Ever felt frustrated because your business is so good at doing what you do… but you still seem to be getting beat up on price all the time? Ever felt like “the best kept secret?” Do you notice that you don’t have much trouble closing the deal once you meet with the prospect, but fall short when trying to find those prospects to sell to? If so, don’t feel alone! This is a common situation in business–and I can explain to you exactly why it happens.

See, there are really two different sides to your business. First, there’s what I simply call the “inside reality” and second, there’s the “outside perception”. The inside reality has to do with all the things your business does that makes you valuable to your customers from a product, operations, and management standpoint. It’s what gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The reason we call it the inside reality is because there’s a good chance that the reality of what you do, and the customers’ perceptions of what you do, aren’t necessarily the same. You’ll find that these two words–reality and perception–are very important to this process of winning in business.

The inside reality encompasses everything you do and everything you are that makes you good. It’s all your skills, your people, your expertise, your service to the customer–before, during, and after the sale — It’s your systems, your operational procedures, your commitment to excellence, your passion, and the way you conduct your business. Now you might think you’re actually better than you are, or you might not be giving yourself enough credit for the things you do well. But regardless, there is a reality of how valuable you are to the marketplace based on those things I just listed. That’s what we call the inside reality.

Think about your business. How’s your inside reality? You probably already know. If you asked your customers why they bought from you, they could tell you something quantifiable, specific, and instantly obvious. They could point to specific advantages of doing business with you and say “That’s why I do business here, that’s why I refer my friends to come here, that’s why I’m a loyal customer of this place, that’s why I don’t mind paying more here, that’s why I keep coming back.” That’s your inside reality.

This is what trainers like Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, and Michael Gerber are all about — innovating your business so it’s valuable to the marketplace. Tom Peters calls it the “Pursuit of Wow!” – Making your business good enough that your customers say “WOW!” Ken Blanchard in his book called it developing “Raving Fans.” And it’s imperative that you begin to innovate your company so that there’s a reason for people to buy from you. These guys do a great job of teaching you how to do those things – how to build the “better mouse trap,” so to speak, but here’s the problem: Just because you’ve achieved “WOW!” as Peters says, or Raving Fans for that matter, that doesn’t mean that customers are going to flock to your business. There’s still a job of marketing that has to be done. And that’s where the “outside perception” comes into play.

If the “inside reality” is about what you do and what you are that allows your business perform better, then the outside perception has to do with how customers and prospects PERCEIVE your company. The outside perception is developed by any and all interaction somebody has with your company. For your customers, they will draw on their past buying experiences to form their outside perception of your company. But here’s the problem. If your customer service is great and your customers love you, none of that means squat to a prospective customer if 1) they don’t know you even exist as an option, 2) they see your marketing and advertising and because of your lack of ability to market properly they perceive that your no different or no better or no worse than anybody else. Because of the marketing ineptitude of just about every company, the result is that almost invariably, your inside reality and your outside perception are different.

Look at the two ads here from the yellow pages for fencing contractors. I think you’d agree these look like fairly typical ads for fencing contractors. Let me ask you this–can you tell which of the companies listed in these two pages actually does the best job of building fences? Can you tell which one offers the best fence for the money? Can you figure out which one is most likely to do a good job for you, and which ones are potentially going to rip you off?

See, you can’t. It would be convenient if every business had complete honesty in their advertising. Wouldn’t it be great if there were headlines like, “We’ll be out of business by this time next year.” Or “Give us a check and you’ll never see us again!” or “Our fences were voted most likely to fall over and crush your children!” Unfortunately that’s not the way it works. We have literally NO IDEA what the inside reality of any of these companies is. We can only guess based on how we “feel” about their ads. Folks, you can do better than this.

See, regardless of how good you are, or how good your “inside reality” is, your prospect isn’t going to be able to figure it out based on your marketing. You’re going to appear, on the surface level–which by the way is the level the prospect is looking at, you’re going to appear to be just another company that sells whatever it is you sell. The prospect will more than likely be apathetic at best. Ask yourself this question–How many competitors, either direct or indirect, do you have in your business? Whatever that number is, that’s how many choices your prospects have, and how many businesses they have to sift through to try to make a buying decision. And that’s assuming they want to buy what you’re selling! Because of the large number of competitors, marketing has to 1) interrupt the prospect, 2) facilitate the decision making process, and 3) lower the risk of taking the next step in the buying process.

These newsletters talk a lot about what you need to do, but how you do it is not as easy as it seems on the surface.  If you haven’t engaged with me yet, click here and tell me you want a consultation or a Hopper System demonstration, and I’ll help you implement these ideas into your business so you can begin to experience the power of this marketing methodolgy.

What is the purpose of marketing anyway? I mean, what is marketing really supposed to do? I guarantee if I asked one hundred business people this simple question, I’d probably get a hundred different answers. That’s right. About a hundred! Some people would say marketing’s job is to get your name out into the marketplace. Others would say to position your company in the marketplace, or to build your brand name. Some would say to generate sales. Some would disagree and say that marketing’s job is not to lead directly to sales necessarily, but to generate leads that are then handed over to the sales department.

Still others would say “awareness, or in other words, to get people to remember our name when they go to buy” Then there’s always the group that just say marketing’s job is to “make money.” And you know what, even though all of these answers are different, they’re all partially right. I wouldn’t say that any of them are wrong. But here’s what I would say: All of the answers I just mentioned are actually results of what happens when you run marketing and advertising that is does what it’s REALLY supposed to do.

So, because the answer to this simple question is so vital to the rest of this series, and so vital to your RESULTS, I want to take just a few moments to solve this mystery and demystify this whole process a little bit. Here’s what marketing is supposed to do: Its purpose is actually three-fold:

1. Its first job is to capture the attention of your target market,
2. and second, to give them the hope that reading or listening to your marketing piece will give them enough information to–here’s the key word–facilitate…facilitate their making the best decision possible when buying whatever you sell. Or in other words, train and teach them how to make the best available decision.
3. Marketing’s third job then is to lower the risk of taking the next step in the buying process so you can further educate the prospect. The result of effective marketing that accomplishes these three objectives is that it should cause your prospects and customers to draw the conclusion, “I would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you… regardless of price.”

Let’s take a closer look at these three things:

First, capturing your target market’s attention. This seems pretty obvious and pretty straight forward. But I can tell you this: there are right ways and wrong ways to do this, and I’ve got a specific formula that I’m going to give you later on that will ensure that you always do it the right way. It’s done the wrong way 99% of the time. We’ll get to that, but first let’s talk about marketing’s second objective, which is what I call “facilitating the prospect’s decision making process.” Do you understand that you’ve got prospects out there that need to buy what you sell, who are just starving and craving information? Because they’re not experts at what you do, they don’t know the parameters or the relevant issues surrounding the decision. They don’t know how to make the best decision, which leaves an opportunity for you to guide them through this process. Your job is “facilitator of information” to help them make the best decision possible. Now if the best decision possible happens to be buying from you–and it should be–then that’s all the better. You should think of yourself as the “fountain from whence all knowledge flows….” Or at least all of the knowledge germane to what you’re selling. I’ll show you how to accomplish that later on in this program. But here are the key principles right now:

See, regardless of what industry you’re in, all businesses, on a base level, want the exact same things… they want more new customers, and less competition. They want to keep their margins, have their marketing and advertising work better, attract and retain more loyal customers, increase the conversion ratios for their sales people…and ultimately, they all want to make more money. True enough?

Also realize that all prospects and customers all want the same things. They want to feel confident that their money has been well spent and their decision has been made to the best of their ability. They want the get the best deal, in terms of price and value. You never hear anybody say, “I shopped around to 8 car dealerships and negotiated the best deals possible in terms of how much car I got for my money, and finally decided to buy where I got the third best deal.” No! People intuitively want to make the best decision possible, and not feel like they’ve got to second guess themselves all the time.

So we have two sets of values: The business wants more customers and loyal customers and higher margins… and the customer wants to feel confident that he’s gotten the best possible deal, in terms of overall value. The process and principles that govern the matching of those two sets of values are exactly the same for every business. See, this is why we can work with thousands of companies a year in every imaginable industry, big or small. It’s real simple: all you have to do as the marketer is figure out what’s important to your prospects, educate them as to what constitutes the best deal in your industry, and then show him quantifiable proof that you actually provide that best deal, in terms of price and value, and communicate all of that to him in a way that he’ll pay attention to, believe, and take action on.

See, then the prospect gets what he wants from you: not just the best deal–in terms of price and value, but also the unshakable confidence that he’s actually made the best decision possible. The problem is, believe it or not, that most businesses come nowhere close to holding up their end of the bargain. Instead of using marketing to educate and facilitate the decision making process and build a case, most companies fill their marketing with self-serving hyperbole, fluff, and platitudes that are only a thinly veiled way to say “buy it from me because I want you to give your money to me instead of somebody else.” That’s why people become jaded and tend to resist marketing. They tend to either dismiss it or worse, become skeptical of it. But you don’t want to breed skepticism! You want your prospects to say that they’d have to be absolute fools to do business with anyone else but you, regardless of price!

So, after you’ve 1) gotten the target market’s attention, and 2) given them decision-facilitating information, then marketing’s third job is to give them a specific, low-risk, easy-to-take action that further facilitates their ability to make a good decision. What I’m saying here is you can’t cram everything that a person needs to know–you can’t completely facilitate that decision necessarily within the confines of an advertisement. There needs to be more information given–and we accomplish this via what we call marketing tools… which means putting things together for your prospects like reports, websites, audio CDs, DVDs, and so forth. I’ll talk at length in an upcoming article, but for now, let me give you an example to crystallize all this.

Have you bought a new home before? I mean a brand new home, from a builder? They have lots of different ways to advertise and promote, but one of the major places that builders advertise is in the Sunday Paper in the New Homes section. But if you look in that section of the newspaper, you’ll see that none of the ads there actually accomplishes what marketing is really supposed to do in the first place. By way of review, marketing is supposed to first, capture the attention of the target market, next, facilitate their decision making process by educating them about what they need to know, and finally, give them a low-risk way to become more educated and take the next step to further the buying process. But the ads you’ll find right now don’t do this. Instead, they feature beautiful happy smiling people, pictures of houses and floor plans, price ranges of homes, and maps to various neighborhoods. Here are some typical ads:

So take a look at these two ads: Neither of them do what marketing is really supposed to do. They don’t capture prospective buyer’s attention at all. At a glance, the ads look virtually identical, contain the same kind of pictures and words, and from the prospect’s standpoint ARE the same. There’s nothing to get their attention, no acknowledgement of what the customers needs or problems might be. Then there’s nothing in any of the ads to educate the prospect. There’s nothing to facilitate their decision making processes. There’s nothing to show them what they need to know… or tell them what the relevant and important issues to consider are.

How many things do you need to know when buying a new home? Are you an expert on lumber, plumbing, masonry, electrical, insulation, flooring, framing, roofing, finish out, and the 613 other relevant, pertinent issues involved with building a home? Of course not. And you won’t be after reading all those ads, either. You won’t even know the relevant issues at stake. I’m not saying every buyer wants to know all that stuff; what I am saying is that all buyers would like to at least be aware of the relevant issues that are at stake.

With these ads, all you know is that smiling people supposedly live there and they all have floor plans and maps to neighborhoods. All of these ads dropped the ball big time, and let me tell you why: Because prospective buyers want and need to be educated–so they can feel confident when making their decision–and nobody’s providing it. First one who does, wins.

Then there’s no low-risk way for the prospect to take the next step in the buying process. The only option these ads give is to come into the model home. You say, that’s low enough risk. The heck it is! You tell me, if you’re just thinking about buying a new home, and the only offer is to come to a model home that’s 45 minutes from your current house, and you know good and well that it is going to be fully stocked with starving sales people who are going to do everything in their power to force you to buy that home on the spot, is that low risk?

You say I exaggerate. You ever met the sales person who has to sit at those models all weekend long? 10% of them are wonderful, and 90% of them are starving and took the job because it’s the only thing they could find that had a $2,000 a month draw and they look at you like a big thick juicy steak to be devoured, not a prospect who wants to make the best home buying decision possible. I mean come on, who else is going to take a job that requires you work every single Saturday and Sunday? Even car salespeople get one weekend day off. All of the ads fail miserably on this level; as a result, they all get lost in the shuffle of all the other ads. I’m here to tell you that there’s a better way to handle this situation.

Why do you think that businesses always feel forced into a price competitive situation? If you feel like that’s the case in your business, like you’re always competing on price, it’s your own fault, period. Your lack of marketing ability has led to a situation where there are no distinctions, there have been no other parameters or relevant issues introduced that you’ve educated your prospects on, no offers to lower the risk of taking the next step. If you feel like you’re always competing on price it’s because price is the ONLY relevant variable you’ve given your prospects to consider, and from the prospect’s perspective, all things ARE equal, so they’d be a fool NOT to demand a lower price.

For a view of ads that have been proven to work click here to contact me.  I’ll show you examples that we have developed that actually get results.

As you continue to learn how to improve your marketing so that it gets more results, I want to share a quick analogy that helps to set the proper expectations from our newsletters. If you’ve seen home remodeling shows on TV you’ll begin to see where I’m going. In one hour they show you how to rip apart the old house and completely remodel into a beautiful new one.

They take an arduous, time-consuming task like remodeling and make it look so simple that just about anyone could do it. Even people who don’t know which end of a hammer to hold watch those shows and start to think, “man that looks pretty easy. It only took that guy one hour to pour that cement, frame the living room, and tile that bathroom. I could do that!”

Well, obviously, it’s not always as easy as it looks. Getting from the “before” picture to the “after” picture takes a quite a bit of know-how, and a lot of hard work. There’s a big difference between knowing what it’s supposed to look like and knowing how to make it look like that.

Here’s the point: you’re not going to be a marketing genius after reading a series of articles, listening to a few CDs, or attending a seminar. Our marketing system is composed of multiple steps that are generally developed and implemented over the course of several months or more depending on the size and complexity of the project….just like completely remodeling a 7,000 square foot house would take longer than just laying new tile in one bathroom.

Each of the steps in the marketing system is multi-tiered and takes a lot of understanding and know-how to properly execute. We have spent thousands of hours perfecting this system to allow us to put your marketing together relatively quickly and easily. I don’t want anybody to be fooled into thinking that remodeling your house–or in this case, re-hauling your marketing program–is an easy process. It’s not. It’s easy to understand how it works, but it’s not nearly as easy to implement the strategies.

The purpose of this series of articles is NOT to train you on everything you need to know about marketing…instead, what we want to do in the time we have together is to educate you so you have a clear vision of what your marketing is supposed to look like…and just as importantly, what it’s NOT supposed to look like. I want to show you the steps and the processes and the formulas and the strategies to make it work. And most of all, I want you to see how powerful what I have to teach you is and to allow you to comprehend what the possibilities are for your company….and what a significant advantage you will hold over your competitors when you do.

So to that end, let me give you brief overview of what we talk about in these articles.

We talk about what marketing is supposed to do and why most marketing doesn’t do it. We’ll explain to you exactly why everything you know about marketing and advertising is wrong.

We cover creating strategic marketing messages and executing a tactical marketing program. What’s the difference between strategic and tactical marketing? Strategic marketing has to do with what you say and how you say it. It’s the content of your message and the positioning of your brand, company, service or product. When talking about strategic marketing, I’ll go into great detail about what we call the “Marketing Equation”. The Marketing Equation is the backbone of the Monopolize Your Marketplace system – it’s essentially a road map to ensure you’re always saying the right thing to the right people – every time you spend money on advertising.

Your tactical marketing program has to do with the execution of the strategic marketing plan.  It involves every way you deploy your advertising messages and implementing a follow up system. We call the tactical marketing program “Franchising Your Sales System” because we show you how to systematize the entire process so that your marketing program is easy to implement and that it’s always consistent.  We’ll cover principles of lead generating, marketing response tools, hopper systems, knock down lists, and referral programs. We’ll also discuss what we call Maximizing and Optimizing your marketing program–which are more advanced tactical execution strategies.

The distinction between strategic and tactical marketing is huge – and something you need to be thinking about anytime you talk about your marketing. Many companies mistakenly assume that when you talk about marketing, you’re automatically talking about tactical marketing–placing ads, generating leads, sending out mailers, attending trade shows, implementing a follow up system, and other lead generating activities. This is tactical marketing only. Most people fail to realize that the strategic side of the coin–what you say in your marketing and how you say it–is almost always MORE important than the marketing medium (WHERE you say it).

If you fail to make this distinction, then you risk becoming jaded toward some forms of marketing and advertising that should be a part of your tactical plan, but that you may eliminate because they haven’t worked for you in the past. When results are less than optimal, the tendency is to blame the marketing medium (the tactical part of the plan) without any regard for how good or bad the strategy behind that marketing piece was.

I’ve heard business owners say things like, “We tried radio and it doesn’t work for this kind of business.” Or, “We sent 20,000 pieces of direct mail and only got back 5 orders – it doesn’t work!”  It’s possible the conclusion is correct, but just because it didn’t work, don’t assume that it won’t work if the strategic message is written correctly. Most people don’t have the evaluation tools and the know how to judge whether a poor marketing result stems from poor strategy or the poor tactical execution. You’ll be able to make those distinctions after listening learning the Monopolize Your Marketplace system.

You’ll see as we share these principles with you that we devote the majority of these articles to strategic marketing issues.  Our objective is to teach you how to innovate your business and powerfully communicate your unique advantages to your target market.

You’ll discover as you read them that regardless of the size of your company, regardless of how big or small you are, regardless of your annual marketing budget, the strategies will always work because they’re based on sound principles. On a tactical, implementation level, big companies have different needs than smaller companies, but the strategies for a $200,000 one-man accounting firm are the exact same as those for a billion dollar multi-national accounting firm. Just take the time to read a few of them and you’ll see what I’m talking about. We’re different than most other marketing and advertising agencies because we have expertise in, and consult on both strategic and tactical marketing.

We’re only interested in helping businesses who want their companies to be the best they can be.   We want people who have such a passion for their customers and dedication to doing things right that they’ll do whatever it takes to get good enough to deserve all the business in their area.  That’s why we call it the “Monopolize Your Marketplace System”.  If you’re not interested in growing your business you don’t need our services, but if you are serious about growing to fill all of your capacity we can help you get there a lot faster than you can without understanding and implementing these principles.

Remember that you can get the majority of the strategic principles discussed in these articles by listening to the 10-CD Audio Course, but these articles are designed to give you additional examples about how to implement them in your business.  We think they’re valuable to every business, but always welcome your feedback so please tell us what you think anytime by going to our contact us page.

Give me the proverbial nickel for every time I’ve heard someone say “This advertising costs too much!” and I would be rich! Clients practically go into cardiac arrest when they find out it costs $32,000 a month to run 6 spots a week on the 6 o’clock news. It is pretty easy to get sticker shock when you see that a sixty-second radio commercial on a popular Los Angeles station could cost you a thousand bucks. Each. Or when you realize that a newspaper ad in your city barely bigger than a Hershey Bar will cost a couple thousand dollars. It’s easy to automatically think that’s a lot of money. Now here’s the important question for you, the advertiser: Does the ad actually cost too much?

So what’s the answer? The savvy advertiser will tell you that the cost of the ad is not the issue. What’s important is the return that the ad will bring. If you were charged even as much as $40,000 for a sixty-second radio commercial that generated enough sales to make you a profit of $50,000, then would the $40,000 be A LOT? The answer is NO! Of course not! You’d be a fool not to beg, borrow, or steal the $40,000 so you could make the $50,000 profit! Try getting that kind of return in the stock market! You’d have to invest in Viaticals to come even close.

So how do you think that these big companies can afford to spend a million and a half dollars for a thirty-second TV commercial during the Super Bowl? You know that an enormous amount of people will see it—enough to make the return on investment a good deal.

The point is simple; you’ve got to figure out how much money an ad will make you before you draw a conclusion of whether or not it costs too much. So how do you do that? It’s actually pretty easy. Here’s a simple process for determining the Return on Investment, or ROI, of an ad.

First, you’ve got to know how much profit you make on each sale. So if you buy something for $50 and sell it for $100, your gross profit is $50. With me so far? Step two is to figure out what your closing ratio is. If, on average, you close one sale for every four people who inquire, that’s a 25% closing ratio. If 9 out of 10 end up buying, then your closing ratio would be 90%. This is simple math. Now, figure out what your break-even is. Do this by taking cost of the advertisement and divide it by the amount of gross profit per sale. Remember, we already figured out what your gross profit is a second ago. So how much do the ads cost? If the ads cost $1,000 and your average gross profit is $50, that means you’ve got to make 20 sales to make back the $1,000—that’s your break-even point. In this example, it’s 20 sales. Fourth and last, figure out the number of leads you need to generate from the ad if you are to break even. To do this, you’ve got to know your closing ratio, which we just figured out also. Let’s say it’s 25%, or in other words, you close one out of four people who inquire. So if you close 25% and you need 20 sales to break even, that indicates that your $1,000 worth of advertising needs to generate 80 leads to break even.

Now I know that all sounds kind of complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple. We just calculated in the example that if the $1,000 ads can generate 80 leads, you would break even. That’s a return on investment of 0. Not particularly impressive, I realize… but hey, let’s START with breaking even so you know the bare minimum you can accept when running an ad. At least you didn’t come up with a NEGATIVE return on investment!

Now, what if your goal is to double your money? What would have to happen to your numbers? That’s right, you’d have to double your lead flow, or in this case, generate 160 leads instead of just 80. That means that if you generated 160 leads, you would generate a profit of $1,000—again, on $1,000 spent. In other words, you’ve doubled your money. Your return on investment is 100%. That’s pretty easy to follow, isn’t it? By way of review, what we’re trying to do is calculate your return on investment for your advertising.

Here are the four steps again. Think about your numbers in your business.

1. What’s your gross profit per sale?
2. What’s your closing ratio?
3. What’s your break even…in terms of number of sales needed?
4. How many leads does your ad need to generate for enough sales to break even?
5. What’s your return on investment on any given number of leads that you generate?

Now let’s take it a step further. Let’s figure out what’s known as the Lifetime Value of a Customer. What if your average customer brings you a $50 gross profit per sale like in the example we just went through? Is that the only time that customer will ever buy anything from you? How many times does that average customer come back in the course of a month, or a year? If your average customer shops with you one time a month and makes you $50 of gross profit every time, that customer is now worth $600 a year—in profit. And if you know that your average customer stays with you for 3 years, now that $50 a month client is worth a tidy $1800.

So now how much would you be willing to spend to accrue that client?  What if those were your average numbers, $50 a month for 3 years. From the example earlier (Remember where we broke even with 80 leads and just 20 sales?) now those 20 customers would be worth an astounding $36,000 over the next three years. And it only cost you a thousand dollars worth of advertising. Now your break-even looks a lot better doesn’t it! If you could accrue a $36,000 annuity every time you ran a thousand dollars’ worth of ads, you should mortgage your house and spend as much money as possible on advertising!

Now, a couple of words of advice when figuring your return on investment for advertising. First, always estimate your numbers conservatively—or in other words, on the low side. Always figure on getting a lower number of leads than you’re hoping for and expecting. Always count on a lower closing ratio than you’re used to. If you calculate your numbers using conservative figures, then you’ll do fine if your results are actually lower than projections…and in the event that you do as well as you had initially hoped, you’ll just make more money than you expected.

Let me give you a real-life example to better illustrate ROI. There is a company who was promoting seminars where they would attempt to sell a service that cost $8,000. When they were starting to do advertising to promote these seminars, the question of how much budget should they allot came up. They wanted to start filling seminars within a week after starting advertising, so they decided that radio would be the best way for them to quickly get the message out about the seminars. When asked how many sales were they planning on generating, they said because of a unique financing plan that allowed them to sell their package on a low-monthly-payment basis, they thought they could sell at least 100 packages in that 5-week time period.

Well, 100 packages is a lot, and they were told that they would have to do at least $15,000 a week for the 5-week period to get the number of leads required to sell that many packages. The man got his calculator out and did some quick math and realized that he had to spend $75,000! $15,000 a week times 5 weeks! That number—$75,000—sounded so huge, it caught him off guard. His idea was to spend just about 5 grand a week, or a total of less than $25,000. Big difference. That’s called “sticker shock.”

So what he did was figure out the ROI, according to the steps previously explained. Again, first, figure out your gross profit per sale. His was about $5,000. Second, figure out the closing ratio. He thought his would be about 20%.  So then, how many sales would he need to break even on a $75,000 advertising expenditure? Well, 75 thousand divided by $5,000 gross profit per sale is about 15 sales. Just 15 sales to break even. So if his closing ratio was 20%, he’d have to generate about 75 leads to break even. 75 leads on $75,000 in radio on the right station? Easily attainable. The last thing to do would be to figure out how many leads he’d have to get to reach his goal. His goal is 100 sales, and his closing ratio is 20%. That means he’d have to generate about 500 leads. That seemed fairly reasonable on a $75,000 budget. He’d generate a total gross profit on the deal of $500,000…and if you subtract out the $75,000 advertising cost, that’s still a healthy gross profit. His attitude toward the $75 thousand changed instantly.

Well, do you see how that works now? Just run through your numbers and you’ll know how much money is a lot of money when it comes to advertising. Then you can write all those big, fat advertising checks with a smile on your face.

(This article was originally published and copyrighted © by Richard Harshaw, and is re-published here with permission).

Kip Lee’s business was rolling along just fine in Savannah, Georgia in 2005. He’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the newspaper to grow his sunroom and window business and was just making the jump into television advertising.  His first several commercials all featured a guy named Ron Sherman who worked for the production company. He had a great personality, a great stage presence, and came across as friendly, knowledgeable, and credible. The commercials worked okay. Not great, but okay.

I started working with Kip right about that time; I wanted to find out how he’d become one of the top sunroom companies in the country despite being in one of the smallest markets. As I was reviewing some of his marketing materials during a new client evaluation, one thing caught my attention instantly: his infomercial.

He’d created the infomercial almost as an afterthought because the production company gave him a good deal on it. It was only run early on Saturday or Sunday mornings and never really accounted for many leads or sales. But something was obvious to me within 30 seconds of watching it for the first time—Kip Lee was successful in his business because he had one of the most friendly, believable, huggable, teddy-bearish demeanors I’d ever seen. People could just feel his sincerity though the screen. When he sat down in someone’s home for a sales presentation, it was over. The prospect knew that this guy wasn’t going to lie to them; they could take Kip Lee to the bank.

Right there and then I told Kip he needed to become a star.

And a star he became. First we put him a series of TV commercials. Then his picture started going in all of his print ads. Before he knew it, people were recognizing him at the grocery store and in restaurants. “Hey, you’re that guy from TV!” Random strangers started to high-five him. He even signed a few autographs at a home show—a guy who sells sunrooms was signing autographs. Think about that for a second.

Apart from just being noticed, the advertising strategy was working for business too. As people started to see Kip on television and get comfortable with his “we take the risk out of home improvement” pitch, they began to believe him. It didn’t happen overnight, but Kip’s cost per lead started shrinking and shrinking and shrinking as his personal stardom was rising. After a while, he started getting plenty of calls even when his ads WERE NOT running. Not to mention friendly “hellos” from strangers while he was pumping gas.

So should you become a star in your ads, too?

There are a few things to consider before taking the plunge. Like anything else, there are pros and cons—and you’d be well advised to step into this arena with your eyes wide open.

Acting Ability: You’d better be able to act if you want to be on TV or radio. Everyone’s seen the dope who gets on the tube and looks like a deer caught in the headlights… or worse, who sounds like he’s reading the cue cards word for word. To really pull it off, you’ve got to have enough personality to charm the crowd, enough acting talent to NOT sound stilted, and enough polish to be perceived as a pro. And trust me… DO NOT ask your spouse for an evaluation on this. Or your mother. Unless you want to turn out like the guy from Idol who sang “Let My People Go.”

The Fame Factor: Do you want to be recognized when you’re buying toilet paper at Costco? Splash your mug on the television for long enough and it’s an absolute certainty. You’ll start getting stares in parking lots, whispers at dinner tables, and points from children. I’m not saying the paparazzi will follow you around or that you’ll get $10 million for exclusive rights to your next baby’s photos… but you will be noticed and called out ON A CONSISTENT BASIS. Also remember that not everyone’s going to love you… some will think you’re cheesy or dopey or annoying. Are you ready to handle that?

Brand You: When you star in your own commercials, you become your brand. Yes, people might catch your company name, but they’re going to remember YOUR name more. This can be a positive, especially if you’re a likable person. But also think to the future—are you planning on selling your business at some point? If so, you’re really hurting the value of the company by wrapping its image up with your personal image.  Just something to think about.

Starring in your own commercials can give your business a tremendous boost. I recommend it for people with the right kind of personality and who don’t have plans to sell their business in the future. Just always remember that fame is a two-edged sword—you might not like it so much once you have it. See you in Hollywood!

Fame is a bee.
It has a song–
It has a sting–
Ah, too, it has a wing.

EMILY DICKINSON, Fame is a bee

Reprinted with permission by Rich Harshaw

The Cute Little Doggie That Drove A Company To Bankruptcy… TWICE.

Want a recipe for marketing disaster? Read on! I’ll serve it up for you just the way you like it… with all the juicy, dumb, dumb details. I’ll show you a company who messed this up so bad that their no-brainer-for-success business model crashed and burned and sent the company into bankruptcy… not once, but TWICE!

Could it really be the marketing that caused the company to experience such dismal results? Certainly there were other factors involved… but you tell me–if your company spent MILLIONS of dollars on advertising for which most people couldn’t even tell what was for sale, let alone what the value proposition was, do you think you’d be far from bankruptcy? Beware of the big, bad advertising agency that wants you to brand your company with something stupid like you’ll see here below.

The company in question is Berge Telecom (name changed (slightly) to protect the not-so-innocent). Their value proposition is very simple. Due to deregulation of the telecommunications industry, they have the ability to sell “Baby Bell” services for 15% to 30% less than the Baby Bell’s themselves. Make sure you understand that: they re-sell the Bell’s services–same lines, same network, same everything–just cheaper. No less quality, no less service (probably better service). It just costs less money. It would be like a new car dealership that opened and sold $25,000 Hondas, straight from the Honda factory, for $18,000 to $20,000. A no-brainer for success, right?

Wrong. Enter the bone-headed ad agencies. Let’s take a look at what they came up for this wonderful company.

The ad has a close-up shot of a frisky looking dog’s head holding a computer mouse in it’s mouth. It has a headline that says, “One Dot Com Minute.” And has some basic copy underneath that says, “Fess Up. Your office needs beefier internet access. So call Berge. We bundle router, line, service in one package, at frisky rates. We include the router, saving you hundreds. And we back it with 7-day a week tech support. Could it be any easier? Call Berge. We’ll come running.” Now remember this is for a telephone company that is trying to sell high speed, or what it calls quote unquote “beefier” internet service for less money than the Bells.

So what is the Activator in this ad? Is it the headline, “One Dot Com Minute?” No, it’s the dog. Remember that an activator is what snaps you out of alpha sleep and into beta alert mode. So you’re thumbing through the newspaper. If you’re somebody who’s interested in dogs–in either a positive or negative way–your reticular activator will signal your brain that there’s something on the page that’s familiar, unusual, or problematic. For most people, it’s familiar; or in other words, they like dogs, so their brain says, “Hey, look at the cute doggie over there on that page.”

Result? If you like dogs, there’s a reasonably good chance you will see this picture and it will pull you out of alpha mode and into beta mode, all of which will happen subconsciously, in a split second, without your being aware. Just like somebody calling your name in a crowded airport baggage claim area. It will force you to look at that ad and then your brain starts searching for additional, clarifying information. “What’s with the dog?” So you’ll read the copy to figure out what’s going on, and you’ll realize that it’s an ad for internet access. Then your brain will begin to short circuit. It’ll say, “dog, internet service, dog, internet service, dog, internet service.” It will struggle to make the connection as to why there’s a dog associated with internet service. See, these two things just don’t normally go together, so it’s a tough connection to make. It’s a false beta.

Now here’s a couple of distinctions for you. Number one, people who don’t like dogs aren’t going to look at this picture no matter what. Their reticular activator won’t flip the switch, so to speak. To them, the dog’s not familiar, unusual, or problematic, so it’s not an activator. So everyone who needs internet access and is not interested in or familiar with dogs will never be pulled out of alpha into beta to consciously see the ad and even have a chance to be sold. Do you see what I’m saying? Why would you put a dog as an activator for an internet service? Because the only people that you are going to reach with this dog are people that like dogs. Is it possible that people who don’t like dogs need internet service? I think it probably is. This is like driving to the corner 7-11 store via Branson, Missouri! You might eventually get there, but you sure traveled a long way to advance a short distance.

Well let’s see, some people do like dogs, so they’ll look at this ad and then they’ll see that it’s for internet service and certainly some people who like dogs will also need internet service so Berge will have a chance to sell to that subset of people. So here’s the question: Why wouldn’t you just go ahead and make the activator based on a hot button–something that’s important and relevant to everyone who needs internet service? A hot button for people who need internet service would be all of the problems that they would potentially be having with their current internet service, or lack thereof.

If you look in the copy, they talk about bundling the router, line, and service in one package. They talk about the availability of tech support, and they talk about saving hundreds of dollars. So I’m guessing some of the hot buttons would be, let’s see–not having the router, line, and service bundled, lack of available tech support, and costs that are way higher than they should be and could be. Now I don’t know if these are the actual, legitimate hot buttons or not, but I know on thing for freaking sure: the dog in this ad ain’t the prospects’ hot button! See, the dog is an activator, but not a hot button. I’ve taken the liberty to write a new ad based on the hot buttons we culled out of the text of the original ad. Notice how the hot buttons take the center stage now, and how the ad follows the formula of interrupt, engage, educate, and offer.

(This article was originally published and copyrighted © by Richard Harshaw, and is re-published here with permission).

Want a recipe for marketing disaster? Read on! I’ll serve it up for you just the way you like it… with all the juicy, dumb, dumb details. I’ll show you a company who messed this up so bad that their no-brainer-for-success business model crashed and burned and sent the company into bankruptcy… not once, but TWICE!

Could it really be the marketing that caused the company to experience such dismal results? Certainly there were other factors involved… but you tell me–if your company spent MILLIONS of dollars on advertising for which most people couldn’t even tell what was for sale, let alone what the value proposition was, do you think you’d be far from bankruptcy? Beware of the big, bad advertising agency that wants you to brand your company with something stupid like you’ll see here below.

The company in question is Berge Telecom (name changed (slightly) to protect the not-so-innocent). Their value proposition is very simple. Due to deregulation of the telecommunications industry, they have the ability to sell “Baby Bell” services for 15% to 30% less than the Baby Bell’s themselves. Make sure you understand that: they re-sell the Bell’s services–same lines, same network, same everything–just cheaper. No less quality, no less service (probably better service). It just costs less money. It would be like a new car dealership that opened and sold $25,000 Hondas, straight from the Honda factory, for $18,000 to $20,000. A no-brainer for success, right?

Wrong. Enter the bone-headed ad agencies. Let’s take a look at what they came up for this wonderful company.

The ad has a close-up shot of a frisky looking dog’s head holding a computer mouse in it’s mouth. It has a headline that says, “One Dot Com Minute.” And has some basic copy underneath that says, “Fess Up. Your office needs beefier internet access. So call Berge. We bundle router, line, service in one package, at frisky rates. We include the router, saving you hundreds. And we back it with 7-day a week tech support. Could it be any easier? Call Berge. We’ll come running.” Now remember this is for a telephone company that is trying to sell high speed, or what it calls quote unquote “beefier” internet service for less money than the Bells.

So what is the Activator in this ad? Is it the headline, “One Dot Com Minute?” No, it’s the dog. Remember that an activator is what snaps you out of alpha sleep and into beta alert mode. So you’re thumbing through the newspaper. If you’re somebody who’s interested in dogs–in either a positive or negative way–your reticular activator will signal your brain that there’s something on the page that’s familiar, unusual, or problematic. For most people, it’s familiar; or in other words, they like dogs, so their brain says, “Hey, look at the cute doggie over there on that page.”

Result? If you like dogs, there’s a reasonably good chance you will see this picture and it will pull you out of alpha mode and into beta mode, all of which will happen subconsciously, in a split second, without your being aware. Just like somebody calling your name in a crowded airport baggage claim area. It will force you to look at that ad and then your brain starts searching for additional, clarifying information. “What’s with the dog?” So you’ll read the copy to figure out what’s going on, and you’ll realize that it’s an ad for internet access. Then your brain will begin to short circuit. It’ll say, “dog, internet service, dog, internet service, dog, internet service.” It will struggle to make the connection as to why there’s a dog associated with internet service. See, these two things just don’t normally go together, so it’s a tough connection to make. It’s a false beta.

Now here’s a couple of distinctions for you. Number one, people who don’t like dogs aren’t going to look at this picture no matter what. Their reticular activator won’t flip the switch, so to speak. To them, the dog’s not familiar, unusual, or problematic, so it’s not an activator. So everyone who needs internet access and is not interested in or familiar with dogs will never be pulled out of alpha into beta to consciously see the ad and even have a chance to be sold. Do you see what I’m saying? Why would you put a dog as an activator for an internet service? Because the only people that you are going to reach with this dog are people that like dogs. Is it possible that people who don’t like dogs need internet service? I think it probably is. This is like driving to the corner 7-11 store via Branson, Missouri! You might eventually get there, but you sure traveled a long way to advance a short distance.

Well let’s see, some people do like dogs, so they’ll look at this ad and then they’ll see that it’s for internet service and certainly some people who like dogs will also need internet service so Berge will have a chance to sell to that subset of people. So here’s the question: Why wouldn’t you just go ahead and make the activator based on a hot button–something that’s important and relevant to everyone who needs internet service? A hot button for people who need internet service would be all of the problems that they would potentially be having with their current internet service, or lack thereof.

If you look in the copy, they talk about bundling the router, line, and service in one package. They talk about the availability of tech support, and they talk about saving hundreds of dollars. So I’m guessing some of the hot buttons would be, let’s see–not having the router, line, and service bundled, lack of available tech support, and costs that are way higher than they should be and could be. Now I don’t know if these are the actual, legitimate hot buttons or not, but I know on thing for freaking sure: the dog in this ad ain’t the prospects’ hot button! See, the dog is an activator, but not a hot button. I’ve taken the liberty to write a new ad based on the hot buttons we culled out of the text of the original ad. Notice how the hot buttons take the center stage now, and how the ad follows the formula of interrupt, engage, educate, and offer.

(This article was originally published and copyrighted © by Richard Harshaw, and is re-published here with permission).

You are reading my newsletters to learn how to improve your marketing so that it gets more results. I want to share a quick analogy that may help set the proper expectations from our newsletters. If you’ve seen home remodeling shows on TV you’ll begin to see where I’m going. In one hour they show you how to rip apart the old house and completely remodel into a beautiful new one.

They take an arduous, time-consuming task like remodeling and make it look so simple that just about anyone could do it. Even people who don’t know which end of a hammer to hold watch those shows and start to think, “man that looks pretty easy. It only took that guy one hour to pour that cement, frame the living room, and tile that bathroom. I could do that!”

Well, obviously, it’s not always as easy as it looks. Getting from the “before” picture to the “after” picture takes a quite a bit of know-how, and a lot of hard work. There’s a big difference between knowing what it’s supposed to look like and knowing how to make it look like that.

Here’s the point: you’re not going to be a marketing genius after reading a series of articles, listening to a few CDs, or attending a seminar. Our marketing system is composed of multiple steps that are generally developed and implemented over the course of several months or more depending on the size and complexity of the project….just like completely remodeling a 7,000 square foot house would take longer than just laying new tile in one bathroom.

Each of the steps in the marketing system is multi-tiered and takes a lot of understanding and know-how to properly execute. We have spent thousands of hours perfecting this system to allow us to put your marketing together relatively quickly and easily. I don’t want anybody to be fooled into thinking that remodeling your house–or in this case, re-hauling your marketing program–is an easy process. It’s not. It’s easy to understand how it works, but it’s not nearly as easy to implement the strategies.

The purpose of this series of articles is NOT to train you on everything you need to know about marketing…instead, what we want to do in the time we have together is to educate you so you have a clear vision of what your marketing is supposed to look like…and just as importantly, what it’s NOT supposed to look like. I want to show you the steps and the processes and the formulas and the strategies to make it work. And most of all, I want you to see how powerful what I have to teach you is and to allow you to comprehend what the possibilities are for your company….and what a significant advantage you will hold over your competitors when you do.

So to that end, let me give you brief overview of what we’ll talk about in these articles, and then we’ll get started.

We’ll talk about what marketing is supposed to do and why most marketing doesn’t do it. I’ll explain to you exactly why everything you know about marketing and advertising won’t work most of the time.

We cover creating strategic marketing messages and executing a tactical marketing program. What’s the difference between strategic and tactical marketing? Strategic marketing has to do with what you say and how you say it. It’s the content of your message and the positioning of your brand, company, service or product. When talking about strategic marketing, I’ll go into great detail about what we call the “Marketing Equation”. The Marketing Equation is the backbone of the Monopolize Your Marketplace system – it’s essentially a roadmap to ensure you’re always saying the right thing to the right people – every time you spend money on advertising.

Your tactical marketing program has to do with the execution of the strategic marketing plan. It involves every way you deploy your advertising messages and implementing a follow up system. We call the tactical marketing program “Franchising Your Sales System” because we show you how to systematize the entire process so that your marketing program is easy to implement and that it’s always consistent. We’ll cover principles of lead generating, marketing response tools, hopper systems, knock down lists, and referral programs. We’ll also discuss what we call Maximizing and Optimizing your marketing program–which are more advanced tactical execution strategies.

The distinction between strategic and tactical marketing is huge – and something you need to be thinking about anytime you talk about your marketing. Many companies mistakenly assume that when you talk about marketing, you’re automatically talking about tactical marketing–placing ads, generating leads, sending out mailers, attending trade shows, implementing a follow up system, and other lead generating activities. This is tactical marketing only. Most people fail to realize that the strategic side of the coin–what you say in your marketing and how you say it–is almost always MORE important than the marketing medium (WHERE you say it).

If you fail to make this distinction, then you risk becoming jaded toward some forms of marketing and advertising that should be a part of your tactical plan, but that you may eliminate because they haven’t worked for you in the past. When results are less than optimal, the tendency is to blame the marketing medium (the tactical part of the plan) without any regard for how good or bad the strategy behind that marketing piece was.

I’ve heard business owners say things like, “We tried radio and it doesn’t work for this kind of business.” Or, “We sent 20,000 pieces of direct mail and only got back 5 orders – it doesn’t work!” It’s possible the conclusion is correct, but just because it didn’t work, don’t assume that it won’t work if the strategic message is written correctly. Most people don’t have the evaluation tools and the know how to judge whether a poor marketing result stems from poor strategy or the poor tactical execution. You’ll be able to make those distinctions after listening learning the Monopolize Your Marketplace system.

You’ll see as we share these principles with you that we devote the majority of these articles to strategic marketing issues. Our objective is to teach you how to innovate your business and powerfully communicate your unique advantages to your target market.

You’ll discover as you read them that regardless of the size of your company, regardless of how big or small you are, regardless of your annual marketing budget, the strategies will always work because they’re based on sound principles. On a tactical, implementation level, big companies have different needs than smaller companies, but the strategies for a $200,000 one-man accounting firm are the exact same as those for a $1 billion dollar multi-national accounting firm. Just take the time to read a few of them and you’ll see what I’m talking about. We’re different than most other marketing and advertising agencies because we have expertise in, and consult on both strategic and tactical marketing.

We’re only interested in helping businesses who want their companies to be the best they can be. We want people who have such a passion for their customers and dedication to doing things right that they’ll do whatever it takes to get good enough to deserve all the business in their area. That’s why we call it the “Monopolize Your Marketplace System”. If you’re not interested in growing your business you don’t need our services, but if you are serious about growing to fill all of your capacity we can help you get there a lot faster than you can without understanding and implementing these principles.

Remember that you can get the majority of the strategic principles discussed in these articles by listening to the 10-CD Audio Course, but these articles are designed to give you additional examples about how to implement them in your business. We think they’re valuable to every business, but always welcome your feedback so please tell us what you think anytime by subscribing and adding your comments to our BLOG.

Originally published by Marketing Sherpa

CHALLENGE: “The hardest thing in marketing is justifying what you do,” says Brett Schklar, Senior Director of Product & Marketing, Vericept Corporation.

“I work in a company that’s very focused and performance driven. If you’re smaller and your goals are to exceed expectations, you’ve got to put metrics in place.

“If you don’t, when you tell the CEO at the end of the year, ‘We’ve spent X dollars,’ he’ll say, ‘What do I get out of it?’ It’s the same conversation the CEO has with the Board of Directors.”

When Schklar joined the company last October, there were no formal lead generation systems in place to keep a steady flow through the pipeline. And there weren’t any marketing department reports he could use to figure out what campaigns had worked in the past to produce the best leads.

He had 90 days to figure it all out, set systems in place, and get the pipeline up and gushing in time for first quarter 2004 sales calls.

CAMPAIGN: First, Schklar focused on making best friends with his counterpart in the sales department. “If any marketing person in b-to-b thinks they can succeed without sales, they are full of themselves. You need a mixture of marketing and sales in everything from planning to execution.”

Specifically, Schklar made sure he and the VP Sales agreed to:

•    Define precisely what makes a good qualified lead, such as industry, company size, job title, budget, and readiness to purchase.
•    Interview and help train each other’s prospective new hires.
•    Share feedback on what clients and prospects think of campaign messaging and product positioning efforts. (Schklar notes that it’s often easier for a marketing-titled exec to get honest feedback from a prospect on product positioning and needs because the prospect doesn’t worry it will turn into a sales call.)
•    Marketing promised to only send sales leads they felt were truly qualified to be acted on. Quality was a far higher priority than quantity.
•    Sales promised to keep marketing fully in the loop on how things were going with each lead.

Next, Schklar began intense research into the marketplace, including informational interviews with:
    – current customers
    – prospects (the sales dept OKed each prior to the call)   
    – analysts at Gartner, IDC, and Meta Group

When he was finished he was ready to launch what he likes to call the “Marketing Machine.” Typical for smaller b-to-b firms, Schklar wound up personally conducting and/or overseeing a wide array of campaigns that would make a consumer-marketer’s head spin, such as:
   
   1. Public relations to generate awareness, including submitting products for trade magazine awards, issuing press releases, keeping in touch with related analysts (4-5 analyst calls per month), and lining up speaking gigs for executives at a heavy schedule of trade shows and regional/niche events.

   2. Search marketing including hiring a firm to optimize the Web site for organic listings (a never-ending process), and testing both Overture and Google PPC campaigns for keywords generating tens of thousands of impressions.

   3. Setting up a series of Webinars (at least twice a month) on a wide variety of topics relating to the product as seen through the eyes of various prospect groups (financial institutions versus educational institutions, etc.). Inviting analysts and actual clients to speak on the topics – but keeping them as non-salesly as possible to encourage pass-along and repeat attendance.

   4. Continually promoting educational offers (white papers, webinars) via ads in highly targeted third party email newsletters.

   5. Creating very-high-level events for senior execs on both the customer and prospect sides to meet and mingle with each other and become educated about a critical business issue (ie. no sales pitches). Example, an information security confab at Arizona’s famed Biltmore.

As you can imagine, hundreds of leads started flowing in. However, Schklar refused to hand over any to the sales department until they’d been through a formal “scrubbing process” (aka qualification).

Of course, AMG recommends you use a contact management system that will tabluate all of the lead generation for you and distribute them to your sales people in an organized way.  It will also manage your marketing campaign for you!  For more inforation about our Hopper System (AMG CRM) click here and let us know.

First, each lead was assigned a quality-rating based on:

•    Source – was this historically a source that produced easy-to-convert leads?
•    Industry & job title – was this a decision maker?
•    Budget & timing – did they intend to purchase soon?
•    Activity – did this individual touch Vericept multiple times (clicking on offer links, attending webinars, visiting the education site, opening the email newsletter, etc.).

An extremely qualified lead might be sent immediately to sales, but most didn’t reveal that amount of information in their contact data. So, Schklar hired a telemarketing team to pre-qualify the leads.

His notes on hiring the best telemarketers:

Tip #1. Don’t outsource if you have a fairly complex product. The product education required to handle calls for a high-level software offering probably means you’ll need to take this effort in-house.

Tip #2. Don’t hire anyone who prefers a salary/commission ratio where the salary is much higher. “It’s very much a sales-oriented role. It’s a commission-oriented position. You’ve got to find people who are hungry.”

Tip #3. Don’t advertise the position. “You’ll get a ton of resumes. You really should talk to a lot of people in the industry, network to find out who does good work.”

Tip #4. Don’t hire a former field sales rep unless they’ve got a great track record and a darn good reason for wanting to come in from the road.   Example, someone who needs to spend more time with family.

Tip #5. Definitely consider experienced telemarketers as well as field sales support reps who’d like to move a bit further up the ladder.

Tip #6. Allow reps to work remotely from home if they want to. Just require on-site training and refreshers on a regular basis.

Tip #7. Do assign a telemarketer to a particular set of field sales reps in a particular territory. They’ll form personal relations with each other and be more likely to succeed, and to give each other invaluable feedback.

After hiring his team of telemarketers, Schklar trained them on-site for more than a week, including product tech training, learning how to overcome typical objections, and live phone training. “We spent two-three days buddying up on the phones with one person listening while the other person did the calling.”

He also brought the Internet into the telemarketing program by making sure telemarketers received and acted on leads the instant a prospect submitted an online form.

And, he gave the telemarketers a series of polite emailed messages they could personalize to send prospects just prior to and after attempting to contact them.   Although Schklar doesn’t believe in hard and fast telemarketing rules, in general his team put aside any lead that didn’t respond after three calls. These leads were followed up with six months later.   

Finally, after telemarketing submitted scrubbed leads to sales, Schklar followed up to get data on ultimate success for an ongoing spreadsheet he created for internal presentations.

The spreadsheet ranked every single lead received, during every step of the process.

At a glance, you could see:

•    How many qualified leads came in the last month, quarter, year.
•    Number of leads generated per marketing tactic, cost per lead, and projected pipeline value.
•    Total growth of sales pipeline in estimated dollars by month.
•    Dated list of PR hits (each ranked by estimated value) including hotlinks to articles in question.
•    Number of leads passed to each salesperson.
•    Calls to appointments-set ratios for telemarketing.
•    Snapshots of stats from most interesting campaigns including search and trade shows.

The key was that the spreadsheet had to be easy for a non-marketing executive to skim and gain the gist of. It couldn’t require much training to understand. That way Schklar could pass it around to senior execs so they felt they were in the loop on the sales pipeline, and impressed by his progress.

(Remember, as a marketer you’re not just promoting to the marketplace, you’re also promoting your ideas and efforts to management and the sales department.)

RESULTS: We’ve seen Schklar’s sales pipeline chart and it rises on a steep, steady incline from a few million at the start of the year to tens of millions by the end of the second quarter.

In fact, the “marketing machine” increased qualified leads from fewer than 20 inbound leads from the start to hundreds just 90 days later.

More learnings:

- Roughly 50% of webinar attendees will answer the quick survey, giving feedback on the topic, but also on their own budgets and goals. So post-webinar surveys are a great way to gather lead qualification data.

You might consider making your webinar registration form lighter on questions to encourage a higher registration rate, and then mop up with a survey on the back-end.

- If your search marketing offer targets seekers of educational information on a technical or legal problem, your paid search ad may do just as well on a lower (cheaper) ranking as a higher one. Serious business information seekers will review all options carefully before clicking on either the best, or on several.

- If your telemarketer can reach a prospect when they are still on your Web site, the chances of turning that prospect into a happily qualified lead are greater. “They’re very impressed. We can help them navigate around if they are looking for certain things.”

- Very senior-level execs were easiest to reach at the outer edges of the business day — very early in the morning or later at night when their assistants weren’t around.

- “If you combine personal emails along with phone calls, you have a much higher rate of success.”

- Successful email frequency for telemarketers’ personal emails depends on what industry you are targeting. “If you’re targeting tech companies you can send more emails; manufacturing should get less emails. There’s a lot of training involved in when to send emails and when not to.”

Schklar advises you to never launch a campaign that costs a significant amount without getting prior buy-in from sales and the CEO. “Either figure out how to measure it very well, or get approval from all parties. Otherwise it’s not worth doing.”

Again, AMG recommends you use a contact management system that will tabluate all of the lead generation for you and distribute them to your sales people in an organized way.  It will also manage your marketing campaign for you!  For more inforation about our Hopper System (AMG CRM) click here and let us know.

How to Get More Opt-Ins (Plus Great Demographic Info From Visitors) With a Personalized Email

Originally published by Marketing Sherpa, but relevant and salient to your email marketing efforts today.

According to a study, “88% of online shoppers say they’re willing to spend time answering questions about their tastes and interests in exchange for personalized email content. Plus, 25% said they’d spend more than six minutes filling out an online form for personalized content”.

But, how can you create personalized email content without breaking your budget with ultra-segmentation and giant ongoing creative fees?

CHALLENGE

“Although we have a pretty big database of people opted in to our mailing list already, it’s my personal goal to continue building that,” says Meg Bruno, Marketing Director for Boston’s alternative lifestyle paper The Weekly Dig.

She has to market to two different demographics — men aged 18-34 who should read the paper, as well as restaurant and club owners who should advertise in the paper. Both aren’t wowed easily.

Local businesses are besieged by ad sales reps from loads of competing papers and sites.

And, although hordes of young men may surf WeeklyDig.com (typically for five and a half minutes per visit), they’re fed up with typing info into countless online registration forms. The pay-off has to be overwhelmingly great to convince them to hand out their email address yet again.

Bruno’s webmaster had naturally positioned an opt-in offer for a newsletter about the site on every single page. But, how could she get opt-ins from readers and fans who hadn’t clicked on that relentless offer?

She needed an additional, super-compelling opt-in offer catch those non-responding visitors.

CAMPAIGN

Young men in Boston are likely to be single, and like single men everywhere, many are likely to be a bit shy. So, instead of schmoozing in person, many in this generation to start flirting by sending the object of their desire a super-witty email that she’ll find irresistible.

Yes, but how many of us have that kind of wit at our fingertips, especially on short notice?

That’s when Bruno’s team had the big idea — why offer a personalized break-the-ice email letter service? Web site visitors could enter information about themselves and the one they yearn for in a relationship survey form. (Link to sample below.)

The form asked questions such as “what’s your favorite restaurant?” that were equally handy for crafting a personalized letter and for impressing potential sponsors with real-life (aggregated) data.

The form data then automatically posted to a private extranet that a team of freelance writers visited daily. A managing editor sorted through the queries, matching writer to form to get the best results. Generally within 24 hours a newly written letter would go out. (If one writer couldn’t make the deadline, the system shifted responsibility to the next writer.)

While 24 hours is a long time to wait for an automated letter, it’s the perfect length for a personal letter. In fact, if your turn-around speed is incredibly fast, some consumers might doubt the authenticity of that all-critical human element.

The subject line varied slightly depending on whether the sender wanted to be anonymous or not:

Sender Identified: Hey [RECIPIENT], [SENDER] has sent you a message from the Virtual Wingman!

Anonymous Sender: Hey [RECIPIENT], you have a message from the Virtual Wingman!

Once the writer got started, each letter took between one and 15 minutes to craft. (Link below to sample.) Total cost, about $7 per opt-in name including the registration form and personal letter service. It’s just a bit higher than the $5 per name many emailers pay for data-heavy co-registrations from name-brand sites.

The system had two key rules to avoid abuse:

Rule #1. Letters would only be sent on behalf of live, confirmed email addresses. “We send a confirmation letter to your e-mail address (to ensure you’re really you, and not Gary from Accounting).”

Rule #2. “We are a virtual wingman, not a virtual stalker. You only get to send one message to each recipient each three-month period.”

Rule #3. The privacy policy was clearly spelled out, plus new users had to check a box to indicate they’d read and understood the privacy info.

Rule #4. No hateful messages would be sent, and the writers could decline to send particular messages.

RESULTS

The Virtual Wingman offer launched on WeeklyDig.com this summer. “Our visitors love the hip, smart humor in the greetings,” says Bruno. “And, our sales force gains an instant edge in the local market.”

60% of Virtual Wingman users are men with an average age of 27. 4% of WeeklyDig.com’s monthly site visitors click to the page to learn more about the service. 8% of those who read about the service then fill out the entire (fairly long) form to send out a personalized email message.

About 10% of all users are fakers — inputting an email that’s not their own hoping to “punk” someone. Naturally those letters are not sent.

To see a demonstration of our Email Marketing System and for detailed examples about how to make this work for you, contact me at (707) 251-0346.