Strategy

Marketing insights question: What’s your legacy sentence?

December 28, 2011

What’s your legacy sentence?

Over the next few weeks, as we head towards 2012, I want to get you thinking about your business in a new/fresh way.  I’m going to ask a single question in each post — but I’m warning you, these aren’t slam dunk questions.

I’m hopeful that as you ponder my question — it will give you some ideas for making 2012 a break out year for your organization.  If nothing else — this exercise should fine tune some of your marketing efforts.

What’s your legacy sentence?   If a customer/potential buyer was going to describe your business in a single statement, what would it be?  Imagine yourself at a networking event and someone says…what do you do?

You can either say, “I’m a financial planner” or you could say, “I help women in transition get on firm financial footing.”

The first option tells me your profession.  The second tells me 1) who you serve, 2) how you add value, 3) what to ask you next (as opposed to just saying, “oh, that’s nice.”)

Which one would you want people to repeat as they introduce you to someone new?

Whether you’re talking about your personal brand/reputation or your company’s reputation — the rule is the same.  You need a single sentence.  Mary Stier wrote a blog post about this and she quoted Dan Pink‘s book Drive, saying:

“In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. ‘A great man,’ she told him, ‘is a sentence.’

Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: “He preserved the union and freed slaves.”  Franklin Roosevelt’s was ”He lifted us out of the Great Depression and helped us win a world war.”

Luce was worried that Kennedy’s attention had been splintered and he wouldn’t be able to solidify the nation’s definition of his presidency.

How about you?  Are you marketing messages laser pointed to a single sentence or are they scattered all over your features, benefits and copy hyperbole?

What single sentence can you use in person, on your marketing materials, in sales proposals, and in all of your sign offs and signatures?

 

Stock photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

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Marketing Insights Question: How are you building your marketing foundation?

December 20, 2011

How are you building your marketing’s foundation?

Over the next few weeks, as we head towards 2012, I want to get you thinking about your business in a new/fresh way.  I’m going to ask a single question in each post — but I’m warning you, these aren’t slam dunk questions.

I’m hopeful that as you ponder my question — it will give you some ideas for making 2012 a break out year for your organization.  If nothing else — this exercise should fine tune some of your marketing efforts.

How are you building your marketing foundation? We’ve talked a lot about the know • like • trust model.  If you remember, the final leg of that equation is that consistency creates trust and trust leads to sales.

How do you generate that trust?  By building a marketing foundation.  And here’s how you go about that.

You do one thing on a regular (daily, weekly or monthly) basis that will add incredible value for your prospects and customers.  This is something that, if you stopped doing it or skipped a week — they’d not only notice the absence but they’d actually miss it.

What is the one thing?  It’s going to be different for every one of us — depending on our industry, our clientele, our position in the market place, our bandwidth and our organization’s culture.

It could be as simple as an enewsletter or as complex as a podcast where you interview leading experts in your field every week.  It might be a cartoon or an ongoing video series.

No matter what form it takes, it must meet these criteria to qualify:

• It’s scaleable so as your audience grows, you can include many more people
• You are 110% committed to honoring your consistency pledge
• It is not a sales piece — this is you creating incredible value
• It is shareable (people can pass it along to colleagues somehow, even if that means tacking it up on a bulletin board)
• It should be unique to you.  Either no one else in your competitive set does something like it or you do it so differently that it stands out

This is going to require some creativity on your part. And some discipline.  As soon as an idea starts to sound at all like a sales tool or gimmick, smack yourself.  That’s the kiss of death.  And it is the mistake 90% of all organizations make.  They just can’t resist hinting at or outright asking for the sale.

If you truly adopt this effort — you will create long lasting relationships with clients and prospects.  You’ll also create a word of mouth marketing machine, as your audience shares your offerings far and wide.

Start with that first building block…and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ve built something worthwhile.

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2012 Trends Worth Watching

December 15, 2011

For the past couple years, I’ve shared the results of the JWT annual year-end forecast of trends for the upcoming year.  In the past, we’ve seen predictions for the massive adoption of location based services (2010) and the coming of the Non Commitment Culture (2011) — both of which have come to be.

So I was looking forward to their 2012 report and it did not disappoint.  I had a chance to ask Ann Mack, JWT’s Director of Trendspotting a few questions.  But before we get to her answers — check out their executive summary. (email subscribers, click here)

Q. Which trend strikes you as the most surprising?  That was my first question for Ann Mack as well.  Here’s what she had to say:

The trend that surprised me the most was Generation Go. The Millennial Generation has been cast by many in the media as the “Lost Generation,” but this trend turns that notion on its head.

Consider this: In the U.S., 52% of Millennials said they would start their own business if they lose or have trouble finding a job, according to a survey JWT conducted in November, up from 25% in 2009. Nearly 6 in 10 agreed that “My friends are doing interesting entrepreneurial things to make more money,” up from 34% in 2009. This indicates that there’s a solid entrepreneurial streak among Millennials, one that has significantly increased in the past two years.

Twentysomethings in the developed world are finding opportunity in economic adversity. Out of continued joblessness or discontent with the status quo is springing an unprecedented entrepreneurial mindset, enabled by technology that obliterates traditional barriers to entry. A so-called Lost Generation is transforming itself into a uniquely resourceful cohort.

Q. Navigating the new normal seems to be more about re-packaging (less frills University degree, smaller pack of gum, fewer featured tablet like Kindle Fire etc.) than offering something new.  How do you think this will manifest itself in the services arena?

You’ll see more services that strip out amenities and features or lower quality standards, DIY options (e.g., Ikea-style assemble-your-own items), off-peak or otherwise restricted offerings, and unbundled/more flexible services and subscriptions.

Equinox gyms, for instance, opened Blink Fitness at the beginning of 2011: The pleasant, polished fitness centers cost just $20 a month (more than $100 less than Equinox gyms in the area), offering the basics and nothing more.

Meanwhile, prepaid, no-contract phone plans—which have been a minimal part of the U.S. mobile market—are now the fastest-growing segment. A new low-cost, no-contract T-Mobile plan offered through Walmart, for example, allows for unlimited Internet access and texting but only 100 voice minutes. The carrier also now offers three Pay by the Day plans, charging customers only for days they use their phones.

Q. How does the trend Reengineering Randomness and the hunger for new/different work in light of both the information overload syndrome and desire to simplify that everyone seems to be dealing with about these days?

To your point, most people welcome the extraction of irrelevant or less interesting information and options. But most people recognize when they are in a rut. Reengineering Randomness is about reaching consumers through surprise and delight, online and off, while avoiding their overstimulation.

As consumers increasingly rely on Hyper-Personalization to help them navigate the Web and the wider world, the random element will come to represent the human touch. Increasingly, breaking through the personalization bubble will become an important way to grab consumers’ attention. By providing a dose of the unexpected, brands can inspire consumers who crave discovery and perhaps find new markets as well.

If you’d like to see the entire 102 page report, you can purchase it here.

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Marketing Insights Question: Calculating the lifetime value of your customer

December 12, 2011

What is your customer worth to you?

Over the next few weeks, as we head towards 2012, I want to get you thinking about your business in a new/fresh way.  I’m going to ask a single question in each post — but I’m warning you, these aren’t slam dunk questions.

I’m hopeful that as you ponder my question — it will give you some ideas for making 2012 a break out year for your organization.  If nothing else — this exercise should fine tune some of your marketing efforts.

What’s a customer worth? I’m always surprised when people don’t know the answer to this question.  If I said to you “for every $100 you give me, I will give you a client” – is that a good deal for you?  How about for every $1,000?  $5?

The truth is, most business owners have no idea what a customer is worth to their business.  If that’s the case – how do you know how much you can afford to spend to get one?

Why does this matter?  What kinds of decisions do you think you’d make in terms of acquiring new clients if I told you that over the lifetime of your relationship, every one of them is worth $500 in profit?  How would your choices change if I said each one is worth $10,000?

How do you figure out the lifetime value of a customer?

You need to know this number.  (Want to bet that your ideal customers are worth a heck of a lot more than your so-so customers?)

Not sure how to calculate the lifetime value?  Check out this great infographic (from kissmetrics)which does a nice job of modeling how you can get a good ballpark figure.

Once you know that….you know what you can do to earn a customer.  And what it costs you when you lose one.

Lifetime value of a customer infographic

 

Stock photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

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Marketing insights question: Who is your ideal customer?

December 6, 2011

Do you really know your ideal customer?

Over the next few weeks, as we head towards 2012, I want to get you thinking about your business in a new/fresh way.  I’m going to ask a single question in each post — but I’m warning you, these aren’t slam dunk questions.

I’m hopeful that as you ponder my question — it will give you some ideas for making 2012 a break out year for your organization.  If nothing else — this exercise should fine tune some of your marketing efforts.

Who is your ideal customer? One of the biggest mistakes most businesses make is that they cast too wide a net, when it comes to prospecting.  Not all money on the table is good money.   We’ve all had a bad customer.  But if we’re really honest, we’ll admit that they weren’t a bad customer.  They were just bad for us.

Assuming you have a finite marketing budget or that you still haven’t figured out how to extend the day past 24 hours — you have to make some choices.  So why not target the very best possible customers?

Your intentional marketing efforts should be laser focused on those people/companies who are ideally suited to benefit the most from your offerings AND bring you the best benefit (profits, repeat business, referrals, longevity etc.) back to your organization.

Are you running around like Chicken Little, trying to make sure that everyone and anyone knows about your business?  Do you spend marketing dollars on long shots and Hail Mary passes?  If you are — stop it.  Now.

Instead, invest that energy into discovering who your best customer is.  Describe them.  Be able to tell me what matters to them and how they get their kicks.  Know what they drive and why they chose it.  When they go to a restaurant, do they pay attention to the fat content of the offerings, the prices or if there’s a 16 z steak on the menu?

Once you really know who they are — you’ll know how you can help them.  Talk to them about it.  Help them a little so they get to know you before you ask them to buy.  Tell them stories of how you’ve helped other people.  In other words — market to your best customers in a way that creates trust and familiarity.  have you noticed how your best customers end up being your friends?

That should tell you something, shouldn’t it?

Unless you have an unlimited marketing budget and time on your hands – you can’t afford to waste one minute or one dollar on anyone who isn’t ideal.  So figure out who that is…. and stay focused on the people/companies you can help the most.

 

Photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

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Marketing insights question: What do you really sell?

November 29, 2011

What do you really sell?

Over the next few weeks, as we head towards 2012, I’m going to write a series of posts that are designed to get you thinking about your business in a new/fresh way.  I’m going to ask a single question in each post — but I’m warning you, these aren’t slam dunk questions.

I’m hopeful that as you ponder my question — it will give you some ideas for making 2012 a break out year for your organization.  If nothing else — this exercise should fine tune some of your marketing efforts.

What do you really sell? Do you understand what your customers are really buying?  Odds are, it’s much more than the “thing” you sell, whether that be a pair of glasses or accounting services.  Look beyond the tangible or what you list on an invoice.

Do you really sell peace of mind?  Or a competitive edge?  Are your customers’ buying the reassurance of your years of experience or your ability to nudge them out of their comfort zone?

Before you can effectively help someone buy – you need to actually understand what you’re selling.

If your honest answer is “I’m not sure” then it’s time to break out the trusty telephone and invite some of your best clients (the ones you’d like to replicate all day long) to lunch.  Ask them why they buy from you.  What is the ultimate value you provide to them?  Why would they tell your competitor “no thanks” even if they offered a bargain basement price?

You will be amazed at what you hear.  We’ve done this over the years at MMG and heard things like:

• “Because I know you won’t have your hand in my pocket all of the time.”
• “You don’t just preach social media, you guys actually do it.”
• “I don’t think they’d care as much about our business as your team does.  You all act like you own the joint.”
• And one of my favorites was “Because I don’t just need an agency, I need a thinking partner.”

Can you see how those answers would alter the way we market our agency?  Do you recognize some client worries/fears in those responses?

You’ll find your clients’ answers to be even more insightful because you’ll get to have the follow up conversation as well.  Listen so hard it hurts.  The learning will be huge!

And in the end, you will know exactly what you sell!

 

Photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

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How do you sell what no one wants to buy?

November 14, 2011

How do you market stuff no one wants?

Most of us don’t have the luxury of selling ocean front property, the coolest laptop, the latest in tractor technology or porsches.  But in most cases, while it may not be sexy to many — someone really wants it.

But how do you sell something that no one has any enthusiasm or interest in buying?  You know, things like…. funeral services, trauma clean up or bankruptcy law services.

Granted…when someone has lost a loved one, had a horrific accident in their home or can’t survive their financial crisis — they need to talk to you.  But it’s not something they’re looking forward to doing.

How do you market to them prior to that triggering event so that when an event occurs — they know about your company, your offerings and you, at the very least, are on their short list of potential vendors?

When you sell something that people dread having to buy, the psychology of that dread is pretty straight forward.   Something very bad has to happen before they’d need to buy something from you.  And odds are that bad thing would have to happen to someone they love.

Focus on the emotion: 99% of the time people don’t want to buy what you sell is because of the emotions attached to the purchase.   You are not a want.  Sooner or later — you’re a necessity.

So in your marketing — paint me a picture of how you help your customers get over the very thing they’re afraid of.   This means you have to truly understand the psychology of your customers at their point of purchase.  Once you do, think through every touch point of the purchase cycle and make sure you’re focusing on getting them through the event.

This isn’t the time for being fuzzy with your message.  Directly acknowledge that you understand their pain/fear etc.  and show them how you’ve  built your business to ease those emotions.

Go with a prevention message: One of the best ads for a funeral home I ever saw was an ad with an anti drunk driving theme.  The basic message was — don’t drink and drive, we’re not that anxious to see you.  it made them seem very human and caring.

If your product or service only comes into play when something bad has happened — one strong marketing tactic is to help people avoid that bad event.

Offer/sponsor a financial literacy class or promote a suicide hotline.  But do something that actually helps people avoid you.  Those who aren’t so lucky will remember that you were compassionate enough to try and help.

Demonstrate on a small scale: Usually, part of what makes people dread buying from you is the enormity and finality of their situation by the time they get to your front door.

But you can show off your skills on a much less scary scale.  For example, if you clean up trauma scenes — think of the stains you have to remove.  Blood, body emissions, etc.

Is there a way you can demonstrate those abilities — but on a less scary scale?  Kick off  a series of blog posts or post card tips that talk about how to remove tough stains like blood.  Show us you know your stuff — but slowly and in less dramatic applications.

Find your influencers: Often times, people are a bit numb at the moment they need to buy these sorts of services.  They are on auto pilot, due to the emotions they’re facing.  So people like attorneys, police officers, hospice centers etc. are often guiding them through the process.

Find out how to genuinely connect with these influencers.  Give them information, materials, etc. to help them get a person/family through that moment in time.  Be truly helpful and they’ll remember you at the point of referral.

The over-arching message here is — you have to be part psychologist to sell what people have no interest in buying.  You are often meeting them at their most vulnerable moments and they need you to help them feel safe and cared for.

The upside of all of this is just that.  You are meeting people in their worst nightmare.  If you can truly serve them well, help them with not only the mechanics of what you sell — but more importantly, walk through the nightmare with them — that’s very noble work and you should take great pride in it.

 

Photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

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Don’t have the time to do marketing

November 2, 2011

I don’t have time to do marketing

If there’s a common theme in the conversations I have with business owners, it’s that they don’t have the time to consistently market their business.

We might be talking about  sending out a customer e-newsletter, participating in social media, attending an important trade show or updating their website.  The specifics don’t matter.  They just simply don’t have the time.

I get it.  The whole 24 hour in a day thing.

I ask them if they have time to serve their clients.  And they say, “of course… I have to do that to stay in business.”

I ask them if they have time to send out bills to their customers.  And they say, “of course… I have to do that to stay in business.”

You find time to do what’s necessary.  If it has to get done, it gets done.

Ahhh.  So it’s not that you don’t have time.  It’s that you don’t consider marketing a necessity to stay in business.  Now that’s a very different conversation.

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The hard truths

October 22, 2011

How do you get clients to tell you the tough truth?

One of the things I loved about playing chauffeur to my daughter when she was younger were the conversations we’d have in the car.  There’s something to be said about the implied “safety” of not looking the other person in the eyes when dealing with a difficult topic.

I think many couples will attest to how sometimes lying in bed in the dark can inspire one of them to raise an issue that for some reason felt more uncomfortable on the couch or over dinner.

The truth is… the truth is hard.  Even if you candy coat it, sometimes what you have to say is going to upset the other person.  And so you have to decide if you’re going to speak it anyway.

That’s not just true in our personal relationships.  It’s true in business as well. Our customers probably have some hard truths to tell us.  But unless they really love us — they’re not likely to muster up the courage to tell us to our face.

While that sounds great on the surface — after all who really wants to hear the bad stuff? But here’s the rub.

just like in our personal relationships — the longer something festers, the bigger a deal it becomes.  And sooner or later, it can poison a relationship.

So how do you create the “riding in the car” feel with a client?

Hire a confidante: Clients want you to know and they want to tell you.  But they don’t want to hurt your feelings and they don’t want to have an awkward conversation.  But, they will, especially if you ask them to, talk about you to someone else.

We do this sort of thing for clients all the time and never in my 25+ year career has it failed to result in some significant changes and insights.

Conduct an anonymous survey: If you allow them to vent without attaching their name to the document, they  may be more candid.  I think our clients want us to be successful and they want us to be the best

Brave it: Make a point of taking your best clients out to lunch/drinks/dinner a few times a year.  Point blank ask them — how could we be better?  You can ask it in a variety of ways — “if you could wave a magic wand and change something about us, what would you change?”

It’s our job to make it possible for our clients to tell us the hard truths.  It sure beats them telling us goodbye.

 

Photo courtesy of BigStock Photos

 

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But where do you find all the content?

October 17, 2011

 

Challenges related to a content marketing strategy

In August of this year, HiveFire surveyed marketing professionals to better understand the state of the B2B marketing landscape including what was really creating the biggest challenges, how they were choosing to market and what they saw on the horizon.  (get a copy of the survey results here)

One major theme surfaced from the results: content marketing (the creation and publication of original content, such as blog posts, photos, videos, website resource pages, case studies or white papers to enhance a brand’s visibility) is changing the way B2B marketers work. More and more marketing effort is being channeled towards content creation and curation.  But it’s not without its challenges.

Some of the more interesting findings of the survey are wrapped in the challenges of actually creating the content.  Few argue about the tactic’s value — it’s the how to get it done on a consistent basis that seems to be causing the most trouble.

Driving leads is the number one objective of B2B marketers but they are challenged with having the resources to accomplish this goal.
  78% of respondents cited driving sales/leads as the most important marketing objective for their organization.

But they have to do it without a lot of help: working with a limited budget (28%) and limited staff (23%) were the top two marketing challenges cited by respondents.

I think most businesses have more content than they know.  They just aren’t looking in the right places.  If you’re trying to implement a content marketing strategy — you can probably re-purpose content found in:

• Annual reports
• Sales proposals
• Marketing materials
• Sales presentations
• Orientation manuals (lots of good stuff about the company here)
• Sales fliers
• Instructional documents
• Emaiils to/from customers
• The FAQ section of your website
• Diagrams/charts of your product/service (think infographic!)
• Customer service manuals/instructions

And that’s just scratching the surface.  Remember — the content shouldn’t be all about you.  In fact, if it is — your audience will run kicking and screaming.  Broaden your scope by asking “what does my audience care about?” as opposed to “what can I tell them about us?”

By asking the right question — I suspect you just made finding content to share a whole lot easier.

Related articles

• Blog Posts Most Valuable B2B Marketing Content [Data] (hubspot.com)
• Content Marketing Needs More Than Content (customerthink.com)
• B2B Content Marketing: The Grande Guide from Eloqua (marketingtechblog.com)

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