Monthly Archives: June 2015

AutoMagic Marketing

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“Yes, I have something up my sleeve” I said. The others sat stunned because I’d shown up in a suit.

Golden Triangles of MarketingRick asked, “Is there a time warp? I haven’t seen you in a suit since somewhere south of 1990.”

“Y’all just haven’t seen him speak then,” said Rob, the southland’s branding poobah we lovingly call Bubba. “When he steps on the platform he looks like he’s been livin’ in tall cotton and sounds like he’s plumb tickled to be there and to preach the gospel of digital marketing to the heathens.”

Gail our writer/editor who always strives for clarity said, “I believe you mean to say that he dresses up nicely and talks about CRM and Automated Marketing enthusiastically, right?”

“Yes Ma’am,” said Bubba.

“And that is what I have up my sleeve” I said. “I started working with Contact Management systems, which have morphed into CRM systems, somewhere around 1990. It took over 20 years for folks to even recognize the term CRM. Most still haven’t figured out what it is. Everybody pretty much knows what SEO means but they mistake things like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact for CRM systems. Those e-mail marketing systems aren’t even close to a full bore Integrated CRM system.”

Kate, our resident sales consultant asked, “So what is up your sleeve?”

“I just came from speaking to group of small business owners at a convention. I offered them a copy of The Golden Triangles of Marketing which shows the absolutely essential data you need for Contact Management plus the basics of a fully integrated automated marketing system plus the seven things anyone can do to give it a personal touch. I have a copy here for each of you.” (Get your copy here)

Chris, our corporate digital guy looked up from scanning the piece and said, “I like the way you showed what is absolutely essential instead of gilding the lily.”

“Thanks Chris,” I replied. I really had to work at finding a way to make it understandable. Remember, this is for small and medium sized companies. Enterprise level organizations have the time, money and resources to throw at marketing but the small business owners just don’t. The point is, most small businesses can take advantage of integrated CRM now because there are products and services out there that are reasonably priced and have some of the sophistication the big guys are employing.”

Kate asked, “What was your speech about?”

“I wrote about this not long ago and I’m continuing to research it. The speech was called The Shortcut to Trust. (See part of it here) What it comes down to is that there is an interesting shift going on in marketing. It may be generational but that is what makes what I’m finding so much more powerful. Younger people seem to not like direct contact, sometimes even from a friend. I’ve watched them make every argument you can imagine to avoid having to respond to a phone call. They literally will send an e-mail to someone that sits 5 feet away. Worse still, they text and don’t check their e-mail. But entrepreneurs quickly learn that people don’t do business with you until they trust you. First they have to get to know you and then like you.

With that younger customer and that younger employee you need what I call AutoMagic Marketing.

You need to use all the capability you can muster to open the dialogue, begin a relationship and get to know each other via automated digital marketing. Then, when you engage with a personal touch, the sales possibilities will be much better.”

The Takeaway:

Digital Marketing integrated with Contact Management is AutoMagic Marketing, the first step on a shortcut to Trust. Add a personal touch and your sales will increase Auto Magically!

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry Fletcher is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue.

Jerry has been researching and implementing small business marketing that builds businesses, careers and lives of joy for 25 years as President of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Learn more at www.JerryFletcher.com

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com

Form With A Personal Touch

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“It all comes down to your form, “I said.

“Are we talking golf or Tennis? “ Chris asked as he sat down.

Getting Subscribers

“Neither” said Rick, our direct marketing expert. “We’re talking forms for web sites and landing pages and other uses on line. One of Fletch’s clients was unhappy that he recommended that a form to capture visitor e-mail addresses be included on every page of the website. The client argued that it wasn’t classy and interfered with his branding.”

Chris, our digital director in residence, turned expectantly to Rob the Branding authority in our midst and said, “So the branding viewpoint is….”

Bubba didn’t disappoint him. “Son,” he said, “That feller’s got his knickers in a knot for the wrong reason. Heah’s the thing. You got folks comin’ to a website and the reason they are there is to find out some more about you or your product or service. They may be looking to meet you. If you were dealin’ with them in person what would you do? You’d make it as easy as possible. You’d answer their questions. You would try to connect with them. You’d invite them to keep in touch. That means the form has got to be there but:

  • The form needs to fit in with the personality of the site
  • The design should emulate the rest of the site
  • The language should fit in with the rest of the site

Kate, our sales veteran took over. She said, ”If you think of the form that way you treat it less like a form and more like an invitation. You tell people what they are going to get and you treat them with respect. You make your approach more personal. For instance, instead of having a button that says Submit you use language like ‘Sign Me Up’ or ‘Connect Me.” (Here’s an example)

“Limiting the amount of information they have to supply is important in that situation,” said Rick. “The other thing you have to tell them is that you won’t sell or give away their information to anybody. Of course, there are other kinds of forms. Those need to include Bubba’s rules but forms that are designed to detect digital body language or for gathering more information such as an application need to assume a couple things:

  • The fewer the queries the better. (Try to keep it under 7)
  • Make it as simple as possible for the visitor
  • Consider gathering information sequentially to build up a prospect profile for multiple interaction situations
  • Put your labels above the fill-ins
  • Use Drop down menus to conserve the visual space of the form
  • Use checkboxes to allow selection of multiple values at the same time
  • Use radio buttons where applicable to allow for faster viewer scanning.

“If I bring my client to lunch will you guys repeat yourselves?” I asked.

Gail, our writer/editor quietly spoke for the group saying, “You’re big boy. You can convey what was said here today. “What I hear you saying is that you’re not sure you can convince your client. Try telling him what you learned.”

The Takeaway:

Forms on web sites, landing pages and sales sites are all better when they are built with a personal touch in mind– like an invitation. That means designing the form to fit in seamlessly while making it as easy for the user as possible.

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry Fletcher is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue.

Jerry has been researching and implementing small business marketing that builds businesses, careers and lives of joy for 25 years as President of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Learn more at www.JerryFletcher.com

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com

Testimonials Need A Touch Of Fear

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It bothered me that Janet’s new testimonial was as ho hum as they come, at least to me. So I showed it to Rick.

Conderned ManRick read it through and said, “I can’t fault the way the author spells out the facts that changed due to Janet’s coaching skills but even with all that it seems like every testimonial I’ve ever seen for a management consultant. It says she walks on water but that is hard to believe.”

“Why not?” asked Chris.

“Age, experience and one of the lessons I learned when I was earning my spurs.”

“Spurs?” Chris said.

 Rick replied, “It’s a figure of speech in the Direct Marketing space. What I learned when I was a little younger than Chris is that testimonials can really help close a sale but only if they are human and the testimonial can help get a prospect over what is keeping them from making a decision to do what you want them to do.”

I asked, “Can you give me an example?”

“Fletch,” he said, I’ll give you one from your own web site.”

You could have seen the lump in my throat as I said, “Okay, fire away.”

Rick said, “On the 30-Second Marketing page of the consulting section of your website there’s a testimonial from Jim Grew. It says:

“When he proposed that I answer the question, ‘What do you do?’ with:
I’m the Business Defogger & Accelerator.
I thought he was nuts. 

And then I tried it.
Everybody gets it.
Nobody forgets it.
Colleagues want to know how I came up with it.
I tell them to talk to Jerry.”

Notice how it goes from ‘I thought he was nuts to nobody forgets it.’ And then on top of that adds the last bit about colleagues?

The essence of the testimonial could have been ‘Colleagues want to know how I came up with my tagline.’

But he added his concern. See the difference?”

Gail said, “So you’re advocating that a concern or problem the testifier has with the person or the process they are lauding should be part of the testimonial, right?”

“Exactly,” said Rick. “A testimonial is more than icing on the cake. It can overcome an objection as well as help convince or persuade the prospect to take a step or two further in making a purchase. It’s why every diet product you’ve ever seen uses before and after photos and when it is on video the former Mr. Obesity says something like ‘I tried all kinds of things but this simple solution is the one that finally worked for me.’

The Takeaway: Put a concern or objection on the front end of a testimonial. Overcoming it makes the testimonial more powerful.

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry Fletcher is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue.

Jerry has been researching and implementing small business marketing that builds businesses, careers and lives of joy for 25 years as President of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Learn more at www.JerryFletcher.com

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com

 

The Eternal Opposite

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Kate asked, “Are you just naturally contrary or do you do it on purpose?”

I began, “Sales experts like you are always telling me that…”

The Eternal OppositeBubba, our peach of a branding expert interrupted me as he arrived and slid into an open seat . He said, “Y’all should know by now he’s just naturally cantankerous but there is usually a reason and most often it is because he smells money. He’s looking at things that way agin I’ll bet.”

Chris took a sip of his tea and said, “So why don’t we let him defend himself if he can.”

“Challenge accepted,” I said. “I was telling Gail about a client that was bemoaning the fact that a survey from Aspect Software found that one-third of consumers would rather clean a toilet than talk on a phone with a customer service representative. She was overwrought about her customer service department. All I really did was point out the other side of that equation. Two thirds were happy talking to a CSR on the phone.

The problem is that humans are gated to see the danger and run from it. That’s okay if it’s a rattler or a hungry tiger but statistics and analytics are for sorting out the good the bad and the ugly rather than a reason to put on your track shoes.

You have to look behind the numbers.

Reporters and marketers are always backing the hearse up to the door. That doesn’t mean there is dead body inside.

Gail piped up, “So you’re advising us to look at all the percentages or both sides of the survey, right?”

“No,” I said. “I’m saying you should not only look at all of it but think about how you can use the data to your benefit. Some examples:

  • One up Kate’s alley—in 2015 CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Survey of 1000 firms worldwide reported that 37% of companies had implemented a sales collaboration/networking system such as Chatter, Jam, Jive, and Yammer. Less than 35% reported noticeable impact. That tells me that 65% are in need of some help in making it work. Whether she goes direct to the companies or gets a contract to do the job for one of the software firms there is money to be made.
  • Any of you ever hear of Optor? No? But I’ll bet you’ve heard of Occupy Wall Street. The occupiers got our attention  branding themselves ‘the 99%.’ The movement was an abysmal failure. Everyone lost interest.

Optor, on the other hand succeeded. They overthrew the Milosevic government in Serbia. They focused everything on their mission. People joined them over time seeing that dedication and the slow but sure progress. They became the definition of a positive feedback loop.

Optor operated like a start-up company rather than a protest group. They wrote a manual that has been picked up and used in the Georgian Republic, the Ukraine, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East.

The lesson for me is that to succeed you need a vision and a mission not just a slogan.

  • One more. According to the 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Facebook is the most used Social media for B2C companies while Linked In is the one B2B companies prefer. No surprise there. What is surprising is the role Twitter plays in both and the fact that it is nearly twice as heavily used in the B2B space. No, I haven’t figured that one out yet.”

 

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry Fletcher is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue.

Jerry has been researching and implementing small business marketing that builds businesses, careers and lives of joy for 25 years as President of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Learn more at www.JerryFletcher.com

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com