How to use your customers to promote your business

Customers are extremely important to your business, where would it be without them? This may sound obvious, but there are some businesses that trundle along taking no notice of this vital element.

When analysing a business promotion, take notice of to whom they are talking to. Who is the main objective in their marketing message? Who is placed at the top of their advertising? Who are they describing when they talk about their services or products? Who is first, the company or the customer?

Humans are naturally self-centred; it’s in our nature to look after ‘number one’. But for business purposes this needs to be turned on its head: you need to think about who you are selling to, rather than banging on about how great you are. Customers don’t give a tinker’s toot about your business, they only care about what’s in it for them. How are they going to benefit from your product or services? Will their lives be improved, and by how much? Will they get value for money?

This concept should be prevalent in all your visual marketing: website, promotional literature, advertising, shop front, merchandise, networking: pitch, presentation and social on-line, sales patter with your customers – in fact any visual outlet of your company. The customer always comes first, as it is they you are promoting to, and it is they who will ultimately buy.

Another factor to take notice of is time. Don’t go mad trying to explain everything, especially if it’s really dull stuff about your company. The 21st century is a fast moving world; customers won’t (or even can’t) spend time reading cluttered and over-long descriptions; they usually make split-second decisions and can be very cruel if it doesn’t match their requirements.

For example, visitors to your website usually spend up to eight seconds to make up their mind whether it the right one, what they can do (go further in, click on something, sign up for a newsletter or download a free report) or just decide to disappear. Your leaflets have even less time to make an impression as to whether they are picked up or discarded: is this relevant to me, does it have the information I want, do I understand all of it, what’s in it for me, who do I contact to find out more?

OK, customers are self-centred, but they are also greedy. You may have got an idea of this from the website reference above. If there is something they can get for nothing, they will have it. Take advantage, and offer an exchange of their details in return for something they want, is of value, is relevant and will benefit them. You now have their details in a secure database for future communication; they are now at your mercy to be promoted at! And customers like being kept in touch, especially if they will have first hand knowledge of any new promotions and can benefit from early-bird discounts!

Use your customers’ opinions, comments and feedback. Write a questionnaire to find out more about their wants and needs. Encourage them to respond to your blog posts, tweets, social networking walls, on-line articles, events and workshops, teleseminars or whatever, and use this incredible source of information to find out how you can make your business even better for them. If customers feel they are appreciated, empathised with, understood and you are willing to adapt for their gain, then they will come back for more, tell their friends, spread the news and even provide testimonials and references (I have a great referral postcard designed specifically for this).

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.

How to get your successful leaflets to look good

The misfortune of the single leaflet (or postcard) campaign is that there is limited space for what you have to say. By choosing only one shot at your potential customer market, you will have to cram in a lot of information into a relatively small space to get the full message across.

The initial reaction, after scanning the grey mass in front of them, is that readers will look for a way out: get rid. Even if all the marketing criteria are met: headline, sub-headline, bullet points, call to action, special offer, contact details, the fact that they are virtually sitting on top of each other defeats their objective.

When laying out your leaflet, the first thing to consider is your margins; wide borders navigate the eye towards a focal point: the message inside. Adequate white space provides sufficient elbow room to allow the leaflet to breathe, so each marketing element has a chance to succeed.

Next, consider which kind of picture you are going to have. Background images can backfire: one particular advert had a relevant picture behind all its text, but it was so complex you couldn’t make out what it was trying to say. Presented by itself it would have been easier to understand its message, therefore providing a more effective contribution.

Another problem with a complex background is that it detracts from the words in front of it. Messages are not easily understood if they have to compete with their surroundings. Clean, clear backgrounds, preferably white or pale in colour, combined with a darker colour for the words, will have far more impact for quick recognition and readability than the reverse.

Pictures should be relevant, and not just a smiling tele-operator who looks good. It’s easy to get a picture off the net that will do, but then it may be so popular that everybody uses it, thus reducing your impact. A good quality, well produced photograph is vital, with excellent focus and presentation within its own frame; a home produced job with camera shake or low resolution taken from a mobile phone will not cut to the chase.

And finally how the leaflet is prepared for the printer will make or break a good campaign. Customers respond to quality, and an obvious product of the office ink-jet will certainly not provide the impression you are looking for. Neither will a leaflet whose pictures are not converted to the printers’ resolution, as failure to do so will result in flat, 2D, uninteresting images that also suggest low quality.

Also the kind of paper or card used will make a difference: good quality with a clean finish will easily sway the customer to read, absorb, understand and therefore take action – ultimately resulting in a sale.

How to get your leaflets to start working for you

First, we must consider the purpose of a leaflet: to promote a product or service and bring in sales. Unfortunately that is only half the story, because in today’s world a single ‘blast’ of marketing will not work. We live increasingly rapid lives, bombarded with stimuli and competition, ever filling in-boxes and constant distractions. Unless your leaflet is so ‘whizz-bang’ it cannot fail to draw attention to itself, it will only end up buried. So the answer is to up the anti, and create a series of leaflets that will eventually get your message across to encourage a response.

OK, this may be more expensive, but wouldn’t it be expensive to print a load of leaflets that bring in no or little response? Wouldn’t a well thought out leaflet campaign (or postcards) sent over a series of days or weeks to a small but well targeted audience, designed specifically with them in mind, bring in a better rate of return?

This is because you will be creating a relationship with your leaflet’s readers, which is what marketing is all about. OK, the first one may well go the same route as your competitors’ leaflet: bottom of the pile or more likely the bin. But subsequent literature is more likely to draw in more attention, as long as the message is compelling and the headlines are relevant and follow on from their predecessors.

The idea is to tell a story through your campaign that eventually climaxes in the final instalment with an offer so great, it cannot be missed. Actually plan your campaign through a story-board, then you will be able to work out how many leaflets will be needed and what kind of customer you are aiming at. Develop your message from many angles, or offer interesting ‘nuggets’ of information that come together at the end, like pieces of a jigsaw. If you can get your customers looking forward to their next episode of your campaign, you’ve got them hooked.

Another tip is to really focus on your target market, and actually create your ideal customer. Give them a name (say David or Susan), create a cut-out figure and think up their lifestyle. This is because it is easier to market to one person rather than many, and you’ll find your customers can easily adapt their way of thinking to match up to Dave or Sue, rather than the other way around. Base your story around your characters to give you more inspiration. You could extend your campaign more long-term, like a little soap-opera, bringing in offers and concepts along the way. If your customers have something to latch onto, they are more likely to remember you or your product next time you start another campaign, making it that much easier for you.

It all comes down to quality in the end

This morning we all woke up to the news that Woolworths and MFI have gone into administration. Such well known institutions in the market place now reside in the hands of the receivers. But where did they go wrong?

One idea banded around at a breakfast networking group I attended this morning was due to the concept of ‘quality’. Both shops piled it high and sold it cheap. Inexpensive materials went hand in hand with trying to give the impression of quality, and advertising usually declared the latest incredible savings that could be made. Sometimes I wondered why MFI were offering over 50% off their sofas – is it because they couldn’t sell them? The quality of Woolworth’s stock sunk lower and lower, and the layout of their shops made it almost impossible to find anything you wanted.

Don’t be tempted over price compared to quality, especially in today’s economic environment. You can easily get your business stationery over the internet from interactive websites that seem incredibly cheap, but then the products they produce certainly are! The quality of card is inferior, the quality of print thin, the portrayal of your imagery is flat and uninspiring, there is no guidelines in how to place your information correctly, the templates are overused and easily replicated at networking meetings, and because the process is totally automated, I known some stuff to come back that was totally unsuitable because their machine broke down and a vital colour was not included!

When you’re handing out your networking stationery, you need be proud of your business cards. Potential clients are impressed by the ‘feel’ of the card, clarity of the layout and zinginess of your colours. This also goes for your letterheads, compliment slips, brochures, postcards, leaflets… in fact, all the promotional literature you produce needs to send the message that you are of the highest quality, and therefore the work you produce is the same.

During a credit crunch, it is important not to stint on your marketing, and certainly not to compromise on the quality of your message and the special offers you are broadcasting. Think quality and therefore deliver quality – it will always win in the end.

How to make a postcard campaign work

At a ‘Power Breakfast’ this morning I gave some tips away about how to design a postcard marketing campaign with marketing in mind.

In today’s world it’s not enough to design a pretty postcard and send it out to lots of people to see if any of them will buy from you.  Here are six of various factors that need to come into play:

First, assess your target market. Are you sending your postcard to the right people? Don’t waste your precious marketing material on the wrong kinds of business or individuals.

Second, how are you going to get a return from your campaign? The take-up rate for mail-outs is usually 0.5% – will that be enough? Is it cost effective? Would you like to capture your potential clients’ details so you can communicate with them later?

Third, when putting together a postcard campaign, consider these other elements. Do you have a good call to action your prospective clients will react to? Do you have something of value to offer them that they can’t refuse, but doesn’t quite give them everything? Do you have a method of collecting names and emails into a database for later use?

Fourth, if you have a website, could you set up a ‘landing page’ specifically for this postcard campaign? This is a stand-alone webpage that re-emphasises the information on your postcard, provides a large telephone number for contact, and displays a sign-up form to download a special incentive or free gift as part of your call to action. Its main purpose is to capture their details or get them to call you to find out more.

Fifth, the postcard itself will have to use the AIDA marketing technique, which consists of a catchy yet relevant headline to draw attention to the main message, bullet points of your benefits (not features) that are in the customer’s interest, a call to action by offering a juicy incentive, and clear and large contact details. A bright and colourful picture will help too.

Sixth, once you’ve got their email details, then you can use them to set up a relationship with them through an e-newsletter. It is quite normal to have to contact prospective clients several times in many formats before they come round to buying from you. Keeping regular updates on how your company is doing, any new products/concepts/services/etc on offer, crowing about any successes or achievements, testimonials from satisfied clients, descriptions of how you overcame particular problems and what results it had – the list is endless as long as it’s relevant, readable and entertaining. Make sure your prospective clients will read and look forward to the next issue, and if you include more call to actions within your posts, you will eventually get more sales.

If you want to know more, I will setting up a series of e-books based on combining design with marketing (or marketing with design – take your choice) which will explain this in more detail. Watch this space. Meanwhile, visit my website and join up to my newsletter to find out more about what I do.

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.

Colours, carstickers and pigs!

At a networking meeting this morning I had quite a number of thoughts come to me. One was stimulated by some vibrantly pink leaflets one lady was handing out. They were very noticeable, especially when everybody seems to be sporting one amongst their piles of business cards they were clutching beneath their cappuccinos. Maybe colour is important when it comes to being noticed.  An eminent marketing adviser told me last week that he sends out bright orange postcards with handwritten notes to follow on from his telephone information calls.  He doesn’t expect the readers to remember everything that is written on them, but that the colour should make such an impression he is remembered as ‘the man who sends out those orange postcards’. They are ideal, of course, for those fervent searches for his information amongst piles of other papers.

One business card I was given I noticed had a shape of a pig stamped out of it. Of course I soon realised it matched the pig logo, but this ‘hole’ marked it out from the sea of other business cards that get stuffed into your pocket during networking meetings. It belonged to Sue Wilson and her discount club. We soon got talking about marketing ideas, which led to the concept of how to get your website noticed without wasting your money on advertising. I asked her whether she had considered a car sticker, and suggested she designed one consisting of pictures of pigs displaying her website URL across the back window of her car.  The vision of a procession of five large pink omnivores nose to tail across her rear view tickled her imagination, and she promised to send me a picture of them once she’d had them done. Do you have a fun image you could use to display your URL on your car?

How many more ways are there to use a postcard?

Don’t think of a postcard as just a medium for direct mail. It is so versatile that if you are able to let your imagination loose you could adapt it for so many different purposes.

For example, in my last post I suggested breaking your business into its component parts, or small, bite-sized chunks and putting each of them onto a postcard.  Why? – so your customers can have the opportunity to truly understand what it is you do. There may be some factors that they haven’t associated with you before, leading to a “I didn’t know you did that” scenario. Adapt it to play on their curiosity – tempt them into asking questions and lead them down different avenues – allow them to explore more possibilities.  Display them for individual selection, or present them as a package in their own special folder.

Use a postcard to promote a new service or product you may be developing. To have a better impact target your postcards to a choice number of people who you know will be interested, and follow it up with a sample of your product, hand delivered in special packaging, to kindle their interest even further (especially if it is either useful or of good value).

If you’re holding a seminar or talk to publicise your service, send out postcards in a ticket-format with a tear off slip or stamped self-addressed reverse, combined with a time-dependent call to action with a free gift or another incentive to guarantee returns.

Spread your good news with a postcard – crow about your accomplishments, publish a glowing testimonial, share your fantastic results to impress your customers – let people know that you, your business and your product/service are succeeding!

Use it for PR purposes – newspaper editors might notice something different in their postbags rather than boring A4 press-releases. (And don’t forget to hit them between the eyes with a mind-blowing headline and make your contact details really clear to get that call!)

Use the stamped self-addressed idea for a marketing questionnaire.  Get some feedback from your client base, both past and prospective, to find out how to improve and provide a better service.  (Don’t forget to offer gifts and incentives by a particular date to get a response.)

Are there any more?  Of course, we haven’t explored postcard newsletters – marketing ideas from the USA.  More in a future blog…

The Diverse Customer and the Postcard

If you read my post on referral postcards, you can have a chance to view what I mean by visiting my postcards page in my website. This idea has also been adapted into a feedback form (also shown) to gain more marketing knowledge about what your customers really want.

As there are many kinds of potential customers out there, does your product or service cater for all of them? Could it be adapted slightly for each kind of target market? Read my blog post Do you have just one kind of customer? which examines the fact that a single product could be marketed and packaged in a variety of ways towards a wide range of customers, yet still, underneath it all, be the same product.

I would like to take that concept and use it within a postcard format. Why not compose a series of postcards that reflect your customer selection? Each could be adapted to aim at each specific customer, sporting the different aspect that they are attracted to, while spelling out the benefits that reflect how your product/service could best satisfy their needs.

If you haven’t done a market analysis of your customer base, now is a great time to start.  Have fun thinking of the different kinds of people who could potentially buy your product or service. What are their characteristics, their specialities, their preferred choices, their lifestyles, and most of all, their needs? Can you locate a gap in their lives that your product or service could fill?

Now look at what your business is about.  Could you adapt the visual impact of your product or service to fit the range of customers out there?  That’s what products such as washing powder and services such as car insurance have done. Create a number of styles that match your potential customers and get some postcards done to reflect it – pink and fluffy for the girls and fast and shiny for the boys are stereotyped characteristics, but you could be far more subtle in your approach when even just a small change in the headline and the use of another colour could do the trick.

Alternatively, you could just break down your product or service into its component parts, and create a postcard to represent each of them. This will allow the customer to understand your business and what it does in small, bite-sized chunks, or to select the areas that they are most interested in. Present them appropriately in a layered stand, or in a matching corporate folder to hold them all together.

Practical Postcard Potentials

If you had read my post last week about postcards, you would see how they could be used for multiple mailshots.  It is worth considering that it takes at least six approaches (or attacks) to make an impression (or impact) on your prospective customer, ranging from ‘I can’t be bothered with this’ right up to ‘that’s amazing, this would really work’. Give it a go, write your story-board and start the ball rolling.

This week I’m going to offer another postcard possibility. We all know that a good way to get clients is through referrals. But asking for them is always difficult (we’re not as confident as we should be), so having some sort of paper prop would be helpful.

When you’ve completed a project with your client, and it’s gone well, they’ve paid up and there’s good feelings all around, this is the chance to get some more out of them. Along with your compliment slip thanking them for their payment, include a postcard asking them for three referrals (giving them spaces to write their details) and, maybe on the other side, a space for a testimonial from your satisfied customer. Make it attractive and easy to use, emblazon it with your logo, strapline, corporate image or whatever, and don’t forget to include a very attractive incentive, both for your customer and his referrals, to get your feedback delivered to you.

Alternatively, you could adapt your referrals postcard to get your satisfied client to send it out to his contacts as a referral for you, providing him with a space to write his comments, and highlighting the special offer both he and his referrals will get for working with you.  Provide him with more than one, making sure it is easy and quick to complete, to get maximum benefits.

And follow all this up with a phone call or a 1-2-1 to see if he received, read, appreciated and acted on your referrals postcard.  It’s easier when there is something to talk about rather than coping with cold thin air.

Postcard Pointers for Pertinent Promotions

This is my version of the subject on postcards mentioned a few posts ago:

Take another look at the humble postcard. Size A6, although appears small, is actually quite versatile (and fits nicely into a C6 envelope if necessary), and even though it’s dimensions restrict the amount of content you can fit on it, there is no reason why you should stick to only one at a time.

Set up a series of postcards as part of a promotional exercise. Think of a story you would like to share with your prospective customers, or isolate valuable items or points you would like to tell them about. Put together a coherent message in separate episodes using a connective theme, target your audience, decide on a timeframe, chose which day they will receive your postcards, and remember to get them professionally designed and printed.

You will make it easier for your target market to cope by sending out your mail-shot in manageable bite-sized amounts, because at the end of your campaign you will need to call each recipient to ask them if they have received your postcards, find out what they thought of them, ask if they struck a chord with their business and whether they interested in what you are offering.  Restrict your mail-outs to a small number at a time to make the follow-up a little easier and less daunting.

Using this slow trickle of reminding advertising will give your potential customers a chance to remember you, especially if the theme is clever, relevant, amusing or eye-catching.  When you do make contact, remember to listen carefully to their answers and take their lead to arrange a meeting with them to discuss their part in your campaign.

What to include in your postcard

The beauty of the postcard is that it can be used in so many ways.  Both sides can be filled with information, or one side only with a picture that is relevant, coercive, stimulating, funny, different or influential. The other face could be designed like a postcard with separate areas for the message and address.  If you’re doing a long-term campaign remember ‘more is less’, especially if your message is thought-provoking, contains an incentive-laden cliff-hanger, or maybe includes a series of clues to culminate in the final issue.

An excellent headline is vital to draw attention to your reader.  Make it short and snappy, rememberable by being amusing, using gimmicks like alliteration or playing on a colloquial phrase, or posed in a question leading to an affirmative answer relevant to your purpose. A sub-heading or catch-phrase will help emphasise it further, or even explain or support particularly ‘clever’ examples.

Advertise your solution to your customers’ pain by highlighting your business benefits, arranged in a scanable format with jargon-free, simply digestible words. Add a time-induced call to action, laced with gifts or incentives, to keep the momentum going.  And make sure your contact details are always highly visible, just in case they don’t want to wait until the end of your campaign.

Presentation is always important, as good quality and well designed publicity reflects well on the professionalism of your company. Care should be taken on the materials used, colours and fonts for modern and noticeable effect, and layout for efficient use of space. If you want to know more, then just go ask Alice!

Postcard Possibilities

Having browsed through my blog list, I came across this posting about postcards, which I would like to share with you: http://www.businessofdesignonline.com/profiting-from-postcards/

I’ve always liked postcards – they’re such a versatile media to work with. You could pack all your details onto both sides, or design them so they can be popped into the post with the traditional stamp in the corner. They can be enclosed in a C6 envelopes (found in a myriad of colours to match your design) or just have your details on one side to leave on side-tables or counters as walk-past publicity.

Why not try the concept from the post above? Setting up a serial of postcards spread over several weeks to get your message across in small bite-sized pieces is an effective way of drawing attention to youself – I was once bombarded in the same way by a printer touting for my custom and I certainly knew who they were when they called me later to see if I had received them. They succeeded in making an impression because I have remembered them to make this post now!

And watch out for my own new postcard design, just getting it ready to hit the streets very soon!