Creating monogamous customers
May 24, 2008
Guy walks into a bar. He goes up to a girl, makes some small talk and goes for the “sale” … Slap!
Guy walks up to another girl… Slap!
Again… Slap!
Slap!
Slap!
Slap!
Bingo! We have a taker. It only took 20 tries, but sore face and all a “sale” was made. It was a fantastic 5% closing rate. This guy should be in sales.
Guy never talks the the girl again. Next night, new place …. Slap!
Do you get the idea? This isn’t a poorly told dirty joke. This is your sales process. I call it “one night stand marketing.”
Now contrast that with guy #2. He walks up to a girl and says “those pants look great on you, Macy’s has nice cuts like that, but in some really wild colors, you should check em out.”
“I will” she says. “Whats your name…?”
“I’m Roger” he replies. “Can I take you out for coffee some time?”
Do you see where this is going? He is building up familiarity and creating a relationship. Pretty soon he is going to be spending lots of time with this girl and making lot’s of “sales.” That’s the power of relationship marketing. When you ask for the sale too soon, you end up getting slapped. If you have a sales force of direct sellers, you can make their lives alot easier by engaging in relationship marketing. Build trust by offering your customers something of value and deliver benefits. When it’s time to ask for the sale, they will be very likely to respond in a positive way.
I call this creating monogamous customers. These are people that you can sell to over and over again. They like you. They trust you. And they are the key to doubling or tripling your profits. Monogamous customers are educated about your services and require less customer support. They require very little in additional marketing. And they can become mavens that help you promote your business.
Using all of the communication tools available in web 2.0, you can start making real connections with your customers by answering their questions and giving them immediate benefits to forge lasting relationships.
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Relationship marketing- the key to making the big sale!
May 21, 2008
The biggest reason most sales never happen is because the salesman asks for the sale too soon. Without trust and understanding, you can’t reach the point where a sale can happen. That’s where relationship marketing comes into play. When you have a relationship, you have the foundation for business dealings.
How do you form that relationship in the business world? You do it by giving value. By being credible. You deliver results first and then you follow up with a call to action that takes the relationship to the next level. Every successful encounter leads to more and more trust.
As the trust grows, so does the potential for bigger and bigger sales. And those sales create valuable testimonials and social proof that lead to more and more business. Relationships are critical and they start by showcasing your talents in a way that benefits your target prospect.
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They call it branding- I call it brand suicide
May 19, 2008
Most advertising being done today doesn’t actually result in a positive return on investment (ROI). Rather than admit failure, the person placing the ad seeks to justify it by calling it branding. “It was a powerful branding campaign” they say. Clever move. How do you quantify the value of something like a brand? You don’t. It’s not easily measured.
Branding is important. Recognizable brands can charge twice as much as their non-branded competitors for the same product or service. That’s called brand equity. The reason that can happen is because Brands have a relationship with their market. They have made themselves liked and trusted. Which brings me to my brand suicide point.
How can you create a positive brand relationship with your market if you are constantly interrupting them with ads that offer no real value to them? What starts off as slightly annoying becomes outright rejection. And when the time comes when they might actually need what it is that you are selling, they have built up a conscious or unconscious distaste for you. That is brand suicide sold to you as a “powerful branding campaign.”
Positive branding comes from giving people what they want, how they want, when they want; before they even know they want it. You can only achieve that sort of precision through online marketing that puts real knowledge in your customers hands. Turning your sales message into a teaching message is going to create familiarity, trust and a higher perceived value. All trademarks of a strong brand.
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Hope marketing- the fast track to sales oblivion
May 14, 2008
Hope is a powerful tool to get you through tough times. However, it is not a marketing approach. If your sales process is so bad that you need to place ads and cross your fingers… THEN YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE.
Don’t worry though. There is a better way. Its called Expertisement. It replaces your advertisements that go off in all directions, just trying to hit that one right person at the right 
time and instead turns your knowledge into highly valuable content that your best prospects are looking for. Hope marketing is like confetti. Expertisement is like a sledge hammer on the head of a nail. Deliver results and the sales won’t be far behind.
Hope marketing budgets are bloated and ineffective. Their ineffectiveness leads to more poor decisions and if not fixed, they can lead to the demise of an otherwise good business.
Your knowledge is your best marketing asset and it’s the thing that your clients want most from you.
So give it to them!
Results matter. Your marketing should give both you and your clients sound results. When it does, the only hope you will have is the hope that you can grow your business fast enough to meet demand.
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Repurpose your content- one message many mediums
May 12, 2008
Working in multiple modalities will also allow your audience lots of options to consume your content in a way that best suits their learning style and schedule.
I like to start in video because that is the most well received way of getting ideas. From the video its easy to pull out the audio sound to create an audio podcast. And from their you can load those files onto your blog where your RSS feed will deliver the link to the files to your subscribers and to itunes. Blogs are also good for linking to your videos on Youtube and vice versa.
Create one high quality message and get it to the masses in multi-media fashion at the push of a few buttons. Isn’t life in the digital age great?
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Turn your competitors best offer into your free offer.
May 7, 2008
Chances are that you aren’t alone in your market. You have competitors. You want to be the leading authority in your market and Expertisement is a powerful way of doing just that. But if you want to dominate your competition and amass market share, you need to turn your competitors best offer into your free offer.
Take their unique selling points, the thing that gives them an advantage in the market, and turn into something that you give away in exchange for prospects contact information. The effects of this are extremely powerful. You take their cash cow and turn it into your sacrificial pig. The perceived value of their offering is going to plummet, while your stock as an expert is going to climb. Deliver a direct benefit through education and interlaced into the content is going to be the education about your product and why its the “must have solution” to their needs. Make the give away a lead-in to your offering and funnel customers into your sales channel. This is called the “give away gateway.”
With your database of their prospects you can start taking their business and create more demand for your services. It’s not unlikely that you will be able to raise your prices and expand into new markets.
Google has done this fantastically well from a service model. They provide numerous free services in the areas of: analytics, landing page optimization, RSS readers, widgets and web developer tools.
All of these service are a lead in to their main revenue generator Adwords.
What can you give away that your competitors charge for? How will it lead into your offering and position you as the go to source?
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8 ways to communicate your message to an online audience for maximum effect
May 2, 2008
The typical way that businesses communicate with their audience online leaves much to be desired. Its generally a lot of formulaic sales messages or bland corporate rhetoric. In fact it makes people feel like employees. And since they aren’t on the payroll, they can just turn you off and they do so with great pleasure. Online audiences can engage more deeply than traditional audiences, but they can also disengage at the click of a mouse.To reach a receptive audience, you need to communicate with them in a way that makes the most sense to their reason for being online. Online audiences are searching for information to answer their questions and new forms of entertainment. Knowing that, we can tailor our messages to give them the direct benefits that they are looking for.
At Expertisement.com we have have broken content creation down into 8 main templates. They are as follows:
1) Story telling- Audiences love a good story with its twists and turns, anticipation and resolution. Stories play heavily on metaphor and mental imagery. Stories allow each viewer to add to the imagery with their own thoughts and interpretations, thus making it their own.
2) Public service- Companies are always doing something good for their communities. Public service shows the audience that you share their same concerns. You can use public service to organize around ideas in the online world and in the offline world. Public service features build a positive brand relationship and pave the way for future communications.
3) How to- One of the most common searches online is for information on “how to” do something. Showing someone “how to” do something gives them a direct benefit and opens the doorway to future business. Make your “how to” features complimentary to your business, so the information that you give moves them closer to needing your products or services.
4) Presentations- Convert your powerpoint presentations and public speaking engagements into online media that you can share with the rest of the industry. Presentations are great for positioning yourself as an expert.
5) Interview- Bring in a reporter or show host to ask you questions. The two person dialog is interesting to watch and can make it easier for first-time or less experienced communicators.
6) Infotainment- Make your blatant marketing message fun and exciting to watch. A blender company called Blendtec producers a show called Will it Blend? that showcases their blenders standing up to the challenge of blending iphones, marbles, and even picket signs. What is really smart about what they do is they create a question that people are dying to know the answer to. Everyone wants to see the blender fail, but when it doesn’t, they are awed by it. Its a powerful testimonial to the strength of the equipment. Another brilliant thing they do is tie their shows into current news stories, so they also get picked up in search. The iphone & writers strike episode are great examples of this.
7) Episodic shows- Create a weekly show that people become used to searching out. Or better yet deliver it by RSS. This is a powerful way to build large audiences. You build familiarity to your audience that can segue nicely into sales and other promotions.
Interactive classes- Teach a complex subject that will in turn lower the barrier to future sales. This strategy is great if you have a new concept that your audience isn’t completely familiar with and that lack of knowledge keeps them from buying. You can further enhance your class with interactive elements like comments, forums, phone call-ins and even more advanced means like membership sites. Membership sites can even become a new revenue source, creating continuity income.
However you decide to reach your audience, be sure to offer immediate benefits to them and they will return the favor with sales and word of mouth marketing.
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