Each week, on my business growth academy website, I have a free training video
Hope you find them useful for marketing your business
Above is a link to my latest e-book to help you generate more leads and improve your marketing message.
There is nothing for you to do except open it – Its a gift from me!
The reason I’m sending it to you is just to help you improve your marketing message and remind people of my Business Growth Academy at the same time.
Look out for my next event – a joint venture with Stadio Marketing – on Building your Fans around Your Pitch. We’ve delivered it in Ipswich and it was very well received. Dates to be confirmed soon
www.nacbusinessgrowthacademy.co.uk
People only remember the extraordinary, strange, wild, surprising and unusual. You need to make sure your ideas and marketing reflect these reactions. This doesn’t mean you have to have a product or service that is completely out of the norm, in fact, this could easily drive customers away. You need to have a product or service that is high quality and easily marketable, then you need to market it as extraordinary and new. As you research word of mouth, there are some questions you need to ask along the way: What are the users willing to tell the non-users?
There are two main reasons why word of mouth research is so important:
There is a simple formula that can help you conduct your word of mouth research. It’s called the “2-2-2” model. 2-2-2- Model What this breaks down to is:
In these groups you need to ask the following questions:
The best way to conduct these groups is by teleconference. This ensures you’ll get a good variety of demographics for your customers and potential customers. It also allows people to feel safe and more able to express their true feelings. These teleconferences should not be conducted by you, but an independent party to avoid adding pressure to the situation. We’re going to transition a bit and talk about how to construct a word of mouth campaign. First we’ll talk a look at the essential ingredients you need to put together a campaign. These ingredients are:
Once you have those ingredients ready to use, you should consider the situations in which your company can benefit from a strong word of mouth programme. Some of these situations are:
While, most of the word of mouth tactics are positive for your word of mouth programme, there are a few products to avoid using in this programme. They are:
This wraps up this post on word of mouth research and how that research can be used when putting together your word of mouth campaign. If you need help with the research and a plan to use the results of that research, try our FREE test drive to get all the help you need with our top notch resources and tools. Go over to www.nacbusinessgrowthacademy.co.uk
In this post we will cover:
The majority of your revenue comes from your ideal customers. This is great news!
I’ve described the 80/20 rule of business before, but it’s the premise for this whole post.
80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients, and
those 20% are your ideal customers.
Generally, these customers are loyal, spend a lot and spend often. They may be demanding, or ask you to stretch a little bit further, but they’re fair and they’re profitable. You make a substantial amount of money from them. You want to keep these customers in your business, and keep them exceptionally happy.
The rest of your customers can be organised on a sliding scale all the way down to your c-list, or unprofitable customers. These are the people who waste your time, energy and resources. They’re never satisfied, and nearly always cost you more to serve than they actually spend in your business.
The most profitable – and enjoyable to work in – businesses know how to spot and cater to their 20%, as well as how to spot and fire the difficult customers.
This post is about optimising your customer base so you can
a. serve happy, pleasant customers
b. see more repeat business
c. have happier staff
d. make more money
To identify the bad apples, you’ll have to first make a list of your ideal customers.
Go through your database of customers and make a list of the customers that make you answer yes to the following questions:
While you do this, you may also wish to make a list of customers who made you answer no to one or several of those questions. Those customers could potentially be unprofitable, or undesirable ones that you need to review.
When you are trying to establish how profitable a customer is, think about how much they spend, how often they spend, and what they buy. Do they buy high-margin or low-margin items? Have they referred other customers to you? Do they pay on time? Do they buy products or services at full price? Each business will have a different set of criteria to evaluate this, but use those questions as guidelines.
Your ideal customers are those that are highly profitable, and a dream to deal with. You’re more than happy to accommodate their requests, and go above and beyond their expectations. These are the customers you will want to cultivate more of in your business.
Your ideal customers are the ones that:
Once you know who your top clients are, ask them what they want and value in your business so you can continue to provide great service.
Why do your ideal customers buy from you? And what more can you do to encourage their business?
Consider sending a survey out to your A-list customers, and provide an incentive for them to complete and return it. Craft the questions to elicit a true picture of your strengths and weaknesses, and include a combination of multiple choice, ranking and open ended questions.
Ask your ideal customers questions about:
You may also wish to create a survey for your staff to identify anything in your business that they feel could be improved. They work there everyday too, so they’re a great resource pool for ideas and enhancements.
Take the information you collect from these surveys, and use it to genuinely improve your business. Fix any problems, and eliminate any activities or services that weren’t identified as valuable. Maximise the activities and services that were identified as valuable.
In many ways, you’ve already done this step. You’ve completed some thorough target market research, and continue to review your customer’s purchasing patterns. You also continuously test and measure your marketing copy so that you are sure to tap into their motivations. Don’t you?!
To go a step further, you need to find out what they need from and think about their experience with your business. You need to figure out what is important to them and what they may not care about.
Here are some ways you can do this:
Now that you have cultivated a greater understanding of what matters to your customer base, you can start giving it to them! Here are some general suggestions for ways you can enhance your customer’s experience.
Remember to take their feedback and incorporate it wherever possible. Don’t be afraid of getting creative – unique touches will make sure your business will be remembered and revisited.
Here are some guidelines for enhancing your customer service:
Easy really! – More on this next time…
You need a clear understanding of who you’re writing for and what their motivators are before you can attempt to reach them.
If you are trying to target a more specific group within your target market, you can choose to segment your market into sub-markets by demographic or behaviouristic characteristics. For example, you might choose to focus on only men, or only women with children under five years of age.
The more specific you can be with your market, the easier time you will have identifying and reaching their emotional ‘hot buttons.’
Once you know who you’re speaking to, clearly define what message you need to communicate to them. Be specific, and even write it down in plain language before you start drafting your headlines.
To clearly articulate your message, ask yourself questions like:
Take the list you drafted above, and highlight or write down the words that will pique your target market’s interest, or trigger their ‘hot buttons’.
If you’re selling vacuum cleaners to young mothers, you’re going to want to identify words that would appeal to her desire to keep her home germ free for toddlers, and make her cleaning efforts easier and less time consuming.
When you’re writing for sales and marketing, always try to paint a picture for your audience. Carefully select descriptive words they will relate to and resonate with, and strong power words.
For example, phrases like “challenging outdoor experiences” would appeal to physically fit readers, but not those who don’t like to exercise.
Direct Headlines clearly and simply state the offer or message, without any attempt at humour or cleverness. Pure Silk Scarves – 40% This Weekend Only | Brand New Security System Just $99 Per Month
Indirect Headlines are subtle, and often use curiosity to pique a reader’s interest before providing an explanation in the body copy. Clever puns, figures of speech and double meanings are often used.
News Headlines mimic a headline you would read in the newspaper and are a great option for a new product announcement or industry scoop. These work best when you actually have news, and can stay focused on benefits, not features.
Question Headlines ask the reader something they can closely relate to or would need to continue reading to discover the answer. Questions are easy to read, and can immediately tap into your reader’s emotions.
‘How to’ Headlines indicate that the rest of the copy or the offer itself will describe a step-by-step process of interest or use to the reader. These two words create headlines that work wonders. How to find a job in a recession | How to start a profitable internet business from scratch.
Command Headlines are similar to direct headlines, but always start with a strong verb or command for action. It usually focuses on the most important benefit you offer your reader. Triple your energy in just three days | Stop wasting money when you travel.
‘Reasons Why’ or ‘Ways to’ Headlines precede lists of tips, suggestions, product benefits or even mistakes of interest to your target audience. Keep the list to a reasonable length or you’ll run the risk of losing your reader. Eight ways to save money around the house
Testimonial Headlines use other people’s opinions and expertise to persuade a reader to keep reading and begin to build trust. Quotation marks are used to indicate that the words are a testimonial, not the words of your business, and they can increase readership by almost 30%.
Use the number of words you need to get your point across, without writing a paragraph. Remember that your headline needs to do one thing: get the reader to keep reading.
Don’t be afraid to draft pages of headlines or sift through the pages of a thesaurus before you get yours just right. Sometimes you’re only a word or two away from transforming a boring headline into a really effective one. Some examples:
Example Headline Templates
As always, you will need to test and measure the strength of your headlines. Try to test at least two “hot buttons” in different media to determine where your target audience’s reaction is the strongest.
You can leverage off of the information gathered from testing and measuring your powerful offer as well. For example, if the offer geared to safety and security concerns was a roaring success, headlines that tap into those motivators will also be successful.