This blog re-named to Marketing Advisor Update

Due to an unintentional but potential conflict with another Australian marketing business called Common Sense Marketing, I have re-named this blog to be the Marketing Advisor Update.

This blog supports my monthly Marketing Advisor newsletter by providing instant updates on important and topical marketing issues. You can sign up for the free Marketing Advisor newsletter here and get a bonus 20-page Client Attraction marketing workbook.

Bonus for Smart Selling Tips subscribers

A brief message to announce that I have added a bonus sales report for new subscribers to my Smart Selling Tips weekly training update. Sign up for the free sales tips and get the bonus report titled "How to Eliminate Risks for Clients and Close More Sales".

I have also updated the look of the MySalesTutor.com web site and revised the page structure. This is part of the evolution of the web site. Check it out and let me know what you think.

New business faces old challenge - where to focus?

Today I was speaking with a potential client. Let's call him Max. You see Max has been struggling with attracting more clients to his financial services business. But now he has a great idea. Max has identified a niche where he can offer a service that can provide fantastic value for his clients, and really benefit those who refer clients to him.

The problem is that Max doesn't know what to do next - that's why he contacted me.

During our discussion it became clear that Max needed to focus on a few high-potential marketing tactics. Instead of doing a bit of everything, and spending (that is, wasting) time trying to monitor non-existant results at this early stage, I suggested he should do one thing. Focus on getting leads.

To do this Max must refine the way he is dealing with referrers. He needs to create an information sheet that "sells" his service to them, and emphasise the benefits for them as a referrer (in this case the benefit is a big commission payment for the referrer if the client succeeds and buys their product, which is financed by Max).

He also needs to create a series of educational emails to follow-up with all the referrer contacts he is making. Currently he is following up by personal visits to many different workplaces to see these potential referrers. Time.. time... time... is slipping away.

Max also needs to create an information-rich web site to attract clients. The information presented needs to educate the client on Max's innovative finance service, and also capture contact details, as well as establishing trust and credibility. I suggested Max use a short information series for this purpose, delivered via email.

The answer here is to focus on what will produce results. Most businesses have too many marketing options. It is easy to get lost in the choices, with half-baked attempts at a diversity of marketing tactics.

Don't be distracted. Stay focused on what works best - and keep at it.

Getting more Loyalty from clients

Did you know there are 4 different types of loyalty? The good news is that you can attract more clients by understanding why clients become 'loyal'. The 4 types of loyalty are:

1) Contractual loyalty
2) Transactional loyalty
3) Functional loyalty
4) Emotional loyalty

A brief explanation of each:

Contractual Loyalty
Is based around a formal agreement, or a contract. (Pretty obvious heh!) It is important here to realise that your clients loyalty can only be as good as the contractual terms. Some people may say this is not loyalty at all. (See Emotional Loyalty).

Transactional Loyalty
This type of loyalty is based on the clients perception of value you offer for that particular transaction. Like a doctor recommending a drug, or an audiologist recommedning a certain brand of hearing aid, this loyalty can be switched at a moments notice if your client thinks they will get a better deal elsewhere.

Functional Loyalty
If your client loves the features of your product or service, and they prefer to buy from you because of that, then you have Functional Loyalty (based on the functionality of the product/service)

Emotional Loyalty
This is what most business owners hope to achieve. Clients who love their services or products so much that they simply don't like dealing with another supplier. Your client 'feels' a bond with your business/product/service/people.

When it comes to marketing your service business you can create certain marketing tactics to attract clients in each of the loyalty 'quadrants'. For example, by offering extra value for every transaction you can satisfy those clients seeking Transational Loyalty. But don't forget to create unique services that will generate Functional Loyalty. And be sure to really engage with your clients to create clients with Emotional Loyalty.

The bottom line is that businesses need clients with all four types of loyalty. This spreads the risk of client defections and maximises growth opportunities.

Marketing Wisdom annual report

See this 2006 Marketing Wisdom report (free PDF download) compiled by online marketing authority Marketing Sherpa. This is the 4th annual report and makes great reading - contains 110 real-life marketing stories from large companies, small businesses, and agencies.

Topics include:
Email marketing
Offline marketing lessons
Web site marketing
Business to business marketing campaign lessons

Latest article on 'word of mouth' marketing

Just a reminder... have you read my recent article titled Talking Behind Your Back is Good. It gives you tips on how to generate word of mouth referrals.

And you can get new articles every month - subscribe to my Marketing Advisor newsletter here.

How to get your prospects to open your mail

Direct mail is a tried-and-proven marketing tactic. For tips on what to do with your envelope see this article from Marketing Profs. The article discusses the 2 main envelope treatments:
1) Make it look like personal mail.
2) Make it look like a billboard.

Don't make the same mistake of many business owners by being half-done - like putting a "soft" promotional statement on the front and still trying to make it look personal. It doesn't work. Where possible test different options so you know what works for your audience.

Getting non-salespeople to sell

Over the last week I have been speaking to a few clients about the need for their professional/technical staff to be better sales people. Because technical and professional staff don’t like selling, they often end up providing customer service rather than selling. They don’t achieve sales outcomes because they are not thinking about them.

You see, all sales people need to consider their responsibility to move their client forward. That means moving their client towards spending more of their available budget with the salespersons company. That is the prime objective for a salesperson.

But many professionally trained people think selling is NOT professional. They see it as being ‘dirty’ and often unethical. But just like every other line of work, in sales you can choose to be professional in your manner, or not.

Professional sales people:

• Plan their sales meeting. They know what they want to achieve from every call.
• Don’t waste unnecessary time on tyre-kickers, or long meetings with unqualified prospects.
• Are prepared to ask for the order. They know their client expects them to do this.
• Have excellent interpersonal communication skills.
• Know how to keep the sale moving forward, even if it takes longer than originally planned.

If you need help to be more professional in your sales activities, see the links in the right hand margin for sales training resources.

Prospecting by email can work wonders for B2B

It's easy to assume that generating prospects via email is too difficult or too much like Spam. However, as this article from CIO Today shows, email prospecting can be a goldmine when done professionally. "The idea that email is only good for client retention is a bogus conclusion" says Robert Rosenthal, of direct response agency Mothers of Invention. The real life example discussed in the article used a whitepaper offer to a high-level executive audience, and includes some good tips on copywriting and use of images.

Brand value - Making $5M a year for doing nothing

Richard Branson is great at building his Virgin brand. Because of this he can now make at least $5million a year by effectively doing nothing. He has just licensed his brand to a major mobile phone company in Australia (and sold his share in it, for a $20m loss). In other words, the phone company will pay Branson for the rights to use the Virgin brand - a 15 year deal - and he has no business risk.

This demonstrates the value of a brand. Branson has spent millions over many years building it up. Now he has a global brand. But brands can work on a local level too. If you have a smaller business you can establish a value for your brand within your own local market.

Font size and style does matter

An interesting report from from Tracy A. Gill of Target Marketing Magazine on a book by Colin Wheildon makes the following points about how some fonts are easier to read than others:

1) 67% of people have good comprehension with serif font, compared to 65% who rated their comprehesion when reading sans-serif font as poor.

2) When comparing Times New Roman standard versus bold, the results showed that the stndard Roman font showed 70% good comprehesion, compared to 30% for the Bold font. And 50% of readers rated their comprehension of bold font as poor.

Notes:
Sans-serif - is without the little 'feet' on the letters. Arial (like this) is a sans-serif font.
Serif font - Times New Roman (like this) is a serif font

Bold is like this
Standard (Roman) is like this

Lesson -
Serif fonts are generally easier on the eye than sans-serif, and using too much bold can make the text harder to read.

However -
I recall earlier research that said for online/computer reading, a sans-serif font is easier to read than a font with serifs. That still seems to work for me. Sans-serif fonts are much more common on web sites (Arial and Verdana in particular).

Selling is Sleazy, or, Is Selling Sleazy?

Just tonight I was watching an episode of the TV show Judging Amy with my family. (Stay with me on this... there is a lesson here.) In this episode a landscape gardener was called to the home of Judge Amy to cut down a fallen tree branch. At first the gardener did not seem to be the right person. Maxine (the character, Amy's mother) was expecting someone with a chainsaw - and this guy didn't have one.

However he did manage to talk quite convincingly to Maxine about the sad state of the garden, and commented on some special plants that were not in flower (that only a dedicated gardener would know about).

He left after insisting that the garden must depress Maxine very morning when she see's it. Maxine tried to refute the statement, but was visibly moved by the suggestion. He left a card with Maxine and suggested "When you are ready to replace the bulbs, let me know".

At the end of the scene I said to my 13 year old daughter, "You have just witnessed selling". (I tend to do that sort of thing - it's an occupational hazard!)

To this my wife exclaimed - "No it wasn't!".

When I pressed her to explain what she meant, she said - "Because selling is sleazy."

(Side note - this is not unexpected, as my wife has often said this before about selling. She has a viewpoint here common with many people.)

I said "you have just witnessed selling" for exactly that reason - You see most people would not have recognised what the landscape guy did as "selling". It appeared to be a normal conversation, and ceratinly wasn't sleazy, tricky, or manipulative.

It was 'selling' because the landscape guy did these things:

* He insisted on being called his proper title (landscape designer - I think), rather than just letting Maxine call him a gardener. In this way he was establishing his professionalism, and being assertive.

* He also observed a major issue which he was not originally asked to inspect - the sad untidy garden. In this way he demonstrated his expert knowledge and sought to identify a need, to feel happier in the garden.

* He was honest about his capacity to do the job, but did help by suggesting he could get someone who was equipped to do the job, even though he couldn't do it on the spot. In this way he displayed his expert industry connections.

* He did all this using a firm but polite and positive manner. He was not deterred by Maxine's initial gruffness.

PLUS - the next day he sent one of his men to cut the branch into sizes suitable for use as firewood - and had the logs stacked properly ready for use. In this way he over-delivered, and created a very satisfied client.

Selling doesn't have to be sleazy - it just has to be sincere.

Focus on your sources of revenue

Just today I was speaking with a new business owner. She needed to know if she was on the right track for her business. She has a franchise in the health and fitness industry, and planned to promote via letterbox drops to local households and flyers distributed in local area.

While these sound like logical choices I mentioned that she is missing a major opportunity by not focusing on her key sources of revenue. To do this I suggested she identify the 'groups' of people that would make the best prospects. Then find which communication channels are used by those people. Then be active in those channels, whether it be newsletters, advertising, inserts, notice boards, talking to groups, direct mail, personal networking etc.

For most service businesses, it is critical to find the right source of clients (revenue source) rather than using mass-promotional techniques that reach a lot of people who will never be your client.

Marketing execs can't easily assess value created by marketing

If you are planning your marketing for 2006, don't get discouraged if you can't see the value you get from your marketing program. It seems that most marketing executives can't see the value from their program either! This report mentions the obstacle for execs is "not enough time to focus on strategy".

Don't make this same mistake. Plan to have time to plan. Otherwise you will end up 'reacting' rather than making sensible marketing decisions that support your business objectives.

Large companies may be able to sweep wasted marketing money under the carpet - and forget about it. But most smaller businesses don't have that luxury.

Free business guides

The Fair Trading Office of the Queensland Government issues a range of business guides to help business owners operate within the law. Guides are provided for a number of service businesses such as real estate, tourism, and fitness. See the list of guides here. The site also offers information on laws that apply to various types of promotional activities such as telemarketing, door-to-door canvassing, competitions, ecommerce, and even packaging. Also includes a list of the do's and dont's for advertising.

As a savvy marketer it pays to be aware of the legal requirements for the promotional activities you want to use.

Using email to attract more clients

For any service business, using a regular communication tool such as an email newsletter is pretty much an essential element of your marketing mix. Just this morning I was reading these two articles. You can get some very useful tips from them.

Read 14 Ezine Publishing Predictions for 2006 from Chris Knight (he's an expert in this field). If you are serious about your newsletter - or want to start one - this is a MUST READ article.

Also see this interesting case study (a snippet really - it's very short) about how a company, MediaSource, used video combined with text-only email messages to grow their business 200% per year, from 1 person to now 35. What a great idea!

How Xerox beat bankruptcy

This 2-part article will give you some insight into how a big business avoids bankruptcy. The tactics used can also be applied to make smaller businesses more successful. Well worth reading.

"Mulcahy, whom Fortune this month named the second most powerful woman in business, nearly didn't have the chance to muse on Wall Street's impatience. When she became Xerox's chief executive in 2000, her company didn't look like it would live long enough to deliver any kind of profits again, whether quarterly or annual."

Part 1
Part 2

New name for newsletter

After nearly 5 years of running my monthly newsletter under the name - NousNEWS - I have changed it. The new name is Marketing Advisor. Sign up here.

Why did I change it? The main reason is that to grow my list I have come to believe that I need a more easily recognisable name for the newsletter. Originally I included the word "Nous" as part of the overall branding/diferentiation strategy for Marketing Nous. Find out what Nous means.

It also comes at a time when I will be changing the format of the newsletter from plain text to full-colour HTML. I expect this may cause a few headaches as many email programs dont show HTML newsletters exactly as they are prepared - due to spam filters and restrictions. We'll see what happens. I will need to educate subscribers, as is often the case these days with any technological change.

To make sure I was doing the right thing I have checked many other email newsletters, and also discussion lists on email marketing. The fact remains there are few standards. Many hugely popular newsletters are still presented as plain text. And over recent years I have watched as a few have gone from text to HTML format, and then back to text again, due to the high volume of deliverability problems the publishers encountered.

I have also seen many popular sales/marketing newsletters in HTML format - apparently without any problems. Or so it seems. I suppose I will find out soon enough.

FYI - Industry research says general open rates for newsletters is around 30%. Click throughs from links in email messages varies hugely depending on the list, the offer, and timing - anywhere from under 1% to over 70%.

Why I hate New Year marketing resolutions

Over the last few days I have been inundated with suggestions and ideas for setting new goals for 2006. New Year Resolutions everywhere - marketing, business, personal. The list goes on. Well guess what! I'm not going to bother. Not right now anyway.

Sure I have plans for this coming year. But not because it's December 31, or January 1. I think one of the biggest mistakes many business people make is to make plans "just because". Because their friends say they should, because they read they should, because they feel guilty, because... etc etc.

The best plans are based on a real desire to achieve something. Or to avoid some unwanted outcome.

My new year tip for you is to focus on WHY you want to achieve something. What is important to you? Then make decisions to bring this to life. But don't do it just because it's January 1. Do it anytime that you need to.

Your marketing strategy should span many months, maybe even a year. So just because we hit December 31, don't get distracted by end of year silly-ness.

Stay focused on what is important.