Do you regularly send out invoices, statements or other paperwork in the post to your customers?

Or do you send the products your customers have ordered by post?

If so what do you send out with them?

I receive lots of bills and statements from suppliers.

My printer sends me bills. The oil company sends me bills. My insurance broker tells me how much I owe them each year.

And what do they put in with them? Absolutely nothing.

They’re going to the expense and trouble of sending me stuff but not taking the opportunity of trying to sell me anything else.

They know what my buying habits are which means they should be able to work out what else from their range would be relevant to me.

Because we’re talking about printed material, you can’t necessarily customise your literature to every customer. So what you need to do is to identify your best selling products and then identify what products complement these or would be an appropriate cross sell.

You can simply bring these products to my attention or even better put together a special offer. Either way you know that your customers are likely to be interested in these products.

The real experts at this kind of link selling are Amazon. OK they don’t send stuff in the post, but they analyze both what you’ve bought and what you’ve looked at and then email you with suggestions of similar products you may be interested in. The result is loads of additional sales because they’re offering you stuff that they know is relevant to you. They are really switched on.

Now the whole point of what I’m saying is that extra sales can be generated with comparatively little extra effort or cost. You’re already sending communications out so the additional cost is really only print of the additional flyer or letter. You’re already paying for the postage and the envelope.

So think about your product range, identify your best selling products and then utilise the expense and effort you’re already expending to generate some easy extra sales.

How often do you hear, in the current economic climate that people just don’t have the money and therefore everyone has to cut their prices to survive?

Well yes, a lot of people are feeling the pinch at the moment and a lot of other people who are still in jobs are feeling nervous and are being very careful with their expenditure.

But personally I don’t agree that everyone has to cut their prices.

Even in a recession (which we’re not actually in) most people buy on value instead of just on price. The headline figure is important but even more important is the value you’re getting.

Think about your own behaviour. If you’re shopping in the supermarket and say 500g of rice is £1.00 but 1kg costs £1.80 lots of people will opt for the larger size because it represents better value. The actual amount you have to spend is nearly double but you know you’re getting more for your money.

Now the easiest marketing strategy is to cut your prices but how much more do you have to sell to increase your profit. As a rough rule of thumb if you cut your price by 10% you have to sell 30% more just to stand still.

How Can You Add Value?

Instead of cutting your prices, why not look at how you can add value to your product.

• A  food supplier can add 20% extra free
• A restaurant could give a free dessert with a main course
• A hotel could give you a room upgrade
• A coach could give a set of training DVDs when 5 coaching sessions are booked
• An accountant could give financial management and profit growth advice instead of just doing the standard accountancy role
• A furniture retailer could give free delivery

Whatever your industry there are ways you can add value, which will maintain your sale price and increase your sales volumes.

So how are you going to add value to your proposition?

Do you find that price is the no 1 issue when you’re selling your products or services?

Are your prospects always telling you that they can buy what you’re selling cheaper elsewhere?

If this is the case then you have a problem. And the problem is that your product is too similar to lots of others in the market.

If your prospects can find several examples of what you sell, all of which, to all intents and purposes are the same, then he will naturally default to the cheapest.

Why wouldn’t he?

If they’re all basically the same, why wouldn’t he pay as little as possible.

So if you want to avoid this margin destroying race to the bottom, you need to find some way to differentiate your product from your competition.

Once you are different, neither  your product nor your prices can be compared directly against others which means  your prices will no longer be dictated by your competitors.

The Need For Stand Out

So the million dollar question is how can you differentiate your product?

This is where people start talking about USPs.

Now I never talk about USPs because  being genuinely unique is extremely difficult and often impossible.

I focus on Stand Out.

So what will make your product stand out?

Of course there’s no one answer to that.

The way you generate stand out will differ dramatically depending on whether you’re selling a product or service.

I will try and suggest a number of routes that might give you stand out and hope that these might act as a catalyst for you to think about what you can do to give your business stand out and to differentiate it from your competitors.

• Your opening hours
• The terms of your guarantee
• The speed of your work
• The quality of the product
• Your speed of delivery
• Your delivery prices
• Your credit terms
• The size of your product or the number of sizes it comes in
• The weight of your product
• Your green credentials
• Your sourcing policy
• The colour of your product
• The number of units to a pack
• The ease of assembly
• The flexibility of your joining terms
• The length of your free trial
• The recyclability of your product

This is just a selection of the ways you can give your business stand out. You, of course, need to identify the right ones for your business.

But the point is that the more you can differentiate your business the less of an issue price becomes and the more ability you have to charge a premium price for your product.

Would you like to get more enquiries from your marketing?

Would you like to make your marketing more compelling, so it encourages more people to take action when they read it?  Most marketing is written to capture the attention of, and then inform.

The best marketing compels the audience to take action.

Compelling marketing

To be compelling marketing must be focused on the needs and solving the problems of the audience.  It must inspire the reader sufficiently that they take whatever action you want them to.

Tips To Make Your Marketing More Compelling

1  Scarcity
You want people to take action straight away. The principle of scarcity makes this happen. The fear of missing out motivates people to do things immediately. A special offer, limited to the first 50 respondents will force people to take action.

2. Make it easy
When things get too complex, people decide to come back to it when they have more time. However if the process is really simple, your audience can take action straight away.

3. Avoid the use of generic terms
Generic terms simply wash over people.  The most overused word in this category is the word “solutions. This is a fantastically bland word, much used in the business world but with very little meaning. Tell people what you do and the benefits you deliver in precise words that they can understand and identify with.

4. Headlines are crucial
This one is simple.  No matter how amazing your marketing message is, if no one reads it, it won’t convert.  The headline or title of your marketing is what compels people to read it.
Why do you read certain advertisements and not others? Why do you open some emails while ignoring others? The headline or subject line grab your interest and compel you to read.

5. Be brief
The fewer words in your marketing message, the more impact you can create.  Most marketing copy is far too long. A brief message filled with compelling, persuasive words will out-perform a long winded one that few people will even finish reading!  In today’s marketplace succinct message have the greatest impact.

6. Call to action
If you want people to take action, you must tell them what to do and when to do it.

“To take advantage of our extra special offer, call us today”
The reader now knows exactly what they have to do.

The fact is if you want real results from your marketing, you must persuade, motivate and compel your audience to take action.

Is your marketing proposition totally clear?

Do prospective customers have a precise understanding of what you can do for them and why they should select you as opposed to any other supplier in your line of business?

Many small business owners are  vague and imprecise when it comes to explaining exactly what they do and why prospects should buy from them.

Of course you know what you do and I’m sure you’re very good at it but unless you can communicate that clearly and in terms that express the benefits that you deliver, you will not persuade your prospects that you are the best option for them

Your Key Messages

Before you can persuade prospects to spend their money with you, you must be able to explain the following three questions clearly and precisely:

1. What do you do and what service do you provide?
   You need to be able to describe what you do in clear, jargon free terms and in as few words as possible.  You also need to do this both from your point of view and from your clients’ point of view. You might think these two view points would be almost identical. Once you’ve done it you’ll see that the same service can sound very different depending on which side of the fence you’re standing.
2. What is the true value of your service to a client?
   You need to be able to articulate exactly what benefit your customers will get as a direct result of working with you. Remember customers buy benefits not features.
3. Why should they purchase that product or service from you in particular?
   What gives you stand out? What makes you better than your competitors? There are probably thousands of other people who deliver virtually the same service as you.  So, why should a prospective client hire you?
   What is uniquely valuable about what you provide – what is your USP?

I virtually never come across companies who have worked out the answers to these three points and yet they are the single most important elements  of your whole marketing proposition.

This is always the first piece of work I do with clients because until this is done they are not ready to start marketing. These are the elements which will make you attractive propositions to your prospective customers and until these are sorted out any marketing you do will not have the impact and success that it should.

Have a look at the full Marketing Fundamentals workshop which covers these three and several other issues http://bit.ly/y8oiCA

Give Your Prospects Every Opportunity To Say Yes

Clarity is extremely important.

If you leave any element of doubt in your prospects mind about the benefit of working with you, that will be enough to make sure that they decide not to take the risk. It’s not that they don’t want to work with you, it’s because you haven’t spelled out clearly enough why they should.

So:

• Get specific about precisely what you do.
• Tell  prospective clients  about all the benefits they’ll get from working with you.
• Convince them of your value.

Then watch the results!

Imagine the scene.

You’re sitting in your office and the phone rings with a new enquiry. While your ultimate objective is likely to be to convert the enquiry into a customer, it is vital that you understand the mindset of the caller and that you manage the call and the ensuing process to ensure the best possible outcome.

The enquirer wants more than just information.

Of course most callers will say they’re just collecting information. While this may be true, the reality is that they have a problem and what they’re really looking for is a solution to that problem.

Expect them to be wary

Although they have called you and they do want a solution to their problem, they are likely to be very wary in their approach. They want to assimilate your information without being unduly influenced by your salesmanship. You must empathise with them and provide the information that demonstrates how you can solve their problem.

They will buy from someone

Whether it’s from you or a competitor, whether it’s today or in six months’ time, they will buy something.
Your task is to educate them to why your solution is best for them.

They will have little idea of what your business does

They’ll understand and take in only a tiny fraction of what you say which means you need to spell things out to them.  You will also need to regularly check their understanding to make sure they are getting the key points.

Sending information

There is a high likelihood that they will ask you to send them some information. It is vital that you establish the value of whatever you send them. This should ensure that it gets opened and read when it arrives so that when you follow up they are fully informed.

Getting a commitment

Once you have established the value of what you’re going to send them, agree when you’re going to follow up . This means getting their undertaking that they will go through it in a pre-agreed timeframe, in preparation for a follow up discussion.

The need to follow up

In 95% of cases, you will have to follow up.  When you follow up, even after all the great positioning, there’s a chance they’ll say they can’t go ahead ‘just now’, for any number of reasons.

As we know, when someone says no that doesn’t necessarily mean no, it may well mean not now.

This is when you feed this new prospect into your marketing funnel. As we know it can take 7, 10 or even more points of contact before some prospects finally make the decision to say yes.

The successful businesses are those who understand this process and put a plan in place to benefit from it.

Strategic marketing is about the BIG picture. If you want to massively improve your results you need to think strategically.

A marketing strategy is a focused plan, which will usually be split into bite size chunks – monthly, quarterly and annual. It’s a flexible plan, which needs to be reviewed regularly.  You need to know what works and what doesn’t.  You need to know what needs fixing and what needs discarding.

Tactical marketing

Tactical marketing is how most small business owners market their services.  Often they will be looking for the one killer marketing tactic which will make them rich and successful.  Because they’re  thinking short term, looking for a quick fix, they usually have no overall marketing strategy or co-ordinated approach to the market. Decisions are made and actions taken in isolation, which don’t build upon other activities.

This may manifest itself by undertaking a particular piece of marketing – say direct mail or email marketing. If after one or two forays into the market they don’t get the result they were hoping for, they abandon it.

They would never think of developing a 6 month campaign with each communication building on the previous one, until they have constructed a compelling proposition which generates a fantastic response and earns them a load of money.

Instead they continue to produce ad hoc activity which fails to deliver the desired results and so is gently abandoned..

Marketing strategy first – marketing tactics second

If you want to start seeing some real, measurable progress, you need to know what your marketing strategy is.  Only then, can you possibly know what the correct tactics will be for what you want to achieve.  Otherwise, it’s like trying to plan a route somewhere, when you don’t have a destination!

Decide what you want to achieve and get specific.  This means putting some numbers together, such as your target turnover, profits, unit sales, client numbers etc.  Then, decide what resources you are prepared to invest to make this happen.  For example, how much time / money are you able to invest in your marketing?  Until you know exactly what your resources are, you cannot possibly select the correct marketing tactics for your overall strategy.

So, it’s strategy first, the overall big picture of how you’re going to approach your market, followed by your tactics which will enable you achieve your strategy.

As all salesmen know, at the end of your sales pitch you have to ask for the order.

If you don’t ask, your prospect may well not offer and the opportunity will go begging.

What holds good in face to face selling, also applies to sales letters and websites.

Website Mistake no 1

For some reason most web pages on most websites, make exactly this mistake. They conclude with… nothing at all.

By not asking for the order many websites and web pages fail to generate the enquiries and leads that they should.

In most cases, this can be quickly and easily resolved by adding a simple call to action to each page.

After all, if you can persuade someone to read your page, you owe it to them to suggest the next step which could be to pick up the phone, to sign up for a newsletter or special report or whatever else you want them to do.

Almost every page on your website should end with a call for action something like this:

“To get started or to find out more -please call us now on 01483 200387, email us on info@bda.me.uk or contact us through the website www.bda.me.uk

You are doing this aren’t you?

If you’re not I suggest you do something about it right now.

A couple of years ago I had a client who was a carpet cleaner. His website was fine but he wasn’t getting as many enquiries as he hoped for.

After adding powerful calls to action on all the relevant pages and giving his visitors a variety of different ways to respond, the total number of enquiries went up from an average of 3 per week to nearly 7 per week.

You may or may not think that’s a lot of enquiries but it is an increase of over 100%

Website Mistake  no 2

You may look at your website and say…

“But we have our phone number at the top of the page in the banner, we have a Contact Us page  and we even have some graphic banners down the side of each page offering our newsletter and special reports – surely we’ve already got strong calls to action”.

And you’d be right – it does and you’d be absolutely correct having all these things.  Hopefully your visitors are responding to them.

But…

Many website visitors suffer from “banner blindness”.

They come to your site looking for specific information.

They find the information they’re looking for and start scanning at that point.

If (and only if) the copy is relevant and compelling, they will then read on but many of them will blank out the surrounding graphics and banners, as they focus on the information they came to find.

These people are reading the text. You therefore need to include your website calls to action in the text itself otherwise you run the very real risk of them missing the call to action and doing nothing.

The great thing is that you can test this and measure the effect.

Add calls to action to the relevant pages and then by using your Google Analytics  you will be able to track changes in visitor behaviour and of course you will immediately see the difference in visitor response.

Make the changes if you need to and let me know how your response changes.

If you want to know how to be good at marketing, you have to understand that people like things to be easy.

The easier you can make it for customers to do business with you, the greater your chances of success.

So when asked what are good marketing techniques, one part of your answer has to be simplicity.

I’ll give you some examples:

1. Your website must to be easy to navigate around.

Of course your site must be full of valuable content but equally important visitors must be able to find their way around the site.  Keep your site clean and clear and make sure that information on particular topics is all located together. It’s important that your site loads  quickly and that all your links work.  The easier your prospective clients can navigate your site, the more likely they are to stay on the site and to find what they are looking for. This of course means they are more likely to contact you

2. Information must be laid out in a way that makes it easy to find

While content is king, visitors are influenced by the appearance of your site. The layout shouldn’t be too busy or crowded and information should be laid out in bite size chunks. People don’t want to be faced by large swathes of text. They want to be able to skim your text, looking for the information they’re interested in. Bulleted lists, short sentences, clear writing will engage your visitors.

3. You must communicate precisely what you do

You have approximately 8 seconds to engage your visitors. You must make it crystal clear what you do right up front so that people can decide to stay on the site.

4. Make it easy for people to contact you

Different people like to make contact in different ways. Give them your phone number, email address and social networking details on every page. Additionally include a contact form on the website and even a physical address as this will increase trust.

5. Social proof increases trust

Use testimonials liberally on the site. Video testimonials are much more powerful than written ones. They prove the authenticity of the testimonial and add human interest.  If you have won an award or reached a certified level of achievement within your industry, make sure people can easily see it.

6. Always include a landline number

Don’t use a premium rate number or a mobile number as your primary contact number. Mobile numbers suggest there’s no substance to the business and why should a prospect pay over the odds to contact you. Use your normal number and be proud of it.

Put yourself in your potential customers’ position. How often have you aborted a purchase or an application for something because the process just got too difficult. Be sure to make your customer experience as easy as possible.

What’s the greatest crime committed by your business?

Personally I believe the number of leads that marketing generates which are never converted into customers is criminal.

How The Crime Occurs

In most businesses, marketing are tasked with generating leads. These leads are then typically passed over to sales who then go to work trying to turn them into customers.

A certain percentage of these will quite quickly become customers – let’s say 5%

Another percentage will even more quickly disqualify themselves and drop out of your sales process. This could well be 50% of all the leads.

However there is still maybe 45% of the leads who haven’t said “yes” but they also haven’t said “no”.

Typically the sales person will contact them or try to contact them 3 or 4 times. After being given non committal responses – “let me think about it” or “I’ll get back to you” the sales person starts to feel that they are being fobbed off and decides to” stop flogging a dead horse” and moves onto the next set of easier converts.

Hold on a moment.

That’s 45% of your leads who are being given up on or to put it another way nine times the number of leads you converted

Buyers Can Take Up To 10 Individual “Touches”

The fact is that many prospects may take up to 10 separate communications or “touches” and sometimes even more, before they are ready to buy.

It may be that the time just wasn’t right initially or that or they were evaluating a different proposal or they simply had other priorities

They want to decide in their own time.

Your Job Is To Maintain The Contact

The last thing your prospect wants is to receive continuous sales calls.

Your job is to maintain the contact, continue to provide valuable information and be ready to respond when your prospect is ready to buy.

What you need is a Prospect Conversion System.

You need to set up a communication system which keeps you in the prospects’ consciousness.

While email is the simplest and cheapest way to do this if you intersperse your emails with letters, postcards or phone calls you will add interest and value to the process.

How Often Should You Communicate With These Prospects?

Many people worry about hassling their prospects – concerned that they will become irritated if they contact them too often. The correct regularity will depend on the quality of what you’re sending them. The fact is that if you are sending valueless rubbish once a year is too often but if you’re sending valuable and engaging material then you can send it almost as often as you like. Weekly certainly wouldn’t be too often

How Long Should You Continue To Communicate?

The classic answer to this is that you should continue to communicate until they either buy from you or they die. Your recipients are perfectly capable of unsubscribing from your list if they no longer want to receive stuff from you.  I’ve known customers who have taken 15 months from the initial contact before they have finally become ready to buy.

So remember a large percentage of prospects will take a long time to decide to buy so just make sure that you’re still in the frame when they finally are ready.

If this blog article strikes a chord with you, leave me a comment and share your experience.