Saying exactly what in the tin

Following on from my visible networking material idea I came across this business card from Jill Wigmore-Welsh. I wanted to share it with you because it stood out from all the other business cards at this networking meeting I went to.

Why? Because the first thing it said is what she does, but in a way that was beneficial to the customer. There isn’t much room, and she even managed a rhyme, but the aim of her business was the most visible element on the card, whereas her details took a back seat.

I like this idea, because the customer should always come first. Why should our networking material bang on about ourselves? The customer cares only about themselves and what they can get out of you and your business, not actually your business. Use the fact that we’re all naturally self-centered, so by turning the tables we can take advantage of this fact and steal a march on our competitors.

What do you think of this idea – your comments are always welcome!

How to use e-newsletters for effective marketing

Marketing is about long term relationship building, and a superb way of keeping your customers informed about your business over a long period of time is through a newsletter.

I have written at length about paper newsletters in the past, but now is the turn of the electronic version or e-newsletter. These are a very effective way of communication with a selection of recipients who should have expressed an interest to receive your publications (these things need to be permission based so not to be classed as spam), with the purpose to inform, educate, publicise and maintain a connection with your customer base so they don’t forget you and go off with someone else.

The first thing is to collect your customers’ contact details via an autoresponder, preferably through a double-opt-in system through a sign up form on your website. Having a secure database coupled with a template system will facilitate the procedure, especially with a large collection of details, and you can divide or create separate lists for particular campaigns or promotions.

Use marketing campaigns to collect customers’ details through the incentive system. Playing on the customers’ greed factor is an appropriate way of gathering contacts. But one thing that is not polite is to assume that after a networking meeting you can take advantage of ‘business card dumping’, which is uploading these details directly into your database, as not everybody would appreciate receiving your newsletter without their permission.

Newsletters should only be sent with a direct purpose which should be valid and appropriate. Don’t be compelled to send something out just because you said your newsletter will be bi-monthly or whatever. You want your readers to look forward to the next issue, and receive it with interest once it pops into their in-box. The last thing you want is for them to unsubscribe (a facility which should be available with every publication).

Using a template to make your newsletter ‘look pretty’ seems to be a specific requirement, but I would like to add that some businesses do very well without any special effects, as the success of a newsletter should depend mainly on the content. But if you think your readers ‘expect’ this treatment then there are plenty of templates available.

Don’t fall into the trap (myself included) of just sending out newsletters without a proper purpose or call to action.  Successful businesses always have an aim or reason for their messages, culminating in signing up for an event, publicising a promotion, highlighting a new concept that has become available, as well as increasing your expertise status. If you don’t have a call to action, ask your readers to send this newsletter to someone else who might be interested, which is another way of increasing your database of recipients, or allow them to reprint its content in another publication such as a blog or forum.

My call to action is, as well as passing this on to your friends and colleagues, if you are interested in setting up a newsletter and would like help in creating one, then I am writing a series of packages in ‘how to create marketing newsletters’ through systems such as ConstantContact.com. This will accompany a similar package called ‘How to beautify your blog’ of which details are now available through the link.

How blogging and article writing help market businesses

One way to get attention is to make a big noise. Any child will tell (or show) you that. And making big noises in business are one of the ways of getting your customers to look your way, and finding a method of getting more traffic to your website will certainly be welcome.

But making a big noise without any content is a waste of time. You have to set yourself up as an expert in your particular field. Analyse all the elements of your business that you know: what makes you successful, what special features do you possess, what little bits of information can you share with your customers that demonstrates your expertise?

Forming relationships in business (ie marketing) is all about giving stuff away, as long as it leads towards the ultimate persuasion of getting customers to buy from you. There are easily things you could tell your customers that would be of benefit to them, but would cost you practically nothing. Think of the baker’s dozen idea, when providing that bit extra results in good will and an increased awareness of the provider.

Of course one way of providing information is through writing a business blog.  This versatile piece of software is virtually free to set up, totally self-editable (you don’t need a web-designer), loved by the search engines (they are visited hourly by the spiders), and can be adapted to reflect your corporate image (including creating more pages that contain further information).  Anybody with permission can add content, and all readers are encouraged to provide feedback, which also helps with search engine optimisation.

Another concept of promotion is through links to your website. Blogs are a superb medium for linking back within every post. In fact, why not comment on other people’s blog posts to increase the linkage back to your own blog or website? This will provide more exposure to a wider audience as well as helping the internet spiders.

Ideally a blog post should be short and concise. Blogs are for quick-fire expertise statements, providing the readership with a concept to grasp, information to process or to provide details of an event with a call to action. Some are over-lengthy, but really a blog isn’t the correct medium for essays. In fact once you get more accomplished at writing about your expertise then you should submit your examples as on-line articles, and there are a number of websites that can host your pieces to aid towards further exposure.

And then there’s the added advantage of linking your blog and on-line articles to the social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, FriendsFeed and the like. All this can be automated through RSS feeds, and again this increases your audience, which in turn is passed on virally through the complexities of their RSS feeds, plus referral and recommendation. The more people who read about how good you are and what you company does, the more likely they are to visit your website and be persuaded to make a sale.

If anybody is interested in setting up a blog but want to know how, including personalising it, then I am creating a series of packages “How to Beautify your Blog”, in which customers can pick and choose certain elements to create the perfect blog for their marketing purposes.  Click on the link for more details, or watch this space for further announcements!

Up-selling pizza blogs

Up-selling is a concept I have been thinking a lot about lately. The book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber explains how the idea of franchises combined with upselling have helped businesses become successful – but how do I transform this into my own business?

I want you to visualise a pizza base, which is an excellent medium for adding things onto. Not just tomato sauce and cheese, which adds value anyway in creating a Margerita, but all the extra toppings which make the pizza individual and appropriate for its consumer. You can add many different toppings to enhance the product, and its the combination of these when added together creates the final effect.

What if your blog was just a Margerita, serviceable on its own, but a bit boring? OK, it tastes nice, and it seems to do well, but do you think extra features would help?

Consider mushrooms as a link to other websites, peppers as a link to your newsletter signup page, chillis in the form of your picture, olives as RSS feed options, anchovies linking to your categories and tags, pepperoni as your social networking links, pineapple for your recent visitors and tuna to show past comments.

As long as all these ingredients are your favourites, it doesn’t matter if you put them all on at once! Although they all have an individual purpose, explore combining these tastes to see what effect they have. Test and measure the responses. Rearrange the positioning to highlight specific items. Work with your widgets!

But don’t forget the tomato and cheese, which should relate to the blog posts, as these are the mainstay of your pizza. Good quality and value should always be on the menu.

How does this relate to upselling? ‘How to beautify your blog’ offers a series of packages that can be added to the main staple, the blog itself. Investigate this concept and give me feedback – does this sort of thing appeal to you? More ingredients cooking away are advice on exiting posts and how to write them effectively, plus all the other marketing elements of blogs I am researching into. Should be the making of the most fantastic pizzas (sorry, blogs) ever!

Make-up an on-line impression

Guest blog by LisaMarie Dias, e-newsletter diva

I don’t wear much make-up, but I do use under-eye concealer almost every day. If you use this, you know how hard it is to find a shade and texture that matches your skin. Finding one that I liked was a challenge, so I was thrilled when the woman behind the make-up counter found one for me that seemed perfect.

I brought it home only to realize that the sleek metal tube was nearly impossible to open, especially with my slightly moisturized fingers. Even after I scrubbed clean both my hands and tube, I still had great difficulty. Days later, still struggling with the tube, I realized that if I twisted it, even slightly, while attempting to open it, large quantities of the product would gush out of the cap. Although the color matched and the tube design was attractive, I’d never buy this product again.

As I thought about it more, I realized that this experience has many parallels with my work creating online marketing materials for small businesses. As great as your product or service might be, if the end user cannot open your message, opens it but can’t read it, or if it creates a mess (think viruses – even the threat of one) they will NOT come back for more.

With this in mind, I have created a list of suggestions for making sure that your message is heard:

§    Do not use a regular email service, like Outlook or AOL to create and/or send your mailings:
•    There are limits to the number of recipients you can send to at any one time without being tagged as SPAM. Even if you send them in batches, there is a chance that your address will be tagged and blocked.
•    Regular email is designed for single-column, letter-format correspondence, not longer, more informative and multi-columned documents.

§    Use an online marketing tool to deliver your message:
•    Services like Constant Contact and others provide tools to create documents that are clear, clean, and easy to read across multiple platforms. They allow you to divide your text into columns and to add photos and images to make your message both more readable and more enjoyable
•    These services work to ensure that your message is not considered SPAM. While no one service can promise that every message will be accepted (there are personal, private, and corporate filters that can still be a barrier), these services increase your chances of getting through.

You put a tremendous amount of time, money and energy into your online marketing materials; make sure that you use a delivery method which ensures that they are easily opened and enjoyed!

LisaMarie Dias helps individuals and small businesses create customized online e-newsletters, e-zines, product announcements and more, using Constant Contact and other online delivery services.  If you are looking for an easy and affordable way to get your message online and into your client’s inbox or want to start an e-newsletter but just don’t know where to begin, LisaMarie Dias Designs can help!

Visit www.LisaMarieDiasDesigns.com to learn more about her services and to find links to Constant Contact where you can sign up for a f.ree 60 day trial!  Email LMD@LisaMarieDiasDesigns.com to set up a complimentary 15 minute phone consultation to see how she can help you get your message from your hands to your client’s inbox!
  Sign up here for LisaMarie’s monthly newsletter filled with tips and suggestions on how to design and create your own custom e-newsletter for your business, your child’s sports teams or volunteer efforts!

How to use autoresponders within marketing campaigns

When putting together an on-line marketing campaign it is vital to get the process automated. You cannot be sitting there 24/7 waiting for any responses, and then be able to process them immediately. Wouldn’t you rather it be done for you while you are elsewhere doing business, making money, asleep or even relaxing on holiday?

You can automate the gathering of contact details from interested customers into a safe and secure database. You can use that database to send out automated emails that are in response to their enquiries. You can automate the process of sending out on-line goods such as special reports and e-books, and if the customer needs to make a purchase, you can use shopping carts to automate receiving the money and organising the delivery process of these items, whether they are electronic/printed books or other goods.

Then, because you have created a database of your customers’ details, you are able to communicate with them about future promotions and products, made all the more successful because they have already bought from you and are more likely to be interested.  It’s much easier to deal with past customers than to coax the unknown into buying.

There are a variety of autoresponders available, depending on their function. If all you want to do is to communicate with your prospective customers on a regular basis, then an electronic newsletter system is appropriate like ConstantContact.com and iContact.com. These provide databases with a series of templates that can be adapted to suit your corporate image, and their self-editing system is very easy to use.

Alternatively you could use an autoresponder like Aweber.com which also provides multiple databases and allows automated email responses, newsletter templates and the delivery of non-paid-for e-goods. It can be used in conjunction with payment systems like Paypal for simple automated delivery of paid goods, but it’s not as functional as a shopping cart.

Shopping carts like 1shoppingcart.com and e-junkie.com tend to be quite complicated to set up, but once achieved make it much easier for the customers to complete the purchasing process, for you to collect what you need from them, such as their contact and payment details, and even organising the necessary information sent to other parties who are part of the processing system, such as distribution houses and manufacturers. They also include an e-newsletter system for regular communications, as well as other automated money-making facilities such as affiliates.

There are a huge number of factors that need to come into play to make any automated system functional, practical and successful. All the marketing ploys need to be applied: attraction, interest, desire, action; focus, minimalism, uncomplicated, persuasion; customer first, market research, validity, affordable; visible, compelling, obvious, proactive. And above all, planning; as Graham Jones the Internet Psychologist said, a lot of on-line marketing systems fail because they just haven’t been thought through properly.

How to effectively combine on-line and leaflet marketing campaigns

Adapt your marketing campaign to collect customers’ contact details, either to buy from you immediately, or to communicate, educate and persuade towards a purchase in the future. Use forward planning to understand how your customers think in relation to what you are offering them.

Leaflets campaigns use headlines to attract attention, which need to be extremely relevant and empathise with your customers’ problems. The same applies to advertising in magazines and other publications, and also on-line, such as pay per click, banner advertising, article writing, commenting on forums and social networking. Concentrate on your customers’ needs and wants and how you can help them, and do market research to find out suitable keywords for your headlines, or what is being typed into search engines.

Focus on one particular scenario and publicise it: create a perfect customer, give them a troublesome problem and provide a fantastic solution, and then market only that. Your customers will find it much easier to relate and adjust their way of thinking towards your perfect customer, rather than you relating to all of them.  Use the marketing techniques outlined in Parts I to IV.

Once you’ve got your customers’ attention, it’s important to collect their contact details before they disappear. Create a compelling call to action, such as an introductory discount, an explanatory video or audio, a ‘special report’ or an offer of free time or consultancy, and direct your customers to a telephone number allocated for this campaign, or to a special landing page on your website.

Website landing pages should have one function only: to get warm leads to sign up. Only use persuasive text to lead up to the sign up form, and delete any other links as distractions. Collect names, email addresses and other relevant data, but limit the number of fields to encourage a response. Set up an autoresponder behind your landing page to collect these details into a safe and secure database, to immediately deliver your call to action, and to create email messages to act as follow-ups. These will help to reinforce your message, provide necessary additional information, remind customers to act upon your special offer and allow links to other aspects of your business.

Some companies use e-newsletters or e-zines for more leisurely communication with their warm leads once the autoresponder emails have finished. (You could also send out paper newsletters if it’s more suitable for your customer base.) They have the advantage of being more visual, information based and provide long-term persuasion tactics through further education and exploration on the many parts of your business. After all, you may have used only one specific area to capture their interest, but by revealing the remainder of your business it may encourage them and their colleagues to learn more about other products or future offers and be persuaded to buy again.

The world continues without me

I’m in the midst of suffering from influenza aggravated by bronchitis. No, I don’t want sympathy, but I would like to say it is really boring.

The problem is I’m concerned I haven’t been unable to fulfil my clients requirements, not to mention a really big project I wanted to get ready before the end of February. But hey ho, nature always has the upper hand and there is nothing I can do.

Nevertheless, the world continues without me. Businesses still do business, marketing, selling, social networking, promoting events, forming strategic alliances, holding meetings, developing new ideas…

Luckily with today’s technology you can watch from the sidelines what is going on, even if you are unable to participate. That’s what marketing on-line is all about: everybody is busy telling everybody else all about what they are doing, thinking, have found out, recommending, researching into, organising, planning, creating, promoting. And good job too, wouldn’t the world be a very dull place if we didn’t do all of this: learning, appreciating, listening, understanding, contributing, assessing, responding?

So let’s revel in the 21st century and applaud how we are so expert at communicating with each other.

What should you say and how to say it within your leaflet campaign

Quick reference:
How to get your leaflets to start working for you
How to get your successful leaflets to look good

It’s not what you say, but how you say it, that contributes towards a successful campaign. Be aware that your customers come first; after all, your business would not exist without them, so therefore they need to be the main focus for your campaign. This means you need to turn your mindset around to accommodate the fact that your business comes way down the pecking order of importance.

Each element of your message needs to be carefully planned, placed and executed. The first thing at the top should not be your logo and company name. Even though most leaflets and adverts blare theirs out from this position, this only works for worldwide recognised businesses; otherwise the reader’s reaction is ‘who?’ or ‘so what?’.

The main key element is the headline, which should be designed to attract attention. Begin your campaign with a statement or question that stimulates a positive response to your customers’ pain or problem. You should have done adequate market research to find this out, so position yourself inside your customers’ head and start to think like them. Work with something that will result in the reader saying ‘yes’.

The subhead should provide the resolve or solution to the headline, and there you can subtly drop in the name of your company.  I mean subtly, as the solution should always come first. The result should be to increase the readers’ empathy towards what you are offering.

Next highlight your benefits in bullet points. Here most businesses happily list their features, but remember since you are focusing on your customers, turn these features around to their point of view, so that they become customer benefits. Take out all the ‘we’ and ‘our’ and substitute them with ‘you’ and ‘yours’ to achieve this.

Why use bullet points? Readers find it easier to scan or quick read through a list than to trawl through a dense paragraph. In this fast moving 21st century, bombarded with stimuli from every direction, people don’t have the time or inclination to read everything. A list containing concise, focused and relevant points is more likely to be absorbed.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. How many campaigns forget to include a call to action? The remainder of your leaflet could contain all the right ingredients, but if you don’t ask your readers to do something, even to tell them to call you for more information, then what is the point? And by making this time-dependent you are more likely to stimulate a response, otherwise, even if they have the best intentions towards your campaign, there is no stimulus to demand a quick reaction and your leaflet could get forgotten.

And last but not least, make sure your contact details are large, clear and easily accessible. If your telephone number doesn’t jump out to hit them between the eyes, your landing page web-address is not clearly visible, or your email is hidden amongst other text, you will not encourage your customers to make contact. And no customer contact means no sales.

What goes into a newsletter?

When you write about a specific subject in your newsletter, the best way is to break it down into its basic components, and explain it simply using everyday language. This exercise is more difficult than it sounds, because the idea is to make it not only interesting, but to appeal to as many readers as possible to gain their trust and form relationships with them. By breaking down a subject, it will then lend itself to a number of other subjects which will become fodder for future articles.

Do a postcard campaign to gain interest and increase your readership. This is cheaper than creating a large quantity of the first edition of your newsletter and potentially losing most of them to an uninterested audience. The postcard campaign would have to be run over a series, as in today’s society not everyone responds immediately to information, they may need to be coerced into your way of thinking, seduced into the benefits of your profession, and stimulated by fascinating facts that they may not have thought of before. Sometimes it can take several goes to gain a follower.

Please don’t bore your readers too much about your business (this may sound unkind, but people are notoriously self-centered, and only think in terms of what is in it for them). You could easily explain the various features of your company through the benefits it offers, by writing about successful case studies, funny stories with good endings, witty and entertaining information articles about certain subjects you want to get across, special offers that cannot be resisted, competitions to raise awareness, ‘try before you buy’ offers to get them across your threshold…

Selecting certain pages for particular subjects is a good idea, because if you are going to make your newsletter a regular feature, people will like to look at a particular page first (like as for the local newspaper the sports section, the horoscopes, the letters page, the classified ads, for example) before reading the remainder of the newsletter. Keeping a consistency will help your readers in gaining confidence, and they will then look forward to the next issue. It’s like a supermarket that always has its basics like milk and bread, but the way there will offer all sorts of more provocative products to entice their interest.

But it is all very well giving them all this wonderful information if you don’t get anything in return. The idea is to get more people to try what your organisation has to offer. Therefore you must provide special offers that have a time dependent call to action. These must be worth the reader’s while, maybe even a lost leader to get them to sample what you have to offer them. Usually if you do a really good job, it will sell itself and you will get more customers. I say time dependent because if you leave it open ended, the lack of urgency will disappear from their busy minds and the opportunity will be lost or forgotten.

Why not create a blog as an archive medium for all the really important or successful features and articles of your newsletter. Because it is a blog, it would be frequently visited by the ‘internet spiders’ compared to that of a website, which can wait weeks for a visitation. The more frequent the postings, the more often the spiders visit. These postings could have links to your website or any other internet based information, which again would raise awareness and click value of your website, because it is not only spiders who roam the web and click on links but people too.

Create a sign-up form on the homepage of your website to increase your newsletter membership. You could have past copies in pdf form on the newsletter page, which readers could download if they’ve lost their original copy, or interested future subscribers to see what it is like. Again the spiders trawl the pdfs, so more info is passed onto the internet, encouraging more visits to your website, blog and sign up forms, especially if you include web links in the newsletter.

Snail mail versus failed e-mail

My friend told me that she recently had an email from one of her newsletter recipients saying that she hadn’t heard from her lately and she thought she had stopped trading.

This was very worrying for my friend. How many other people hadn’t got their newsletters each month? OK, she wasn’t using an autoresponder, which would have made her life a bit more laborious, but the problem was that she was unaware that the emails hadn’t reached their destination.

One suggestion I gave her was to occasionally alternate with a paper newsletter, or even a newsletter postcard as explained in my previous post. It would help to maintain the interest from her subscribers, guarantee getting read and provide another focal point to her communications.

This leads to the question: can you rely on the internet for your communication? Especially nowadays with over-full in-boxes stuffed to the gills with spam and other missives. How do you know your e-newsletters are getting read and not swamped, forgotten or deleted? Sure, you may be able to track that they’ve been opened if you use an autoresponder, but that doesn’t mean they’ve even been scanned for interesting content yet alone properly scrutinised.

What used to happen back in the dark ages before email? Paper newsletters were used to impart news, tell stories and crow about your company. They were a media for advertising and articles. The news was both past, present and future. They were read without eye-strain. OK, you did rely on the Post Office and it cost to send them, but they were more likely to be read at the recipient’s leisure, more than once and passed around our friends and contacts. They were not as frequent, so were looked forward to the next issue. They were not deemed ‘a pain’ when they plopped onto our doormats.

The most important elements of a newsletter are: relevance, of interest to the reader, well designed for readability, legible, captivating and newsworthy, excellent copy, good spelling and grammar, striking pictures, grabbing headlines, and being well read. Can e-newsletters lay claim to all these qualities?

How powerful is a postcard newsletter?

Here’s a concept that is big in the US. Think of a small, bijous, concise form of communication that is quirky, eye-catching, yet still packed full of information. Of course the Americans have a larger version of the postcard, something resembling an A5 so there is more space for the designer to play with, but I still think it could work with our British sizes if you’re clever.

How can you fit a newsletter onto a postcard? This all depends on an efficient use of layout. You don’t have to make your font extra small so the reader needs to get out a magnifying glass to read it, it’s all to do with columns, succinct copywriting, choice subject matter, prioritisation and, of course, a brilliant use of headlines. You could say it is an exercise in combining the verbal with the visual into another form of communication. And don’t forget to wrap it up with excellent imagery that describes, reinforces or compliments the content, with a fully incentive-biased call to action together with your clearly presented contact details.

Why do a postcard newsletter? Well, in this age of emails and e-newsletters, why not grab your readers’ attention with something different. Postcards are simple, easy and cheap to post; don’t require an envelope; fun, different and visually compelling; are always open and therefore immediately readable; not time-consuming; and are a medium for quick messages and prompt news items. Their brightly coloured visual impact will not get swamped, deleted or forgotten.  They can be read there and then or later with a cup of coffee, and can be passed around for others to read or stuck onto a noticeboard.  It’s their individuality that makes them stand out above the crowd and get noticed.

Use a postcard newsletter to advertise your news in bite-sized chunks and tantalising snippets of information.  You can post up the remainder of the story on either your blog or website by including the link at the end.  I know it won’t be interactive, so make sure your link isn’t complicated or over-long, or provide clearly placed links from your homepage to the remainder of the content, a double whammy as the reader will then get a chance to view the rest of your website later.

Then there’s the added bonus that they are relatively inexpensive to produce, even if you get them professionally printed.  And that’s probably a good idea, as digital printers can mailmerge the names and addresses onto each card (as well as other variable information), topped off with your personal franking mark and, of course, your corporate identity and colour scheme. If you prefer to use stamps, then send them to a distributing house for economic facilitation, especially if you want to stick a sample onto them or whatever else your marketing team comes up with.