Natural Marketing in Business

I attended a lunch last week where Tony Rubleski, author of Mind Capture: How you can stand out in the age of Advertising Deficit Disorder, spoke. I took a couple pages of notes that I thought I would share with you here.

A lot of what he talked about is not ground breaking information, but he positioned it in such a way that it had a real impact on me.

It’s interesting how we need to hear the same messages over an over in order for them to really sink in. As business owners and marketers, we know that it’s important to provide a consistent message across multiple media in order for our prospects to really hear it. This is also true for us. I might read 10 books this year and countless blog posts that essentially say the same things. However, I will likely pull different insights from each simply because of the positioning strategy of the message, or because of my frame of mind when reading it, or because of what someone else said about it.

The point is this: Keep reading. Keep listening. Keep learning.

With that said, here’s what Tony had to say about standing out in the “age of Advertising Deficit Disorder.” I’ve added some of my thoughts as well. Enjoy! (Then buy the book.)

The 3 Greatest Challenges We Face As Marketers in pursuit of a  truly successful business:

1. Attention. We’ve all heard the claim that you only have 2 seconds to grab someone’s attention before you’ve lost your opportunity. I don’t know if that’s exactly true, but Tony points out that the principle is absolutely true. You have a very short period of time to capture someone’s attention with your marketing.

2. Time: 99.9% of people today are busy and easily distracted. When was the last time you talked to someone who wasn’t “really busy”? Yeah… I can’t remember either. All marketing campaigns  are just one more thing competing for our prospect’s time.

3. Credibility: We are a highly skeptical society these days. In order for anyone to listen to you for more than 2 seconds and not immediately dismiss what you are claiming, you must prove your case. And, of course, you must do it quickly.

Here are 6 ways you can capture your audience’s attention, time and trust:

1. Referral Capture. Referrals are extremely powerful. We are much more likely to be open to hearing what someone has to say if they were first recommended to us by someone we know and trust. So… how can you get more referrals? Ask for them. You simply never know what will happen until you ask.

There’s an effective and not-so-effective way of doing this. The not-so-effective way is to just hand someone a few of your business cards and say, “When you come across someone who might be interested in what I have to offer, would you point them in my direction?”

The effective way is to be a bit more proactive and ask for introductions. If you are doing a good job taking care of your customers, they want you to be successful. Who do they know that you need to know? Ask them to introduce you.

A really great idea that Tony called “website magic” is to visit your top customer’s web sites and take a look at what they’re doing. Have they won any awards? Did they just launch a new product or service? Take note of something you would like to congratulate them on. Then, look for the space on their site where they list their clients. Find the one or two that you most want to be introduced to. Send your client an email that says, “I was on your web site today and noticed that ________. Congratulations! By the way, I also noticed that _____ is one of your clients. Would you mind introducing me to them?” You can also use this technique on Facebook, Linked in and My Space, etc.

Keep track of who is referring other people to you and reward them! If someone refers you once, it is highly likely they will refer you again and again - IF, you encourage that behavior by rewarding them. Every document you have should ask, “How did you hear about us?” Give your referrers gift certificates, gas cards, movie tickets, etc. Make the gift a real gift (not just a promotion) by giving them something you think they would enjoy that is not something you make or do.

2. Evidence Capture. Use testimonials, videos and blogs to support your claims. Give away content rich white papers, free reports and eBooks. Generate positive PR. Have an outrageous guarantee that shows just how much you believe in your product or service. Update testimonials frequently and consider the use of video testimonials.

3. Story Capture. Stories engage the mind. They are great attention grabbers. Once pulled into a great story, it is hard to pull away. Using stories in your marketing is a great way to capture someone’s attention and hold it for a decent length of time.

4. Content Capture. Give people really, really good content. Stop worrying about giving too much away for free. Do you really think that you have information that is not available for free somewhere right now? You can’t control information. You can’t capture it, hold it or corner the market on it. Don’t even try. Instead, set yourself up to be the main authority in your particular niche. Use the fact that people are short on time and don’t want to spend a lot of it searching for what they want or need to set yourself up as the one source they trust in a particular area.

Just because so much information is available for free doesn’t mean we aren’t willing to pay for it. Once we get serious about wanting to know something or do something, we will gladly pay for “how to” information. Your customers and clients are going to buy from someone when they get to that point. If you’ve given them plenty of great content over time, you will be the first one they go to when they are ready to purchase.

5. Grabber Capture. When using direct mail you must be creative in how you send it. Hand address the envelope and put a real stamp on it. Send it in a red greeting card envelope. Put something in the envelope (the lumpy mail technique). Mail the marketing piece in something other than an envelope. Be creative and bold about this. You could even send your letters via UPS or Fedex. The point is, put at least as much thought into how you are going to get your prospect to read a promotion as you do into producing the promotion. (This applies to email marketing as well. Be creative!)

6. Innovation Capture. Gather good ideas from everywhere. This includes outside your industry. A good idea is a good idea and can be applied to any industry. Make it a habit to look at everything with a child-like curiosity.  Some of the best ideas have come from those who questioned everything. Keep track of all your ideas and the ideas of others’ by create and use a swipe or idea file.

Finally, Tony shared these quotes that I thought was worth passing on:

“Sometimes you have to be willing to be misunderstood.” Jeff Bezos (SP?) founder of Amazon.

“How many industry norms can you violate or turn upside down?” Dan Kennedy

www.YourMarketingLab.com

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