Archive for the ‘Niche marketing’ Category
Customers and clients need you to be credible and trustworthy. One of the best marketing techniques for doing this is to position yourself as an expert in your field or niche.
Experts get recognized, have more work than they can handle, and are primary sources of information for potential customers and clients. But how can you establish yourself as an expert?
1. Write articles and post them on directories.
High-quality articles with plenty of actionable, accurate content show prospects you know what you’re talking about. Don’t forget the resource box for each article.
2. Comment on appropriate blogs.
Find blogs that complement your topic or niche and comment there, making sure you link to your website (usually you put in your site URL before your comment, then it’s linked to your name). People will flock to your site or blog, already pre-sold on you based on your comments.
3. Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, Digg . . . or your local newspaper or radio station.
Online and offline media can both help you establish yourself as an expert if you play your cards right. Always be professional, find ways to be helpful, and give away a few secrets. People will wonder what else you have to offer if you’re freely sharing such good stuff!
4. Leverage your resources and acquaintances.
Do you know other experts in your field? Why not get together and hold a seminar to help your target audience with their biggest problem? Or guest blog for each other. You scratch their backs, they’ll scratch yours.
5. Try Google Knol.
This is a really cool tool I just found out about this morning and had to share with you. You’ll probably agree after you see the video . . . Knol is a great way to become known as an expert.
Good luck and if you have any other ideas, please let us know!
They say great minds think alike. I saw two YouTube videos this weekend that could use some help, and was going to write a blog post about it when I got a message from Michelle at Sūmèr, LLC. She beat me to it!
Check it out: Are You Boring Your YouTube Viewers?
(If nothing else, seeing the adorable picture of her dog, Mama Mia, is worth clicking on the link. Mama is almost as cute as my Trixie, and much better behaved! Ha ha.)
It had recently closed its doors “due to the economy”.
Did this closing really have to happen? Was the restaurant an inevitable victim of the recession, or could its failure have been avoided?
I think the latter.
Restaurant owners need to use a little ingenuity when it comes to marketing. No longer can one “hang out the shingle” and expect to do well. Many consumers have limited funds for dining out, and when they do, they want a deal. They don’t want to pay full price.
If you offer them a significant special, they will come to eat. Especially if the message is personalized and comes to their email inbox or mailbox.
The first step is to collect email addresses (snail mail addresses and birthdays also, if possible). Give ‘em a freebie to sign up. Build an email list with an autorresponder like Aweber, and then decide what to offer. Maybe you want to fill up your restaurant at a slow time, say from 6 to 9 on Tuesday night. Or you just want to increase your overall numbers.
Several ways you can do this…
1. A monthly newsletter with discounts good through the month
2. Weekly email blasts with “deal of the week”
3. An ongoing deal at a certain day and time…a “permanent special”, if you will
4. If you collect birthdays, a postcard or email with a coupon good for a free birthday meal
5. Kids eat free at certain times
6. Buy one, get one 1/2 price
7. Buy 2 drinks (usually alcoholic), get reduced-rate meals
8. Free desserts or appetizers
…and so on. The imagination is the only limit here.
This process can work for any business, frankly. It just takes a little thought.
Obviously, it will take time to collect the names, so this may not work if the restaurant is teetering on the edge.
Writing a good email is art mixed with science, with a smidgen of common sense thrown in. Your emails should be conversational, but not salesy. People are tired of being “sold to”.
They want information and help with their problems. If they get that from you, they’ll buy your products. If they get one whiff that you’re only there to sell them, they’ll unsubscribe.
The way you craft your email is crucial. Doing the following three things can cut down on your unsubscribes and help you stay in your readers’ inboxes.
1. Make the subject line as attention-grabbing as you can–but it better relate to the product. This is not to say you can’t connect flying green monkeys to computer software. However, if you put it in your subject line, you better be able to link the two and make the reader laugh, think, or buy…otherwise they are going to be annoyed.
2. Don’t use the reader’s name more than twice. When you talk to someone, you don’t say, “Mark, you know how it is, Mark, when you turn on your computer, Mark, and see the blue screen of death, Mark…”.
That might be a tad exaggerated, but you’ve seen emails that overuse the name. I suggest once in the salutation and once in the body or closing, at the most.
Some email experts suggest using the name in the subject line, some do not. When reading emails, I delete those with my name in the subject if I don’t know the sender well…I assume it’s a sales pitch. If it’s an email from a list I’ve been on for a while, it doesn’t bother me…because we have a relationship.
If your subject line is crafted well, you may not need to use names. Try split-testing and see what happens!
3. You are cultivating trust. Make sure you know it and show it. You are positioning yourself as an expert in the eyes of the reader. Sound professional, but let your personality shine through. People want to get to know you and they want to trust you.
Don’t lie to your readers–it will trip you up every time, and then the trust is gone. Yes, you can be informal, but keep in mind your relationship with the readers.
Your list is the goose that will lay your golden eggs. Don’t jeopardize what it can do in the long run for some short-term success.
Happy Marketing!
My good friend Michelle Salater has just launched her new company, Sūmèr, LLC. This woman is an incredibly gifted writer and marketer…and I’ll let her tell you about her company herself.
This is from Sūmèr’s website at www.writtenbysumer.com:
“Sūmèr, LLC, specializes in web copy writing, SEO copywriting, and the promotion and marketing of websites after they launch.
Professionally written, optimized copy produces results. When your message is clear, you attract targeted customers, have higher conversions, and rank high in the search engines.
Sūmèr stands for more than effective marketing web copy. Our promotion and marketing services maximize your online exposure, increase sales, and generate a higher return on investment.”
Check Sūmèr out and tell them Grab More Customers sent you.
Today was graduation at my old high school. I love to check out the graduates’ pictures in the local newspaper. Recognized several of my classmates’ kids…congratulations to all.
Then I noticed something else.
I grew up in a small town of about 3,500 in southern Wyoming. It’s your typical Mayberry kind of town, where everybody knows everybody else. The graduation insert in the paper isn’t just for congratulating the kids and parents. It’s an opportunity for businesses to advertise.
Most of the advertisers blew a great chance to grab more customers.
I counted over 30 ads from retail businesses. Not banks, lawyers, or accountants, but stores, restaurants, and commonly-used services like auto shops. This would have been the perfect opportunity to get people through their doors with a great graduation deal.
Out of the 30+ businesses that advertised, guess how many gave readers some kind of special for graduation?
One. The theater offered a small popcorn if the customer brought in the ad.
Why didn’t these businesses take advantage of this perfect opportunity?
How come one of the fast food joints didn’t offer a buy one, get one meal deal after 8 pm on graduation night? The restaurants couldn’t have offered free desserts after dinner?
Why didn’t the flower shop offer 10% off all orders that mentioned the ad? They could have put a time limit on it, as the paper came out on Wednesday. Some dads could have made some moms very happy indeed.
The grocery store could have snuck in a $5 coupon, or offered a special on photo albums. Their bakery could have thrown in half a dozen cookies for every graduation cake ordered.
The ideas are endless. Why don’t they get creative with their advertising?
Because many have never had to. Rather, they’ve never felt like they had to. In a small town, many businesses don’t have competition and use the same old ad in the paper and yellow pages every year.
What they don’t understand is that it’s not always about competition (or lack thereof); it’s about getting as many people into your shop as possible, giving them good service and products at a fair price, and getting most of them to rinse and repeat.
And if you DO have a competitor, the need to do this is even more urgent. Effective marketing can put you head and shoulders above the other guy, who is likely cutting back on marketing.
Using the flower shop as an example, let’s say there were just 5 orders for flowers averaging $30 a pop, or $27 after the 10% was deducted. My math says that’s an extra $135 for the week.
Big deal, you might say. But what if the flower shop started running a monthly special? What if every third Monday was 10% off day? Using the same 5 orders per month, that’s over $1,600 in a year.
When every penny counts, that’s nothing to sneeze at. For some businesses, simple marketing changes like that could keep the doors open.
These businesses can’t be the only ones who make this mistake. What marketing opportunities do you see businesses missing?
Your email list is one of the most lucrative resources your business has.
Yet so many businesses don’t do anything with theirs — and I would guess many of them have no idea what to do with those email addresses they collect at the point of sale, other than hold on to them (if they even do that).
Every time I see a site that has good products but no opt-in box, I see dollar signs flying away from the screen. And I’m going to start approaching those business owners and offering my services. Why not?
If a business has just a couple hundred names, they can start pulling gold from that list by sending a "How did you like our product?" email. Or perhaps a "How are you, sorry we haven’t written lately" email. Anything to rekindle the relationship.
But many business owners don’t have time, especially if they’ve had to let employees go. They are likely wearing more hats than they used to, and they need help.
If this is you, please leave a comment or send an email to melody@grabmorecustomers.com and let’s see what we can do to help you grab more sales.
After all, it’s a lot easier to sell to someone who already knows you than it is to sell someone who doesn’t.
Melody
I’m at a crossroads.
I have a passion for helping people quit smoking. I used to be a tobacco quitline coach and am a former smoker myself (8 years quit as of January 8).
I believe that nicotine replacement therapy and Chantix have been oversold and overhyped as *the* answers. In reality, everyone has the ability within themselves to quit cigarettes or chew if they have the desire, education, and confidence to tap that inner strength.
I know that I can help them find that inner strength. I also know I could marry internet marketing with quitting smoking and help more people than I ever could one-on-one. At the same time, I could make enough money to have even more time to devote to helping more people quit.
But there’s one issue that makes me pause…
In my time with the quitline, one persistent theme came up with smokers and chewers. They didn’t want to pay for help. They didn’t want to pay for a few days’ worth of patches while waiting for the supply from us. They were unhappy that Chantix wasn’t free. Interesting, considering what they willingly paid for cigarettes.
To be fair, they’ve been trained to expect this by their state governments with the free programs many of them provide. Understandable, since these programs are paid for with their cigarette taxes. Some of the pharmaceutical companies help out with free stuff as well. And frankly, some are stubborn enough that they won’t even think of quitting unless someone gives something to them.
But then I see the Allen Carr Easyway to Stop Smoking seminars being given in three US cities for $350-425 a pop. Perhaps this is a niche within a niche? The more committed of the quitters?
So my research continues. Has anyone tried to work in this niche and do you have any advice for me? Thank you in advance for any help.
–Melody
