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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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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In a social media world everyone is a content producer- even your business
April 30, 2008
Throughout history their have been gatekeepers to the media space. If you didn’t pay up you didn’t have any access. Business was completely at the whim of organized media to get their messages out to large audiences. That mindset has become ingrained into standard business practice so thoroughly that even today businesses focus almost exclusively on traditional advertising.
Why is that remarkable?
Because the gatekeepers haven’t blocked the internet yet. Anyone with an internet connection and something to say has access to large audiences of people without the constraints that traditional advertising has.
So why haven’t businesses jumped in and taken advantage of this opportunity?
Good question. When you figure it out please tell me. The ability to directly reach your prospects in numerous forms of media is ground breaking. It’s like free money for life. In the digital age everyone is their own media outlet.I think what holds businesses back from taking full advantage of web 2.0 are three things:
1) Fear of losing control of their message.
2) A lack of knowledge and understanding of the medium.
3) Fear of giving away too much information.
Fear of losing control is understandable, but online, rational minds prevail when you are honest and forthright. Sure there are bad apples, but its a small price to pay to engage so many people. Being online and under the watchful eye of your audience can make you a better company. A lack of knowledge is not surprising because of the rapid change in social media. There are resources and companies that specialize in this space to help you get your media plan working. Fear of giving away too much information is based on a scarcity mindset. There is no scarcity of information in an information economy. In fact their may be too much random information. By answering your customers questions you save them valuable time and energy sifting through the internet trying to get at what you already know. When you become a resource, you are building a relationship. You establish familiarity, repetition, rapport, and reciprocity. These are all powerful triggers in people that will make your sales process much easier.
If you aren’t a producer yet; where do you start?
Start simple with a blog. Get the feel for the conversation online and understand RSS. RSS is a method of subscribing to online content that allows you access to it in real time. It powers podcasting which will be your next step. You can get a free blog by going to www.wordpress.com. Podcasting is easy. Sites like www.blogtalkradio.com let you call in and record audio podcasts by phone. They already have an audience that you can tap into. Podcasting is very easy and very inexpensive to do. The next step is video. Video is the hottest thing in media. Video allows you to fully engage your audience. According to Comscore, there were 10 billions videos played by U.S. consumers in December of 2007. That represented 144 million people. Thats a majority of the U.S. population. Your customers are online in a big way. If you aren’t there for them to find, who is?
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Target Marketing
April 19, 2008
Target marketing, in the social media space, is the most powerful way to get your message heard by an engaged audience. The power of online communication is that people parse themselves into precise groupings and pull through the messages that pertain to them. Gone are the days of looking at wide ranging demographics and blasting out a message that will only resonate with a few and interrupt the rest.
The key to target marketing online is to think like your customer. What questions do they have? How do they frame those questions in their minds? Most of the communication online passes through information choke points like search engines and site search. This makes keyword targeting so important. Its the words we use that will dictate whether they find us or not.
A little time spent talking with and informally surveying your target audience will reveal some insightful information on 
which words they use to describe their needs.
They have questions. In order to connect to them, you need answers. And those answers need to be targeted precisely in order to make their way to the top of these information choke points where people can find them. That is where Expertisement comes in. Turn your knowledge into a marketing message that solves peoples needs with high quality content.
Expertisement places your relevant content in exactly the right online places where people are looking for it and allows them access to it when its convenient to them. It doesn’t get any more targeted than that.
By adjusting your keywords and your content, you can reach different audiences with very different messages and not worry about cross contamination.
Start your keyword research at Wordtracker and see what your customers are searching for.
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