Marketing Your Small Business Through Generating Referral and Repeat Business
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Jan 29, 2009
Making Your Small Business Marketing Dollars Go Further by Generating Word-of-Mouth, Referral and Repeat Business
Relationship building is possibly the most effective way to market a small business these days. This is part one in a two part series that will give you a ton of ideas about how to market your small business through generating word-of-mouth, referral and repeat business:
Combat the clutter that your clients and customers filter out every day. We are so bombarded by marketing messages. Not one of us doesn’t experience information overload – nearly every day. There isn’t a lack of information out there about anything. In fact, the opposite is true today. If your business isn’t growing like you want it to, it’s not because there exists a lack of information about your product or service. It’s because of a lack of meaning.
Information by itself has become meaningless without context. The context you must create as the person responsible for marketing your small business: a relationship between you and your prospects and customers that communicates trust and delivers value. Without that context you are just noise. And your prospects have their guard up and are tuning you out.
Your job is to gain their trust so that you can help them cut through all the noise and make a decision. It’s not enough to get their attention with empty gimmicks and buzz creating marketing and advertizing. There has to be a meaningful, relevant and emotion-provoking context that carries the message you put out if you want it to resonate with people.
Your prospects have been conditioned to tune you out and mistrust you. Example: I know a roofer who, upon completion of a project, found he had many shingles left over. He looked around the neighborhood and noticed that many of the other houses were missing shingles of the same kind and color. Not having another job to get to that day, and wanting to get rid of the extra shingles, he decided to offer to replace the missing shingles on the other neighbor’s roofs for a ridiculously low fee. Door after door was slammed in his face. In the entire neighborhood, he finally found only one homeowner to take him up on his offer.
Now, let me remind you that all the other neighbors had a need that he could fill. He was standing in the midst of his target market, for sure. What’s more, he could deliver instant gratification at an incredible price. He was completely baffled as to why most of the homeowners treated him, as he put it, “like a snake oil salesman”. Have you ever experienced something similar? Haven’t we all been given the small business marketing advice to locate your target market and present them with what they need at a price they can afford? So - what happened here?
Think about this: What if the homeowners in this particualr neighborhood already knew him? Or, what if the homeowner whose roof he had just repaired called the other neighbors and told them about this great roofer that just finished re-roofing their house and had some shingles left over and agreed to patch a few other roofs in the neighborhood for an amazing price? If he had been recommended in this way, do you think he would have received a warmer welcome? Certainly.
We have been conditioned to mistrust those we don’t already know or who haven’t been recommended. It’s often not enough today to locate your target market and present them with what they need at a price they can afford. In most cases, they also have to know you.
Technology has made it so that businesses all over the world can capture your customers simply by offering them a better price or a better deal. Unless you live in a very small, rural town, there is no such thing as the neighborhood insurance salesman, or shopkeeper, or salon, or bank. Your “neighbors” are willing to drive 20 miles, or order it online. The best small business marketing solution you can employ is to build a sense of trust, loyalty and familiarity with your customers. Figure out how to position yourself as the ONLY choice in your customer’s mind for what you offer.
A great example of this is a handyman in Arizona who uses the tag line, “We’ll leave your house cleaner than when we came.” And they do – they not only clean up their own mess, but the leave the house noticeably cleaner than when they arrived. This has created intense customer loyalty while also giving their customers something to talk about. Which brings us to a very important point: your customer’s have relationships with those who will trust their recommendations. These referrals are extremely valuable. If you can generate enough of them, and give new customers or clients reasons to refer you to their network, your business can grow virtually on it’s own.
Choosing your clients
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Oct 30, 2008
Last week I wrote a post that asked the quesiton, “Why Should Customers do Business With You?”
In that post, I dared to ask: “If you don’t know exactly why, in the eyes of your market, your business should continue to exist (and thrive), why should your prospects and customers?”
This is a vital question to answer, and answer clearly. But first - it is very important that you have a clear picture of who you are communicating to. Namely, who your ideal client is.
Understanding the difference between a client (or customer) and YOUR ideal client.
Your ideal client is made up of much, much more than some demographic information. Your ideal client has a face and a name. They have hopes, dreams, wants, needs, desires and attitudes that distinguish them from the “everyone else” that makeup your not-so-ideal clients. They also have a distinct lifestyle, distinct pain, and a distinct amount of money they are willing to spend to deal with that pain (level of motivation).
Until you know who you are communicating to, it is very difficult (if not impossible - as you may have already discovered) to discover the message that will resonate with “them”.
Until your ideal customer is much, much more to you than a general, faceless spreadsheet of demographic information, your message will not be targeted enough to even reach them.
Let alone get their attention.
So… Can you describe exactly who your ideal customer is?
There are many ways to do this. Scroll through your list of current and past customers. Ask yourself who resonated with you. Who has seemed to get the most out of your product or service? If you had to hold up one person and say, “Here! This is the kind of customer that makes me want to jump out of bed in the morning just so I can work harder at solving their issues.”
That is your ideal customer.
Good. Now, you need to know what they want?
You might have to do a little research here to find out what you need to know. Give them a call and ask if you can conduct a 10 minute “interview”. (They’ll be flattered.)
Send out a survey. Ask them questions about what they are worried about, what their hobbies are, what they fear, what they read, what they wish they could do or have, what they are looking for but having trouble finding, etc.
While you’re at it, ask them this: “At this time in your life, what is the one thing you need most from me/ my company?”
And, “In the sea of options out there, why did you choose (and continue to choose) us?” You might be surprised at the answer.
Other ways to find out more and further define your ideal customer: Read their web sites, read what they are interested in, subscribe to their newsletters, and join the associations they belong to.
This is an important task - don’t overlook it. It’s not only important in the process of developing a core marketing message, it’s important for your own happiness, well-being and effectiveness.
If you don’t define the kind of person you want to work with, you might end up with a group of customers that drain you and that you aren’t well suited to help. You could end up burned out and with the damaged reputation of being mediocre. Nobody wants that.
This post is part of a free email course that shows you how to uncover the motivating factors that drive your ideal customers to buy, and then breaks down the process for creating a core message that will drive them to buy from you. Subscribe to this free course now.
Big Marketing for Your Small Business
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Oct 5, 2008
Read a good article this morning by Steve Mulder titled “5 Marketing Tips for Tackling Twitter”.
This article, written in September of this year, outlines 5 ways that marketers can use twitter to listen, communicate to, and better connect with, their customers and potential customers, and lays out great examples of large companies that are using twitter to facilitate this kind of intimate connection with their customers.
This spotlights an interesting (though not very new) trend, also discussed in a 2005 article by John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing.
Small is the new big.
In that article, John wrote that, “Large organizations are beginning to wrestle with the reality that their markets want something more personal, more honest and real, from the companies they buy products and services from. It’s obvious that small businesses possess natural advantages in this arena, so the rush is on to think small. Acting like a small business, it seams, is the latest killer innovation.”
This was true in 2005 and is even more true today. What’s more, new social networking tools, like twitter, have provided an extremely effective and efficient platform for large companies to act small.
The interesting thing is - these same platforms have also provided ways for small busineses to act large. Social networking platforms (like twitter) have leveled the playing field for both large and small businesses.
Large businesses can act small (connecting with customers, projecting a personality, reacting quickly, etc.) and small businesses can act large (reaching large numbers of people quickly, driving customer opinion, generating buzz, etc.).
If you are in business today, large or small, chances are your best advantage lies in implementing the same strategy. And that is new. Years ago I stated an opinion that consumers were tiring of the very large, impersonal type of business that have the distinct advantage of being able to offer a wide selection at low prices, but also have the distinct disadvantage of not really being able to connect with their customers and build the type of loyalty that only comes from personal relationship. Well, it seams that very large companies are finding the resources they need to retain the above mentioned advantages, while mitigating their impersonal nature.
At the same time, small businesses, which have the distinct advantages of being closer to their customers, creating strong customer loyalty, and can shape and adjust quickly, can now use social networking tools to reach ever increasingly larger audiences on the cheep.
So, what does this mean if you are trying to build a successful small business today? Simply that if you aren’t currently using the many social networking resources available to you now, you are missing out on an advantage that you can’t afford to miss out on. In the world today, it doesn’t matter if you are large or small, you have the ability to stay “small” and act big.
If you need a jumping off point for social media, check out this blog: http://pistachioconsulting.com/. If you need to figure out how to better incorporate social marketing into your existing marketing strategy, or if you simply need to construct a solid marketing strategy, better contact the team at Your Marketing Lab, Inc.
Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/YML
Right now might be the best time to start a small business.
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Sep 29, 2008
And, if the economy gets worse, it might be an even better time to start a successful business.
Check out this post from Seth Godin’s blog:
“Inc. magazine reports that a huge percentage of companies in this year’s Inc. 500 were founded within months of 9/11.: Talk about uncertain times. But uncertain times, frozen liquidity, political change and poor astrological forecasts (not to mention chicken entrails) all lead to less competition, more available talent and a do-or-die attitude that causes real change to happen…….If I wasn’t already running my own business, today is the day I’d start one.”
Ultra successful Information Marketing Guru, Dan Kennedy would agree. He started an information marketing business at a time when the economy was poor and charged more than anyone thought anyone would pay. Incidently, it was also a time when no one else dared start a business like his which automatically made him top dog. And, he ended up with a very successful businesss.
When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. If you are in the mortgage industry right now, and can find a way to survive while everyone else jumps ship, it makes sense that you will be the one to not just survive, but thrive. You will be forced to do things a bit differently. You will be forced to find the next great idea. You will be forced to become a better at marketing your business. You will become strong and come out on top, the proud owner of a very successful business.
