Did you make any new friends today?

Over the course of fifteen years, I have purchased five Saturn compact cars. In that same time frame, I bought four Gateway computers. Setting aside for the moment my incredible talent for choosing brands destined for extinction (perhaps Kellogg should take note…I do love their cereals and my patronage seems to be a kind of kiss of death), I think the bigger picture here is about brand loyalty. For me and Saturn and Gateway, that all began with relationship-building.

No matter how big or small your business, your success is dependent on relationships, e.g. with existing customers, with potential customers, with vendors, with contractors, with your employees, with your partners. The cigar-chewing, acid-tongued executive may foster fear, but he also nurtures contempt. And in the end, everyone with whom he does business knows that he just doesn’t care.

The proof of all this for me is that if Saturn and Gateway hadn’t gone the way of the Triceratops, I wouldn’t be buying their brands anymore anyway. Why? Because they were like the small town yokels that hit it big on Broadway and then forgot about their roots and the folks back home. Too busy to care, only interested in making a buck, they never called, they never wrote, they never sent flowers anymore. (Actually, they never sent flowers at all, but they both used to offer free services and perks and promos that evaporated as soon as success sullied their souls.)

The lesson then is to never stop working on those relationships because you want your customers, your loyal employees, your dependable contractors and vendors to be around for a long, long time.

Today’s vocab will help you begin to build those important relationships.

Questionnaire –Never underestimate the power of this simple document. Use it to gather clients’ demographic information, their motivation for buying, products they’d like to see developed, complaints they might have. Then post it to your website, shoot it out in an email, throw it on a postcard and into a mailbox. Never stop information gathering. It will keep you connected and show you care.

Referral—It’s time to start naming names, imposing on relationships and just generally making a pest of yourself (at least with your family.) With current clients, offer an incentive for referrals—a bonus, a reward, a gift. Tell family members they’re out of the will if they don’t give you at least three names, then follow up, and ask those three for more referrals. Always remember to ask for a referral or three and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your network and customer base will grow. interest in the product.

Social media—Okay, if you don’t know what social media is, may I be the first to welcome you to the planet earth. That aside, just because you know what it is , doesn’t necessarily mean you’re using it or taking advantage of its fantastic capability to build your business. If not, then it is time. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc. We’re going to look at them and you WILL learn how to use them.

Finally, remember when you used to come home from school and your mother would ask you, “Did you make any new friends today?” When you’re operating your small business, you need to ask yourself that question everyday. (Quite likely, it won’t annoy you as much as it did when mom asked you.)

Photo credit: Louisa Stokes, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1722

Are You Getting Enough Of It?

You have the greatest small business in the world. But if no one knows you’re there, does it really matter? In order to get your customers’ business, you need to first grab their attention. Fortunately, there are a multitude of ways to make sure your business is getting enough of it.

Today’s vocab focuses on three proven attention-getting methods. We’ll only review them briefly here, but in the weeks ahead, we’ll examine them in-depth to demonstrate how they work and how you can make the most of each one:

Newsletter. Distribute your newsletter to your customer base and fill it with all kinds of information they’ll find useful. That means, no matter how interesting your cat, how cute your kids, or how delicious your Aunt Joan’s eggplant/fig/nacho chip dip is, your audience probably won’t be interested. (That is of course, unless your business has something to do with cats, kids or chip dips.) But if your target market isn’t interested, they won’t read your newsletter. And if they won’t read it, you’ve just wasted a lot of time and money putting it together and distributing it. Instead, send out a low-cost online newsletter filled with the latest info about your industry, upcoming promotions or discounts you’re featuring, the latest breakthroughs or products on the market and more. Remember, your newsletter should provide value to your customers so that when they receive it, they will read it, not delete it.

Optimized. When you optimize your website with carefully chosen keywords, you increase the volume and quality of traffic coming to your site via search engines. Of course, just like a brick and mortar store, once you get your customer through the front door, you exponentially increase the chance that they’ll convert to a paying customer. Optimizing your website is no minor task. It’s hard work, it’s on-going and if you contract the work out to a professional (which I highly recommend you do, because how much do you really know about algorithms?) it can be expensive. However, the payback can be substantial and well worth the investment.

Promotion—According to the Promotion Marketing Association Coupon Council, almost 80 percent of Americans use coupons. That means there are a whole lot of folks out there looking for a great deal. It’s up to you to give them an offer they can’t refuse. Promotions include everything from temporary discounts to contests to sweepstakes to give-away’s. Spend some time thinking about what you can afford to give away. By offering a promotion to your customers such as a free consultation, a discount or a rebate, you can potentially increase your customer base and your sales, while spending a minimal amount on the actual promotion itself.

Make sure your business gets enough attention by testing one of the methods mentioned above. By applying even one of these strategies to your own biz, you could be getting all the attention your heart (and business) desires.

Photo credit: Federico Stevanin, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=149

Happy Holidays

From all of us at The Write Effect to all of you...happy holidays and may we all experience an abundant, prosperous new year!!


Photo credit: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/download_file_captcha.php?pid=24555&sid=3

Get found!! Key words to help you entice your audience!

A few years ago, a friend and I took a jaunt to downtown Minneapolis to attend a rally where someone we greatly admired was scheduled to speak. In search of refreshments, we separated, agreeing to meet up in ten minutes at a designated spot.

This would have been fine, except that when I arrived at the spot, he wasn’t there. What followed was 90 minutes of me frantically searching for him in a crowd of 92,000. (This was pre-cellphone days, so apart from sending up a flare, I had no way to contact him.) After the event ended we did meet up again at our car, but I had missed the entire rally.

If you’re not applying proven marketing principles—whether online or in direct marketing—you may find that you’re business is going to get lost among the thousands and thousands of others out there. And what a waste of time.

That's why you need to commit these vocab words to memory this week. They are critical to getting you found and arriving at your marketing success:

Keyword marketing—This entails utilizing keywords and key phrases relevant to your business, products, services and customer’s searches in your online marketing. You can research keywords yourself by using free keyword tools online, such as those at webconfs.com or google adwords, but if you have the budget, consider hiring a professional to do it for you. Keyword marketing is a complex, yet critical process and the search engines’ ever-changing rules make it one that requires you stay continuously up-to-date. (Sort of like your accountant and the tax laws.)

Link text—Link text are words contained in a hyperlink upon which your site visitor clicks in order to take them to another web page. Preferably on your own website. Preferably to your order page.

Marketing plan—Your marketing plan outlines your strategy for all the great marketing you’re going to do to sell your product or service to millions of people. It’s one of the most important elements in your business plan and should contain a workable budget as well as realistic action items. Getting asked to appear on Oprah to become a gazillionairre does not qualify as realistic.



Photo Credit: Simon Howden http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=404

Work Gets in the Way of Life

Sometimes work gets in the way of…well…everything...especially at this time of year. I've got more than enough to do shopping, baking, wrapping and pretending I'm enjoying all this, thank you. I don't need something like WORK to get in my way.

Wait. Yes, I do. I mean...if I want to eat and pay bills and stuff, I do.

Juggling is one of the hardest parts about being a solopreneur or small business owner. It’s easy to get sidetracked and lose your focus, which is what’s happened to me these past few days. BUT, a few extra minutes after hours, when the phone has stopped ringing and clients have stopped making perfectly reasonable, albeit time-consuming requests, and I’m back on schedule. So, away we go…

Guerilla Marketing—No, this has nothing to do with Dian Fossey. The term Guerilla Marketing was coined by legendary ad man, Jay Conrad Levinson, to describe a form of marketing and advertising that is inventive, original and aggressive on a small or even non-existent budget. Think unconventional, unusual and inexpensive—exactly what you’re looking for.

Help—While there are a multitude of “H” words we could explore (HTML, Hits, Hypertext, et al) for our purposes, HELP is the best “H” word you can focus on at this point. In other words, ask for it when you need it. Don’t try to go it alone, even if most people spend more at Starbucks on a daily basis than you have in your monthly ad budget. Find online forums, free web sites, info articles, blogs (like this one) and ask for HELP!

Inbound Marketing—The opposite of Outbound Marketing. These days, there are a million ways for your audience to BLOCK your outbound message. Think no call list, spam blockers, TIVO (to fast forward through those annoying commercials), satellite radio, etc., etc. Inbound marketing works on the premise that tools such as Facebook, Twitter, web sites, blogs, free downloadable white papers and e-newsletters bring warm, qualified leads to YOU! More about Inbound Marketing in the weeks ahead.

That’s it for today kids. Keep studying and whatever you do, DON’T GET BEHIND. (In other words, do what I say, not what I do.)

Back to School--Back to Work

This is my attempt at recycling and making sure my blog is "green." In other words, I've been busy traveling for business and so am "repurposing" a post from September.

When one is traveling for business, it's as if the Blue Fairy has come along, swept you out of your life and into some alternate reality where there is nothing but overcrowded airports, bad coffee, flight attendants who snap at you like you're five, and hotel rooms with broken thermostats. In the meantime, life...your life, the life that you left behind...goes on without you. And when the traveling is done, and the Blue Fairy drops you on your ass back into your actual reality, you feel a bit disoriented.

Thus is my rationale for recycling this post. It's time to get back to work children. See you next time with something new!

Lately, I’ve found myself lingering in the Back to School department at Target, longing for the days of new lunch boxes and a 64-pack of Crayola crayons, remembering what it was like to get new clothes and shoes and have my mom take my picture clutching my new Big Chief Tablet right before I stepped onto the bus. Just because that was a million years ago (sometime during the Johnson administration as a matter of fact--yes, I am THAT old) doesn’t mean we can’t still focus on learning.

Here’s your next batch of DIY marketing vocab. Take notes. There just might be a pop quiz later:

Direct Marketing—Seems pretty self-explanatory, but can encompass many things, including Direct Mail. In a nutshell, Direct Marketing targets a very specific audience. Instead of taking a shotgun approach and mailing out your brochure to everyone in the United States, you build a profile of your target market (determined by demographics and psychographics) and tailor your message or offer directly to them.

For example, you want to make sure that if you’re selling genuine fur-lined computer monitors, you’re only marketing to those folks who would have a use for that sort of thing. My guess is no one from PETA should be on your list.

Direct Response is much the same as Direct Marketing/Direct Mail, except that your marketing piece includes a means for the potential customer to respond to you, either via coupon, mail back request for additional information, or order form.

Eighty-Twenty Rule—Also known as Pareto’s Principle, the 80/20 rule states that 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue. As such, it’s important to identify that 20% and make sure you’re managing those accounts closely. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to treat that other 80% like redheaded stepchildren. On the contrary, all your prospective and existing customers should get as much “love” as you can give them. It’s just that that 20% is likely your bread and butter—treat them well and they’ll continue to keep you in business.

Full Position—This is really a newspaper term, (“What? What’s a newspaper?”) but can still be applicable if you’re utilizing ad space online or even in your local shopper, small town news or a newsletter in which you’ve purchased ad space. Essentially, it’s the most effective placement for your ad because your ad is completely surrounded by an actual news article, making it highly likely that the reader will peruse your message while they’re busily reading the surrounding article.

That’s all for today kids, this being the first day of school and all. Be prepared for more info to come! Class dismissed.

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

Julie Andrew’s singing “Doe a Deer” in The Sound of Music keeps echoing in my head. I wish it would stop. But, I think there’s a good reason for it. When you’re starting your own venture into DIY marketing, you need the primer, the Dick and Jane early reader, the ABC’s, if you will.

So let’s begin:

Advertising—Both verb and noun...it’s the act of promoting your business and the final result of your marketing campaign. It’s what you’re going to do for now until you’re so incredibly successful that you can afford to hire a big Madison Ave Agency to do it for you. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Brand—Who are you? Or rather, who is your business? If you’re a consumer (and who isn’t) you know more about brand than you realize. Once you establish your brand identity (which we’ll do in the weeks ahead) you’ll know exactly what your brand stands for--your brand message and what it promises. Then all your advertising will grow organically from there. (Ooooh, that sounds so Oprah, doesn’t it?)

Competition—Who are you up against? Huge multinational corporations or the mom and pop shop on the corner? This is an important factor in your marketing, so don’t think it doesn’t matter. Start looking at your competitors ads and websites. What are they promising? How is your business different, and most importantly, better?

This is just the start of course, and it’s enough to keep you busy for now. (C’mon now—just be patient. You didn’t start reading Tolstoy the minute you learned the alphabet did you?)

Photo Credit: jscreationzs:
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1152