Taking your ideas for a ride – or why I can’t write a book (Part 2)

On 20 September I blogged about my client and riding instructor, Debbie, who thought I was joking when I suggested that she write a book. (Click here to read Part 1.) I knew it would be a great way to promote her services and to share her knowledge with some of the thousands of horse owners in the country.

Well, after Debbie stopped laughing, she agreed to spend half a day with me and Sarah Williams, The Book Consultant. Sarah has published many books herself and now helps business owners to write and publish their own books. She’s working on a clever process that will allow even more people to get the ideas out of their head and onto paper. Unsurprisingly, she’s writing a book about it and when it’s out, I’ll let you know. Without giving away too much at this stage, Sarah is developing a specialised thinking and planning process. She avoids putting too much structure into ideas too early on, keeping the structure as loose and provisional as possible, for as long as possible. The way she did this with Debbie was to start by asking her what riding is all about. The negatives and positives all went onto a flip chart – all carefully colour coded. Then she asked Debbie about the process she goes through with new clients (riders) and again the answers went onto the flip chart. All this took a couple of hours and really gave us time to explore the ideas and issues in plenty of detail.

Then we took a break for lunch (and a glass of wine – very important for the creative process!) After lunch we went back to the flip charts and suddenly things started dropping into place. From all the ideas and the loose structure, we could see chapters and sections of the book start to emerge. At the start of the day, if we’d asked Debbie what she wanted to write about, I don’t think she’d have known. But when Sarah asked her now, she could see quite clearly the important aspects that she wanted to write about. Out of the colours and words on the flip charts – out of the provisional structure – came a plan and a process for the writing. How clever is that!

Many people who want to write a book just don’t know where to start. 95% of the people who think about writing a book don’t ever do it. If you really want to write a book – to promote what you do and build your reputation or just to share your ideas – then don’t be one of that number. Get in touch and Sarah and I will see what we can do to help you get the book written and then promoted to the world.

The importance of good design

Alice

There is nothing more off-putting than going to a networking group, finding an interesting prospect, asking for their card and receiving something that is obviously from Alta Vista, when your initial concept was that they were a thoroughly professional outfit successfully doing business left, right and centre.

How you present yourself shouldn’t only be limited to the promotional pitch you give, the clothes you wear, your manner and the wonderful ideas you can provide. I remember at one particular networking group, a flashy dentist wearing a wonderful Italian suit gave me a thoroughly beautiful business card, and I was suitably impressed. I asked if she had any other literature, and she dug out a leaflet that was obviously hand-made, freshy gathered from her office printer, and badly laid out on sub-standard paper. Hmmm.

Using a professional graphic design company can make or break a business’s portrayal to the outside world. Only yesterday I noticed a good friend of mine had changed her business’s logo. Although the original was fun and easily comprehensible, it didn’t have that ‘edge’ that would set it apart as a successful and knowledgeable business, of which it was. It had been transformed into a much more modern, lively, stimulating and informative version. I also noticed that the graphic designers had taken the trouble to add in important elements for the client, resulting in a truly personal and appropriate promotional aid.

This is important if you want to progress with your business, as first impressions can make a big difference. Our electricity company wrote to us to say our electric meter needed to be updated, and they included the logo of the subcontractor doing the job on their letter. This logo was so obviously hand-made, we doubted the validity of the proposal, and rang up the electricity company to see if it wasn’t a hoax. I wonder if the bad quality of this logo also put off other customers, who might prevent the company in question from entering their premises, all because they didn’t put forward a professional appearance in their communcations.

So take a good look at how your company portrays itself via its logo and printed material. Taking the trouble to spend a bit extra to get a professional job done might make all the difference towards winning a proposal, influencing a client to do business, and creating a good impression at a networking event.

How not to do direct mail – part 2

Chantal

About 18 months ago, we got in touch with a company that sells mailing lists, to see if they could provide us with useful contacts for one of our clients. At the time, we had a lady called Lisa working with us.

Recently we received a letter from the mailing list company, with words and phrases like ‘Targeted’, ‘Focused’ and ‘Up to Date’ printed all over the envelope. It was addressed to Lisa; she moved to a different job over a year ago!

If a huge mailing house, that specialises in selling business data, can’t get it right, who can?! How difficult is it to keep in touch with your clients and prospects, to check that their details are up to date? How much money could you save by updating information before putting large envelopes in the post?

Before the digital age, I was a big fan of direct mail. I used it a great deal during the first couple of years of my business, to find new clients. I looked up marketing and PR companies online and then called them, to ask for the name of the best person to send information to. I posted them a letter and a leaflet, none of which ever came back with ‘not known at this address’ on them. Then I made more phone calls to arrange appointments. On the limited budget of a start up business, it worked really well. I had the time to do the research and saved a lot of money by getting the correct details. Some people I spoke to didn’t need my help, which saved me from sending them anything in the first place.

Direct mail still works if you do it properly. Spend time doing some research before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard!) and you won’t fill up your letterbox (or inbox) with returns. Instead, you’ll get to speak to people who are interested and want to work with you.

How not to do direct mail

Chantal

“Dear Sir or Madam” – if you really want to get my attention, make a phone call first to find out my name, instead of addressing me that way.

“We currently have available an exceptional new business person who is immediately available” –  but I’m not looking to recruit a ‘new business person’.

“In his previous role … he won business from companies like Budweiser, Oracle and Dell” – so where’s the proof that he can win business from SMEs?

“If you would like more information … do not hesitate to contact me” – if you’re that interested in working with me (or finding a job for this superstar) shouldn’t you be phoning me? Oh, I forgot, you can’t because you don’t know my name!!

If you’re going to write to companies to tell them about your services, do a little bit of research first and you can save yourself a great deal of time, money and effort.

Why boring adverts don’t work

Alice

Advertising is having a difficult time at the moment, as there is a ‘rumour’ going about that it doesn’t work. Well, that is true if your advert is rubbish, and believe me, there are plenty of rubbish adverts out there!

Chantal gave me one to comment on yesterday, which was particularly bad. For starters it was jam-packed full of words in a tiny font. Why do companies have the urge to stuff practically everything in to the ads that they think is important? After all, that’s what websites are for, and your advert should direct interested parties to a well-written landing page that is relevant to that particular advert.

Adverts should concentrate on a specific area of your business that you think your customers need or want the most. Do some research to find out what the biggest problem your clients have, and then tailor one of your solutions so it is ‘ad-worthy’, and base your ad-copy around that. The idea is to relate to your customers’ pain by empathising with them, provide a solution to attract their attention, and incentivise them take action to go to your landing webpage and make contact to find out more.

If you’re worried about not promoting the rest of the things your company does, that doesn’t matter. Once you’ve got the customer across your threshhold, both virtually or physically, then you can practice your sales patter to direct their attention to what else you have to offer.

As well as the tiny boring text within this advert, there were these unpromising aspects:

• a particularly uninspiring headline – why not pose a question or statement that is attractive to a potential customers based around their problem?
• unrelenting large blocks of writing – alleviate this by breaking the text up with bullet points for more emphasis; it can also aid those that quickly scan adverts as it highlights the most important elements.
• don’t conform with a picture of a smiling lady, that is so passé it almost has the opposite effect it is intended for; that concept went out with the last century – good layout is better than inappropriate imagery.
• stuffing a tiny unnoticeable version of your logo at the bottom – the position good, but make it larger and combine it with an equally large URL of your landing page with the incentivised call to action; giving your customers something to do as well as read all your advert will ensure a much larger response rate.

The 2010 Christmas card awards

Chantal

I’ve already awarded the prize for the 2010 worst Christmas card – click here to read that blog post if you missed it.

There are a few more awards to present. The award for the Pointless Waste of Time and Money card goes to a printing company not far from my office. The image on the front of the card is made up of photos of people – I assume they’re the people who work there but I don’t know because I’ve never met any of them. Inside the card, there’s no name, so we have to assume that the card is for everyone in our office. The ‘signature’ has been pre-printed into the card and says “from everyone at XYZ Printing” There’s no name, so I still don’t know who works there or who I should contact if I want a print quote. OK so they’ve shown me part of their printing expertise, but is that enough? Their card doesn’t tell me that they treat their customers as individuals.

On a much more positive note, the Clever Use of a Christmas Card award goes to Viney Associates. Being a graphic designer, Anthony has created a clever and amusing design for the card. Rachel has applied her marketing brain to creating some clever copy and to using the reverse card to tell me when their office will be closed for Christmas.

And the award for my Favourite Christmas Card goes to my friend Sue from Springboard Consultancy. A handmade card, decorated with a simple felt pen drawing and stuck on sparkly bits. Inside is a personalised, hand written message. She’s even written her new address by hand and a fun copyright message on the back.  She told me that she spent a whole day making cards for her friends and colleagues and I can see how much care and attention she put into my card.

Now I’m not suggesting you start thinking about this year’s Christmas cards just yet, but when the time comes, think carefully about what you send, how much time and effort you’re going to commit and what impression you’re going to create. And if you can’t wait until Christmas, think about other times when you could send a card (birthday, thank you for a referral or a cleint’s support) and the effect you want it to have.

What’s the best marketing you’ve done this year?

Chantal

What marketing have you done that has really worked? What have you done that hasn’t been a great success? What was your best effort and what will you be doing more of less of next year?

2010 has been a busy year for Appletree so we’ve taken a look at the different marketing we’ve done, with different levels of success. Hopefully it will give you some ideas for different marketing to try out next year.

Have a party. In August 2010 Appletree turned 10. We celebrated by inviting our clients, friends and suppliers to a Birthday Party in September. We put a marquee on the lawn outside the office and arranged for some delicious food to be served. We caught up with people we’d not seen for ages and introduced people to potential clients. What can you celebrate next year?

Do something for someone else. Each year, everyone in our business can spend a week of their paid time with a project for a local community. Dianne helped organise a volunteers’ day in Newbury, persuading many local shops to take part – taking to strangers is not something she used to enjoy doing. I will be visiting a prison, to spend time with people who might not have anyone to listen to them, without passing judgement. Alice will be listening to people at the local elderly care centre and writing down some of their stories.

We’re doing this Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to improve our skills and to give something back to local community. Being able to tell people about the work we’ve been doing is an added bonus for our marketing. For your own CSR Review and Report, click here.

Do more networking. We bought another business this year – a networking company called Ladies That Lunch (and men too). Networking is one of the best ways to promote businesses and running the meetings allows us to share out networking experience, while bringing people together. We have big plans for next year, with new groups opening up. Take a look at http://www.ladiesthatlunch.co.uk/ to see when and where you can network with us.

Write a book. I’ve been wanting to write a book for a long time and this year, with the 10^th birthday of the business, I got the idea to write a book about how to survive 10 years in business. Each chapter is divided into a number of sections and each one will be available to buy separately next year as a workbook and video.

Beginning to blog. In February we launched our blog. Clients had been asking about blogging – should they be doing it? What’s the best system to use? How does it work? So we started testing it. We now post three times a week, sharing advice and ideas with the world. We linked our blog to our Twitter account followers hear about new posts. Now we can set up blogs for clients and give them advice on how best to use a blog to market their business. Click here to find out how we do it.

So what has been our best marketing this year? We’ve done a lot of different things and there’s been no one thing that has brought the best results. What has worked best has been the integration of is all. Our CSR has been talked about in our blog; we talk about the book at networking meetings; we share marketing and networking tips on Twitter. Our marketing pulls in the same direction so in 2011, whatever marketing we decide to do, we’ll be making sure it’s all integrated and working together.

How to sell a book without selling a book

Chantal

My book has been rejected by two publishers! I’m dismayed and I’m giving up!

No, not really. There are plenty of other publishers out there who I can approach and someone will, eventually see sense and give me a publishing deal. (Imagine being the person who originally turned down JK Rowling and her first book about a wizard!)

So until I do get a publishing deal, I’m going to do something else with my book. I’ve planned 10 chapters, each with 4 sections; at least one section per chapter has a marketing focus. I’m going to turn each section into a workbook, starting with the theory – the meat of the section – and follow it with questions to be answered and activities to carry out. For example, the section on ‘Grown up marketing’ will encourage readers to look at what marketing they can do, to make the right impression, when starting up a business. As you can’t really get away with homemade business cards, what do you need to do to get them produced professionally?  There will be tips on the best way of doing things – according to my opinion and experience.

Each section will be available to purchase and download, from my website, with a new chapter being added each month. Customers will be able to buy individual sections or whole chapters, selecting specific topics and the help they need.

Each month I’ll be writing a newsletter, based on the section of the current chapter that focuses on marketing. The newsletter will be used to tell my readers about the latest section and when it will be available. There will also be blogs about that subject throughout the month. All integrated and planned – which should make the writing easier!

Chapter one is about getting started from the ground up, with sections asking if you’ve got what it takes, how you do proper marketing from the outset, how to find the motivation to keep going and what to do with advice you’re given. It should be ready to download (and watch, because I’m going to video someone talking through each section too) in February 2011. The newsletter, about grown up marketing, will go out in February to promote the chapter. In January we’ll create the video version, and this month we’ll turn the words, which have been written, into great looking PDFs.

Chapter two will go through exactly the same process, so that it’s ready to buy in March. And so we’ll go on, all through 2011. Now that I’ve told you that’s what I’ll be doing, I don’t have any excuses, do I?! I’d better get with turning Chapter One into some PDFs!

How to get customers to notice you

Alice

Many people consider advertising to be a waste of money, because they do not get any business from it. They spend a lot on the design to make it look good, and even negotiate where it is placed in the publication for maximum effect, and yet the punters don’t come flocking in.

This can be very demoralising, especially when your advert is placed alongside others that are trying to promote the same product or service. (This is particularly poignant in those local magazines that plop on your doormat once a month.)

If you took a step back and looked carefully, you would probably notice that all the ads are saying the same thing: “This is the company’s logo and name, this is how wonderful we are, this is what we do, this is where we are located, this is our contact details”.

Sometimes doing what everybody else is doing is not a good thing. To grab a customer’s attention you need to be different. You need to analyse what is their problem or what do they need/want, and you need to show empathy with the customer’s predicament. You then need to provide the solution or answer.

If your company provides answers to lots of problems, don’t list them all (that’s incredibly boring, and there probably won’t be enough room in the advert), do some research to find out what’s the most important thing people are looking for in relation to your industry. If your marketing message hits home what the customers are most likely to be thinking about – maybe it’s seasonal, fashionable, most popular, a gap in the market, your expertise – it will relate to them more and you are more likely to be noticed above the others.

Also, the first area of the advert that is noticed is the top left. This should not be where your company logo and name should be, it’s where your main marketing message should take pride of place. Get the customers on your side, make them feel comfortable, and let them appreciate your empathy with their need before they read on.

Then you should list the reasons why customers should do business with you. These are the benefits they will experience from your company’s service and the products you provide or instal, and how much their lives will be improved. It does not mean listing how wonderful you are and all the special features your product or service has; they may be important to you, but the customer only thinks about themselves and how it will affect them. List feelings rather than facts, or lifestyle rather than performance.

And then you must tell the customer what to ‘do’ after you’ve given them all this information. Never assume they will automatically pick up the phone or look you up online. Why should they, if they have no compelling reason? What incentive do they have to make contact? What will they get for nothing if they leave their details with you? What special, timebound deal with entice them to immediately fumble for their mobiles or go straight to your special landing page on your website?

And when you have put together this totally unmissable incentive (which should be part of your marketing planning activities done way in advance of setting the advert), make sure your contact details are LARGE and clear, not stuffed somewhere at the bottom as if they were an afterthought. Outline the special offer equally clearly, and add in a post-script at the bottom – a very powerful tool to entice the customer to take the bait.

And to be able to measure the performance of this advert, or within its position within a series (which does have more impact because one issue may not be enough to capture your customers’ attention; drip-feed marketing on a long-term basis will finally wear them down!), create a method of collecting data from reactions: Google Analytics for your special landing page, database programmes for collecting the names and emails of those participating in your special offer or downloading your relevant report or e-book, even having a special patter ready for those customers who ring up (maybe to a special telephone line) to find out how they heard about your company and what they are interested in.

Isn’t this better than blindly putting an advert in with the same copy as everybody else, with the vain hope someone might possibly see it and respond?

5 top tips for writing adverts

Alice

During a recession one of the main marketing activities to suffer is advertising. This is not surprising, as most adverts fail because the people that write and/or design them don’t understand the psychology of their customers and how they think or react. This statement may cause many tempers to rise or collars to become suddenly warm, but when I looked at a local magazine that regularly plops through my letterbox, stuffed to the gills with adverts from tradesmen and services all plying their wares in the vain hope that someone, somewhere, might bite, I sighed deeply, as only two adverts in the entire publication had any chance of success.

There are many factors that experts have up their sleeves that make advertising successful, and those that know these nuggets of information are certainly the more richer because of them. Adverts on the telly are far more sophisticated than printed versions, especially as they cost so much more, but there are certain elements that ring true in all adverts that ‘work’ that I can share with you.

1. How well known are you really? Only extremely well-known brands such as Coca Cola and Harrods can advertise with just their name or logo. One ad I saw, which I knew would fail, comprised of a beautiful woman wearing an alternative to bra-straps, accompanied with only the brand name and the URL. I knew this wasn’t well known enough for people to understand, recognise or even react to it, and the URL itself was almost obscure in its positioning and size. There was no description or even any factor that could make that ad succeed, yet the owner was especially proud of it.

2. Don’t put your logo at the top. Most of the ads in that magazine did this. And why not? – I hear you say. This is a mind-set of businesses that needs to be reversed: the customer is much more important than your business, so you should be addressing them first and putting your business details, logo, business name and contact details, at the bottom of the ad.  You need to put the focus of your advert at the top, with carefully composed headlines to capture your customers’ attention, to make them think they are the most important and that you really care about them.

3. Work with your customers’ problems. Do marketing research to find out what your customers need or, ideally, want. Work on the pain your customers experience by acknowledging it, empathising with it, and providing the solution for it. Again this is working on the concept that the customer comes first, and having established the problem and then the solution, you need to work on the benefits your customers will gain by buying your product or taking up your service. Forget your business’s features: 25 years’ worth of experience may not cut the ice if that experience cannot be proven to be any good; why not turn that feature into a benefit, such as the fact that over 500 people have been helped to success within the firm’s 25 years of existence – this has far more impact, especially if they say they can do the same for you!

4. Does your advert have a focus? Raising brand awareness is all very well, and so many of that doorstep magazine’s ads were doing just this, but a page of four adverts for plumbers all saying virtually the same thing will make it very hard for you to choose between them. But what if one of them focused on installing kitchens as a speciality? Having a niche in which you can perform to an exemplary standard is much better than doing everything just so-so. Grow a reputation as “the kitchen-plumber”, and you can mention later you also do bathrooms and central heating systems. And offering special deals, such as on call-out fees, could also be a draw as long as it’s cost effective, both to you and your customers.

5. Finally, say it loud and proud. Having banged on before about putting your business details at the bottom of the ad, don’t forget that you’ve got to make them clear. Provide a call to action to incite a response, such as a code to quote for a discount (measurable), an early bird offer before a certain date (timed incentive), or even a command that they call this number (‘please’ sounds desperate), made large and noticeable so the customer doesn’t waste time searching for it before they lose interest. This also goes for any other details, such as a URL for a special landing webpage specifically designed for that ad, so you can provide more information (such as testimonials) that cannot be fitted within your advertising space, and allows them to either pay online or email you to make an appointment.

There’s so much more than bunging up your logo, stating your profession, having a reasonably relevant picture and half-heartedly adding in your contact details somewhere as an afterthought when it comes to designing an advert. What does yours look like?