Posts Tagged ‘business’
Do you lie in your marketing materials?
Have you ever thought about that?
How many times have you seen a sales letter that made a big promise but the product didn’t deliver? Or how about a blog post whose title said one thing but the post itself said another?
How did you feel when you were done reading? Like you just wasted 5 minutes you’ll never get back.
Make sure you don’t do that. If necessary, have someone else read your marketing materials.
Always test your emails. Send them to yourself and click on the links, reread for clarity, and check the formatting. If your emails look sloppy, you’re going to lose subscribers.
And above all – if you say you’re going to tell your readers how to do something, follow through! And don’t take 50 paragraphs to do it.
Clients need your help in getting more customers, especially online. Most of them have no idea where to start – and not only will they pay you handsomely, but they will love you for taking this chore off their hands. These are just a few ideas meant to inspire you to come up with plans personalized for your clients.
1. ASK your clients what they need . . . just because your other beauty shop clients needed help with Craigslist ads, that doesn’t mean this one will too.
2. Closely related to #1 is Don’t assume anything. Your client may have a solid marketing background and just needs to know how to start a WordPress blog. To waltz in and assume he needs your services from A-Z is not only condescending and rude, but you’re going to lose business . . . to people who ASK.
3. What kind of list does the client have now? It may be mailing addresses only, in which case you can start a postcard campaign. It takes time to get this together and see results, so the process should be started right away and running in the background along with #4.
4. Gather contact information consistently, especially email addresses. You can use Aweber or Constant Contact to create a monthly newsletter with coupons and specials. Make sure that newsletter delivers quality content.
5. Create a blog or website. If nothing else, a Blogger site will do. The client may want to update the blog or website in-house but want you to train the staff who will be doing it. Or he may want you to take it over.
6. Don’t forget old clients. You may need to send them a “sorry we haven’t touched base” letter or postcard, but reactivating old clients can pay great dividends.
7. JV, JV, JV. Joint ventures are a big piece of the corporate money pie, but most small businesses have never heard of them. In a joint venture, two or more businesses leverage each other’s resources.
For example, a jewelry store that specializes in high-end diamond jewelry might work with a boutique in an upscale part of town. The boutique could send out a letter to its clients recommending the jewelry store, with an introductory special of 20% off for anyone who brings in the letter. The boutique gets 35% of the profit from the campaign.
All it cost the boutique was a little time mailing the letters, and the actual costs to put together the campaign could be taken off the top of the proceeds. The jewelry store has new customers they wouldn’t have had otherwise, and the customers got a great deal on jewelry.
A win-win-win situation for everyone.
Most business owners are so busy running their businesses (especially in this economy) that they don’t have time to learn how to market, much less to do it. Anything you can help them with will be much appreciated . . . remember, they are already used to paying for marketing and advertising.
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!
Found an article on prospering in this economy from master copywriter and marketer Bob Bly. We should all keep these 5 things in mind…remember, this too shall pass.
And if you keep marketing, you’ll come out the other side with a bigger piece of the pie than you had before!
***5 ways to thrive in a recession***
By Bob Bly
BusinessWeek recently gave these 5 suggestions for navigating
your business through the current economic storm:
1–Don’t panic. Cycles happen. Sometimes they happen hard, but
we’ll come back around eventually.
2–Keep marketing. Slowdowns are an ideal time to snatch up
market share.
3–Stick to your focus. Don’t water down your message in a
misguided attempt to widen your market appeal.
4–Don’t go “discount crazy.” If you keep offering “special
deals,” eventually the deals are no longer special… and
customers learn to wait for the next deal instead of buying
right now.
5–Have a plan. You can’t wish the crisis away by ignoring it.
Source: The Copywriter’s Roundtable, #398. This article appears courtesy of Bob Bly’s "Direct Response Letter" and can be found at www.bly.com.
