Solutions for Small Business Marketing Mistakes

I was flipping through the news channels and saw a viewer email saying that many are complaining that the auto companies are still advertising heavily. He said that years ago he worked for a company that cut back on advertising to save money in hard times. They then went out of business, because nobody knew who they were.

Don’t use the recession to market less, use the recession to market smart. Take a look at where and how you spend your marketing budget. Is that big TV sports buy the best thing? Or would you be better off making a funny video that could go viral?

The List

The list is your audience. It’s the people who will receive your brochure, watch your ad, read your blog, or see your video. In the old days, this was an actual list, often printed out on labels, with names of magazine subscribers, or phone numbers. Now, it can be e-newsletter subscribers, people who clicked on a Google ad, Twitter followers, or RSS feed subscribers to a blog.

The Offer

What your audience gets by responding, and how much it costs. You don’t have to offer a sale or a discount. It can be a free report on email click through rates, an efficiency review, or a Web site makeover for $399.

The Creative

What the promotion says, what it looks like, and how it’s delivered. This once meant envelopes, on paper, with letters and postcards. Now, it can be a Squidoo lens, an email, or a landing page.

Regardless of the delivery system, and whether the campaign is on paper or electronic, the principles are the same.

*Send to the right people about issues that are relevant to them (don’t talk to teenagers about denture adhesives).

*Offer something that they want. (those teenagers might not want denture adhesives, but senior citizens might like a free sample)

*Talk to your audience in terms they understand. Be conversational. Go online for younger people, but send those denture samples through the mail.

I just read Chris Brogan’s great post on blogging tips. One of them was to claim my blog in Technorati, so here I go. You can read the rest of them here.

Danielle is starting a new business offering virtual assistant services. She wants to send out a postcard offering her services and asked for help on Marketing Exchange (12/29/08). She said she wanted to offer “off-site business support services that free their time and allow them to focus on revenue-generating activities.”

As I was reading this, I noticed that a sheet of paper had fallen out of my files. I picked it up and saw that I’d written Strategy and Tactics on the top. It said, “Strategy: How can I achieve my goal? Tactics: Have you identified your prospect’s problem? Have you presented your solution in a way that makes them want to do business with you? Have you established trust?”

Danielle has chosen a tactic (sending a postcard), without a clear idea of what her strategy is. She has no clear picture of who her clients are, how she helps them, or how she creates trust.

What’s your strategy for the new year? How will you create trust with potential new customers and keep it with your current ones?

How do you make your product stand out when it’s not unique? Say you have a coffee cart. It’s in a good location, and gets lots of traffic, but you’re no different from any of the thousands of other coffee carts in your area. What do you do?

The answer is to make the stand (and the experience) remarkable - build a tribe.  The key is to differentiate it from all the other stands and all the other coffee places in the area and make it a fun and special place to go and tell  your friends about.  A few ideas on how to do that:

1) Offer free Wifi - draw customers in, make your stand a place to hang out, stay, and order more coffee.

2) Hold a contest for customers to invent a new blend of coffee.  The winner gets a cash prize or say 10 pounds of the winning entry.

3) Have customers submit quotes (either their own or from famous people) about coffee, or just inspirational, to be printed on the cups.  Have a new quote each week or each month.  Have customers vote on the best ones.  Winners have their quote printed, along with their names.

This works for anything, t-shirts, music, dolls, Lego…make the product experience special, and build a story around it that makes the experience remarkable (worth talking about). And, you don’t need a big budget to do it. What can you do with a $500 budget to make your product worth talking about?

(i) by Bonnie Larner

1. Comment on blogs and forums (be helpful, not promotional).

2. Send a press release. Make sure it’s really newsworthy, not a puff piece about your company.

3. Build a Google pages Web site.

4. Interview someone and upload the mp3 file to your Web site with Audacity.

5. Build a Squidoo lens. It’s a one-page Web site that focuses on one topic. Share your expertise, and strut your stuff, but don’t spam people with “me! me! me!.”

6. Write articles and send them to trade publications in your field.

7. Start a blog at Wordpress or blogger.com.

8. Add referral and sharing tools to your Web site, such as Add This or Share This.

9. Answer questions at Yahoo! Answers, LinkedIn, and Marketing Professionals Know-How Exchange.

10. Sign up for HARO (help a reporter out). It’s a free service with queries from reporters who need sources for stories.

I was just reading Bob Bly’s blog post asking whether it pays to complain about bad products. He wonders if it’s worth complaining about poor service in restaurants or other places, and whether any one really listens.

It turns out they do. A few months ago, my doctor fired my insurance plan. It was disruptive, annoying, and irritating. I don’t go to the doctor often, but he’s convenient, he has my records, and I rarely have to wait.

Well, two weeks ago, I got another letter saying the economy is bad, patients’ options are limited, and the doctor’s practice was able to negotiate with the insurance company to ease some of the administrivia. So, he’d changed his mind. He would continue to take the insurance and apologized for the “disruption, hardship and angst” that many patients endured after the original decision.

I thought that was remarkable. He realized he’d upset his “customers” and he took steps to fix it.

I was just going through my mail/bills and found a note from Chase Visa.

It thanked me for being a customer… and then proceeded to tell me that because my account hadn’t been used in a while, they assumed that I didn’t need it and had closed it! The whole thing was presented as if they were being helpful. I couldn’t see how so I called Chase to find out what had happened. They said, oh it helps you because your credit score will go up, and in this crisis we can’t have open and unused credit lines because the credit bureaus charge us (in case you might use the credit).

Aha! So, it’s not about ME at all. It’s about THEM!! The scary thing is, I just nearly used the card about 10 minutes ago. I was buying model train stuff for my dad, and the site didn’t take Amex. I finally settled on my debit card instead because a) I figured I hadn’t used the Visa card in a while and model trains were so odd (for me) they might think it was fraud and b) one less addition to my credit card bill next year. Imagine if I’d tried to use the card!!!

I promised to blog about it. They said they’d seen lots of other people complaining too (including today). But, they didn’t seem to care. It didn’t bother them at all that thousands of their customers were angry. The rep said there was “nothing she could do” and she didn’t even seem sorry about it.

I wonder, instead of canceling the account, why not send me a letter offering me something to get me to use the card? A discount? Coupons? Many years ago, when my dad hadn’t used a gas card for a while, the company sent him a letter saying , “We miss you”. Got his attention AND he talked to other people about it. It was viral! Why not make people feel happy instead of angry? Encourage/strengthen your tribe of customers, rather than break it.

1. Web Color Combinations
Need to pick colors for your site? Or give direction to your Web designer? This site lets you pick colors that match (not clash). Color swatches include the Web color numbers so you can easily recreate the combinations you like.

2. HTML code checker
HTML code errors can leave your whole site looking like it’s had a bad accident. All bold, all purple, or just plain wrong. This tool checks your code, makes sure it meets Web standards, and points out any mistakes.

3. HTML help
Stuck on how to create smart quotes, special characters, or an indent? This site has tutorials, cheat sheets, and more.

4. Google Analytics
This free tool gives you easy-to-understand reports showing how many people visit your site, which pages they look at, and how much time they spend. You can also create your own reports showing results for specific keywords, visitor locations, and cash earned from e-commerce.

5. Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide
Get the scoop on SEO straight from the source. Find out how to make your site more search-engine friendly, how to name your pages, and what not to do.

Thanks to Greg for pointing out the last one.

Hugh at Gaping Void said, “.. if I randomly asked you to make a list of the world’s top ten most “Creative” companies, would Dell make it on to the list? I’m guessing, for most people reading this, they simply wouldn’t.

Yes. I happen think this is a SERIOUSLY huge problem.”

This got me thinking. Dell’s problem is they have no tribe. They haven’t reached out to their customers, or given people considering a new computer any particular reason to prefer Dell over HP or any other brand.

Apple is famous for its “cult” of enthusiastic, loyal customers, a tribe if you will. One reason is that they provide first-class customer support. Several months ago, the display on my iMac wasn’t working properly (everything had a green tinge). I have Apple Care, and they sent a technician here (twice - because he didn’t have the right part the first time) to fix it. For free!

When a Dell customer has a problem, they’re routed to an outsourced customer “service” rep in India, who has been given poor training, may not speak English well, and is forced to rely on a script. I know of one instance (and could easily get more) in which a Dell rep talked a customer through “fixing” her computer. At the end, she said, “OK, where are my files?” They were gone. She’d just deleted them!

Why not encourage Dell owners to talk to each other? Have a forum to discuss problems, work-arounds, and new updates. Have executives hang out and answer questions.

Post software documentation written in plain English (have you seen Microsoft’s online documentation? It’s unintelligible). Offer special upgrades for higher quality tech support. Or heck, just offer the best tech support. Have it stand out, be so remarkable people talk about it.