Sales Archives - McLellan Marketing Group

Taking full advantage of email marketing

December 30, 2020

Since we dealt with email law previously, I thought it would be a good idea to look at some email marketing best practices that will help us avoid getting sideways with the regulations.

But before we get into how to do it well, let’s talk about the value of doing it at all. According to Hubspot’s report “The State of Email Marketing in 2020,” for every $1 spent on email marketing, the return on investment is $38.

Marketers who used segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue, and 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months.

It’s clearly effective when done well. So, how do you do it well?

Remember how it is viewed: 46% of all emails are opened on a mobile device. If your emails are not formatted to be visually pleasing on a cellphone, that should be fix No. 1.

Make sure you’re accessible: Over 1.3 billion people live with some level of visual disability. There are some simple things you can do to make sure they can consume your content without missing any aspect of your communications. Learn how to create your emails so they’re screen-reader-friendly and watch your image contrast ratios.

Welcome emails perform better than any other email: Carefully crafting your welcome email (the first email sent to a new subscriber) is worth the effort. The average open rate is over 80%, and click-through rates exceed 22%.

Timing matters: When you send your email has a significant impact on whether your audience actually opens it. For the last several years, 9-11 a.m. and 3-5 p.m. have the highest open rates and click-through rates. The exception to that rule? Sundays. The peak time for opens on that one day of the week is 9 p.m.

If you don’t want them to reply, don’t email them in the first place: When you send out marketing emails, isn’t the whole point to engage your audience? It always baffles me why so many companies use a noreply@ address. The more interactive your emails are, the better. And it’s tough to interact with a noreply@ address!

Your emails should paint a picture with pictures! Emails with visuals and multimedia like video can have a 4x impact on click-through rates. Video performs twice as well as just including still images, and still images deliver double the results of a text-only email. Mixing your media usage will help keep things fresh and your audience engaged. But don’t overdo it. Too many images or videos will send you right into the spam folder!

Avoid the spam folder: Buying a list, emails that are too visual-heavy, sending too many emails a week, and not cleaning/purging your email list on a regular basis can all get you rerouted to your audience’s spam folder pretty quickly. That’s a lost opportunity that can easily be recaptured with some simple shifts.

Email marketing is one of the most reliable tactics available to businesses small and large.

When done well, it can create community, ignite interest in your products or services, and position you as an authority worth following.

It’s also one of the more cost-effective ways to build your brand, drive sales, and encourage repeat purchases when you do it well.

These best practices can get you started in the right direction if you’ve avoided email marketing in the past or help boost your performance if you’ve been at it for a while but aren’t seeing the results you want.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Where did your confidence go?

December 16, 2020

If there has ever been a year when our confidence has taken a knock to the chin, it’s 2020. If you are like most marketers, January and February gave every indication that 2020 was going to be a breakout year for you.

Many businesses reported the most robust January they’d had in a decade and were looking to exceed goals. And then COVID hit. Many of us went two to three months feeling that it was inappropriate to sell at all, and when we did sell, it was a bit apologetically.

As if that weren’t enough, the combination of COVID, racial tensions, economic challenges, back-to-school maybes, and just feeling like we are being restricted and contained at every turn has caused an underlying malaise in just about every human I know.

Given everything we’re all carrying on our shoulders right now, how in the world do we muster up the confidence to sell?

Marketing and sales are all about confidence. When you believe in what you’re selling, know it is the right answer for the prospect, and can see the benefits the prospect could enjoy, it’s much easier to approach a new opportunity and offer your assistance.

That’s where I think we can regain our confidence: by recognizing that we have something valuable to offer and by seeing it as us offering assistance. Your marketing should be helpful and useful, which builds trust. Once the trust is seeded, sales is about continuing the trust-building while offering tailored solutions that are going to exceed expectations.

Barbara Corcoran, from ABC’s “Shark Tank,” recently shared a letter that she wrote to the show’s producer, Mark Burnett. It’s clear from the letter that she had received a “thanks, but no thanks” response to her audition and I’m sure Mark expected her just to exit gracefully.

Instead, she sent him this letter, outlining very respectfully why this was not the right decision. Her arguments were not about her but how he was taking a more significant risk by not allowing her to come to LA for the final tryout, even though her rival for the position would be there as well.

She called Burnett’s rejection a lucky charm and then gave him point-by-point suggestions of how his final decision would be more reliable if he reconsidered her for a role on the show.

The entire letter exudes confidence. There’s nothing arrogant about it, but as she builds her case, you begin to understand what a formidable force she really is. She ends the letter acknowledging that it is his decision, but she’s already booked her flight and hopes he invites her to get on that plane.

As I studied the letter, I identified some of the sources of her confidence that we can all learn from as we rebuild our own:

She reflects on her past successes and sees them as a progression of her skills, accomplishments, and lessons learned.

She thinks about the opportunity from the buyer’s (Mark Burnett) perspective and demonstrates that he’s at risk of making a bad decision if he does not consider her in the mix.

She suggests ways he could improve his decision-making process, whether she is chosen or not.

She compliments him and recognizes his depth of expertise in his field.

She ends with the presumptive act of confidence (booking the flight).

Breaking that down, it’s about having faith in yourself and what you sell. It’s about truly understanding what your potential buyer is trying to accomplish and his or her situation and being helpful in their efforts, and it’s about a confident close, knowing you can make a difference.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

How to market when no one is listening

October 14, 2020

We are in unprecedented times. As our country and state continue to deal with whatever the coronavirus throws at us, it’s a little tough to be thinking about your next marketing tactic.

I want to remind you that this isn’t actually the first time most of us have seen a season like this. 9/11 and the Great Recession were very similar. Events outside of our control had an incredible impact on the economy, our businesses, families, and personal finances. This particular threat feels even more imposing because we’re also facing a health concern.

The country will survive this. The question is – how will businesses fare? There’s no doubt that companies have been harmed. Our goal is for you to mitigate as much of the risk as possible and prepare your organization for the calm that always comes after the storm.

That’s the good news – no storm rages on forever. There’s always a calm that comes after the storm has run out of steam. We’ll get to that point too, just like we did after 9/11 and the recession. But first, we have to do all we can to survive the storm.

How do you market when no one is listening, and even if they are, they’re probably not in a position to buy? It’s time to move to a long-term strategy. What you do now isn’t about immediate sales. It’s about making a sale in six months or a year.

This is not the time to capitalize on the situation. We’ve already seen opportunists re-tooling their marketing to seize the opportunity. When people are in panic mode, they don’t react well to feeling taken advantage of by someone they thought they could trust.

No sale or coupon is going to get people to care about what you have to sell right now unless it’s a necessity as they wait out this storm.

It’s time to shift entirely into “be of service” mode. It’s time to focus your attention, time, and efforts into helping your customers, prospects, and employees through this season.

How can you help? That’s the question to keep asking yourself. What can you do that will genuinely be of service to your most important audiences?

Let me give you an example.

Shine Distillery & Grill, a small distillery in Portland, OR found a unique way to help. The first batch of alcohol in their distilling process isn’t drinkable. They’ve been throwing it away after using a little bit of it as a cleaning agent to keep their facilities shiny and disinfected.

At the onset of the pandemic, as they watched people scrambling to find hand sanitizer, it occurred to them that they might be able to help others during the coronavirus. They reached out to local authorities to find out what they would have to do to use their waste alcohol as a sanitizer. Turns out as long as they’re not making medical claims – they can bottle it and give it away. It’s an 80% alcohol solution that is well above the CDC’s 60% recommendation.

Maybe you can’t replicate that. But perhaps you can create some financial relief through a payment program for your customers and then build a communication strategy around that. Perhaps you can hold educational webinars that help your prospects, and customers save money or serve their customers better in this odd moment in time. What if you gave your smaller customers access to some of the perks that your more prominent clients enjoy?

That’s being of service without remuneration. For now. I believe that kind of generosity is our marketing mandate right now.

Be of service.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Who are your people?

October 7, 2020

We have been talking about some of the core elements of creating a marketing plan. My goal is to get you thinking and planning for 2021 and beyond. Previously, we focused on making sure your prospects can pick you out of the crowd. The next step in putting together your marketing plan is deciding who you’d like to serve along the way.

If you’ve been in business for more than a week, you know there are clients we can delight and clients who suck the life out of your company. The better you know yourself, the better you will be at identifying and chasing after those sweet spot clients that you love to work for, your team is excited to bust a hump to please, and in return, the client appreciates all of your efforts.

The bad clients aren’t bad; they’re just a bad fit for you. Your goal is to recognize what makes someone a good or bad fit early in the sales process so you can either double down to earn their business or stop chasing them.

Ideally, you’re going to stop chasing or even talking to the prospects that don’t meet your profile of the ideal client. We all do better work for clients who are a better fit. The good news is – you’ve experienced that more than once in your organization’s history. We’re going to use that experience to replicate those great clients.

If I said to you – if you could clone any three customers and work for those clones as well – which customers would you choose? Who are your people? After you identify those customers, look for common traits that make them the right fit for you.

If you are a B2B company, think about tangible factors like the size of their organization, the industry, your point of contact’s years of experience, their decision-making process (individual or by committee), if they have internal resources or if they’re going to be relying on you to provide 100% of the support, and other factors that matter to your work.

On the B2C side, think about tangible elements like the customer’s role in their family, all the demographics like age, gender, and income. Where do they live? What kind of dwelling? Is there a similarity in the type of work they do or the hours they work? For each of you, this will be a little different based on what you sell.

In either case, don’t forget about the intangibles like communication and work style, how they react to issues or problems, and if they’ll be a good referral source. Are they comfortable with technology? Are they animal lovers? No factor is too obscure as you look for common threads. Think of yourself as a reporter and you are about to write a biographical piece on your best customers.

While these lists of traits are useful, they become invaluable when you use them to create customer personas. A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data about your existing customers. You can gather that data through observation, as I’ve been outlining. You can also add market research data to the mix if your budget allows for it. Put all this information to work and you’ll be able to be very clear on who your best prospects are, based on the clients you and your team love to serve.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Busines Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Are you selling from a position of confidence?

August 23, 2020

Given everything we’re all carrying on our shoulders right now, how in the world do we muster up the confidence to sell?

Marketing and sales are all about confidence. When you believe in what you’re selling, know it is the right answer for the prospect, and can see the benefits the prospect could enjoy – it’s much easier to approach a new opportunity and offer your assistance.

That’s where I think we can regain our confidence. By recognizing that we have something valuable to offer and by seeing it as us offering assistance. Your marketing should be helpful and useful, which builds trust. Once the trust is seeded, sales is about continuing the trust-building while offering tailored solutions that are going to exceed expectations.

Barbara Corcoran, from ABC’s Shark Tank, recently shared a letter that she wrote to the show’s producer Mark Burnett. It’s clear from the letter than she had received a “thanks, but no thanks” response to her audition and I’m sure Mark expected her just to exit gracefully.

Instead, she sent him this letter, outlining very respectfully why this was not the right decision.

Check out her letter below. Are you approaching your marketing and sales with that same level of intensity and passion? Do you present yourself with confidence?

Slow down!

February 26, 2020

One of the more common and popular patterns of today’s lead generation and nurturing tactics goes something like this:

Offer something for free or low cost in exchange for an email address
Nurture the relationship to earn the prospect’s trust
Over time, offer them something of more value and with a higher price tag
Continue to provide value and, as needed, continue to offer more services

On paper, it makes perfect sense and in practice, when done properly, it works very well. It’s built on the understanding that no one will buy anything from us until they know, like and trust us.

Trust is built over time, as the initial purchase (for a few dollars or in exchange with an email address) proves valuable. From there, the buyer’s confidence is boosted and they stay open to considering the next level of both purchase and trust.

Unfortunately, it’s often not done properly. This weekend, I saw an ad on Facebook for an information product that looked like it might be useful. I clicked on the ad and watched a brief video about the product. It held my interest, had some credible testimonials from people I recognized and so I made the first purchase for $37.

Before the site brought me to the cart so I could check out, they offered me several other, more expensive products that I passed on, because they hadn’t earned that level of trust from me yet.

Right after I checked out, on-screen, I was told that I’d be getting an email with a log in link so I could access the information. Within minutes, I did receive that email.

So up to that point, they’d executed the tactic well. They’d earned my attention, held it with some valuable information, reassured me with some credibility elements and led me to make my first purchase.

But then, they went off the rails in a hurry. Within five minutes, I got four additional emails. Three of them tried to convince me to buy the more expensive offerings I had just passed on a few minutes before. That was bad enough. But the fourth email is the one that really ruined any chance they had with me.

The email was from the CEO and he wanted to tell me about a special beta program they were just launching. The email went on to say that because I was clearly the kind of leader who could really contribute to the beta, just yesterday he had gotten special permission to invite me into that beta. Of course, he had no idea who I was yesterday. I wasn’t on their radar screen until ten minutes prior.

Both the volume and the insincerity of their emails cost them any future purchases from me. I went from being interested to feeling bombarded. My next thought was that I needed to harvest all of the information from the site I’d paid to access as quickly as possible because if I got four emails within the first hour – what would the first week be like?

Their heavy-handedness had the opposite effect of what I am sure they were going for. Instead of growing my trust slowly and giving me time to get to know them and value what they offered, they put me on guard. Even worse, the flurry of emails also tainted my opinion about the content I had already purchased from them. They got my $37 but they lost my confidence and any future purchases.

Email sequencing can be one of the most effective marketing tactics available to you. But a misstep can not only cost you a customer but it can cost you your credibility.

Why referrals can’t be the only answer

December 24, 2019

When I meet a business owner or leader, I love learning about their organization and how they attract new clients. Once they find out I own an agency, the talk almost always turns to marketing and sales. Inevitably they will say something along the lines of “most of our business comes from referrals” and for them, I believe this actually translates to:

“We don’t have to do much marketing because our customers are happy enough with us that they send us their friends.”

There is no more powerful marketing than a referral. It’s inexpensive, effective and odds are, the sale is usually a slam-dunk. Today, thanks to all of the rating and review sites out there, our referral reach is greater than ever before.

But it’s not enough. All referrals are not equal. I’m guessing you are serving a client right now that you aren’t making a dime on and in fact, you are probably paying for the privilege of working with them. Why? Because one of your good clients made the referral, so you feel obligated. Let’s call this referral customer Bargain City.

I’m also guessing you are serving customers today who need things that are not quite in your wheelhouse but you have gerry rigged your process or system to accommodate them. Sure, it’s more expensive and labor-intensive to do, but it’s how you make them happy. For the sake of the conversation, let’s call this client Custom.

Let’s look at this pattern and see where it goes. Referrals are wonderful and satisfying. There’s nothing better than having a customer love you and your work enough that they introduce you to someone who is important to them and ask us to take good care of them. While they are wonderful endorsements from clients we greatly value, they are also an obligation. We feel compelled to serve them because we don’t want to disappoint the referral source. This is not really an issue if most of your referrals come from an anonymous online source. But for most of us, the lion’s share of the referrals are coming from within our own customer base and often times, from the clients we value the most.

So when they send someone our way, we do feel a sense of obligation. Which is how we find ourselves serving Bargain City and Custom. Having one or two of these types of new customers isn’t an issue. We can probably afford to take on one or two less profitable clients. And our systems can tolerate one or two aberrations from our carefully created processes that allow us to deliver incredible results efficiently. It’s not ideal but we’ll survive both.

But if we rely on referrals as our sole or biggest source of new opportunities, then over time, those anomalies become not the exception, but the rule. Now we have a problem. Now, we are losing money over price and process. And someone else is defining our business for us.

The truth is, the more referrals you get, the more and better your marketing needs to be. You need to clearly define for the marketplace (including your current clients) that you best serve, the specific products, services and outcomes you deliver. Your marketing and outbound sales efforts need to create boundaries and thresholds, so both your existing customers and their referrals can clearly see how you do business. And you need to attract and win enough “right fit” customers that you can afford to take on a few Bargain City and Custom clients to honor your existing relationships.

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record, as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Clients You Love

November 20, 2019

The truth is not every client is created equal. We all know that there are clients we love to serve. We’re able to provide them with incredible value and they appreciate the work we do. The relationship goes beyond the transaction and makes our work meaningful. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to work with a bunch of customers like that?

That doesn’t have to be just a dream. If you’re willing to invest a little bit of time profiling your best customers, you can replicate them. There are no bad customers. But there are definitely bad customers for each of our organizations. I believe marketing gets a whole lot easier when you have a clear picture of exactly who you should and who you should not serve. How different would your business be if you only served people who resemble your best and most loved clients?

At MMG we call those sweet spot customers. They’re the customers that you can delight every time. They’re your best referral sources and they tend to stick around for a long time. The truth is that companies are living entities and some are better matches than others. It’s not enough that they need what you sell. Lots of people are potential customers. But not all of them are sweet spot customers.

Marketing becomes a whole lot easier when you can narrow down your audience. You can be very specific, knowing that your message will resonate with exactly who you’re trying to reach. Unfortunately, most businesses never drill down to define who their best customers are.

Here’s an exercise you can do with your internal team to begin to understand how to recognize your right-fit clients.

Start by thinking of the client you love – the one you’d most like to replicate. If you could have ten of any particular client – which client would you choose? Now identify your next two favorite clients of all time. Now we have a sample of three clients you’d gladly work for over and over again.

Take some time to think about those three clients. What do they have in common?

Was it the kind of work you got to do for them?
Was it their budget size or their approval process?
How about their structure?
Were they all the same age, gender or have some other demographic in common?
How large was their organization?
Were they leaders in their industry or were they the underdogs?
How did they communicate?

That’s just scratching the surface but you get the idea. Dig deep and find the commonalities that made them such a perfect fit. In most cases, you’ll come up with a list of 5-8 traits they all had in common. Think of that list as your best client filter. Next time you have the opportunity to chase after a new client, compare them to the list. If they don’t possess most of the same characteristics, odds are they aren’t going to be a sweet spot client. This matrix is an objective tool that you can use to determine which prospects would be your best fit and worth pursuing with a vengeance.

Not only will you know who you should ideally pursue, but you’ll know how to talk to them. You’ll know what matters most to them and what they value. All of that insight should be woven into your marketing messages as well. By writing specifically to them, you’ll have a much better chance of attracting the kinds of clients you can successfully win and keep.

And let’s be honest – it’s a lot more fun to work for people who love and appreciate your efforts and who you enjoy as well. Why not stack the deck so you only work with customers like that?

This was originally published in the Des Moines Business Record as one of Drew’s weekly columns.

Mini marketing

November 6, 2019

The list of marketing tactics that you can use to reach an audience is staggering. The different ways you can slice and dice humankind into different audience segments is never-ending. The stories you can tell and the messages you can deliver are countless.

And that’s exactly what is ruining your marketing.

The truth is there is not a business on the planet that needs to be on everyone’s radar screen. Whether you are a global business or a Mom and Pop local shop – you have a very finite number of people who actually can benefit from what you do. One of the biggest mistakes marketing people make is inflating their number. They fish with a very wide net when a speargun is a much better choice.

Stay with me on this analogy. When you cast out a wide net, it gets filled up with a wide variety of fish, debris, and seaweed. You spend a lot of time sorting out the good from the bad. You often will talk yourself into trying some odd fish that looks good but turns out to be hideous. And by the time you dig down to the ones you actually wanted – they’re a little worse for wear. If there’s even one in the net at all.

That’s how most businesses approach their marketing. They cast a wide net, trying to have a presence everywhere because they don’t want to risk missing someone. I’m here to tell you, you can miss most of the someones as long as you connect with a relatively small number of the right someones.

Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine, has been talking about this idea since 2008. You’ve probably heard of the 1,000 fans theory. His hypothesis is that an artist (performer, author, artist, etc.) can survive on 1,000 true fans. The number 1,000 is not a precise number but more of a ballpark. But the concept holds either way.

The idea is basically that as your fan base gets larger and larger, the ROI per fan gets less and less because you can’t possibly cater to them all. The long tail is past the sweet point of the effort to engage. According to Kelly, if you want to make money, you will make much more from the first 1,000 fans that are diehard because they’ll buy whatever you produce and engage no matter what. They will also tell the world about you and how much they love you. Back in 2008, the world looked very different, but changes in our connectedness and online behavior only make this base idea more relevant.

Odds are your business is a little bigger than a single artist, so recognize that the number 1,000 is symbolic. But the message is dead on. You need to figure out who your fans are and talk to them on a regular basis about the things they care about. That will attract more of them.

Here’s the danger zone in this effort. Once they have their attention, many marketers just check the box and consider it done. And they’re off to chase the next audience.

That’s where you can do it better by being smarter about keeping the target small and focused. The minute you broaden your message or your channel, you make your fans feel like customers. That shift – from being someone you care about to someone you want to convince to buy something, changes everything. They don’t feel special. They don’t feel catered to and they sure don’t feel like telling the world about you.

Marketing shouldn’t be wide. It should be deep. That’s where people evolve from prospects to customers and if you stay focused – become your raving fans.

And action!

September 11, 2019

It seems simple on the surface. You sell something awesome that people really need and want. In theory, all you should have to do is let them know you’re open to selling it to them, right?

And yet we’ve all experienced the frustrating situation of having someone tell us that they genuinely want what we sell and yet somehow, they can’t get over the hurdle and actually take action. Even after you’ve removed all the barriers (“why yes, Mrs. Smith we will deliver that to your home” to a payment plan) it still seems to take people a long time to take that final step.

I often read that for most people, the scarcest of resources is time. I don’t disagree, but I think the kissing cousin to time is attention. We are rarely alone anymore. Even if we are physically alone – because of our devices and technology, we really aren’t. Someone is always pinging, poking or prodding us through email, apps, or even the old-fashioned phone call. In fact, we don’t really know what to do with ourselves if we get a rare moment of silence. It’s why you see everyone grabbing their smartphones every few seconds.

We literally spend the entire day filtering. We filter our emails, skimming over them and quickly deleting the ones we think we don’t need. We filter calls with caller ID and even text messages can be ignored and/or deleted without reply.

Given all of that – how in the world do you get people to take action and buy what you know is a valuable product/service?

First, I think we have to accept the reality that they’re in control of the situation. They will buy (or not) when they’re ready. Yes, you can do things to make it easier or more compelling but at the end of the day, they will take action when it suits them. The most destructive thing you can do to your sales opportunity is to demonstrate your frustration and get pushy.

Which means you need to adjust your expectations about your sales cycle. When you’re setting your goals for 2020, go back and really analyze the time span between your first connection to a new customer and their initial purchase. I’m guessing it’s a lot longer than you think.

It’s not uncommon for me to have a prospective client say, “Oh, I’ve had one of your columns pinned above my desk for years.” The longest so far has been 8 years. But you know what – they just weren’t ready. And there’s nothing I could have done to make them get ready any faster.

Given both our lack of control and the unpredictability of when a prospect will finally be ready to make that first purchase – the reality for us is that we need to think of marketing like dollar-cost averaging investing. According to this philosophy – since we can’t predict when the market will go up or down, we put in a little bit every day. Some days we’ll buy high and some days we’ll buy low but in the end, on average, we’re going to come out ahead.

Marketing and sales work pretty much the same way. Unless you can accurately predict the day your prospect is finally going to be ready to buy – you’d better be out there consistently so you’re still top of mind on that day. As you work with your 2020 marketing plan, make sure that consistency is there.

In today’s marketplace, your competition isn’t just the other company who sells what you sell. The real competition is for the prospect’s attention; and in that race, you’re running against every email, TV show, billboard, phone call, and ping.

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