Marketing For Power Packed Business Growth

Business cards, we dispense them like confetti without any real thought other than, maybe, “that’s someone else I managed to offload a card on”.

Or maybe you don’t scatter them, perhaps you hoard them, or worse never use them.

Business cards are the one advertising medium where you can usually explain your advertising in person. And you can make it oriented to that person too.

That must be the ultimate in marketing.

I’m going to make this a two part post because I’m analysing how business cards are used, certainly within the SME community.

In my initial analysis I’ve found the following results:

1. No customer benefits indicated ........................................... 95%
2. No explanation of the business provided............................ 75%
3. The back of the card isn’t used ............................................ 51%
4. The persons role is not given ............................................... 39%
5. Flimsy board used for cards ................................................. 25%
6. No name on the card ............................................................. 3%

There are other results but I’m doing a much larger analysis for those figures.

But you can see immediately what these results mean to people you give your card to.

If they hold onto them they’ll find the following:

• In almost every card (95%) they’ll not be able to tell other people about the benefits of your business
• In 75% of cards they wont have a clue, unless they've great memories, what your business does. And think about it why would they rack their brains?
• a gobsmacking 3% apparently have such a high turnover that they don't give their staff their own business cards (which can cost about £50/$100).
• 25% are so close to the breadline they can't even afford reasonable quality cards

I will return to this subject later and with some advice as to what you can do once I've compiled further results...

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Search engine optimisation...

Commonly know as SEO, it’s a hot buzz word isn't it?

Yet the two most important things to do on a web site are:

• Get an initial sale with subsequent further sales
  
• Get contact details so you can follow-up to get the inital sale

That's it isn't it? Pure and simple.

Search engine optimisation is important to get people to visit your site. But if they don't find anything they want on it they'll leave quicker than a cat on a hot tin roof.

Good Keyword Content Is Crucial

I use a great keyword checking program (Good Keywords) when I’m writing copy.

I wrote the web copy for a client called The Ultimate Sauna Company I checked the keyword "infrared" for one of my clients and got the following searches per month on Overture UK:

• infrared saunas 1269
  
• far infrared saunas 142
  
• far infrared therapy 51
  
• far infrared treatment 48

If you look at Overture US you get:

• infrared sauna 6689
  
• infrared saunas 3685
  
• far infrared sauna 1750
  
• far infrared saunas 1202
  
• infrared therapy 569

If you optimise for the word "infrared" you'll pick up thousands of people visiting to check out infrared saunas. Most of whom wont buy. Now if you look at Infrared therapy or Infrared treatment they've a much lower search count. But they're likely to be people who are looking into specifically whether infrared will help their health problem.

The result? You need to decide (by testing) whether the top word converts to the most sales or one of the lesser keywords does.

A word of warning thought. Content is just one aspect of search engine optimisation. So don't just rely on the keywords for your search engine optimisation strategy.

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Businesses that rely on direct mail will be kicking themselves if they've sent letters to Turkey or Brazil and West Africa timed to arrive on the 29th March 2006.

I'd like to think that it's unlikely, but ...

Because the chances are that people are going to discuss the eclipse and direct mail is going to come a poor second.

So chances of a profitable response to that mailing is very poor.

We're not fortune tellers so we can't expect to predict everything that affects a mailing. Things like Hurricane Katrina or other natural disasters or wars.

But lets face it we've known about this eclipse for months.

Just remember the next eclipse is in 2008.

We're also pretty good at remebering our own country's public holidays and national events. So we should plan our mailing round those dates.

Unless you mail overseas and then you need to take note of both your own national holidays and events and the target country's too.

Remember that events outside your target market can also affect response.

How many people are talking about the eclipse in London or Manchester? Even though we're apparently unaffected by it.

You need to remember that more mundane reasons can also affect or restrict your response. With that in mind I've compiled the Top 7 Secrets For Making A Mailing More Successful:

1. Natural disasters that are forecast to hit the area you're mailing, a few days delay will ensure it's not ignored
2. National events, such as total eclipses! The Olympics. State visits.
3. National holidays, don't assume that everyone across the world has the same national holidays you do
4. Test the best days of the week to see which ones you get the best response in
5. Find out which days of the week are the weekend in the country you're sending mail to, and no its not always Saturday and Sunday
6. Keep an eye on the media for strikes in your target market - this can be a double-edged sword
7. Local events that disrupt normal business in your target, such as conventions or other events

This list marks the start of what times/dates to avoid. As always your business may well be different and have other dates that are important.

On the flipside your particular mailing may benefit from one of these dates. So as always be aware of what's going on around you.

Business growth and business training go hand in hand.

If you want growth you need to implement best practise processes to ensure that your people uniformly adopt the best ways of:

• Selling


• Delivering products/services


• Building customer relationships


• Dealing with suppliers


• Invoicing


• customer complaints

The list could go on and on.

Interestingly your list of vital areas for your business may well be different to mine.

That doesn’t really matter the point is you choose an area and refine and refine it.

Again as I’ve mentioned in a previous post you need to use the Deming Plan-Do-Act-Study process to continually improve a single process.

Until it’s the best it can be.

The exact same principle applies to creating copy, either for brochures, business cards or web sites.

Until a prospect looks at your brochure, web site or business card you can have no feedback on how effective the materials are at generating sales, leads or whatever you’ve set as it’s “Most Required Response.

You must also expect that your guess of exactly what hot buttons your customers have may be wrong, or at least slightly wide of the mark.

That means that you need to polish and change and test and test copy until you’re happy that it’s pulling profits in for you.

Copywriting is a skill that requires feedback in the form of sales, leads, expressions of interest, or their lack. So that the copy can be reviewed and changed according to the real feedback from people who want your product or service.

Don’t be fooled by friends, people in your office, other copywriters or even yourself into thinking you’re the target market you’re writing for. So don’t base the letter on what you want.

Ultimately the final arbiter in how well your copywriting works in a particular instance is whether it achieves what you wanted it to achieve.

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Business people are keen to tell you they have a business plan, that there is method in their madness and that that they try to approach their business systematically.

Such must always have been the case as Edgar Allan Poe in “The Business Man” says:

“I AM a business man. I am a methodical man. Method is the thing, after all. But there are no people I more heartily despise than your eccentric fools who prate about method without understanding it; attending strictly to its letter, and violating its spirit. These fellows are always doing the most out-of-the-way things in what they call an orderly manner. Now here, I conceive, is a positive paradox. True method appertains to the ordinary and the obvious alone, and cannot be applied to the outre. What definite idea can a body attach to such expressions as "methodical Jack o' Dandy," or "a systematical Will o' the Wisp"?“

The reason I bring it to your attention is that having been in business now for some years I’ve had the opportunity to go into a large number of companies ranging from global blue chips to one man bands.

There are always ways of doing things in these companies. Purely because people need a consistent approach to common issues.

And the interesting thing is that in almost all cases the processes have grown and grown without any thought as to whether they are the best for the company and its clients.

If the process is not aimed at improving the experience for the client and the company profits it’s going to fall short of that target.

The result is a less than optimised system.

Resulting in lower profits.

What to do about it?

I recommend that you look at all your processes. Get them documented.

I don’t mean document them the way ISO9001 et al specify - usually from the top down. I mean document (in English) who does what, with what and to whom and what are the inputs and outputs.

Then look at all the processes and start to review them in this way:

1. Does this company or its clients benefit from this process? If neither benefit stop doing it.
   
2. Can we improve how this process works to benefit the client?
   
3. Can we improve how this process works to benefit us whilst still delivering client value?
   
4. Is the current process due to a lack of training?

Then once you’ve amended the processes review them again to make sure they are all still appropriate. Because there’s a risk that you’ll change one process that affects another but not change the affected process. The result a new process to correct comes into existence without your knowledge!

This echoes Dr W. Edwards Deming focus on continuous improvement.

That way your company improves all the time, step by step. If you improve by 1% per week think how much improvement you’ll make in 12 months?

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Blogs can offer a big advantage to brands reckons Matthew Yeomans writing in the New Media Age magazine.

As Matthew says blogging in 2005 was basically conducted by geeks - ok yes I hold my hands up I enjoy high-tech stuff too. Although to be fair I would say blogging is not that desperately high-tech.

And now witness the change in companies attitudes.

Matthew notes “Coca-Cola, Starwood Hotels, Honda, Nokia, Benetton, Ducati, Guinness and HSBC have all caught blogging fever.”

As I’ve been saying all along these blogs are there as a marketing tool to build rapport and a relationship with your clients and prospects.

And as I’vè said before they can be a double-edged sword.

Look at motorbike Ducati whose CEO Federico Minoli is blogging. Already he’s being asked about new models. What if he answers off the top of his head and upsets months of careful marketing planning?

The point Matthew makes it that blogs appeal because they seem “real”. What’s more bloggers seem able to see straight through fictional blogs. In much the same way I suspect that they do if someone generates a creative and made-up testimonial.

Putting up a company blog is not for you if you like living in an ivory tower. Because you’d better believe you’re going to get feedback.

In my opinion feedback is manna from heaven. Obviously you weight it and cross-check to make sure your competitors aren’t feeding you a line.

Then once you’re happy it’s real feedback use it to improve your offering, create a new one or maybe withdraw a product from market.

So as always don’t rely on just blogging for marketing - it’s only one tool. And remember it’s a very powerful one - for the good of your company or to bring it down.

You decide.

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Or is it ...

R. Philip Hanes certainly believes you can get anyone to do anything.

I've written a review of his book "How To Get Anyone To Do Anything" for blogcritics and have also put a copy of it on my own blog Magic Marketing.

Personally I found the Philip Hanes' writing warm, humorous and very helpful. See what you think.

If you want to know more about the book check more Amazon reviews for it at How To Get Anyone To Do Anything.

"The goal of the agencies and agency companies is to offer search marketing services internally rather than requiring clients to go to independent specialist agencies",

writes Stuart Elliott in an article in the New York Times.

Search engine marketing covers Google Adwords and other pay per click programmes and web site page optimisation.

eMarketer reports and forecasts some interesting data for search engine marketing:

• Ad revenue of $5.1 billion was generated in 2005
  
  
• Expect almost $6.5 billion for 2006


• Forecast more than $10 billion by 2009.
  

The great thing about search engine marketing is that it is totally based around direct response by someone clicking on an ad or web site link. You see the number of clicks that have come through to your sales pitch and then you can check how many sales you made from unique visitors.

The New York Times article notes that Stuart Bogaty, leader of the North American operations of new company (NeoSearch@Ogilvy) says, "Search is so tied to R.O.I.,". Purely because advertisers are paying only when a text ad is clicked on.

The article also notes some concern about "click fraud" where another company, usually on behalf of a competitor continually clicks on links to text ads without providing sales. Because there is a cost each time your ad is clicked on you'll pay more for the sales you're getting than you should.

There is no doubt that as we move more and more onto the web for all our needs search engine positioning for web sites, blogs, video blogs, podcasts and ads is going to become more and more important.

That means anyone who is ignoring this important marketing tool is risking being left out in the cold for getting new leads, or for losing current customers as they browse for better value, or simply out of interest.

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“Ads that stay the same pull the same profits!”

You need to continually change an element of your ads to test whether it improves its profit power.

The original ad becomes the control and is used to compare the profit power of any revisions you make when creating a new ad.

Which Elements
Must You Test?

How about these:

• Headlines
  
• Offers
  
• Guarantees
  
• Ad size
  
• Ad placement

• With graphic/without graphic
  
• Order form
  
• First sentence
  
• Call to action

Test Each Important Element
One At A Time

Change one element at a time. Check the revised ad against the original (your control) to see whether your profit power has improved.

Then once you find a changed advert that gets more profit than your original it becomes the control. And the testing cycle resumes with the better pulling ad now used as the control.

Obviously if you only intend advertising a few times that’s more difficult. So pay more attention to creating a great ad as quickly as possible by “borrowing” from the advertising greats.

All marketeers have a “swipe” file that they use for inspiration. The swipe file is a folder with real ads in. Mine has ads that caught my eye, direct mail I liked and long running advertisements.

When you create ads it’s important that you’re not swayed to change content by people who don’t understand how well tested for profit power so much direct response advertising is.

A great article by Roy H Williams (The Wizard of Ads) titled Stronger Ads = More Complaints shows what happens when other people change an ad to make it less offensive, to read better or to look more professional.

The bottom line is that you can achieve all the changes people ask and get an advert like everyone else.

How does that make you stand out from the herd? Because you don’t do you?

Why would people do business with you at the price you ask when they can start a price negotiation with you against one of your competitors.

So swim against the competition.

Employ a good copywriter. Listen to what they say and how they write, it might just make you more profit power.

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How can marketing be wrong?

The fact that "marketing is wrong" is proved almost every day in lots of companies world-wide.

Wow!

Is that a fact?

Well actually, no it's not.

You've probably heard other business owners telling you exactly that. Maybe they say, "the only marketing I need is referrals". Which in itself is too short-sighted. Why leave the money from other approaches on the table?

Often the problem is when a business hasn't worked out a marketing strategy how can they know what marketing tactics they should be applying and what sort of costs they should expect?
The simple answer is that they don't. The problem is they don't know how much to really spend on a particular marketing tactic.

Marketing relies on fine-tuning of copy, the approach, the offer, your headline and other aspects. If you haven't budgeted for it as part of your strategy to test your marketing you'll almost inevitably put up with a poorer response than you should.

That means your tactic could lose you money. So you stop doing it. You've poured your money down a marketing black hole and "proved" that "marketing is wrong", it doesn't work for you/your industry/ this country.

But if you realise that it's a test and you try a different headline, amend the offer or try a slightly different approach you could suddenly have a fantastic response. And now you know the secret of marketing - TESTING.

Do you check how well your
brochure is doing
as your salesperson?

If you don’t how do you know it’s worth the money you’re paying for it?

I’ve written an article titled “Is Your Brochure Killing Your Sales?” which explains what a brochure isn’t and how to make it pull better than you ever do now.

Pet Hate: Random Brochure
Marketing Tactic

One thing I particularly hate is when people go to trade shows, networking events and other business functions and leave brochures displayed on every table, or hand them out to everyone they meet regardless of whether they’re their target market.

The reason I dislike it so much is not that you’re simply throwing sales tools away, which you are and it’s costing you money. It’s that it stops you checking the brochure is making you money.

What do I mean?

I mean you need to record the money you’ve spent on brochures and check how much money you can attribute to your use of them.

If you’re not able to make more money than the brochure cost you you need to look seriously at why that is. It maybe you’re giving them to the wrong people. You may have the wrong offer. You could even by giving them at the wrong time.

Avoid These Brochure
Content Mistakes

Avoid the mistake of simply using a brochure as a list of the services or products you provide.

Everybody does that. Do you?

Neglect to refer to your Unique Selling Principle and you’re the same as everyone else in your industry and you will be bought on price, probably discounted at that.

Everybody does that. Do you?

Don’t say you’re Top Quality, or Fast Delivery or Cost Effective Solution.

Because, guess what?

Yes, everybody does that...

Make your brochure your salesperson in print. Make it work hard to convince people they must buy from you. Then give them the ways to do so in the brochure.

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“Put your contact details on everything you do!”

I tell all my clients that their details need to go on everything you do.

Then I get two articles published in the printed media and both only have my blog address on!

I’m a great believer in letting people know how to get hold of you.

I think I need my own marketing coach - then they can say “... you did put your contact details in that article, didn’t you?”

Anyway the point is remember email address, web site, fax, direct line and mobile should all be readily found from your materials.

In this case I can console myself as the editor does have all my contact details.

And the header at the top of this blog also displays my phone number and web site URL.

Remember. And let my case be a warning to us both!

Wal-Mart Gets Bloggers Help In P.R. Campaign

says Michael Barbaro in an article for the New York Times.

He notes that “Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters.”

Now isn’t that a coincidence?

In a posting titled “Marketing Profitably - Blogs Buzz Shows Companies Profitable Trends - And Beware Fake Blogs” I noted that companies would be getting others to blog for them. I actually meant they’d employ them to do so. What’s happening here is that Walmart is feeding bloggers useful news and information and getting PR. Without having to pay for it. Now that's great if you can manage it.

The article highlights the vested interest that bloggers have if they’ve been picked by Wal-Mart to get exclusives.

For example exclusive news will tend to increase traffic to the bloggers sites, which in turn raises the likely return from advertising revenue.

The article also notes that Microsoft, Cingular Wireless and General Electric all turned to blogging to raise a buzz about what they’re doing. In contrast Wal-Mart is trying to improve its image.

That’s exactly what publicity is all about.

Blogs must be regarded in the same light as newspapers, TV, radio and magazines. They all have editors with their own axe to grind and the need to keep their media going. That means you weight up what is being said and don’t believe everything you see, hear or read.

What’s that?

You thought the Internet was different?!

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Marketing trends picked up through the Internet?

That’s the way it’s going reckons Steven Levingston in a Washington Post article titled “Blog Buzz Helps Companies Catch Trends in the Making”.

As Steve says in the article,

“To capture the chatter, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a giant in the industry, uses software that collects hundreds of thousands of comments a day. The technology can scan for specific companies, products, brands, people -- anything searchable. It can slice data into a range of categories to quantify the number of times a subject was discussed online, the individuals who mentioned it and the communities where it appeared”.

So Big Brother has finally arrived!

Listen To Your Customer’s Voice

Having said that companies need to use this information. It’s the authentic voice of their customers.

Remember in marketing you lose customers and often you don’t know why. Now on the Internet people are complaining about poor service, inferior products or bad design. That allows companies that are listening to plan and implement improvements.

Steve notes that ConAgra, a vast American food group, is exploring not just the new trends in food, such as lowering interest in low-carb meals, but also news relating to its products - like how avian flu might affect its customers perceptions of their chicken dishes.

That’s not to say that everything that is said in blogs or forums is to be taken as absolute truth.

But as the volume of regular bloggers grows the accuracy of predictions made on their content will rise.

Companies in the Uk that would benefit from such Buzz analysis would include British Airway, BP, BAe-Systems, Dixons, Hertz, ICI and Unilever, and other large consumer goods and service companies.

The Rise Of Fake Blogs

The downside to companies taking an interest in blog posting is going to be a rise in fake blogs and fake posts.

Ryan May who runs the Minnesota Public Relations Blog wrote an article last year called Small Company? Better Blog!. that explains how running your own blog can defuse the PR nightmare of Internet gossip stopping a marketing campaign or even a company in its tracks.

Why Must A Company Blog?

Almost any company needs to blog for the following reasons:

• Positions your company as the expert


• Defence against fake blogs


• Monitor the blogosphere for comments relating to it, its products and its competitors.

Those companies who don’t have the time to research and create blogs in their own market need to employ a blogger who can provide a blog service. I already do this for a client and am monitoring the statistics from the posts. You need to get doing the same.

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Death By Powerpoint.

How often have we heard that muttered at seminars, workshops and during supplier presentations?

Why don’t people say exactly the same about overhead slides or flipcharts?

Because let’s face it a lot of companies do presentations in the worst possible way.

Am I qualified to know?

Well I’ve sat on both sides of the table. I’ve presented lectures, seminars, workshops and sales presentations.

And I’ve also been on the receiving end of exactly the same from others.

Often people fill their presentations with ‘Me’ messages. They talk about “how their company is number 1”, or how “they’vè increased profits year on year”, or that “the MD was a well known Blue Chip company CEO”.

So what?

Then they go into their product, it’s features, how good it is and what it can be used for.

Again, so what?

They tell you the structure of their company, they give you company accounts, they tell you about great projects they’ve known and loved.

SO WHAT!?

Who cares? Only the people with the egos in that company. The people who are getting it in the neck from the presenters couldn’t care less.

Instead, there is a better way to present:

1. Tell a Story
2. Use bullet points - don’t read from the slides
3. Use “Grab Them By The Balls” headlines
4. Tell them about historic data that relates to their industry and their company

Tune in to the radio station they’re all listening to ... WI2FM (What’s In It For Me).

Present to that audience and then it doesn’t matter what you’re using to present your message gets heard. And acted on.

Publicity tips blog from the Publicity Hound, Joan Stewart, is following a suggestion from Marketing Sherpa.

The suggestion is that everyone should brand their blog. So She’s branding her blog with a consistent item: Publicity tips .

As an aside, if you use marketing in your company it pays to, at the very least, to subscribe to Marketing Sherpa.

Why?

Because Marketing Sherpa publisher, Anne Holland, provides great research and case studies on the ins and outs of marketing on the Internet.

If you’ve the time to study the information on the site and in the newsletter you will without doubt improve the response rate of your email campaigns or increase the interest in your web site.

Anyway to return to the point...

As you know my thoughts on branding are that it’s vital for big companies not quite so vital for the smaller ones. Except on the web.

The reason?

It’s because the web lasts a long time. So what you do now could be around to haunt you in ten years time. Alternatively your prospects may want to look at what you’ve done.

Branding gives you a consistent look, feel and promise of a great product or service.