Marketing

How to put your word-of-mouth marketing on steroids

June 6, 2011 by Al

Everybody in business knows that word of mouth is the absolute best form of marketing for their business.

Having a third party recommend your business is more credible in the eyes of the potential customers. Numerous studies have shown that recommendations from friends and even complete strangers have much higher levels of trust than advertising.

The problem with word of mouth marketing is that it is really hard to instigate, encourage or control. For someone to recommend your business, you need to be top of their mind when they happen to be having a conversation with someone who needs your products or services. Basically the right person needs to be in the right place at the right time, having the right conversation to make the referral.

Enter social media

Social media removes some of the barriers of word-of-mouth referrals and makes it easier for your customers to refer or recommend your services. In fact, it makes it so easy, often times, people don’t even realise they are doing it.

Staying Top of mind

Social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, a blog, or even email, allows you regular contact with the fans and customers of your business. That regular contact is critical to reminding your fans that you exist.

Here’s the thing… The contact doesn’t have to be anything heavy. It doesn’t have to be a sales call, a product offer or any form of ‘marketing message’. In fact, it is better if it isn’t (of course there is a place for promoting sales from time to time).

The point is purely to let them know you are still here. Doing your thing. Helping people.

Make it easy to share and promote your business

Before social media, contacting people was slow and expensive. But now, taking 10 minutes to post a photo or a tip on Facebook, and you’ve made contact with all of your fans who are interested enough to follow you.

The trick is posting something interesting that inspires your fans and followers to want to have their say. To share it with their friends.

It only takes 2 seconds to click the ‘like’ button or send a retweet on Twitter, or a minute to compose a comment. On Facebook, every interaction with your content spreads your idea and the visibility of your business further, to reach a larger audience. Effectively removing the barriers of referring your business.

How to make this work for your business

If you haven’t already, set up your presence on these platforms.

Think about what sort of content would be useful or interesting for your customers, and plan some cool content. Remember, content, can be short text tips, long articles, photos or video.

Get some fans. Spread the word with your staff, friend and customers, and give them all a reason to follow you on these services.

Get publishing. Be cool.

Speaking of being cool. If you found this article helpful, I’d appreciate it if you took a moment to write a comment below or share this article on Facebook.

How to grab business by targeting a highly specific market

April 28, 2011 by Al

Shampoo is marketed to specific target markets. I’m going to tell you something you already know. You know it, but I’m going to tell you again, because you probably don’t do it.

First, something to consider…

In our house, if you wander into the bathroom and poke your head behind the shower curtain. You will find quite a number of bottles crammed onto the tiny shelf. Including, not just one, but three separate bottles of shampoo. A white bottle with a blue lid for me, a tall architecturally designed cream bottle with a peach lid for my wife, and a transparent bottle of golden liquid for our kids.

Why the hell do we need three bottles of shampoo? They all do more or less exactly the same thing – clean hair.

We have them because shampoo companies know something. It’s the same thing that you already know.

You need to define your target market, and sell directly to them

Most small businesses, when asked who their target market is, have a version of the same answer.

“Anyone” or “Anyone with money”

The idea being that by targeting everybody, they have a larger potential market. Wrong! This strategy is leaving money on the table.

Back to shampoo… Do they sell less shampoo because one brand is targeted to only men? NO they sell more, a metric boatload more.

By targeting a specific, well defined market, it is easier to understand their problems and communicate how your product or service can solve it for them.

Everyone has hair that needs cleaning, but some have dry hair, oily hair, or an itchy scalp. Those are all specific problems that need solved.

Advertise specifically to your market

My shampoo says ‘for Men with sensitive scalps’. It’s a no brainer… That’s the stuff I need (or at least that I think I need).

By being specific you decommoditize your product or service. A product that fixes a specific issue is more valuable than a generic product.

But the market would be too small

Ok, here’s another example of a sneaky way to get around the problem with a small market. In the Internet marketing world, there is at least one dog training course that is marketed as train your Labrador, train your Great Dane, train your German shepherd and many other popular dog breeds.

It’s the same study course, the only way the course is differentiated is who it is marketed to (Labrador owners or German shepherd owners). Simple tactic but it works because all dog owners know their dog is the best dog breed, and training techniques tailored specifically to their breed is going to be better than general dog training.

Could you market the exact same product to two (or more) specific markets?

Action

Who can you help specifically? Write a list of specific groups of people who you could tailor your product or service to fix their specific problem.

Can you add something to you product or service to make it cater to a specific group?

How-to reports and Tips work great:

‘How to teach your child about bike safety’
or ‘7 critical accounting systems for a new service business’

Try something to reach a niche market.

— Rinse and repeat —

photo credit: Cormac Heron

If you liked this post, we would really appreciate it if you could write a comment below or post it on Facebook. Sharing is what the cool kids are doing!

Oh, and jump over and ‘Like’ our Facebook page

How to use Facebook places to market your local business

March 9, 2011 by Al

Facebook Places just went live here in New Zealand yesterday.

I just posted this Cinchcast which covers, what Location services are, how they work, and why they are important in marketing your local business online.

Heres what you need to do now.

1. Go and make sure you are listed on Facebook places (and Foursquare for that matter)
(Beg or borrow a smart phone from a friend if you don’t have one yourself…. or go buy an iphone because you should have one anyway.

If your business isn’t listed, then add it.

2. Go to www.facebook.com/places and claim your listing
(just follow along with the instructions)

3. Encourage people to check in to your business. Put up a sign, ask customers as part of your sales process. Especially customers playing with their nice new iPhone in the queue.

Could you do me a favour and leave a comment below. Tell me if you found it helpful or if you have any other questions.

My Forehead-slappingly obvious lesson in Marketing

January 31, 2011 by Al

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was a Strawberry Farmer.

As with most horticulture businesses, I had a hand in every part of the operation, which was great for understanding the whole picture of running a business.

Some parts of the business I am glad to be finished with, such as getting up and starting work at 6am (and finishing at 6pm). But I really enjoyed the grass roots marketing of the berries.

Talking to customers, working out pricing (which changes daily in the fruit and vege game), and coming up with marketing strategies and promotions. this was the interesting stuff for me.

I recently got a lesson in PR from Mary and Ian who are now running the Farm

It is funny how when you are busy running around in your business sometimes you miss the “slap myself in the head” obvious stuff.

The beginning of last season, the strawberry packing team weighed in a monster Strawberry at 78 grams. That’s a pretty big strawberry… Three of those and you’ve filled an average punnet.

Super impressed with their 78g berry, Mary mentioned it to a local reporter… And just like that, they had a story run in the local Newspaper.

How is that for publicity?

But it gets even better… The local newspaper is part of the Fairfax media group here in New Zealand, and it must have been a slow News week because before you new it, Fairfax papers republished the story throughout the country.

Seriously… National exposure of their strawberries, just because they grew a large strawberry.

Funny thing is, Monster strawberries are pain in the arse… I know because, here’s the kicker, when I was running the show, our record was 105 grams!!!!

That’s about the size of a small apple.

But here’s the thing. When we weighed our mega-berry, we thought, that’s cool, we showed it to a handful of customers, and then gave it away (or ate it, I can’t remember). That was it!

What’s the lesson?

If you find something in your business that you think is cool, somebody else probably does as well. Don’t assume that no-one else cares. Ask them to find out.

Ok, sure, if I had told a friendly reporter about our 105g strawberry, it’s possible they would have said, “so what”. And obviously you won’t necessarily get massive exposure – but you might!

When it comes to marketing and publicity, sometimes it is hard to know what will strike a cord and take off. Take the “double rainbow” guy on YouTube… Who would have thought that would get 24.7 million views?

With Social media, you can publish things with a couple of clicks

Publishing news (or stories and quirks) about your business online is as simple as a few clicks, and while it might not make you front page news, they might just get you front of mind with some potential customers. And what can be more valuable than that?

Stop forcing your customers to pay twice

October 20, 2010 by Al

I watched a movie a couple of days ago with my wife. I’m not going to admit what movie it was, other than to say it was a chick flick…. ok a teen chick flick.

Anyway, my wife actually bought this movie so she can watch it over and over again whenever she feels the need (oh please no more).

But heres the problem

We load up the dvd, watch the dolby intro and the ‘pirates are costing you money’ announcement (don’t get me started), and 10 minutes of ads…

What the hell?

Five movie previews that we can’t fast forward!

Did I mention we paid for this dvd? not rented Bought! But now here we are spending our recreational time being forced to watch ads for the studios latest movies or special behind the scenes whatever…

I know someone worked out that we are now a captive audience and they should let us know of other titles we can buy off them… That is plain stupid. We paid for the movie, now we have to watch SPAM.

Heres what they should have done

Don’t force me to watch these Previews Ads. Stick them as a menu option, right beside the deleted scenes. Call them something like ‘similar movies’ or ‘suggested films’ (or probably something much better).

Now they’re not spam anymore, they are added value. Why? because we have the choice to watch them. The crazy thing is we would probably watch them happily.

What examples do you have of post sale silliness?

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