Archives for February 2012

A Simple Relationship Marketing Example

February 20, 2012 by

Say you have a restaurant that is open 7 days a week for both lunch and dinner. There are 730 lunches and dinners in a year. As the restaurant owner you could get someone to eat all of those meals at your restaurant. Not likely, but you might be able to get them to eat with you once a month or more.

In ‘transactional marketing think’ you would see each customer as worth a single meal where in relationship marketing each customer is worth up to 730 meals a year for many years. So a relationship marketer would invest to get the customer to come in the first time. Then invest in forming a relationship with each customer, so that they returned many times until they moved away.

A great relationship marketing example is sending your customers a printed, monthly, customer newsletter.

A newsletter that shows up every month at the same time of the month 12 times a year, just like their favourite magazine. They will see that you as the business owner want to have a relationship with the customer and over time they will prefer to patronise your business to the exclusion of other businesses.

How many times has someone remarked to you that they prefer one store over another simply because the staff are friendly, polite and courteous, despite the other store offering cheaper prices?  A relationship marketing example trumping transactional marketing.

Filed Under: Relationship Marketing

What is Relationship Marketing?

February 20, 2012 by

An example of relationship marketing that everyone could learn from.

So… What is relationship marketing? – well… Relationship Marketing is marketing based around the long term value of the customer. Many marketers often overlook lifetime value of the customer and focus solely on marking a sale.

Relationship marketing is based on the idea that the customer is the single most important asset class a business can have. If you have no customers then nobody is going to buy your products and services… Businesses don’t make any money until a customer buys something.

Customers can buy from a business many times. They can also buy different things. Using relationship marketing will lead to a longer and more profitable clients over the long term compared with using a simple transactional marketing model.

Filed Under: Relationship Marketing

Hope is Not a Customer Retention Strategy

February 20, 2012 by

Customer retention is the new acquisition. More and more these days customers are willing to shop around and find a better deal or not buy at all. Many business owners know that customer loyalty is dwindling but have not put together a customer retention strategy to compensate.

The smart business owner who is willing to focus on keeping what they already have will be at an advantage over their competitors who ‘hope’ that their customers come back.

McDonalds has systems for everything. A system to open the restaurant, a system to close the restaurant and systems to everything in between – that is why there is Hamburger U. So that you can learn The McDonalds way. What you don’t realise is McDonalds also has a marketing system a way to get new customers in and to get existing customers to come back – they have a complex and very sophisticated customer retention strategy.

You don’t need anything as complex as what McDonalds uses. But considering the economic climate you do need a customer retention strategy. It will be far cheaper to spend 50 or 60 dollars a year to keep an existing customer rather than spend hundreds of dollars or possibly more getting the phone to ring with a new customer.

Think about it for a minute. If you are unwilling to spend a pittance keeping the customer then why would you bother to go out and get them in the first place?

In the report “Getting More Repeat Business and Referrals Simply and Easily in the Next 12 Months,” you can read about a simple customer retention strategy that almost any business can implement. Yet most seldom do.

Filed Under: Customer Retention

Dating & Marketing have More in Common Than You’d Think.

February 3, 2012 by

dating-and-marketing-they-have-much-more-in-common-than-youd-thinkI was listening to some interesting recordings from a speaker in the ‘seduction’ industry by the name of David DeAngelo (aka Marketing Expert Eben Pagan).

The material I was listening to was all about how a man can present himself in a certain way in order to create attraction and get a womans phone number or set a date with them or get into a sexual encounter or a dating relationship.

What I noticed was that there were a lot of similarities between presenting your business to attract a client as there were presenting a man to attract a woman. In particular:

  • Being unique, interesting and different
  • Expressing confidence in yourself / your product / your business
  • Not coming across as needy
  • Being true to yourself and having clear ideas of what you want / don’t want. (not being a push-over and bending over to a clients/womans every need)
  • Limit your availability (urgency and scarcity)
  • Let them see other people having fun and being attracted to you (social proof, testimonials etc.)

But apart from just attraction, the thing I found really interesting was when they talked about ‘keeping’ a woman, it was all about building a relationship, entertaining them and keeping them wanting more. It reminded me a lot about the customer retention work that Zac and I have been doing lately.

Consider this story.

Peter is a young man, not looking for any serious or deep relationship, just looking for some fun with women –  his goal in particular is sexual encounters.

Now… Peter spent a fortune on clothes, shoes, teeth whitening, a fancy car and many other things to make himself feel attractive and boost his confidence. He went out every weekend for months before he got a girls number, despite his persistent efforts. After getting her number, he went on numerous dates to restaurants, fun attractions and various other activities (which he paid for) in order to ‘get to know’ this woman. Finally, after about 10 dates, she was finally ready to sleep with him… SCORE!

It took a lot of time and effort and money to attract a woman, build trust and attraction to the point where she was ready to sleep with him.

This is similar to the trials and tribulations we face as business owners: investing in marketing and advertising, polishing our sales techniques, making sure our business is presented professionally. Then we go out and prospect for clients, we then spend a lot of time, energy and money following up with them and finally at the very end we sometimes get the sale… SCORE!

But what most business owners do is what I have often heard referred to as… WHAM. BAM. THANK YOU MAAM!

They take their clients money, say thank you, then move on. Then they start all over again, they go and find a new prospect, spend all that money, time and effort again following up and advertising and hope they get another sale.

If we move back to our story about Peter. – He too could act like the typical business, have his way, say thanks for the good night, then go and start all over again trying to find a new woman.

But there is an alternative… he could call up his lady friend, ask her for a date next friday and chances are, for investing a couple of hours and the price of a meal he’d probably score again! And this sort of relationship could probably go on for months or years!

Like relationships, in Business, once you have reached that point, where a client likes and trusts you and has purchased from you before, it takes only a fraction of the time, money and effort to get them to buy from you again.  This process can be acheived simply by keeping in regular contact with your clients and making them feel appreciated.

A monthly printed customer newsletter is a great way to keep in contact with your customers and build a solid relationship with them. If you’re interested in getting a newsletter started in your business, give us a call on 1300 120 106 and we’ll have a chat about how we can help get you started.

Filed Under: Blog

Is Being in the Company of Big Spenders Hitting Your Pocket?

February 3, 2012 by

Keeping hold of your cash can feel difficult at the best of times, but when you’re in the company of big spenders, it can become all but impossible.

Although you might not normally be the type to be influenced by the behavior of others, there are actually three main reasons why people are sometimes tempted to emulate the spending habits of others.

  1. The “keeping up with the Jones’s” effect.  They don’t want to be seen as any less affluent than the people they associate with and so they not only match the latter’s spending, but even outdo it.
  2. Watching others spend freely gives them a sense of entitlement, even though they may not be able to afford the expenditure.  They tend to think, “If they can, then why shouldn’t I be able to?”
  3. The loss of self-control.  Although it’s often easy for people when they’re alone to talk themselves out of spending their hard-earned cash on things they don’t really need, being in the company of big spenders can tempt some people to think only of today and deal with the consequences later.

Think about the people you associate with and whether any of them have any of these effects on you.  If so, you might want to think carefully about the situations in which you meet with them to reduce your chances of letting yourself be led astray.

Filed Under: ezine

Are You Ready to Meet Your Social Match?

February 3, 2012 by

Whether MagnetU catches on to quite the same extent as social media sites such as Facebook remains to be seen, but for many people, the appeal of being alerted every time they are in the vicinity of someone who has the same “social desires” as themselves will undoubtedly be enormous.

MagnetU describes itself as the first real-world street network; essentially this little device acts as “a bridge between your online digital life and the real world” by broadcasting your social media profile to everyone around you.  Whether you are looking for the perfect love match, want to meet people with similar hobbies or are more interested in making business contacts, all you need to do is go to MagnetU.com, fill in your social desires, and then sign in to Facebook, Twitter and other social network sites to receive alerts each time a “compatible” individual passes nearby.  You can even change which particular social desire you wear at any given time so that you can look for your soul mate while you’re out socializing and a potential business partner when you’re at a business conference.

Although critics of MagnetU point out that machines are notoriously bad at people-matching and suggest that society already faces enough distractions from social media without this addition, it could just turn out to be another one of those technological necessities that we can’t do without, if only because everyone else is using it!

Filed Under: ezine

Golf – More Than Just a Long Walk for No Good Reason!

February 3, 2012 by

The game of golf is described by critics as “a long walk for no good reason,” but actually there are a number of reasons why taking up the sport could help keep you in tip-top condition.

First of all, of course golf does involve a good deal of walking, and walking is one of the best forms of exercise that we can get.  In fact, a round of golf will typically see you having to walk for around four miles – and that’s if you play well!  Keep sending the ball off in entirely the wrong direction and you could probably add an appreciable distance on top of that.  The great thing about it, though, is that if you’re engrossed in the game, you barely even notice how far you have traveled on foot.

Not only does golf give your legs a good workout, the arms and upper body get plenty of exercise with all those long (and hopefully accurate) drives down the fairway.  Like many sports, the focus and concentration also mean that it’s good mental exercise.

Many people take up golf when they are in their 40s and older, and in fact the older age groups derive tremendous benefit from the workout that they get from the sport by increasing muscle strength and bone density, two things that often dwindle naturally with age.

Filed Under: ezine

How To Get Yourself Unstuck

February 3, 2012 by

It doesn’t matter if you’re an artist, an inventor, or a shoe salesman. There are times when you’re stuck, unable to move forward with a big project or something on your to-do list.

Here are four ways to get going:

  1. Just start. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But you can’t get moving until you start to move. It doesn’t matter what you do; grab a pen, contribute a thought, start a conversation. The momentum will follow.
  2. Get in touch. Sometimes, taking a deep breath and getting in touch with what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish can help you identify the one thing that might be getting in your way.
  3. Ask for help. Sometimes you need to get out of your own way to see things clearly. Ask the people around you for some advice on what to do first. Allowing yourself to detach from your own thinking and consider someone else’s perspective may give you the shift you need.
  4. Take a walk. Taking time away can open new ways of thinking. Go for a walk, outside if possible. Notice your surroundings, listen to nature, and recharge your brain.

Sometimes just one of these techniques will do the trick; other times it may take a combination. Whatever helps you get unstuck is fine. The point here is to take one step outside the space called “being stuck” and see what happens.

Filed Under: ezine

Lessons From the Grandfather Of Copywriting.

February 3, 2012 by

the-only-man-to-be-loved-by-both-direct-response-marketers-and-ad-agenciesFor those of you not in the loop, every serious student of advertising eventually finds their way back to Claude C. Hopkins. Almost every great marketer and copywriter says the same thing about Claude. He founded modern advertising and the principles he codified still work today.

Claude took his ideas from carnival pitchmen and applied them to copywriting. Hopkins’ principles were laid down in 1923 in a slender book called ‘Scientific Advertising.’ Yes. Advertising was a science before 1923.

David Ogilvy said of Scientific Advertising, “Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times.”

In my opinion Scientific Advertising is ‘the manual’ for internet marketing even though its 90th anniversary is coming up. The speed to work through the science is all that has changed. We can do in days what it took Hopkins and Co months to achieve.

Keeping that in mind, I thought I’d share some pithy nuggets of Hopkins.

“The uninformed would be staggered to know the amount of work involved in a single ad. Weeks of work sometimes. The ad seems so simple – and it must be simple to appeal to simple people. But, at the back of that ad may lie reams of data, volumes of information, months of research.”

“People don’t buy from clowns.”

“The time has come when advertising in some hands has reached the status of a science. It is based on fixed principles and is reasonably exact. The causes and effects have been analyzed until they are well understood.”

“A person who desires to make an impression must stand out in some way. Being eccentric, being abnormal is not a distinction to covet. By doing admirable things in a different way gives one a great advantage. So with salesmen, in person or in print… There is refreshing uniqueness, which enhances which we welcome and remember. Fortunate is the salesman who has it.”

“Almost any questions can be answered cheaply, quickly and finally by a Test Campaign. That is the way to answer them, not by arguments around a table. Go to the court of last resort: the buyers of your product…”

Scientific Advertising is available as a free download… It is worth getting Scientific Advertising in compilation with Hopkins’ Autobiography My Life in Advertising. The stories in it bring life to his principles much more vividly.

Filed Under: Blog

3 Paths to become an Obvious Expert in Your Industry!

February 3, 2012 by

mlm-personal-branding-now2-300x225There is an ever increasing amount of competition in every business category. Can you believe that internet marketing is now being sold door-to-door and on the phone by Sensis media agents. More and more so-called experts are cropping up every day. Many are in it for a quick buck.

Nobody can really tell the good from the bad until the results are in. By then it is too late. You’ve paid your money and they could be long gone looking for the next sucker.

In the face of this glut of competition you can take some steps to begin to differentiate yourself from the competition. It starts with taking a unique position in the market place. This allows you to automatically slice through the competition simply by being different.

You need to take some steps to make yourself appear ‘long term’ and ‘here to stay’ to your prospective customers. It will differentiate you from the glut of other options. Ideally you need to demonstrate that you are the expert for what you do and nobody does what you do, as well as you do it, in the way that you do it.

Generally speaking, the surest 3 ways to build credibility are:

  1. To be able to speak on your topic from Stage. Respect is conferred on every professional speaker. After all, ‘nobodies’ aren’t let up on stage now are they? Being up there makes you seem like an expert in your industry, not just some clown who is out to make a few bucks before the market wises up.
  2. Wite and be published. There is a natural degree of respect conferred to authors the same as there is for speakers. Being published in trade magazines, blogs or even your own book will bring huge credibility. You’ll be recognised as the ‘go-to’ guy in your industry simply because you have a book.
  3. Publish your own newsletter. Newsletters are a fast track to expert status. You must have something important to say if you are publishing a newsletter on the subject. Simply putting out a newsletter every month means that you have a degree of permanence and respectability that other business owners in your market aren’t going to have. You automatically appear to be in the game for the long haul. You know what you are talking about simply because you are putting out a newsletter. Especially when nobody else in your industry is. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Credibility is the magic ingredient that lets you charge more for your services and makes customers believe what you say. In the face of commoditisation, being a credible expert in what you do will make you stand out from your competition.

When you look at the 3 options for becoming credible, a monthly customer newsletter is probably the easiest one to get started with. It only needs to be 4 pages and out 12 times a year. That is easier to write than a book – some 40,000 words are needed to fill a 200 page book. For most people a four page newsletter is less daunting than learning how to effectively speak from stage which can take years to master.

You need to differentiate yourself from the competition. The humble newsletter is probably the most direct and fastest route to being the obvious expert in your industry. You can have a free no obligation consultation on how to start publishing your own printed monthly customer newsletter: – call 1300 120 006.

Filed Under: Blog
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