Aspire » local business

10 Ways to Take Control of your Marketing

Shawn Kinkade — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:25:05 +0000

Does your marketing suck? Wouldn’t you like to strap on your mind control helmet and make your target market sit up and listen to all the great things you could do for them?

There are times when marketing feels like black magic…or maybe rocket science, but the reality is there are proven and well understood principles of marketing that, if followed, will get the right people raising their hands and asking to learn more about your product or service.

It’s not a silver bullet – these principles are fairly easy to understand, but they can be difficult to actually put into practice. The good news is that you don’t have to be perfect off the bat – most of your competitors aren’t very good at marketing either (just look around at a lot of the marketing targeting you these days). With a little bit of knowledge and effort, you’ve got a great opportunity to stand out and take control of your marketplace!

What are these tried and true principles? Let’s take a look:

1. Have several marketing strategies active at all times

Your target market needs to see your message many times before it even sinks in. Running multiple strategies at all times will make sure that message is out there and effective. Ideally a mature business would have up to 10 different strategies running at once – which sounds like a lot, but several of them are stuff you need to be doing no matter what (website, networking, etc.).

2. Focus your marketing message very tightly

This actually means two things – you need to have a very detailed idea of who your target market is and you need to understand their needs and the problems that you’re solving. The more precise you can be with the message and the target, the more likely they will respond to it.

3. Have a consistent message across all mediums

Marketing is all about consistency. The worst thing you could do is run a shotgun approach in terms of your message across different mediums (which is what happens when you don’t have an overall marketing plan). In order for your message to sink in – you need to be actively promoting it and you have to be consistent across the board.

4. Have a very clear next step

You might have a great product and a really enticing marketing campaign, but if you don’t clearly lay out what you want your target audience to do, nothing will happen. Do you want them to call you? Go to your website? Send you an email? Visit your location? Whatever it is, make it easy and make it very, very clear (painfully clear). Are you frustrated that you’re not getting calls? Maybe it’s because you don’t have a clear call to action!

5. Track where your opportunities are coming from

Marketing can be frustrating and expensive…especially when you don’t know what’s working and what’s not working. If you have an advertisement that’s not driving any sales, you need to stop spending money on it – which you can only do if you know it’s not driving any sales! Conversely, if you found a winner, it might make sense to double down and invest more. There are lots of ways to track things, especially with technology options, but you have to make it a priority and plan it out ahead of time.

6. Make sure your message is Dramatically Different from your competitors

The path of least resistance when it comes to advertising is to look around and copy what seems to be effective from your competitors. Unfortunately that just means you look like everyone else and there’s no reason to pay attention to your message! If possible, develop a Dramatic Difference when it comes to what you offer. If you can’t reach a dramatic difference, then do whatever you can to stand out.

7. Focus on your existing customers first

Your best chance of success is to sell to people who already Know, Like and Trust you – your existing customers. Are there are other problems you could help them solve? What could you do for them to either generate additional revenue and/or make them love you even more? Give them what they want and they will reward you and say great things about you!

That doesn’t mean not marketing to prospective customers, but you should have a weighted mix of activities that include upselling and cross selling to your existing customers..

8. Stay in touch with past, current and potential customers

You must have a list of all your past and current customers and you should have a database of all your prospective customers who are in your pipeline. And with those lists, you need to actively stay in touch with them on a regular basis. That could be a newsletter, maybe a card in the mail or a regular ‘special’ offer you make…anything that keeps you top of mind when they’re ready to buy.

9. Give your buyers a Real Reason to Believe in you

The world is way too noisy these days and your prospective customers aren’t going to believe big claims of how you can help them…unless you give them some proof. You could start with Social Proof – testimonials from your raving fans will get people to believe. You could also offer a meaningful guarantee that shows the confidence you have in your product or service – make it a no risk or at least low risk proposition and they’re likely to believe it’s real and give you a shot to help them.

10. Make sure you can be found online

These days, if I can’t easily find you online, then you may as well not exist. Even if your business isn’t going to sell anything online, you need to be found online for the sake of credibility. To most people you don’t have a real business if they can’t find you on Google. A professional, clean website is the starting point, but you should also have some presence on Social Media and you should understand how local search works (i.e. Google Places, Yahoo local, etc.).

Are you controlling your marketing? Score yourself on how many of these 10 that you’re doing well with. If you’re not doing well with at least 5 of these, it’s likely your marketing sucks! Now what would you like to do about it? If you’d like a 3rd party perspective on how to get better from a trusted, licensed professional business coach – contact me for a free consultation.

Did I miss anything? What marketing principles are you struggling with? I’d love to hear your thoughts, share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

Similar Posts:

Great Marketing and a Local Search Visibility tool

Shawn Kinkade — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:19:00 +0000

photo by nolifebeforecoffee

Can your customers find your business when it comes to searching locally?

Back in April when Google released / updated Google Places they also shared that 20% of all searches done on Google included location…translating to nearly 3 Billion searches using Google data from March!!!

Beyond that, a recent study done by comScore and 15miles that asked ‘What’s the first thing you use when searching for local business information?’ had some interesting results on Local Search…

As you might expect, the large majority of consumers look online first, but the statistics vary quite a bit by age range. The blended number for everyone was that 70% look online first,

55 and older going online – 56% first
35 to 54 going online – 69% first and
18 to 34 going online – 81% first

Combine those two ideas and it’s pretty clear that if you have a business with a local presence…if you sell locally at all, you need to be found through local search results.

Easy Tool to Use

One local search company is helping you figure out where you stand with an easy to use, helpful tool. AdCuda has created a local search visibility tool that is not only a really helpful tool, it’s a brilliant example of how to market effectively.

Click over to the tool using the link above and you’ll see the opportunity to enter the name of your business along with your primary zip code. Hit enter and you’ll get back results on whether you are listed in 10 popular local search listings or not, a letter grade on how you did and an easy to read table of the offerings you could select from AdCuda if you wanted to improve your results.

Great Marketing

What makes it great marketing? First of all it’s easy to use and easy to grasp – the business benefit / outcome they deliver is getting you listed and helping you get found with local search. The tool quickly gives you a clear picture on whether you need help or not.

The tool and the other information on their site also demonstrates their expertise and credibility. You don’t need to guess if they know what they’re doing, they’ll show they understand how things work.

Finally – it’s totally a no-pressure approach. They don’t save your information, you can try the tool out as often as you like and the resulting offers / information give you a wide range of affordable choices that clearly outline what you’ll get. There’s enough information that you could probably do the work yourself…but it would be much easier to have them do it.

What’s your grade on local search visibility? If you haven’t been aware of it and you sell locally at all, it’s a low cost way to get a great boost to your visibility. Share your thoughts on the Local Search Visibility tool or local search in general, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

Similar Posts:

3 Tools to help you get found locally

Shawn Kinkade — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:09:32 +0000

One of the keys to success with small business (and one of the challenges) is that your potential customers need to be able to find you before they can actually spend any money with you.

Of course you also need to have a product or service that solves their problem, presented in such a way that they get what you’re doing and they see the value (and how you’re different than others in your space). And of course you need to be great at delivering that product or service…all the while developing that difference that makes you Remarkable (just like these 3 Kansas City Businesses have done).

However it all starts with being found – you have to be found first if you want more business. And the best place to be found is where people are already looking…which is online!

The good news is that it’s getting easier and easier to get your business out there every single day. At a minimum you should register with a directory like The Finder in Kansas City. They have free listings or some low cost options that can really help boost your exposure.

On top of that – here are 3 other tools / strategies that can help you raise your online profile for your business.

Get Listed

The first one is a really helpful site called GetListed.org. Get Listed allows you to enter your business name and your location / zip code and they will do a local search and see if you are listed in the top local search directories (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp and Best of the Web). It takes all of 30 seconds to find out if you need to do anything with those directories.

On top of that, they have a lot of resources and information to help you understand how all of this local search stuff works. Great site!

Get a Video for your business

The next site is Pixability.com. Pixability has an interesting model for helping business owners get professional quality video for their business promotion (website, youtube, blog, etc.). They send you a camera, have you shoot some basic footage of what you want covered in the video. You send the camera back, they edit and combine the basic video with text, voiceover, graphics or whatever makes sense on what you want…and you get a professional looking video for a pretty reasonable price.

Video is a hot topic right now – because people want a quick and easy way to see what you’re doing – video is often a great way to quickly get their attention and make your case. Especially if you have a business with some visual interest.

Get Found on Google

Google is the 800 pound gorilla of search engines. If you’re only going to spend time or effort in one place – it should be with Google, they handle 60+ percent of all search engine traffic.

The good news is that Google is constantly innovating, adding new tools (for free) and they make it pretty easy to get up and running. The first place to start from a local search perspective is Google Places, create or claim your business and fill out the profile. Once you’re up and running, you can also use the analytics to see how many people found you, how they found you and what keywords they were searching for when they found you.

First step is to make sure you’ve got a quality website (doesn’t have to be expensive, but at least professional) and then make sure that you are giving people a real chance to find you online.

What tools or tactics are you using to get found online? Are you where you want to be when it comes to this stuff? Share your thoughts or questions below in the comments – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

Similar Posts:

Do you Gnome your Customers well?

Shawn Kinkade — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:50:13 +0000

photo by Per Ola Wiberg

Although it’s starting to get too hot, it’s still gardening season and my wife has been doing a lot of work on our yard and flowers. Some of it’s clean-up and the stuff you have to do every year, but a lot of it is finding new plants and flowers and figuring out what’s going to live and what’s not (and why).

We’re within a 5 mile drive of at least 1/2 dozen places that sell plants – several big box type of stores and a few local nursery operations.

The big corporate stores compete almost entirely on price – although they’re not necessarily the cheapest across the board, they are generally going to have lower prices. However the overall quality is pretty suspect (unless you get there the day of a new shipment) and you are unlikely to get any real help or service.

It’s tough competition for the local stores…or is it?

Earning the business

We were joking last night that the local nursery has become a daily stop, but the truth is that we have gone there a lot lately – partly because it’s that time of year, but mostly because they’ve really earned the business.

On a typical visit, my wife will locate one of the several wandering employees and ask several questions (“The Coleus we planted 2 weeks ago is getting shredded by something, what’s doing it and what can we do?”, “We’ve got a dry shady corner – what’s likely to do well there?” – etc.).

Not only are the employees happy to answer her questions (even sometimes spending 15 to 20 minutes going into details) but they’ve all been very knowledgeable – clearly they enjoy what they do, they take it seriously and they like to help people.

So the prices might be slightly higher (although not always) but the service, the expertise and the selection make it a really easy choice to pay a bit of a premium. And…not only are we loyal customers, but my wife has probably shared her experience with a dozen people (all of them interested and looking for a better place to shop for plants) in the last 4 weeks – I have to believe that’s helped their business.

What are you doing in your business?

When you look at how you interact with your customers, are you generating loyalty and stories they’ll tell to other people? Are you training and incenting your employees to go out of their way and really deliver value and good will with every interaction they have?

I’d love to hear other examples or ideas of companies that are getting it right – share you thoughts in the comments below!

By the way – in case your interested, it turns out that caterpillars love Coleus and about the only thing you can do about it is pick them off.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

Similar Posts:

What can 5 Guys teach you about business?

Shawn Kinkade — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:03:47 +0000

I had the chance to go to 5 Guys Burgers and Fries over the long weekend (the closest one for me is over in Olathe on 119th and Blackbob.

If you haven’t been to 5 Guys, it’s a burger franchise originally started in Washington D.C. about 20 years ago and it’s growing really fast. They do one thing really well – and that’s more than enough reason to make a 25 minute trip to pick up a really good burger!

Although they’re fast food, you will wait a while to get your food – generally there are some lines and more importantly, they don’t start cooking your burger until you order it, so it comes out fresh and custom made with your fixins.

As I was waiting for my burger this weekend, I thought about what really made this an excellent operation – and how that could apply to any business.

Focus on your Strengths

Something that every business would benefit from is the idea of finding that one thing you do really well (better than almost anyone) and just focusing on that.

5 Guys does burgers and fries. You can get variations on that basic idea (cheese, bacon, a whole bunch of toppings) but the centerpiece is the burger – and they do a great job with that burger!

What does your business do better than almost anyone else? Is that your primary (almost single) focus? If not, why not?

Keep it simple

This kind of goes along with focusing on your strength, but consider the menu at 5 Guys:

That’s it – they almost have to stretch to get a full menu out of that. The toppings are free, the refills are free and everything is very straightforward. The potatoes are from Idaho, they only use peanut oil and they don’t have any freezers in the stores (only coolers). This keeps it easy for the employees, easy for the customers and keeps things moving.

Could you simplify your products? How about your pricing? Do all of your employees really understand everything your business does? If not, maybe you should simplify.

Invest in the Product

If you’re not familiar with 5 Guys, that may be due to the fact that they don’t advertise – instead they spend their marketing budget on secret shoppers that instantly reward employees with cash bonuses when they see things being done the right way.

The philosophy is that the best thing they can do is to continue making the product and service the best that it can be and word of mouth will take care of the rest. Judging by the lines I’ve seen when I’ve been in there, it seems to be working.

You probably have a good product, but wouldn’t you love to have a great product that speaks for itself? That people lined up to by and more importantly, told all their friends to check out as well?

Make the customer happy

There are several signs prominently displayed where you pick up your drinks that talk about their customer philosophy – the employees are there to serve the customers, without the customers there wouldn’t be a business. It sounds simple (and it is) but shouldn’t all of your employees embrace that kind of attitude?

How good is it?

If you’ve ever been out west to a Fatburger or an In and Out Burger – 5 Guys is every bit as good as those legendary places. In Kansas City you can get a great burger at Chef Burger or Blanc Burgers and Bottles (love the inside out burger) – however that’s a different experience, almost a gourmet burger experience.

5 Guys has nothing gourmet about it, it’s just extremely high quality product, simply served that happens to be really good. If you get a chance, go and check one out.

And let me know if you learn anything that might help out your business – I’d love to hear your thoughts (share them in the comments below).

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

Similar Posts: