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5 ways to capture customer insights

When I first visit with a new client the first thing I ask is, "Do you talk with your customers?"  I am often surprised to hear that many don't.  This is one of the first check points or pulses in marketing  as this insight is pivotal to how you can strategically manage your business. This feedback shapes everything and so here are 5 ways to capture customer insights.

1. Ring your customers for a chat. Every one likes to be made feel valued and so to ringing your customers and asking them how everything is going and if there is anything they need or you can do to improve your service is a no brainer. Most small businesses don't do it. Make a time in your diary for every month to call at least 5 customers and ask them these questions. You will find the answers shape your business and open up opportunities.

2. Have a database. This is a crucial investment. Once central place to collect information about your customers. The more  you know about them the more you can tailor your services to their individual needs.  There are lots of great CRM products out there to hold your customer information but a simple excel sheet with their details, name, phone number, email address and what they have bought from you is a good start. You can then begin to segment your customers based on different criteria, how much they buy from you, $ value, products or services they buy. This information can then be useful when you start talking with your customers using other social medias including, blogs, newsletters, or lead generation campaigns.

3. Ask your staff for customer insight.I was chatting about this the other day with a client and we decided to put a big whiteboard in the middle of the open office space with Happy Customers, Upset Customers and then people could come and write down what they were hearing and seeing. This gave the CEO much greater visibility to customers and gave the staff some ownership over the customer satisfaction of their clients. So set up some forum where staff can discuss customer issues, good and bad.

4. Do some research. Research these days can be very quick to do and economical. There are a lot of free survey tools that allow you to create surveys quickly ie surveymonkey. When you need to test and idea, get some feedback then perhaps try a survey to your existing cliental. Very quickly you can get a feeling whether you are on the right track and as long as the survey is not too long, they can feel good that they were consulted.

5. Invite customers to your planning and brainstorming sessions. It is sometimes worthwhile to have a customer or a a customer advocate like a marketing consultant involved in your planning sessions for the business to ensure that the customer remains central to the focus of your buisness. This holds the business accountable and by having an actual voice at these forums ensures that the customer is really represented. Other option is to hold a focus group just with your customers around an important decision that you are going to make with the business, to test the concept or pilot it before you commit to it.

So there you go, 5 simple but effective ways to talk with your customers. Get started today, and let me know what you uncover...

10 tips on how do we get qualified traffic to our website or blog or other social media

May 3, 2009
Tips from Ty Downing.

1. Good content - original content. Authoritative content. Your ideas, your words, your audience. No matter where you are writing this, website, blogs, e-zines, ads, social media (twitter, facebook, Linkedin). All of these are getting index and crawled by search engines.



2. Don’t copy. Check this on www.copyscape.com. If you do Google will abandon your site and you will rank lower.

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/wordpress/dCcq
3. For every 100 words you would use your key word or phrase. Google looks for these things and will list you on the search engine. This helps promote your ranking within the engine.



4. Images - tag them. Put a key word phase in this Alt tag under the image. So the key word would be on topic. This also helps search engine rank your content higher in their list.



5. Blog is a potential source of referral for your other communication methods. Search engines loves fresh content. So a blog is a great idea. Within your post link back to your main website. So you can cross market and you can anchor this link into both of your sites and that stream helps you get greater visability on the search engines. You can benefit from your hyperlinks not just others.

6. Track what is working with Googleanalytics and run it on each page. Then you can tweek things in real time. See if your conversion pages are working. Are people bouncing off your page immediately. Bounce rate: land on a page and then how long it takes them to leave. If your bounce rate is high then you are ranked lower in google search engine. So measure and review. Average bounce rate is 40%.



7. Track key words. SEObook is a free tool that allows you to do this. Word tracker - paid service. $59 key words in your content. Another one is googlesktool

8. Title tags and meta tags. Title tag is the title words at the top of you site. These should keep to your key message (70 characters). This is the most important text on your page as this is what the search engine uses first. Meta tag -(160 characters - your positioning or description). This should be done on each page for the best indexing and thus finding by search engines.



9. Backlink - this is a website is linking to you. You can return the favour by doing some outbound links. Backlicks - the more you get the higher up you go in the search engine crawler and ranks you higher.



10. Need a consistent home page address. Keep it consistently represented, one version of your key page. You can fix this by visiting Ty blogsite. This effects your search engine ranking.

Go to my new blog and subscribe today! Much more information and tips.

Treat Customers Like Family

Really liked this article on the Service Excellence website http://www.serviceexcellence.com.au/

After a careful marketing strategy, your customers are finally pursuing you. They want your goods, they want your services – but how do you know you have a stable relationship and not just a bad blind date? You want your customers to return in droves, if for no other reason than because, according to the Better Business Bureau, gaining the trust of a new customer is five times more expensive than continuing a relationship with a current one. The best way to maintain a successful relationship is to stop treating your customers like customers and start treating them like…well, like family.

Let’s say your customer walks into the store for the first time. Do you remind them of a shark pursuing its prey? Or are you friendly and helpful? Customers will respond better if you take the time to learn a few things about them – their name is a great start – and create a human connection before moving on to business. Compliment their clothes. Ask about the sports team whose logo they boast. Even a comment about the weather will help move you out of the rank of the greedy salesperson and make you more of a person. Remember details they mention – their kids, their spouse, their goals. Are they purchasing the product because they are tired of fighting with their teenagers? Can you sympathize with a brief sentence about your own? Make the customer an individual, treat them like someone important. Actually listen to them, the way you listened to your uncle at your last family gathering. Then, when your customer leaves, take a few quick notes for future reference.

Once the transaction is complete, do what any polite family member would do after a party – write ‘thank you’ notes. I’m not talking about a bland, one-size-fits-all printout, though this will still outperform most of your competition.. Take a few minutes to scribble a handwritten note, only three to five lines long, thanking them for choosing your business. Remember those personal notes you took? Mention one. For instance, “I hope your children really enjoy your new Tivo, and you finally get to watch your own shows!” Or, “I hope the fishing rod you purchased helps you bag the biggest one on the dock when you go to the lake this weekend.” Individualize it. Ideally, once you have made the sale, you can take a minute or two to scribble the note, while things are still fresh in your mind. Your customer will remember that you went the extra mile, and will most likely feel the thanks are sincere – making them not only more inclined to return, but also more likely to spread that good karmIf you really want to take them by surprise, give them a call. I don’t know about your family, but my mother loves to hear from me – and she especially loves to tell me what I did wrong. After a few days, ask them a few brief questions regarding your service. The key phrase: “What could I have done to make you more satisfied?” Make sure you remember what they said and learn from it, too. If there was a serious complaint, make sure you follow up on it to solve the problem quickly and efficiently, with the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction. Outsource it to your company care department if you must, but imagine how your customer would feel if you called and really did follow up by asking how many fish he caught. He would think, wow, that salesperson really does remember me and really did listen!

Next on your list, maintain a file your customer. Make a note of when they return to your store, what they buy, and any other comments they made. Then, cater to their interests. If your fisherman said that he would be looking for a part for his boat in the future, keep an eye out for when an appropriate one would come in. If your Tivo buyer mentioned he would have to get a DVD burner to permanently record their favorite shows, give them a call or send them a letter when the item goes on sale. Better yet, give them a discount before you give one to the rest of the general public – and let them know it. After all, wouldn’t you give your brother first crack at saving money?

Periodically, send them a letter – again, handwritten is best. Remember all those letters to your grandparents? Enclose a flier with a brief note: “I thought you might be interested in this new kind of bait being developed, since you don’t like the sliminess of the other brands.” Touch base with them once a quarter. In this high tech world, databases abound that will alert you when you haven’t contacted someone in three months. Keep your name and your concern at the front of their mind, and when they shop, you will be at the front of theirs.

People would rather buy from someone they know, someone they believe genuinely cares about them and their needs. I’m not talking about forcing a relationship to increase your profits, although that will certainly happen. Instead, try to genuinely meet the needs of those you come in contact with. Help them solve their problems. Don’t forget about them once you have their money. Foster a good relationship, rather than a sales pitch. You will find that your customer will share his positive thoughts with others, creating an extended family of customers for life.

How to attract visitors to your site?

Great practical article of how to attract visitors to your website.



http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/ebusinesscolumnist/article80220.html

74% of small business have no marketing plan!

Carolyn from Connect Marketing did a recent survey of small businesses with some interesting results.

The survey highlighted that 89% of small business owners considered marketing as either their first or second priority, yet an astonishing 74% said they did not have a marketing plan! Failing to plan is planning to fail and a well thought out plan that has at least six strategies working in tandem is the only way to generate a consistent flow of quality leads, month in and month out.

Here are the findings:

The survey was completed by 149 small business owners with a breakdown as follows;
53% were solo operators
13% employed 1 other person
30% employed between 2 and 20 people
4% employed 20+ people


TOP 10 FINDINGS ON THE ‘STATE OF MARKETING’ FOR SMALL BUSINESS
62% of people associated the word ‘marketing’ with either selling, advertising or branding.

44% said marketing was their FIRST priority and
45% said it was their SECOND priority.
In total, a whopping 89% place marketing in their top two priorities in their business!

Yet… 74% said they don’t have an up-to-date written marketing plan that is regularly followed!
Of those that don’t have a plan, 65% said they feel they need one with many stating they don’t know how to go about it.

44% said they don’t have enough KNOWLEDGE of marketing.
40% said they take a scatter-gun APPROACH to marketing.
Only 14% said they get the RESULTS they would like from marketing.
64% said they don’t have enough MONEY to do marketing properly.
56% said they don’t have enough TIME to do it properly.
50% said they don’t have good PEOPLE or resources to help them with marketing.

MORE DETAILED FINDINGS
What are the three most common words that come to mind when people think of marketing? Sales 25%
Advertising 20%
Branding 17%
Other 38% (all one off words where no pattern could be identified)

Other less common words associated with marketing were; promoting, money, cost and creativity. For me these findings confirm that there is generally a misperception about what marketing is. Marketing is traditionally about the 4 P’s - having the right Product at the right Price at the right time, in the right Place being well Promoted. Advertising and selling are but one component of the last P of marketing. More recently I have defined marketing as the ability of a business to generate a consistent flow of quality leads which ultimately comes from getting the 4 P’s right and through having a clear customer value proposition and points of difference.

What priority would you currently give marketing in your business?
First priority 44%
Second priority 45%
Third priority 9%
Minor priority 1%
Not a priority 1%
It’s not a surprise that marketing has come up as such a high priority for business owners in today’s slowing economy. I suspect businesses that have traditionally just relied on word-of-mouth referrals without having to focus on marketing as a ‘true function’ in their business, are now finding that it has become of much greater importance due to a slow-down in new business enquiries and sales. Given all the other functions that a business has to perform (ie HR, IT, Finance, Sales, Service etc) the fact that a whopping 89% placed marketing as one of their top two priorities says that we need to focus on giving small business owners practical, low-cost, consistent solutions that can be easily implemented - and NOW!

Do you have an up-to-date written marketing plan that you regularly follow?
No 74%
Yes 26%

If you don’t have a plan, do you feel you need one?
Yes 65%
Maybe 27%
No 8%
Many people stated they didn’t have the time, money or resources to get a plan and that they didn’t really know where to start to get one.

Respondents were asked to rank the current state of marketing in their business.

Do you have enough knowledge of the best ways to market your business?
No - 44%
Yes - 21%
Maybe - 35%
Knowing what marketing NOT to do, is as important as knowing what to do. Successful business owners are knowledge seekers in all areas of their business, especially marketing.

Do you tend to take a scatter-gun APPROACH to your marketing?
No - 40%
Yes - 40%
Maybe - 20%
A marketing plan helps avoid the scatter-gun approach. It just needs to be simple and focused with a minimum of 6 prongs working together to generate required leads.

Do you get the results you want from your marketing?
Yes - 14%
No - 46%
Maybe - 40%
Marketing is a numbers game. We need to be completely aware of the cost per lead and conversion rate so we can measure the ROI of every marketing activity.

Do you have enough money to do marketing properly?
No - 64%
Yes - 13%
Maybe - 23%
I recommend investing between 7% - 10% of your target revenue in marketing.

Do you have enough time to devote to marketing?
No - 56%
Yes - 30%
Maybe - 14%
If you can outsource the non-revenue producing areas of the business to focus on the revenue producing areas such as marketing, selling, servicing clients and product innovation, that would be a good start. I recommend spending at least 6 to 8 hours a week on marketing.

Do you have good people to help with marketing?
No - 50%
Yes - 26%
Maybe - 24%
There are many innovative ways to source good marketing and business development support. Consider establishing formal distribution alliances or employing commission sales people and agents or getting some University students on work experience. In summary, it appears there is a fair degree of pain around marketing, with people consistently feeling they don’t have enough money, time or resources to do it properly ultimately resulting in a huge degree of disappointment in return on investment. Working to a simple plan and annual marketing calendar and then dedicating some resources and time to it, is a good start. Then the key word is PERSISTENCE to generate a steady flow of new business leads, month and month out, rather than having the peaks and troughs so many businesses experience.

When it comes to using online resources or websites to help with marketing which ones do you regularly use?
No-one 28%
Connect Marketing 18%*
Google 18%
Flying Solo 8%
Twitter 6%
Facebook 6%
Other 16% (family, friends, business associates and other e-resources etc)
The findings indicate there does not appear to be one single trusted source where small businesses can get all the education and tools they need when it comes to helping them market their small business.

Five steps to building brand equity for the small business

by Mike O'Toole


Instinctively, every small business owner understands the importance of brand equity, even if they may not be able to define the idea. Marketing-speak aside, brand equity is how your customer recognizes why you are different and better than the alternative.


Brand equity is built on that customer's direct experience with your product or service. This experience, repeated over time, creates equity or value in your brand. And it serves as a shorthand in the buyer's mind that separates you from everyone else.


Brand equity is what creates loyalty that carries beyond price or the occasional product or service bump in the road. It is the quality that motivates your customers to recommend their friends or colleagues to you.

Everyone wants brand equity. But building it, when you are more likely to qualify for the Inc. 500 rather than the Fortune 500, can be a puzzle. Particularly when the role models for brand equity are global icons like Coca Cola, Volvo, or Sony—hardly your peer set.
The good news is that the path to building brand equity is clear. Here are five simple steps you can take to get started:


1. Clarify your position
The first step to building brand equity is to define your positioning: the single thing your company stands for to your customers. Single is the operative word here. Good positioning forces hard choices.
To define your brand position, get the key leaders in your company together. Decide what makes you different and better than your competition. This might sound blindingly obvious, but most small businesses are too busy responding to customers or making payroll to do a lot of introspection.
You don't need an agency or consultant to get started. There are a couple of good exercises out there that you can do on your own. A simple one that I like is the Positioning XYZs:
"We are the only X that solves Y problem in Z unique way."
Where...
X is the category of the company, product, or service or other offering you've chosen to own.
Y is the unmet need of your target audience.
Z is the differentiation, advantage, or key positive distinction you have over your competition.


2. Tell your story
Clear positioning is critical, but positioning statements are internal touchstones, not external expressions. Your next job is to make it interesting, to imbue the rational positioning with emotion.
All brands are stories, and a good way to get started is to document and share your best corporate stories: the founding insight of the company, the times you went to extraordinary lengths to take care of a customer, or the background behind the big product breakthrough.
The good news is that with ubiquitous broadband access and Web-based applications, it is within every company's grasp to share these stories more broadly through rich-media video and audio.
B.Good (http://www.bgood.com/), a small restaurant chain in Boston, has done this well. It's a burger joint that promises "real food," positioning itself against the typical fast-food burger and experience. The real food story begins with the stories of the "real people," the founders whose corporate values are based on their experiences growing up at their uncle's restaurant. You're reminded of these stories when you're in the restaurant or checking store hours online.


3. Bring it to life
Once you have the story, you need to bring it to life. Make sure that the way your company looks and feels to the outside world matches that truth. This leads to questions about your corporate identity: Do the basics (starting with your name and logo) make the impression you want? And your broader system for communicating to the market: Web site, brochures, your retail environment.
A client of mine talked about his Web site as a "corporate veil" that obscured what made the company special. Does your corporate identity reveal the best truth about your business, or does it hide it?

4. Start building brand before they buy
Think beyond the transaction. Brands begin at the transaction level, but the brand experience goes much deeper. The opportunity to create a brand impression starts long before the buying decision. The principle is a simple one: Give away an artifact of your brand for free. In the professional services world, this means a taste of your service or your intellectual property. Here are two creative examples:
Igor (http://www.igorinternational.com/) is a naming consultancy based in San Francisco. It has built a methodology—and a client list that rivals those of much-larger branding agencies. That methodology is laid bare in a 100-page guide to naming that it gives away—without any registration requirements—on its Web site.
This move is both generous, in the spirit of Web content "wanting to be free," and also incredibly shrewd. The naming guide is rich, detailed, and outlines a very clear process for naming. Igor understands that giving away IP (intellectual property) doesn't cost it business—but it is its lead business generator.
It doesn't have to be just IP. Peet's (http://www.peets.com/), the coffee retailer, allows customers to send their friends an "eCup," an email redeemable for a free cup of coffee. This is an ingenious way to enable the fiercely loyal customers of Peet's to promote the brand themselves.

5. Measure your efforts
Here are a few direct ways to measure the progress of your brand:
Ask your customers. Survey a subset of customers, prospective customers, and (ideally) people who chose a competitor over you. You'll be surprised at how candid people will be about your strengths—and your weaknesses. Make sure you ask the most important question in any customer research: Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? Research (check out www.netpromoter.com) has shown that the willingness to recommend is the most important indicator of brand health. This research can be done quite cheaply online, using free or near-free tools like KeySurvey (http://www.keysurvey.com/) or SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/).
Check your search rankings. I don't know all of what Igor measures, but I do know it fares very well in what is perhaps the most important measure of them all: organic search results. Type "product naming" on Google, and chances are you'll see Igor come up in the top three listings (the earned ones in the middle, not the paid ones on the top or side).
Monitor the social media conversation. In most categories, consumers are holding a very active and candid conversation about the brands they love and hate. Check out what they're saying about you in blogs, bulletin boards, and vendor-rating Web sites (http://www.technorati.com/ or http://www.yelp.com/ are good places to start).

Top Five Lead Gen practices

Jon Miller in a recent post at Marketo.
Top Five Lead Management Best Practices:


1.Be everywhere. "Cast your marketing net wide so customers will find you no matter where they are searching," he advises. (as long as they are within your target market profile).

2. Build prospect profiles. Create a lead database to manage and store all your leads, and then make sure you have a strategy in place to keep that database clean (e.g., lead de-duplication).

2.Automate lead handoffs. He offers an example: "Define different lead status values to indicate whether someone is a qualified prospect but still nurturing, or a true sales-ready lead." Then update their lead status in the CRM system.

3.Provide sales-lead insight. Give the sales rep the prospect's history, and offer insight about the "interesting moments" that caused that person to become a lead.

4.Recycle leads as necessary. If your sales rep can't follow up right away, or the prospect isn't available, don't let a lead just sit and turn stale. "[H]ave a process in place to reassign the lead or escalate the issue," Miller advises.

Internet Marketing - A viable marketing strategy in a down economy

Laura Lake explains some good ideas when it comes to internet marketing ideas and strategy.

We are watching our pennies and slashing our marketing budgets so where can we market that provides us the most cost effective vehicle as well as gives us the efficiency we need in this economy? It's the Internet.

Why is internet marketing the most cost effective and efficient? It's the only marketing vehicle that allows you to make tweaks and changes to your campaigns on the fly. When was the last time you ran a marketing campaign and realized it wasn't pulling the results that you had hoped for? Do you remember the hopeless feeling you got when you saw the campaign was going to be a flop? Of course you do. If you had used internet marketing you could have made the changes at the first sign of failure. The changes could include tweaking the text, modifying the graphic or strengthening the message.
I'm not saying internet marketing is easy, but given some effort and even guidance you can make internet marketing a viable option to sell your services and products. I've provided you a few resources that will help you understand the importance of internet marketing strategy as well as guidance that will help you get started.

Internet Marketing Strategy: What Can it Do for You?Having an Internet marketing strategy gives you a measurable and definitive way to target your market and position your business so that those looking for what you have to offer are finding you easily. Learn what it can do for your marketing efforts.Read more

Internet Marketing Strategy : Why is it Important?An Internet Marketing Strategy is just as important as a business plan. Find out why it is important and the risks and problems you can face if you proceed without one.Read more

ABC's of Creating an Internet Marketing StrategyThis can often leave marketers confused and wondering where to start. Learn a formula that will help you experience internet marketing success in 2007.Read more

Five Levels of Internet Marketing and the Sales ProcessCreating a successful online sales process can be accomplished by making sure that you represent and court your visitor through the five levels of the sales process on your site. You can do this by meeting the psychological needs that your visitor has. Find out how in this three part series.Read more

Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies Internet Marketing can attract more people to your website, increase customers for your business, and enhance branding of your company and products. If you are just beginning your online marketing strategy the top 10 list below will get you started on a plan that has worked for many.Read more

Five Myths of Internet Marketing for Independent ProfessionalsThe vast majority of what appears on the Internet about marketing is designed to help you market products and services sold and delivered exclusively on the Internet. What does that mean for the independent professional whose web presence is primarily aimed at selling his or her own personal services? Learn how to identify and avoid the five myths of Internet Marketing for independent professionals in this guest article by C.J. Hayden.

6 Ways to weather an economic downturn

Robyn Haydon from Flying Solo has some great ideas about how to survive as a small business or sole practisioner in this economic climate.

A wise business mentor once told me ‘the best job security is the security you create for yourself’. I think this is true in any economic environment. So what is the answer for solo businesses? I think it’s planning. If we establish defensive measures now, we will be ready if and when this wobble turns into a full-on slump. Here are a few ways to weather-proof your business against the looming clouds of an economic downturn.

1. Review your target markets Geoff Kelly, a leader influence consultant I spoke to, believes that not enough of us “spend enough time targeting the right niche”. Kelly has shifted his focus from small-to-medium clients to those “more medium” sized. The risk-averse could consider government clients, if the offer suits, as government will always pay its bills.

2. Adjust to short-term thinking Expect prospects to be tight with time and cash and don’t take it personally. Try improving something they already have or do, rather than selling something completely new. Accept smaller projects.

3. Adapt your offering to what customers want now Talk to your customers and find out how the economic downturn is affecting their business. Come up with ideas, products or services that will solve the new set of problems. Always be relevant.

4. Be smart about keeping your customers Turn that long-term handshake agreement into a monthly retainer for regular work. Incentivise repeat business by offering extras without devaluing your core offer.

5. Widen your new business net Sharpen up your market presence - revamp your website, or get one; revisit your customers for testimonials; talk up the value customers get from you as opposed to competitors. Shelve brand-building in favour of marketing campaigns that get an immediate return. Ask existing customers to refer new ones. Think about how you could do business with customers based interstate or overseas.

6. Know and respect your value Shawn Price, an independent career management consultant, points out that we ‘independents’ can be attractive in an economic downturn because we can offer more expertise, more flexibility and a lower risk and level of commitment than full-time employees.

The Amazing Power of Growing a Big List

by Wendy Maynard, Marketing Maven

You may think your biggest business asset is your equipment or your inventory. But, you have two assets even more important than these. Your first big asset is your expertise: your unique knowledge and the specific way that your company helps your clients.

Your second asset is your list of satisfied, loyal customers, as well as your pool of warm prospects with whom you are building a relationship of credibility and trust. Building this list and keeping in touch is your ticket to an ongoing, steady stream of income - no matter what the economy is doing. And this is true regardless of the type of business you run. These individuals will develop a fierce brand loyalty and they will spread the word about how much they love you.
Here are some tips to build your list of leads and prospects:
If you have a website, make sure you have some kind of name capture mechanism. In exchange for people's contact information, offer a subscription to an ezine, a free report, an e-course, coupon, sample, or some other perk.
Make sure you have an effective online system to collect the names of your customers and prospects. The best program I've found for managing my lead generation and follow-up activities is MavenMerchant.com. This program allows you to set up a name capture form for your website or blog, as well as autoresponders to automate the process of communicating with your list on a regular basis. Set it up and let it work for you as your online salesperson - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
If you have a physical location, place a sign-up form in an obvious place for your visitors so you can stay in touch with them on an ongoing basis. You can offer an incentive to sign up such as special coupons, discounts, or a print newsletter with tips. For instance, one of my clients owns a retail boutique and she offers special VIP Customer Discount Events.
When you give speeches, presentations, and attend trade shows, collect the names of people you interact with! In exchange for their contact information, offer people a prize like a free product or a discount. You can do the same thing if you offer telephone seminars or online courses to your clients.
Grow your list by conducting a joint venture with a like-minded business. This is one of the most powerful ways to grow a list of qualified leads. For example, a mortgage broker and Realtor can offer a free seminar on home buying. Both businesses can collect the names of the attendees.
Submit articles to various websites, ezines, and industry publications. Make sure each article has a resource box with information about your business and a link to a name capture page. Submit Your Article is a powerful service that will send your articles to numerous websites. For a fre.e online service, try EzineArticles.com
Good 'ol phone calls can also do the trick. They often say something like: "Oh my goodness, I am so glad you called! Getting in touch with you has been on my list for weeks now. Let's set up a time to meet because I have this great new idea for a project..." And off we go!
Direct mail is a relatively inexpensive way to keep in touch. There are so many different types of direct mail you can send to your list. But you can keep it simple. All you really need is a regular postcard to remind people of your presence. If you want to get more complicated, you can send a printed newsletter, thank-you card, or special letters with gifts inside.
Anyone and everyone who has ever purchased from you should go on your list. It is much easier and cost effective to cross-sell and up-sell to past, satisfied customers than it is to convert a prospect into a customer. Regularly keep in touch to ensure your company stays in the forefront of their awareness.

Be sure to track your marketing activities with your customers and prospects. This includes direct mail, phone calls, estimates sent, and meetings. You can use something as simple as Microsoft Outlook, which has client relationship management (CRM) functions. You can also use software with more robust CRM capabilities such as ACT! or Goldmine. If you don't need to have the latest version of these, look on Ebay for great deals on an earlier release of the software.

Action Item: Take a look at your current system for collecting names and following up with prospects and customers. How do you store your contact data? What actions will you take in the next three months to improve the list-building aspect of your marketing, and how will you reach out to them on a regular basis?

Funnel Vision - How to build a great business (from a good one)

Great article by Hugh Macfarlane


Standing out from the crowd is tough when your competitors are also working towards the same end. Occasionally, though, a business that has been doing 'fine' suddenly starts doing better than fine. In fact, it goes from being good to great. For some, this success is temporary and they soon slink back into the pack. A select few make a significant shift and go on to achieve sustained greatness.
How does a good business become a great one? Hot on the heels of his groundbreaking work with co-author Jerry Porras on the bestselling management book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, researcher and author Jim Collins set out to answer this question. As a result, he produced an even better book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap & And Others Don't.
Collins' team of researchers drew up a list of extraordinary companies that met three criteria - they had to have performed at or below the rest of the market for 15 years; then undergone a change; and then significantly outperformed the stock market for 15 years or more.
Collins wanted to understand what these businesses had done to transform themselves into market leaders. His findings suggest there are seven keys to creating a great business.
Disciplined people
1. Adopting level 5 leadership: build enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
2. Considering who first, then what: begin by getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off it) and then work out where to drive it.
Disciplined thought
Confronting the brutal facts (yet never losing faith): all good-to-great companies began their transition by analysing the facts of their reality while being determined to rise above that reality.
4. Embracing the hedgehog concept: this entails getting clear answers to three questions:
· what are you deeply passionate about?
· what do you know you can be the best in the world at?
· what drives your economic engine?
Disciplined action
5. Fostering a culture of discipline: getting sustained great results requires self-disciplined people who take disciplined action.
6. Using technology as an accelerator: good-to-great companies avoid technology fads, but become pioneers in carefully selected technologies.
7. Creating 'flywheel momentum': sustainable transformations follow a pattern of build-up and breakthrough. Like pushing a flywheel, it takes effort to get things moving, but persistence builds momentum and breakthrough.
In our experience, the final idea needs further examination. Momentum is a great outcome, but how do you get it?
In business-to-business (B2B) marketing, organisations often come up with a great idea, try it once and then go looking for another great idea. This is fatally flawed. Not only is it hard to get good at anything this way, but the market becomes confused.
Consumer marketers know that perceptions take a long time to build. They create ads and sell their message consistently. As B2B marketers, we have to do the same. Create campaigns that last for years, and execute them again and again. Refine those plans when necessary, but only after robust measurement and testing.
Adhere to these rules and you'll soon hear that flywheel humming.

Measuring Marketing - trends

Quality Metrics Enable Marketing's Ability to Influence Strategic Directionby Laura Patterson
Published on September 18, 2007

Various studies for the past several years from the Association of National Advertisers, Frost & Sullivan, IDC, and the CMO Council, among others, have found that CEOs are demanding more accountability from marketing. While most marketers are measuring something, survey results indicate there is room for improvement regarding metrics and the quality of these metrics.
In fact, results from VisionEdge Marketing's 6th annual Marketing Performance Survey found that only 17% of the 136 executives and marketing professional indicated that their CEO would give marketing an A.

In addition, this study and others continue to suggest that a gap remains between a company's business goals and the metrics marketing uses to measure their impact on these goals. Companies continue to struggle with the contradiction between priorities and action.
The need and opportunity remains for marketing to improve the linkage between marketing expenditures and delivered results.

"Marketing must improve its value to justify its existence as a centralized function," according to Elana Anderson, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. If we don't make our case and develop and communicate quality metrics, we may find the days of marketing as a standalone department numbered and instead find ourselves absorbed into sales, finance, or some other function.

It's not like this is a new phenomenon. The concept of measuring marketing has been around for a long time. The question is what should we measure and what metrics are best?
In 2001, James Gregory's article in the Journal of Brand Management shared a proprietary model that linked various financial factors and corporate images to stock prices, sales, and market share. Research at VisionEdge Marketing has found that most companies fail to measure such things as cost to acquire, order value, share of wallet, churn rate, brand equity, and other key business variables that marketing impacts. Rather, marketers have a tendency to measure such things as response rate, demo participation, event traffic, number of new contacts or leads, number of press hits, cost per lead, and lead aging.

While these metrics offer some insight into the results of specific programs, they do not link marketing to the business objectives. In fact, our studies indicate that only about one in four marketers measure marketing's impact on the business and nearly two-thirds of marketing plans do not even include metrics.

A Five-Point Continuum
Forrester Research, Marketing Management Analytics, and the Association of National Advertisers conducted an online survey to find out how marketing professionals leverage marketing analytics. Some 50% of the respondents indicated that measurement remains the hardest part of marketing and 51% are dissatisfied with how they measure marketing ROI. Yet nearly all of the respondents realize that measuring marketing is important and influences senior management's confidence in Marketing personnel and programs.
To make progress on the marketing-measurement front, marketing professionals must shift from tactically based metrics to metrics that are more linked to business outcomes. The measures must include both financial and non-financial goals.
This figure illustrates the continuum of marketing metrics and how marketing metrics are evolving:

Starting at the bottom left and working up and to the right, we can use this illustration as a framework to explore how marketing metrics are evolving from tactical to strategic. Activity-based metrics refer to those things we can count. This was marketing's first foray into the world of measuring—looking for things we could count, such as press hits, click-through rates, CPMs (cost per thousand), and so on.
Most marketing plans today consist of activity lists, such as the number of ads to run, the number of tradeshows to attend, the number of new product brochures to produce, the number of research studies to conduct, and so on. Marketing then reports on the status of these activities—ads ran and responses per ad, Web site visits and downloads, contacts per tradeshow, etc. These are then turned into charts in an attempt to present the marketing dashboard.
Yet with activity-based metrics all we have is a colorful status report and no information on the impact of these activities on the business. The company cannot make any key business decisions or determine whether strategies are working.
Operational metrics, the next level, is a step forward. These metrics focus on improving the efficiency of the organization. Typical metrics in this stage include cost per lead, lead aging, leads per sales rep, and campaign payback. The goal is to squeeze out any inefficiency. While this is a noble pursuit and an important one, marketing efficiency alone will not make a company successful. What really "moves the needle" in terms of business performance is how well its marketing identifies product opportunities, positions these products, builds market traction against the competition, and fosters customer loyalty. Performance outweighs efficiency.
Both activity-based and operational metrics are a good place to start, but neither serves as an accurate indicator of strategic effectiveness. Neither enables the organization to determine which efforts are having the greatest impact; neither provides a quality control process, focuses on marketing's contribution to the company's overall valuation, or serves as a good way to demonstrate marketing's accountability.
To address those issues, marketing executives and professionals need to evolve to outcome-based metrics to develop quality measures. Outcome-based metrics focus on three specific and common business outcomes: market share, customer lifetime value, and brand equity.
Once we accomplish a systematic approach to outcome-based metrics, we will have the basis for advancing to leading indicator metrics—those that help us determine the likelihood of a particular outcome and eventually creative models to use metrics to predict outcomes.
And once we've mastered leading indicator metrics, we're only a few financial models away from predictive models—those that allow us to predict a business outcome.
Creating Your Marketing Executive Dashboard
Marketing performance management and metrics tracking would be incomplete without a way to capture and report the metrics—that is, a dashboard. Ideally, metrics indicate the business health of your organization. A dashboard is the visual representation of a firm's health and provides a snapshot between actual performance and the goals. A good dashboard facilitates action. It not only reports on the metrics being monitored but also serves as a vehicle to help decide on what actions are required and their priorities. Yet, according to a 2005 study conducted by CMO Magazine, three-fourths of marketers have no formal scorecard.
Creating a dashboard is more than just producing a few charts and graphs. A good marketing dashboard serves as a visual and diagnostic vehicle that communicates marketing's effectiveness and impact on business goals. Every metric provides a specific perspective on the firm's business. Some metrics indicate whether there is a problem today, and others help alert marketing to a potential problem down the road. The status of the marketing organization on the metrics continuum will impact what kind of dashboard it can create. As the business goals change, it will be important to revisit the dashboard to make sure the dashboard metrics are still in alignment with the business needs and goals.
As companies progress along the metrics continuum from activity-based to outcome-based, the dashboard will also evolve. Outcome-based metrics involve a dashboard that hones in on the primary business outcomes: market share, customer value and shareholder value. Because these metrics tend to be more market centric, the dashboard begins to provide more strategic insight and direction.
The greatest challenge for the marketing organization is how to capture the metrics. Manual aggregation of data across multiple spreadsheets comes with potential issues, ranging from error-prone reporting to poor utilization of internal resources. Moving from a spreadsheet-based system to an automated system provides greater benefits to the organization as a whole.
A mapping process helps with defining the metrics and ultimately the dashboard. As a result, most companies select metrics and a dashboard that reflects the following six categories:
Market growth
Customer value and net advocacy
Profitable deal flow
Opportunity pipeline
Competitive health and market value index
Product innovation pipeline
Regardless of the metrics you ultimately choose or the categories represented on your dashboard, a good dashboard provides insight into performance, fosters decision-making, and aligns strategy with implementation.
Measure What Matters
We began this discussion about the need for marketing to be more accountable and to develop quality metrics. Hopefully, you have some new ideas on how to focus marketing metrics around business outcomes and how to develop quality metrics that will help you provide insight into how marketing is making a contribution to the company and how to demonstrate that contribution to senior management.
As you continue on your marketing performance journey we hope these ideas lead you to...
Focus marketing metrics around business outcomes.
Develop quality metrics that will help you provide insight into how marketing is making a contribution to the company.
Demonstrate that contribution to senior management.
And we hope your journey will include the following three actions:
Start making active progress on improving marketing performance and accountability.
Even if you don't have all the data, start with what you have, define your data gaps, and develop a plan to close these gaps.
Stop reporting on activities and tactical data around campaigns and Web traffic, and focus on climbing up the metrics continuum. It may still be important to track campaign results for an internal functional dashboard. The more you can link marketing to business outcomes, the more you can influence your company's strategic direction.
If in doubt about what to measure, select those measures that help your company make decisions and take action. When used this way, marketing metrics enable a firm to seize a competitive advantage, and they position Marketing as a strategic member of the team. MarketingProfs.com

Five small business email customer lifecycle tactics

This article is by Kara Trivunovic and Andrew Osterday
Published on January 27, 2009

I thought it was insightful so I thought I would share it.

It's probably no surprise that the process of acquiring new customers comes with one of the higher price tags of any of your marketing initiatives. The value of growing your customer base is obvious: the potential to sell more products or services. Moreover, increasing customer loyalty will reduce your marketing costs by providing you with a growing number of prospects and customers that can be easily and efficiently communicated with.
Accounting for the following five basic lifecycle tactics for the coming year will help identify areas of focus when laying out your strategy and setting goals.
1. Target and Acquire
It's not only about a customer database with the most amounts of records. The key is to fine-tune your targeting tactics to grow your customer database with those individuals who have a true interest in your products or services. Adding 50 new and engaged customers or prospects can have a better positive net effect on your bottom line than adding 500 prospects who might not be as interested in what your organization has to offer.
Look to add to your email database with those potential customers who have the most relevant connection with your organization. In short, poor leads equal lackluster performance and added costs.
Targeted growth provides you with a database of motivated customers who are not only ready and willing to open your email messages but also less likely to opt out of communications and less prone to mark your communication as spam.
In an email world where your Email Sender Reputation is critical, avoiding increased complaint rates with ISPs means better in-box penetration. Those spam complaints not only harm your email reputation but also limit the number of messages that individual ISPs will actually deliver to your customers who want to receive your message.
2. Onboard the Correct Way
An onboarding program that reflects your brand, sets expectations, and confirms the appropriate customer information needs to follow industry best-practices as well.
Interested prospects and future customers who desire to be a part of your marketing program are willing to share information regarding their needs. This information can be used to help grow your relationship with your customers as well as increase the trust in your brand. Create clear and easy forms that allow your customer to quickly tell you the information that they are interested in.
The more you know about your customers (not just their email address) the better. Crafting email program enrollment forms that ask the information you need to execute the most relevant communications back to them is not merely desirable, it is a necessity.
Keep enrolment forms easy to complete and available on every page of your Web site, and follow industry best-practices using a double opt-in confirmation method and welcome message. These messages need to be timely and reinforce your brand.
Waiting too long to send an enrollment confirmation or your first message can be the difference between your prospect's staying engaged or forgetting about you and moving on to your competition.
You should also take the use-it-or-lose-it approach with collecting information during the enrolment process. Collect only the information that you will use to help get the right message to the right recipient at the right time.
3. Deliver on the Promise and Serve up the Right Content
Your email marketing programs should have a clearly defined purpose that your future email recipients will easily recognize in communications that they have requested.
"Sign up for our monthly newsletter" means that the future recipient is expecting an electronic issue every month. Inform your recipients about when they can expect your communications—and show them examples. Providing a link to your most recent communications for them to peruse may limit the number of records that you add to your database in the short term, but as noted in the Target and Acquisition section, the value in growing your database is based on acquiring customers and prospects who are unquestionably interested in you communications.
Providing the right message, to the right person, at the right time does produce results. One study over a five-year period showed that when marketers provide relevant product and service offerings to engaged customer segments, they reported an annual profit growth of about 15% as opposed to 5% for those marketers that did not take into account engaged customers and relevant content.
4. Grow the Relationship
Learn more about your customers by analyzing purchase history and Web site traffic. Satisfied customers will most likely account for a larger portion of your sales. Being able to identify the attributes of your most-engaged customers will allow you to leverage those attributes on a growing customer database.
Your best customers shouldn't necessarily be getting the same message that you are sending to your entire database. These individuals are more familiar with your brand, knowledgeable about your offerings, and amicable toward receiving targeted promotions and tailored marketing messages.
Say in tune with the marketing strategies of your competition as well. You are all vying for the attention of that same customer. Knowing what your completion has to offer allows you to tailor messages that that can compete. Timely offers, tested frequency, and clear product differentiation afford your customers the ability to make purchase decisions quickly.
Good customers make great advocates. You customers share common likes and interests with friends, family members, and colleagues. Relying on these advocates is often one of the easiest way to organically grow customers and subsequent sales.
5. Retain
Retaining a customer has a much smaller price tag than acquiring a new one. Growing customer loyalty by 1% can be the equivalent of a 10% cost reduction, according to Bain & Company. "Catch-and-release" marketing tactics may not provide that top-of-mind ability to keep your brand as your customer's first choice when contemplating a future purpose.
Communicating with your customers using messages that go beyond marketing offers keeps them engaged with your brand. Take into account birthdays, anniversaries, or holiday greetings. You communicate with friends and family with these types of greetings, why not with your customers?
Complimentary products or services that enhance previous purchases or are aligned with customers' previous purchasing history demonstrate that you understand them as customers and can identify what is important to them.
Providing tips and tricks to help your customer's use your product or service in more efficient ways also helps to strengthen the relationship. Keep your customers up-to-date on new products, upgrades, and updates.
Reach out when your customers become unengaged. Test the way you communicate with those individuals who stop opening or interacting with your communications. Are you sending too many or too few messages? There could be many reasons that your once engaged customer acts less interested in your communications. Monitor your reporting for cues that a change may be needed. Test your theory, and apply your learnings.