Category: Sales & Marketing

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Sales & Marketing

3 Keys to Writing Copy that Attracts and Invites (and Doesn’t Feel Sales-y and Slime-y)

If you’re like so many conscious/heart-centered entrepreneurs, a lot of traditional copywriting probably makes you pretty uncomfortable. (Copywriting is writing promotional materials, nothing to do with protecting your intellectual property.)

 

But everyone tells you that you need that “type of copy” if you want to make money.

 

So what do you do? Make money and feel slime-y and sales-y with the copy you’re using — or don’t make money, but feel like your copy is at least aligned with your core values?

 

Well, I’m here today to say it IS possible to do both — write copy that attracts, inspires and invites so you make money AND feel good doing it.

 

And I’m going to share 3 keys to get you started.

 

1. Know your ideal clients. I’m a big fan of ideal clients. Because unlike target markets or niche markets, your ideal clients are the heart and soul of who you’re meant to serve.

 

You see, target markets and niches are more about the external — their demographics. Ideal clients are about the internal — what drives them, what gets them up in the morning, what keeps them awake at night… what their core values are.

 

And if you base your business and your marketing around that, you’re going to attract the perfect clients into your business — the ones who you love to work with and who love working with you. (Doesn’t that feel fabulous?)

 

Now if you haven’t done this before, I really encourage you to do this exercise — I want you to create your ideal client avatar. Spend some time getting to know your ideal client. It doesn’t matter if he/she is real or in your head; either way it’s a big help to do this.

 

Start by writing out a detailed description of that person. Be as complete as possible. Then I want you to post it, so every time you sit down to write copy, you see your ideal client.

 

You may want to add a picture as well so you can really “see” your ideal client as you write.

 

Now once you have your ideal client set, then you can move to the second key.

 

2. Pretend you’re writing a letter to a friend, NOT writing marketing copy. If your friend came to you and told you about a problem she had, and you KNEW you had the perfect solution and wanted to help, how would you craft that letter? You would be passionate, right? And you would probably also be very comfortable asking her to take action, because you know in your heart if she does, her life will change.

 

Well I want you to bring that same passion into writing your marketing copy. You care about your ideal client, right? So you ARE writing to a friend — a friend who has a problem you can solve. And you know how wonderful your friend’s life will be once she’s solved the problem.

 

That’s the place to come from when you write. And when you do, all the hype-y and sales-y stuff melts away.

 

3. Focus on their transformation. Now you’ve probably heard “write benefits and not features,” and that’s true — I want you to do that. But even more than that, I want you to focus on the transformation: how much your ideal clients’ lives will be transformed once they’ve bought your products and services.

 

If you focus your copy on that — writing “you” instead of “I” (in fact, you should have a 2:1 or even a 3:1 ratio of “you” to “I”) and how your product or service will transform your ideal client, they’ll be that much more excited to work with you.

 

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Sales & Marketing

Using Email Marketing in 2014

email-marketing-2014

Part of our outlook into 2014 we’ve started to compile some blog posts that are not only designed to help us but also help you in creating an effective strategy.

Email marketing, have you been doing it?

I ask simply because email marketing is hugely underutilised with B2b sales however the stat’s behind why you should be doing it are eye opening:

  • 40% of B2b leads generated via email marketing are considered high quality.
  • 44% of respondents to email marketing made one or more purchases.

Now when you’re response rate is close to being half that’s pretty good going, especially when it’s either a hot lead or a done deal at the end of it.

The trouble with email marketing is that we’ve all become some immune to spam and get rich quick schemes that we tend to have a misconception as to what email marketing should be. (It’s about value, just good old value adding to someone’s life).

So in 2014 here are the things you should be focusing on with your email marketing strategies:

Subject Line

If you happen to be a one man band or don’t actually have a marketing department then it would be wise to take a couple of hours out to learn about creative writing.

Put it this way – the subject line is the first thing the recipient will see and it’s the only thing that will make them open the email.

Social Leverage

Social media is here to stay so give into it and leverage it to your full advantage alongside your email marketing campaigns.

Here are some ideas:

  • Competitions
  • Exclusive offers
  • Newsletter subscriber only offers

All of the above is designed to simply capture as much data as possible, getting more and more people onto your email list is vital. They may not be interested now but it’s the most efficient way to maintain mindshare.

Timing

You can no longer disapprove the value of sending well timed means of contact. Social media updates are being widely optimised for release at specific times that followers are most likely to click through and so should emails.

Use metrics to back up your findings and ultimately test what you’re doing, it will take some time to fully understand and develop a solid strategy but in the long run email marketing is about Open Rates and Click Through Rates.

Images

Sales pitch emails are horrible, they are the best example of the worst type of email that can be sent out. Forget the paragraphs of how you’ll add value and how previous customers saw X increases.

Instead focus on the visual appeal of your email, pictures and videos are becoming a huge growth market for social media therefore you need to optimise your emails to these trends.

Images and videos also carry the added bonus of being more likely to be shared over a plain piece of text – you just can’t get excited about something like that.

Update: Google has released news that they will be caching all images – meaning that there’s a strong chance measuring metrics such as opens and views will now be difficult. For more details check out this article.

Mobile

The all round numbers for mobile usage are going drastically up – viewers, amount of time spent, activities etc – so ensuring that your email marketing campaigns are mobile friendly is vital. Add too many large pictures and you’ll have a slow to open email – instant delete.

Again test and measure as for everyone it’s different but focus in on the need to have a balance between images, information and ultimately a mobile presence.

Automation/Segmentation

If you use the likes of iContact, Mail Chimp, Aweber etc you’ll have the wonderful ability to segment and automate your email campaigns. The whole process from list sign ups to welcome messages to follow up emails can all be done on an automated scale, why aren’t you doing it?

Email marketing has become such a fluid process that 2014 should be the year you fall in love with automated campaigns and hyper targeted segmentation. Realistically there are few reasons as to why your lead rate isn’t growing with email marketing.

Email marketing isn’t that bad, there are only a few bad seeds out there that want to create horrible campaigns that deliver nothing more than pain and sorrow for your inbox.

Some of the most popular email marketing providers; Aweber, MailChimp, iContact provide great services that allow you to understand your customer. 2014 should be key for your development and use of email marketing throughout your business.

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Sales & Marketing

3 Tips to Getting Your 2014 Marketing Plan Together

2014-marketing-goals

It’s that time of year to make sure your marketing plan is all ready to go – just in time to kick off the sparkling New Year that’s right around the corner.

But how do you get a marketing plan together that will actually get you the results you’re looking for? Here are 3 tips to get you started:

1. Start with the end in mind. Make sure you figure out specific and REALISTIC goals. While I’m all for having a hit-it-out-of-the-park goal (like building your list to 10K when you have 500 on it right now), you should also have a goal that’s doable AND will make you happy if you reach it.

Knowing your goals will help guide where you need to put your focus. And I would pick no more than 3-5 top ones to get done in 2014 (plus some secondary strategies to round out your calendar). So, for instance, maybe you want to build your list, launch a high-end group mastermind program and get your book done as your main goals. And maybe as part of your high-end group program launch, you also have a smaller launch as a lead in.

So now you have 3 big rocks you can get into your calendar — a product launch, a high-end group launch and a book launch. Plus you have list-building activities that need to happen regularly. Once you’ve plugged those in, now you need to make sure you have both long-term and short-term marketing covered (which is #2).

2. Do you have a balance between long-term and short-term marketing activities? Long-term are tactics like building your list and nurturing your list (for instance sending a regular ezine). Short-term are tactics like having a sale or a launch that bring money in the door right now.

Successful businesses have a balance of both throughout the year — the long-term that will lead to a healthy business with a regular stream of leads and clients and short-term for cash flow.

So now that you have your big rocks, do you see holes in either your short-term or long-term? Do you have your cash-flow covered from month-to-month? Do you have your list-building and list-nurturing activities in there? Now is the time to adjust accordingly.

3. Are the marketing activities you’ve committed to things you enjoy? My personal feeling is the reason why entrepreneurs fail when it comes to marketing is they focus their efforts on what they feel like they SHOULD be doing, rather than what they LOVE doing. There are so many ways to market yourself — videos, podcasts, writing blogs, connecting on social networking, etc. — that I guarantee there is SOMETHING you enjoy doing. So figure out what that is and do that activity. Don’t worry about the rest. Get one thing done and get it done right, and the rest will fall into place.

(If you want some help with this, my “Internet Marketing Success Story” includes an assessment to help you figure out which marketing activity is perfect for you. You can learn more here: http://www.InternetSuccessStory.com)

Now, once you’ve figured out what you love doing, don’t forget to actually build those activities into your plan. Because it doesn’t matter how great of a plan you’ve put together, if you don’t actually implement anything in the New Year, you’re not going to get the results you’re looking for.

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Sales & Marketing

Five Key Questions to Profile Your Customer

Customer-Profile

Article Contributed by CASUDI (Caroline Di Diego) of Entrepreneurs Questions

We have been profiling customers for our clients for years; we always called it MITS (man-in-the-street) profiling. It means asking the right questions, and accurately determining and understanding the meaning of the answers. We did this in the days before sophisticated data analytics!

If you align these answers with your Customer Development & Customer Experience answers, you will be well on your way to profiling and  knowing your customer.

In the online trackable universe we now have endless amounts of data”, big and small, but the information may be worthless if you don’t define your criteria, and ask the right questions in your data search.

Here are FIVE KEY Questions to profile your customer that we have used with success from before the days of “data”, and they still work great today!

1. Where can I find my customer; where do they hang out?

Are my customers to be found on the golf links, boating or fishing, flying their own plane, hiking in the wilderness, attending the theatre…..where are they?

Today we have another option; do they spend time online?

Is it easier to find where your customers hangout online? The endless number of product or special interest-focused communities would indicate that it is. However, whether your search is data driven or MITS, you still need to ask very targeted questions to find your demographic and sociographic customer profile.

2. What habits and routines has my customer established?

If you know what, where, and when your customer does things routinely, it enables you to create very targeted campaigns. Example: everyday thousands of people head to gyms in the suburbs of major cities between 7-8am.

We now look online for communities, to engage with our client’s customers, or we may help them create a special interest community to attract their customers. We can even create a habit or a routine for the customer; guiding them to be where and when we want them.  It really does look a lot easier than it was. Just think how the major social networks have made this so much more possible!

You can do a psychological profile from their SoMe (Social Media) feed ~ go to twitter, LI or other social networks and find who they are talking to, what they are saying and also what their friends are saying.

3. What lifestyle most accurately describes my customer?

To answer this question it helps to have an understanding of what differentiates lifestyle. Are my customers established in a 9 to 5 business/office routine, or do they have flexible schedules, as well as flexible incomes? Obviously income is a lifestyle driver, as is locale; city or suburban, west or east. Lifestyles may include “the boating crowd”, the “country club set”, “snowbirds”, “pickups and shotguns”…….

Who influences your customers? “Influence” is very much in style today, but it has always been a key line of questioning in determining and understanding your customers’ lifestyle and trends.

Take a look at the hugely influential “Mommy bloggers” and how they are being courted by big and small brands alike.

4. What brands is my customer most likely to buy?

Part of the customer persona is what brands do they gravitate towards. Are they Mac or PC? Audi or Cadillac? Pepsi or Coke?  Are they brand-focused at all?

When I was marketing real estate, if I knew what brand of car a person drove, I could tell a lot about them, sometimes even which house they were more likely to buy!

Similarly, in the online world the attraction to certain brands may often be a very good indicator on which social network a customer is likely to hang out, and what communities they gravitate towards.

5. Where does my customer get their news and information?

In the past there were fewer options; radio, TV, newspapers and magazines and outdoor. We broadcast our one-way outgoing message, and sometimes quite successfully.

Today there are many more options to find and consume news online. However, this facilitates many added opportunities for listening to and even having conversations directly with your customer.

Pay attention to niche social platforms if you are looking to sell services and products into niche markets. Example: my business partner has been engaging actively in the FerrariChat social network for 10 years. This discussion forum website has over 120K members, with nearly 400 threads of discussion at any given time. There is much discussion of luxury brands (Ferrari/Lamborghini/watches/private planes, etc.), but in addition he keeps abreast of current news and information there, just as I may do on twitter and G+. It is fun, and often quite revealing, to compare the discussions on the same topics, from the 2 different viewpoints; Ferrari and twitter!

Summary: I’ve always found profiling customers fun, revealing and profitable and you can too!  I like noting similarities and differences, connecting the dots and spotting patterns and trends, and of course getting the right answers by asking the right questions!

FIVE KEY Questions to profile your customer by @CASUDI #EQlist [Entrepreneurs Questions] 

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Sales & Marketing

The Metrics That Will Haunt Your Sales Team

Before you read on, take a moment to soak in all of the metrics that can be found in the infographic below. Those are sales metrics that basically mean you’re losing business and it’s all because no one is helping the sales team understand the numbers of sales.

For a sales professional their career is basically a never ending numbers game from targets, quotas to meetings per week. Their ultimate success and they reason they’ll be given a bonus is down to the number of sales they bring in which then brings me to the effectiveness of sales approach.

From a sales professionals point of view very few are going to spend the time inputting data and metrics that show how many times they called someone which also means they are incredibly unlikely to take the time to compile the data to analyse and determine the best course of action.

For a sales leaders point of view compiling data should really be your task to complete because you’ll also have the added benefit of not putting bias on data that is the strong point of a sales person rather you’ll be looking at the whole process from meeting to closing.

Once you understand the metrics and the data behind it you’ll soon begin to pick up on the sales people who are the all stars and laggards not by the number of deals they bring in but by they efficiency and effectiveness during the sales cycle.

This is key data that needs to then be shared with the team so that they can understand where they need to improve and where they are excelling because until then most sales people and leaders tend to rate success on the number of deals that are brought it.

However a fluid and efficient process not only limits the amount of missed opportunities, lack of follow ups and ultimately lost business it also helps to create a sales team that has a different attitude to the sales process.
sales infographic