Is This Marketing?

Every time you communicate with your prospects, its marketing. If you think differently, not only are you wrong, but you are missing opportunities to differentiate your business, close the sale, and grow your company.

Here is a case study.

We currently work with a roofing, siding, fencing, and gutter replacement company. After each initial contact with a prospect, they were sending out a package of printed materials that cost about $5 per piece. They were sending these to everyone who called them.

Our recommendation to them, cut it out. Send an email with attached PDFs instead. BUT, don't send any old email, send a remarkable email.

This is the email we suggested they send.

Mr. Shelly,

Thank you so much for your interest Advance! We are excited to show you what we can do. Our team is already preparing for your project. Our installers have started to study the design of your home to optimize our work and keep the cost of materials in line with your expectations. Our product team has started to look into how long it would take to order the specific products for your project. We want to make sure the materials come into our building in enough time for us to completely QA them, so that they are ready for your home. Our schedulers are looking ahead so that when you give us the go-ahead, we expeditiously work you into our plans for the upcoming month. In short, everyone here at Advance is planning on making your project our best yet.

I have attached two important documents to help you with your decision. The first is a list of what makes Advance special in the eyes of our customers and the second is a partial list of testimonials from some of our customers. But if you are interested in learning more about the region’s best home solutions company, our website is filled with tips and techniques for people considering home projects like yours and there is even more information on our products and services for you to review at your leisure. Click here to visit our site.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call me ANYTIME. My office and cell number are included below. I know this is a big investment on your part and I want to help you make the right choice.

Thanks in Advance!

Ever get an email like that from a contractor? Nope, I haven't either and that's the point. This email gets forwarded, this email gets attention, this email is remarkable, and this email gets the business. Create your own remarkable email for your company today and post it here. I will review and comment. Good luck!

Square 2 Marketing - We Help Entrepreneurs!

Now is not the time to STOP Marketing

I have talked to a variety of business owners who think NOW is the perfect time to focus on marketing. This might be the BEST decision any business owner could make. Now, more than ever marketing plays a critical role in communicating with your customers, clients and prospects.

If you want to keep your business growing, you have to double your efforts to deliver effective messages to engage your prospects and get these people interested in doing business with you.

The critical key to success is doing it efficiently by using new tools that make marketing extremely affordable and results oriented. While these tools aren't new, let's review the Top 5 most efficient and economical marketing tactics at your disposal.

1. Email Marketing - its at the top of the list because for 1 to 2 cents you communicate with every customer or prospect. Even a list of 10,000 can be done monthly for only $100.
2. Your Website - if you are doing email marketing, you need a website. But more importantly, your website, if designed properly, actually sells for you and it does it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Google reports that 88% of the people check your website before they pick up the phone to call you, its critical that your website be highly effective.
3. Search Engine Optimization - driving people to your remarkable website is key. These types of programs (the left side of Google) work over time and with the number of people doing searches for both b2b and b2c searches in the millions daily, if your business isn't coming up in searches people will think it might not even exist.
4. Pay-Per-Click Advertising - these work in tandem with Search Engine Optimization (the right side of Google) and offer you instant access to millions of prospective customers. These programs allow you to ONLY pay for people who click on your ad and you set your own budget, allowing you to control expenses and track results daily.
5. Public Relations - if you create interesting stories about your business that appeal to your target market the newspapers and magazines will want to write about it. The trick is to tell editors and writers about all the wonderful things you are doing and tell them about it in a way that makes it easy for them to write about it. Plus, these stories can be distributed online to improve rankings in search engines.

Let me know if you have any questions on any of the Top 5 most efficient marketing tools. I would be happy to answer any of your specific questions.

Square 2 Marketing - We Help Entrepreneurs!

Any Remarkable Candidates?

Why is being remarkable SO important? Something remarkable gets people talking. It's worth sharing. It's extraordinary, new, interesting. You can't be almost remarkable. It is either remarkable, or it's NOT. There is no almost! Being remarkable means there are interesting aspects of your product or service built right into it. Not slick advertising, fancy jingles, or worse...mind numbing repetition of the same ad over and over again. If what you do isn't remarkable, it's invisible.

This is what we tell our business owner clients, you have heard me talk about being remarkable many times. But...does this sound like I am describing the ridiculousness associated with the campaign advertising for both Democratic and Republican candidates. Both campaigns are spending millions of dollars to say the same exact thing...which in essence is NOTHING! Nothing productive anyway.

Our country is in a very challenging time and the person who really wants to lead this country could take the reigns by simply stepping up and breaking the paradigm associated with safe, say nothing campaign advertising.

Barack Obama! John McCain! Tell us what you would do to get us moving in the right direction! Do it now! Do it remarkably! The election is yours to win, if you just speak up--be remarkable!

Be Bold and Mighty Forces Will Follow!

Planning Part 2

Ok, if you have the basics of the plan down...the next most important aspect of the marketing planning process is to think through the details of the marketing tactics required to hit your goals. Look at the year on a monthly basis and plan out a regular rhythm of marketing activities that match your desired sales goals. In short, if you want to grow more quickly, you need more marketing, if you have modest goals, you can afford to do less.

Make sure you do something that touches your clients and prospects every single month. The more touches the better. Email marketing, monthly press releases, educational workshops or webinars done quarterly, regular updates to your website, proactive sales outreach, and similar programs make up the content of a strong marketing program. The collection of these programs is your Marketing Machine.

The more tactics...the more leads you should expect. The more tactics...the bigger your Marketing Machine. It really is a situation where one plus one doesnt equal two, but three.

In the next entry, we can talk about how the marketing tactics and the messaging strategy work together to engage people in a dialogue with your clients.

Square 2 Marketing - We Help Entrepreneurs!

It's Time To Start a New Conversation

With the book moving out to shelves at book stores in a neighborhood near you shortly, I thought I would transition the blog back to tips and techniques to help entrepreneurs stay current with some important marketing concepts. Since so many people found the book project interesting, I will continue to keep you updated on our progress over the next few months.

Since the summer is over and its back to school, lets start from the beginning and see if we can't review some marketing fundamentals too. This should get all of you thinking along the right lines and hopefully will motivate you to take a look at your marketing programs now for a strong finish to 2008.

The fall is a great time to start thinking about planning for 2009. Having a marketing plan is critical to ensure your marketing tactics drive to your overall strategic objectives. If you start working on both strategic goals and marketing to support those goals, its likely that you will be done in time to get a head start on 2009 and hit the ground running in January, instead of trying to catch up after the holidays.

We will talk about the plan for a couple of days, but here are the components to consider when working on a marketing plan.

1. Who do you want to sell to? Is that different than who you are selling to now?
2. What do those people look like? Yes, I said people and not companies, because people do business with people. You have to understand what the people who make the purchase decisions look like. If you have a consumer sale, then it is actually people. So, how old are they, were do they live, where do they work, are they male or female, what titles do they have? Actually create a profile of what these people look like.
3. What problems, challenges or "pains" do these people have?
4. How do you satisfy those pains?
5. What do you do that is different than you competition? Be hard on yourself. If your competition says the same thing, you have to work harder to find something that's different. Make sure you have at least 5 things that make you special.

These are the building blocks for what you will "say" to your prospects when you market. This is the essence of your messaging and differentiation strategy, two very important aspects of a good marketing plan. Make sure you actually write these down, putting pen to paper is critical.

Next steps in tomorrow's blog. If you want to learn more and work on your own, our book has much more detail. Visit www.realitymarketingrevolution.com to buy the book!

Square 2 Marketing - We Help Entrepreneurs!