Leveraging the Power of Video

I remember two years ago listening to a web expert predict that eventually websites would be all video instead of print.  While it hasn’t quite reached that extreme, it’s hard to ignore the impact videos and You Tube are having as a marketing tool. As a small business owner, you may want to take a close look at this amazing tool.

Thanks to companies like Bizbox TV and Pixability, creating videos is not necessarily cost prohibitive. If you are more of a do-it-yourselfer, you can even arm yourself these days with your phone or flip video, along with some editing software and be on your merry way.

So how can you use video?

1. 2 minute commercial of what you or your company do
2. Testimonials (much more impactful than just words)
3. Blog posts (sometimes referred to as Vlog can be great to mix things up or if you don’t like to write)
4. Promotion (demo a product or your speaking style for example)
5. Credibility builder (“how to”, webinars or statistical videos)
6. Lead Generator (think “sales letter or sales presentation” but in video)
7. Ad or info on other websites (think – advertising or strategic alliances)

Where can you use the video?

The two big ones of course are on your website (or blog) and You Tube. You Tube right now is the 2nd largest search engine after Google. What does that mean? That means millions of people are searching for specific information on You Tube. You should also know that people pay more attention to a You Tube video than they do their TV set. Finally, you should know that it can do amazing things to your Search Engine Optimization (being found on the internet).

But definitely look for other options.  Incorporate a video into presentations, as an introduction to your company at a live event or as an “ad” on your website or others.

A few key tips:

1. Keep it real – the more authentic the video, the more believable.
2. Keep it short – unless you providing how to info or product demonstrations, try to keep to 2 minutes or less.
3. Make it entertaining – seems obvious, but boring videos will lose your audience.

While video may seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be.  Look for great resources and for a start why don’t you try today to “point and shoot”. You never know what the result might be!

Are You A Marketing Control Freak?

Which activities do you find you focus on the most?

Column A	Column B
Direct Mail	Facebook
Email	Blogging
Advertising (online & off)	Search Engine Optimization
Tradeshows	LinkedIn
Networking	Twitter
Telemarketing	Constant updates to your website

If you chose Column A, congratulations you are control freak. You might be exhausted and stretched monetarily, but at least you know that if you ramp up these activities you can usually see immediate results. If you chose Column B, congratulations you are king or queen of inbound marketing – efficient with your time and money, but if you are trying to get sales tomorrow, you might be finding yourself at a loss of what you can do.

With the newest statistics from Universal McCann showing that over 90% of people are now searching online for products or services, it’s impossible to ignore the power and allure of Column B (Inbound Marketing). But be careful about putting all your proverbial “eggs in one basket” just yet. The problem with focusing all your energy into Inbound Marketing is the lack of control. It takes time and commitment before these activities see results, and every time you introduce a new product or service or enter a new marketplace, you will again experience a lag time. It’s also harder to predict results.

Now before you outbound marketers rejoice (Column A’s) – being a complete control freak has its own downsides. While these activities if measured, revised, and re-implemented, can provide more predictable results and help when you are new to a market or launching a new product or service, you can’t ignore the buying patterns of 90% of the population. Inbound marketing is much more affordable and over time, is usually much more effective.

So where is the answer? It’s in balance of course. Don’t throw away all of what are commonly termed traditional forms of marketing (Column A’s) for Inbound Marketing Techniques (Column B) – make sure you have a nice amount of both and you will start to level out those peaks and valleys in your sales cycle.

Does Your Marketing Lack Personality?

Sometimes we get so caught up in following the rules with marketing that we forget its entertainment value.  However, with marketing becoming more community based than ever (thanks to the onslaught of social media channels), you ‘gotta’ inject some personality or you are going to have a much tougher time engaging your prospects.

Without some personality:

• You won’t get their attention in the first place
• They won’t forward it on or tell others
• They will remain neutral about how they feel about your product or service.

At a recent social media conference, I had the pleasure of hearing the story of Knorr’s Sidekicks recent campaign created by Tribal DDB Canada.  It’s such a great example of how a bit of personality can go a long way.

Knorr had just introduced their new Sidekicks with less sodium and wanted to take over the #1 spot in the marketplace.  Tribal DDB introduced Salty – the lonely and dejected salt shaker.  The ad and Salty were an instant hit, and they soon  created a Facebook page for Salty’s Life and a Twitter feed as well.  On Facebook alone Salty has 12777 Likes (note: Knorr’s Facebook page has only 1416).

Salty became such a hit that Knorr even created salt shakers of Salty and his buddy Pep.  In less than 25 days the first shipment of 20,000 shakers sold out.  In fact people were selling them on eBay for $200 a   set!  People started launching You Tube videos of them and their Salty and Pep shakers.  In fact, Salty is quite the hit on You Tube as well.  Check this out.

Did Knorr achieve their goal to dominate their market?  Yes.  Did they end up creating enormous buzz for the product?  Yes.  Heck they even created a new income stream (Salt & Pepper shakers).  Just because of a little bit (okay a lot) of personality.

Sure, as small businesses, we might not be able to go this extreme, but personality still plays an important point.  One small company I know simply played with his Facebook ad.   His first ad, presented his product in serious tone and got a decent number of click throughs, but when he added a fluffy kitten and some fun to his business page, his results tripled and his leads became way more engaged with his company.

Marketing should be about having some fun.  Enjoy it and make it enjoyable for your prospects too.

What is a Prospect Looking for Online

I had to laugh at my 18 year old son the other day when he couldn’t connect with a friend because his cell phone was down and he wasn’t on Facebook. This friend might as well not exist, in my son’s world. I suggested he look up the family phone number in the phonebook which my son thought was absolute “genius,” (a rare complement as many of you with kids this age know). I went to grab the phonebook for him, because I knew he had no idea where this book lives, but alas he had already found it online.

Think about the last time you purchased a product or service. Just like my son with seeking a phone number, you naturally follow a buying patternprobably withoutrealizing you are doing so. And, if you are like over 90% of the population, a lot of that buying pattern is done online.

Understand your prospects buying pattern and give them what they need at every stage and you will ALWAYS attract and convert more sales.

It starts with a Timing Trigger – something happens that makes buying this product or service a priority on your to-do list.  Maybe your car broke down, the doctor told you need to lose weight, you have a big event that requires a new outfit, or someone or something interrupted you and made this product or service a necessity right now (e.g. impulse buy at the cash register or price sensitive deadline).

How can you interrupt and cause a timing trigger? 
Did you know timing triggers make excellent headlines?

Next – (for bigger purchases) we enter Research Mode – look up info on the computer, ask friends, buy a how-to book and through our research mode we determine that we need a certain provider of goods.

Do you create educational material and share this online?

The question is do we already KNOW of a company that can help us? If that company has been out there networking, advertising, promoting their business, getting some media attention, then maybe we do. This is why P.R. advertising and promotional activities are very important. But what happens if we don’t KNOW? Then we will do one of two things – ask (Referrals) or “Google.”

When you Google your product or service, do you come up on the first page?

Once we know a company exists, we want to check them out to see if they really can provide us with what we are looking for. While this could mean a trip to the store, a lot of times for small businesses it most likely means a trip to their website. Do we LIKE what we see, what they say, what they do?

And do we TRUST that they will deliver?

Here’s a check list of some key elements that should be on your site:

• A killer headline on the front page that tells a prospect they are on a relevant site
• A professional image that says you are a solid, reputable company
• Reasons to choose you over your competition
• Results, testimonials, information about your product, your process
• Benefits of your products or services
• Your story
• Ways to reduce the risk from buying from you (guarantees, trial product, etc)
• Ways to get engaged today (free report, free trial, free online publication, forum).
• YOUR Contact info (don’t laugh….it’s crazy how often this is missed).

It’s only when our questions have been answered and we like and trust enough that we are willing to take the next step and purchase a product or service.

What’s interesting is that a buying pattern can take seconds, or months depending on how much risk is involved in the purchase. Low risk, we fly through the steps. High risk we need way more information.

UNDERSTAND YOUR PROSPECT’S BUYING PATTERN and PROVIDE THEM WITH WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR and the result is MORE CUSTOMERS.

Creating Your Marketing Routine

Think about the last time you made a big change in the way you run your business or perhaps even in your personal life. It’s hard to adjust your day to day habits. Sometimes we are even at a loss where to start. The same tends to happen with our marketing. Perhaps you have worked with a strategist like us to help you build the right marketing system for your business, but don’t know how to actually implement all these changes going forward. There seems to be so much ongoing content, “tweets” and updates to the website. It can all be overwhelming unless you can make certain elements part of your day to day routine. Here is a roadmap to your marketing routine:

• Make the time. Let’s face it if you had a hot prospect that was looking at spending a considerable amount of money with you, you wouldn’t ignore them to go get toner for your printer. Yet when it comes to marketing – by far our biggest prospect for earning a considerable amount of money for the company, it always remains low on the priority list. So start treating it like a hot prospect.

Action: Book a recurring appointment with your marketing in your work calendar every day for at least 30 minutes and then once or twice a week for 1.5 hours each.

• Create your tasks. I love my Tasks feature in Outlook. It allows me add a task, make it recurring and prioritize it. I can even share it or allocate it with others. You can’t just expect, after all, to sit down to do your marketing and then wonder what the heck it is you’re going to actually do.

Action: Using a task program (or a spreadsheet) start by listing what you want to accomplish this quarter. Then back this up into monthly tasks, weekly tasks and possibly even daily tasks.

• Do your tasks. Now this might seem obvious, but if you have ever created a to-do list before, you probably have found that a few of those “to-do’s” just don’t get done. There is one reason for this. Simply, you don’t want to do it right now.

No matter how you try it’s just not your forte, you don’t want to learn it, you can’t find the time or it just is against your personality. It would be like choosing swimming as part of your new fitness regime, when you can’t even swim and have no time or desire to learn. In the case of marketing then you have 3 options. If a task element is still on your list a month or two after it’s due:

Delay it – Move it to the next quarter if the reason it hasn’t been done is you have ran out time or it’s not as big of a priority as you thought.

Delegate it – If you don’t have the forte or don’t have the desire to learn it, delegate it to someone else with experience in this area to get it done for you. After all, a successful person is one who has learned to spend money to save time instead of spending time to save money!

Delete it – if this just doesn’t fit with who you are and you can’t delay it or delegate it. Delete it as part of your marketing system. Don’t be surprised when you go to actually delete it if you have a change of heart and find you can’t really let it go! This is good news because it means you have now chosen to either do it, delay it, or delegate it!

So what might a marketing routine look like? Here’s one created by one of my peers, Kelly Weppler Hernandez of WH and Associates.

Daily

• Facebook and Twitter daily update first thing in the morning, and maybe a posting later in the day

Weekly

• LinkedIn update at least once a week.
• Hand-written Notes – every Thursday. Send at least 2 handwritten notes to colleagues, past clients, strategic partners etc.
• Blogging – anything that’s related to your industry. Blogging might be written, video or audio.
• Update content on your website

Monthly

• Newsletter – email corporate newsletter at least once per month. Pick a target date like the 15th.
• Run a monthly promotional campaign

Quarterly

• Speaking Event – set a goal to do a speaking event once per quarter.

Annually

• Client Appreciation Event – pick a month that works within your calendar and work with a few strategic partners to host a client appreciation event.

Remember the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Create your own marketing routine and make appointments and tasks in your calendar to get it done!

My secret spy online

This article may be short, but it’s very, very sweet in terms of its power and simplicity.

I was having a conversation with another marketer about the most common question we get asked lately. The question is, “what is the ROI for Social Media?” Face it.You are getting asked to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, You Tube and your blog and want to know if it really pays off. Now I could tell you success stories after success stories of sales results from companies, or I could tell you about the referral power, collaboration and credibility building that you get from these sites.  We could dive deep into the Search Engine Optimization benefits, but I might leave a few of these topics for future articles.

Today, I want to talk about one of the biggest uses for Social Media that is absolutely invaluable and yet highly ignored. It takes the least amount of time annually, costs nothing, yet seeps through all the noise online to deliver to you daily ONLY the information you need to know. Important information, like:

• What your competitors are up to
• What your clients are saying about you and your company
• What the newest trends are in your industry
• Hot stories in the media that pertain to your company and industry
• And so much more

In the military they call this their listening station or listening post. I consider it my secret online spy. How do you harness all of this in less than 30 minutes of your time today? By setting up your Google Reader in a very clever way.

If you read my article about expert failure , you know that you really can’t be putting blinders on and assume that the enemy isn’t making advances. Building your listening post will allow you to:

• Constantly improve and enhance your offerings
• Identify your most relevant media contacts
• Stay up on the latest and greatest to avoid becoming obsolete or archaic
• Help position you as an expert in your field
• Turn bad customer experiences into heroic customer service
• And (again) so much more.

I think that’s pretty good ROI for 30 minutes of your time. Don’t you?

Do You Suffer from Expert Failure?

I’ve had an interesting couple of weeks thanks to two very interesting events I was able to attend.  Firstly I had the absolute pleasure to hear Malcolm Gladwell speak last week. He was talking about a concept he calls “Expert Failure.” He was suggesting that once you feel you have mastered your area of expertise, you stop seeing the warning signs of what might be breaking down or what might possibly go wrong.

Secondly I had the honor of being a judge for the ACE Regional Exposition. Here, I had the opportunity to hear the success stories of some of Canada’s top student entrepreneurs. One in particular caught my attention. He was a polite young Mexican who is currently studying for his Business degree. While he is completing his degree here in Canada he also owns and operates the second largest online bookstore in Mexico with annual sales exceeding $1 million dollars. As he shared his story, I was astounded how much he knew about the day to day operations of this business that runs in a completely different company, and I realized this is someone so far from expert failure that we could all learn a lesson or two from this astounding young, hardworking man and the principles of Malcolm Gladwell.

#1 – LISTEN

Gladwell shared a story about General Hooker and the Battle of Chancellorsville in the American Civil War who had his scouts trying to tell him the enemy was getting set to invade. He didn’t listen to them and as a result his army was caught by surprise and he lost of battle that he should never have lost. Our young little student learned early in his career that his customer can tell him better than anyone what information they require and what trust factors need to be in place before they will buy from him. In Mexico, adults are very uncomfortable purchasing online. It took him years to build enough trust with them, as well as to train them to place their orders online instead of over the phone. He continues to maintain this high level of customer intimacy.

Lesson Learned – When is the last time you surveyed your clients or received feedback? With the onslaught of Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc, it’s never been easier to have a real conversation with your target audience. Survey them, poll them, interview them – find out what you can do better and what they need from you to feel comfortable doing business with you.

#2 – REVIEW, REVISE, RE-IMPLEMENT

As this young Mexican presented his story, he more than any of his young competitors shared an incredible amount of measurable results. He learned that his first website wasn’t effective in attracting clients, so he changed it. It was better, but his analytics told him it could be better yet. So more changes. He is constantly looking at patterns, and preferences, revising his approach and quickly implementing changes. He does the same with his costs – looking at the amount he is buying from his suppliers, negotiating better rates, so that he can maintain his competitive pricing for his customers.

Lesson Learned – How often do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing? Do you look at your costs and ways to minimize these? Do you review the results, split test ads, revise your approach and quickly implement the changes? Do you look at the stats of your website every week and consider ways to add to your content, change your content to make it better?

Sometimes we get so busy that we assume that the future will only be better, and then find ourselves in yet another valley; scratching our heads, wondering how that happened AGAIN! LISTEN, LEARN, MEASURE, IMPROVE. Don’t become a victim of expert failure.

Have you ever had a really good look at who’s actually referring you and been surprised to find it’s a handful of the same people over and over again?

Have you wondered why more of your customers or strategic partners aren’t referring you at all?

Even though you might have a great product or service and your customers rave about what you or your product have done for them, they may  NEVER refer you. Think about it. Do you refer every product or service that you have had a great experience with? Of course not. The good news  is that doesn’t mean working on your referral system is a waste of time. Instead try looking at your referral sources in a different light. If you can  start to recognize their profiles, you may just find you can start to create a much more powerful Referral Marketing System and generate a flood  of new customers!

Who will refer you?

If you are currently getting referrals, start looking at the people that are referring you the most. At first glance, you might not see any differences between them and other customers. In fact they may not have even been your best customer. Instead what you are likely to find is that they have one or more of the following characteristics.

If you have ever read the Tipping Point you might recall that Gladwell talks about these first 3 very powerful groups of individuals:

Salesmen or Persuaders – You can’t miss these charismatic people. You probably find yourself drawn in by their charm. Lucky for you, they are also naturally armed with powerful negotiation skills that cause others to want to agree with them. When a persuader mentions your product or service, he or she will encourage others to try it and they will.

Connectors – These are your customers that have a large social network and are happy to connect you with those networks; or share their experiences with your product or service with their network.

Mavens – These individuals are information specialists or people we rely on to provide us with new information, especially those around your particular product or service. For example a food critic for a restaurant would be an ideal maven and strong referral source, or someone who researches and downloads a large number of phone apps could refer a ton of people to a new business iPhone app.

The above can (and often are) combined with one of more of the following:

Raving fans – The product or service you provided has had such an impact on them that they just can’t stop talking about it and/or others have noticed the results.

Strategic Partners – Strategic partners share your same target audience. The strategic partners that will refer you the most (assuming they also have some of the above mentioned characteristics) are those that come just before you in the timing cycle.

For example, while real estate agents and movers share a similar target audience, because realtors tend to come before the moving company in the timing cycle of moving they will be able to refer more business to the mover than vice versa.

Friends/Families/Peers – Because they believe in you and want to support you, your friends, family members and peers will refer you. But don’t get upset if they don’t. It’s likely because they don’t portray any of the other above mentioned characteristics.

Others with a similar target audience – If a woman is pregnant and within a short period of time many of those around her also become pregnant, as a provider of baby gear you might find that this individual is referring you a ton because she is surrounded by others currently in the market for what you offer.

Doers – One of the reasons we don’t refer every product or service we come across is because we simply don’t have the time. Doers are those that will follow through with action, and tend to be efficient with their time. If they say they will send contact info about a great company, they will. If you ask for a referral and they say yes, they will give it. Others are more introverted and can be described more as thinkers. They may be less likely to actually follow through with a referral source or even refer you at all.

Here is a great exercise

In your database, start to identify your customers (and even prospects) by the traits above. Do you find that those with a strong combination of traits are also strong referrals? Can you now start to think of better ways to reach out to them and get them more engaged in referring you more?

At the very least, I hope this information also helps you forgive or understand why some of your customers aren’t referring you at all even though they raved about your product or service. It’s not because they don’t want to, they just may not be programmed to do so.

Want to build your own killer Referral System. Check out our Referral Engine Program.

Jugular Marketing

When I sit down with a business owner for the first time, I will always ask them what marketing activities they have tried to-date. Whether they explain them or show me samples, they will often feel that their marketing activities haven’t worked.

“We did trade shows, but that didn’t generate us one customer.”
“We tried direct mail and that didn’t work.”
“I’m on Twitter, but that’s not getting me any business, it’s a waste of my time.”

All of the above are what I like to call Marketing Vehicles – tradeshows, direct mail and Twitter, to be exact. Do these vehicles work? Of course they do. Google them and you will find success stories tied to any marketing vehicle. So how come they don’t seem to work for you? It might be because you are going for the jugular. In other words, you are trying to go directly for the sale instead of simply engaging a prospect to take the next step.

If you have a low risk, low price product or service, you will probably find some success in jugular marketing, but if you are marketing something that requires the prospect to trust you or the product you need to re-look at WHAT you are saying or doing in a marketing vehicle, instead of changing the marketing vehicle itself.

Here is an example of Jugular Marketing.

Imagine you are single and a member of the opposite sex approaches you on a night out. The conversation goes something like this. “Hi, my name is (LOGO). Let me say that it again (because it takes up 1/3rd of the ad, so it must be important). I have a lot of amazing qualities you would love about me (they’re all listed here in bullet points). So, do you want to get married (there’s that infamous phone number at the bottom that screams, buy from us)?”

There is no reason for me to act today and quite frankly I’m not looking for many of these attributes in a gym. But what if you focused the ad more on the buyer than yourself? What if you made it easy and less risky for me to take the next step? The ad might then look more like the following.

If we were back in that social situation this one might equate to: “You look like you might want some company and obviously enjoy places like this (after all the headline shows you understand me and highlights a major motivator for me”. I am having a get together in another place like this (some key features and a complimentary VIP pass). It’s next Wednesday (there’s time limit on it). If you would like to come and get to know each other better, check out the details (drives them to more information and a place where they can act easily and with minimal risk).”

Which one would cause you to act more easily? The latter allows Gold’s Gym to capture more prospects. It allows them to better measure the effectiveness of the message and tool (VIP pass) they are using. But most importantly, it allows the prospect to try them out at no cost.

Next time you are looking to execute on that marketing tactic, avoid jugular marketing. Try capturing leads instead of going directly for that sale.

5 Fun Ways to Market Your Business on Facebook

If you are using Facebook personally or are still one of those rare people who aren’t part of what compares in size as being the 3^rd largest country in the world, you might want to consider “playing” with some fun techniques here to market your business.

Of course to start with you will need to create a Page for your Business if you haven’t already. Click here to get started. It only takes a couple of minutes.

Collect “Likes” for Charity – A “Like” on Facebook equates to a soft referral and has taken the place of “becoming a fan”. Businesses know that if someone in your network “likes” something then it will get more of your attention. American Express Open used this technique to promote their Small Business Saturday promotion. Set a figure you would like to donate (say it’s $100) to your favorite charity. Friends can basically help to donate by liking your page over a specific period of time. You will then donate $1 for every like to this charity up to a certain number (100 in this case) of “likes”.

Run a Contest – Make sure you read Facebook’s Promotional Guidelines before you do this. But if done correctly, it can draw a lot of exposure. I saw this used very effectively and correctly by a client of mine The Chamberlain Group. They had just had a baby, and decided to run a cutest baby or (for their friends who didn’t have kids) cutest pet contest. Prizes were $1000 for the baby’s RESP or dog food for a year, donated by a local pet store. You could post the picture of your baby or pet on their website and of course contestants promoted their baby or pet through their networks. The exposure for these savvy realtors was enormous, but it also allowed them to connect and give back in a fun way to their network.

Run a Fun Ad – If you have never clicked on the little advertising button on the bottom of your Facebook page, you should. Setting up an ad on Facebook only takes a minute and you can set some very low dollar amounts to keep the cost down. Besides being a great place to test your ads or a headline, Facebook ads work! Instead of just trying to sell your business though, try using them creatively.

Taylor Pratt was promoting his popular Ravenhunt game on Facebook and wanted to increase the click through rates of his ads (read full article here).

His first ads were pretty good.



But when he had a bit more fun with the pictures his click through rates doubled and when he beckoned to his target audience his click through rates tripled.

Have fun with your Fan Page – Often businesses will leave their Wall as the default entry point to their page, but you can add new tabs to your page like the Welcome tab below and customize your settings so the people land on this page first. Examples like the one below are way more enticing and give people multiple ways to engage with you. You can use a Graphic Designer to help you design a page like this or fan page software.

Find ways for people to interact – Target ran a very successful campaign on Facebook asking users to help them select which charities they should allocate their charitable funds to. Called the “Bullseye Gives” campaign, Target used a Facebook voting application and integrated it onto their business page.

Each time someone voted (they could vote daily), they could publish their vote back to their Facebook feed, meaning more people could see Target’s branding and becoming followers of the company’s page.

As you can see Facebook, just like every other marketing tool out there is just that a vehicle. It won’t go anywhere or do anything, without your input, expertise and experience.  Have fun!