As consumers we are continually bombarded by ads, emails, mailers, and phone calls about the latest and greatest. How do we decide which ones to pay attention to and which ones to ignore?
In the same vein, how can the small business owner expect his/her marketing message and value proposition to stand out amongst the masses? The answer lies in using effective marketing techniques and differentiators in order to be as unique as possible. The higher the competition of a particular industry, the more difficult this becomes. One would be hard pressed to find many industries that are not saturated these days, unless it is a very unique and highly targeted business.
In addition to using creative and innovative messaging, small business owners should keep in mind the value of the relationships they build. The Internet and the use of social media have created a totally transparent society in that what one does and says is more often than not, broadcasted across the World Wide Web – especially if it is something negative. As the old adage states: “Bad news travels fast”. Reputation management has become an increasingly important area of concern for business owners – as it should be.
It is pretty much accepted by all that people like to do business with people they know. Think about it. How often do you ask people you know to refer you to a doctor, hair dresser, painter, or landscaper? How often do you hire someone to perform a service you need because you either know that person or know someone else who knows that person?
So, in the end, who gets the business? The person you know – either directly or through someone else. If you ask many self-employed folk how they found their first customers, you will find that most of them are from people they know.
Even in a world where technology is advancing at a rate close to the speed of light, basic principles of human nature and business prevail. Reputation and relationships matter.
Aug 242010
A copywriter uses words to promote a person, business, opinion or idea and these words come in all different shapes and sizes. The style of writing totally depends upon the medium in which it is used. For example, many of you have your own blogs, whether they are personal or professional in nature. One of the suggestions on how to write a successful blog is to write in what has been called "your own voice". There is a large variety of styles seen in blog posts. The styles range from a little on the dry side but highly professional to downright rude and sarcastic. The point here is that we all have developed our own style of writing that is consistent throughout our blog (or at least it should be).
When writing articles for sites like Technorati and Factoidz, if your style is humorous or cute, you will need to be a little more professional in order to get your articles approved. Factoidz, in particular, literally has in its rules, "no cute titles".
Website copy is a totally different animal. As a copywriter for website content, the rules are quite different than for blogs or articles. The writer needs to keep many different things in mind when writing the copy. Writing effective website content needs to be:
- Unique, precise, organized, timely and relevant
- Interesting enough to capture the reader’s attention in a few seconds and compel them to read further
- Easy to navigate and fast loading
- Efficiently worded in order to get your message across without being too long that your reader loses interest
- Keyword rich
- Broken into short paragraphs and short pages to make it easier to read
Copywriters also need to wear the writing hat of their customers if writing blog posts, articles, or website content for them. Industries and companies vary in the complexities of their businesses and the demographics of their target market. Writing for a boat dealership is going to be totally different than writing for a pharmaceutical company. To be successful as a copywriter, you will need to be able to wear different hats and produce appropriate, venue and industry-specific content.
Are you able to wear different writing hats? What have been some of your challenges?
Aug 192010
Have you noticed that human contact is becoming less and less as we rely more and more on technology to deliver our messages? Take the example of an email. How many times have you been in close proximity to someone in an office setting when they shoot over an email rather than walk over to you and talk to you? Seems kind of lame doesn't it?
Now sometimes there are very valid reasons to put something in an email like needing to include many people on the same message or wanting your message documented. But there are times when emails are sent instead of face-to-face interaction where there is really no need. Think about it the next time you send an email to the person sitting right next to you.
Check out Paul Castain's Email Free Fridays for his suggestions on how to bring back the "conversation" into the work arena and how to work those muscles that using technology keeps us from working. Paul is a riot with wisdom and keen insights. Check out his post. You won't be disappointed.
Aug 192010
The business world is changing in leaps and bounds. Social networking and the Internet have totally changed the way businesses are run today. The competition is fierce, brand exposure opportunities are increasing exponentially and everyone is looking for the latest and the greatest. Consumers in any industry want the most value for the least expense and minimal effort. With this in mind, when I came across a new site called SuperSizzlingSavings.com, it peaked my interest enough to see what it was all about.
Super Sizzling Savings’ message is that they are a new and innovative way to shop by “bringing sizzle back into the community”. Their target market is both the consumer and the business. For the consumer, Super Sizzling Savings offers great deals and big savings. For the business, they offer free advertising and an introduction to local shoppers. The idea behind their concept is to enhance communities by encouraging local spending and building community relations.
My first thought is that this type of shopping and advertising service is better suited to product-oriented businesses or at least ones that have fixed pricing. They currently have a barber shop, a property service company, a transportation company, a print and copy shop, and a sponsored ad for a retirement planning company. This type of service can be very helpful to the small business owner who doesn’t have a large advertising budget yet wants more brand exposure.
Super Sizzling Savings sounds like an interesting concept that might just work. The fact that they are promoting community spirit is a plus for them. Some small local business owners feel like they are losing some of their client base to competitors with higher marketing and advertising budgets. A service such as this might help bring local spending back into the community.
If you are a small business owner, why not check out SuperSizzlingSavings.com. You have nothing to lose as you will not have any out-of-pocket expense. If you do, please let us know what you find out and how it works for your business. Do you think this company could be a winner?
What do operating rooms and small businesses have in common? Not much from my current perspective having spent the last few days and nights at a major NYC hospital. However, operating rooms, more specifically the surgeons in the operating rooms, can learn plenty from small business best practices.
For starters, successful small business owners know it is wise to capitalize on both their own and their employees' strengths and to minimize weaknesses. World-renown surgeons are experts at their craft – that craft being surgery. However, many of them lack the skills necessary to deal effectively with both the patient and the family. Some have absolutely no compassion and no ability or desire to communicate.
Hugh Laurie portrays Dr. Gregory House, a brilliant diagnostician who is sarcastic, callused, and downright nasty and can be entertaining to watch on television. However, when your father's surgeon is a real-life Gregory House, it is not funny. Luckily both Dr. House and this Dr. House wannabe, have a dedicated, caring staff with both the ability and desire to communicate. If the operating room were run like a small business, this world-renowned surgeon would focus his energies and time on what he does best – surgery. His staff would continue to assist and observe the surgeries, but the staff would be the ONLY part of the surgical team to speak with patients and their families. The surgeon would not have any access to the patients and his/her message would be carried by those who have compassion and good communication skills.
The concept of congruency in marketing messages and brand perceptions refers to clearly-defined and consistent messaging and delivering on one's branding promise. There is a large collage of messaging on the wall directly opposite the nurse's station all about "relationship-based care" and how the staff at the hospital work together to create the most caring and nurturing medical experience for the patients. Yet, right in front of the same collage, as well as in other areas of the hospital, arguments and harsh words can be heard between staff members. The nurses in this hospital work like dogs yet are treated with disrespect by many of the physicians. If the hospital was a small business run by a wise business owner, hard-work and dedicated employees would be rewarded rather than treated with disrespect by those who have more education.
If a hospital was run like a small business, there would be a project manager for each patient charged with the responsibility of managing the medical care. They would set up processes to assure that doctors documented their instructions for each patient in the patient chart rather than telling the patient what the next step is and then walking away. This lack of communication runs rampant in hospital settings leaving the brunt of the work on the shoulders of the nurses who are bombarded all day long by patients and their families about carrying through on the doctor’s orders. Nurses are not permitted to administer anything without the written directive or approval of the attending physician, so when they are questioned by a patient or family member, they have to leave a message and track down the attending physician to follow-up and get the necessary approvals. This is not an effective use of their time and could be avoided if physicians would simply document their orders. In a small business, team work, effective communication, and collaboration would be encouraged and all egos would be left at the door.
In order for small business owners to truly understand the needs and wants of their target market, they need to put themselves in the shoes of the potential client or customer. It is difficult for anyone to really understand what someone else is going through unless they have been through it themselves or if they try to look at a situation from the perspective of another. So when we met with the surgeon and discussed the two options available for surgery, I posed the following question to the surgeon: "What would you do if this was your father – which option would you choose?” His response was "My father is dead". That response was obviously not very helpful, totally irrelevant and extremely rude. But, alas this surgeon was recommended to us by two top physicians and his reviews on the web all raved about his top-notch surgeon skills, even though the same reviews also shared that he lacks any bedside manner. The customer reviews were right on target, the surgeon proved his surgical prowess and also his lousy communication skills and total lack of compassion. Clearly this surgeon (and many others) not only don’t know how to put themselves in their potential market’s shoes, they don’t want to (and they don't have to).
Several people have posed the question: "If you had a choice, would you rather have a surgeon who is top in his/her field or a surgeon who has a good bedside manner?" My response is "why can't we have both?" Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world and both are often not an option. So we opted for the world-renowned surgeon with Dr. Gregory House Syndrome and the surgery was a success.
What is your “personal brand”? This is an area of growing concern in today’s times as more and more people participate and engage in social networking. Before the Internet revolution, the term “brand” was only used in the context of the business world.
The word “brand” brings to mind many variations of the same concept such as: “trade name”, “trademark”, and “a name, sign, symbol, or slogan”. Essentially a brand from a corporate perspective is the embodiment of anything and everything the company says, does, doesn’t say, doesn’t do, how they say it, what others say about them, how others perceive them, etc. The phrase “you are your brand” most effectively exemplifies this concept.
Fast forward to 2010 and this age of transparency to look at the term “brand” in the perspective it is used today. This is where the concept of “personal branding” plays a crucial role. Social media networking has enabled everyone to have their own personal brand by way of publicly sharing anything and everything they “say” on the World Wide Web. If you cut through all the semantics and take this concept of personal branding down to the most basic level, what you are left with is simply what is commonly referred to as your “reputation”. Your personal brand is your reputation.
What happens in this advanced age of technology and social media marketing to a company’s brand reputation when their employees have their own personal brand? This topic was discussed and debated at great length in Fortune Magazine’s article Building your brand (and keeping your job) by Josh Hyatt. Josh spoke about Scott Monty, Ford’s first global digital and multimedia communications manager and his use of social media to promote his own personal brand and Ford’s corporate brand. In summary, Scott was a social media guru with a high degree of credibility and 3,500 Twitter followers prior to accepting a position with Ford and had already earned his personal brand reputation. Scott used his social influence to further the goals of Ford and enhance their brand synergistically with his own brand. A perfect match!
What ensued after this article was published was an incredible amount of criticism about the way the author portrayed Scott Monty which is really not relevant to the topic of this post. This author sees the mutually-beneficial business relationship between Scott and Ford as an example of how to handle our new age of business that we find ourselves in today. It works for Scott and it works for Ford making this a win-win proposition.
However, more often than not, employees don’t capitalize on their personal brand to enhance the image of the company they work for. This is not to say that they wouldn’t want to help out their company, but rather to imply that many people use social media for their own personal use that has nothing to do with where they work. Yet companies are concerned with how their brand may be affected by an employee’s use of social media. Some companies prohibit their employees from using social networking sites in an effort to avert any damage that might be done to their corporate brand.
The solution to this potential problem is quite simple. If people would understand the impact their written word has and use good judgment in what they post, there would be no problem. Fortune Magazine also featured a case study called Edit Thyself, a very befitting title. The study discusses a young woman who was just “letting out some frustration” when she Tweeted something about her boss that got her fired. Moral of this story: Don’t let out your frustration in PUBLIC because EVERYONE will see it. Call a friend instead which is exactly what this young woman learned from her experience.
The bottom line here is, when using social media, remember that anything and everything you write can and will be read by anyone and everyone. Yes, some of the social networking sites like Facebook have privacy controls set-up, however, these controls change often and it is highly possible that you might forget to control these settings for even one comment that might not sit well with someone in your life – and that someone could be your boss.
It is really a matter of common sense. The problem is that, unfortunately, not everyone uses common sense either because they don’t have any or because they are busy doing a million things at once and they forget to think. This puts companies in the position of having to be concerned about their employees’ personal branding. Do they have a right to censor their employees’ personal branding? The answer to that is not clear, but until common sense becomes commonplace, companies do have something to be concerned about.
Originally posted as guest blog post for Compukol.
Aug 082010
Do you want more customers/clients? The obvious answer is a resounding "YES" – why else would you be in business?
There are a multitude of options available both online and offline to use as part of your marketing strategy, but if you, as a small business owner, can't put yourself in the shoes of your potential target, your marketing message will fall on deaf ears.
Even if you are doing everything "right" – if you do not look are your company offerings from the eye of your target audience, you might just be missing the boat.
I was recently editing an email blast for a client that exemplifies this concept.
The client was producing an email blast in the hopes of receiving donations for a private school to help get them out of financial debt. Her concern was valid – she didn't want the first response of the reader to be "Ugh! Another appeal for money". Unfortunately, we are all bombarded on a daily basis with TONS of emails, letters, phone calls, etc. either asking for money, asking for business, promising instant wealth, etc. This is part of the territory of doing business or trying to remain afloat in today's world.
So what can we do? We have no choice but to try even harder to make our message stand out in the crowd, we better make darn sure that our message is perceived in the way it was intended to be perceived, and we MUST be sure we are delivering value to our target market. We have to change our thinking from "me, me, me" to "you, you, you"!
So what are some ways to get your message read? Your message must be compelling enough to the reader to make them want to read on. In the case of an email blast, the subject is your first line of attack. In the case of this client, our subject read: "Don't let this happen to your children". Because our children are so precious to us, we want to read more to see "what" we don't want to happen to our children.
The next step is to find the right hook that will compel the reader to keep reading. Do they really care about a school they might not know anything about? Probably not. But, they do care about their own children. The approach we took was to find a recent story in the news about children who have gotten into serious legal trouble – sadly, this is not difficult to find. The email began with a brief summary (and link to the article) about a particular story and included quotes from the police chief giving his opinion about why certain young people today get into trouble, including not being raised with the values and morals necessary to develop into conscientious and responsible members of their community. Then came the plea for financial support….
Is this type of tactic immoral and trying to capitalize on the misfortune of others? No – because my client truly believes in the value of her school and is genuinely interested in providing the children with the right training so that they will NOT end up like the children in the news.
How do you make your marketing message stand out?
We live in a society where making money has become our primary goal - and with good reason. Everything costs money – even air - albeit it for our tires :)
However, sometimes we make a connection with someone on a social networking site that strikes a personal chord within us. I made such a connection on LInked in with a gentleman named Victor Silvestre. Victor posted a discussion on a LInkedin Group about a new website he has created called Vestres.
Vestres is a site for anyone that has special dietary needs. It's a great place to share recipes, suggestions and stories. Victor's inspiration for Vestres comes from his own personal experience raising a daughter, now an adult, with serious food allergies. I, too, have a daughter, also now an adult, with serious food allergies. Unless you have personally experienced these types of life-threatening allergies yourself or have a child who has, you might have a difficult time understanding how truly frightening and difficult something as basic as eating becomes. Eating out at a restaurant, food shopping, eating food served at a party, etc. becomes a major challenge.
I applaud Victor's endeavor to reach out and offer a platform for those who find themselves in similar situations and whose dietary restrictions impose on their everyday lives.
Take a look at Vestres and see if you have anything to contribute. Let's help Victor help others. I am not a big fan of the kitchen but certainly learned a trick or two along the way that I will be sharing.
We are all human. We all behave according to some psychological theory or cause and effect relationship in our personal lives. These same influences are carried over to our professional lives. Many people speak about business issues, sales, management styles, decision-making, and other business-related topics in isolation. The reality is, we are who we are and no matter how we try to disguise our true self to the betterment of our occupation, at some point, the real you is going to show through and if you are not being authentic in your professional life, this incongruous behavior will be noticed.
So what is your best chance of being perceived as real? Be real! Be yourself. If there are improvements to be made in your professional life – which I am sure there will be because everyone can use improvement in some area (some more than others); make those improvements in your personal life by way of personal growth. Your journey towards becoming a better person will naturally carry over to your professional life. This concept is demonstrated in many personal coaching programs.
Being congruent is especially important in fields such as sales where what you are, what you say, how you say it, and what you look like are of vital importance. If you are telling a prospect how your product or service can help them solve a problem and you are dressed in an unprofessional outfit, your speech will more than likely not be as effective as if you were dressed more appropriately. If you are speaking with a prospect but your heart isn't really in it and you have a sour expression on your face, what you look like will not be congruent with what you are saying and your message will be lost.
Paul Castain is a sales guru. He is a genuine, down-to-earth, direct, insightful, and funny sales professional. He offers valuable advice and real-life witty examples of how to be the best sales person you can be. In his post and podcast The 6 Judgments of Rapport! Paul clearly and cleverly talks about how to be genuine in the rapport you are trying to create with your potential customers. He talks about trying to establish rapport with a prospect by making lame comments about photos on the person's desk as a poor attempt at establishing a true connection. What if the office you are sitting in doesn't actually belong to the person you are speaking with? It is not uncommon for professionals and even physicians to meet in an office that is not their own. Read Paul's blog and listen to his podcast. You will not disappointed.
As a small business owner, you want to display the best possible "you" to both your current and potential customers or clients. Your number one priority is to increase your bottom line and learning to become a better person which will naturally make you a better sales person is a step in the right direction
"A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world." – Sigmund Freud
