Archive for the ‘Marketing Strategy’ Category

How to Thrive in the Recession: Lean-in to Your Customers

Sunday, April 19th, 2020

Difficult times require us to get massive about making an impact on our customers. What used to work will not be enough in the future. Now is the time to be calling them and finding out what’s going on with them. Find out what they’re fearful about, find out what their dreams are, find out where they think they might be compromising their dreams, asking them how they might take advantage of this situation to find other revenue streams and different opportunities.

Recessions historically have been the opportunity to pull ahead. And one of the best things that you can do is help your people dream the next possibility. Those who sit and wait to be told what to do and stay in the old actions will be very limited, both for you, within your organization, and also for them. So now is the time to get massive about helping your customers see a new possibility, and get busy helping them accomplish that possibility. By helping other people, that’s how we help ourselves and our own organizations.

Now is a wakeup call for us to get even better at that than we ever were before. So seize the opportunity.

Now Is The Time To Massively Increase Your Results

Friday, April 3rd, 2020

Challenging times require substantially changed behaviors.  Everyone knows the story of the 110-pound mother who can lift the car off of her child because there was a need, and there was no one else around to do it.  Well, think of yourself as being that 110-pound woman who there’s no way in regular times you could lift the car, and that’s how you should approach your job every single day. So if you were producing five widgets, the question you should ask yourself is, seriously, how do you produce 500 a day? If you were able to have other projects that you are doing or different impact on customers, how do you raise that impact by a hundredfold?

These times require massive action that’s the right action. If you don’t know how to be in the mastery of the work that you do, Google it. Go home, read a couple of books. Come to a different person, because these kinds of times require those who step in all-in every day. Be that person.

Boost your company’s online reviews

Sunday, March 29th, 2015

You know that online reviews on sites like Yelp and Yahoo can make or break a business. As an employee who cares about the company’s success, you’ve recruited every friend and relative to boost the reviews, but your company’s competitor across town has 500 reviews and counting.

How do they do it?

The odds are good that they are actively recruiting reviews from actual customers. No matter where you are in the company, you can do the same.

If you’re on the front line, ask every single customer to leave a review about their experience. Put the request on every receipt, all paperwork, and in every email you ever send. Offer a discount or entrance into a drawing. And always ask for honest reviews, not just good ones.

If you have 500 customers a day, and only one percent of them post reviews, you’ll have over a hundred new reviews by the end of a month, and more than a thousand at the end of a year.

That’s buzz worth creating.

Marketing with a PLAN

Sunday, June 24th, 2012

Picture yourself in the driver’s seat of your dream car, ready to go—but the windows are all painted black and there are no gauges. You turn the key and the engine roars. You push the pedal to floor and away you go!

You’ll end up somewhere, but it won’t be pretty. (more…)

Goodbye to “Sir or Madam” Marketing

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

© Brunoil | Dreamstime.com

© Brunoil | Dreamstime.com

“Dear Sir or Madam,”

“Have you heard about our new [product/service]?  There has never been anything like it before.  Best of all, it’s designed just for you, [prospective client name here]!  Worry no more about [financial security/maximizing returns/funding college/on-time retirement].  Our [product/service] will fit your needs like a [glove/shoe/favorite T-shirt].”

Most marketing has gotten well beyond this level of obviousness, of course.  But below the smoother surface of our mail-merges, much corporate thinking about marketing is still stuck in the one-size-fits-all mindset that should have gone out with legwarmers.

American Express was successful for years with the all-purpose slogan, “Don’t leave home without it.”  But with the 1990s came the advent of a new consumer mentality, one that encouraged customers to feel that products and services were not generically designed for the masses but tailored “just for them.”  American Express recognized this and retooled its approach, adopting its revised, targeted slogan, “The right card for the right people.”  As Richard Weylman noted in Opening Closed Doors, AmEx had realized that “it is more important and effective to reach the right people than it is to reach many people.”

It’s one of the great insights of modern marketing.  In today’s advertising climate, the wider you cast your net, the lower your marketing ROI.  Instead, spend some time identifying and wooing the very specific fish that are most likely to bite on the bait you have to offer.

How do you identify these fish?  Look around your tank. They’re already swimming in front of your nose.  Your current happy customers are the best predictors of what your future happy customers will look like.

After all, your current happy customers are happy for a reason—they love what you have to offer.  If you think of them as generic “customers” and go out looking for more “customers,” you are missing out on the golden opportunity to discover just what it is that brought them in and kept them with you.  Do you have accounts belonging to young families?  Realtors?  Educators?  Members of the Kiwanis?  Golf-loving retirees?  New homeowners?  Each of these comes with specific needs and desires.  Find out what they love and want, then build tightly targeted marketing around that subset of your local population.

And how do you find out what they love and what they want?  ASK them!  Remember that people love to talk about themselves.  Send out a personal letter to every current client who recently bought a home.  Tell them that you are eager to have more clients just like them.  Who wouldn’t want to hear that?  Ask what would make their lives easier—from actual financial products and services to a pizza delivered on Moving Day—then create it, advertise it, and reel ’em in!

In the end, your marketing should consist not of one big blast of generic information, but six or eight smaller, more carefully crafted campaigns.  Believe me—it’ll be the biggest bang for buck you’ve ever had.