…personal development for smart professionals
marketing
Make Yourself Scarce!
85 days
photo credit: Steve Parker
Normally, when someone tells you to make yourself scarce, it isn’t a compliment. They want you to go away.
There is a different way to look at this. Scarcity creates value. We tend to value things we can’t get much of. Indian head pennies, for example, are worth much more than a penny minted last year; in some cases, hundreds of dollars more. Original paintings by Van Gogh fetch among the highest prices in the art world.
In the business world today, there are many things that are scarce, uncommon and even downright rare like customer service that exceeds expectations. Stellar customer service has become so rare that when we encounter it we are almost suspicious.
A young man at a fast food hamburger joint waited on me and some friends a few weeks ago. How many times has someone sold you a hamburger then come to your table a few minutes later to ask, “is everything alright?” That’s the sort of thing you expect anywhere except at a fast food hamburger joint, but this guy’s enthusiasm was truly impressive.
My prediction is, unless somewhere along the way he gets hypnotized and brainwashed into subscribing to the status quo, this young man will find his way to the top of whichever organization is lucky enough to employ him. Maybe not right away, but he will eventually find an employer that values the employee that goes out of his or her way to provide 5 star customer service even when it isn’t expected. Customer service for this young man is an art. Not just art, art that is rare and valuable. I wouldn’t be surprised if this young man ends up owning his own business because he gets so frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm others have for providing stellar customer service.
I’m not exaggerating much when I say, this kid is probably more valuable to that company than most of the senior management staff, yet he is paid a miserable fraction of the salary.
- What about you?
- How valuable to your business or profession are you?
- If you’re not at work for a week, do customers even notice?
- Is what you do art or just marking time and following the crowd?
It’s easy to create stellar customer service that is scarce. Just ‘go the extra mile’ as the old saying goes. Most people are too lazy or brainwashed by a culture that seems to value the status quo over doing anything above and beyond the call of duty.
Look around you. The businesses and professionals that thrive, even in a down economy, are the ones that provide something competitors aren’t providing. Its time to get busy creating scarcity by doing something your competitors aren’t doing — even when you’re tired, even if its Monday morning or Friday afternoon, even if you don’t think it makes a difference.
WOW Me or I’m Gone!
127 days
The most successful companies in the world are ones that WOW their customers. They don’t all WOW in the same way, but they all go out of their way to impress the socks off their customers and potential customers.
There are different ways to WOW customers. Wal-Mart WOWs with low prices, Apple WOWs with innovative bells and whistles, Starbucks WOWs with the coffee shop experience, zappos.com WOWs with free shipping and easy return policy.
All of these companies have one thing in common; in certain areas they blow away the competition. Notice I said “in certain areas” not “in all areas.” Virtually all of those companies fall short in areas -but not in their core competency. In their respective core competencies, these companies clearly outshine their competition.
What makes Wal-Mart so attractive is their relentless attention to low prices. Most small businesses can’t compete on price. For most small businesses, to compete based on price is like getting into a race to the bottom in which all the competitors will ultimately lose.
The experience of using an Apple iPhone surpasses by far that of using a prepaid, disposable phone that you buy at a department store. The phrase “there’s an app for that” gets at the heart of what an iPhone can do and that is, NEARLY EVERYTHING. Apple is in the business of putting a product in your hands that will do so much to make your life easier you may wonder how the human race ever survived this long without Apple’s advancements.
Starbucks is not in the business of selling cheap coffee. If you want cheap coffee, there are plenty of other places to find it. If you frequent Starbucks, chances are it isn’t for the cheap coffee. Is probably for the ambience, the made fresh while you wait experience. You can get a cappuccino from most convenience stores but it’s nowhere near the caliber of what you will get at Starbucks.
zappos.com competes with the bricks and mortar shoe stores in the mall by making it almost as quick and easy to shop online as it is to drive across town to the mall. Their no-hassle and quick turnaround policy for returns makes it less trouble to send shoes that don’t fit back and get a replacement pair in a surprisingly short period of time.
How about you? In what area do you WOW your customers. What is it that you do that makes your customers tell their friends about you?
Failure to WOW in at least one area is very predictive of failure. Chances are, there are dozens of people out there who do exactly what you do. If you ever expect to stand out from the crowd and thrive as a business, you’re going to have to focus more on finding things your customers want and need and less on selling them what you have. By getting out of your box and into your customer’s world of needs, wants and desires you will find new opportunities to WOW them. It’s the business that WOW customers that survive and even thrive despite the ups and downs of the economy.
How do you WOW customers? Easy, do something they don’t expect which will make their lives and experience with you better than they expected. It sounds cliché, but EXCEED EXPECTATIONS must become your mantra if you really want to succeed in business and leave your competition in the dust. If you don’t exceed expectations, someone else will. Find the one or two areas where you can absolutely blow the doors off your competition then focus on delivering a product or service that WOWs your customers and potential customers.
How to Clone Your Best Customers
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could somehow clone your best customers? You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones that love what you do and cannot get enough of your products and services. They’re low maintenance and highly loyal. They’re the ones who are your brand evangelists - spreading the good news of your business to all their friends and everyone within shouting distance. In other words, the ones that are fun and profitable.
What if I told you its possible to clone those customers? I’m not talking about some controversial, back room experiment conducted under the cover of night. I’m talking about something that can easily be done with a little effort.
This article will teach you how to define your best customer and essentially clone them through market segmentation. The payoff for directing your marketing efforts toward a specific target profile can be enormous if carefully constructed.
In most businesses, a minority of customers represent a disproportionately high level of profit. It’s the Pareto Principle, aka The 80/20 rule.
The secret to cloning your most profitable customers is finding out why they spend money with you and what they have in common. Better yet, uncovering their unique needs and making it clear that you are there to meet those needs is especially beneficial to your bottom line.
It’s vitally important to the ultimate success of your business that you formalize a working profile of your most profitable customer. By formulating a profile of your most valued customer, you can use your marketing to target potential customers that fit that profile. Target marketing for a small business is generally more effective than mass marketing. You simply cannot be all things to everyone. You are more likely to build a successful business if you forget trying to be all things to everyone and focus on a narrower segment of the population – its called niche marketing.
In order to accurately formulate a Target Profile, you have to know a little bit of information about them. The easiest way to collect this information is with a brief survey. People are usually happy to share their opinions but are usually pressed for time. This obstacle is easily overcome by providing an incentive for completing a survey. A coupon is the best way to reward those who complete your survey. This approach to gathering information does cost money but the payoff of collecting critical data is enormous in terms of the value of the information you gather. Consider it an investment in the future of your business. By gathering critical information about your best customer, you can essentially clone that customer by targeting other non-customers that have common attributes.
The larger your business, the more likely you are to need multiple target profiles. Ideally, you should start by picking a specific target profile and carefully focus on reaching the people who fit that profile by carefully wording your marketing messages to capture the attention of those most likely to become a profitable customer.
People inundated with mass media marketing messages only have to ability to focus on a limited number of messages. The more your message targets a specific profile the more successful it will be. A targeted message is much more successful because it says to the target “I ‘get’ you” and “I am the solution to your problems.”
Should you take a ‘shot gun’ approach to your marketing efforts hoping to just reach anyone, or should you try to connect with an individual who fits a specific profile? Obviously, the more precise your aim, the more likely you are to reach a customer who fits your target profile - hopefully a person who you can convert into a profitable customer.
Lets say you operate a store that only sells blue jeans and you possess an inventory that encompasses hard to find sizes. Which of the following headlines do you think would connect best with someone who needs extra-large jeans?
“We sell jeans in ALL sizes”
OR
“We sell ‘hard-to-find’ Plus size jeans”
If you’re in the market for plus size jeans, that message will cut through the mass media racket and grab your attention.
Advertisers bombard your customers and potential customers with thousands of advertising messages everyday. The messages that stand out and grab their attention are the ones that connect personally. A generic “one size fits all” (pun intended) message usually falls on deaf ears. Carefully constructing your marketing message so that it connects personally with a very specific customer profile will have the effect of cloning that customer. In the example above, that headline will bring ‘Plus size’ customers to your store in droves because it speaks to them personally.
Obviously, it’s perfectly logical to also target people who are in the market for Petit sizes, but its important to do that with a separate headline.
Cloning your best customers is easy: identify what attracts them to your business, what problems they have that you can solve, and what needs they have that you can meet. Then, use that information to market to others who have those same needs.
Don’t Blame the Sign: Why Some Marketing Doesn’t Work
6
photo credit: Michael_Lehet
Neon lights are made to grab attention. A neon light that isn’t illuminated doesn’t live up to it’s potential.
No one would ever point to a burned out neon sign and say, “See, neon signs don’t attract attention!” Of course, a burned out neon light isn’t going to attract customers. To attract attention, a neon light must be brightly illuminated.
A marketing message that doesn’t connect personally with the intended target customer is like a neon light that is burned out – it isn’t going to capture the attention of anyone.
As a busy entrepreneur, the last thing you need is to waste money on marketing that doesn’t work. If your marketing isn’t working, maybe it isn’t the particular marketing approach, perhaps it’s the message.
Don’t Blame the Sign
I hear entrepreneurs all the time essentially blame a burned out neon sign for not attracting customers. “Internet and email marketing doesn’t work for me,” is something I hear all the time. Many times, when someone says, “XYZ marketing doesn’t work,” what they should actually say is, “The way I’m using XYZ marketing isn’t working.” Marketing works like neon signs work – they have to be functional in order to attract business.
Imagine you’re an entrepreneur with a business that keeps you so busy with bookkeeping you barely have time to actually run your business — or engage in critical business development activities. Even if bookkeeping doesn’t consume that much of your time, it’s clearly time that should be more productively spent. Your most productive time is the time you spend intently focused on what you do best. So, you finally decide to outsource your bookkeeping to free up some of your time to pay more attention to daily operations, business development or even to spend more time with family and friends.
To start, do what most people do, hop on the internet and Google search for accountants in your home town. What you find is this: First is a local accounting firm whose website boasts of their years of experience and solid reputation. Despite their claims of being the best, their website fails to grab your attention.
Finally, after quickly clicking on each of the top few results you finally land on a page that says something like “Bookkeeping taking up too much of your time? Let us do your bookkeeping so you can focus on what you do best.” WOW! What a difference a change of focus makes.
It’s not what you do, it’s what the customer needs
Your marketing message, whether it’s a brochure, newspaper ad copy, a billboard or your website must connect personally with your target customer. To put it briefly, it’s not what you do that is important; it’s what your customers want and need. If you’re an accountant, you’re not selling bookkeeping services; you’re solving a client’s problem of not enough time to do bookkeeping themselves. Your marketing should address your potential client’s problems and how you will solve those problems.
Blabbing on and on about how good you are is pointless because most people don’t believe you anyway. If you really want your message to connect with your target customer and motivate them to use your product or service, make your message about them – not you. In the above example, the message addresses a specific need for less time spent on bookkeeping and more time focused on more productive tasks.
Like a brilliantly lit neon sign, a well constructed marketing message powerfully attracts the right customers to your business – the ones motivated and ready to spend money to solve a problem.
Fish Don’t like Cheeseburgers
1
photo credit: stu_spivack
My father is an avid fisherman. He and my mother are retired and live on a lake. He’d literally spend day and night fishing if my mother would let him.
I’ve been out on the boat with my parents several times and I’ve arrived at the startling conclusion that fish don’t like cheeseburgers. In the handful of times I’ve gone fishing with my parents, not once have I never seen either of them bait a fishhook with a cheeseburger.
Seems odd, I know. After all, everyone likes cheeseburgers; my parents like cheeseburgers and I love cheeseburgers. I sure if you don’t like cheeseburgers you at least know several other people who do.
When it comes to catching fish, apparently you have to bait the hook with something the fish like and fish don’t like cheeseburgers. On the other hand, I find those slimy things my dad puts on his hook to be anything but appetizing. I’m more interested in what I brought along in the ice cooler.
How to Attract Customers
So what is the marketing takeaway? Simple, give your customers what they want; not what you want and not what you think they want.
What do your potential customers want?
In most settings, consumers want you to help them solve a problem. Consumers want you to save them time, help them fix something or make some part of their lives better.
There are only two reasons human beings engage in behavior; avoid pain or seek pleasure. In the ‘pain/pleasure’ equation, pain avoidance is actually the stronger of the two in most instances.
The fish my dad goes after in the lake are trying to avoid the pain of starvation. That is why those slimy things he puts on the hook gets the fishes’ attention.
The most powerful way for you to get the attention of potential customers is to first call their attention to a problem in their life then in no uncertain terms show them how you can solve that problem.
The idea that advertising is just about “getting your name out there” is false. The truth is customers don’t believe what you tell them but they believe 100% of what they tell themselves. The challenge you face when devising an advertising campaign is to capture the attention of potential customers with a story to which they can easily relate. You do this by getting into their head with a story. A story that ends with the customer living happily ever after because they’ve done business with you.
Chubby Guys like Cheeseburgers
If you want your advertising headline to stand out, you have to first reach out and grab a potential customer’s attention with a problem. For this example, lets consider an ad for a personal trainer. “Men: Tired of feeling embarrassed when you take off your shirt at the pool? I can help you lose the gut and feel proud to do the high dive!”
That brief headline quickly tells a story that grabs the attention of every chubby guy reads it. After grabbing his attention, the personal trainer offers his or her services as the solution and PRESTO! The story has a happy ending and the personal trainer is a part of it. The ad is great because it targets a specific customer who is likely to connect with the headline at an emotionally deep level. Trying to be all things to everyone is not effective. You can certainly go after different target audiences with a variety of ads but don’t ever try to run an ad campaign that tries to be all things to everyone.
Carefully constructing an ad that specifically targets our chubby-hubby customer is as effective as dangling a cheeseburger in his face and far more likely to get his attention that some slimy worm with a hook in it.
