Someone else is talking to your customers!

In just one example, Merchant Services / Credit Card Payment providers are talking to clients that are similar to mine. You see this with referrals all of the time, for example when a dentist recommends a trusted orthodontist or a realtor recommends a contractor.

I teach (and practice) finding non-competing businesses that you can align with–to benefit everyone involved. In fact, I offer free (and immediately actionable) marketing consultations with their clients because it drives everyone’s revenue up. And when I help those businesses, it gives me an opportunity to meet new clients…

So who is talking to your customers?

It’s a classic mantra – continue the conversation that is already going in your customer’s head.

Make the message relevant...

In this case, Brookstone is responding to Hurricane Irene’s imminent landfall. They’ve made their products relevant to current events, aligned with current timelines (shipping is free for the next 4 days) and stoked a bit of human emotion…

Brookstone’s email blast is a prime example of how we use current events as part of our message to our customers–you’re just continuing the conversation in their head.

Active marketing should be the lifeblood of your business, but it deserves re-evaluating as part of your entry/exit strategy.

Don’t stop marketing. Sellers tend to wind down their marketing effort as they start shopping their business around. That’s a critical mistake that leaves money on the table for all involved.
Clean up your client list. The more you can segment your client list, the better. Can you identify repeat buyers? Infrequent buyers?
Move those clients to your email list. It’s not enough to have a list, but do you have a good way to contact them?
Drip-feed messaging until your clients ask you to stop (or until they die). If you keep the communication lines open you can keep the sales coming.
Best way to implement…

An email autoresponder (aka pre-written email campaign) is one of the least expensive ways to create a long lasting, niche marketing system to both attract new clients and re-engage existing clients. You can set up a month’s or a year’s worth of personalized messages that will be automatically delivered to clients without any manual intervention on your part.

Here’s what you’ll need:

An autoresponder account. This provides a way to capture users to your email list and a way to distribute messages.
7-10 quality messages. Most businesses have plenty of content – what can you transform into succinct messages?
Sales copy interwoven through your communications. Don’t try to sell in every message-it has to accompany quality content.

I learned sales in spite of a career in web design. I had to leave the ‘profession’ to understand what web design should really focus on…

I was a web-designer/user-experience designer/jack-of-all-trades that lived and breathed design in a previous life. I could give you many reasons why you should use one button layout vs. another, or why your navigation bar should be on the left/right/top/etc. I could concoct the most subtle gradients that would make your logo sparkle…yada, yada, yada.

The only problem was that I was NEVER taught to sell for my client. Had I been focused on really getting the visitor to sign up as a prospect or drive them to the ‘buy’ button I would have been far more effective. But, that also went against some of ‘our’ best practices…go figure. I had to come to terms with the fact that a truly effective (and profitable) website just might be the ugliest damn thing on the web…

So my $.02, don’t get so caught up in the ‘design’, just make sure that it contributes to the bottom line.

My friend Rishi, a big-shot E-commerce expert, sent me on a curious internet treasure hunt. Literally. He started poking at Overstock.com’s use of sponsored product links. You see Overstock carries over 2 million different products through their online store, but they also offer links out to competing products. It’s definitely counter-intuitive. They build up traffic and visitor affinity only to send it elsewhere. Is there another income stream there?

This is an imperfect analysis across their revenue streams, but it does look at some of the components involved.

1. They are in the business first to sell tangible, shippable products-at a great discount. They’ve built a name as the internet’s outlet mall.

2. They make sponsored listings available – aka Google Adsense. Again, that means they are turning traffic away. But, if someone does follow the link they generate income on that click.

3. They’ve added tabs for Real Estate, Autos, and Auctions. These are third-party sites, presumably providing referral fees. Again, they’re sending away traffic, but generating income on that click.

4. They spend substantial money on advertising. Paid advertising can be highly targeted, but doesn’t necessarily account for intent-to-buy. What do they do with the visitor that doesn’t buy? They get an option to click a link to affiliate products-that also represents income.

5. They sell annual memberships. Basically, they eat the shipping fees if you pay to opt-in to an email alert. Again, brilliant. Customers are paying for the email that Overstock sends through a natural e-mail marketing strategy.

There is definitely enough movement of product AND visitor traffic to warrant using sponsored links across their site. Essentially, they are playing the arbitrage game. They pay for traffic (or use established free traffic) and sell it on non-performing buyers for the margin.

What does this mean for the average business owner? First, not all of your prospects are customers. Can you capture enough of their intent to refer them elsewhere? For a profit? I’m making a jump, but sometimes selling leads can be just as profitable as selling tangible products.

Allen Pratt posed a common question in one of LinkedIn’s groups…what do you do with a marketing budget? Responses ranged from television tie-ins to promotional giveaways, but I think the crux is to find your difference (competitive difference), find your audience (highly targeted list), and keep sending them content that will drive towards the sale. Spoiler alert: read to the end…if you don’t track the response, you’ve wasted your budget.

His question:

Bueller, Bueller, Bueller…here’s the marketing class assignment. You have $20K to spend with the expectation that you’d double the retail B2C. Where and how would you spend your ad dollars?

B2C web site with shopping cart exists with 900 hits a month. Twitter and Facebook accounts are set up with approx. 100 followers/friends.

My response:

A couple of questions come to mind:

1. Are you trying to double $10K, $50K, etc.?

2. Are you capturing the email addresses of your current visitors?

3. What is the traffic potential? are you in a very niche market or very big market?

4. Do you have a true differentiation from the competition?

Depending on the answers to these, I would look at:

1. Defining why customers should buy from you- your USP (unique selling proposition)

2. Putting the money into buying a very targeted mailing list and send *multiple* mailings.

3. Capture at least a name and email from everyone hitting the site (that’s willing) and create my own list–then hit it hard with autoresponder messages.

4. Joint-venture or create some kind of alliance to use someone else’s list or piggyback on their mailings.

5. Targeted, response-driven adwords campaign.

Bottom-line: I wouldn’t rely completely on a purely online campaign. People have great success driving users to their site from an offline campaign.

Bottom-bottom-line: You HAVE to be able to measure the response. Track everything!

My second-favorite tv show is a cartoon that I watch with my kids-Phineas and Ferb. (Yes, I’m unabashadly a tv watcher!) True to proper cartoon form, there is a bit of a formula to the show and there are a couple of things that you need to know. First, it’s perpetually summer for these guys. Second, they are always looking for the next cool project to occupy their time.

So, each day starts with a question from Phineas, “Ferb, what do you want to do today?”.

At which point they go off and build some amazingly sophisticated (perhaps impossible) machine for their summertime exploits. During the build sequence, there is always ALWAYS someone to ask them, “aren’t you a little bit young to be…” (insert specialized skill here). And, the answer is always “Yes, yes we are!”.

Finally, Phineas and Ferb are blessed with a big sister that is always trying to catch the boys in the scheme and provide evidence to her mother. For the record, this never pans out the way she would like.

So, let’s start to fit this back into the real world of business. There are several rules that we should follow from Phineas and Ferb:

1. Do something extraordinary each day. Some of the best advice I’ve followed is to work ON your business, not IN your business. Follow that one and you’ll see exponential returns.
2. Don’t worry about the rules-who cares if you’re too ‘young’ to be doing this. Massive action is better than paranoid preparation. We all strive towards perfection, but there is a point where good enough is good enough.
3. Someone is always out to get you. Don’t let that get in your way. Momentum wins!

The vexxt hiatus is over…we traveled to china for the adoption of our daughter. This trip was about family, and getting all of the paperwork done so that we could bring our new daughter home. But, I took every opportunity to soak up a unique culture and the nuances of daily life in china. From this I bring a few observations:

Space is at a premium. Retail space is at a potentially higher premium. We visited several of the local shopping districts; from clothes, souvenirs, jade, electronics, traditional medicine…you name it. In a lot of these areas the stores were essentially stalls packed with goods. Merchandising consisted of showing everything…and hiring young workers to talk with passerbys and lure them in. There was a carnival atmosphere to it; lots of loud music and noisy teenagers. Generally, there wasn’t empty wall space (or if they had it, counter space). It was completely filled with merchandise. Some of the stores spilled onto the sidewalk, they had so much stuff for so little space. Takeaway, you have no excuses to not make do with what you have.
There is no apprehension about asking for the sale. At home, we visit a store in a traditional mall and feel ignored by the sales stuff. There we walked in and were shown merchandise samples by at least 2 employees- at the same time. And no one was deterred if we weren’t interested. And, the sale wasn’t over when you purchased something…they would keep pulling out merchandise until both feet were out of the store. Takeaway, keep asking for the sale.
There is a huge workforce…restaurants had double to triple the number of employees that I expected. There was someone to take the order, someone to deliver the order, someone to serve the order, someone to pour the tea, someone to deliver napkins, etc…Customer Service is alive and well in China.
There was no point of sale system at a lot of the stores…including bigger stores. Purchasing items frequently involved someone hand writing a ticket that you take to a centrally located cashier. You paid the cashier and brought your receipts back to show the clerk that originally wrote your ticket. Then they gave you the merchandise. Takeaway, not sure here…I say get a point of sale system for any retail operation.
People are far more advanced technologically than we give them credit for. In the US there is the notion that China is still undeveloped outside of it’s factories. That is not true. Everyone has a cell phone…and everyone is proficient at communicating with text messages. The internet is very accessible, and the younger generation is probably just as wired as we are. Right now they have the upper hand in outsourced manufacturing, this will spill over in the knowledge management/IT fields.
Production quality is outstanding for their television programs and commercials. Gone is the idea of state run, low-budget entertainment. Quality is not taken for granted.
There is no concept of a line or queue. Clarification, there may be a line, but that never stopped anyone from ignoring it and proceeding to the counter. Takeaway- if you need something, go ask for it.
Now, the solutions that we saw may not *translate* exactly to our businesses, but with some tweaking the underlying lesson is spot on. Most people would shut down if their shopping experience was as frenetic and noisy as we observed, but they got your attention and continued the conversation.

I recently took my son to the Children’s Museum to see the various exhibits. Especially one of our favorite parts of the museum—the ‘funhouse’. There are two rooms that offer visual illusions and/or induce vertigo.

Since I’m not the tallest of guys, I prefer the room that makes me look like a giant. I can stand in one corner of the room and appear 8 feet tall on the observation camera. Or, I guess I could go to the other end where I appear to be less than half of that. Either way, the different angles and scale changes really affect your perception of an otherwise simple room. My son loves to position us so that he looks the taller of the two (not too much of a stretch, but still…).

The other room is absolutely normal. No visual illusions there, or so it seems. But, it’s built on a slant that you don’t realize until you’ve stepped inside. Once you enter the room it’s obviously tilted, significantly. But, it’s enclosed so that everything appears level. Your inner ears (and gravity) tell you the opposite.

These are exactly the little unexpected changes in perception that give us pause. And teach us something. The real estate market has tanked and no one is buying, right? Not really. There is always a market, you just have to work a little harder to avoid becoming invisible.

I saw a house for sale recently that I drive by daily. Only this time the sign read “Waterfront Property”. There is no real waterfront in this area. We aren’t by the ocean, the lakes aren’t that close, so what were they doing?!

They were referring to what is probably the smallest creek. ever. In the backyard, you could see a teeny-tiny line of water running through the property. They weren’t lying, and they weren’t particularly serious.

But, they were getting a much deserved second-look from everyone driving by. I don’t know if it was the real estate agent with a sense of humor or a badgering homeowner, but it was brilliant. You could see people chuckle as they passed by.

That sign wasn’t up very long, it changed to a regular sale sign; although that wasn’t up for much longer. We can only speculate if that contributed to someone’s decision to take a look, but it was obvious that a little tweak to someone’s perspective deserves a little extra thought.

Art has always been more than merely painting pictures on canvas. But in the late 60’s it began moving in a very different direction. Suddenly the piece of art wasn’t so important to the artists.

Huh?

It wasn’t so much that the art wasn’t precious, its that the value was in the idea. Great, everyone has ideas. Anyways, they latched onto the idea of maximum efficiency.

In 1967, Sol LeWitt stated the following:

The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

Essentially, he said that it was his job to think of the art and that it didn’t matter who implemented it. Kind of like outsourcing the Mona Lisa…

So, let’s dial it back into business terms. We want the IDEA to drive the business. OR…you have to work on the business, not IN the business. Otherwise you’re just trading hours for dollars.

Still a little vague? To convert it into a usable concept for us, your idea must have value. Just outsource the details. The best way to do this is to focus on the end goal. You want customers, you want sales, and you want repeat business. You also want time. You’ve got to enable marketing and education to occur even when you’re sleeping. You have to put systems in place that solicit feedback, acquire leads and close sales on autopilot. If your customers keep coming, and your business keeps rolling along, you suddenly have the freedom to step back and let the machine run.

What will it take to get the machine started?