9 Critical Secrets Behind Marketing

Do you know anyone who is insane? Insanity is doing the same thing again and

again and expecting different results. Most of us only need to go as far as the

nearest mirror to find insanity. We market to our clients the same old way and expect

them to behave differently.

We are in the Information Age, where the average person thinks 60,000 thoughts

every day. 30,000 pieces of advertisement bombard our senses daily. Clients have

less time, they are more frustrated and they expect more. Yet we give them the

same as everyone else and we expect different results.

Your marketing efforts should aim to accomplish three goals.

1. Close the initial sale.

2. Get the repeat sale to the same client.

3. Get referral sales from that client’s network.

Nine Steps to Sane Marketing

Step 1: OPTIMIZE YOUR ADVERTISING

Optimize the result of an action. A $5,000 ad will cost you the same no matter how

much business it generates for you. A salaried salesperson will cost you the same

amount no matter how much they close. That is why if you optimize the result of

everything that you do, your business will sky rocket.

Direct-mail campaigns should be like sending a salesperson in to talk to your clients

personally. If done effectively, direct mail means you can have thousands of sales

people spreading your message.

Your ads should qualify your leads. If not, you get a lot of leads that will actually cost

you money to pursue. Forget about trying to reach everyone – find the people who

want your stuff.

Remember your ads are listened to and read by one person at time. Even when you

send out thousands of ads, in the end each one is read or heard by one person at a

time.

Think of that one person as you create each ad.

Step 2: EDUCATION

Your ads should be an education. Get your target market to see your company as

superior to the rest. People intrinsically want to be lead but lead by experts.

Educate people to why and how things are done the way they are. And ultimately

those reasons must translate into the benefits for the client; otherwise, it will simply

be bits of trivia.

A prime example of using education to increase market shares is the Schlitz Beer

campaign. The company went from 8^thposition to 1^stwithin 6 months. Everyone else

was claiming that their beer was pure. But what did that mean? Schlitz took it a step

beyond and explained how they tested the ingredients, how they selected and

processed them, and how each batch was quality tested. Suddenly the consumer

was involved mentally with the making of the beer and that made it “their beer”.

The first person who tells the story on how and why they do something positions him

or herself as the expert in the field and gains distinction in the marketplace from then

on.

Instead of running ads shouting how good you are, try offering a booklet with

practical advice and interesting information. For example you could put together a

list of “10 critical questions to ask before you purchase a home: a lifestyle checklist

to determine the type of home that suits you”, now you have targeted people who

are seriously interested in purchasing.

Increase the perceived value of your product through education. The more your

clients understand how your product helps them or protects them the more they will

want it. Remember, you are selling a lifestyle.

Step 3: CALL TO ACTION

In your marketing, give your audience a reason to call you.

Some other ideas for spurring action is to offer a free video, free article, Top 10 list,

or something else of value to them and tell them to contact you for it. You can even

offer a seat at an information session.

Step 4: MAKE IT ALL ABOUT THEM

This is where getting over yourself becomes very important. Do not do any

marketing that focuses on how good you are, your marketing should be all about the

client.

The market you are trying to reach must gain an advantage – education, entertainment, etc.

They are much more interested in what is important to them than what is important to you. And feel free to let them know how hard you’ve worked for them. Go ahead and tell your clients

how much research, commitment, blood, sweat and tears went into creating this value for

them.

They will appreciate what you’ve done for them. From that appreciation comes

respect. Once they respect you, the sale is the easy part. Start with their needs and

wants first.

Step 5: FOLLOW UP

Everything you do is important but it’s close to useless without follow up.

Sending a sales letter, by snail mail or email, is great but you can increase sales by

30% with a phone call after they’ve had a chance to read the letter—usually 7 to 10

working days later.

Consider that some people will not have received your letter, some will not have

opened it, and still others will have questions that can be easily answered in a 2-

minute conversation.

The more consistently you communicate with your clients, the more they will buy.

80% of big-ticket sales happen as a result of at least five follow-up attempts so keep

calling. Do you follow up indefinitely? Well, no. You can stop for one of 3 reasons:

1. They buy.

2. The cost of following up becomes prohibitive.

3. They tell you to stop.

If they do not ask you to stop, stay in contact with them. The leads who eventually

buy will outweigh the ones who prefer to not communicate with you.

Step 6: TEST EVERYTHING

What is working in your ad campaigns and what is not? A new headline on the same

ad might be just what you need. Changing the title of your newsletter might get it

read more often.

Question your headlines. Question your content. Question your layout and colour

choices. Question your distribution methods. Test various options and monitor the

results.

A university once ran a campaign to encourage students to get tetanus vaccinations.

They surveyed the students and found that while the students were aware of the

benefits and the simple process involved, only 3% of them got vaccinated. The

university ran the campaign again, this time with a small map showing the location of

the Health Sciences building. All the students knew where the building was, yet that

little map increased the vaccination rate to 28%.

Everything you are doing right now should be tested and refined, as they could be

under-performing

Step 7: ADVERTISE TO YOUR ATTRITION

Retention is how many we have kept. Attrition is how many we have lost. Many

companies do not focus on attrition, or even have a process to track that loss and

the reasons for it.

Clients stop doing business with you for 3 main reasons:

1. They do not need your product or service anymore. They have moved, changed companies or they no longer gain a benefit.

2. They had an unsatisfactory experience with you or your company.

3. A change occurred in their business or personal life that caused them to

interrupt their buying practice with you and never got back to it. This is

usually the main reason for attrition.

Cutting your attrition rate and regaining previous clients is a lot easier to do than to

win over new clients as you already had a relationship with them. It will be a lot

cheaper and simpler to grow your customers then to grow your client base. Market

your services to your existing and former client.

Step 8: REPLACE RATES WITH VALUE

It’s not what you pay, it’s what you get that matters. And that’s how you must train

your clients to view the benefits. What the client pays is the price; what they get is

the value. And all too often they will confuse the two.

When you market best rates, you add to this confusion by letting the client focus only

on the prices. Potential clients may ask you for your rates before they ask any other

question. Why is that? Because it’s the only thing they can think of to initiate a

dialogue with you. What they really want to know from the conversation is, Can you

help me? How can you help me? How will working with you make my life easier?

Rate advertising conditions the client to respond to prices and not to the real value of

what you are offering. If you are tired of talking about rates with your clients, don’t

talk about rates in your marketing. Start talking benefits instead.

For example in the financial industry

1. Every borrower has debt (or is about to have it) and it is too much.

2. Every borrower has payments that are too high.

3. Every borrower has payment terms that are too long.

4. No one ever has enough cash.

Starting a conversation by discussing price is already an uphill battle. Without a

frame of reference for the value, no matter how low the rates, those rates will always

seem too high. And someone will always offer a lower rate than yours.

On average clients will get four competitive rate offers before they feel comfortable

making a decision. Alter that decision-making process by replacing their pricing

focus with something more meaningful — compelling value.

Step 9: BUILD LOYALTY AND TRUST

What is more important — loyalty or trust? You can trust someone without being

loyal to them. But can you be loyal to someone without trusting them first? Loyalty is

trust taken to a higher level.

We need to understand and relate to clients in order for them to be loyal to us.

Get to know your client’s concerns and fears. Think of new ways to diminish or

eliminate those concerns.

Most consumers make decisions based on emotion and then use logic to rationalize

those decisions. If your clients feel that you understand their needs, they will choose

you, so base your advertising on the question, what emotions are your clients going

through when they are looking to borrow.

Once they have bought from you, start looking to build that trust into loyalty. Allow

them to get a sense of your values. Without a sense of loyalty to you, they will leave

faster than they came.

Be sure to know the answers to these questions:

What emotions have the clients experienced in the past?

What is the biggest client complaint in today’s industry? (Don’t even think of saying

it’s the price! That’s insane.)

Insanely Simple

Keeping these nine steps in mind, you can accomplish the three goals of selling to

the client, selling them more and selling to their friends. Simplify your marketing

message. Make the client your main focus, appeal to their emotions, build loyalty,

and leave the price talk until they understand how you can fulfill their needs.

Overcome their fear of making a mistake by building confidence.

Do something different that gets to the heart of the matter. It’s the only way to

change buying behavior. Now look again in the mirror and see how insane you really

are.