Monthly Archives: January 2011

Twice The Customers with Half the Effort: Corporate Social Media

Is your new customer acquisition strategy stuck in the 1800's?
Wouldn’t business be easier if twice as many customers arrived at your door with half of the effort? Modern technology has actually made this possible. And the timing couldn’t be better.

Let’s face facts. Today’s economy demands a streamlined, effective business operation to keep costs low while maintaining a high return. Is your company still using a new customer acquisition strategy from the 1800s? Yes, I mean the telephone.

Like it or not, today’s effective marketing plan must take into account that consumers typically aren’t interested in being interrupted anymore. And unexpected marketing phone calls are an interruption. However, because consumers are researching answers to their questions on search engines like Google and Yahoo in record numbers, we may now weave long tail keyword research into a corporate social media campaign, and any company may take advantage of the consumer’s tendency to use Google to find solutions to their problems. Since social media doesn’t cost anything to use, it’s obviously cost effective!

In other words, instead of “fly fishing” for new customers one at a time on the phone, create a net made out of useful online content and attract a bunch of fish who are looking for your “bait” right now. If you take the strategy a few steps further, you can create not only a net to capture new customers, but a series of steps to help your fish swim upstream, through all the noise and chatter online, and actually make it to your pond. By the time they call, they may have educated themselves through your excellent and informative content (your private stream), and hopefully they are prepared to do business.

Do you have an online stream for your customers to swim up to find you?

Does it work that way all the time? No, of course not. But wouldn’t it be preferable to have interested customers calling you and asking questions about your product or service, rather than you call uninterested cold prospects who are annoyed that you have their number?

Direct Response TV Ads – 6 Tips for Success

Direct Response TV Ads are usually associated with the shouting, British pitchman who you couldn’t ignore in a nuclear blast. But there’s also the soft spoken cosmetic ad in which women share their experience of nearly being lifted up to heavenly embrace with Favio. Both are Direct Response TV spots. But they are radically different. The rules that apply to one don’t apply to the other. Or do they?

Here’s 6 tips to make a DRTV ad that’s a good fit for your customer.

Direct Response TV DRTV  Logo
1) Start with your customer and what they need. This will determine the spin of the infomercial. If your consumer is looking for ways to lose weight, you might add a line “and lose weight effortlessly” to a bicycle commercial.

2) Understand what presenter they’ll respond to. Consumer analysis will tell you keywords to use that your consumer is interested in. Women might buy a car wax (for their husband to use) if it’s “environmentally friendly”.

Even if the product isn’t the best on the market, being “environmentally friendly” positions it as the responsible wax to buy.

3) Start the pricing high and work your way down.  Your initial price establishes the value. You still have to make it believable. But once the price is set you can either add free incentives to it or you can double the quantity (two for the price of one) IF they order now.4) Match their emotional tone level.  Most advertisers miss this one. They assume shouting works on everybody. Sometimes the soft approach is what a particular consumer wants. The audio can still be loud but the announcer isn’t shouting.

5) It’s a mind game.  We learned this from a famous infomercial spokesperson. People are mostly frustrated in their lives. They’re bored! They want something to do they can get a win doing. So, he uses the word “easy” in nearly every sentence. And he shows them how much fun they could have by doing this EASY procedure to make something. They don’t even care about what that something is.  What they’re buying is the ability to make something. They want a win.

6) Use a phrase that will trigger an irrational buying impulse. You don’t want them to think about your offer.  You want to command them to buy. You want to override all the reasons they can come up with to “do nothing”.  Knowing that trigger phrase is the result of consumer analysis and optimized market research applied by a company with direct response TV experience. I use the analogy of two fly fishermen. One knows what trout fly the trout are biting and one is the new guy.  The trout are hungry but the guy who knows those trout the best will catch them.

The Social Network

Facebook Logo
No, not the movie, but you’re close. I am talking about Facebook, but more specifically, using Facebook as part of your market development strategy to create and implement an effective marketing plan.Why use Facebook to promote your business, product or service?  Simply because people (many, many, many people – your potential customers) are using the web to search for what you may have to offer, and Facebook was the #1 top-searched term in 2010. And perhaps more importantly, Facebook was the top-visited website in 2010, surpassing Google for the first time. (Facebook came in 2nd in 2009).Read all about it here (courtesy of Experian Hitwise).

So, there’s a huge audience out there searching for you and what you have to offer. Let them find you, through Facebook.