blog

6 Quick and Easy Blogging Tips

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:19:00 GMT

1.   Create an Editorial Calendar
There are just two steps needed for creating an editorial calendar. First-assign Blogging to time slots that are best for your creative juices to flow. This is the time you usually feel inspired and productive. For me, I do this on Saturday mornings.
Focus on building content that can be quickly indexed by the search engines. You can either write on your blog two to three times a week or like me – focus on the content creation and then come in for a few hours and start writing. Whatever you do, be sure to block that time off!

Do you need some inspiration? Go into social media and be a passive listener. Then come up with some ideas that can solve some of the issues or concerns in the social media space. Try spending two days a week for about 30 minutes reading other blogs posted in your industry and leave comments when you have something of value to add. This not only gives you more visibility and exposure, but it also can drive traffic back to your own blog and/or website. It positions you as being an active listener and also brings you to the attention of other people who you may not have known about you before.

2.   Jot down the Types of Posts and Topics You Will Write About
This makes Blogging time more efficient because you don’t have to spend additional time trying to determine what to write about every time you’re scheduled to write.

Make a list of categories that you feel would be of interest to your readers. Review the categories and make a list of 5 to 10 subtitle topics that relate to each category.

For example, if you have 10 primary categories and 5 subtitle topics for each category, it is much easier to develop relevant blog content quickly. You can then add another layer to your planning process by assigning each topic to a style or type of post such as:

•   A How-to List
•   A Top 10 List
•   An Opinion
•   A Case Study
•   A Q&A
•   An Interview

Finally, assign each subtitle topic to a date in your editorial calendar and next thing you will see is a building of four months plus of blog post ideas! This system only serves as a guide, but using this concept has worked for me for both blog writing and finishing my book Full BRAIN Marketing. Just because you have a blog posting schedule, don’t let this stop you from being spontaneous when a current event or hot topic in your business should must be addressed with a new blog post.

3.   Keep a Current Updated Running List of Blog Topics
The more you blog, the more ideas will come to you. Everything you do throughout each day-conversations, books, articles or blogs you read, all becomes information to use for research for your own blog posts.

4.   Be Creative and Write Several Blogs at One Time
Many bloggers use this strategy and it works well for time management. As stated earlier, my creative writing day is Saturday mornings and I usually write 5-6 Marketing and also Trade Show Blogs each week. Use whatever method works best for you. Maybe you only have one hour a week to focus on blog writing

5.   Find Guest Bloggers
Occasionally if you’re pressed for time, find someone you know, like and trust to help. Depending on the purpose and goals of your blogs, this is a great way to feature another voice in your industry. A great example could be showcasing ideas of other members of your team, vendors, colleagues and thought leaders in your industry.

6.   Interview People you Perceive to be Experts
A great way of creating content quickly is doing an interview with an expert that the readers can relate to. This could be a weekly or monthly feature that you plug into your editorial calendar and stick with.

In order to make this successful, identify 10 to 15 industry leaders who have written books on your subject matter. Prepare a written interview with several questions and invite the expert to respond, and then post the interview on your blog page. Not all of the experts will take the time to respond; but some will.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

7 Tips for Creating Quality Content for Blog Writing

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:10:00 GMT

Have you gone to write a blog and found yourself suffering from blogger’s block? Sometimes it can be difficult to find the time to create content for a blog. When developing your content, be sure to apply these 7 tactics.

1.   Clear & Effective Targeting
The first and foremost rule for creating effective content for a business blog is to completely understand why you are Blogging. Be sure to have a thorough understanding of your ideal customer’s (your reader’s) profile in addition to your core message as it relates to your business. When you have a clear idea about who you are writing for, it is much easier to write. This allows your blog posts to be on target and have a purpose. This will also keep you from meandering off into subjects that may be irrelevant to your target audience.

2.   Know What Your Readers Need or Want
It makes good practice to always write content with your reader audience in mind. Write a blog as if you are answering a question “what is in it for them?” Readers are constantly asking themselves whether a blog is worth their time to read and you want your blog to be “yes” to that question. You’re more likely to keep readers interested if you take the approach of speaking as if “walking in their shoes.” Be sure to address readers’ major concerns and/or issues. If you don’t know what they are, be sure to ask!

3.   Edit Often
I see many blog posts that start off with generic lead in sentences such as, “Earlier in the week, the other day, I was thinking about…” A blog post should not be thought of as writing an essay and it is definitely not poetry. When writing a blog, be sure to get to the point quickly. Follow the simple rule we all learned in school “KISS = Keep It Short and Sweet!” This means you can actually write less and say more. Start off with writing short declarative sentences and omit all unnecessary words.

4.   Create Keyword Focused Headlines
Write compelling headlines using strategic keywords that pertain to and are relevant to your topic. Keywords are often touted as “gold” by search engine optimization experts who charge a lot of money for their services.
Begin by putting yourself in the shoes of your ideal reader. If the reader was searching Google for information or solutions to a problem, would he or she find you? Compile a list of all the key words or phrases the reader may use to search for you, your business, and solutions. Think of the keywords and key phrases that you want to use frequently in your blog. When writing a headline for a blog post, use these keywords. These key words will alert the search engines, as well as your reader about what’s important in the post.

5.   Write Strong First Sentences
Optimize the first paragraph by using the same keywords used in the post headline. Make your point right away, instead of leading into it. Use clear keywords for search engine optimization in your first sentence of the first paragraph. Secondly, summarize them again before you close the blog post. Make it a habit of always closing by asking readers for their comments.

6.   Keep Your Blogs Short with Plenty of Space
When writing, try to keep the paragraphs short. Each paragraph should be one or two sentences at most, and then break for a new paragraph. White space can be your friend. Often, one sentence can be as effective as a paragraph. Create lots of white space between paragraphs in your blog.

Remember, most readers are in a hurry and like to scan their content. Computer screen text is harder to read than text on paper. Make it as easy as possible for readers to grasp your message quickly.

7.   Use Bullet Lists for Information
Use bullet points as much as possible. This makes posting much easier:

•   to scan
•   to read
•   to understand
•   to retain

Research indicates that readers prefer blogs to be easily digestible and summarized for them. It’s easier for readers to remember a message if you’ve given the message in a list of three to five items. Many online writing experts recommend keeping a bulleted list to an odd number of bullet points.

There are many ways to ensure great blog posts. These seven tactics above provide a good starting point and a checklist to help you stay on track to create content that your readers will consume and that will lead them to want to take action.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

100 Popular Media Sites to Know About

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:05:00 GMT

One hundred popular social media sites with data from May 2010 are listed below and on this Web site http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/top-list-of-social-media-sites. This is valuable information to allow businesses to review and make comments and start building online relationships. This content was developed by Vladimir Prelovac, a computer engineer and author of WordPress Plug-in Development.

Introducing Social Media Advances

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:26:00 GMT

I want to share with you some new ways to use social media other than the traditional LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Have you ever heard of Flipboard? This is a hot new way to consume social media news from your Facebook and Twitter connections.

Flipboard Enhances Social Media as we Now Know It!

Flipboard is a recent new app for the iPad. With Flipboard you can mock up how a magazine looks, but do this while using social media content. The app helps you to collect and consume information from different sites by creating a customized dashboard on your iPad.
With your iPad Flipboard, you can visually display content from your Twitter contact lists and Facebook friend lists and easily share what you discover. Flipboard makes it easy to create a customized dashboard on your iPad and you can move things around to suit your visual style and preferences. This new Flipboard is going to be a force to be reckoned with!

Facebook’s Over 500 Million Users and How to Connect Your Business

Facebook now has over 500 million active users. Active users is defined by people who have logged on in the last 30 days, so this number changes monthly for Facebook active users. That’s a lot of people to gain access to for your business.

Facebook recently announced a massive transformational piece of news at its Developers’ Conference this past April 2010. Facebook came out with allowing you to install a social plugin on your blog, your website, and even your Facebook page. You’ve probably seen one of these plug ins lately such as the new “Like” button. Over One hundred million websites have installed the Like button already. Here’s the link to get the code for those social plugins.

Facebook is changing business thanks to these advanced social plugins.

Facebook is focused on business growth strategies and this topic was of many discussed at the Developer’s Conference. Facebook’s ad techniques were created to leverage endorsements of your fans to share their likes with their friends. When this is done, your friend who liked your ad has their name linked and also includes their review and number of stars. This was a smart move for Facebook as it makes ads less likely to appear as scams and emphasizes the core value proposition of Facebook ads which is to help multiply the love your fans already have for you-to pass this on to their friends and create viral marketing.

According to Facebook Director of Platform Product Bret Taylor, he states that “Once you put these 'like' buttons all around your site, the like buttons power a whole suite of social plugins." He further shared that an "activity streams" plugin will show all activities from the Facebook user's friend list on that third-party site. A "recommendations" plugin will provide suggested content to users. "It's not just 10 most e-mailed articles, this is truly powerful recommendations," Taylor said.

There's also a "social bar," which can provide "an all-in-one social experience" with a "like" button, Facebook chat, and friends list information that seems to be very much in the league of Google Friend Connect or the Meebo chat toolbar.

Foursquare Means Business and Supports a “buy local-stay local” message.

Foursquare is one of several location-based services, which I have personally been using to promote Albuquerque’s Independent Business Alliance message for buy local. shop local. Foursquare is similar to a game for consumers, but you can also use it from a supporting local businesses and creating awareness standpoint.

Here’s how Foursquare works. Download the application and when people come into a certain venue:

•   Most likely they have their mobile phones with them
•   They “check in” with Foursquare on their phone
•   They say to all of their friends: “I am here. I am at this venue” and can even personalize a message about the business they are visiting.

If you own a local restaurant, a bookstore, a service organization, or any kind of brick-and-mortar business, let your visitors know you’re on Foursquare and encourage them to check in when visiting any of the businesses in town.

If you like this blog and what to share it with your friends in Facebook, your colleagues in LinkedIn or even better Tweet this, be sure to pass this blog on to others to read.

Why Participate In Social Interactive Media?

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:15:00 GMT

Stay in touch
If you are like me, and own and run a fast-paced business, you have lost touch with people over the years. You can look them up on popular social media sites and find them. If your network is profiled and linked, you will never lose them again.

Be found
I cannot tell you how many times former friends, colleagues, and business associates have found my profiles on social media sites and have contacted me. A few years ago, one of my best friends from high school found me online and contacted me. What a thrill it was to
reconnect! All those years were made up instantly within days and we are still connected and staying in touch.

Find candidates for jobs
You can use a social media network to e-mail the job requirements and ask for referrals. This allows you to tap into the minds of trusted online relationships to find passive candidates or people who are not currently actively seeking work, but may find your job requirements interesting and want to interview. When we are looking to fill a position, I reach out in my networking social media community for referrals first. I have always had great responses for interviewing candidates. I have also helped other companies in my communities to find qualified candidates and sent referrals.

Look for a new job
If you desire to move on from your current employment for whatever reason, use social media sites to assist you in the job search. I see this happening more and more especially with the economic changes over the past two years and the unemployment being at the level it is.

Establish your online brand
What do you want to say about you or your company? What expertise do you have to share? What accomplishments do you want to be known for? The information put in your profiles will eventually serve you well or not! When a potential customer Google’s your name or company name, will he or she find credentials and expertise that are credible? You will want to establish an online image before you really need it. Establishing this image, or what I also refer to as a sensory package, may take some time.

Join online groups that share your interests and profession
LinkedIn is a great example that allows you to create groups. I am a member of many groups ranging from online marketing, social media, business owners, and others. Following people on Twitter also yields content recommendations. Twitter groups have increased the scheduling of in-person meetings by encouraging people who are interacting online to meet face-to-face.

Develop online social connections over time on social media sites
MySpace and Facebook are sites that allow much more fun than the more professionally oriented LinkedIn. While both these sites started off for young people, participation by mature professionals has been on the rise. Be careful what is shared online, but do not doubt the power to expand relationships.

Provide a space for users of your products or services to interact with you
Customers want to have a conversation with you about their wants and needs. They want to tell you how to serve them better. Many of them want to build a community around products and services that they love. Give them an opportunity through blogs, online communities, forums, and the like and answer their comments. Be sure to use the feedback to improve your company. It is much easier in today’s online environment to zap a note off to you on LinkedIn or Facebook or to leave a comment on a blog than to write a letter to an anonymous company.

Build a community around your products and services
Is your company approachable? Are the people who work in the company approachable, likable, knowledgeable, and ready to listen? If not, be sure to find these types of employees and nurture them. They are the voice of your company. Forums and blogs on your company Web site and within other online community sites build a sense of community. These are your communication lifelines. Create and use them.

Establish a company presence on social media sites
According to the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, 93 percent of Americans believe that a company should have a presence on social media sites. Also, 85 percent believe that these companies should use these services to interact with customers.

Before you go off on a tangent and start joining social media sites, be sure to join social media sites that matter to YOU and YOUR business. It can be overwhelming when first getting started in social media. I suggest you start with setting up the LinkedIn page, Facebook page, and a Twitter page. Remember, LinkedIn and Facebook need to be set up in your personal name, while Facebook company pages can be added and Twitter can be set up with using your personal name or a company name.

I suggest you set up a personal page in Facebook and create a business page as an additional page so there will be two Facebook pages set up total. Send invites through already established customer lists you have gained throughout your business to allow the existing customers to follow your business on Facebook or Twitter.

Use LinkedIn to look up groups that you may want to join and start getting involved in the discussions and provide some discussion feedback to gain credibility. Invite only people you know to join in Facebook and LinkedIn. Follow only those you know, like, and trust in Twitter and spend some time getting involved in discussions.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

Using Social Media to Draw Traffic

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 22:25:00 GMT

What does the word social have to do with media? First of all, social media is not the same as traditional media. The term media refers to various means of communication traditionally associated with newspapers, magazines, and television or radio broadcasts. Social media sites have become the platform to combine a wide range of digital spaces into a single package.

Social media is a marketing tool designed to establish a presence and build relationships with your prospects in a timely and consistent manner. Social media has opened the door to social media marketing (what I also refer to as interactive media marketing), which is the method of using social media to draw traffic to your business. Rather than pushing your message into the prospective customer’s space (as traditional marketing does), social media marketing focuses on relationship development and attracting your target market to learn more about you.

Social media allows people to develop personal relationships with others around the world as needs to have the same mentality as “attending a cocktail party or social gathering.” How would you talk to others in this environment? Would you self promote or listen and build relationships?

First, social media can be a tool to see how to fit into the lives of targeted customers. Search both yourself and your company name and see if people are talking about you. Are they mentioning you in passing? It allows companies to get ahead of an angry blog, social media site, or e-mail and handle customer service issues. That little bit of communication can build a rapport online for others to see. It allows people to build personal relationships that may have nothing to do with a company, but that little bit of empathic communication can lead to more business referrals.

Social media opens the door for communication with almost anyone. You can reach out to complete strangers, can get advice, or even share your advice online. These conversations are often stored digitally and made available over time for others to read or participate in. Each of us has probably given or received advice but it may be forgotten after a week or so. Now you can connect with others online and save this information indefinitely. This switch to social media marketing allows us to communicate more effectively and efficiently.

Social media enables users to build relationships in an easier, faster manner. Social media can also be used to draw people to face-to-face events such as conferences and trade shows. Many conference attendees “tweet” or mini blog about the event during the presentation, creating chatter and relationships that may be built upon long after the event is over. At EXHIB-IT! , we blog at shows and report how the show is going or deliver content that others may want to hear. You can upload a video, images at the show, or interview attendees and post the video and images online and blog about them.

Before you go into the social media environment and start blasting away with information about you, your business and promote a product or service, listen first. Get involved in groups and community areas so you can hear what is being said and respond to build your confidence.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

Online Marketing Channels

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:35:00 GMT

Often businesses can feel that integrating marketing (bridging traditional, digital, and social media marketing) can be as enormous as the Grand Canyon if not properly thought out, and can be an expensive process if not properly planned and measured. Yet if done to match the right message with the right audience, the payoff is valuable. Doing so takes strategy and time in the beginning.

I recommend taking a look at what has been done so far in evaluating your company’s overall internal systems and processes and also take a look at the external perceptions of the customers. This can be done by asking each customer how they heard about your company and why they do business with your company. We do this within our own company and is a process for our employees when someone calls or walks into our showroom. Also using the competitive analysis discussed in earlier blogs will enable your company to gain valuable insight to what you are doing better or not doing well.

Evaluate the company’s Unique Selling Proposition, also known as USP and how that USP relates to what and how things are delivered to the customers. After this is accomplished, determine the best media to reach the target market segments. Is the target audience under thirty years of age? If so, this is the time to delve into social media as a main touch point to reach this target audience.

If the target audience is between thirty and forty, it is a good idea to focus on digital marketing and social media. If the target audience is between forty and fifty-five, I suggest you use all three methods to reach them. There will be some in this group who appreciate social media, but most prefer the traditional and digital media. If the target audience is over fifty-five, then I suggest you pick up the phone and personally get to know this target audience or use direct mail to reach this customer.

Millions of customers converse on a daily basis in online communities, discussion forums, blogs, and social networks sharing opinions, advice, grievances, and recommendations. Are you listening, connecting, and responding in a way that protects and promotes your brand?

Find out how customers feel about your brand, product, or service – in their words. This is a great opportunity to listen to the customers at a time when there is so much to offer on the Internet. It has been said that traditional media is losing its face value and that the Internet is a fad and digital only applies to the millennium generation. While that may seem true, if you want to stay on the innovative cusp for your business, use both traditional and Internet media marketing. Here are some reasons why:

• Online conversations can power or deflate a company’s brand. Do you have an online presence?

• Discover specific issues that are being discussed around your company, brand, or organization and create feedback to these issues.

• There may be events, trends, and issues that may be influencing industry and brand buzz that you can respond to online.

• You can measure how your online and offline marketing campaigns resonate with customers.

• You will be able to leverage word-of-mouth to drive brand credibility, and ultimately sales, if you use face-to-face marketing, Internet marketing, search engine optimization strategy and social media strategy correctly.

According to Nielson research, TV users watch TV more than ever before (an average of 127 hours, fifteen minutes per month) and these users are spending 9 percent more time using the Internet (twenty-six hours, twenty-six minutes per month) from last year. Approximately 220 million Americans have Internet access at home and/or work with a growing number using the Internet for research and social media.

Online marketing communications are moving toward interactions between individuals as recipients and consumers rather than being directed from a marketing organization to masses of
consumers. It is now possible for individuals to be just as efficient in broadcasting information, both positive and negative, about a company or individual as it is for larger corporations to
promote themselves such as Comcast, Del and Southwest Airlines. Companies that are using this form of communication online have been successful in responding to positive and negative cyber space information. The social networking that allows the quick and easy dissemination of information and misinformation is in part a product of change in online communication channels. These communication channels are in part enabled by such social networking.

Knowing this research, traditional media entertains and communicates to a mass audience whereas digital media entertains, communicates with, and engages the individual. Digital media is known as digitized content (text, graphics, audio, and video) that can be transmitted over the Internet. The benefits of digital media can be highly measurable and marketers can often see a direct effect in the form of improved sales in addition to establishing a direct link with the customer. This can also be cost effective. However, the pitfalls of digital marketing can be that the medium is new, constantly changing, and evolving with results that vary. You often get what you ask for!

By engaging the customer, you can clearly define your audience and determine the best way to engage that audience (both traditionally and digitally). First, examine your budget and deliverables and set goals with measurable expectations. Engage the customers in conversation and always market in a way that truly connects with the customers and answers any questions they may have about your product or service. Use traditional and digital media to reach your mass targeted audience and invite them to be engaged via the Web. Leverage the Web to start conversations. This is where you can lose or gain the attention of your audience if done correctly. Engage the viewer for lead generation.

Some of the emerging issues from online marketing channels are-

1.   Integrated Marketing Communication

The concept of integrated marketing communications, also known as IMC, is relatively new over the past few years. The general idea is that there are a wide array of media methods and channels for communicating with those outside of a company that a company needs to coordinate and centralize these activities over the long term in order to be effective. By mid-1990s, IMC was being described as an emerging concept and field, but was also perceived as one with a lack of any generally accepted definition or process for precedence. Prior to this time, it was noted that there was little discussion or description of what has now come to be called IMC and this term was considered to be a mere buzzword and now look at the reality.

2.   Social Media

The emergency and popularity of social networking and social media sites has made it easy for an individual to communicate in real time with thousands of total strangers being present online and conversations take place as if with a single close friend. Social networking Web sites have also been a great equalizer, making it just as easy for someone to build or break a marketing brand as for a large corporation-as well as making it easy for a large corporation to mimic a sincere "grassroots" individual who lacks corporate motives. A social networking Web site allows internet users the ability to add user-generated content such as comments, feedback, ratings, or their own dedicated pages for allowing product users to post ratings, comments, opinions, and full reviews about products.

Wikipedia.com makes it possible for anyone to edit information about a company or person, enabling a view that is not necessarily the official white-washed company version.

Social networking Web sites make it easy for anyone to spoof a person or company with a fake profile and fake messages with the objective of causing harm to the other party.   This can be harmful to person or company should this happen.

Social networking Web sites also allow anonymous attacks on the character of persons or companies. For example, there was an attorney working for Cisco, a computer networking business, who anonymously posted comments on a blog about a patent attorney. A civil lawsuit alleging libel and slander was then filed. The patent attorney had been on the opposing side of the patent lawsuit. The Cisco attorney allegedly accused the patent attorney, along with another attorney and a federal clerk, of conspiring to alter a document. Claims were made to having made the blog post with the knowledge and approval of his supervisor. He ultimately admitted his true identity after someone traced his Internet address and threatened to expose him (LaRowe, 2008).

The damage to the reputation of the recipient of such an attack can be long lasting if such posts are indexed and never deleted, yet the risk, along with financial and reputation cost, to the anonymous party making them is nearly nil. The results of such attacks could also be long lasting even if removed.

This opens up a lot of ethics when posting things online. Become familiar with WOMMA.com, which is an online resource that provides ethical leadership to protect consumers and protect your brand. It has best practices that help you become a better word of mouth “WOM” marketer with standards that improve impact and accountability. This is a great organization to join.

From a marketing perspective, we are at a pioneering stage in understanding how online marketing works. If you are new to online marketing, you may want to study how online
communication channels are emerging and how they might evolve in the future. Some critical elements to become familiar with for online marketing infrastructure are core/technological, competitive/commercial and political/regulatory issues.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

The Six Honest Serving Men That Never Lie (What, Why, When, How, Where and Who)

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:31:00 GMT

Understanding customers is so important that large corporations spend millions of dollars annually on market research to gain this knowledge. Although formal research is important, a small business can usually avoid this expense. Typically, the owner or manager of a small business knows the customers personally, which is an added advantage. From this personal
foundation, understanding your customers can be built through systematic efforts. A comprehensive system for understanding is what Rudyard Kipling in his poem, “The Elephant’s Child,” called “I Keep Six Honest Serving Men…” and their names are What, Why, When, How, Where and Who.

What

Find out the customers’ needs, as the common names of products mean as little to them as the chemical names on the label of a proprietary drug. A sick person’s real need is safety, speed, and
relief. Understanding your customers’ needs enables a company to profit by providing what buyers seek – satisfaction and results. Products change, but basic benefits like personal hygiene, attractiveness, entertainment, privacy and safety endure, as do commercial purposes such as quests for competitive superiority or profitability. Successful manufacturers, retailers, and service businesses produce benefits for which customers are willing to pay. In other words, successful businesses understand the reason for their customers’ buying decisions.

So why is it that so many businesses find it difficult to retain existing customers? Just how many product and service slip-ups does it take to send a customer packing? According to BIGresearch survey results, 17 percent of customers will bolt after a single service slip up. Another 40 percent will jump ship after two instances of poor product or service delivery, and 28 percent more will go out the door after three slipups. That’s 85 percent loss of customers due to service mistakes. So what do buyers really want from you? In order of priority, here’s what customers say:

Knowledgeable and Available Employees
Friendly and Cooperative Staff
Good Value
Convenience
A Fast and Efficient Finish

Why

Determining why customers choose one company over another is challenging. Customers themselves don’t always know. They may think they purchase from a business because the products or services are better than another’s, when in reality it’s something else. Perhaps they know, like, and trust the employee or salesperson that is the company spokesperson. Or maybe their business associate or friend mentioned it to them last week.

The reason customers buy is based on logic from “their point of view.” Understanding customers derives from this fundamental premise. Every customer has unique and individual goals, pressures, and purchase criteria. The astute business deduces and accepts the buying logic of customers and serves their customers accordingly. Sometimes the reasons customers buy are trivial. If customers feel indifferent toward a product or business, the selection is more apt to be happenstance. Perhaps several rival offerings meet all the conditions that a customer deems important. Consequently, minor factors will govern. This explains the rationale of the customer who chose a $28,000 car because its upholstery was most attractive. That’s how I decide between cars…upholstery and dashboard…what I see and feel while in it! Price is not the top consideration.

The point is to pay attention to details. They may be crucial to customers. Shrewd businesses respect what customers say and pay special attention to what customers do. Just as important as why customers buy is why former customers take their patronage elsewhere. Also, why are qualified buyers not buying? What is keeping them from buying? Can this obstacle be surmounted? Companies should monitor competitive offerings and buyers’ reactions to determine purchase motivators. Informal conversations may also reveal some reasons. Special offers may overcome resistance and boost profits. Many factors affect why a customer will buy products or services from you rather than your competition. They may include:

Awareness
Features and Benefits
Price
Brand and/or Reputation
Convenience
Word of Mouth

When

Many buying decisions from customers are postponed because there is not an emotional motivation for the product or service being offered. Timing is critical for the standard 3 to 5 percent buying cycle timeline for your customer. This is the time cycle percentage when customers are most likely ready to buy. The other 95 to 97 percent of the time, they are just shopping and do not have an emotional buy in.

When customers are ready to buy, be ready. A business must be ready to sell when the buyer is ready to purchase, lest an opportunity be irretrievably lost. Customers buy when they want an offering that is relevant to them and when they have time and money to purchase it. Buying patterns may often be discerned from an analysis of existing customers and their purchases. Look at the history of what existing customers have purchased.

Many customers have limited time for shopping only during off hours, evenings, and on weekends. The transition from a single breadwinner per family to having all adults of a household engaged in commercial employment has intensified these time restrictions. Astute business retailers adjust their hours, staffing, and availability of merchandise and services to meet customers’ shopping convenience. Restaurateurs and bartenders know that business booms on paydays.

When marketing, timing strategies can benefit significantly from competitive analysis as previously discussed. Companies may want to consider adding and systematically refreshing information that captures what their competitors are offering. It may also be helpful to know when competitors make those offers and to which markets those offers are being made. This data can assist companies in knowing when to adapt the timing and cadence of their offers to either pre-empt or strategically react to their competitors’ offers. But, again, I want to emphasize the importance of not basing everything on price.

How

Customers make purchases to satisfy needs. These may be economic, physical, or emotional needs. Customers may perceive wants and needs to be the same. If customers need something, they want it. If customers want something, they need it. It is important to remember that needs and wants are not always generated by a problem that needs to be solved. Personal preferences and desires of customers play a large part in customer purchase decisions. It has been found that buyers generally behave rationally whenever buying decisions are made. Customers buy to gain the benefits of the products and services they find of interest. Customers usually expect to gain more than they give up. If customers do not think they are getting a good deal, you are not likely to close a sale. Both the buyer and seller have expectations to gain from every transaction. If both the customer and the business are not satisfied, then the sale is not likely to occur.

To sell anything, whether in a retail store environment or on the Internet, you have to understand the typical steps that your customer will take before handing over hard-earned cash.
This process entails four steps:

1.   Recognition of problems or needs
2.   Information Research for a solution to a problem or need
3.   Examination of alternatives and buying decision
4.   Purchase evaluation of decision to purchase

Where

Whatever location is chosen for a company, make an effort to become familiar with the habits, likes, and dislikes of your customers. Find out the median household income or business revenue of the area. These statistics are usually available from a local government agency or you can often find this information on the Internet. Next, find out how many cars visit nearby retail stores or businesses or drive by your location on the major thoroughfare.

Ask yourself questions. “Why do people visit this particular business district? Does it contain businesses that will attract the same customers I am targeting?” Consider a location near a busy
intersection or heavy traffic area.

When choosing a location for your business, demographic information will provide the first clues if you are not familiar with the businesses and culture of an area. Examples of this data could reveal that 40 percent of the businesses in the area have business owners under the age of forty, have been there less than two years, work sixty hours a week, and may earn over $100,000 a year. Or that a large percentage of the businesses around you are in the infancy stage of business and are not your probable customer. Location is extremely important to “captive” buyers. If a company is easy to get to and is well branded for location, a customer will stop by on the way to work, at lunch, after work, or even take part of the day to come visit.

Who

Not everyone is your customer and it is sometimes difficult for small business owners to acknowledge this. However, when they do, they can best advertise and market to their target customer. While you can’t win all the customers all the time, you can win with a certain demographic when you create a unique niche for yourself using decor and special catalog items that satisfy your chosen group of customers.

There are many ways to acquire information and they all involve research. Before you gather information to make your marketing easier, ask questions and really listen to the words and body language of the answers. It is good to know who is buying and why. Understanding people’s motivations makes it far easier to appeal to them with marketing messages and keep
them, and others like them, happy. Train the company employees to ask leading questions and report findings of what customers want.

Manufacturers and suppliers of your products keep up with the industry and have a vested interest in seeing you grow, so tap into their expertise too. Another consideration in profiling a customer is to understand who influences the purchase decisions. These are the people who will:

1.   Initiate the inquiry of your product or service
2.   Influence the decision to buy
3.   Decide which product or service to buy
4.   Permit the purchase to be made (Sometimes the decision maker is this person, but the decision maker – like a CFO – will sign the paperwork after other pertinent members of the buying cycle have submitted their recommendations.)

As has been shown, understanding of customers enables a company to increase sales and revenue. This same understanding can equally serve to reduce costs. Higher sales at lower costs inevitably boost profits. A small firm that understands its customers can buy or produce exactly what they want – and nothing else. The company’s sales effort is efficient because it builds on why its customers want to buy and not on why others buy, or why the vendor wants to sell.

Overall, it may be your service – not your price – that dictates whether or not you secure customers for the long term. If you give customers what they want, the way they want it, when they want it, and follow through with a fast finish in the end, you are much more likely to turn those customers into satisfied repeat customers.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

Understanding How Your Customer Thinks

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:48:00 GMT

Each of us uses the principles of psychology every day and probably don’t even realize we are doing it. For example, when we get nervous right before giving that big speech, we activate our autonomic nervous system. When we talk to ourselves in our minds, telling ourselves to “calm down,” “work better and harder,” or “give up,” we are utilizing cognitive approaches to change our emotions and behaviors. When a child is disciplined for doing something wrong, we utilize the learning principle of punishment. What is so important about understanding human emotions, behavior, and the mind of what we learn in most required college courses in Psych 101? What advantage does this knowledge lend itself to a business professional?

It is simple-psychologists not only spend their time helping people with their problems, they perform research to better understand why people react and behave the way they do. Industrial-organizational psychologists work with companies and organizations to determine ways to make them more productive and to improve relationships in the workplace. We use the same principles of psychology every day to determine who the target audiences are for our own business.

Who Are Your Customers, Really?

Here are 5 critical characteristics to help you understand who your customers are.

1.   Behavior

These are variables such as benefit sought, consumer attitude, loyalty rate, occasion, readiness stage, user rate and user status, They include amount of purchase, cost, frequency of purchase, loyalty, time of year, time involved in purchasing decision, and where customers purchase the product.

2.   Demographic

These are the basic identifiable characteristics of individual consumers and organizational consumers and groups of consumers and organizational consumers. Demographics are often used as “segmentation” bases that define groups of people or organizations, with similar demographics that often have similar needs and desires that are distinct from those with different backgrounds. These include: age, education level, family size, gender, income level, marital status, occupation, race, religion, and other pertinent information.

3.   Geographic

This describes the basic identifiable characteristics of cities, countries, regions, states, and towns. One or a combination of these factors such as climate, competition, cost of living, density, growth pattern, legislation, location, media, operations, size, and transportation network may comprise for an identifiable location.

4.   Psychographic

These are any attributes relating to attitudes, interests, lifestyles, personality or values. They are characteristics like experience brand loyalty, family life cycle, innovativeness, lifestyle, opinion, perceived risk, personality and motives, social class, and usage rate that determine how a customer thinks of themselves relative to others.

5.   Linguistic

This is the way language varies in the communities of customers. This is where you look in particular at the interaction of social factors (such as a age, degree of integration into their community, ethnicity, gender, etc) and linguistic structures (such as grammatical forms, intonation features, sounds, words, etc). They also include key words, key phrases, misspellings, along with regional differences in spelling and pronunciation.

How do you know who your target customers are? How well do you really know them? Do they browse and buy on impulse or buy only what they need and want? Does the customer shop alone or with coworkers, friends, and family (who might influence their purchases)? Are they brand loyal? Do they shop online or just research on the Web to find the best price? And how much money do they have to spend? Understanding how your target audience thinks before buying is key. Making money in a small business is important, but truly understanding the customer’s way of thinking will make or break business growth.

How aware are customers of your brand or business compared to your competition? First, identify how the customers know about you. The prospective customer is made aware of your product or service through:

• Advertising
• Face-to-face marketing
• Reading a review or article of your company
• Referral from a friend or colleague
• Search engines
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more)
• Trade shows and events
• Viral marketing

Over the past decade, Web sites are an integral part of marketing success. Customers visit Web sites to get a sense of what a business is about and learn as much as they can about the product or services being offered. Content on a Web site should build trust or the prospective customer will quickly leave and never return. In doing this, a Web site should answer questions that the consumer has, and have content written for them and not just about who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Having a “call to action” on every product or service page helps visitors know how to proceed to the next step.

If you are offering a reasonably high-priced product or service on the Web site, the prospective customer will make contact with the company by e-mail, live chat (if offered), phone, social media, and text (if offered). This contact may be to get a genuine question answered, but is an important stage for the trust-building process. Customers want to know whether there are real people behind the Web site visited. How quickly will they get a response? How well will their question be answered? Do you understand what they want? Are you listening to their questions and concerns?

Today’s customers are active in and informed about the buying process. They conduct Internet research to see what OTHER people are saying about you, your products or services, and your business. You have no control over what will be found. If the majority of articles, blog posts, comments, reviews and testimonials (written or video), are positive, this will greatly increase the chance of getting a sale. If the majority of information found is negative, you can almost certainly kiss that future customer good-bye. To be in the race, a company’s Web site with products and services needs to be highly visible on the Internet. The content on a Web site has to build trust with the visitors. If someone visits a company’s Web site, they expect a prompt and courteous response that shows professionalism to all queries. Your reputation on the Internet must be positive and the products or service offered MUST be of quality. These points can be boiled down into understanding how your brand and reputation are created on the Web. The formula is simple.

Web Presence/Credibility + Product Quality + Support = Reputation/Brand

If these three elements are not in place, businesses will struggle to have a long-term future. If they are all in place, along with having a good online reputation, your business can grow rapidly through word of mouth. Finally, the customer has done the research and brings together everything he or she has learned and makes a decision. The choices are:

• Buy your company’s product or service
• Buy a competitor’s product or service
• Buy nothing and stay on the fence about the buying decision which usually means the customer did not get an answer to a need.

Understanding customers is so important that large corporations spend millions of dollars annually on market research to gain this knowledge. Although formal research is important, a small business can usually avoid this expense. Typically, the owner or manager of a small business knows the customers personally, which is an added value advantage. From this personal foundation, understanding your customers can be built through systematic efforts such as processes in which to respond to customer queries, automated responders that are sent out and a telephone call follow up process in place and the like.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

You Have the Competitive Data – Now What?

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:38:00 GMT

Using the information discussed in prior blogs written in May starting from Your Competitive Advantage Edge! through Tracking Your Strategy-The Writing on the Wall will provide valuable information that will allow you to have a complete understanding of a competitive analysis that will give solid insight into ways to increase targeted market share.

When compiling data for a market size, it should consist of the number of potential customers in the target market who meet your demographic study discussed earlier. This information, updated annually rather than monthly, is a comprehensive demographic study of your potential probable customer.

To gather the data for market growth, consider the average frequency of purchases for your type of product or service. Unless you have great market research that is readily available, estimate this information based on knowledge of the markets and common sense. In the exhibit industry, I would want to know how often my customer purchases an exhibit item and what they purchase in order to determine this demographic information.

The next step is gathering market potential based on the first three steps in looking at your marketing exposure. Does your marketing reach someone in the target market? If so, the potential buying customer is exposed to your marketing message.

“Now that key marketing indicators have been created, it is time to use metrics and evaluate information.” A great example is a direct mail piece that has been mailed to five thousand people. This would equate to creating five thousand exposures if all the addresses were known and correct. If done twice a year, there would be a creation of ten thousand exposures. Additionally, if an advertisement is run in the local business paper or magazine that reaches fifteen thousand of your target market customers, then you have created twenty-five thousand total exposures. If you continue to circulate twenty-five hundred newspaper inserts per week for four weeks, that would be another ten thousand exposures for a grand total of thirty-five thousand exposures to the target market potential customers.

This process is another form of lead generation. A lead is any person who has expressed interest in your business or its products and/or services by walking into your store or showroom, submitting an e-mail, responding to a direct mail or viral marketing piece, making a telephone inquiry indicating interest in your product and/or service, or filling out a call to action form on your Web site responding to a product and/or service inquiry. A lead is more valuable than a random member of the target market because the lead exhibited a motivation to buy and an interest in your product.

By the time these leads to sales are converted, sales information was most likely collected. For the purpose of tracking the marketing strategy, you will need the exact number of sales transactions and the number of leads generated to calculate the true lead conversion rate (i.e., leads = appointments = presentations = closure = percent close ratio).

When compiling sales dollar totals, find this on the business financial statements or in sales reports in your accounting program. This information represents one type of marketing data most people can find fairly well, but having a true understanding is key to building a strong and financially stable business. Now that key marketing indicators have been created, it is time to use metrics and evaluate information. This allows you to keep informed of what the quantification efforts are for determining the accurate, objective, and ownership point of view of the business rather than the usual collection of random numbers with personal impressions on which most small business owners rely. This also allows you to know what the business is doing and what to do about it. It also allows a business to adapt to change because they are aware of business strategies and using metrics for quantifying the data.

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

Tracking your Strategy – The Writing on the Wall

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:54:00 GMT

The writing on the wall, sometimes referred to as the handwriting on the wall, is an expression of doom or misfortune. This expression originated out of the biblical book of Daniel where the supernatural writing foretold the demise of the Babylonian Empire. This phrase is widely used when warnings are clear, but one fails to take action. For example, when a company tracks the market size, market growth, market potential, and market coverage to determine what lead generation avenues should take place and then fails to track lead conversions and measure – they should beware! The writing may be on the wall! This does not have to happen if key marketing indicators have been put in place and measured along every marketing journey step.

Getting Started is About the Process

A great way to look at the key marketing indicators is to understand whether your marketing strategy is working or not. Evaluate the sales revenue in relation to the key marketing indicators listed below. If sales are up, it is working. If sales are down, it is not.

These indicators are the financial and non-financial measures or metrics used to help a business define and evaluate how successful it is. These are great indicators to measure the long-term company goals. Performance indicators such as these differ from business drivers and goals. While a school may consider the failure rate of its students as a key marketing indicator that
may help the school understand its position in the educational community, a business may consider the percentage of income from return customers as a potential key marketing indicator to measure. When putting something like this in place, it is necessary for a company at least to identify the key environments for the key strategic indicators, which are:

1.   Having a predefined business plan or process

2.   Knowing the requirements for the business plan or processes

3.   Having a quantitative and qualitative measurement of the results and comparing with
set goals

4.   Investigating variances and tweaking processes or resources to achieve short-term goals

Some example key marketing indicators could be:

•    Customer-related numbers:
               - New customers acquired
               - Status of existing customers
               - Customer attrition
•    Turnover generated by known and evaluated marketing segments of the customers – these could also be demographic filters
•    Outstanding balances held by marketing segments of customers and established terms of payment – these could be demographic filters
•    Collection of bad debts within value-based customer relationships
•    Demographic analysis of individuals (potential customers) filling out applications to become customers, and levels of approval, rejections, and pending numbers
•    Delinquency analysis of account receivables
•    Profitability of customers by demographic segments – segmentation of customers by profitability

Categorizing key marketing indicators (also known as key performance indicators) can prove expensive or difficult for some companies. For example, staff morale is difficult or near impossible to quantify. Often a business will research another business with a similar background and use the information as a benchmark to compare targets or standards to measure against. Some well-defined indicators listed on the previous page may be then summarized and put into subcategories.

•    Quantitative indicators – presented as a number or statistic

•    Practical indicators – interface with existing company plans and processes

•    Directional indicators – specify if the company is getting better or not

•    Actionable indicators – the ability of a company to control or affect change

•    Financial indicators – performance measurements used when looking at financial data

Another example of some more defined key marketing indicators:

Market Size: Target market population
Market Growth: Target market changes
Market Potential: Business available from the Target Market with a maximum dollar value.
Market Coverage: Effective marketing activites that reach the Target Market.
Lead Generation: Quantity of motivated potential buying customers and the % of Target Market.
Lead Conversion: Quantity and the % of leads converted to sales.
Market Share: Market share of business in the Target Market.
Average Sales: The dollar amount of each average sale.

To be effective in the marketing strategy research, measure this information monthly and commit to consistency. Doing this more often may skew the information. There are too many daily variances to get a clear picture and understanding of the underlying dynamics of your market and business practices if you look at the information on a daily or weekly basis.

Monitoring the information above will tell you what is and is not working in the marketing strategy. You will know if the market is growing or decreasing and discover how much business is out there for you and the competitors. You will know if the advertising and other integrated marketing communications are bringing in sufficient numbers of qualified leads for potential buying customers. You will be able to determine if the market coverage needs to be increased or not and if your salespeople are effectively converting leads into customers. You will understand the trends of the business and will be able to spot areas that need more attention.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

Make Money by Donating Your Time or Resources!

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:59:00 GMT

Many companies focus so much on how to build revenue that they lose sight of how to make revenue through giving back to the community and building an awareness campaign or through donating to a cause for awareness to build revenue.

When making business decisions of how to thrive in a downturn or stalled economy, be sure to focus on giving back to the community and creating awareness of how your company supports causes. Brand your company as a full resource center to help businesses stay profitable in a downturn or stalled economy. Be the resource for services others no longer have staff to support. Listen to the customers, walk in their shoes, and develop a marketing message and overall company strategy to meet customer needs.

One thing my business has done in the local community is implement an annual EXHIB-IT! B2B Networking Event. This event started with the grand opening of our new location on June 11, 2008. The grand opening turned into a large networking event with over four hundred attendees, including many of the local chambers, organizations, political officials, and business owners in the community. In turn, we gave away a FREE exhibit display valued at $1,200 to a selected nonprofit organization and unveiled the giveaway at the event. This event was such a success because of the marketing strategies implemented. Since that time, we have incorporated an annual branded EXHIB-IT! B2B Networking Event that is marketed as the “Pay It Forward” community service event. We solicit nonprofits to fill out an application which is reviewed and judged for one of the applicants to receive a free display. See link: http://www.exhib-it.com/pages/nonprofit_app.html

We ask the nonprofit organizations to set out their overall marketing strategy and how the new exhibit display would benefit their nonprofit organization. The applications are judged by different off-site organizations, and one nonprofit is selected as the winner of the display each year based on the criteria set out in the application. In 2009, we expanded our community commitment by adding a silent auction at the event with donations from various businesses around the state, with all the proceeds donated to a selected nonprofit organization each year. This has garnered both local and national press for the nonprofit organizations as well as our company.

This is one example of how to become more involved in your community, show that you are truly connected to your community, and be known as a pay it forward leader. This not only shows a true commitment, but it also demonstrates sustainability and that you can grow your business network. As you apply the principles presented in this book, you will learn to be a marketing innovator as well and when people experience the difference they will refer business to you and your business growth will pick up.

The biggest DO in marketing for the small business is to get a strategy in place to drive sales, profits, and growth. It’s a blanket answer that applies to any business, anytime, anywhere. When the buyers of your products and services are really struggling, it becomes even more apparent that your marketing efforts need to have pinpoint accuracy in terms of who you are talking to, what you are talking about, and when to get them to pledge their patronage and loyalty to your brand and not somebody else’s brand.

Instant Brand Association – They Know You!

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:49:00 GMT

Instant association, also known as pre-emptive persuasion, is a process of establishing a link in the customer’s mind between your product or service and the emotional gratification they are seeking. When the need or desire surfaces with a potential customer, your company name is the link in their mind.

A successful brand is the most valuable resource a company has. In fact, many brand authorities speculate that brands are so valuable that companies will include a “statement of value” addendum to their balance sheets to include intangibles such as the value of their brands.

Brands are used as external cues to qualify for prestige, taste, design, value and so forth. In other words, consumers associate the value of a product with the brand. For example, the value of Coca-cola, Kodak, Nike, Sony, and Toyota is indisputable. One estimate of the value of Coca-cola, the world’s most valuable brand, places it at over $68.7 Million. (See video chart below and video for resources.) In doing some research online, I came across Bloomberg Businessweek “The 100 Best Global Brands 2009” (http://feedroom.businessweek.com/?fr_story=d848bd8c8fdfad532b8b4e43e4c5781f7acd5ce8) and Interbrand that published the 100 Best Global Brands. (http://www.interbrand.com/best_global_brands.aspx)

Both web sites state that the top brands endured, even though 2009 was a tough year. They managed to weather the storm admirably. Coca-cola managed to rank #1. The companies that made the list all had one thing in common-trust. Consumers took issues with companies online and the top companies handled negative publicity instantly and responded online quickly to complaints, issues, etc.

Here is The Top 10 out of the 100 Best Global Brands listed. To view all 100, visit:
http://www.interbrand.com/best_global_brands.aspx).

Brand Origin ($m)Value Change (+/-)

1. Coca Cola United States $68, 734 +3%
2. IBM United States $60,211 +2%
3. Microsoft United States $56, 647 -4%
4. GE United States $47,777 -10%
5. Nokia Finland $34,864 -3%
6. McDonald's United States $32,275 +4%
7. Google United States $31,980 +25%
8. Toyota Japan $31,330 -8%
9. Intel United States $30,636 -2%
10. Disney United States $28,447 -3%

Trust is now at the center of every company’s marketing strategy. How does your brand create value to a customer? Why do certain brands have more value than others? Naturally, companies with such strong brands strive to use those brands globally. Leverage your personal brand: What's the least expensive, yet most effective form of marketing? Word-of-mouth referrals from friends, family, customers, of course!

We're all busy and are working faster and harder for the instant recognition. Honestly, we forget to recommend even those companies we know, like and trust. So, to get more referrals, you need to get those you know to remember you and keep talking about you-despite & during their hectic day-to-day busy schedules.

So what do you do to try to achieve your brand recognition and instant association? First - a consistency of ad copy will go a long way. It is a proven fact that it takes 5 to 7 exposures to a print or online ad before someone may look further. If you change your ad copy every time you post it, people will not identify with your ad.

If you use the same ad in many different places, people will start to identify with it, and may ultimately take a further look. But that of course raises a dilemma. How do you know if you have a good ad that will draw, or one that needs to be changed?

Some great instant brand association examples would be:

• When we need a soft tissue, we think Kleenex®, and the emotional gratification would be a soft tissue that will help us with a runny nose.
• When we are looking for an action sport name and hear the saying, “Just Do It,” we recall Nike, and the emotional gratification may be that we take action and get it done.
• When we hear the saying, “You’re in Good Hands with Allstate,” we recall Allstate Insurance Company, and the emotional gratification may be feeling safe with this insurance.
• When we need to use bleach, we recall Clorox®, and the emotional gratification would be that we know it is a great disinfectant and will get the area clean.
• If we need a good window cleaner, we recall Windex®, and the emotional gratification is that we know it cleans the windows effectively and we will have clean windows.
• If we need an aspirin, we think “Bayer® Works Wonders” – Bayer® Aspirin, and the emotional gratification may be that we remember hearing that aspirin also keeps the doctor away as a reducer to heart attacks.
• If we hear, “How do you Spell Relief?” we think ROLAIDS®, and the emotional gratification is relief of stomach pain and aches. The customer can read any emotional gratification through a perceived message. In each of the seven examples above, there is a direct link with the emotional gratification sought by the customer. They can rely on the product in their perceived mind.

When customers identify your product or company name with an emotional gratification response, the brand name becomes the name of the product type in the minds of customers. Think of FedEx®, UPS®, Kleenex®, Xerox®, and Jell-O®. All these names are brands, but the names are interchangeable with the product.

In order to establish an instant association or pre-emptive persuasion, my company has branded one of our services as being the resource center for marketing seminars. We provide free monthly seminars on a consistent and systematic basis. When our local customers hear marketing strategy seminars, they think of EXHIB-IT! Their emotional gratification is that they have a professional development seminar they can attend on a consistent basis to help grow their business without the hassle of being sold to while here. We have marketed and provided a systematic delivery of free monthly seminars and have speakers booked well into late spring 2012.

DJ Heckes
Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

Leadership Positioning – Who Are You?

Mon, 24 May 2010 21:43:00 GMT

Leadership positioning, also known as prestige identification, is used if your products are the best, most respected, or if you are the proven sales leader.

Before your customers can get to know you, it's important to first know yourself and your company's vision and mission in the marketplace. In today's highly hyper-competitive environment, it isn't enough to simply say, "I own an exhibit business." You must define the type of exhibit business you own. Are you a walk in business for everyone with wall to wall exhibit choices and information that can easily be identified and the same products purchased at other exhibit businesses? Or do you specialize in unique products or services, thus attracting those people who demand more than what they can purchase on the Internet that are unique and not readily available at other locations or maybe it is the added value they see and feel?

Having distinct product attributes can deliver a promise of some special status. In the customer’s mind, you must be able to make a legitimate claim to being number one in some important aspect and deliver that promise.

A good example of this would be if you are a hospital claiming that you are number one in the state. You may have a large billboard and many printed materials supporting this statement, but can you prove the claim with statistics or award recognition? Basic principles must be applied when making marketing messages about “being number one” and it is the responsibility of the person doing the advertising to conduct truthful and non-deceptive advertising.

Back in the early days, I had a marketing statement that listed us as the “Largest Rental Exhibit Provider in New Mexico.” I had a competitor challenge me on this. When I first opened my business, I did a competitive analysis of what was offered in New Mexico and EXHIB-IT! was, in fact, the largest rental provider in the state. We actually had over fifty exhibit rentals and could rent at any given time without having to go our manufacturer or other sources to provide the rental products. Support claims made to build credibility and market those results.

To be sure you are a thought leader and forward thinker in your industry, research these things in your own industry to define who you are in the market place.

• Describe how your industry has changed in the last 5 years.
• Describe the changes you expect to see in the next 12 months in your industry.
• Describe the changes you expect to see in the next 5 years in your industry.
• Become familiar and up to date about any regulations on marketing in your industry.
• Describe the perceived standards of customer service in your industry.
• Describe the perceived standards of technology in your industry.
• Describe the perceived standards of product quality in your industry.
• Describe the perceived standards in sales & marketing in your industry.
• How does your business compare to these industry standards?
• Customer Service?
• Technology?
• Product Quality?
• Sales & Marketing?
• What are businesses in your industry required to guarantee?

When you are done reviewing this data, and then conclude with:

• List 3 things that you can not confidently guarantee today, that you would love to be able to guarantee and focus on this.
• What is the one thing, if you could guarantee it that would make you the market leader? (For example, a news agent that guarantees to sell you a winning lottery ticket every time?)
• In an ideal world, what would you like your customers to see as the main point of difference between you and your competitors?

Now you are ready to write your company’s unique selling proposition, also known as USP, that has a guarantee, or more than one guarantee, that also delivers a compelling reason to do business with your company with some type of guarantee or experience based on the customer feedback you receive from listening. Once this has been accomplished, be sure the entire company has the same buy in to the guarantee and the message is communicated from the owner, managers, to the face-to-face employees who engage with the customers on a daily basis.

DJ Heckes,
Author & CEO EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

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Your Competitive Advantage Edge

Mon, 24 May 2010 21:37:00 GMT

Once there is competition, customers have a choice. Once customers have a choice, companies need to consider, “Why should they buy from us?” In today’s environment, hyper-competition comes into play.

Hyper-competition stems from customers wanting the products or services faster, cheaper, and in their way. This fundamental quantitative and qualitative shift in competition requires a company to change on an unprecedented scale. A company must constantly reinvent more efficient organizational strategies to be at the forefront of the leading edge. The competitive rules of the game are in such flux that only the most adaptive and agile companies will survive.

A sustainable competitive advantage is the focal point of a company’s strategy. This focus allows the maintenance and improvement of a company’s competitive position in the market, and it truly is the leading edge company.

Leadership Positioning – On the Edge!
When leadership positioning and instant association are understood, it’s time to establish your competitive edge advantage. To do this, determine what the competition is doing in the same marketplace and what their competitive strengths and weaknesses are.

Getting started with competitive advantage research:

• Who are the competitors? List five to ten who do the best job of attracting the customers you want to attract.
• What threats do the competitors pose?
• What are the profiles of the competitors? (i.e., an in-depth description of the competitor’s background, finances, products, market segments, facilities, staff, and strategies)
• What are their objectives? • What strategies are the competitors pursuing and how successful are these strategies?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors?
• How do their prices compare to yours?
• How are they doing overall in the market share? (i.e., percentage or portion of the total available market share or market segment)
• How do you plan to compete with your competitors?
• Do the competitors offer better quality products and/or services?
• How are you uniquely suited to compete with the competitors?
• What customer needs and preferences are you competing to meet?
• What are the similarities and differences between the competitors’ products and/or services and yours?
• How are the competitors likely to respond to any changes in the way you do business?

You can probably think of many more pieces of information about the competitors that would be useful. However, an important challenge in competitor analysis is working out how to obtain competitor information that is reliable, up to date, and available legally!

Step 1: Identify main competitors and compile questions when undertaking competitor analysis

How do you stack up against your competition? Know and understand main competitors. Secondly, how effective are the competitors in the marketplace and what is your competitive standing in the target markets? Once you can answer these things about the main competitors, you can determine how to compete better.

Step 2: Evaluate the competitions’ positioning as well as their major strengths and weaknesses

Put this on a grid and evaluate on a consistent basis, whatever that may be for your company. If you have an annual strategic plan, then do this annually. If you are analyzing data quarterly, then evaluate quarterly.

Step 3: Determine your company’s competitive effectiveness and decide where you rank among the competitors listed in Step 1

When evaluating your own business, be brutally honest about weaknesses and list the strengths that are perceived as strengths by the marketplace. It may be surprising to see how much more insight this evaluation of your business will provide after an inside reality check on your own business is performed.

To be a successful company, the inside reality MUST match the outside perception of potential customers. Competitive analysis is an important part of the overall strategic planning process. Why should you bother to analyze competitors? Some businesses think it is best to ignore the competition and get on with their own plans of running their company. Other companies become obsessed with tracking the actions of competitors (often using underhanded or illegal methods). Some businesses are happy simply to track the competition, copy their moves, and react to changes. Do you know as much about the competition as they might know regarding your company?

Competitor analysis has several important roles in your overall strategic planning:

• Helps owners and managers understand their competitive advantages and disadvantages.
• Helps generate a true understanding of competitors’ past and present, and (most importantly) an educated guess toward their future strategies.
• Provides an informed basis to develop competitive strategies to achieve an advantage for future growth.
• Helps forecast the returns that may be made from future investments. (i.e., How will competitors respond to a new product or pricing strategy?)

When I first went into business, it was important to me, as the founder and CEO to differentiate our business from the competition. In the beginning, it was easy, but as years have passed and we have developed a brand identity and won many national awards, I have watched competitors go after the same awards, say the same things, and copy our innovation. A very dear business friend of mine, Matt Rix of Mattrixx.com, once said, “It’s always safer and easier to be in the number two position in your industry. This is because you can follow and copy what has already been successful without assuming the risk of potential failure.”

The downside of this is that you will never be able to capture or control a market share by being a follower. Followers are never leaders. You have the choice to be the innovator or the follower but you cannot be both. It took me a long time to realize what this meant.

What he was saying was that being the innovator is great in the mind-set of our potential customers, but our competition can sit back and watch how we innovate and see what works and what does not and then copy what we do without taking the risk. Always look to be the innovator, even though being a risk taker can be stressful at times. Seek to be, and to be known as, the business others copy.

DJ Heckes,
Author & CEO EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com

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