list had grown over 150%.

My conclusion, and my advice to you, is two-fold.

1) Start with your warm market before asking strangers to join your list. If you can’t get someone who knows you to sign up, your idea needs tweaking before it’s released to the masses.

2) The latest techniques and technology are not always the most effective tools. Sometimes low-tech options are the most effective. Do not rule them out until you have tried them.

Using A Sniper Rifle To Acquire Customers

“Focusing on customer acquisition over ‘awareness’ takes discipline… At a certain scale, awareness/brand building makes sense. But for the first year or two it’s a total waste of money.”

This quote succinctly said everything I’ve thought about early-stage marketing. Most marketers (and we’re all marketing something) don’t realize that it is, in fact, better to do nothing than to just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

Most projects have a marketing budget. Each time you fling something against the wall, you use part of your budget. And if you answer to someone, each time you fling an idea, your credibility goes with it. You can fling nine failures, but that tenth better have some sticking power.

In practice, this looks like:

Opting for specific marketing copy with explicit calls to action – instead of “awareness campaigns”
Tracking all of your efforts (there is technology for anything you’re marketing)
Not spending money on a campaign unless you can track success/failure
Having the discipline to label something a failure and not revisit it (before tweaking, at least)
Knowing who you’re targeting and using a sniper rifle instead of a shotgun

Yes, a shotgun is fun to carry. Anybody can pick it up, pull the trigger, and hit something if it’s within range. But you have to be close to use it, it’s results are unpredictable after a short distance, and a non-direct hit probably won’t deliver the desired results.

Contrast the shotgun with the sniper rifle. You know exactly what you’re shooting at; there’s only room for one target in your scope. Hit or miss, you know exactly what happened, there is no guess work about results. Finally, you can hit things much further away with a sniper rifle than you can a shotgun.

I am in the first year of marketing my book. Nearly all of my efforts have used campaign tracking URL’s that allow me to determine clear success or failure. Many of my efforts have not worked. The good news is that I know they haven’t worked. The bad news is that I am now tasked with continuing to fling trackable ideas before my budget runs out.

I am in a stage where I must stay disciplined and not waste resources on “awareness campaigns” that are untraceable. If your business/idea/product is still in its infancy, look to do the same. Spend resources wisely on campaigns you can track the success/failure of. For instance, my next approach will be using the proverbial sniper rifle to target a very small community of people (former high school/college football players) who I believe will enjoy my book. If my efforts work, results will be clear. If they don’t, I know exactly how much I spent. Find your “ideal customer” and go after them with a traceable, targeted effort.

If you’re not in this stage, you can still track your efforts, but odds are you’ll have more unknowns due to length of time in the market. Your efforts should be tracked, but they will inevitably be more diluted.

What are some of your most successful “sniper rifle” campaigns?

Giving to Gain

Click the Cover Page to Download

I went ten months without a job.

I spent most of that time lost and confused, not knowing which path to take. And when I finally chose one, I didn’t know if it was the “right” one.

All I could do was forge forward and trust that everything was going to work out. I put my story into a book. This is how I gave my way to two jobs without a resume.

It wasn’t easy, and I’m still working hard at it. But I’ve learned some valuable lessons by taking this path.

The book is filled with my experiences, stubbornness, mistakes, and successes as I attempt to do things my way. I’d love for you to read it. Just click the cover page and download the PDF.

You don’t even have to signup for my email list, but I’d love it if you did you can signup on the right sidebar 🙂 .

5 Ways to Improve Your Next Marketing Campaign

Marketing is a difficult concept to grasp for some people.

It is a very broad term that encompasses a lot of actions and decisions in an organization. It includes everything from your company attire to your mission statement. And of course it includes everything you’re already thinking about like the company Twitter account & the magazine ads you just finished purchasing.

But a specific marketing campaign is something that is planned out and executed in brief spurts. This may be a series of billboard ads or a TV spot, something that has a definitive start and finish date. It centers around a certain new idea or product you are promoting and the message has not been sent before.

Here is where many people get it wrong. These are 5 Ways to Improve Your Next Marketing Campaign to make sure it isn’t a waste of resources.

1.) Give Your Campaign Specificity

Most brands want to make ads like Nike. But 99.9% of brands don’t have the notoriety of Nike, they are like your local neighborhood dentist.

Nike can be mysterious & vague, it’s one of the most well known names on the planet. But the dentist down the street? They need to be more specific about what they do, where to find them, and why you should pick them over the other 2,000 dentists in your city.

An example of this came from a spinning studio ad I recently had the pleasure of critiquing. It was a ¼ sheet of paper and at the top is the logo for “Revolution” and at the bottom (cutoff) is “www.ride-rev.com.” Does the ad below tell you anything important?

I knew what the ad was for, but any Joe Schmo that picks up that piece of paper is going to throw it away out of confusion. There’s a big difference in creating intrigue versus just leaving out important pieces of information.

Be intentional about sharing your business’s specifics, otherwise people cannot equate who you are with what you do.

2.) Give Your Campaign a Call to Action

To this day, the most effective ads I’ve ever seen used are small, corrugated yard-signs we used while promoting new furniture stores. The signs were hand-written and plugged into the ground near stop signs.

They read 3 simple lines: New Queen Pillowtop // Mattress Set // $150 // 843 – 696- 5212

5 Ways to Improve Your Next Marketing Campaign

A similar dining set sign

There was no confusion, there was no sex appeal, there wasn’t a brand name, there wasn’t anything clever about it. There was just a simple call to action, a phone number.

This is obviously an extreme example. Many people want to brand their businesses with more than a phone number.

But think about how you can cut the fat in your next ad and make it more direct. Sure it won’t be as sexy or funny, but that’s not what marketing campaigns are about.

Marketing campaigns are about getting people to buy your product or service. If a marketer selling an idea or their medium of advertising uses the term “raising awareness” you should turn & run.

That is a fancy way of saying, “We’re going to put this in front of people, but don’t expect to get your money back on it because we don’t have a call to action that can be recorded.”

If you design an ad with a good call to action (sign up here, click this, call us, etc.) you will be able to measure your results & be able to answer this simple question: “Did this ad pay for itself or not?”

3.) Direct Your Campaign to the Correct People

I frequently go to WordPress meetups and I see people who are trying to market their web design services at these gatherings.

The other attendees are not their customers!

Their potential customers are the people who own small & medium sized businesses, not other people who sell SEO services & build websites for a living.

Ask yourself, “Who are my customers?”

If they are boat people, find ways to get their attention at marinas. If they are golfers, find ways to get their attention at the links and driving ranges. If they are bargain hunters, find ways to utilize Craigslist.

A major marketing mistake is saying everyone is a potential customer. Everyone is not your customer. Not even Wal-Mart can boast that.

Be realistic about who you are targeting and go find where they spend their time.

Don’t waste time trying to convert people who may be interested in your product/service. Focus your efforts on the people you know for a fact are already interested in your industry.

Find your audience.

4.) Tailor Your Message to Your Audience

Once you find your audience, it’s time to relate to them.

I use sports analogies because I know many of my readers have sports backgrounds. You have to speak the language of the locals to be accepted. If you can’t relate, they’ll never understand your message.

Looking again to the Revolution ad above, what message are they promoting by having sweaty models in their ad? Are you supposed to be young to come to these classes? Do you want to fill your classes with people who are skinny or do you want people who want to lose weight? If you’re appealing to the fitness community, what sort of workout is this?

Tailor your message to your audience to be more effective.

If you’re trying to reach small business owners, make sure to show how you can improve their business. If you’re trying to get people to sign up as a volunteer for your organization, make sure to show how your cause affects them. And if you’re trying to get people to come to your spinning class, tell them it’s a full-body spinning workout.

5.) Track Your Results

It blows my mind how many business owners don’t know where their sales comes from.

Did newspaper ads or social media produce more sales last month? Did the $2,000 spent on that radio spot pay for itself or not? How many sales came from the direct mailing campaign used?

These are important questions to ask ones self if you’re spending money on a marketing campaign. If you don’t know what is producing results, you could be making some serious mistakes.

If your billboard campaigns aren’t effective, stop paying for them. If you are getting great results from Adwords, dump more into the account & work on improving the conversion process.

The process of tracking your results starts before the campaign even begins. Know what ROI you need in order to make your money back. Do you need to sell 20 widgets or 25 widgets to pay for this? And if you do sell that many, will you run the ad again?

Knowing this before signing a contract will help make your next campaign a clear success or failure. And if you don’t know if it was a win or a loss, you might end up spending more money than you can afford.

When you have a clear goal in mind, you can tailor your ad with the specifics it needs to bring more customers your way.

With these 5 elements combined, your next marketing campaign is sure to have better results than previous attempts. Have a plan and be intentional about your next marketing campaign

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What are some examples of good & bad promotions you’ve seen? Share them below in the comments or chat with me on Twitter (@mikemccann3)!

Have a great rest of the week!

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The Ultimate Form of Content Marketing

What is content marketing?

To some its a buzz-word that has been floating around for some time now, right up there with “scaling” & “passive income.” It sounds more complicated than it really is, like a broad concept without a tangible definition.

To make it simpler, break it into two words and elaborate.

First word: content

Your content is information you produce (NOT what you sell) that is useful to your current & potential customers.

For a real estate company, this might be info on how to maximize your property value prior to selling. For a company like SOUTH, it could be how to Search Engine Optimize your website after we’ve made it for you. And for furniture stores, it can tips about interior decorating.

Content can be curated, rehashed, or paid for. In the sense of content marketing as a strategy, it’s typically free. Other times, people pay for you content, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Second word: marketing

Most people don’t actually know what marketing is.

Most people think marketing is buying a billboard, handing out t-shirts, or having flyers made to put up in Starbucks. Marketing your business is all of those things… but so much more.

Marketing is any message that your business conveys. This includes social platforms, this includes how sales people dress, everything down to the copy on your website. It’s ALL marketing.

One idea many of the sales people I used to train didn’t grasp was that their actions with current customers would affect potential customers they haven’t even met yet. This could come in the form of Google reviews, social media promotions, and general word of mouth around town.

For the ones that lasted a long time in a profitable store like the main one I managed in North Charleston, they could see the positive effects over the long-term. Customers would walk in & recognize me or ask for someone by name that hadn’t worked there for 3 years.

They made such an impression that the person remembered their furniture salesman’s name 3 years later! Keep in mind, furniture salespeople are about as trusted as used car salespeople. Talk about impact!

On the flip side, it was pretty easy to point out when someone mistreated a customer. They quickly decided Google should know about it. Marketing your business is any message that is conveyed, intentionally or not.

Nuts & Bolts of this idea

Your content is information (other than a product or service) that you give to the world. And your marketing includes any message you send.

Are you starting to bridge the gap here?

Content marketing is how you use your company’s Facebook page to entertain people with funny memes. Content marketing is what you put in your emails to customers. Content marketing is the helpful pamphlets you leave out around your store that educates customers.

Which means you need to be very selective about what messages you convey. The more helpful you are to your customers, the more effective your strategy.

Being able to relate to your customers is difficult. Most of us will be tempted to just put out dry white papers on a subject in your industry or just post an occasional message to our company Twitter account.

That’s why the best content marketers have fans, not just customers.

They entertain their customers
They educate their customers
They relate to their customers using their “language”
They find out what social platforms their customers use & publish on it
They engage with their customers (not just shout at them)
And when it’s time for customer service, they listen to their customers and respond accordingly, knowing their every move is now public.

Content Marketing as a Business Strategy

Does your website speak to your clients or is it just a template thrown together? Does the professionalism of your sales people convey the mission of your business? And if you’re promoting content, is it how you want to be seen if/when the news catches onto it?

The stores I used to manage got some press this week. The Charleston City Paper wasn’t thrilled with their ads, but the company seems to think they are working well. I don’t agree with the ads, but this is the message they wanted to convey and they did it intentionally to be edgy.

Since I know who works there, I can honestly say that the message conveyed in these ads matches the experience you’ll receive if you come into a store. Whether you like the ads or not, they have figured out the message(s) they want to convey through their ads.

When it comes to content marketing, it is the same idea. What message(s) do you want to convey? And how will you get them out? Atlantic Bedding chose to be edgy & use Facebook.

Check out this piece from last year on how to identify which form of social media best for your business if you’re stuck on which medium(s) to use.

Marketing your content can be done many ways. Through an email campaign, via a blog, through your sales people’s actions, or through the use of social media. And if you’re intentional about it, through all those mediums.

The Ultimate Form of Content Marketing

Since this topic has been swirling in my head for a while, I’ve had this idea of the the ultimate form of content marketing being how we live our lives.

For business owners, people will pick up on what you do and how you carry yourself. They’ll decide if they want to follow you or run away.

As a Christian man, people will look to see how I live my life to determine if what I say and do is worth listening to or in your case, reading.

In the case of my Mom, a personal trainer, she’s never had to advertise for clients. She trains upwards of 60 people each week. Not because she selflessly promotes herself on social media, or because she’s purchased billboards promoting her business. But because how she lives her life is the ultimate form of content marketing.

People are drawn to her because she is constantly helpful to people, whether it’s in the form of a kind word, encouragement, or just the fact that they see her working hard every day and she’s still in great shape. Her content sells her service.

She knows who she is and what message she wants to convey. She does it every day and she probably doesn’t even realize it.

Does your business know what it’s core message is? Once you’ve got that figured out, make it permeate throughout your organization and intentionally craft every message you can.

Be helpful, be generous, and be transparent with your audience and you’ll reap the rewards of content marketing.

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Do you utilize content marketing? How so & what benefits have you seen from it?

I’d love to hear from you below in the comments section or on Twitter (@mikemccann3)!

Have a great week!

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How to Network like a Pro

Are networking events actually worth attending?

I’ve always been curious of what people get from these gatherings. Some people swear by them and others despise them.

I had an epiphany last week during an event that may seem very obvious. There are certain ‘Connector’ personality types that benefit from these gatherings more than most of us.

The epiphany wasn’t that these events were beneficial to some people and not others. It was that I needed to find some Connectors if I wanted to make my attendance pay off.

Who are the Connectors?

They are the professional networkers.

They are the movers & shakers at these events. They can put me in connection with potential clients and they can introduce me to people that share a common interest with me. They know who I should talk to even if they don’t know me.

They have their own permanent badges with their full name, title, and company that they proudly display. They know almost everyone at the events and unlike most of us, they look very relaxed in these situations.

These are all more than likely some type of Connector.

In The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell describes Connectors as people that know LOTS of people, they cultivate acquaintances (not necessarily deep friendships), because they occupy multiple “worlds” they know a variety of individuals, and they seem to collect, “people the same way others collect stamps.”

Tom Rath & the StrengthsFinder 2.0 series explains that the Connectedness trait can be shown as an ability to see yourself as, “a bridge builder for people of different cultures.”

They intentionally seek out new relationships, even if they’re not incredibly deep ones. They are always meeting new people and they are always in front of others trying to connect the dots.

The Connectors are the people who can connect you to 90% of the people in the room through one handshake, instead of having to shake everyone’s hand individually. The best professional networkers seem to have these connecting qualities.

How are Champions important for my business?

We don’t all have time to attend 3 luncheons each week. And most business owners are reading this shaking their heads saying, “In no way am I a connector, I actually hate most people.”

I get that, I used to be the same way when I worked in retail. It’s hard to go to events like this if you don’t see value in it.

That’s why you should find someone else to do it for you. Someone that is much better at connecting than you are. It’s like sending in a spy with all sorts of information to leak it out into the community.

Can you identify a customer that is well connected in your community? Or maybe an entry level employee that seems to know an abnormal amount of people? What about a fellow family or church member that has extra time and seems to always make new friends?

If any of these people can network more easily than you and they seem to be better connected, consider asking them to go in your place to the next networking event you get an invite to.

If word of mouth is important to your business, you need champions. The best champions are professional networkers.

They may not walk around telling everyone who you are right away with a bull horn. But when the time is right and the conversation has been primed, they will plug you like you deserve.

A 3rd party promotion can be way more beneficial than one coming from a company representative, especially an owner. A 3rd party promotion comes across off as more sincere since the promoter is not technically getting paid to do the promoting.

And when they promote, people listen.

Connecting Topics

Imagine if that current employee you sent to a networking event wore a neon green t-shirt with your logo on the front right next to their pre-made badge. Pretty cool, eh?

That actually sounds ridiculous, I know. I’m not suggesting you buy neon green t-shirts and hand them out to advocates of your brand. What I am suggesting is that you offer those Connectors something to talk about for you.

When you send a Connector into an event as your company’s Champion, they need to have material to talk about. New initiatives that are happening, upcoming projects, or positive things that you’re doing in the community.

This may sound risky to you, or maybe even sound like a waste of time. But if you have high dollar customers, as my new company SOUTH does, the investment made in one person over lunch is easily paid off when they send one customer your way.

If you have lower priced commodity products, like mass produced furniture, everyone is always on the lookout for where to get a good deal. The more people you touch, the better your business will grow.

Identify Connectors in and around your business, recruit them to attend some of these events for you, and give them topics to talk about. Speaking of tactics…

Ideas for Encouraging your Champions

Here are some ways to get individuals to talk about your brand for you.

Make them VIP
- One time I was ‘awarded’ a Wild Wings VIP card since I frequented the establishment weekly. It was usually to entertain my sales guys or customers and I paid 99% of the time with personal or company funds. They gave me a VIP card that offered me discounts for spending X dollars and I loved it. I told everyone I knew, and it made me come back again and again just to show my card off. I helped spread their business through word of mouth.
Bribe them
- Yes, that’s a strong word. But it’s a simple concept, give them something for free. It doesn’t have to be huge, it just has to be sincere and transparent. Give them something such as a free upgrade, or a free sample of your product. You want them to have a reason to talk about you in a good light.
Ask for the ‘sale’
- If you don’t share your intentions, these connectors will never know why they are being treated like royalty. You have to explain that you’re working on a new word of mouth program, that you are looking to show value to the “people of influence” in the community. You’ve pinpointed them as a person of influence and that you would like them to be an advocate of your brand just for being them.
Don’t ask for specifics
- Inquiring how many cards they give out during a typical networking event is way off the mark. Just tell them that you think they are influential and that you would like to make in impression on them since they hold high standing in the community. Some people will be downright flattered and that alone will make them want to talk about you.
Don’t waste your time on the wrong people
- Celebrities don’t necessarily equal connectors. You want to find the people who make real connections. If you’ve been to a few of these events, you can easily spot them. They are the ones that you see at multiple venues. They’re the ones who seem to know half the people in the room, and not necessarily because they are speaking.
Cultivate the relationship
- Take them out for coffee, invite them over for dinner, or ask them go to the beach with you. It doesn’t always have to be about your business, you just need to get them to know you & your brand.

Once you’ve built relationships with the right people, they will do the networking for you. They’ll talk about you at work, on vacations, and at these networking events.

The more of these Connectors you have promoting you, the more business can be sent your way.

If you have enough people out there championing your brand, you don’t have to try and attend every networking event in town. You already have brand advocates out there promoting for you. Which means you can focus on your business and go to events sparingly.

As Gladwell explains in The Tipping Point, word of mouth epidemics are spread only after a Connector gets a hold of an idea. Identify the Connectors and spread your own word of mouth epidemic. That’s how to network like a pro.

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How else can we effectively spread out business through word of mouth?

I look forward to hearing from you below or on Twitter (@mikemccann3), have a great rest of the week!

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The 4 Evolutionary Stages of Marketing

I’m sure you’ve seen the posts on social media with these “year in review” sites/apps out there. They compile your past 12 months worth of pictures and put them into an 80’s style montage to remind people about why you are awesome. There was “flipgram” for Instagram right around the end of the year and now there’s one for Facebook.

These programs are genius! The creators have done a great job of building the marketing INTO their product. Most people think about their business in compartments. Accounting | Product Development | Marketing | Sales | Customer Service | etc. Nothing overlaps and nothing intertwines. Today we’ll talk about how that way of thinking is outdated and inefficient with the 4 evolutionary stages of marketing.

Stage 1

The first stage of this progression started when someone would make a product or come up with a service. It was just them and maybe an apprentice, say making shoes. At first, think way back, you had to tell people what you were doing.

This was the original word of mouth marketing. You went around telling people that you were a shoemaker, and if they knew you, they would come buy shoes from you. If they didn’t, but someone said you had great shoes, they might try you out and you would have the opportunity to earn their trust.

Stage 2

Then there came sales people. Hired guns that would travel and push your shoes for you. Everyone had to be sales people in the early days, but someone figured out that they didn’t have to do all the selling (an introvert) and someone else figured out that they could capitalize on the other guy’s product (an extrovert) for a fee.

There was always that word of mouth that would get you business, but it was too slow for some. Traveling sales people that went from store to store (B2B) or door to door (B2C) were a much faster avenue to higher revenues than waiting for those word of mouth promotions to spread.

I believe this is where the entrepreneurs began to get lazy. They didn’t have to earn as much business through word of mouth because the sales people were pushing their products faster than before. They didn’t have to make as high of a quality product or service, their main avenue for gaining business shifted from word of mouth to sales people.

Stage 3

Then came mass marketing and mass media. Sales people could reach more people one-on-one than the entrepreneur going off of word of mouth, adding customers faster and at higher numbers since that was their specialty. But mass marketing created the multiplication effect, addition was for losers.

And here, the products and services fell off even more. The larger the advertising program, the lower the quality needed to be. After all, there are only certain amounts of funds for an entire company, right?

Now there were still companies that employed sales people, and of course if the product was good word of mouth still helped spread the product. But companies and entrepreneurs now focused on their marketing, and less on their products.

http://pickadirection.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/your-marketing-sucks.jpg

Stage 4

Here we’ve come full circle and the companies that I listed in the beginning have figured out how to leverage the numbers of mass (& social) media, but built in the word of mouth marketing INTO their product. It’s like a super product!

When we use these products, the result is a marketing message (aka “word of mouth”) that is sent across our social media profiles, a built in ad. What happens next? Well I watched the videos, I don’t know about you…

Another example of this is exactly how social media platforms were built. When something like MySpace came out, you couldn’t use it unless you had a profile. So you get a profile, then you interact with your friends and then you tell someone else about it. The marketing was built right into the product, genius!

Incorporation

I agree that every successful company has some sort of well thought out marketing strategy incorporated in their business model. But the best ones don’t compartmentalize all the facets of their business, they let their marketing bleed through the company. It comes out of every inch of what they do.

It starts with a great product or service, if your product or service sucks, your marketing is only going to get you so far. You’ll get a first wave of customers, but no repeats and no referrals.

If you’re like me, you don’t care to have the next Facebook, you just want to have a successful business (if you are an entrepreneur). So it starts when you look at your product, how can you incorporate your marketing into your product?

I talked about my mom earlier this week, and her marketing is built right into her product: she works 14 hour days in a gym with 60+ clients a week. Do you think the other people in the gym don’t notice that??? If you come at 7:00 AM she’s there, if you come at 7:00 PM she’s there, and she always has clients so she’s obviously doing something right.

When I was in the furniture business there was a referral component built right into the sale, asking for referrals before the person even left the building. The motto was “8 out of 10 people we see are return customers or referrals” and that wasn’t too far fetched.

How do you incorporate marketing into your business?

If you don’t, where CAN you incorporate it?

Don’t be compartmentalized, break open the boxes of your business and let your marketing bleed through into everything you do!

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Leave me a comment below or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on marketing.

Have a great day!

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One Trick to Build Brand Loyalty and Gain More Sales

Consumers today are bombarded with constant messages from advertisers in every direction. They have messages shoved in their faces while driving from the radio and on billboards, while surfing the internet, and even while using the bathroom in many restaurants. It’s non-stop. So how are we, as small businesses, supposed to cut through the clouds of smoke and mirrors to differentiate ourselves from others and build brand loyalty?

Memorable is Still Bad

As I spoke about in November, being just memorable is bad. We want our customers to have an unforgettable experience that they must tell everyone about. When people leave our store, our website, or our offices we want them to walk away feeling like they have been taken care of.

Today’s consumer is accustomed to a few things from businesses.

being barraged with marketing messages every minute of every hour (Thanks David Ogilvy)
being treated like cattle (Thanks airline industry)
getting what they want, when they want it, if they whine loud enough… even when they’re wrong (Thanks Wal-Mart)

I see two solutions to these scenarios. We can attempt to break our customers of this and retrain them. OR we can take the Steve Martin approach and “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” I choose the latter for this example.

Brand Loyalty

They must leave the interaction with our company feeling like we have become a partner, a companion, or even a friend. Any one of the above acquaintances would have a hard time cancelling an order, writing a bad review online, or even complaining about minor blemishes in a product.

When we can achieve this level of brand loyalty, the flywheel has turned for us. People do not want to offend a friend, they do not want to burn a bridge with a partner, most people generally want to be liked (there are ALWAYS exceptions). People don’t want to let a companion down by buying from another brand. They have a sense of responsibility driving them to come to us, bypassing our competitors.

When people become loyal to our brand, they will forgo others even if their prices are lower. Yes it’s shocking to hear, but it’s true. They will drive further because they know they will be taken care of and they will get a genuine transaction. And most importantly, they will become spokespeople for our brand. This is the biggest determining factor of how your brand should be measured: How many referrals does your brand get? If you get none, you need drastic changes. If you get many, find out why and put those reasons at the core of your business.

However, people will not become loyal to our brand until we treat them like they are special to us. OK Mike, I get it, we need to treat them right, we need to blow them away, we need to make them fall in love with us… get to the instructions!

Personalized Touch

We can’t expect people to be loyal to us until we’re loyal to them. All relationships, including consumer relationships, are two-way streets. If neither party makes a leap of faith to build that relationship, it never grows. The one that leaps first will always set themselves up to be let down. When dating, its commonly referenced as ‘keeping our walls up’ so we don’t get hurt. As businesses, we cannot operate with our walls up. We have to be the first to make that leap of faith and put ourselves out there.

Using hand-written thank you notes is the best way to build relationships and begin to put our businesses out there. A hand-written thank you note tells the recipient that we not only took the time to get a card, but to put our email aside, drop our phones, and write them a personalized message. There’s no way this could be duplicated, there’s no way it could be spammed, it is a personalized note addressed to one person (or business in a B2B world) expressing gratitude.

Thank you notes can be sent after a customer purchased, checking up on their satisfaction. It can come after a sales call, a perfect follow-up for those multi-encounter deals. They can come after a job interview, just thanking someone for their time. There are countless other times that a hand-written thank you note can strengthen a relationship. As I talked about last week, we all yearn for connections, this is a perfect way to do it.

Side Effects

The most important part about sending hand-written thank you notes is the accountability it creates. When we know that we’ll follow up with a customer after a sales call, we pay extra attention to what they’re saying. If not, how would we personalize the message? Taking the time to write thank you notes forces us to pay attention to our customers and treat them as humans instead of cattle. It shows them that we care about them and we’ll do what it takes to make their situation correct if something has gone wrong. And finally, it makes us stick out from the crowd.

When we are so good that we can’t be ignored, we set ourselves up for success by giving our customers something to talk about. When we make that interaction so personal with a hand-written thank you note we are building brand loyalty and simultaneously encouraging those people to be speak on our behalf. And if we’re doing a great job creating an unforgettable experience, we know they’ll have nothing but awesome to talk about!

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Do you write thank you notes by hand? If not, where can you implement this practice to grow your business? Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this follow-up technique!

P.S. 8 Days till Christmas!

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