Now is the Time for All Good Businessmen to Survey Their Target Public

By John Eberhard 

Do you feel like your advertising and promotion is not working as well as it used to?

You may have heard that we're in a recession.

I say that facetiously of course, as how can anyone living on planet Earth have failed to hear about it over the last year.

Do you feel like your advertising and promotion has not been working as well since the beginning of this so-called recession?

One major component of any recession is the public's perceptions and attitudes. In other words, the public at large has a perception that there is a recession. They agree that there is one. And their attitudes about buying things can change rather dramatically.

So we could discuss or argue about whether the recession is real or manufactured, but one thing we could not argue about is that the public's perceptions and attitudes have changed.

So let's say you have a business and you are selling a product or service to some segment of the overall population, to a "target public" as we call it in marketing. And you are using the same marketing campaign and the same ads or promo pieces that you were using before this big shift in perception and attitudes took place.

Well, a marketing campaign should use what are called "buttons" in its headlines and copy (sales text). A survey button is something you find out from a survey, that when you say it or put it on a promo piece, it gets a reaction. Usually it is a "positive" button - something a high percentage of people told you regarding what benefit they think they would get from your product or service. Or it's a "negative" button - some problem or difficulty they expressed that your product or service would solve.

Whether you got them from surveys, or from talking to a lot of customers, or even from trial and error in your promotion, you are using buttons in any successful promo that you're doing.

But what if you're using buttons that you found five years ago, but the public's attitudes and perceptions have now changed? Chances are that promo using that older button or buttons will not be working as well. Is that happening to you?

It is usual after one does surveys and finds out what his target public's buttons are, to use that survey information for at least 2-3 years, or for that matter as long as it is working well.

But if you find that your promotion is not working as well these days, it may be time for you to do some new surveys on your target public. If you find out what their current attitudes are, it will be much easier to motivate them to buy something from you.

Some business people consider surveys to be too expensive. But there are some less expensive ways to get more affordable surveys done.

Surveying your target public newly at this time gives you a way to disagree with all the bad news and do something about it. It puts you more in control. And considering what's been happening in the world over the last year, better control sounds good to me. How about you?

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An Email Newsletter Drip Strategy

By John Eberhard 

When someone responds to you for the first time, responding to one of your free offers or asking for more information, he may not be ready to buy at that time. And despite whatever you say to him in the sales process, he just may not be ready to buy.

So of what value is that guy to you? He is actually very valuable to you! I try to make this point with salespeople sometimes and they often don't get it. They think that guy is worthless and they often throw him in the trash.

Well he responded to you, didn't he? In all probability he is qualified as someone who could buy your products or services. But he's not ready right now. He may be ready at some time in the future. But if you throw that sheet of paper in the trash, he will almost certainly not buy anything from you.

The answer is to stay in touch with this person, not necessarily by calling him, but by sending him a regular communication. And one of the best ways to do this is by sending him an email newsletter, either monthly, twice a month, or weekly. Many marketers refer to this type of strategy as "drip" marketing, because your regular communications to him are like a slow flow of water dripping on his head.

So the key, when that person contacts you, is to make sure you get his email address, because then you can send him your email newsletter and it costs you nothing, other than your time putting the newsletter together.

The benefit of the newsletter drip strategy is that you are regularly reminding the prospect that you are there, what you do, and keeping your company and your products or services in his mind. Most industries these days have plenty of competition, some more than others, so if you employ a newsletter drip strategy, you may have an edge on the competition. Because you will be keeping your company in the prospect's mind whereas your competitor may not be doing so.

Now compare this to the earlier scenario of throwing that lead in the trash (which I have painfully watched some sales people do). It is most likely that some other competitor will catch that person's attention at a later point, when he is finally ready to buy.

When you consider the amount of money that you spend to get people to respond to your offers, it makes the most sense to fully utilize that lead.

About 8-9 months ago, someone contacted me to ask more about my services. At the same time they referred me to someone they knew. I tried multiple times to contact the person they referred me to, but they never answered my phone calls or emails. So I put them on my email newsletter list. I send out an email newsletter and put a new article on my blog once a week.

The other day this person who was referred to me called me and said he was finally ready to do something with his Internet marketing. This is a fairly regular occurrence, with people contacting me and saying "I've been getting your newsletter for a year," or something like that.

Not everyone who calls me like that buys something. But the point is that this system is a much better utilization of the leads you get, than throwing them in the trash if they don't buy right away. One person I worked for likened it to fruit, where you pick the low hanging fruit that is ready to be picked, but the rest has to be ripened more (by sending them further communication).

It takes patience, but I think you'll find that this system will help you with better utilization of your leads.

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The Fall Online Promotion Roadmap

by John Eberhard

Well, we’ve finally passed Labor Day which means the summer season is officially over. That means I hope you had a nice summer, but that now it’s time to end off on the summer mentality and get down to business with your business.

Now I know everyone has been vacationing and spending all that extra money everyone seems to have these days. So all that spending has probably caused people to kind of forget about promoting their businesses. Yeah, that must be it.

Well, whatever the reason, many businesses have decreased their advertising and promotional spending, with some dropping their promotion altogether. And from my observation this has gotten more noticeable over the summer.

If the above describes you, meaning you have cut back on promotion or dropped out promotion entirely for your business over the summer, or earlier due to concerns over the economy, then I suggest you might want to reconsider that decision now. After all, in September, vacations are over, kids are going back to school, football season is starting, and in general everyone is getting back to business.

And it is basically a law that you have to somehow let your prospects and customers know you are still there. In other words, promotion in volume is still a necessary part of doing business, regardless of whatever is happening with the economy. And I’ll mention that all of my clients who are still promoting aggressively are doing well. So it’s time to ramp up your promotion, including your online promotions.

The Roadmap

Here are some suggestions for what you should do to gear up for the fall and increase your revenue and market-share:

1. Blogging: I’ve been recommending blogging for over a year, as a great way to promote your business online. Once you set up the blog it is basically free. You post something, then send out a notification (called a “ping”) to all the blog search engines, and that drives volume traffic to your site. It’s best to post something at least once a week. Lately I’ve been setting up one main blog, then setting up other blogs on free blogging sites such as Wordpress.com and Blogger.com, and linking them all together so I can post from one place and it goes out to all of them. Then send out a ping for each one. I call this “blogging on steroids,” without the dangers of a Congressional hearing.

1. Email Marketing: You need to set up an email newsletter if you aren’t doing one already, and set up your website so that every time someone fills out a form to contact you or request information, their name automatically goes on that list. Then send out an email newsletter regularly, i.e. at least once a month or more often. If this is set up and you get every person who contacts you on that list, this becomes a powerful promotional vehicle, because it keeps your name in front of all those people.

1. Facebook and Twitter: Start up accounts on these sites, then log in and start developing lots of “friends” on Facebook and “followers” on Twitter, so that lots of people will see your message. Then observe the types of things that other people post about. You can’t be posting “Buy my stuff, buy my stuff” all day long. You will annoy people and they will “unfriend” you faster than you can say “how come they didn’t buy my stuff.” Instead, just post things about what you are doing with your business. Such as “We are installing new plumbing for a client today,” or “Our clinic saw 100 chiropractic patients today,” or “Our software company sold 200 licenses today” and so on. In other words, you post things that are descriptive of what the business does so it reminds people of your business. I have found this approach to work extremely well and to generate leads. Some experts such as Ed Dale recommend posting links to interesting articles on the web, related to the topic of your business, and I see some other online marketing people following this lead.

1. Other Social Media: You should also start accounts on MySpace and LinkedIn and do the same strategy there: getting friends and posting regular stuff about what you’re doing. There are also other social media sites that I would call the “second tier” social media sites, where you can also develop lists of friends and post updates, including Plaxo, Plurk, Mashable, FriendFeed, Xanga, Vox and more.

1. Leverage Your Time: So who wants to log in to 10 different sites each time you want to post something. Not me. You? I didn’t think so. So start an account on Ping.fm, then hook up your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Plurk, Xanga and other accounts to it. Then post something and it goes out to your friends on each site. Ooh, the power! Save time and multiply the results of your efforts. Of course you still have to log in to each of your social media accounts to interact with people, add new friends and so on. But for outgoing communication, you can’t beat Ping.fm. I also use another site called Posterous.com now to post my blog posts to seven different blogs at once.

So now that the fall has begun, it’s time to get your online marketing in gear. 25, 54, 72, Hike! Good luck!

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