I once wrote an e-book.  Years ago.  And the premise of the material was that success at any level in anything you do takes Action.

Simple, directed Action.

Now I use the word “directed” because you can actually do something every day but if it’s not focused and consistent it may not be effective.  Flitting from one thing to another will not produce results.

Consistent Focused Action = Big Results

Off-line and On-line marketing are similar in that you’ve got to stick with your pitch or campaign in order for it to get results, that’s the consistent part.  Last month I talked about the number of touches required to turn a prospect into a customer and that’s what I mean about consistency; you’ve got to keep doing it.

But it’s not enough to just repeat yourself.  Sending the same marketing piece over and over to the same prospect or customer can sometimes create numbness in the prospect.  You’ve been there yourself, you’ve seen the same ad over and over and over and over for your local pizza shop and you don’t notice it any longer.  So change it up a little, key word “little”.

It is impossible to know what works and what doesn’t if you change up your strategy every time you make a marketing move.  It’s enough to send the same email or flyer with the added text:  “In case you missed it.”  And then send a third time with:  “You might have missed this, but we’ve had a good response so we are sending it out again.”

A successful business is one that gets the customer and keeps the customer.

Seriously, there’s not much more to it, which means that marketing is your number one priority.

There was a guy…who sold a bridge… He didn’t have a bridge, just some old bridge pieces and a really good marketing campaign!  True story.

That’s not to say that I think you should sell crappy stuff or be deceitful because it’s not about the first sale to one prospect.  It is about the second, third and fourth sale to that same prospect.

If, after you’ve sent out your marketing campaign 9 times without response, then that prospect may not be a good match.  But if you quit at 4, 6 or 8, you’ve given in too soon.

The big secret you’ve been waiting for is simply this – Consistent Focused Action.  It takes a dedicated and persistent person to build a successful business because you’ve got to be prepared for the dry spell just before the dam breaks.  If you move from thing to thing or strategy to strategy, you’ll be livin’ in a world of dry spells.

Pick your ammo, stick with it — consistent focused action.

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[Photo Courtesy of David Hoshor]

©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

When Coca-Cola became the sponsor for American Idol the set became a branding platform for Coke.  The judges kept cups of Coke in front of them.  Simon occasionally spouts out, “How much I love Coca-Cola!.”  During auditions contestants enter and exit a holding room where the walls are painted Coca-Cola red.  The chairs and couches have the familiar rounded contour shape of a Coca-Cola bottle.  For this Coca-Cola pays an estimated $26 million annually to do all this branding, including commercial spots.

But does it work?

For Coke it did.  The details of the research can be found in Martin Lindstrom’s book “Buyology”.  But basically, the integrated branding into the program itself had a much higher recall than just those products that ran commercials.  The results revealed that branding integrated into the storyline or show rated higher in the test subjects minds.  Coke was simply more memorable as a result of its branding efforts.

Why is this relevant?

In order to increase brand awareness we must carefully align our brand with all aspects of our business.  It can’t be just about the colors on your web site showing up on every page.

You must align your business mission or personality with all aspects of your web presence.  All of the elements must align in order for your customer to begin to recognize you as a brand.  Design elements are important and should be consistent from page to page.  The design elements should be carried into all your marketing efforts.

Language comes next.  Your web site copy should be consistent.  If you are a light and fun type of brand, then your word and tone choices should align with that personality.  Carry those language choices into all your marketing materials as well.

Develop a personality that can be displayed visually as well as through your copy.

The best brands tie into your customer’s emotions and create a bond and recognition.  Think Apple.  They have raving fans.  Who doesn’t recognize the Apple logo?  Who doesn’t recognize the innovative mission?

Remember though that branding is not just about the logo, design and copy.  Ultimately it is the alignment of those elements with your true mission and service to your customer.  It is about connection.

Good branding starts with authenticity and connection.  From there it must then be recognizable.

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Start with your audience in mind.  Not all strategies will work for all business types.  If you’re selling expensive wine, you may not want to go with the bright cartoon look and feel.  Think Nordstrom’s not Target.

• Keep your benefits up front.  Make sure that your brand strategies align with your key benefits.  Think about what you are offering the customer and how you can best portray that with your copy, images and design.

• Be consistent.  It’s great to have lots of ideas but if every area of your web site boasts a different theme how will your customers remember the important one.  When given more than two choices people tend to not choose.  If you have too much going on your customers won’t be able to remember any of it.

• Be different.  At a minimum differentiate yourself from your competition.  There are far too many “me too” sites out there.  Mimicking your favorite blogger or web site because it is successful will not help to build a memorable brand.  You need to be unique.

Have a little fun and don’t make the process too complicated.  Start with simple design features.  Choose just a few things to focus on.  As you develop your site there’s plenty of time to tweek, adjust and strengthen your brand.

Remember that too much is really too much for the visitor.  Using a minimum amount of branding concepts that are consistent and aligned with your audience will be far more effective and much more memorable.

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©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

Giving this some thought, I realize that when someone does bad marketing it tends to spark an article about something. And here’s the thing, no really bad marketing crossed my path this week but neither did any really good marketing.

Let’s face it, I love stuff. When a week goes by where I am not prompted to open my wallet…well that’s kind of a bad thing.

I’m not living in a cave. I received lots of mail this week, lots of email, lots of pitches for…stuff. But nothing got me to even think about my wallet…

So, what are you doing to stand out?

I can tell you right off that if all your competitors are doing glossy brochures, yours isn’t going to stand out even if it’s got better pictures. Why? Because they all look the same to the consumer.

If everyone is using a blog or pod cast or video or whatever… yours probably won’t stand out. Sorry.

The point is that you cannot, you must not, do what everyone else is doing. You have to be different, you have to stand out. In any market, unless you are a market of one, you’ve got to find that one differentiating factor.

A lot of people tell me that their business has no differentiating factor or that they can’t find one. Or they tell me their competitors all do the same stuff the same way, they say the same stuff, they sell the same stuff, they charge the same….

If you can’t BE different, then DO something they aren’t doing.

But what?

Your marketing. I can guarantee you that your competitors aren’t as marketing savvy as you believe them to be. Not by a long shot!

In today’s market you cannot depend on only one or two or even three marketing mediums. You must use them all because your competition is not using them all.

What is popular is over-saturated, period.

But how?

Right now the biggest bang for your buck is being just a little different.

Snapple commercials are a good example. They are funny, witty, and just plain entertaining. They work because they are different from other similar product advertising.

Lots of other drinks can tout fresh ingredients but Snapple simply calls it all “good stuff” and in that has differentiated itself. Surely you don’t need to know all the different ingredients in your drink, you simply need to know that it’s, well, good stuff. Simple. It is not what the other guys are doing.

I know, I know, your business is different. You can’t possibly be silly or simplistic.

I would argue that you can be and it can be very, very successful.

An Example

When I started the Porsche service and repair business I, too, did what everyone else was doing. I put in an ad, said how fabulous we were. I put a pretty, shiny car in the ad. Looked at everyone else’s ad and made sure I was just as fabulous. I mean why wouldn’t someone choose me over the others, clearly I was fabulous.

But, then, I got my marketing education.

My target is over 40 year old men, driving Porsches. They are “pride of ownership” owners which means they’ve worked hard to have the car of their dreams.

Below is an example of a recent mailer. One-sided. Sent in a colored envelop to get attention. Hand-stamped, hand-labeled.

The response rate…now remember my target…30%. It kept me swamped for two months.

It was simple. It was fun and humorous. It was far from boring. Most importantly, it is different from what my competitors are doing, in fact they don’t even bother to mail to their customers. I could send just about anything and it would get noticed.

The Point

The big points… don’t assume that everyone is doing everything and don’t assume that it is their advantage. The other guys are likely using one or two marketing mediums. They probably are using them in the same way everyone else is using them. Which means it really doesn’t take much to stand out and be different.

Standing out and being different can be as simple as your marketing campaign. Yes, it takes a little time but clearly it’s not boring. I have a blast putting my mailers together and so should you. If you’re having a great time putting it together, your customers will sense that.

I promise if you can get a reaction, any reaction… I go for getting a smile… then you will get the customer, promise!

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©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

Some of you already know what I’m talking about, for those of you that don’t, it simply means that a potential customer needs to have seven contacts or impressions by you before you begin to get noticed and can potentially close a sale.

So that means the consumer needs to see seven commercials, seven ads or receive seven emails or seven flyers before you work your way through the clutter the consumer is bombarded with every day.

That’s the problem…

I am not a patient person.  It is one of the reasons I don’t grow vegetables.  I want results and I want them now!  And I suspect most of you are the same, especially if you are just starting out.

You might run Google ads for a week without any leads and then change your ad or drop your ad altogether.  You might send out one email offering a freebie or discount and get one response, so you dump the email into the “didn’t work” file.

The problem is that maybe your email got deleted by mistake, perhaps it was dumped into the spam folder, maybe that day, in frustration, the consumer deleted everything they didn’t recognize, what if their computer was broken…

That’s the reason behind the idea of repetition.  Besides, repetition works.  The direct mail folks love to do research on this stuff and they’ve got lots of numbers to back up the idea that you have to make multiple impressions on a consumer before you get their attention.  Certainly you’ll have consumers who buy on the first contact but the majority does not.  If you give up too soon you lose the potential for bigger sales.

I see it all the time.  A business owner sends out one flyer, gets no response or a very small response and figures it doesn’t work so they dump the campaign.  Same for email campaigns, same for any campaign.

Aside from the fact that you can generally only expect a very small response, most mass campaigns get only a 1%-2% response rate which is considered good, most people don’t stick it out long enough to really know what is or isn’t working.

Same goes for tweaking the website.  The owner puts up new copy; it doesn’t convert as well as the old copy so they change it all.  Next week, same thing.

Patience

When my father, brother and I started our commercial millwork company it was relatively easy.  My father had been in the industry many years and had a good reputation.  We never had to market…still don’t.  We get most of our work from referral.

When I started the automotive repair business, we had no customer list at all.  And although my partner had a good reputation, no one knew where to find him.  It was very stressful.  For three months we sat looking out the window of our newly painted shop and waited.  $30,000 later we began to make some progress.  Yup, we lost 10k a month paying expenses with only one or two customers who happened to be friends.

It was pretty awful but I knew that it would take time.  We had to find our place in the consumer’s mind.  So we did our marketing and advertising for three months.  We didn’t give up.  After nine years we rarely advertise or market at all.  We pretty much have a referral business and it’s great.

The point is we stuck with it.  We never pulled ads, although they were expensive, we changed them a bit but kept at it.  We networked, handed out business cards, put business cards on cars, we just kept at it.  We had to get our name out.

Keep at it.

So don’t give up if you don’t get the results you seek immediately,  especially if you are running an online business where the noise is even greater than on a local level.  It is critical that you stick with your campaigns and make them multi-stepped.

The seven touch concept has upgraded to nine touches because the noise has become so great.  Think of those nine contacts as your “long-tail”.  As you hit contact 3 and 4 you’ll begin to see more response.  Then as you pass 5 and 6 you’ll see even greater response.  It just takes time.

The biggest take away is the simple act of consistency.  Be consistent.  Keep at it, don’t give up.  Your consistency in getting those impressions out in front of the consumer will pay it just takes a little time.

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©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

How many times have you heard that?

Well, you hear it so much because it is so very important.  Whether you are an online or offline business you need to cultivate a list of your best customers.

Having a customer list is critical to your business success.  Without a list you are throwing your marketing and advertising dollars away.  I could end the post right here and feel okay about it because what I’ve just written is critical and clear, but just to make sure you ‘get’ the importance of it let’s cover the why and how…here we go!

Why You Need a Customer List

Having and refining a customer list is an education in itself.  Reviewing your customers helps you to find out what they buy and why the buy.  This is critical especially if you want more customers just like the one’s who are currently buying your products and services.

It is also a good idea to regularly segment your list by demographic information.  Do you have lots of local customers or do your buyers come from everywhere?  Do they all fall into a similar age, gender or economic group?

With these few facts in hand, it makes the process of choosing the right advertising venues much easier.  Why spend money on ads that don’t target the people most likely to buy.

Think about television advertising for a moment.  When Coke pays to have a commercial run during a popular weekly sitcom they are hitting thousands of viewers.  But the money is paying to advertise to diabetics who likely won’t buy, teens/tweens who don’t do the household shopping, Pepsi lovers, non-cola drinkers, vegetarians and organic eaters, etc.  All that money going to advertise to people who will never buy the product.

List refinement and cultivation removes the added expense of advertising and marketing to people who aren’t likely to buy.

A customer list is not just for research purposes it is a tool for communicating with your potential buyers.  Typically if someone buys and they are happy with their purchase, they are more likely to buy again from the same vendor.  We are all creatures of habit when it comes to spending patterns.

It may seem like price is the biggest consumer buying consideration but that is a false notion.  Only about 10% of consumers buy on price alone.  Most buy on experience.  If the experience was good they will go back.  Think of your favorite restaurant…you likely go there because you like the food or atmosphere and price likely plays a small role.

It makes sense that in order to improve the customer experience, constant contact is a must do item.  Customers like to know about those with whom they do business.  A weekly email or newsletter can have a tremendous effect on whether or not that customer returns.  Even more importantly, adding an offer to your otherwise informational communication can prompt customers to purchase, especially if they have been sitting on the fence about a particular purchase.

But How Do You Make Your List Great?

To be sure a list of names is just, well, a list of names.  What you do with the list once you have it determines whether or not the list will be great or mediocre.

Segmenting the list is one way of enhancing its effectiveness.  I typically make two segments for my automotive business list.  One list is for the top customers.  Customers make that list by meeting certain criteria, only one of which is dollars spent.  The second list is for everyone else.

The first list receives newsletters, coupons, offers and flyers regularly.  The second list receives informational updates and flyers.  I have segmented my list in this way to ensure that the customers that are my “best” customers get the best stuff.  These are customers who are easy to work with, keep their appointments, follow directions, take care of the cars regularly, basically people we love working with.  The second list is for those customers who show up late, complain about pricing, don’t always do necessary work, make it difficult and I’ll work with them but it’s a lot more work.  Finally anyone who is extremely difficult is removed from the list entirely.

Your segmentation may be based on a whole set of different factors.  You might segment by gender, by dollar value spent, by order size, by location or any other factor that translates as important for your business type.

By segmenting you can laser focus your advertising, marketing and communication efforts and, in turn, convert your list from good to great.  A highly responsive list is a business building list.

Of course the best way to make any list great is to use it.  I’m always surprised at the number of businesses with access to list creation who simply don’t bother.  And then there are those who have lists but never use them, either to enhance their marketing and advertising efforts or to just send out a simple flyer or newsletter.

The absolute greatest list is the one that keeps customers coming back again and again.

So if you have no list, start making one.  If you have a list start using it.  Dollar for dollar, hour for hour, it will be the best investment you ever make.

©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

But then it moved into the dare kind of realm…I love a good dare…even better than that would be a double dare…but I didn’t get one of those.

Kathleen O’Conner is not expecting me to write about George Michael and faith because the whole headline using 80’s music icons was just supposed to be funny.  Then she said she expected to see my post on Monday.  I, of course, couldn’t resist.

Now the worst part of this whole thing is the fact that she’s the writer…the creative one, the one who can write the words that make the whole world sing…okay wrong decade but you get the idea.

I could have focused on headlines but that would have been too easy and she had just done that, so I had to stew about this for a bit because I still need to give you some marketing know-how and that’s when it hit me…

Faith!  That’s it! Faith!  “Cause you gotta have faith!!”

And that‘s the thing, the big marketing take away…ready?

Faith might work for George Michael but not for bloggers and certainly not for any business person or marketer.  There’s just no excuse for it.  Instead “you gotta have testing”.

Yup that’s it.

In marketing, testing is king.  With all the analytics tools that exist, there’s no reason to guess at whether your newest promotion is working or failing miserably.  And if failing, you tweek and put it back out there.  This means not just your web site copy or your product branding, but also the packaging, the colors, the specific words, the price, everything.

Blue text colored red instead could increase sales or make them fall flat but unless you are testing you’ll never know.

So that’s my big take away.  Don’t have faith, test instead.

Wanna share your favorite 80’s tune? Or better yet a testing method that works for you?  Please share below

©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

I had an interesting email chat yesterday with Kathleen O’Conner of O’Copy.  We got on the issue of aligning your business with your Marketing Plan of Attack.  We chatted about voice, tone and language.

It got me to thinking about ‘marketing speak’; you know the words we use to communicate with our audience and whether they need to align in some way with what we do, i.e., our service or product.

When we prepare our Marketing Plan of Attack we define our market, we make our positioning statements and we create a USP. (Check out the video series if you’re lost…we’ll wait…)

The issue Kathleen raises is a good one and one we all need to think about.  Kathleen and I are both business owners, albeit different types of businesses, we are both marketers and we both help others use marketing and learn about marketing so it wasn’t an unusual thing to chat about.

And, we came to some conclusions:

Align Your Voice Appropriately

What I mean by this is that you may and should use different voices for different marketing functions.  For instance, if you have a blog and a sales page or pages you will likely have two different things going on.  Sales pages are designed to inform and sell a product or service.  Blogs are designed to inform and build relationships.  And while you may use your blog to give product information or announce a sale, the primary purpose should be to connect with your customer and build a relationship.

Another example might be the voice you use for your advertising copy and your existing customer list copy.  Your advertising copy is generally designed to attract new customers and may appear in the yellow pages, on Google or as a direct mail piece.  Your existing customer list is designed to enhance your relationship with the customer.  They serve different functions and therefore will have different voices.

Determine Your Core Voice(s)

Decide in advance how you want to be perceived.  Your Marketing Plan of Attack (MPA) will help you with this exercise.  Keep that in front of you as begin to write down some key words or phrases that exemplify what you want your customer to perceive when they read your blog or advertising or product copy.  Use your MPA to make sure those key words and phrases align with your positioning statements and with your target market.  Words like pretty and cute don’t fly with 40-year old men who drive BMWs.

You’ll have to do this exercise with each type of copy you have.  If you run ads, have a blog and write for trade magazines, you’ll need to do three different exercises.  They may be very similar but they won’t likely be the same.

Ask questions to help the brainstorming process.

Do I want my customers to connect with me as a person or with an entity?
Think IRS (entity) vs. Seth Godin (person).

Do I want my customers to feel a specific emotion when they visit my site?
Think Cadillac (luxury) vs. Nissan Cube (hip)

How do I want my customers to perceive me as a person?
Think Naomi Dunford (potty mouth) vs.  Lady Gaga (sex pot)

How do I want my customers to perceive me as a business?
Think I Can Has Cheez Burger (fun) vs. Google (simple)

All in all remember that there is no right or wrong way to communicate, only better aligned ways to communicate.  For each business and for each person the voice will be different.

It is those differences that help us, as consumers, to pick through the clutter and find the right voices for us.  Your goal as a marketer is to do your best to resonate with your customers, to build trust and to build like, to inform and to persuade.  There’s a lot going on when we set out to communicate but having a plan or ideas about what we hope our customers will hear will get you there faster.

Do you use a special voice or even a character when you communicate with your customers?  Do you set out to convey specific perceptions or emotions?  Share your thoughts with us!

©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

After creating the videos for the Becoming A Better Marketer series I learned a few things about using videos for marketing purposes.  I’d like to give you my thoughts on whether or not you should be using video on your site.

Now when we talk about marketing we aren’t just talking about selling something.  Providing useful content on your site for the purpose of gaining and keeping customers is a legitimate marketing function.

So, customers need and want information that is helpful and informative.  Customers also want information that is clear and concise so that they can make their buying decisions much more easily.

The amount of information overload consumers are bombarded with can cause a state of ‘freeze’; so many choices and too little time to research them all.

Consumers like my brother who research every purchase can get frozen just trying to pick out a new TV.  Plasma, HD, 1080, inputs, outputs, this, that and the other…  Choosing between a Samsung with gadgets one, two and three and a Sony with gadgets two, three and five can be the breaking point.  It took my brother months to decide on the TV purchase.

I on the other hand use referral sources and some research.  I skim a few sites, read a few reviews then I start asking people what they think.

When my beloved Sony tube TV died, I was heart broken.  I asked my friends and they said “go to Costco, get the LG”.  So I did.  I mean I did do a little comparison shopping but only in the Costco store.  If my friends were happy with it then I would likely be too.

The point is, every consumer is different and if you plan on selling stuff online in any capacity video is an excellent way to compare products for your customers visually.  Short blurbs of info on the good and the bad can be a very effective tool.

Even if you simply intend to educate your potential customers, video can be a real eye-opener for them and for you.  Choosing to produce a short video can open your eyes to the things your customers see and perceive.  The exercise alone will teach you something about marketing to your customer base.

A short video comparison of the TV’s offered at Costco, online, may have helped me to make a more educated decision.  I think it would have also un-froze my brother!

The Good

Video allows you to visually communicate with your audience.  Because you can simply show them what you mean, you help the customer to avoid confusion.  Video can build credibility for you and your business.  Putting an actual voice and moving person in front of your audience can help them to connect with you more easily.  We like doing business with people we like and we like learning from people we like so it’s a win-win.  Simple video can be very cheap to produce.  Flip cams can be had for $100.  Software to edit and publish your videos can run the gamut from freeware to very expensive but software programs like Camtasia are easy to use and only cost $199.  If you don’t want to use actual video footage, you can create a PowerPoint slide presentation and import that into programs like Camtasia adding effects and audio.  Video is no longer out of reach.

The Bad

Video can be time consuming.  Depending on the effects, the amount of editing and the size of the video, expect to spend some time putting it all together.  Video is also very memory intensive.  The files are large and not everyone has a high speed connection.  Using places like youTube to host your video is one solution; however there are size and time limitations; something I ran into when I went to publish my videos.  I ended up having to spend additional time editing the videos and splitting them to fit within the time constraints youTube has in place.

Finally…

All things considered, getting video up and running is an effective and cost friendly tool.

The Become A Better Marketer series would not be as effective had I not been able to include visual aids.

Whether you want to educate your customers, present new products, compare products or even just share information, video can is a great way to do it.  It has it’s drawbacks but I think the benefits far outweigh any potential negatives.

©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

In running, negative splits mean that you run the last half faster than the first half.

Yes, another running analogy… what can I say, I think when I’m running.

So I’m planning my four mile run for this afternoon and after working all day, nine hours, the idea of running four miles seems… well, like a lot of work.

But I have a plan.  First I head out, very optimistic, and I do one mile, turn around and head back.  When I reach the driveway I’m in for two miles.  I stop my watch, run into the house, grab the leashes and head out with the dogs.  We go one mile, turn around and head back.

Four miles, done.  Just like that.

Now we didn’t do any negative splits ’cause the dogs are a bit slower to run with.  One is 11 years old, the other 11 months old, so it’s a lot of work to manage them.  So much work, in fact, that the two miles whizzed by.

So what’s my point… and yes, I have one, I promise.

Whatever marketing task or administrative task or operational task or whatever task you have in front of you, think about tackling it with negative splits.

Split it in half.  Do half now, half later.  Half today, half tomorrow.

Sometimes dividing the work makes the work less daunting.

When I started out today, I thought, “it’s only two miles”.

When I grabbed the dogs and they started pulling me down the street, I thought, “it’s only two miles”.

Whatever the task, cut it in half, and most importantly, get to it!

Remember, “it’s only two miles.”

(Photo Credit:  Jean Scheijen)

©2010 Marketing Unhinged. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing, the topic itself, is such a big one, that I think people tend to get overwhelmed by it.

Do NOT get overwhelmed!

Marketing doesn’t have to be hard, in fact, most of the marketing you do will encompass most of what you do in any given day.  The key is to be aware of that fact and proceed accordingly.

It’s all about the communication…

Everyday you communicate, whether it is with a vendor or client, and even potential clients.  All this communication is a form of marketing.  What you say and how you say it reflects directly on how people view you and view your product or service.

I have a vendor who has a client that he loves and has been working with for years.  The client has hired someone to communicate with the vendor.  The client is trying to free up some of their time.  The problem is the new employee is a pain in the ass.  Difficult, angry, rude, hostile.  The employee calls up and asks for some parts, he’s hostile and rude.  The vendor says, “sorry can’t help you, don’t have it in stock”.  The client calls and says, “Hey we are looking for xyz, are you sure you don’t have any?”  Vendor says, “got it right here on the shelf”.  Client says, “I don’t understand?”  Vendor says, “Your employee is a jerk.”  Client says, “Yeah but he’s really good at what he does.”

Of course I laughed at the story.  And I understood where the vendor was coming from.  What I don’t understand is why the client doesn’t see the adverse affect his employee’s behavior has on the perception other’s have of the business.

Now certainly the vendor wants to sell parts, but he has a whole bunch of other people who aren’t rude who want to buy parts from him.  Why should he deal with a rude guy?

This, my friends, is marketing.  Of course, there a lots of things to discuss in the story but the point is that how you communicate and what you communicate speaks loads about you and your business.

In the auto repair business, an area I have a lot of experience in, you start at a disadvantage.  Most people distrust repair shops.  They figure they are gonna be ripped off, and many times they are.  I see it all the time.  I am surprised and appalled at the stories I hear and at the things I’ve seen other shops do.

So, when a potential new customer calls, you already look bad. Communicating to them through what you say and how you say it is the only way to work past the barrier the potential client has already built.  For me, it is easy to work past those barriers, simply because I honestly care.  And that is a key ingredient in communicating good vibes.

Care, really, just give a rat’s patootee about the customer and their concerns.  Give them the time they need to feel confident about you.  Don’t give them a sales pitch, they don’t care.  Most people will spend more money on something so long as the value is there.  Don’t rush them into an appointment and off the phone.  They are ready to make an appointment, that is why they called, so your job is to make them feel good about making that choice.

Connect with your customer, we’ve all been there, we’ve all had a car breakdown so relating to the customer is easy, just do it.  Tell them you understand how they feel and that you want to make sure you can take care of them.  Again, care.

Marketing is easy if you just remember to care about your customer and communicate that to them.

Not just on the phone, but in your print advertising, email and direct mail.  All the time, everytime.

It really is pretty simple, just make a good impression and keep on doing it.

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