Mobile Marketing & Online Customer Getting Solutions

Courtesy Gerald Yuvallos of Flickr

“You’ll attract more flies with honey than vinegar” – old wives tale.I don’t know why you’d want to attract flies. But you do want more customers.

Attraction marketing is the huge buzzword today. Basically, it’s getting customers calling you. You do this by posting content in the form of articles, press releases, radio ads and videos on the Internet or through broadcast channels.

Done the right way they’re so enticing the prospect is compelled to follow up. They almost HAVE to call you.

I won’t get too deep into the metaphysical.

I’m implementing a content marketing strategy for More Customers Online to bring in the preferred client. I’ve thought long and hard about the clients we’re going to work with and those we’re going to turn away.

Sometimes I have to turn away a client because I don’t want to work with them. Sometimes there’s just not a personality fit.

It’s much more common to turn a client away because of what the research reveals. Sometimes there’s just not enough people searching online or talking on the Internet about their type of service to justify their investment with More Customers Online.

Our philosophy is all about positive ROI for you. You’ll be a long-term client. It’s a partnership to grow your business and profits. And after doing the research if this doesn’t seem likely we part ways as friends.

Intention

You want to be intentional in your business.

I told you the More Customers Online company philosophy so you can start thinking about your company’s philosophy.

1. What kind of customers do you want to work with?

2. Who is your ideal customer?

Once you define who this is you can be intentional with your communications, your marketing investment, and your company culture to attract those customers to your business.

Content Attracts

Now you can craft content and marketing messages which will speak directly to your ideal customer. It’s so enticing they’ll be compelled to contact you. It’ll be interesting and exciting for them.

Your ideal customer will feel you’re talking directly to them 1-on-1.

The most powerful word in the English language, in any language, is your own name.

When you tune your content to this level your ideal customer will almost feel as if you’re calling out to them by their own name. And this is irresistible to them.

This is attraction marketing at its best.

A Closing Example

I was with my friend Dimitri Kozlov who came into Austin for a business growth summit.

We hung out and did standup paddle boarding. I’ve never done standup paddle boarding before. Thankfully, it was easy to get the hang of and very enjoyable. It was also very exhausting.

I vaguely remembered where the paddleboard place was. I didn’t know what the name of the place was so we couldn’t even look it up on his smartphone. But I set the intention we were going to get there and we did without incident.

Afterward we stopped at Whole Foods. We didn’t know where something was and there weren’t any workers around. Just then on the next aisle a worker seemed to appear out of nowhere.

I can’t claim any scientific proof that we attracted this Whole Foods employee right when we needed her.

But these kinds of things are happening to me more frequently. I’m believing in attraction marketing and the law of attraction more and more. A missing piece most people have to the law of attraction is you’ve got to take steps and get into action. Movement toward your desires brings them to you.

I highly suggest you implement attraction marketing into your marketing mix today. It’s the most powerful way to bring new customers into your business.

And since you’re developing compelling content which speaks directly to your ideal customer it’s an asset. Because of Google, Bing and Yahoo your content lives forever. It continues to attract your ideal customers to you forever. This is the greatest power of the Internet, when used correctly.

Leave your comments below about successes or questions you have about content marketing. It’ll be a lively conversation.

courtesy flickr only alice

Clearly communicating your local business‘ value proposition in the marketplace is paramount. Your value is communicated and you have an irresistible offer customers instantly comprehend.

They shouldn’t have to hunt and peck on your website to find this simple to understand offer.

It should be immediately clear right when they land on your full version website or your mobile friendly version website. Your offer states what your business does, the value you bring to the customer, and the cash investment they’re going to have to make in order to unlock that value.

Graphics

Graphics can be a quick and instantaneous way to get your offer across. But don’t rely solely on them.

Text Copy

You should certainly have some text sales copy at least to supplement your graphics. Think of your text sales copy as the “beast of burden”. Your graphics are the water and hormones you feed the beast to keep it pulling strong.

Bad Offer Example

I recently attended a live networking event and had trouble finding parking in downtown Austin.

The parking attendant said “that’ll be $7 please”. So I paid the man and then he said, “Just park anywhere”.

So I started backing up a little bit and pulling into a spot and he says, “No, no that’s employee parking only.”

Offer confusion

In his world “anywhere” didn’t really mean anywhere. I ended up pulling onto the next higher level and parking there.

This highlights the importance of offer clarity.

If any word is ambiguous. If any word can have multiple meanings make sure to define it for the customers. Define it explicitly so there’s no confusion.

Leave a comment below about a confusing offer you’ve seen around. If you’ve dealt with a business thinking you were going to get one thing but calling them and getting something else let me know.

These are the ambiguous offers you want to avoid in your local business. Be clear, be clear, be even more clear.

I vow to read and participate in the lively comment conversation.

courtesy arbyreed on flickr

As a local business owner you probably wonder whether big Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 companies advertising campaigns are effective.

I’m breezing through the weekly ads from grocery stores and farmers markets. One ad in particular gouges into my eyeballs like a gaff hook.

I couldn’t simply throw it away.

“It’s good mood food”

I don’t know what the hell good mood food is. I don’t think anybody does.

But that’s not stopping Arby’s and the advertising agency they hired from attempting to define it.

I’ve got nothing against Arby’s. I’ve enjoyed a Roast Beef Sandwich before.

But it’s certainly not healthy.

And people usually turn to fast food as “comfort food”. When you’re feeling down get something quick and easy.
It tastes good but you know it’s damaging you.

I’ll stay tuned in to see the progression of Arby’s “It’s Good Mood Food” long-term branding ad campaign.

As marketing campaigns go this one’s fascinating.

Leave your comment about other ad campaigns that forced you to double take.

Or the contrary side comment, a campaign so bad it was like a train wreck you couldn’t rip your eyes away
from.

I promise to read and reply to your comments in the conversation.

This is the 2nd to last night I’ll be living in my granddad’s place. He died back in December of 2011.

We were close. He had up a big positive influence on my life. Our whole family misses him.

But now it’s time to sell his place. It’ll be good for me to get into a new place and start new challenges.

Earlier today I was walking through and taking pictures of the interior and exterior of the house.

My camera’s batteries died while walking the property.

I reached in to change them and said “The 1 thing I don’t want to happen is to drop these in the wet grass”.

Guess what happened…

No, I didn’t drop BOTH energy sticks in the grass. Only 1 battery touched wet grass.

It brought back into my mind just how important it is to focus on what you want. Stay away from focusing on what you don’t want. Stop even thinking about what you don’t want.

Think about what you desire. Focus on your dreams. Visualize your best outcomes.

Do this in your business. Do this in your personal life.

If you get good at doing this 90% or even 95% of the time you’ll live a way happier life and get much more of what you want.

And it’ll seem to happen as if by magic.

Don’t get me wrong. Success still requires some effort. It’ll just happen faster and with much less energy than you imagine.

Tell me about a situation where you focused on something in your business and got it. You can also tell me about a situation where negative thoughts crept in and you ended up getting what you didn’t want.

I pledge to respond to your comments and spur lively discussion.

You’ve probably heard the adage about local business advertising “Half my advertising works I just don’t know which half”.

Double Your Money Photo via Shutterstock

 
One way you get an answer with off-line advertising is coupon codes in your ads. Your people must bring in or tell you what this coupon code is in order to get the discount offer.

You have a different coupon for each ad and each advertising channel. This way you know exactly what ad generated the customer.

It’s not full proof.

But for off-line advertising it’s the best you’ve got.

As a small business owner you’re crunched for time. Your customer’s time is almost as strained.

So design your marketing campaigns and website to respect their time. They shouldn’t have to hunt and peck for your contact info, hours of operation or office location.

Tracking

All marketing campaigns and advertising channels should be accountable.

The cool thing about the web is you can track basically everything.

For your business important activities to track would be:

– number of phone calls from the web

– number of visitors to your website

– number of visitors from search

– number of visitors from social media

– number of people from text message campaigns

– number of visitors from e-mail marketing campaigns

There are some other more specific activities which will depend on your business type. You can get some custom tracking solutions from the team here at More Customers Online.

Off-line Golden Nugget

To properly track your radio or TV ad campaigns (or even print if you’re still doing print ads) set up a different website for each of these 3 channels.

You can copy the look and feel of your main website over to these other 3 sites.

The only thing which changes is the offer. The offer you make on this page will depend on what you said in your radio or TV ad.

This way you don’t have to pay a massive amount for a whole new web design and web development team. You take what you’ve already built and further leverage it. You also get better tracking.

This way you can tell exactly how many visitors you got from your TV ad. And how many from your radio campaign.

Armed with this ironclad data you can go in to your advertising rep’s office and either negotiate better rates or a pay per performance advertising campaign.

I’ve never heard of this idea before. But it’s definitely something you should do for off-line advertising campaigns.

Here’s more from small biz trends.com:

”

ROI Is Everything

Beautiful websites, high rankings, lots of Facebook likes and Twitter followers don’t necessarily translate to high ROI.

As a person that owns a small business, you almost certainly have a shortage of either time or money. That’s why you need to set specific, measurable and attainable goals and project returns for every marketing campaign, no matter how small it seems. Track everything and take the feedback from the data you are measuring seriously. Rinse and repeat.

Thinking outside of the box with your feet firmly on the ground while implementing what’s working for your business will produce remarkable results over time.  Guaranteed.

”

How are your advertising campaigns performing?

Leave your comments below because I pledge to read and respond to them.

Local businesses still pour money down the drain on Yellow Pages ads. Only a few in the older demographic still use the outdated print book.

Despite this fact a force of habit still compels many local businesses to spend precious ad dollars here.

Over $6.9 billion were spent on ads in Yellow Pages publications across America in 2011.

This is still a whopping 7.6% of all advertising spend.

What return did local businesses get on this substantial investment?

Most business owners don’t even know.

Because most don’t put any kind of coupon code in their ad offer so they can track if any customers are coming from their Yellow Pages ad.

The only real way to track off-line ads is through a unique coupon code which is different in each online off-line ad.

Say you’ve got a $15 first-time offer as your Yellow Pages ad.

You’re coupon code could be “YP15″. This way when a customer calls in with this code you know they found you in the Yellow Pages. You can now track whether you’re getting positive ROI on your Yellow Pages ad spend.

Certain business classes are still found using the antiquated book. Roofers and furnace replacement companies are 2 cited. Restaurants and locksmiths you likely find on your mobile device. Along with almost everything else.

If you can afford front or back cover of the book advertising it has some return.

If you’re in an emergency business like repairs or insurance funded restorations it can be good.

Yellow Pages companies see opportunities managing online marketing for small businesses. This has disaster written all over it.

Negative ROI for businesses sucked in by this.

Online marketing changes so rapidly do you really want an ancient company with a dying business model handling this vital piece of your local business?

I don’t know any sane business owners who would.

The only ones likely to be sucked into this blackhole are those who’ve been spending money with the Yellow Pages for years and simply don’t know any better.

The online marketing game requires mastery like anything else. And the Yellow Pages don’t have their 10,000 hours required to master it.

Take this into consideration before making your decision. Here’s more:

”

The industry’s hopes for revival lie with small business owners like Les Watkins, founder of LD Watkins Construction Services in Granby, a town in the Colorado Rockies, who has advertised in the yellow pages since starting his company in 1993. He’s found that the print ads don’t help the custom-home building side of his business, which is more relationship-driven. “It would be like advertising for a girlfriend,” he says. They do help his “reactionary and spontaneous” lines of work, namely emergency repairs and insurance-funded restorations. He pays $500 to $800 a month for each of his ads, which he runs on the front or back cover of the local directories.

While Watkins has a website, he doesn’t buy online ads or know how to improve his search ranking. “I need to get my Google placement higher,” he says. That’s where yellow page companies see an opportunity—handling all the marketing for small businesses without Internet savvy, be it ads in print directories, buying keywords online, or managing Facebook pages. “We believe as the local media marketplace gets increasingly fragmented for small businesses, many people don’t have the time and inclination to figure it all out,” says Neg Norton, president of the Local Search Association, which, in a sign of the times, changed its name from the Yellow Pages Association last year.

”

What do you think the Yellow Pages should do?

Does their turnaround plan have a prayer of succeeding?

Leave your comments below because I pledge to read and respond to them.

Local business owners are often told, “content is king. Links are queen.”

This is false. It’s now a myth but unlike other myths it was once true.

We’re now in the information overload era. We’re in the attention age.

Attention is the commodity.

Customers want to deal with experts. Experts provide solutions.

So your content marketing should be focused all around providing solutions to common problems people in your market have.

For most markets this content should be multichannel. Meaning:

1. Text based blog posts

2. Images and infographics in blog posts

3. YouTube videos

4. Apple iTunes podcast

5. Live events — online webinar training events and live in-person events promoted through Meetup.com, Facebook events, and even on craigslist

That’s the format for the content.

So what types of content?

1. Competitive comparisons — features and benefits of your product versus your competitors. Pricing versus your competitors.

2. FAQs — questions your customers are asking and those they should be asking

3. Case studies — customer success stories which through telling the story naturally overcome objections

4. Negative info — if you’re the premium price in your market explain why your value given is way higher than the money your customers invest with you

It’s better to address the negative info upfront and position your company as the champion than to let the customer’s imagination run wild.

Here’s the story from entrepreneur:

”

Q: How do you price your watches?

A: Our prices may be slightly higher than other watches you may find on the internet, but this is due to our exhaustive restoration process. When one of our master watchmakers finishes with the restoration of an individual piece, it is timed to within factory specs, or better, in all original, rated positions for that particular timepiece. … We also warranty our watches for one full year without an extra charge that some other dealers charge. Included in our price is a good quality watchband at no extra charge.

What we are really talking about here, of course, is creating content people will find useful. Done right, the content you create will position your company not just as a seller of stuff but as a reliable and consistent source of information. And that, Marcus Sheridan says, is “the ultimate gift that keeps on giving.”

”

What questions do you have about content marketing? If you don’t have a content strategy what’s holding you back?

You should produce at least 1 piece of new problem-solving content per week at a minimum.

Leave your comments below because I’ll answer your questions and point you toward solution resources.

As a local business owner it’s a dream to see your products stocked on the shelves of Wal-Mart, Target and Cosco. If you’re selling electronics then Best Buy, RadioShack, or even Apple stores (which would be cool but as of right now the only way I know to do this is to supply component parts which go into Apple devices).

Awareness is the first step.

Distribution is the second step.

By getting distribution from 1 or more of these big brand stores this is automatically taken care of.

Dream big

If you don’t dream big it will happen.

But this cliché won’t get you there. You must have the steps to make this dream reality.

1. Research

Be thorough when doing your research. The homework stage determines success or failure.

Put yourself in the big corporate’s shoes. It’s easy to live inside your own box as the small business owner but that won’t get you on their shelves.

You must think of it from their perspective. What do their customers want? What problem does your product solve for their customers?

What’s an easy positioning statement so their customers will recognize in a snap your product is a solution to their problem?

2. Positioning

You see big companies gobble up small companies all the time.

They stay focused. When something cool comes out they take note. But they don’t want to develop or spend time on it themselves.

It’s a much more positive ROI for them to just buy it.

If your company’s product or service solves a problem that customers are having and they don’t have to invest their time, human resources or money internally developing it you’ve probably got a winner.

They’ll gladly buy or license it from you.

3. Persistence

One local business owner called Wal-Mart 10 times a day for 3 straight weeks before finally getting that meeting.

4. Scalability

Big companies think in terms of 7 figures and hundreds of thousands of users. Begin with this end in mind. Plan to scale huge.

More tips from entrepreneur:

”

1. Be unique. Make sure your business pitch is carefully thought out and offers value to your potential partner. After Robin Thurston co-founded MapMyFITNESS.com, an Austin, Texas-based fitness social network that offers online routes, training and group activities, he and his partner realized they had developed a geo-location technology that bigger companies wanting online fitness tools and access to a social network could use. With their first corporate partner, Cadbury’s Accelorade sports drink, they collaborated on a web interface enabling users on their site to map and share workouts. “You have to have something that is clearly valuable to that big brand that they might not want to spend the time investing in or doing,” Thurston says. Now, the company also builds web platforms and mobile phone apps for brands like NBC Sports, Humana and Skechers, whose customers can opt into the MapMyFITNESS social network.

2. Remain persistent. Although Szaky had the worm-excrement-in-a-recycled-bottle market cornered, getting that first deal with Wal-Mart in 2005 still required persistence. After scouring LinkedIn and alumni networks to find the right contact, Szaky called Wal-Mart 10 times a day, every day for three weeks until he finally got through and set up a meeting. Big companies field lots of requests, so persistence is a must. “There are some brands we are working with today that literally were five-year conversations,” Thurston says.

”

Tell me about your experience in negotiating deals with big brands. If you haven’t gone down this path what’s stopping you?

I’ll respond to your comments and point you in the right direction.