Marketing Comet - Small Business Marketing Secrets

Multiple Levels of Advertising and Promotion

I bet you didn't know that there are multiple levels of advertising and promotion that correspond to intent and stage of business. Understanding these levels helps small businesses tailor their promotions and ads to the proper purpose thus making more money. Let's look a little closer...

Stage 1 - Awareness
Hey mom look at me! Cries the little child who wants attention. One of the biggest threats to small business is the fact that there may be thousands of people out there who need what they offer - but don't know they exist.

This stage works on the "if you build it they will come" principle. It's good if you don't have much competition, or if you are an established brand opening a new location.

This is the most basic form of advertising and it has its uses. Unfortunately most small businesses never move past this level.

Stage 2 - Gain Market Share
This is a very important stage of promotion an advertising. This is where you put your unique selling proposition out there so that people will choose you over a competitor. You have to be compelling in a way your competitors aren't.

Most advertising (even from a lot of the big guys) just doesn't go this far. Your job here is to compel action from the customer.

Stage 3 - Increase Consumption
Gaining new customers is very important, but what are you doing to bring your old customers back? What kind of advertising or promotional tactics will increase the frequency and the size of your average purchase.

Advertising to your current customers is not a waste of money. In fact your ROI is likely to be far higher than advertising to get new customers.

Think about ways to get customers to come back more frequently and spend more with you when they do. You can realize an exponential growth in sales if you get these two components down.

Stage 4 - Capitalize on Opportunity
This stage is where you use opportunities to increase sales. What kind of opportunities? How about holiday sales, long weekends, current events?

Be careful about using very bad news for promotion. Being seen as too mercenary can come back to haunt you. There were some companies that sold terrorist insurance after 911 - but I can't imagine any did well.

However, offering deals to offset rising gas prices or beat the heat of summer deals can be great was to promote all kinds of things.

You can boil these four stages down into finer points of distinction, but mastering just these basics will give you a head start for a more profitable future.

J D Moore - Marketing Comet

Bush Gets Caught Saying "Shit" on Open Mike at G8 Summit

President Bush today uttered a colorful expletive while referring to Hezbollah in what he thought was  a private conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The two were attending a lunch at a G8 summit and speaking candidly about the current situation in Israel, unaware there was an open mike in front of them.

Bush said something to the effect of, "someone needs to tell Hezbollah to stop that shit". The video is available currently on CNN.com. This is not the first time Bush has gaffed with a hot mike he thought was off. Once while speaking to Cheney, he referred to a reporter as "an asshole".

While this certainly will not end his political career or send the stock market into a plunge, it points to a very important concept. What you do in public can reflect on you and your business even if you think nobody is listening.

A business owner I know was sitting in a restaurant one time badmouthing a recent issue of a magazine. As it turns out - the publisher was right next to her. He stood up and confronted her. It goes without saying she'll never get any good publicity from him.

Do you have a corporate vehicle with your business name on it? Be careful how you drive. Be careful how you park.

Did you hand out jackets with your business name to your employees? How are they behaving while wearing your logo out in public?

My attorney related the email test to me. If you ever question whether you should send out an email, just imagine it blown up poster size in front of a jury. If you're still comfortable, push send.

J D Moore - Marketing Comet

Internet Marketing Tips From Dane Cook's Tourgasm

I am a big fan of comedian Dane Cook and have been watching his Tourgasm show on HBO. On the show, he and 3 other comedians travel the road in a big bus and perform all over the country.

On the last episode, Dane was giving advice to a younger comedian on the tour. He was talking about how he was really utilizing Myspace and other similar technologies to market himself. He said that he had embraced every new technology as a way to reach out to his fans.

He showed the young comedian the 12,000 add a friend requests he had gotten in three days on Myspace. Wow. Imagine tens of thousands of people basically begging you to market to them.

Dane Cook really understands his market, in fact he has been credited with bringing the younger generatio back to stand-up comedy. He views technology as a force multiplier - allowing him to keep in touch with tens or hundreds of thousands of his fans.

This is a great use of technology - and his is free.

When can small business marketers learn from this?

Technology, particularly to the younger generation, is about community. Myspace, for example, is now the most popular web site in the world. The new Internet (reffered to as Web 2.0) is all about sharing and connecting.

As a small business you probably can't afford to hire dozens of programmers to build a community portal like Myspace. However, you can learn to leverege the tools that are already out there for you.

Look at community sites like Myspace and linked-in. You should be blogging. Build an opt-in newsletter. Frequent message boards where your customers go. Connect, connect, connect.

The most important lesson of all!

In web communities sales pitches will get you nowhere. In fact people will resent you if your only intent to connect with them is to deliver a sales pitch. Comedians and musicians tellking people about albums and gigs seem to be the only exceptions to this rule.

Look for conversations with your target market. You can get a lot of insite into what they are looking for. As they start to trust you - they'll seek your business out.

J D Moore - Marketing Comet

Your Customer's Time is Very Valuable

Today I took my car in for some routine service and to get a state inspection sticker. I normally take my car to a specific Toyota dealer because they have aways given me exceptional service. I am willing to pay a bit extra for good service.

When my wife and I took the car in at 8:00 this morning, they told us it would take about 2 hours. Great, I had an appointment at noon and that would give me plenty of time. At about 11 am we hadn't gotten word the service was done and I started to worry. The repair desk was very busy so I peered into the wok area, but our car wasn't there. Hmmmmmm.

I looked outside and noticed the car parked outside. I thought maybe the service was done but they had neglected to tell us. I asked the cashier but she had no idea - I had to go to the busy repair desk to check.

The man at the counter said he would check on the car so I went back into the waiting area. It's now 11:20, my wife goes out to check. The man at the counter sees her ticked off and decides he better check on our car.

He comes back and tells us that the car hasn't been inspected but we are next in line. "Sorry, we'll pay for the service and take the car somewhere else, I have to go."

He tells me that if I can wait ten minutes he'll do the inspection right then and we wouldn't have to pay for it. Fine, I can wait ten minutes. 20 minutes later the car is finally done. We get the car and the repairman has left a half-full container of Gatorade on the passenger seat. We hurriedly pay the bill and leave, not noticing that we had indeed been charged for the inspection.

Ouch - they get a D, and they only got that because they were always courteous.

There's practically nothing you can do to tick off a customer more than waste their time. I'm not unreasonable, I know that sometimes things take longer than expected. However, we had been kept waiting because other people, who had come in later without an appointment had been put in font of us.

There is nothing more valuable to me than my time. I tend to look at things from a billable hours perspective. As consultants, my wife's and my billable hours are worth multiple hundreds of dollars. If you waste  an hour and a half of my time - a free inspection sticker doesn't even begin to make up for it.

Likewise - when the cable company gave me a 4 hour window that I had to sit at home waiting it was inconvenient. When they never showed up I was furious. A single month's free cable did not make up for it and didn't make me happy. It's been almost 10 years since it happened and I'm still ticked off.

Every company will have screw-ups with customer service from time to time. Nobody is perfect. If you want to keep your customers you have to make them whole. If you own a restaurant, and one of your waiters spills tomato sauce on a customer's coat it's not enough to pay for the cleaning. You should comp the meal, and offer to take the coat to the dry cleaner and then deliver it clean to the customer.

Just paying for the cleaning means that you are forcing the customer to take the coat to the cleaner - taxing their time. Guess what they are thinking about when they are bringing the coat to the cleaner, picking it up, and then trucking the bill over to you? They are thinking about how that stupid waiter spilled the sauce, and what a pain in the butt it is for them.

When I showed up at my noon appointment 1/2 hour late today, and I hate being late, all I could think about was how ridiculous my wait had been. Has the dealer lost me as a customer? Maybe. They have given me about 10 years of good service, so they get maybe 1 more shot. If they mess up again - goodbye.

My wife and I are planning on buying a new Toyota this year, so they may miss out on that, as well as the rest of my life in service calls. Their failure to keep me happy may cost them tens of thousands of dollars in business.

Think about what to do if your customers aren't absolutely thrilled with your service. What's a customer worth to you? How far are you willing to go to keep your customers?

J D Moore - Marketing Comet

The Viral Linkie Winkie

There's a new viral buzz out there over Linkie Winkie. It's part mystery, and part fun. So far there doesn't seem to be much commercial going on, but it's an interesting social experiment.

I'd love to hear some comments from people who may have figured it out.

A Fabulous Promotion

Today I had lunch with my wife on Newbury Street, Boston's swankiest shopping district. We passed by a women's clothing store that I felt was running one heck of a promotion. With a little creativity, you can apply their idea to almost any business.

The sale was called the BFF sale. BFF is female slang for "best friends forever" The promotion is that if you bring in your BFF (really you can bring in anyone) you both get 25% off when you buy the same outfit. Brilliant.

What makes this such a great promotion?

First, rather than just a sale, it encourages two sales.

Second, it takes advantage of the fact that many women shop with their friends as a social activity.

Third, and perhaps the most powerful part of the equation, it utilizes social pressure. You can easily refuse a pushy sales clerk, but it's less easy to resist your friend who's begging you to get the same outfit.

"Bring a friend with you" promotions aren't new, but I don't see them executed as well as this one. He store had huge signs in the window that explained the promotion in one sentence of about 10 words. You don't want a promotion that's too complex for people o figure out.

Think about how you might double a few of your transactions with a promotion like this one.

J D Moore - Marketing Comet

Clean Bathrooms as a Marketing Tool

My wife and I travel to Maine often to visit friends and family. There is a chain of gas stations called Blue Canoe (how cute) that are run by the Irving company up there. We almost always (99% of the time) stop at a Blue canoe in Falmouth to gas up, get soft-drinks, and do our business. Why? Immaculate rest-rooms.

How many public restrooms have you been in that were a disaster? And don't they give you a horrible impression of the establishment?

I can tell you that one of the swankiest malls in Boston has filthy, foul-smelling bathrooms. It's one of those places that you need a second mortgage to buy a pair of shoes. You can't tell me that the can't afford an extra few hundred dollars a week to keep their bathrooms spotless. It's simply laziness and a lack of appreciation for the fact that every shopper - even the wealthy ones - have to pee.

As a marketing tool, a gas station with an sparkling rest-room is a huge differentiator. I can tell you that there are frequently lines to use the rest room at this gas station, and everybody is getting gas and snacks while they are there anyway. I have never seen anything like it at any other gas station.

The Blue Canoe stations boast that they check their bathrooms every half an hour (and I bet they do). They have a suggestion box inside the bathroom. The bathroom is incredibly clean, comfortable, and tastefully decorated. At Christmas, there were even decorations in there.

Does it make a difference to me? Absolutely. I can get gas almost anywhere, but why not stop in where my wife and I can use the bathroom and not have to hold our breath or feel like we've contracted the creeping crud?

On top of this, the Blue Canoe employees are extremely courteous and go out of there way to give extra service. One of the cashiers got me  liter of diet Pepsi from the back because they were on special and were out in the front cooler. Here's a company that understands that, in a commoditized industry, customer experience counts.

In Boston, Hess gas stations get the big thumbs up from me for excellent customer service. Given the 6-7 vendors I can choose to get gas from around my home - I nearly always choose to go to Hess.
Customer experience marketing translates to dollars on your bottom line. It isn't that expensive to keep a bathroom clean, or to set policies and train for customer service.

Make your customers enjoy doing business with you. It seems like common sense, but unfortunately almost nobody gets it. Customer experience is in short supply. The good thing is that you can easily outshine your competition with very little effort.

J D Moore - Marketing Comet