Your views are important to me… will you share?
I hope you had a good Easter break. Mine was not quite as relaxing as I’d intended because I took time to start gathering material for the Spring Clean Your Marketing Toolbox I mentioned in my post last week. And that’s why I need your help.
Because of the triumphs of some business owners who are already using Social Marketing and the 80-page report I’ve got for you, I’ve focused on gathering material for the toolbox that shows how to take advantage of this emerging marketing approach – as well as the copywriting skills needed to use it effectively.
But there is so much to consider and I want to be sure I’m gathering the right know-how for any business owner who wants to review their marketing.
So I’d appreciate it if you would spare a few minutes to tell me if you think I’m on the right track.
Would you answer just 3 questions, anonymously, for me?
Pop over to: SCYM survey
Thanks – your input will help me create a powerful toolbox.
~ Carol Bentley
P.S. Oh, by-the-way… don’t think the new social marketing genre doesn’t apply if a business is conducted mainly offline. Just take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk on http://tv.winelibrary.com who turned his wine supply business into a $multi-million success.
What has social marketing got to do with your business? If yours is an online business you already know the answer to that. But what about the bricks & mortar; the offline businesses? What impact does it have on them, if any?
A business colleague sent me an extremely interesting 80-page report on the phenomenon of Social Media… or Social Marketing.
It showed fascinating statistics on its global spread and the different platforms; from blogging, social networking to podcasts and video showing/blogging.
For example since September 2006 the people who read online blogs has grown from 52% to 72.8% whilst those watching online video clips have shot up to 82.9%! That’s an estimated 394 million people watching video online.
I’ve got permission to share this report with you but before I do I decided to gather some useful material together that shows you how you can use this info to your advantage.
So – I’ll dish the dirt in my ‘Spring Clean Your Marketing Toolkit’ promotion next week just after Easter. The report will be a free download with the option to purchase the additional reports and offers if you want them.
Enjoy your Easter break – look out for the next post with the Spring Clean link.
~Carol Bentley
P.S. One of the crucial aspects of all marketing is keeping your conversation with your prospect / customers going.
If you use Aweber to keep in touch with your contacts you might be interested to see the short survey Karin H is holding… might even discover something you didn’t know about Aweber! 
Plus she’s offering a couple of interesting reports. Pop over to Karin’s survey
Last Saturday morning, 4.15 a.m. – still dark – and my alarm woke me so I could get to a marketing-focused business club meeting on time.
Was it worth the effort?
Yes!
The London event, hosted by SuccessTrack, was a gathering of enthusiastic and ambitious business owners (my kind of people ) listening to four powerful speakers.
First up was Mark Perle from ‘The Guru Garage’ – I love that name! – sharing some great insights to the real power of business networking – when it’s done properly. He gave tips from how to prepare before the meeting – so you can SHINE (his acronym for how to create a brilliant first impression) – to the skills a good networker uses to be extremely effective.
He got the audience actively involved; getting us to use one of two structures to create a powerful introduction to share with each other (very similar to the method I talk about in my posts Do people remember you? and Your Wow! introduction ).
Here’s one of the templates he gave us:
“What I am is [an accountant] …………………………
But actually what I do is help my clients to [improve their financial control]……
and as a result they [reduce costs and increase profits]……………….…….”
I also got another nice little tip on how to help people remember your name after an introduction. One that I and my fellow delegates put into action straight away!
You also can read The Ten Biggest Mistakes of Business Networkers on Mark’s blog: Perl’s Wisdoms.
Next up was Emma Wimhurst from EMpwr. She is an absolute inspiration.
Her presentation was The Devil’s In The Detail in which she distilled her experience of taking her original start-up business (Diva Cosmetics) from zero to £1million turnover in her first 12 months. She gave us the 7 business disciplines (you can see them on her website at www.empwr.co.uk) she used to continue her business growth to £2.8 million before selling the company.
Emma explained how her 50-word company goal statement kept her focused on the right success track for her business when tempting ideas and offers came up. That struck a chord ‘cause it is so easy to get caught up with other ideas for your business that can dilute your effectiveness.
Emma’s vivacity, passion and downright business common sense made a great impression on me – especially when she revealed that she did all this whilst starting a family!
Emma has kindly agreed to be a guest blogger and share some of her business building experiences and insights with you at a future date.
After lunch Andrew Ludlam (Maverick Marketing Consultancy) was our next speaker. If you’ve been following this blog for a while you may remember Andrew wrote a guest post: How do we get bums on seats back in September.
Andrew packed an amazing amount of marketing-how-to content into his presentation, including examples of what he’d done successfully with his clients. As you can imagine, there was a lot of note-taking throughout the audience.
His marketing approach matches closely with mine so a large number of the tips he shared were known to me. But I also heard a few little gems that were eye-openers too… it’s always good to see another marketing professional’s view on the wisdom you both have .
You can get Andrew’s take on The 7 Critical Marketing Mistakes Nearly Every Business Owner Makes in his free report.
The final speaker was Paul Shipley from Remarkable Practice. Paul works specifically with accountants helping them to be ‘remarkable’ for their clients.
He gave us a Business One Page Planner, based on the book The Balanced Scorecard by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, which meshed really well with the business building and marketing advice we’d heard from Emma and Andrew.
Paul encouraged us to use it to ‘BOPP’ to the beat of a growing business and I’ve already started to do that.
Add to all this the interesting people I talked to in the breaks – one of whom has agreed to share how he uses marketing techniques, similar to some of the tips you’ve read on this blog, to great effect in his hairdressing business – and I think you’d agree the early start was worthwhile.
I’m looking forward to next month’s SuccessTrack business club event.
~ Carol Bentley
In my post ‘How to keep mailings environmentally friendly’ a few questions were posed that needed to be answered by someone else. When the person I invited visited the blog and posted his response I popped an email to the readers who had left questions to let them know. Karin H – who frequently posts valuable comments – was one of the people I emailed.
Karin kindly replied to say she already knew about the reply because of a comment tracking utility she uses. So I decided to check it out: www.cocomment.com
I discovered there are two ways coComment can be used. You can register and have any comments you make – on any website – tracked so you can see other readers’ replies and follow the conversational thread.
Or, the one I was more interested in, you can integrate it with your blog to allow readers who comment to choose if they would like to know when any other comments are added.
So as from this post (if I’ve set it up properly – and I think I have with the swift technical support I got from the coComment team) you’ll see under each post some extra buttons: comment, track and share. (See the P.S. I’ve added below).
If you would like to use the tracking features you do have to create a free account with coComment (you can do that from here). And you can still leave a comment in the normal way without registering with coComment.
Do you think this is a useful feature to have on this blog?
~ Carol Bentley
P.S. I’ve turned the feature off for the moment because I hadn’t realised the javascript adds banner advertising – which I certainly do not want on here. I’m checking if it can be used without the advertising. If it cannot – and comment tracking is something you’d like to see on this blog – I’ll check for other ways of adding a comment tracking feature.
P.P.S Now activated – see the comment I posted as a test.
Reading an email from a marketing group I belong to reminded me of an advert for Cillit Bang on British TV some time ago. I don’t think it was originally filmed for the UK market because the presenter was shouting at the top of his voice. That has now changed – it’s more of a conversational style advert and I no longer get the urge to switch it off.
And I’ve noticed a few other advertisers have changed their approach from the ‘in your face’ to a more gentle, reserved style.
The email, sent by Tony Attwood of Hamilton House Mailings, was on the same theme. Here’s what Tony said:
When faced with a potential customer most of us are able to speak in a fairly normal, friendly manner about the benefits of our product, how well it is going, why people buy it, and so on. We smile, look the customer in the eye (although not too much as to make them feel uncomfortable) and by and large aim to come across as a friendly sort of person who it is good to do business with.
What we don’t do is…
a) Bore the customer to death with talk about when our company was formed, the fact that we are a small family business or a vast plc, and the like
b) use some sort of convoluted double speak such as “This award winning bit of software….”
c) shout “NEW!” or “DISCOUNT!” in the customer’s ear.
In short, when we meet someone we talk to them in a fairly nice, normal way.
So my question is; why don’t we do that when selling by email or direct mail or on the phone?
I don’t know why, but I do know that when emails and direct mail pieces are written in normal language their response rate goes up. When written in the artificial language of selling, (“This award winning software…”) the sales level goes down.
Tony Attwood of Hamilton House Mailings plc.
www.hamilton-house.com
or phone 01536 399 000
How friendly and ‘normal’ is your letter or email? If someone read it out loud would you get the impression of a friendly, informative, focused on you – the reader – type of message? Or is it more of a circus ringmaster announcement?
If response to your sales message is not as high as you’d like maybe it is time to review your approach. Perhaps try a more ‘softly-softly’ approach – or at least test it against what you are doing at the moment.
~ Carol Bentley
This question came in from Chris Bullard who wanted to know how to encourage his prospects to take his letter seriously whilst asking them to recycle responsibly. . .
Dear Carol,
I’ve recently received a copy of your book ‘I Want to Buy Your Product…” and have been applying your teaching to our own direct marketing campaign.
Whilst writing the letters a question has arisen that I’m sure other people will have also asked given the pressure on businesses to consider the environment and sustainability.
As a company we do our very best to ensure we consider the environment in our day to day running (paperless office, communication via e-mail etc). The direct marketing campaign that I’m launching is specifically targeting businesses that do not have e-mail. As such we’re having to send out a printed letter as opposed to our preferred method of e-mail.
However, still trying to consider the environment, the letters are being printed/sent by ViaPost and I’d like to add a note to the bottom of the letter to ask that if the letter is disposed of it is done so via recycling. My worry is, that this is suggesting that I think the letter will end up straight in the bin.
I’d really appreciate any thoughts/suggestions you might have on this?
Many thanks,
Chris Bullard
Design Virtuality
I can understand why Chris is concerned about the perception he might give if he asks the reader to recycle. Here’s my thoughts on how to approach this:
How about saying:
P.P.S. I have sent this letter using ViaPost, which means we have reduced the carbon emissions associated with sending you this letter by up to 80%. Once you’ve read and responded to our great offer I’d really appreciate your environmental support by making sure this letter goes in your recycle bin. Thank you.
The words ‘our great offer’ can be replaced with something more specific about your promotion.
An additional advantage to adding this P.P.S. is Chris is demonstrating his company’s commitment to reducing the impact all their actions have on the environment – and that may well earn him some brownie points with his prospects if they feel strongly about it too.
Chris, thanks for agreeing to share this question on the blog.
~ Carol Bentley
For most organisations an increase is usually a fairly consistent percentage rise across the board of services or products supplied.
But when I visited my local post office recently Les, one of our friendly counter staff, handed me a copy of the UK Post Office’s new prices leaflet and expressed surprise at some of the increases being made.
The price uplift ranges from 8.3% to 17.3% (I only checked the First and Second class rates).
You can download a PDF of the price guide at Pricing Made Easy
The 17.3% hike is on the First Class Large Letter, which is increasing from 52p to 61p for the entry level (i.e. up to 100g in weight).
I guess it could still be classed as good value, considering the size and weight of the letter you can send but if you are planning to send out a mailing of thousands, or even just a few hundred packages, the increase will create a hefty burden on your postage budget. Not something you need right now, especially if you are one of the smaller businesses struggling to keep going.
Planning Ahead
You can plan ahead and keep a tight hold on your postage budget. Here’s how…
It is worth remembering that first and second stamps do not show the cost of the stamp… they simply show the designated class: First or Second. In addition you can use the current value of these stamps to make up the postage required on other letters, packets or parcels.
So – if you buy stamps rather than using a franking machine or taking your packages to your post office and you know you are going to need stamps for a mailing campaign after 6th April 2009 (when the new charges take effect) – you could save by using a little forethought.
Buy a stock of designated 1st and 2nd class stamps before 6th April. You’ll still be able to use the stamps after 6th and they will be taken at ‘face value’ – sufficient for first or second class postage or that amount towards the overall postage required.
That means on large letters, sent first class, you will save a considerable – and welcome – 9p per letter for any you send out after 6th with a stamp purchased before the 6th April!
Getting Your Stock
You can purchase stamps – in sheets of 100 stamps - online with free delivery, direct from Royal Mail, provided your order value is at least £35. You can also get rolls of stamps in higher quantities; 500, 1000 and 10000. Visit www.royalmail.com and use the Shop link in the bottom panel.
Of course the downside is you’re spending in advance but – if you have the cash available – I doubt you would get between 8.3% and 17.3% return on your money if you left it in your bank!
And it means your mailing campaigns could still go ahead.
~ Carol Bentley
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