Marketing your small business or service firm can be frustrating – particularly if you don’t have a marketing system in place. This brief video outlines how you can get rid of that frustration and systematically attract your ideal customers.
Archive for Marketing Strategy
By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Friday,
January
27th,
2012
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Tags : duct tape marketing, marketing system
By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Tuesday,
December
6th,
2011
Last night I attended a networking event during which I was asked what the biggest mistake I see when working with people on their marketing plans and strategy. My response was “not knowing who to say NO to”.
My response may sound just like another way of saying “you have to have a clear picture of your ideal customer” but I believe there is a significant difference. I believe that having a clear picture of who you don’t work with (and sticking to your guns) is a good indication of whether you are putting your marketing strategy into practice and just nodding along with marketing theory and platitudes you hear and read.
One of our goals in marketing, particularly B2B marketing, is to become known as the “go to” resource for a particular domain – a particular type of customer who is facing a particular type of problem. In order to achieve that goal we need abandon the “all things to all people” attitude and narrow our focus.
Knowing who to say no to will help you narrow your focus. Many business owners view their ideal customer profile as a wish list rather than as a focusing tool. They think “this is who I will keep an eye out for, but in the meantime I’ll take any work I can get”. This approach can actually make it more difficult to serve an ideal customer once they find you.
I think saying “No” becomes easier the more you believe in the value of the service you provide. Some of this has to do with a sense of mission but some of it also has to do with charging a price that is reflective of the value you provide – something I think many professionals struggle with, but that’s another post for another day.
Knowing who to say “No” to, having a plan for identifying them as well as a plan for telling them “No” (i.e. having someone to refer them to) and having the courage to follow through with the “No” is a difficult but essential part of taking your marketing and your business to the next level.
Do you know who you will be saying “No” to in 2012?
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Categories : Marketing, Marketing Strategy
Tags : ideal customer
By Bill Brelsford · Comments (1)
Tuesday,
November
29th,
2011
Marketing strategy before tactics – if you have visited this blog before, or have heard any of my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Consultants speak, then I am sure you are familiar with this concept.
But how do you know if you are focusing too much on tactics and not enough on strategy? I think you can tell a lot by the starting point your choose and the questions you ask when you begin working on your marketing plan.
When we focus on tactics we tend to focus on marketing channels, ways to “get our message out there”. You can tell if you are focused on tactics if you start your marketing plan by creating a list like this:
- social media
- direct mail
- advertising- online and offline
- PR
- Video
- email marketing
When we focus on tactics, there is a tendency to stress efficiency over effectiveness. “How many different ways can I blast out my message?” becomes the primary question we try to answer.
However, when we focus on marketing strategy, we tend to focus on function – the purpose or goal we are trying to achieve. When we focus on function, we start working on our marketing plan by creating a list like this:
- How to I find new customers?
- How do I keep more of my existing customers?
- How do I get more referrals?
- Can I re-activate or re-engage my former customers?
When we focus on function, we start by thinking about the customer. What do the need? What motivates them? How do they make decisions? How can I provide what they are looking for?
When we focus on our marketing strategy, we begin with function and then decide on the appropriate channels to help our ideal customers find what they need.
Don’t mistake a list of tactics and channels for a marketing strategy. Focus on the needs of your customers and the goals of your business first and let the tactics follow.
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Categories : Marketing Strategy
Tags : Marketing Strategy
By Bill Brelsford · Comments (2)
Wednesday,
November
2nd,
2011
Evernote is one of my favorite tools and I’m becoming a huge fan of their company too.
Evernote’s stated goal is to “give everyone the ability to easily capture any moment, idea, inspiration, or experience whenever they want using whichever device or platform they find most convenient, and then to make all of that information easy to find.” They do a great job of achieving that goal with tools that “just work”.
I’m not the only one who loves them; if you aren’t familiar with Evernote, just Google them and read for yourself how much their customers love them and the unique ways people use their software.
Like many great companies, Evernote recognizes the importance of their customers in helping them promote, support, and improve their products. To publicly recognize their more passionate users, they recently created the Evernote Ambassador Program. Ambassadors are recognized for their individual areas of expertise and the ways Evernote helps them achieve their goals – thus helping other users achieve theirs.
Ambassadors can also be identified by these special badges:
I think there are some great marketing lessons to be learned from what Evernote is doing. Here is my biggest takeaway from this story:,
We often talk about generating referrals and “buzz”. Your customers don’t want to talk about you, they want to talk about what they were able to accomplish because of you.
Here are some other questions to think about:
- Do you know how your customers are using your product or service to fulfill their personal goals?
- Do you have a crystal clear purpose for your company (see Evernote’s goal above)
- How can you help your customers help other people like them?
P.S. – I always love to hear how other people use Evernote; leave a comment about your favorite way to use it.
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Categories : Marketing Strategy
We all have face competition in our businesses, but that competition may not always be coming from where we think. When working customers on their strategic marketing plans, I typically see four broad categories of competitors. I’ve listed them below along with some ideas of how different elements of your marketing plan can help address each one.
Real Competitors – these are businesses that actually perform similar work for similar types of customers as you. The more generic your offerings, the more you try to provide “something for everyone”, the more real competition you will have and the more likely it will be that you will compete solely on price.
Very few businesses want to be the low cost provider. This is why we put such an emphasis on starting with a sound marketing strategy in Duct Tape Marketing. Your marketing strategy defines who (specifically) you serve, the types of problems that you solve, and how you do that differently from everyone else who claims to do what you do.
Mindshare or Category competitors – just because your offering is unique, doesn’t mean it is unique in the mind of your prospects. To a prospective customer a marketing strategist, web designer, direct mail specialist, graphic designer, video producers, and print shops may all provide “marketing”.
Creating marketing materials that educate can help clear up this confusion. Use your marketing materials to educate your prospects about the business problems you solve. Teach them the questions they should be asking to insure they make the best decision for their situation. Use case studies and examples to show them what life will be like after working with you.
Budget Competitors – Even if your products and services are truly unique, you still have to compete for the same budget dollars that other service providers are vying for.
If you want your solution to be a priority for those controlling the budget, make sure your marketing materials focus on prospects business issues and not on your “wonderfulness”.
Doing Nothing – Sometimes your biggest competitor is inertia. One way to overcome inertia is to demonstrate that the cost of your solution is cheaper than the cost of doing nothing. Lay the groundwork for this in your marketing but make sure you address it during your sales process as well.
Look at your marketing and sales process through the eyes of your prospects. How complicated is it to make the decision to buy your products or services? Do you offer too many choices? How complicated is your pricing structure? Does the Try stage of your Marketing Hourglass make it easy for people to start experiencing what it is like to work with you?
What is the biggest source of competition that you face in your business?
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Categories : Marketing Strategy
I am in the middle of reading Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice
Henry’s discussion of rhythm reminded me of something I learned when I was finishing up college and preparing to take the exam to become a certified public accountant (CPA). At that time, the exam consisted of 5 testing sessions over 2 1/2 days. I’m not quite sure how I came up with this, but I decided early on that I needed to be able to focus intently for 90 minutes at a time in order to be successful. I figured if I could do that, then I would have plenty of time to complete each section with a short break in the middle and still have time to review my work.
So I began to practice this rhythm when studying. I would study for 90 minutes, take a short break and then study for 90 minutes again. By the time the exam rolled around, this rhythm was ingrained in my system. I remember seeing shocked looks when I actually took a break in the middle of a session to get up, walk around, stretch, and then start again. To this day, I believe finding that 90 minute rhythm was one of the biggest keys to my success in passing the exam.
I believe this ability to establish and maintain your rhythm is becoming increasingly important. As marketers, we have an ever growing list of demands and shiny objects that encourage us to constantly flit from one task to another. It has become all to easy to feel busy all day without getting anything accomplished.
This sense of rhythm and focus is one of the reasons why we talk about the importance of using a marketing calendar in your business. Using a marketing calendar is not just about mapping out your to-dos, content topics, and milestones to a particular format. You also need to use your marketing calendar to establish regular appointments to work on your marketing. Use your calendar to set (and honor) dedicated time to think deeply about your business, your customers, and your marketing.
Do you have a rhythm or pattern that helps you be more productive?
photo credit: JavierVazquez on Flickr
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Categories : Marketing Strategy
Tags : marketing calendar
I was going over my notes from It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For: Why Every Extraordinary Business Is Driven by Purpose (view my summary here) and I was reminded of a very simple yet powerful lesson. The keys to effective marketing are:
- Understanding your purpose
- Telling that story to the world
Simple, but not necessarily easy.
It’s common to want to jump right to the telling. We want to “get the word out”. We want the sense of accomplishment of checking “send email blast” off our to-do list.
But if we can slow down for a while, take the time to thoughtfully develop our strategy (or understand our purpose), then we will be much more effective in attracting our ideal customers.
How would your business be different if you and your employees could see a direct link between their daily activities and the purpose you have articulated for your business?
photo credit: dito_13 on Flickr
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Categories : Marketing Strategy
By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Monday,
July
25th,
2011
What would the world lose if your company ceased to exist?
This is one of the questions
Authors John Spence and Haley Rushing share their experience of working with some of the world’s most successful brands (Southwest, Wal-mart, BMW to name a few) who attribute much of their success to being purpose driven in everything they do. They also share the troubles some brands have had when they have strayed away from their purpose.
This message of this book really resonated with me. I’ve always been more interested in why people do what they do and my favorite customers have always been those who are in business not only to make money but to also serve a greater purpose – trying to make the world a better place for their customers and\or employees. I wish I had read this book a long time ago.
The book is organized into four main parts:
Part 1 – Purpose Principles – Lays the foundation by defining purpose, arguing why you should want one along with tips and advise for discovering and articulating your purpose.
Part 2- Building an Organization that makes a Difference – This section speaks to taking a vision, based on purpose, and using it to serve an unfilled need(s) in the marketplace.
Part 3 – Becoming a Leader of Great Purpose – Discusses purpose based leadership principles and how leaders must be the “stewards of purpose”.
Part 4 – Bringing Your Purpose to the Life in the Marketplace – provides a number of case studies of organizations bringing their purpose to life. Spence shows the wide application of purpose by including examples from for-profit corporations, membership organizations, non-profits, educational institutions, and sports organizations.
I highly recommend this book. I have a handful of books that contain the main ideas I try to use in my business and refer to often. This book is going on the same shelf as those.
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Categories : Books, Marketing Strategy
Tags : Books, roy spence
By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Thursday,
June
30th,
2011
Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation at Brooks Associates Customer Appreciation Breakfast. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Below you will find the slides from yesterday’s talk. Below the slides, I have also included links to the two books that I mentioned during the discussions about understanding your customers’ buying process.
If you are anything like me and you think of questions on your ride back from the event, feel free to shoot me a message or give me a call.
Social Media for Sandler Salespeople
View more presentations from Rebar.
Here are links to blog posts about the two books I mentioned during the presentation:
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Tags : sandler sales training, social media
Due to time constraints, I had to omit this topic from my presentation at the Constant Contact event last week, so I thought I would share it here.
When I speak to small business owners about their frustrations with using social media to build their business, I often ask if they are not satisfied with the results of their marketing conversations or their sales conversations. Following this questions, it’s not uncommon for them to at me as if I have a grown a second, evil head.
Although sales & marketing are often lumped together, they are separate activities, each with it’s own type of conversations.
In a marketing conversation, we are working on building Know, Like, and Trust. Using social media, these types of conversations include answering questions, sharing info, pointing out resources, making referrals and recommendations – things like that. Marketing conversations are relatively easy to have via social media.
A sales conversation typically involves defining the problem to solve, determining if our solution can solve their problem, determining if they (the buyer) are able and willing to spend money to solve that problem, and if we can do so at a mutually agreeable price.
Sales conversations are generally more difficult to have via social media than marketing conversations. Depending on what you sell, you may or may not be able to have that conversation via social media. Most professional service firms can start the conversation via social media, but need to move it to another channel (usually telephone or face-to-face) to finish it.
If you are unhappy with the results of your social media efforts, I would suggest that you:
- Understand what type of conversation you are having (or want to have) and what you want the outcome to be
- Have a plan for transitioning from marketing conversations to sales conversations
photo credit by Peter Nijenhuis on Flickr
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Categories : Marketing Strategy
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Copyright © 2012 All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2012 All Rights Reserved