How to Avoid Marketing Overwhelm
by Suzanne Falter-Barnes
OK, who’s hitting the Ben & Jerry’s because they can’t somehow get all their marketing tasks done? (That would be me.) BUT … I finally rose and said ‘no’ to the angst. Here are some ways I’ve developed to tackle the creeping overwhelm:
1. Realize you don’t have to do it ALL. To get known in the world, you don’t have to pursue every last marketing vehicle, just the right ones. Target like mad.
2. Focus on your market (and know who they are.) Some niches can rely purely on on-line promo, because that’s where their people are. But others need the ’seal of approval’ of major media. Figure out exactly who your people are and where to find them.
3. Determine exactly what you need to do. Break your marketing plan or to-do list down into all the areas you need to work on.
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7 Steps for Pinpointing Your Audience and Designing Your Offerings (Part 2)
by Adele Sommers, Ph.D.
Imagine yourself surrounded by the mesmerized, captive audience that you identified in Part 1 of this article series. What exactly will you offer them?
To recap, in Part 1, we covered the first three steps of a seven-step sequence for developing successful products, services, Web sites, or custom solutions:
1 – Identify one or more potential audiences consisting of the constituents you already serve, or might want to serve. These audiences might comprise clients, customers, subscribers, project collaborators, students, affiliates, or a combination in a particular industry. You can further segment these groups into sub-audiences who can benefit from specialized variations of your offerings.
2 – Interview your audience by polling your existing constituents for “burning questions” or problems related to your topic. Or, identify and describe in detail one or more fictitious characters who represent target audience members, known as personas. Each persona embodies distinct needs, desires, challenges, and problems.
3 – Write a mission statement for your offering that explains why your product, service, or solution should exist, as well as the specific purpose it will serve.
In Part 2 (this article), we’ll explore the remaining steps in the sequence to continue determining what to offer your audiences:
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7 Steps for Pinpointing Your Audience and Designing Your Offerings (Part 1)
by Adele Sommers, Ph.D.
How do you create an irresistible personal connection with your audience? One that’s strong enough to grab your prospects by the eyeballs, ears, or fingertips and draw them magnetically into your sphere of influence?
Whether you seek customers, clients, subscribers, project collaborators, students, or affiliates, I offer seven recommendations for identifying your audiences, discovering the most compelling ways to speak to them, and then using the information you gather to create your book, product, service, Web site, or custom solution.
The twist in this process is that you actually reverse the order of what most people might do to develop an offering. Instead of creating it and then doing the marketing work, this sequence involves completing certain marketing exercises first, and then using the results to develop your offering. This article, Part 1 in a series, describes the first three of seven steps you might take:
1. Identify one or more potential audiences
2. Interview your real or imagined prospects
3. Write a mission statement for your offering
4. List the features and benefits of your offering
5. Write hypothetical “testimonials” for your offering
6. Use all of the above to develop the actual offering
7. Invent a compelling title for your offering
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An Apple a Day Keeps the Customer
An Apple a Day Keeps the Customer
By Ron Kaufman
A large grocery store opened a new outlet in my neighborhood. A small basket of red apples sits by the cash register. The sign in the basket reads:
‘Free apple if our staff at check-out did not greet you and say thank you.’
But the apple basket stays full. Not because the check-out staff are always smiling (trust me), but because the act of taking an apple is tantamount to ‘catching the staff doing something wrong’! Who wants to irritate grocery check-out staff when they’re ringing up your order?
To get the impact the store really wants, the sign could be re-written like this:
‘Thank you for shopping with us. We want you to have a good shopping experience. If, at any point, we are so busy serving you that we forget to greet you or say “Thank you!”, please let one of these delicious apples put a smile upon your face. We will smile back!’
The store would give away more apples with this sign, but would gain more smiles, too. Better text, better impact.
Key Learning Point
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Follow your good ideas all the way from concept to detailed execution. Good ideas need great implementation to deliver real results.
Action Steps
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Find where your promotions and policies are actually seen and heard by your customers. Be sure the message is as clear at point of contact as it was when first created.
Ron Kaufman is an internationally acclaimed educator and motivator for partnerships and quality customer service. He is author of the bestselling “UP Your Service!” and founder of “UP Your Service College”. Visit http://www.UpYourService.com for more such Customer Service articles, subscribe to his Newsletter, or to buy his bestselling Books, Videos, Audio CDs on Customer Service from his secure Online Store. You can also watch Ron live or listen to him at http://www.RonKaufman.com.
Secrets to Becoming a Master Communicator
Secrets to Becoming a Master Communicator
By Debbie Allen
Knowing how to effectively communicate is essential for any person to become successful in sales. The purpose of communication is to get your message across to your prospects in the best way possible. Good communication takes skill, since messages can often become misinterpreted by one or more of the parties involved. When this happens it causes unnecessary confusion and moves you further away from connecting to your prospect.
Your communication is successful only when both the sender and the receiver perceive it in the same way. By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you convey do not necessarily reflect your own, causing a communication breakdown. This breakdown can cause you to lose trust and belief in your prospect.
To communicate effectively, you must clearly understand what your core message is, and how your prospect will perceive your message.
Communication breakdown can pop up at every stage of the sale, causing you to lose out on many sales opportunities. Therefore, to become a more effective communicator and get your point across without misunderstanding and confusion, your goal should be to lessen the frequency of communication breakdown at each stage of the process with clear, concise, accurate, well-planned communication.
