Winston's e-Newsletter - March 2010 - Edition 2

How to Stand Out From The Crowd, Chapter 9
Answers About Blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Rest
7 Common-Sense Rules of Customer Service
Everything is Free (or Should Be)
A Doctor's Marketing
Another Commercial

 

How To Stand Out From The Crowd, Chapter 9

One of the most important sources of business for market leaders is word of mouth referral or third party endorsement. If you’re in retailing, trade, hospitality or manufacturing around 80% of your business should be coming from referrals; if you are a professional the figures zooms up to 92%.

To make referrals happen you have to have a system. Market leaders recognise this and remember a lesson from childhood days – when you were a little kid and sat upon your mother’s knee to take medicine she used to say, “Take the nasty medicine and mummy will give you a sweet.” So what is lodged in almost everyone’s sub-conscious? Respond to reward.

If you want people to refer others you must reward them for their referrals and do so generously.

Let them know that you really value their introductions and are happy to share with them the saving in marketing costs that their referral produces. And when they refer people to you make sure you thank them – and send them the reward.

Marketing leaders make sure that they are in the minds of their market by contributing interesting articles to the journals, newspapers and magazines that their markets read. These articles underline your expertise and give you status.

You’re not good at writing? No problem! For a very reasonable investment, you can get a journalist to ghost write your article. You still get the credit but the journalist turns your ideas into an interesting, readable and easily understood story for very profitable results.

In this increasingly cyberspace age, an e-zine (an e-newsletter) is a must. It’s a regular piece of information you e-mail to your database. It is not spam – junk e-mail – which is stuff they don’t want, but interesting, useable information of benefit to them. If it is of value they’ll probably send it on to their friends creating viral marketing – spreading the word about you. Again, if you are not good at it, it’s a great thought to get somebody to ghost write your e-zine for you.

 

Answers About Blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Rest

I’ve mentioned my good friend Paul Hassing who is an absolute genius when it comes to all the social media stuff. He Twitters, blogs and Links In regularly and uses it to builds his business. But he’s not reluctant to share his secrets to show you what you can do and, more importantly, how you can make it work for you.

So, do two things for starters… see some of the blogs he writes for and then visit Practical Social Media Tips where Paul passes on occasional dollops of helpful information.

 

7 Common-Sense Rules of Customer Service

I’ve had these rules in my files for ages and I’m not sure if I wrote them (a senior moment!) or if I gathered them from somewhere. So, if they’re your creation please let me know so I can acknowledge you. That said, they’re too good a reminder not to use.

1. Keep them coming back. Ask customers what they want and give it to them again and again.

2. Go for efficient systems as well as smiles. A friendly, polite approach is great – but only systems can guarantee that you’ll do the job right first time, every time.

3. Underpromise and over deliver. Customers expect you to keep your word – but if you can exceed it, you’ll delight them.

4. Forget about a consumer relations department. Give every employee that deals with clients the authority to deal with complaints. Then support them and the decisions they make.

5. Encourage your customers to tell you what you’re doing wrong. If there are no complaints, something’s wrong.

6. Measure everything. Football teams do it, basketball teams do it, and cricket teams do it. You should be doing it too.

7. Make them say “WOW!”. Do something during the sale or after delivering that they don’t expect. Like a follow up phone call to ask “Is everything okay?”.

 

Everything is Free (or Should Be)

That’s the belief writer Derek Thompson espouses in his article “The 10 American Ideas of the Decade” for the Atlantic magazine.

He writes: “Let’s say its 1999 and you’re at an entertainment store looking for a movie or CD. The two questions you might ask are 'Where can I find this?' and 'How much does it cost?'

Today the answers to those questions would be 'Anywhere' and 'Nothing.' In a kind of reverse-Big Brother effect, the Internet has been a dream for the little man consumer and a nightmare for Big Media publishers of music, movies, journalism, and television. If your content can be digitized, it can be pilfered, pirated, and otherwise pulled from the Internet without being purchased. As a result newspapers and magazines are folding, network TV is doubling down with reality shows, and music chain stores are filing for bankruptcy.

The winners—or at least, the non-losers—have been the companies who figured out how to monetize an on-demand world. The key: Don’t make us pay (not too much, at least).

Gawker Media and Huffington Post found fortunes in aggregating and repackaging free news. Hulu streams free TV with limited advertising. In the bundling business, Netflix gives users an infinite library of movies for a monthly fee. iTunes lets consumers buy songs and playlists rather than full albums. The e-reader, a late bloomer in the on-demand media family, may be a threat to $30 hardbacks, but for magazine publishers, it presents an opportunity to train readers to pay for news again. The next decade will determine whether devices like the Kindle will jump-start the media industry, or give wily consumers yet another way to steal content.”

Are you capitalising on the opportunities that the Global Marketplace presents? Or are you simply sitting back and feeling the pinch of underpricing from sites like Amazon and Ebay? An online presence can present marvellous opportunities for growth but one must be a proactive seller to avoid being left behind!

 

A Doctor's Marketing

Here is a clever joke about growing your business through follow ups, sent to me by a doctor friend:

A young doctor went to look at a practice that was up for sale in a very remote part of West Virginia. It looked perfect with a comfortable house, fully equipped lab, and lovely gardens. The old doctor even quoted a very affordable price.

"This looks great," said the young doctor. "I just can't figure out how you're able to have such a nice set up with so few people to practice on."

"It's just simple, common sense and a strong work ethic," replied the older medico. "For example, most folks around here take a couple weeks off for a vacation every year.

My wife and I, however, spend the time at home, gardening and putting things in order. Our herb garden gives us a huge harvest because of that, so we mix the herbs and boil them up for my secret tonic."

"But that doesn't explain this fine house and all this land," said the younger man.

The older doc replied, "That's where going that extra bit pays off. I run into my patients at church, at the store, whatever, right after they get back from their vacations. I tell them they don't look too good, and they usually say that their vacation took a lot out of them."

He continued, "I'll agree with them, then invite them to stop around to my office for some of my old fashioned tonic, and at ten bucks a bottle, it can add up really fast! Of course, that's just the beginning. A few weeks after a patient buys the tonic, I comment on how much better they're looking, so that they feel like the tonic is working."

"Then I have them stop by the office for a complete physical exam, just to make sure everything is alright. I also tell them to bring in a specimen, and this way I get my bottles back!"

 

Another Commercial

In this segment I’ve occasionally commented that I’m not a big believer in humour in an advertising just for the sake of humour. If a TVC is so funny that the viewer remembers the humour but has no recall of the message or the advertiser, its just an expensive way for the advertiser to entertain people as they go out of business.

In these 2 vintage John Cleese commercials I reckon the humour works… viewers couldn’t miss the brand and almost certainly would recall it when shopping for a computer. (As an aside have a look at the sizes of the “portable” and the desk top computers!)

 

 

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