Use A Shotgun and The Rule of 3 To Make More Sales
October 31, 2007
Are you using the shotgun method in your marketing? If you’re not you’re losing sales.
The fact is, most potential customers will need to see your branding three times before they decide to use your product or services. So you need to focus on one small group at a time and ensure that this happens. And this is true whether you have an online business or bricks and mortar.
Here are a few tips for ensuring this happens:
1) Don’t use the machine gun approach and fire a dozen different marketing strategies at random consumers. Use a shotgun - target a specific group and make sure they see you at least 3 times.
2) Notice I said see what you are offering, not just hear or see your name. Most people are visual, or kinsthetic. So, you should have a clear, simple, logo. And your message in your advertising should give them an idea of how they will feel when they use your product or service.
3) Make sure you target a small group of people at a time. Choosing your group and how to market to them is easier than you think. First, pick a recent customer - not just any customer, but a good one. Someone who has made a decent size purchase from you, paid on time and hasn’t been a complete pain. Then you target customers in the same area, using the same marketing methods.
4) You already know how your great customer found you, because you asked them. If you didn’t - give yourself a dope slap and make sure you know where all your customers come from in the future. This bit is dead easy. If you take your orders by telephone, you simply ask them how they heard about you.
If you take orders online, you make the question a simple part of your online order form. And if you have a retail outlet, when they’re paying you tell them you run special offers from time to time and ask them to fill out a form so they can receive them. Your question should be part of this simple form.
5) Use every opportunity to discover as much as you can about your ideal target customer. If you’ve followed the steps above you already know how they found you, and you know what area they are from.
6) Once you’ve defined your ideal customer make sure they see your product or service at least three different times. Eg: If your ideal customer hangs out in niche forums, make sure you are a valuable contributor to that forum, consider advertising on the forum. Focus on what keywords potential customers on that forum may be using to find what they’re looking for, and set up a targeted Google adwords campaign.
If you have bricks and mortar business, you could drop flyers in the customers local area. At the same time, you could target that area with a mailing campaign. You could also advertise in a local publication. Small publications such as community or parish newsletters are far cheaper than local newspapers.
7) Don’t give up to easily. Remember most potential customers need to hear your marketing message at least three times. And it does work. Just to give you an idea on how well it works - we were getting mediocre results in a particular target area. So, we chose just one street in that area to test, using three different marketing methods. The results were astounding - 7 jobs on that one small street within 2 days.
Are You In Control?
October 26, 2007
How much control would you be willing to give up in order to grow your business? Would you be willing to give up some of the shares, so long as you held onto the majority? Or would you happily give up 80% and take a backseat? Or would you cling on to every single share as though your life depended on it?
Many businesses could not come up with the cash if they weren’t willing to give up some ownership. Guy Kawasaki is hugely in favour of giving up control to grow a business, and I know Asako is in agreement with him. Ian Denny also feels the same. Yet others, like Felix Dennis would not give up a fraction of a percent of his business, and he’s still managed to become hugely successful.
But, the fact is that many businesses simply could not grow if the owner did not give up some control - or at least they wouldn’t be able to grow quickly anyway.
And usually with any type of outside investment, you will have to give up control to some extent. Of course you could always borrow from the bank to grow your business. And while they wouldn’t actually interfere in the day to day running of your business, banks are nice to you when it’s sunny and absolute tossers when it’s raining. And often if you hit problems they want their money back quickly.
Would you have a problem giving up control if it helped your business to grow? Or are you determined to hang onto every single share, even if it means growing at a snails pace?
Which of the following things would you do to grow your business faster, or would you try something else:
1) Borrow so much money that the bank would have to much to lose by shutting you down if you were in trouble - as Donald Trump did a few years ago.
2) Float your business on the stockmarket.
3) Take in a partner.
4) Franchise your business.
5) Borrow money from an outside investor.
6) Remortgage your house.
7) Rob a bank.
Borrow from friends and family (Richard Branson borrowed from his Auntie a lot).
I already have 3, but I wouldn’t have an additional one. I would do 6 or 8 before the rest followed by 2.
Which would you do? Even if you’re not sure, it’s good to think about it as it will help you plan how you’re going to grow.
Do You Avoid Asking Yourself These 2 Crucial Business Questions?
October 23, 2007
There are two crucial business questions many business owners choose to avoid asking themselves:
1) What if I die?
2) What if I become too ill to work?
Ok, so you may be thinking you’re too young to think about things like that. I felt the same. And I should have known better, as I went from being fit and healthy overnight in my early twenties to becoming too ill to work.
And whilst there’s no point worrying that you might die, become seriously ill, or have an accident, it’s smart to consider the consequences on your business if you do, and plan what should happen in a worst case scenario.
Dying Without A Will: If you have a business, you need to make a will, which states what will happen to your business if you die. If you don’t, it could leave your spouse in financial difficulties, and your business in deep trouble.
Do take advice on making a will from a specialist adviser. You can get home DIY kits but they’re a huge risk if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Becoming Too Ill To Work: Could you afford to replace yourself in your business if you suffered an accident or illness? What would you live on? It is worth checking out accident or illness plans that would pay out in this scenario.
Also, you need some type of back up plan for if you’re ill for a couple of months. Could your business survive without you? Could anyone do your job in your absence? Can you systemise some aspects of your job, so that others can cover for you.
It may sound morbid, but a bit of advance death and illness planning could save a lot of problems further down the road.
6 Reasons Why You Should Love Your Competitors
October 19, 2007
The attitude of some business owners towards the competition amazes me. Lets face it, no matter what type of business you are in you are going to have competition: And I would hate to be in a business where I didn’t have at least a couple of good competitors. Here’s why:
1. It Means You’re Wanted: If there is very little competition, you have to ask yourself if there is really much of a market for your business. If there’s a lot of demand, it’s realistic to expect some good competition.
2. They’re Not All Bad: I’ve listened to people tell me they have competitors but they’re useless. This is one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard. Don’t fool yourself. If they were all that bad, they wouldn’t still be in business.
3. You Can Benefit From Their Marketing: In all business your product or service needs to be good enough and your marketing needs to be excellent. If your competitors are good marketers, your customers will be exposed to your product or service more often and they’ll be more likely to buy.
Remember most customers don’t buy because they desperately need something. In fact if you sell kitchen’s, they’re just as likely to change their minds and book a holiday instead than they are to buy from another kitchen supplier.
4. They Help You Improve: Good competition will ensure that you constantly try to improve what you have on offer. And this continous improvement will help keep your enthusiasm up, and help you to grow.
5. If They Think You’re Worth Competing Against Then You Are: Initially, I was disappointed that some of my best competitors noticed me almost as soon as I started my plumbing business. After all, they’re big national companies, so I was hoping to fly under the radar for a while.
One of them actually used a keyword hacker to hack into my site, then used what they found to improve their SEO and their Adwords campaign. They even tried to block me from viewing their new landing pages. And at first this irked me a little. Then it dawned on me that they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if they didn’t see me as a good competitor.
6. You Can Learn From Their Improvements: When your competition is constantly improving you can learn from them. For example I liked some of the things my competitors used on their landing pages and this inspired ideas on how I could improve my own. But, this doesn’t mean I decided to copy what they’d done. You should never do that. Use your competitions ideas by all means but make sure you’re offering something different.
