Company Concept - Affect Selling - Simply Effective Marketing

by: Peter Sandeen

Nokia Jumped into a Well – Are You Following?

Nokia jumped into a well. But you can avoid the mistake. photo by Kashif Mardani

A couple of weeks ago Nokia announced they’ll cut 10 000 jobs.

Nokia used to be the market leader. It used to be the innovation leader. It used to be the quality leader.

Now their marketing strategy is a prime example of poor marketing and leadership.

Your company most likely won’t fire 10 000 employees. Or lose $1 billion annually.

But you can make the mistake that got Nokia into trouble. You’re even likely to make the same mistake, and think it’s the best decision for your company.

Here’s what they did wrong and what they should do now to rise again…

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by: Peter Sandeen

3 Common Beliefs that Will Ruin Your Business

Your business doesn’t mind if you believe in Santa.

Not even if you wait for his flying sleight every Christmas with a cup of milk and cookies ready for him.

Your business doesn’t mind if you’re Christian, Jewish, Zen Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu.

But there are common beliefs your business doesn’t tolerate. They will make it crumble and you may not have any idea why it’s happening.

I learned them the hard way – maybe I can spare you the trouble.

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by: Peter Sandeen

3 Copywriting Questions for Business Success

Do you buy this Louis Vuitton handbag for its functionality (carry things around with you)? photo: Thomas Ogilvie

You don’t need to be a copywriter to run a business.

Actually, you only need to be a copywriter if you run a copywriting business.

But it can teach you three things you must know to run a successful business.

Copywriters can (and usually should) do the actual writing for you. But knowing these basics will give you a better understanding of your business and how to make it successful.

So, here are the core questions of effective copywriting.

And there’s a five-minute “exercise” at the end that puts all of this together and makes a real difference to your success, I promise

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by: Peter Sandeen

How Marketing Works – Video Interview with Danny Iny

Danny Iny definitely knows the answer to “How marketing works?”

This is a part of the Secrets of The Marketing Experts interview series.

How would you describe marketing?

Do you know all the steps of effective marketing?

How do you create a relationships with potential customers?

What turns engaged listeners into buyers?

How to get referrals and when to upsell?

…and much more.

Get the answers in this half-hour video interview with Danny Iny, which gives a good bird’s-eye view of effective marketing.

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by: Peter Sandeen

Review: Fascinate – Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead

Rating: 5/5

Ever wondered how to capture people’s attention completely? Or why you sometimes lose track of time?

The answer to both is fascination.

What is it? Fascination is powerful attraction that captures your attention and focus.

Why should you care?

Fascination is the best tool you have to get your message heard.

If you want to be good at copywriting, you need to understand how to fascinate people.

If you want to write captivating headlines, you need to make them fascinating.

If you want to be fascinating in your personal life or at work, you need to understand the seven triggers.

But the one question remains: What is fascinating and how do you write/become more fascinating?

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by: Peter Sandeen

Review: Good to Great by Jim Collins

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

Rating: 5/5

Good enough isn’t good enough for some companies. And those companies become great companies. Do you want to do that? The book tells you everything you need to know to go from good to great. In fact you may even get the impression it’s easy.

Jim Collins, with the research group, studied what exactly makes a company perform much better than the market or their competitors. I think the principles they found behind the great performance are what you’d expect them to be (except for one). But most people, me included, tend to avoid them because they’re not easy or “fun” to follow.

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by: Peter Sandeen

The Biggest Business Mistake – One You’re Likely to Make

The mistake

The biggest business mistake you can ever make, is one you’re likely to make. Several times. Without noticing.

It stops your business from going forward, and can even take you back. Do it too often and you guarantee your business won’t succeed. This is also the most common reason most bloggers never succeed.

And here’s what’s worst about it, the mistake is a lot of fun to make. So, even when you notice you’re making the mistake again, you may not do anything about it.

What’s the biggest business mistake? It’s losing focus.

You’ve probably done it, everybody you know has probably done it, I certainly have done it. But what exactly does it mean, to lose focus?

Losing focus

You should always know what you’re after in the end. In almost every business, this goal is profit. For Unicef that goal is to save the children of the world. For bloggers that might be selling an e-book or getting more ad revenue. In any case, this goal is the end result you’re after.

But it’s not enough to know what you’re after. You need to know how you plan on getting there.

These are basic business truths, so how could anyone forget them? The mistake isn’t forgetting your end results, nor creating the plan. The mistake most people make, is to lose focus of the plan.

You might start a project that doesn’t really get you closer to the end results you’re after. Or maybe you hire someone who doesn’t really fit your plan. You basically do something that feels like it gets you closer to your goals, but it’s not a part of your plan, and doesn’t actually help you one bit.

You forget how your plan is supposed to work, and you alter it without preparation.

Your end game and the game plan

Before you ever start a business, you should know exactly how it will generate income (assuming that’s your goal, the end game). For most businesses this is a straightforward question (selling specific products or services).

The next question is a bit trickier. How do you plan on selling your products and services? “Online” or “in local stores” is a poor answer. It’s like saying, “We’ll win the game by scoring more points than our opponent.”. You need to know how you’ll get your products sold. This is your game plan.

The important question to ask is, “What can I do, to make people want my product.” When you have thought through all possibilities you can think of, choose the best plan.

Now that you have your game plan, follow it. Do what the plan says you need to do. This is the time when you’re most likely to make the big mistake. After a while of following the plan, you do something unplanned just because it felt like it was a part of the plan. And you’re unlikely to notice it.

If you like sports metaphors, here’s one: Your business game plan is like ice hockey. Your end game is to win, but if you think for a moment that you only want to hold the pluck, you could take away your goal keeper and get a sixth player on ice. You’d probably meet your goal of holding the pluck more, but you’d also lose the game. Similarly if you confuse your short-term goals (holding the pluck or getting more people into your store) with your end game (winning or making a profit), you’ll work toward a misguided goal.

Don’t obsess over your plan

Maybe you used a lot of time to create the plan, and you followed it religiously. And that’s exactly what you should do. But you shouldn’t become obsessed with your plan.

If there’s a reason to change the plan, you should do it. Holding on to a plan that’s anything less than the best plan available is stupid. Knowing which plan is the best is sometimes impossible. As a rule, if there’s no clear reason to think another plan is better than the one you already have, don’t switch. It’s better to see through the plan you’re already executing, than to start over with another.

For many admitting their mistakes is difficult. But protecting your reputation will only benefit your ego, not your company, bottom line, customers, marketing, or anything else. If you notice that a change to your plan would probably work better, than do the change. Admit that you’re a human and that the original plan wasn’t perfect. In the end you made the plan better, regardless of your feelings. At least I’d rather hire someone who puts the benefit of the company ahead of their own image… Wouldn’t you?

How to stay focused

I wish I knew a definitive answer to this, but I don’t and I don’t believe it even exists. Here’s a couple of ideas that have helped me to stay focused.

1. Spell out your goal. Your goal may seem so obvious to you, that you’ve never actually said it out loud. Write it on a piece of paper and assess if it’s clear or not. If it’s not extremely clear, then clarify it so that you cannot forget the end result you’re after.

2. Create a timeline. Put a deadline (or an approximate time) for each step in your plan. When you know all the steps and when you’re supposed to do them, you’re less likely to stray from your path.

Have you made the mistake of losing focus? I’d like to hear your thoughts about focusing on a plan, so share them in the comments below.

by: Peter Sandeen

Know What You Promise and Deliver That – A Poor Example By GoDaddy

I had an unfortunate experience with some customer service people yesterday. I needed help with switching the way Affect Selling is hosted.

It was previously on a “shared” server and therefor it was really slow at times. Now it’s using a “Virtual Dedicated Server” from GoDaddy.com.

But that’s not the point here. The point is that GoDaddy advertises their customer service on their website. But they don’t deliver what you’d expect.

What do you advertise?

Though I believe great customer service is the best way for a business to succeed, not everybody has to offer that. You can offer lower prices if there aren’t so many customer service people waiting for someone to need their help.

Whatever it is you advertise about your product/service, is what people expect you to be good at.

If you advertise customer service, the promise is that you’ll do everything you can to help customers. That you’ll offer the best service possible.

With that expectation they’ll be disappointed if the service isn’t wonderful. This is true also if you advertise cheap prices, fast delivery, ease of use, or anything else. People expect to get the best of what you talk about.

Poor example

The GoDaddy email customer service doesn’t live up to any sort of hype. They reply quickly, but that’s it. I guess they should read my series of posts about email customer service.

The answers were too technological for me to understand (and I did tell them I’m not that tech-savvy). And they did their best to avoid doing more than the bare minimum.

For example when I asked them about the PHP version on the server (I had no idea what that meant), they told me I can read an article about it. Or they could do the necessary updating for $49.99.

I decided to read the article. I didn’t understand it so I read another and another and another article to explain what the first one meant. Finally after a few hours I managed to update the PHP version on my server.

Now that I know how it’s done, I could do it in a minute. So, they would’ve charged me $49.99 for that one minute. Instead of just doing it, they replied to my email, and another email, and a third email about the process. They spent more time answering my emails than it would’ve taken them to do the update.

When the installation of WordPress didn’t go smoothly, they told me to find answers elsewhere since it’s a third-party application. Again when I finally found the reason for the problems, I could see it would’ve taken them a minute or two to fix it. (I have to thank the people at WordPress forums for help.)

I do understand and appreciate the low prices GoDaddy offers. But I cannot understand why their email customer service isn’t better. The people there obviously have the technical know-how. They just don’t seem to understand what their job is.

What should you advertise?

What are you good at? Really good at? When you advertise your customer service, people expect it to be great. But you should still exceed that expectation.

Exceeding expectations is the best way to create loyal customers and referrals.

You need to surprise people regardless of their expectations. If you advertise cheap prices, then either be surprisingly cheap, or offer additional free services for your customers.

“Good enough” isn’t good enough. If you’re not confident you can exceed expectations with something, then you shouldn’t talk about that at all. Or if your customers are likely to expect more from you than you’re able to offer, than warn them in advance. Don’t let people build up anticipation, and then prove them wrong.

Avoid and/or explain

I was disappointed with the GoDaddy customer service because I expected more. I’d be fine with doing all the server configuration by myself, but since they “advertised” their customer service, I expected to get help.

They could just add a “warning” to their sales page for the server that said, “You’ll need to understand how to configure your server on your own. Optionally you can hire us to do it for you.”

If I would’ve read that before making the purchase, I wouldn’t be so frustrated with them now.

You cannot always cater to your customers’ every need and desire. But when you can’t, you need to try, and then explain why you can’t do it.

Don’t please everyone

Many businesses fall into the trap of trying to please everyone. It’s not going to happen. You can only ever hope to please a small portion of people.

You should deliver what those people want. And do it well. When you attempt to please everyone, you will probably become mediocre at everything. And you’ll end up pleasing no one.

All marketing should target someone, not “the general public” or “the masses”. It’s possible you’ll end up selling to “the masses”, but there’s a squirrel’s chance on an eight-lane highway you’ll get “the masses” to embrace your product immediately after launch.

This is what GoDaddy has done. They’ve become so big, they can profitably “target” everyone. They offer the lowest prices and a variety of services. But they do nothing particularly well (except pricing).

Then there’s Synthesis, a high-end web host. They offer hosting options for WordPress users. And they do this one thing exceptionally well.

If you’re just starting a blog, you’ll run away from their site when you see the prices. But if you’re serious about creating a blog and you want the best solution for it, then they offer just the right thing. (They don’t even offer email because “it’s not their thing”.)

What’s your thing?

What is it that customers buy from you? Is it quality? Is it cheap prices? Is it the experience? Figuring this out might be the most important thing you can do for your business.

Don’t waste your resources advertising something you won’t deliver. Instead focus intently on your core idea; what you’re the best at.

To survive you need to be the best at what you are about. But that’s not enough. You also need to understand how to make people believe you’re the best.

Check out the Premeditated Marketing Guide for ideas on how to get your message heard and believed.

And finally tell what is your thing. What is your business about, really. Do you compete on price or quality or something else? Share your story in the comments below.

by: Peter Sandeen

3 New Year’s Resolutions Every Business Should Make

People make new years resolutions and so should businesses. Here are 3 new year’s resolutions every business should make.

1. Don’t think that the same things that worked last year would work this year.

Things change. There’s no real reason to believe that you could keep doing the exact same things you did last year.

More probably than not, you need to change too. If your competitors change for the better but you stay the same, you’ll lose.

You shouldn’t change your core idea, unless it no longer works. But you should take a long hard look at how you do what you do.

Is your marketing creating increasingly positive results? Do your employees’ motivation strengthen? Do you enjoy working more than before?

Change for the sake of change is pointless, don’t fix what isn’t broke. But never say, “It worked well last year, so it’ll work well this year.” There’s no guarantee that’s going to happen.

2. Make a list of your top three development priorities for the new year. And act on them!

A business should always know exactly what it needs to work on the most. Unfortunately these priorities are often forgotten.

Do your sales people need more training? Is your company culture holding you back? Are there any new challenges in sight?

Never think your business is “ready”. There’s always the next level, even if you’re already the best at something.

When you have the list, do something about the things on it. And do that something immediately. Don’t put it off or you’ll find yourself writing the same list next year.

3. Deliver more value to your customers.

Think of at least five ways you can deliver more value to your existing and future customers. Unless you can deliver more value to your customers, they’ll find someone who can top what you offer.

Could you promise faster delivery? Better customer service? More resources to customers? Closer relationship with customers?

People get used to the status quo. They get bored with it and they start to expect more. Your competitors will do their best to offer more than you. So, beat your last-year-you and wow your customers again.

Do you have another new years resolution? Share it in the comments.

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by: Peter Sandeen

5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Think About The ROI of Marketing

What is the ROI of marketing?

Almost every marketing specialist will urge you to accurately calculate the ROI of marketing. You should measure every marketing effort separately to be able to know what’s working best. ROI (Return On Investment) means how much you gain/lose relative to your investment. So, if you spend $1 million in a TV advertisement and that ad generates $5 million in revenue, your ROI is 400%. Seems simple and rational? Well, it’s in no way simple and I wouldn’t say it’s entirely rational.

Why you shouldn’t think about the ROI of marketing

There are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t think about your ROI of marketing.

Marketing should be built into your business idea. If your product is interesting enough people will talk about it. And you don’t have to pay anything for word-of-mouth marketing.
There’s no way to know the ROI of marketing for a specific marketing effort. All your marketing should work together. Maybe the customer, who decided to buy after seeing your magazine ad, wouldn’t have bought from you if they hadn’t heard the radio ad. You’ll often get inaccurate results no matter how precisely you track your marketing.
If you concentrate on the ROI of marketing you easily forget to track other aspects of your business. Customer service and sales people often create much more sales than any advertising.
Your marketing budget is like the phone payment; it’s part of the cost of doing business. You don’t try to calculate the ROI of email do you?
The difference in the life long value of customers makes it impossible to calculate the ROI of marketing. Even if you knew what made a customer come to you in the first place, there’s no way to know what’s their value to you.

So, you shouldn’t think about the ROI of marketing. Then how can you know if your marketing works or not?

How to measure the effectiveness of marketing

Rather than trying to calculate the ROI of marketing you should compare your marketing efforts to your overall results. If you’re making a profit your marketing works. Maybe not all marketing you do, but at least enough of it. To get better at marketing you should also know what’s working and what’s not. Here’s some ideas on how to track marketing results.

Identifiers. Use promotional codes and other identifiers in your advertisements to track which ads were seen and acted on.
Target specific audience. Create ads that are only seen by a specific target audience. It’s easier to track who buys rather than why someone buys from you.
Change location. Systematically change where your ad appears to find the best place. Placement in newspapers and websites alike is important, because only a tiny portion of the space is actually looked at.
Change the design. Changing just the color of a headline can have a major effect even if nothing else changes. People respond to different colors in different ways. Remember that the surroundings of your ad will also play a part.

To benefit from the results you get by doing all this, you need to do A/B-testing. Make changes to your marketing to make it more effective. If you want to do accurate A/B-testing you can only change one detail at the time. Otherwise you won’t know which change actually mattered. But even more vague results can be helpful.

How much should you spend on marketing then?

Short answer: as much as you can as long as it creates a profit. But the more you invest the smaller the ROI of marketing will be.

Most effective marketing methods are usually online marketing and content marketing. Both are extremely cheap compared to traditional advertising and usually create much better results. They work so well because you can target the best opportunities individually and with low-cost. But the more you market the poorer the targeting becomes; you start with the best, the second target is only the second best opportunity, and so on. As the marketing campaign grows you can’t choose so specific targets anymore. And that leads to a smaller ROI of marketing.

Don’t think about the largest amount of money you can spend on marketing. Rather think about the results you’re after. If you want to reach the people who will make lots of referrals, then do that. If you want to increase brand awareness, do just that. You can spend as much money as you like on both, even though one targets only a few people and the other all the people.

Make a list of 3-5 most important goals you have for your marketing. I’d always start with reaching the early adopters. If they’re already using and promoting your product then go after target groups. Target groups are groups of people who are most likely to enjoy your product or benefit from it. These target groups are larger than the group of early adopters but still way smaller than the general public. Once the target groups use your product, start marketing to the masses. These “masses” may still be only a handful of people; in a niche market that’s very possible. But I’d use the same logic anyway: early adopters – target groups – the rest of them

When you have your list ready think about how much value you give to each of them. You’ll quickly build up a math problem. Once you solve it you’ll know how much to invest in each.

You might think there’s no point in using more money to reach a few early adopters then to build brand awareness. Why is that? If you value more reaching the early adopters and target groups (as I do), then why wouldn’t you invest more effort into that? Obviously if your product is already well-known there are no more early adopters to target, and the target groups are already using your product. But the idea still stands: spend most of your budget and effort in the most important goal.

If and when your business makes a nice profit you know your marketing worked as it was supposed to. That’s a good ROI of marketing.

What do you think?

How would you calculate the ROI of marketing? Do you do it? Share your ideas and experiences in the comments below.