For US and Canadian consumers, competitive pricing and promotions are reportedly of most significance when it comes to making purchases, according to a marketingcharts.com summary article titled, Pricing Remains the Dominant Way to Influence Shopper Behavior.

According to the marketingcharts.com article:

• A recent RIS News and Cognizant survey found price to be the most significant factor when it comes to the buying behavior of people both in-store and online in the US and Canada.
• A Parago shopping behavior study indicates that US buyers have become increasingly aware of price in the last year; nearly 100% say they shop in stores that offer the best prices at least part of the time.

But competing on price is not the best marketing strategy. In fact, it’s a marketing strategy that can hurt your business, and not just because it diminishes your profitability.  Competing for “cheap” can leave your customers with the impression that your products and services aren’t as valuable as they first believed. And it can upset people who paid full price if they learn that “new” customers enjoy better pricing for the same products or services they purchase from your business on a regular basis.

There is more than one way to compete when it comes to competitive pricing and promotions, without diluting the perceived value of your products and services or garnering the resentment of any of your customers. 

First, remember that price is not the only factor that is important when it comes to getting the stamp of approval from shoppers in the form of actual purchases.  Nearly equally important in the RIS News/Cognizant study were:

• Actually having the right product selection
• The ease of making returns
• Fast, easy checkout
• Ease of accessing customer service and quality of customer service
• Other people’s ratings and reviews
• Loyalty programs

So say you don’t have the cheapest price – if you can put your business on top in one or more of the other factors that customers indicated were important to them you also increase the chances that consumers will choose to spend their money at your business, instead of a lower-priced competitor that ignores the customer experience, fails to understand what customers really want, makes it difficult for customers to get help or return products, or doesn’t offer loyalty or other rewards.

Second, you can compete directly on price without lowering your price by adding value.  If you increase the perceived value of what customers receive in exchange for the same amount of expenditure, you win when it comes to the price war, and you win without actually lowering your price.

Adding value to products or services could come in the form of loyalty or other rewards, gifts with purchase, 30 day (or longer) money back satisfaction guarantees, celebrity, VIP treatment or club membership or any number of other intrinsic motivators (appealing to the need to be part of the “in crowd,” be in style or belong).

And there’s no question that the customer experience and your ability to engage, educate and entertain your clients as part of the buying process can also diminish, or even negate, the appeal of shopping at the business of a bargain basement competitor.  Books like 365 Days of Marketing can provide you with hundreds of ways to engage your customers or think of creative ways to educate them about the worth of your products and services.

At least three of the most important factors cited in the study that influence consumer shopping behavior have to do specifically with the customer experience; it stands to reason that you should dedicate time, study and even invest money in making strategic improvements to the experience you provide for your customers. 

Remember that each and every customer touch point provides you with the opportunity to “wow” the customer in some way, proving to them over and over again that doing business with you is good for them.  That your products and services are valuable – not only in and of themselves, but that whatever it is the customer purchases from your business makes their life better in some way.

Now that we’ve given voice to the ultimate secret for blogging success (actually populating your blog) and talked about some easy, painless ways to do so (even if you don’t consider yourself much of a writer) let’s go on to the remaining:

9 ways you should be using your blog to build business
(but probably aren’t).
1. Populate it.

2. Use your blog to educate readers about your business, products or services.

One way to do this is to have a spotlight product or service of the week (or month). Incentivize newly blog educated customers by providing an offer relative to your product or service of the month, such as a complimentary trial version, free add-on or another goodie.

On your working calendar (whether it’s electronic or old fashioned paper and pen) schedule out 15 minutes each week and write down the name of each product or service that you’ll write about. For each, you only need to write 2-3 paragraphs, and you will likely be able to cut and paste from manufacturer’s websites or flyers, or even take scripting from product packaging itself.

3. Brand it.

Your blog – along with your website, email newsletter, Facebook timeline page and all other online platforms – should be designed so that a customer knows they are interacting with your business (and with the same business) no matter which site they were on.

For example, I recently designed a website for my husband’s dental practice. Note how the Walker and Kraus DDS’ Enumclaw dental practice website, blog and Facebook page – while not identical – still have enough harmony so that you can easily identify them as united.

4. Optimize it.

Now more than ever it’s important that you utilize your online communications effectively and strategically. I know it sounds complicated, but a little reading and research on your part about optimizing your blog posts to help drive traffic not only to itself but also to drive more traffic to your business’ website will pay off.
Your blog also gives you opportunities to specifically enhance your local SEO (the optimization that you do to bring more local clients to your website and hopefully into your place of business).

(And if you don’t want to do it yourself, you don’t have to. Content writers like me would simply love to do it for you!)

5. Engage, provoke and otherwise invite feedback.

The point of communications channels like your blog are primarily to build brand awareness and foster relationships. You should write from the standpoint of wanting to create intrigue among readers – a desire in prospects to want to know more about your business (or do business with you), the development of customer loyalty and referrals among existing clients, and so on.

Use your blog to gauge feedback, solicit reviews and testimonials, find out how well your customer service, fulfillment, service department or other segments of your business are doing, etc.

6. Establish and build on your reputation as an expert.

No matter what business you are in, you want your customers to view you as the authority, the go-to-guy for whatever it is that you do or sell. By using your blog to educate customers and prospects, you set yourself up as a perceived authority.

In addition, by populating your blog strategically and improving your SEO result placement, you enhance your reputation. True or not, people perceive businesses to be more (or inherently) trustworthy when they place higher in Google search results.

7. Ensure cross-channel coordination.

Blog posts should be scheduled, in part, to be coordinated with your overall communications strategy. Not only should you use other channels to link to your blog post, but even topics themselves can receive focus across the entirety of your business in conjunction with the point in time that it’s being featured on your blog post.

An example of this would be creating a promotion around a product that will receive “product of the week” status. in addition to blog post and social media status updates, you could put a snippet on your on-hold system, place bag stuffers in box shipments or bags when customers check out, send a postcard to customers or prospects who have purchased that product in the past or who are more likely to buy in the future, include it as a featured product in your email or print newsletters, and even provide service providers or point of sale employees with a special script about that product.

8. Make emotional connections.

People expect blog posts to be written by real people. And when you get to write like a real person, you have more ability to make emotional connections. Use analogies about people, places, pets and other things in your life that your customers or prospects might relate to emotionally. Talk about local schools, charities, civic initiatives and other worthwhile endeavors which you support. Give people emotional reasons to see themselves as connected to your brand and your business.

9. Turn it into a resource.

When you populate your blog with posts that have value (i.e., value in the eyes of your readers, customers and prospects), you establish your blog as a resource. When you provide a valuable resource, you give people reasons to come back. Reasons to forward your blog posts on to friends and family. Reasons for them to check back to see what’s new, what’s special, what’s incentivized, etc.

In addition to talking about your business, you can also talk about your community and provide links to other businesses, city organizations, events, etc. Set your business blog up as a hub for people to come back to visit, time and time again.

10. Think series of posts, rather than one and done.

There’s no reason that you can’t write out the story of your business in a series of posts, especially if you can tell the story of your business in a compelling way and leave people wanting more. And writing in series sequences (instead of one and done) also enhances your SEO as search engines view pages with back links as having more value and authority.

While modern blogs have evolved into a fairly consistent form, digital communities and digital diaries have existed pretty much since the internet came into existence. That puts the age of this medium at something like 20 or 22 years – which, I believe qualifies it as a grown up part of online marketing and marketing in general.

Even so, its’ still not uncommon for me to sit down to talk marketing strategy with a business owner only to discover that they really don’t know what a blog is. And it’s even more common to sit down with a small business owner to find that while they have a blog, they aren’t posting on it (1) at a regular frequency or with (2) any kind of strategy. Ditto when it comes to social media.

Once the bright shiny new toy-ness wears off your blog or social media marketing, without a plan, it’s likely to fall into disuse and become just one more piece of cyberspace litter. In fact, when this happens, it can actually harm your business to have an inactive blog “out there.”

Why?

Well, assume that your blog, although inactive (you can almost see the virtual cobwebs growing on the thing) actually does what it was intended to do: draw traffic to itself. Imagine that a reader lands on your blog only to discover that you stopped posting nine or ten months ago.

Your reader is left to wonder whether you’re still in business at all. Your reader is left with the impression that you don’t have your act together (if you did, your blog wouldn’t lie dormant, and if it was dormant, it wouldn’t be visible).

Or what if your address and phone number have changed, but your obsolete blog remains online, driving real traffic to real or virtual locations that no longer exist? Your contact information changes but your blog is there sending your inquiries out to non-existent phone numbers and email addresses?

What’s more, over time the brand of your business will change and evolve. If you leave obsolete, inactive visible brand identifiers online, and readers interact with your blog and then come to visit your website or business, the inconsistencies between the two are going to undermine your overall branding efforts.

So let’s say you do have a business blog (or a blog you’re resolved to revitalize) – now what? 

What are you going to do with your business blog to make sure that it doesn’t fall into disuse, or worse, become a business liability? To answer that question, I came up with a list of 10 ways that most business owners aren’t using their business blogs, but should be.

First, here is the ultimate secret for business blogging success; the number one way that you should be using your blog to build business (but maybe aren’t):

The ultimate secret for business blogging success:

Populate it.

Number one, without question. It’s critical that your blog be populated with quality content on a continual basis. There is no way around it if you want to get found online, and there’s no way around that, because your prospects and customers are looking for you online.

If you’re stuck for content (that was how your blog went dormant to begin with, I’ll betcha) don’t feel alone. Not everyone loves to write, even when it comes to areas of passion, like their business, solutions, employees and customers.

Beyond telling you to “just do it” (which eventually you may have to) there are some other ways to make populating your blog consistently and with quality, relevant, engaging content easier:

• Use your website’s FAQ (frequently asked questions) as topics for multiple blog posts. You probably have enough to provide you with content for many, many blog posts, and they will also help you educate your customers about your services or products. Plus,they should enhance your SEO since they are likely to incorporate key-words and phrases that contribute to boosting your business in search results.
• Use a book like 365 Days of Marketing which has themed content for (literally) every day of the year. Share interesting facts and lists such as those found on sites like Wikipedia or MentalFloss.com. (Be sure to correctly credit original sites when sharing information from other sources!)
• Utilize corporate marketing and educational collateral such as your website, marketing brochures, materials provided by vendors or manufacturers, and even information found on the labels of your products themselves to build content on topics that would most interest your readers: namely, how your products or services would benefit them.
• See what other businesses like yours are blogging about and what their readers are responding to; these might be direct and indirect competitors or equivalent organizations in other communities.
• Ask your customers for input about what kinds of topics would be of interest to them.
• Keep it simple. Your blog posts don’t need to be longer than a few paragraphs. In fact, readers will remember more if you say less.
• If you really hate writing blog posts and maintaining your business blog, get help. Pay a content marketing expert to populate your blog and post on your behalf on a regular basis or identify someone within your business who wants to do it. Or share the responsibility out between several individuals so that no one person is burdened with a task that doesn’t come naturally to them.

Next Up: 9 more ways you should be using your business blog to actually build business (but probably aren’t)

And since I was just about as creeped out as if it had been a proposal on a blind date, I responded appropriately. Deleted the email, told outlook to block future emails from this individual and un-connected on LinkedIn. The equivalent of changing my phone number and eliminating my blind date proposer from my social media networks.

It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last; my question is, how many times have you moved from introduction to proposal too quickly? How many times have you lost customers by being presumptuous – failing to understand what they really needed or where they were in the buying process? Or how many customers have you lost because you didn’t know they were ready to buy, and so never even extended an offer?

Building relationships with prospects is vital if you want to move them from prospect to customer. And moving customers to the next step in the relationship is vital if you want to garner referrals and gain enduring customer loyalty.
Developing communication strategies for each stage of the customer life cycle can greatly aid your ability to keep the relationship growing and keep your business on the prospect’s mind so that when they are ready to buy, ready to move, ready to try a new product or service—when they are ready to do business with you—yours will be the business to which they turn. And communications collateral can be the means by which your customers will refer friends and family to your business by passing on an email newsletter, coupon, menu or brochure.

While some business owners express doubt as to the return on their email marketing investment, and others worry about being perceived as spammers, email marketing is alive and well. And, done correctly, email marketing can have huge benefits to the bottom line. For instance, did you know:

• Email marketing produces one of the highest returns on investment compared to any other form of direct marketing. The DMA says that email marketing ROI was $40.56 for every $1 invested in 2011; compare that to the return on banner ads at just $2 for every dollar invested and keyword ads which produce a $17 return for every dollar invested.
• According to the email stat center, Epsilon studies found that 57% of respondents have more positive impressions of the companies that send them email, 40% say that simply receiving a company’s email positively impacts the likelihood that they will make a future purchase from that company, and 50% say they are more likely to buy products from companies that send them email, whether they make those purchases online or at a brick and mortar place of business.
• And email marketing is permission based. This should ease business owner’s fear of being perceived as a junk emailer. If your customer or prospect asks you to communicate with them via email, why should you be afraid to do so? All of the power rests with them: they can choose to delete your email or save it for later if they don’t want to read it right away, and they can unsubscribe at any time if your email newsletter isn’t something that adds value for them any longer.

Sending a regular email newsletter is a great way to initiate and develop your relationships with prospects and customers. Here are 10 things that an email newsletter can do for your business:

1. Email can significantly impact your overall branding strategy. Your brand is the sum total of an individual’s perceptions about your business (and you!). And email communication is one of the few customer touch points where you control most of the interaction in terms of what the customer or prospect sees, and where they are directed next with each and every email communication. And you can use your email communications to drive traffic to your website or webstore, your blog or even to outside sites which can further help to influence and educate your audience to do business with you.

2. Email can enhance your customer education strategy. Part of getting the prospect or customer to “choose you” when they are ready to purchase what you have to offer is educating them as to the benefits they will receive as a result of doing business with you. Email communications provide the forum for sharing these types of benefits as well as your mission, vision, customer bill of rights—all of the promises you make to customers about what they can expect to be true, each and every time they do business with you.

3. You can use email to create intrigue. In 365 Days of Marketing, I make the point that intrigue is vital to turning prospects into customers and moving customers deeper into relationship with you. In order to gain mindshare among prospects, you must keep them interested in your business, even if they aren’t yet ready to buy. To return to the blind date analogy, it’s the equivalent of creating a desire on the part of the other person to want to know more about you—to be intrigued about what they don’t yet know or fully understand about your business, products or services, but want to find out.

It’s important to point out that creating intrigue on a first date isn’t done by proposing marriage; it’s done by omitting information – and giving your date a reason and the motivation to go out with you again and develop a relationship over time. It is during this relationship over time that intrigue leads eventually to relationship decisions, like buying, referring others and becoming a loyal customer.

4. Email can be used to gain referrals. When you provide useful information to prospects and customers in email newsletters and updates, you provide both the reason and the means by which they can refer friends and family to your business. For instance, something in your email newsletter might remind them that an acquaintance needs your products or services. And having an email in their inbox makes it incredibly easy for them to forward the email itself or a link to your online newsletter on to interested parties.

5. Email can help you build relationships. Though referenced throughout this article, remember that email is not a one and done marketing push, it’s about building relationships over time. Your email newsletter should have a combination of content that creates intrigue but also educates, communicates your values and customer promises and helps to build your brand, in addition to actually extending marketing offers to your readers.

6. Email can help you establish influence and expertise.  One of the reasons that people choose to buy from you or feel comfortable referring a family member or friend to your business is because they trust you. They trust that you will treat them (or their referral) to a positive customer experience and they trust that you will provide them with the right solution. Trust is built over time and repeated interactions; and email can comprise those interactions. Use your email newsletter to communicate news, information and expertise to enhance your reputation and the reputation of your business and set yourself up as the expert in your field in the minds of customers and prospects.

7. Email can be used to extend offers.  The top reason that consumers subscribe to mailings and interact with businesses on social media is to receive special offers and discounts. Your subscribers expect you to email them and they expect (and want!) to receive valuable offers from you. Use your email newsletter to tell customers and prospects about current offers, or create special offers that are redeemable only by your email readers. In addition, you can use your email newsletter to tell people about what is new in your business and remind them about offers that will be expiring in the near future.

8. Email can help you move customer to the next level in the customer life cycle. You can invite customers to events, ask them to refer others to your business, extend membership, VIP or other club type of offers and make any number of other calls to action meant to encourage your prospect or customer to move to a deeper level of relationship with your business. If you have openings for new clients, you can use your email newsletter as the means of telling your readers exactly “who” your business would be a perfect match for. You can provide education about your business, products or services that engage your readers not only intellectually but also emotionally and give them even more reasons to want to do business with you. You can tell them know about your commitment to the local community, local schools or local charitable causes. You can talk about the history of your company, your employees, your passions and a variety of other personal topics that will help them to connect themselves emotionally and to feel proud about identifying themselves with the brand of your business.

9. You can use email to gauge interest. Before launching a new product or service or making changes to customer processes, you can use email to gauge interest ahead of time. This can help you to fine tune new offerings before they launch or even avoid costly mistakes, like investing in a product for which demand is not strong or making a change to the customer process that might make your customers upset or even leave.

10. You can use email to gather feedback and customer data. While you may view email as a push marketing our outbound marketing tactic, it can be much more. It’s easy for people to respond to email—it takes very little time and no cost to do so. If you aren’t yet, you should be using your email newsletter not only to share information but to ask for information. Provide the means for people to respond directly via return email or links to surveys and questionnaires which can help you gauge everything from your customer’s level of satisfaction to what they like best (or dislike most) about your business, what they want that you don’t provide, what you do better than the competition (or vice versa). You can also ask readers for product or service reviews or testimonials or even for feedback that can be used to help improve the level of customer service you provide (or where you are falling short of customer’s expectations).

Email communications have a relatively low cost, especially when compared to other forms of outbound marketing. And they have been shown to produce a significantly higher return. And now you have 10 great ways to use email communications that you might not have thought about before—so what’s stopping you?

You can easily get started with an email service such as Constant Contact, and you don’t have to be a programmer or HTML expert to do so, since they provide you with easy-to-modify templates. If you sign up using the link above, you’ll get to try it out for free and receive a $30 credit.

Build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients—it’s going to be a great year!

There are many individuals who choose to work as consultants, sole proprietors, home based business owners, independent agents and representatives who could be termed “coffee shop consultants.” So-named because many of their meetings occur in coffee shops, restaurants and other non-office settings, Coffee Shop Consultants share some unique problems as a result.

These professionals often devote many hours to providing free analysis and consultation services to other business professionals which go unpaid, for a variety of reasons. They also face the challenge of conducting meetings and doing business without a traditional office space. For these reasons, I wanted to provide consultants and other independent professionals with some tips that can help them become more profitable and productive, no matter where their “office hours” occur.

1. Treat Coffee Shop Meetings As Though They Are Professional Appointments (Because They Are)
As a consultant or independent agent, representative or sole proprietor, your time is your most valuable asset. Treat all meetings, even those that occur with acquaintances in coffee shops, like professional appointments. Set a time to meet, and stick to it. Set a time for your appointment to end, and stick to that, too.

Analysis and consultation does not have to be a ‘free’ service, just because you meet in a coffee shop. If the information that you provide to clients has value, it should not be given away for free; you may need to set a fee not only for services delivered after a consultation, but for your consultation findings themselves.

One way to recoup a return on some of the unpaid hours that inevitably go into most consultations of this kind is to provide a summary of your findings and recommendations, but charge a fee for a full report, business plan or the specific strategies and tactics a client would need to undertake in order to implement your recommendations. This gives you the ability to demonstrate to a potential client that your expertise has value, without giving all of your information (which is your product, in reality) away for free.

If you do provide free consultations and recommendations for clients initially, then you should establish an hourly fee for subsequent consultations. If you do not, you run the risk of giving away even more valuable time for free; and, as the old saying goes, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” Remember that information is at least part of your “product” and learn to value it. If you don’t, no one else will, either!

2. Set Expectations
Both you and your client (or prospective client) should have an idea of what you want to accomplish at your coffee shop consultation. You should be meeting for a purpose and for the most part, you should try to constrain your meeting to those topics. This will help you to keep your meeting within the time frame you allotted and it will prevent you from giving away consulting expertise which clients should be paying for.

3. Do Your Homework
Based on the expectations set and the purpose of your coffee shop consultation, if you do some research ahead of time you will be more prepared for the meeting with your client (or prospective client). This kind of preparation can help you to present yourself even more professionally and will reinforce your role as an expert in your field; both of which give you more ability to put a monetary value on your time and business.

Pre-meeting homework might be accomplished by internet research, reviewing press releases, websites or other corporate collateral or reports, contacting mutual acquaintances for information or referrals, or even conducting pre-meeting surveys or questionnaires from meeting participants or employees of their organization.

4. Establish Your Own Desired Outcomes
Unfortunately, many times the only one who receives value from a coffee shop consultation is the individual on the receiving end of the information. When information itself is part of your product – the value that you provide to clients – and when you give this product away for free, sometimes it leads no where.

Make pursuit of specific outcomes part of your consultation strategy! When you agree to a coffee shop consultation, make sure that you are clear on what you have to gain from the meeting, as well as what you are expected to give. Keep a prospect or client record for each meeting which includes your own desired outcomes, the calls to action that you make, the proposals for services that you provide, etc.

5. Write Up An Agenda
Prior to any scheduled coffee shop consultation, write up a meeting agenda for yourself which will enable you to stick to your schedule and give you the ability to meet both the client’s expectations and to accomplish your own goals for the meeting. Make a checklist. Write down all of the most important talking points that you want to cover and leave room in the schedule for a discussion of proposal, paid service options and next steps.

6. Ask Open-Ended Questions
Open-ended questions can help you identify other needs that your prospective client may have that you can fill. They can also help you to better understand their preferences so that you can tailor your proposal or presentation to meet their unique needs and wants.

7. Know What the Next Step IsConsultants and independent agents often leave money on the table simply because they do not have a plan and a schedule for how they will follow up after the meeting. Next steps might include the production of a proposal or even a paid report, an in-house seminar or workshop, provision of specific services or sale of products, policies or accounts, etc. Even setting up a second meeting can be the appropriate next step in some cases where there is a long buying cycle or where you need time to do research in order to provide your prospective client with a proposal.

Before the end of your meeting, tell the prospective client or customer what the next step is and when it will be taken (if the next step is on your part) and then do it! If after your meeting the ball is in the client’s court, ask when it would be appropriate for you to follow up with them, and make sure to do it. Keep some of the responsibility for the ‘next step’ on your side of the table (meaning, don’t leave it up to the prospective client to contact you next) so that you retain the right to touch base with them relative to your coffee shop consultation.

If this has been your experience, you may have written off networking as a waste of time in terms of a bona fide marketing tactic. I’m hoping to give you a reason to give it a fresh look, and I’m hoping to give you some useful ways to adjust your approach to networking so that it brings some actual benefits to your business.

As it turns out, the 2nd week of April is actually National Networking Week — so no wonder it was on my mind!
In 365 Days of Marketing, I define networking this way: net-work-ing, noun
meaning: the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions
specifically: the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business Networking is more than attending meetings with other business owners or showing up at events where prospects might be in attendance.

Real networking is purposeful.

It either involves working together with peers to help improve the business climate in your community or it involves being present, visible and alluring in the same places as are your target market/s prospects or ideal types of clients.

Maybe that’s why so many business professionals give up on networking or put it on the bottom of their priority list; they’ve been doing it wrong! Now that you have a better understanding of what networking is (and isn’t), how are you going to put this tactic to work to help build business?

Here are 6 ways that you can reap a bigger return on your networking efforts:

1. Know what you want to get out of it and be prepared.
When you attend networking meetings and conferences, be prepared with an audience-targeted, short introduction – no more than 30 seconds, and no more than one main point beyond your name, company name and title. For more on networking introductions read this post on the topic called “I’m Sorry, I’ve Already Forgotten Your Name.”

In addition to your 30 second power introduction, consider offering something for give away (I frequently bring a copy of one of my books for give away at networking events by way of instant business card drawing). And create a one-sheet which is targeted to that audience and which highlights some important aspect of your business. I like to include a sample blog post along with a short list of “Related Services” that my business provides.

And make sure every one-sheet or take away includes a call to action and the means for the recipient to take the next step in the relationship they have (or want to build) with you and your business. Such calls to action might include an invitation to subscribe to your blog or email newsletter, to visit your business or book an appointment, to shop your store or website, to connect with you on social media, etc.

2. Use your social media platforms to make generous mention of businesses in your networking groups.
All too often we focus all of our marketing communications – social media profiles included – on marketing our own businesses. You can improve your SEO and generate plenty of goodwill among your peers if you will use your social media platforms for what they were intended; social interaction.

Over the last month, I’ve made it a point to mention every independent business that I’ve interacted with on social media as quickly as possible. It costs me very little by way of time and brings a wonderful return in the relationships that I’m building with other business owners. And hopefully it encourages my peers to do the same on social media in mentioning my services and those of the other businesses in our networking groups (and isn’t that one of the purposes of networking groups, anyway?)

3. Encourage reciprocal links.
Most blogs include a list of recommend other blogs or other websites that the blog’s author would recommend to their readers. Just as you can mention other local businesses on social media, you can also set up links to their businesses on your blog or website as local resources which you would feel comfortable recommending as resources for your customers. And there’s no reason not to point this out to the businesses with which you choose to network and to create reciprocal links in order to boost everyone’s SEO as well as provide a helpful list of local resources for your customers.

4. Write reviews for your networked peers.
Again, you might be asking yourself, why should you spend valuable time talking up other people’s businesses? The first reason should be that you genuinely want to be an information hub to your own customers in providing valuable resources to your customers. It improves your own reputation when you make good recommendations to others, and it makes you look good to both your peer business owners and your customers when you spend time saying good things about other people, and other businesses!

Secondly, reviews, blog comments and other similar online forums can also help you improve your own SEO and visibility to prospective customers. You can leave reviews on sites such as citysearch.com, yelp.com and others. You can also leave your own “shout outs” and complimentary reviews of local businesses on their blog sites, and on their social media pages (as well as your own). You may even choose to feature raves for local businesses in anecdotal stories as posts on your own blog.

However and wherever you decide to leave reviews for other businesses, I would recommend that you adhere to what “mom” always advised. When reviewing other businesses in your community, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

5. Create an online directory.
One of the ways to build influence and become a catalyst for improving the local business economy is to turn your blog and websites into hubs. And not only hubs of information, but your website (and blog roll) is a great place to create a hub of local business listings. Include a directory of local resources on your website which features listings of the businesses within your peer networking groups.

6. Actually visit – and patronize – the businesses represented in your networking groups.
I recently attended a local networking group at the invitation of a friend who said that she was a little fed up with the networking group. When I asked why, she replied that in the year they’d been having the meetings, not one of them had even visited her business.

While participation in networking groups should bring referrals from other members, it might be that a lot of networking groups are missing the person that should be the most obvious referral: you.

If you participate in business networking groups, and especially if you are going to refer your own customers to these other businesses, take the time to visit these other businesses and patronize them when you have opportunity. After all, this is something you want from other group members, right? Time to put your time and money where your desires are!

If you think about it, local business networking groups operate as loosely affiliated cross and cooperative marketing partners in many respects. Wouldn’t it behoove your networking group to approach this strategically and make this one of the biggest benefits to local business owners for participation?  Feel free to pass on my tips to your group or even use them as the basis for a more purposeful, concerted effort in order to boost the local economy for all participating businesses!

Like any other part of your overall marketing, networking should be done as strategically and efficiently as possible. You are much more likely to reap a return when you understand what networking is (and isn’t) and you have a plan for getting the most ROI on the investment of time and money you make.

Last year consumers spent an average of $140 each on Mother’s Day gifts for their moms, wives, daughters, aunts and other special women in their lives. That was up more than 10% from the previous year, and there is reason to believe that this could be another great year for retailers when it comes to the sale of gifts and gift cards for Mother’s Day.

If you sell items that would make great Mother’s Day gifts, or you can transform your goods and services into gift baskets or even non-traditional, creative Mother’s Day gifts, it’s time for you to go into full on Mother’s Day marketing mode!

To that end, here are some Mother’s Day marketing ideas to help you court Mother’s Day shoppers in 2012:

• Make sure you know what women want. More specifically, find out what the women among your clientele, your target markets, or the wives and mothers of your customers actually want.
  • Survey your customers as to what they want to receive for Mother’s Day, what their favorite Mother’s Day gift was in the past, or what they plan to purchase for their own mom for Mother’s Day this year. Use your social media platforms to survey your readers using the same questions.
  • Use a poll not only to solicit customer and reader feedback as to what women want for Mother’s Day this year, but to make specific Mother’s Day gift suggestions by listing great Mother’s Day gift ideas as the choices for your poll question.
• Make it easy. Make it very, very easy. Make it easier for people to buy Mother’s Day gifts than you ever have before, and easier to buy their Mother’s Day gifts from you than from anyone else!
  • Use your email newsletter to make specific Mother’s Day gift suggestions to your subscribers with ‘one-click’ ordering, order ahead for store pickup or that even include wrapping, gift card and delivery service.
  • Make specific suggestions that would be most appropriate for the different women in their lives (moms, daughters, aunts, etc.)
  • Place signage throughout your business pointing out great Mother’s Day gifts.
  • Put a sign or set up a display at your point of sale stating that Sunday, May 13, 2012 is Mother’s Day and reminding them of the great Mother’s Day gift options you offer.
  • Include gift wrapping and gift cards along with Mother’s Day gifts or gift baskets.
  • Provide (and promote) last minute creative Mother’s Day gift options.
  • Prepackage gift baskets for Mother’s Day with themed items; such as a bundled package for outdoor lovers, exercise lovers, food lovers, movie lovers, makeup or pampering products, etc.
  • Create a cross marketing opportunity and create Mother’s Day gift offers which include something from your business along with something from a partnering business and promote this special Mother’s Day gift package to customers and contact lists of both businesses (or all participating businesses).
• Make it a lather, rinse, repeat experience.  Create Mother’s Day gifts that come along with a good reason for mom (or the gift purchaser) to come back to your business again, soon.
  • Ideally, a Mother’s Day gift won’t just represent the sale of products for your business one time, but would result in a new customer coming to your business, repeat visits and the opportunity to turn a new customer into a regular, loyal customer. If you offer services (such as a salon or spa), be sure that your Mother’s Day gifts are bundled along with a gift card that mom (wife, daughter, or aunt, etc.) will come to your business to redeem it and experience what your business has to offer.
  • Don’t forget the bounce back! Create a special offer to include with the sale of Mother’s Day gift items in the form of a bounce back offer either for the recipient or the individual purchasing the gift (or ideally, include one for each!)
• Take advantage of the opportunity. The sale of Mother’s Day gifts might mean that people who are not normally your patrons come to your business or visit your website to buy something special for their mom, wife or daughter for Mother’s Day.
  • Include a bounce back offer, bag stuffer or special offer along with the customer’s receipt designed to bring them back in for Father’s Day or another future sale or event.
  • Ask them to subscribe to your email newsletter or to follow you on social media, or to be added to your direct mail mailing list to receive future offers from and news about your business.
  • Set up an online customer survey form and invite them to rate their experience with your business. As follow up, extend a special offer via landing page on your website or email thanking them for their participation.
• Get your Mother’s Day gift ideas and offers into the places where Mother’s Day gift givers are.Many Mother’s Day gifts are given by men to their moms, wives and daughters. But if your business caters mostly to women (or women are the ones most frequently shopping your establishment) then you face the challenge of getting the word out about the Mother’s Day gifts you want to sell.
  • Create strategic partnerships with businesses whose patrons are comprised of the male audience you want to reach, such as mens clubs at golf courses, recreational or outdoor sports facilities.
  • Partner with businesses that serve mainly male shoppers or clients in a Mother’s Day / Father’s Day gift promotion combination or swap (you advertise their Father’s Day gifts to your customers, they advertise your Mother’s Day gifts to theirs).
  • Partner with businesses whose patrons (and email subscribers or direct mail contact lists) have a large male composition for cooperative email marketing or direct mail marketing.
  • Partner with restaurants, bars or clubs that have a high percentage of male patrons and place table tent cards at their establishments advertising your Mother’s Day offer (and making it easy for them to obtain it! Wouldn’t it be great for a guy to be able to buy a salon gift basket with gift card for mom while out with the guys on a Saturday night? Or how about a last minute bouquet of roses? Scentsy burner and scent wax? Gift card for Sunday brunch to take the family out for Mother’s Day? Make up and skin care gift set? Beautiful tote or purse? The possibilities are endless! With a little creative and cooperative effort, cooperative marketing can become a big source of referrals and cross sales for both businesses.

It used to be that Marketing professors and books opened up marketing discussions by presenting the “4 ‘P’s of Marketing,” most of which occur toward the end of the long range or marketing planning cycle:

• Product (the goods, services, information, etc., that will be sold)
• Price (the amount of money or other rate of exchange at which a product will be sold) )
• Placement, also called “Distribution” (the means by which goods or services will be made available for sale, including the means of distribution and the real or virtual stores where they will be made available for purchase), and )
• Promotion (how you will tell potential buyers about your goods or services and the ways you will entice them to buy)

In fact, for many people, the last “P” in this list, “Promotion,” actually comprises their view of marketing. They view the other three items in the list as part of other business processes (such as accounting and operations).

So when should marketing come into the equation?
Recently, marketing guru and best-selling author Seth Godin asked this question: When should you add marketing?

He makes the point that marketing is not something to be added after you have all of the rest of the questions answered, suggesting instead that now, more than ever, marketing is the starting point for any business. I couldn’t agree more!

If you adopt Godin’s conclusion, that it is marketing conversations which are the starting point and so must be the core of your business planning process, it begs the question: What are these marketing conversations?

I would suggest that there are two major categories of conversations which comprise the beginning of any effective business start up, planning or long range process, both of which come down to a phrase I saw many times while visiting London: “Mind the gap.” You’ll see signs with this phrase at entrances and exits to subways, the bottom of escalators, etc., warning pedestrians that they need to pay attention so that they don’t trip over the gaps between where they are and where they want to be.

And gap-finding is a great way to think of marketing when it comes to determining whether your start-up business idea or the product or service you want to add to your business is a worthwhile endeavor.

Here are some of the marketing conversations that can help you determine consumer supply and demand:
The first category of marketing conversations that should be at the starting point of your business process pertains to totally new products and services. The gaps that you need to identify, or which must exist in order for you to know that you are on the right track are these:

• Is there an unfilled need or desire that represents demand for the product or service (or new business type as a whole)
• Is there an underserved market or niche market which represents demand for the new product, service or business
• Is there an as-yet undefined up and coming market which represents demand for the new product, service or business

The second category of marketing conversations which should occur before launching new products or services or changing your business model have to do with current customers, rather than new markets or un-served demand. When thinking about your current customers, clients or patrons or the “ideal client type” and target markets that you pursue, you will want to identify these types of gaps:

• Are there other products or services your customers, prospective customers or ideal client types want or need that you could provide
• Could you provide the products or services that your customers, prospects or target markets want in a better way (more efficient, more quickly, etc.)
• Can you significantly improve the customer experience in a way that is meaningful to your customers, prospective customers or ideal client types

Starting with marketing is essential!

You can see how putting marketing conversations at the beginning point of your business planning accomplishes many things. First and foremost, it puts the needs, desires and wants of your customers and ideal client types at the heart of your business planning. And consequently, this type of thinking can also help you make better business decisions and avoid costly mistakes!

The question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” is representative of man’s quest to know which came first in the process. And it’s a question which has yet to be answered, in terms of the literal chicken and the egg. But when it comes to the question, “Which comes first, the product or the marketing?” the answer should be clear.

Marketing conversations are essential if you want to know whether a new business idea, or an idea for a new product or service for your business has merit, because if no demand exists, you may be left with ‘egg on your face,’ as the old saying goes!

Absent an analysis of survey details, as someone who has been a regular attendee of churches for the better part of the last 33 years, I thought that I’d offer up a few reasons why people who regularly attend a church, mosque or synagogue might be happier than those who don’t. To that end, here are four divine secrets for businesses who want their own ‘congregations’ filled with happy customers and employees.

Divine Secret of Happier Customers and Employees #1:

A belief that they are part of something bigger than themselves.

Churches, mosques and synagogues from fundamental to new age, traditional to modern, and all stages in between still provide this one commonality for their members: The opportunity to be part of something bigger than themselves as individuals. Their members are fully “bought in” to the vision (what can be accomplished) and so are willing to do what is needed to help fulfill the mission (the means by which they will bring the vision to pass).

Most churches have the ability to carry out their mission and vision not due to paid clergy but in large part due to volunteer efforts. Contrast that with the dilemma some business owners have getting even their paid employees to show up and do a full day’s work, or give 100%. Why? Church members believe in the mission of the organization.

If you want your employees and customers to be happier, you need to get buy in to a vision of what can be that is meaningful to them, that is worthwhile (beyond monetary compensation), that provides emotional and intellectual payoffs and one in which they see themselves as valued contributors. To do that, you must first actually have a clear vision statement (the good that your business can ultimately provide to the world) and a clear mission statement (the means by which you will achieve your vision).

Secondly, you have to ensure that your mission and vision statements are more than just inspiring words. If no one buys in to your mission and vision statement, they are unlikely to come to pass. And if the only time that your employees hear your vision and mission statements are the day they’re hired or at annual meetings, they are not likely to be part of your employee culture; they aren’t likely to influence your operations, day in and day out. And if your mission and vision aren’t central to your day to day operations, you’ll never achieve them!

Divine Secret of Happier Customers and Employees #2:

A belief that other members truly care about them and act on their behalf.

Man oh man, if you want to hear some great gossip, attend a church prayer meeting. You’ll find out who is sick and what they have, who is struggling financially and who is living in sin. Why? Because of the trust that members have in one another. They trust one another with incredibly personal information because they believe that other members have their best interests at heart, that they would not act on the information inappropriately or share it indiscriminately and that they will pray on their behalf and do whatever they can to meet the needs of one another.

That’s not usually what happens at the office, though, is it?

When we hear tidbits of gossip at work, we are more likely to share it with people whose business it isn’t and either to be happy that it isn’t us or even gleeful that someone is getting “what’s coming to them” karma wise.

But when it comes to your employees and customers, your business should be as safe as a church. Not only should your customers have absolute faith that any information you have about them remains confidential (and that goes for contact information, email addresses and financial information as well as any information actually obtained as a result of providing services for customers), but your employees should, too.

Gossip should be called out and eliminated, whether the secrets being told are those of customers or employees. And your employees should view your business as a safe place to share their problems and troubles – the employee culture should be one of mutual encouragement and be characterized by people who are willing to help one another out, whether on the job, or off.

Divine Secret of Happier Customers and Employees #3:

A belief that they should focus less on their own problems and well-being and more on that of their fellow man.

It’s easy to focus on ourselves, it’s human nature. And the more we focus on ourselves, the more we tend to worry about our own problems, indulge in self-pity or experience jealousy at the success of others. It’s more difficult to put the well-being and happiness of others ahead of our own, but that is one of the guiding principles of conduct in churches, synagogues and mosques, where members not only preach but regularly practice putting the needs of their fellow man in the forefront.

If you want happier customers and employees, this must be central to the culture of your business, too.

• When was the last time you caught an employee doing something that was someone else’s job, just because it needed doing?
• When was the last time you had managers who worked to forward the initiatives of other departments, rather than fight for their own initiatives or “turf?”
• When was the last time you caught an employee going out of their own way for a customer?  
• When was the last time that you did it, yourself?

Divine Secret of Happier Customers and Employees #4:

A belief that they have an oasis for encouragement, learning, personal growth and self-renewal.

When church goers walk through the doors of worship, they not only find a community of people they believe truly care about them and who would go out of their way to help them, but when they walk through those doors, they are entering a place where they can leave the cares of the world behind and find sanctuary; an oasis where they can renew their inner spirit and mind and prepare to face the week ahead.They expect to be uplifted. They expect to learn and grow. They expect to leave feeling filled up, rather than drained out.

What happens when your employees or customers walk through your doors? Is anything about your customer experience meant to renew or refresh their spirit in some way – by showing that you truly value them, by demonstrating that you view them as people (rather than tools or wallets), by stimulating their senses or providing them with information and education to engage, enlighten and intrigue them? When was the last time that you put any effort into ensuring that employees break and lunch rooms were hospitable for rest and refreshment? Would your employees or your customers say that their renewal, refreshment and interest was important to you or your business?

And that brings me to one final observation. Regular church goers aren’t just happier in general than non church going counterparts; they’re happier every day of the week, and especially on Sundays. Are your customers and employees happier on the days when they interact with your business than on any other days? If you take inspiration from the divine secrets of customer and employee happiness, they could be!

Why does this happen?

People tend to think that their own preferences—whether in choice of color or in design elements—are “right” or somehow superior to those of others.But that’s like saying that one person’s favorite foods is superior to another’s.

The truth is, many of the choices we make in designing our logos, choosing fonts, choosing caricatures or other logo images and other elements relative to brand identity (including the colors we choose for our logos and branding) are purely preferential.

As a graphic designer, it is very help to know this, because it’s nearly impossible to keep our own preferences out of the design and branding mix. And sometimes what the client wants is far removed from our own design point of view. Once you understand which elements of the brand design process are subjective, based on personal preferences, it helps the designer to let go of control in some areas they might otherwise feel compelled to argue for, if they believe that their point of view is “right.”

As a small business owner or client, it can be very helpful for you to keep this in mind as well.
When you are choosing colors for a design project or within a branding process, if you can keep in mind that your preferences are just that, you can become open to a more objective, analytical brand analysis that should result in a better outcome for your business.

Understanding the psychology of color and the associations that people in western cultures have relative to certain colors is one way that you can take a more objective approach when it comes to designing crucial elements of your visual brand identity.

If you want to further your study of the meanings of color, especially as it relates to the branding your small business or marketing communications, you will love Pantone’s Color: Message and Meanings A PANTONE Color Resource by Eiseman.

To that end, I want to share this infographic from TestKing.com as introductory to your study of color in branding. As your first exercise, after taking in the information contained here, you might spend a few minutes analyzing the landing page of your website, your logo or other elements of your visual brand identity or corporate communications and think about where you could better use color strategically, what may need to be revisited and what kinds of messages your visual color cues might be sending to your customers.

The Psychology of Color by Tech King

In this episode, on a day when the office’s manager was out of town, a woman known to most of the employees of the office turns up from corporate headquarters and proceeds to plant her behind in the manager’s chair. The woman, Nellie, is not liked by the employees at all, and is coming off a huge failure at the corporate headquarters – both of which are good reasons that two of the main characters, Dwight and Jim, encourage their co-workers to reject her usurped leadership.

During the course of the day, brazen Nellie calls a group meeting for the stated purpose of “getting to know” the other employees, calling herself their manager. Having failed to establish her stolen authority with the group, she begins a masterful “divide and conquer” strategy, which, by the end of the day, has nearly all of the employees clapping, smiling, and saying, “I believe!”

I’m not suggesting you follow her example and steal someone else’s job or conduct any kind of office coup, though; what struck me about Nellie’s leadership was the use of uber-positive, one on one encouragement, feedback, incentives and customized perks, and her ability to believe in herself, even when no one else would.

• Nellie publicly praises Dwight (who has a history of having the most sales in the office), calling him “Atlas,” saying that she recognizes that he carries the weight of the office on his shoulders. She tells him he is worth something, and in the process, she defines his worth by the one area in which he most desires to excel.
• Phyllis, she flatters with compliments and admiration.
• To Pam, mother of two including one still breast-feeding baby, she offers up a midday nap.
• By the end, when there is just one hold out left, she uses group peer pressure to try to get him on board.
• And everyone is to receive a pay increase, presumably even Jim, though he never bought in to her power play at all.

You probably can’t afford to give everyone in your office a raise, but you can still learn from Nellie’s example. Here are no less than seven leadership lessons that I suggest as worthwhile Office takeaways: 1. Belief, confidence and passion are contagious. You can’t expect any of your staff to take risks in order to make your vision a reality unless you wholeheartedly believe in it yourself.

2. Expect opposition and don’t let it cause you to doubt yourself or the mission.

3. If your goal is important, don’t just have a plan, have a contingency plan, or plans.

4. You need employee buy in, especially to get employees to accept big changes. Seek out influencers and win them over privately in order to create thought leaders who can then encourage others to get on board.

5. Rethink the idea that everyone can be motivated by the same rewards. Personalized incentives that would make the professional or even the personal life of individual employees better could be more effective ways to create loyalty and employee buy in than one size fits all rewards.

6. Be generous with positive feedback and genuine compliments, including both personal and professional accolades, in private and in public. Acknowledge behavior that you want more of.

7. And finally, fake it ‘til you make it. If you are a new leader, you might not have a long track record of successful team leadership to inspire trust among your followers. In that case, the confidence you exude yourself will need to replace it!

More? Read  Creating Sustained Performance Through Thriving Workplaces (business2community.com)

From the article: “…A very practical article in the January-February issue of Harvard Business Review, “Creating Sustainable Performance” surveyed 1,200 white and blue-collar employees in several studies over seven years across a swath of industries.They concluded that a better word to describe happy or satisfied employees was “thriving.” The article provides the leadership lessons and suggestions from the research for both personal thriving and leading others to thrive.

I love this story for two reasons. One, it’s relationship to (authentic, internal, personal) humility, which is critical to growth and personal development.

We all have co-workers (whether above or beneath us on the organizational chart) who feel that they have so honed their leadership, presentation, management and other work skills to the point that they don’t feel the need for change, regardless of any feedback they receive to the contrary. They become their own worst enemy when it comes to the future, and that includes how they will (or will not) benefit your business in the future.

Why?

Because if you are not open to change and growth, and if you are not humble enough to realize that you don’t, in fact, have your act completely together, then you will miss opportunities for personal growth. If you have “arrived” to the point that you no longer need constructive criticism, then you’ve peaked, too (and you are probably somewhere high up on the “pain in the butt spectrum” for colleagues and subordinates).

Authentic humility (this has nothing to do with making self-deprecating statements, this is an internal trait) is critical to being open to change. (Duh.)

But the higher you rise, and the more successes you have on the job, the more tempting it is to believe that you’ve got it all mastered. The more likely you become to resist change, because you believe that what got you there will keep you there. That attitude only reveals that you don’t know what really “got you there” in the first place.

What likely “got you there” in terms of success wasn’t something inherently yours in terms of skills or style; rather, it was your ability to learn, identify opportunity, put in the work and be developed, personally, throughout the process.

And those abilities begin to disappear when you start to rest on your past accomplishments.

Great leaders remain humble and retain the internal traits relative to being authentically humble that enable them to continue to learn and grow and develop, personally and professionally. Great leaders don’t think that their style or performance is above reproach; instead, they listen to criticism intelligently, analyze it and then make changes based on the truths they gleaned during the process.

And that brings me to the second thing I love about this story. Strategically and systematically using institutional criticism could become a great tool for you as a CEO or manager.

If you want to identify the next great leader within your business, watch how they handle criticism. In fact, create opportunities for potential leaders within your business to be in a position to receive constructive criticism relative to presentations (which could even be staff meeting presentations) or performance on projects.

Create opportunities that include 360 degree feedback and see how these individuals analyze and incorporate findings based on feedback from co-workers and subordinates into their personal and professional work and style. See how they communicate with their subordinates about feedback received and changes they intend to make as a result.

And you can use criticism as a tool even before you decide to hire a new employee, too. 

If you have a multi-step hiring process, include an opportunity for candidates to receive constructive criticism relative to some aspect of their candidacy: a suggestion on how to improve their resume, how to improve their interviewing skills, how to present themselves in terms of dress or style, etc. And then see how they react to the criticism. This could be especially helpful in the hiring process when you are dealing with a “superstar” type of candidate, as it will reveal whether they are teachable and whether they possess the authentic humility needed to become a contributor as part of your team (rather than just individually).

And finally, as Walker himself did, take this story to heart as a leader, yourself. Authentic humility and transparency are traits which can create strong loyalty among your colleagues and subordinates who will discover that they can trust you. It will also create loyal followers who realize that, since you are open to learning and growth, the sky is the limit and the best is yet to come.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit “the target.”

Or maybe I should say, ‘Penneys first, Target later, because today there’s a glut of stories in my news feed about how large department and discount stores are going “smaller” either in terms of actual store space or in their approach within their stores, by creating micro shops around customers’ favorite brands or lifestyles. About retailers who are ‘reinventing’ themselves to reflect consumers changing habits. And for years we’ve been bombarded by advertising from retailers who are competing on price to the point that, this year, JCPenneys latest re-invention may be the signal that discounting is dead—whether it’s because retailers have hit bottom in terms of the prices they can afford to offer or whether we (the American consumer) have simply been discounted to the point that it’s no longer an incentive to buy.

It seems like nearly every major retailer is somewhere in the process of reinvention, re-engineering, all the time.  And it’s expensive; somewhere along the line, we as consumers are the ones who foot that bill, too.  Are any of you out there feeling the genius of all this retail reinvention?

Maybe retailers are shooting at the wrong target, or at best, maybe these strategies are only part of the answer.

Because ultimately, what creates shop-to-the-death brand loyalty isn’t layout, it’s love.

Love for the customer, demonstrated day in and day out, in consistent, repetitive encounters in which the customer experience matches up with not only what your customers need (products and services) but also corresponds to what they value—the things your business does that make customers feel truly valued, themselves.

Do the retail reinventions you’ve observed to date, or which are being promised in the future speak to that? If the products and services being offered are the same, and the customer experience is essentially the same as before and as that of competitors, then it is not. When was the last time you had a retail shopping experience that felt intrinsically unique—extraordinarily outside of what you expected—in some meaningful way?  When was the last time a business acted on your feedback?  When was the last time you shopped a major retailer and felt like the most important customer in the store?

Love for the mission and vision, demonstrated to the point that your customers would be able to write out your mission statement, based on their experiences with your business.

While there are many different ideas on what mission and vision statements should look like, this definition, from Drew McLellan at Drew’s Marketing Minute provides a clear way to describe them: “Your mission is what you do best every single day, and your vision is what the future will be like because you deliver on that mission so brilliantly every day.”

If you put a focus group together of even your most loyal customers, would the answers they write to these questions reflect your (actual) mission and vision statements?

• What is the mission, or purpose, of our business?
• What words would you use to describe the customer experience at our business?
• What words would you use to describe your last experience with any aspect of our business?
• When our business is “all grown up” (5, 10 or 25 years in the future) what type of role do you think it will play:
  • in your life
  • in the life of the community

How about your employees?

Without a cheat sheet, would their answers to these questions reflect your actual mission and vision statement? I hope that it would, because the next “love” you must have to create customer loyalty is just that:

Love for employees, demonstrated by more than paychecks and perks.

People on the outside of your business are described by words like customers, prospects, referrers, stakeholders, etc. These are words which indicate that these individuals possess intrinsic worth, in and of themselves.  Doesn’t it strike you as odd that once an individual accepts a compensated position with a business that they are then viewed (and consequently treated) more like tools and resources — things that are only valuable to the extent that they are used properly?  And who wants to be treated like a tool?

The single most important thing to creating loyal customers is the customer perception. The single most important influencers of the customer perception are your employees. Period.  Not your products or services, because your customers can get what you sell somewhere else.  It’s not what you do that sets your business apart, it’s how your business does it.

And since your employees are, therefore, your most important resource, doesn’t it follow that you should lavish the love, care and attention needed to educate and empower them to create extraordinary customer experiences?  And shouldn’t the way that you treat your employees become the ultimate motivator for them to their best, each and every day?

There is merit to creating customer’s bills of rights, manifestos and other promises. But if you continually break the promises you made to your employees when they were hired as to the vision of how it would be to work for your business, then what incentive is there for your employees to fulfill the promises you make to customers and to give you that 100% effort you ask for, each and every day?

Love for learning, manifested by transparency, authenticity, introspection and capacity for change.

You might need some therapy for this one because, as Dr. Phil and others like to say, “You can’t change what you won’t acknowledge.” And this goes back to the heart of the initial question about retail renovation as well, in whether or not retailers are shooting first, and aiming later.

A love for learning usually goes hand in hand with growth and development whether speaking about individuals or corporations. Businesses with a learning culture eagerly embrace all sorts of new information, including information gained from customer and employee feedback. They recognize that feedback can become the impetus for change that will put the business into position to actually (1) really know what customers value and (2) provide customer experiences that deliver on those values.

Love of the future, demonstrated in a continuous pattern of long-term thinking and decision-making.

This one is easy to understand. Those who seek immediate gratification often destroy their ability to succeed in the future by disappointing customers and employees, failing to invest in learning and disregard that points to dis-ingenuousness when it comes to the stated mission and vision of the business. Conversely, when you are concerned with the long term, you make decisions and plan strategically to get to the future, to put yourself into the best possible position to succeed in the future. And best of all, love of the future feeds all of the other types of loves listed above.

99% of you are losing my attention before you’ve half done. You’re trying to tell me much too much, you’re getting too specific and you’re diluting your message.

30 seconds turns into four minutes as you try to expand on specials that your business is running right now, events you are planning, how interest rates are affecting your industry, and even very worthwhile community and charitable causes your business is supporting.

It’s just too much. In most cases, way too much.

If you tell me anything more than your name, the name of your business and one strong statement about what you do or what you hope to accomplish, the amount of information I will actually remember drops off precipitously. And I don’t think I’m alone.

I’ve heard it suggested before that when giving a presentation or writing a paper, you should have 3 main points. And most people can remember three things.

When you give me anything more than your name, the name of your business and one strong statement, the amount of information I am actually retaining is dropping off, precipitously. And I don’t think I’m alone. We are bombarded with ads and marketing messages throughout the course of every day. We remember very few of them; and in fact, our brains have learned to tune most of them out.

The three main points presentation principle is a good one when it comes to planning how you will introduce yourself (and your business) to others going forward. This does not mean that you should tell people three different things about your business, it means you need to limit yourself to three things: your name, the name of your business, and one strong tagline or purpose statement.

Think of it this way:

When you are part of a business networking, rotary, chamber of commerce or another community group, you are thinking for the long term. You are making yourself available so that when people in the community actually need your services (or know someone who does) your business will build mind share with your networking peers that will result in referrals.

When your introduction expands into selling points, you’ve moved into selling mode. You are working a short-term strategy, as if you are cold calling and going for the sale at the same moment, rather than working to build a relationship.

When introducing yourself to any group, first decide what it is that is most important —the one message about your business that you most hope those specific people will remember, and limit your introduction to that one short (but hopefully impactful) statement.

When you know you will have the opportunity to introduce yourself to a networking group, plan ahead.

• Think about the people who will be in attendance and what one message might resonate most with them.
• Think about the kinds of customers they have and the types of people they are most likely to come into day to day contact with: what aspect of your business would be most relevant to them?
• Think about the types of customers you most want to attract.
• Think about your short and long term business goals; what is most important for your business right now?   

To make an impact in 30 seconds requires preparation. But I would argue that you will make more of an impact if you take only 30 seconds than you will if you take 5 minutes.

For your one strong statement of purpose, you might need to create a tagline for yourself or you may simply be able to take one of the main points from your mission or vision statement and convert it for the purpose. If you have a few (or even several) strong statements, don’t give up, just spread them out. Rather than delivering them all at once, deliver them over time. Take one and stick to it each month, or decide which you will deliver based on its relevance to the audience.

If the information you deliver for yourself and your business is laser-like in focus and clarity, and concise, the potential for audience members to connect with it and remember it increases, exponentially. So when it comes time to introduce yourself, think 3 main points—the three most important things you hope people remember: Your name, the name of your business and one strong statement of purpose.

The last time I did so I saw a sign on the counter announcing that every Saturday afternoon, they would be hosting “Coffee classes.” With my love of java and the fact that I make my own coffee drinks every day, I would love to brush up on my coffee knowledge.

But besides thinking that this class was something I’d like to attend myself, I whipped out my pen and wrote a napkin note to myself, because this is a ‘grande’ marketing idea for almost any small business.

Classes like these would be a great way to draw already engaged customers even deeper into relationship with your business and it’s also a great way to introduce prospects or indifferent customers to new products or services.

So you don’t serve coffee? Good news: This isn’t about the coffee.
Free classes, seminars and demonstrations are a great way to educate interested prospects and customers about products and services they haven’t yet tried. The trick to attracting attendees is to do just what Starbucks did, educate people about your products and services in a very non-threatening, non-salesy, low to no pressure way.

Here’s what I mean:

They didn’t offer up a class on Starbucks coffee, they offered up a coffee class. They are giving people who love coffee a chance to learn more (presumably) about things like how coffee is grown, how blends and roasts are made, and what types of processes are needed to produce various coffee drinks. My guess is that attendees will also be treated to samples at the event. It would be equivalent to a winery offering wine tasting, growing or making education or a local bar with its own microbrewery offering some type of beer classes.

And you can apply the same principle and create classes for almost any type of business:

• Does your business provide financial services? You could hold estate planning, budgeting or retirement planning classes.
• Do you offer salon or spa services? You could offer classes in current styles and trends for hair and makeup, celebrity look how-to or seasonal styles, hair and skin care.
• Are you a realtor or mortgage professional? Hold classes to educate consumers about various lending programs, how to qualify for a mortgage, or how to best prepare a home for sale.

And so it goes. Almost no matter what type of business you have, you can think of topics that are related to your business but not only specifically about your products or services, and use them as a vehicle to expose individuals who represent your ideal client types and leads to your products and services.

You can use classes as a way to connect with people in your community who are at various stages of the buying process, so that you establish and build your reputation with them as an expert in your field.

You can use free classes and seminars to help you identify leads—individuals who may not be in the market for your products and services right now, but who may be in the future, or who may have friends or family to refer to your business.

If you like this idea but don’t feel that your business provides you with a topic for which to offer classes, you can also view this as a cooperative marketing opportunity and partner with other professionals or other businesses who serve the same types of clients that you do. In fact, a joint event offers several advantages. Not only do you share costs, but you also share contacts and have a greater reach for extending class invitations out into your respective constituencies.

Here are some more ideas when it comes to creating free classes to bring people in to your business and expose them to your products and services in non-threatening, non-sales-ey ways:

• Establish a weekly or monthly time when you will offer free education or demonstrations to any interested customers or local community members.
• Hold quarterly or semi-annual open house events featuring free mini-classes, demonstrations, refreshments and door prizes.
• To make sure you don’t engage in “hit and miss marketing” when it comes to classes, which will  require the investment of your time and other resources, make sure that your topics are going to be interesting to your customers and prospects. Survey customers in-store and online to find out what types of topics they might want to know more about. Benchmark competitors. Use networking events to ask peers for advice and feedback.
• Invite other professionals or business owners to participate and bring free education on a variety of topics to people at your place of business. Chances are these professionals will also be willing to invite their customers to attend as well; or you could even work with a local business owners group to set up a round robin of free classes at local businesses which will be promoted by all participating businesses.
• Create webinars and post educational videos on YouTube. This is an especially great option as people can ‘attend’ them any time, from anywhere. And since they are virtual, there is little to no cost to you to present them. If you are not comfortable making educational videos, consider video-taping your live events and making them available to the public online.
• Create branded PDF and web page “tip sheets” and short videos that give your customers and prospects “insider” education, seasonal or monthly ideas and tips relative to your industry, products or services to post on social media, your blog and website, YouTube, etc.

Investing in the education of customers and prospects could bring “grande” results not only in terms of sales but in managing and cultivating customer relationships and employee engagement. It could be the vehicle to help you reap new referrals not only from customers but from among your peers as a result of networking and cooperative marketing and event efforts. So take a lesson from Starbucks when it comes to marketing your business in a new, grande way!

Hit or Miss Marketing happens when you make assumptions about what customers truly want or need, what they value in business interactions and the worth that they ascribe not only to your products or services, but also to the brand of your business, without doing the research needed to validate your assumptions. Then you “hit” customers up with the wrong product or service (or at the wrong time or price point), change something about the customer experience in the wrong way, or make another change you think customers want.  But you “miss” the mark, because — well — they didn’t.

They missed the mark because they did not do the work to find out what, in fact, their customers really did want.  And it doesn’t just cost your business in missed opportunities, it can also frustrate your customers, aid your competitors and result in loss of trust from your customers, vendors and even your own employees.

Despite the fact that there are many ways to get to know your customers, and in spite of the fact that there are so many good reasons to do so, because it provides your business with information you can use to:

• find out what types of products and services your customers may want (now) that you are not yet providing
• anticipate what types of products and services they will need in the future, or as a community ages
• determine what types of interactions they would deem most satisfying
• identify community and charitable causes they identify most with, and
• find new ways to differentiate your business based on what your customers value,

still, many businesses aren’t taking advantage of even the most basic and easy ways they could to find out what their customers value and what they really want.

In 365 Days of Marketing I suggest many ways to get to know your customers better in order to grow your business. This morning I was thinking about why more businesses don’t do customer surveys or even ask a “question of the month” in order to begin to accumulate data that they could use to grow their businesses.

While the number one reason might be lack of time (or presumptive laziness), I surmise that one of the main reasons businesses don’t simply ask their customers for information is that they don’t want to appear intrusive. But the need to collect, analyze and utilize helpful information about your customers and your community remains if you want to grow your business, especially in the current economy.

1. Don’t ask for too much. Create surveys, but make participation voluntary and answers optional.

I spend a lot of time researching marketing topics on the internet and there are no shortage of “free” white papers which can downloaded from any number of reputable businesses. But I download very few s for one simple fact: the contact information they ask for is too intrusive.

So do create online and written customer surveys to be filled out in exchange for white papers, at the point of sale, etc. But make it ok for participants to provide only the information they feel comfortable providing. Getting some hard data that you can use to help your business is better than getting no information, isn’t it?

And keep in mind that it takes time to build trust.  Build customer trust and they will trust you with more information. If you ask intrusive questions at the outset, you are likely to stop the relationship in its tracks.

2. Keep it simple and take a long term approach.

Instead of asking for a lot of information, ask a few (or even just one) question focused topically in order to provide you with specific information you have determined could be most helpful to your business. Or ask a question of the month (or quarter) and gather information over time. As noted above, this will prevent the appearance of over-intrusiveness. Plus, asking questions over time (and acting on the information you obtain) is a good way to consistently engage with customers in meaningful ways.

3. Actually use the information you obtain.

When customers are gracious enough to provide you with valuable information you can use to grow your business, improve the customer experience or add desired products or services to your menu, act on it, as quickly as possible. (After all, isn’t that the point of asking the questions?) And don’t just make changes to your business, tell customers about changes that you make based on their preferences, requests and complaints. Nothing makes your business look better to customers than the realization that you actually value their opinions!

4. Don’t ask any questions, at all.

There is information you can obtain relative to your customers and prospects based on simple geography, and what’s more, it’s free, and right at your fingertips.  As little as 15 minutes on the internet can provide you with valuable information about your community.  Sites like www.city-data.com can provide you with demographic information about your community and surrounding areas instantly, which you can analyze and use in your short and long range planning, such as:

• percentages of people in various age ranges (find out the median age of local residents or find out the percentage of people in your area who fall into Baby Boomer, Gen X, Gen Y, Millennial and other generational categories)
• the median income and cost of living for your area, and how it compares to state or national averages
• information about the types of jobs people in your community hold
• crime statistics
• information about weather, air quality, earthquakes or other natural disasters
• home values, percentage of people who own homes, rent and even how long on average they remain in their homes
• marital status, male to female ratio, nationality and diversity statistics
• information about community resources such as hospitals, churches, financial institutions, grocery stores and other businesses

You, your accountant and a team of lawyers spent a month finessing the disclaimers on your invoices.

You spent months (or even years) writing an employee policy manual.

But your corporate mission and vision? That one sublime, supreme statement which reflects the ideal of all you want your business to be? That one you knocked out in a single staff meeting.

Believing in the words that you wrote and hoping to inspire others with its intent, you made an announcement or two to employees and customers, blew it up poster-sized, put it in a beautiful frame and hung it on the wall.

There it sits, in all its glory, but no one remembers it. It’s not a source of inspiration to your staff because apart from reading it during employee orientation, to them, it’s no more than a lifeless wall ornament. Your customers don’t connect with it – or worse, are even offended by it – when their experience with your business does not match up to the promise that it conveys.

Why?
Because your mission statement is just not that important to you.
Why do I believe that? Because as human beings our actions speak louder than our words when it comes to telling others about what is important to us.

Because what is important to us gets done.

What is important to us, gets attention. And resources. And research. And funding. What is truly important to us receives whatever is needed to keep it alive and well. And right now, your mission and vision statement isn’t on the receiving end of any of that.

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that all of those other things are important, too. Mistakes can cost money or even result in law suits on the part of customers or employees. How you present your business to the public is intrinsic to your branding efforts.

But here’s the thing:

If your mission and vision statement is really important to you – if it is a genuine reflection of the ultimate ideal of what you believe your business can be and the good that it can do in the world and in the lives of your customers – then all of the actions you take, goals you set, strategies you undertake and tactics you employ to reach them – all of it should tie back in spirit to the mission and vision of your business. Because all of those day to day interactions, all of your business policies and operations, all of the goals you set and the means you take to reach them — all of those little things are the means by which you will reach (or fail to reach) the ideals laid out in your mission and vision.

See what I mean?  If your business decisions, operating policies, goals, hiring and training investments and all of the other little and big things that you do every day aren’t aligned with your corporate mission and vision, how in the world do you expect to achieve them?  If your corporate mission and vision are just pretty words hanging lifelessly on the wall, you never will.

Your mission and vision statement should be the guiding and determining factor when it comes to your long and short range plans, your marketing plans, and the decisions made behind closed doors in staff meetings. Your plans and operating policies should all be measured against their relevancy to your mission and vision and whether the strategies and tactics you will employ are in harmony with the promises you make to your customers within them.

As should your hiring decisions; after all, what is more important to the customer experience than the individuals they will encounter or who are responsible to create and facilitate them? Job descriptions should tell employees how the role they fulfill helps to fulfill the corporate mission and vision, and the manner in which they are expected to create them. Performance evaluations and salary determinations should be tied to whether and how employees embody your corporate mission and vision in the fulfillment of their duties.

The training you provide for employees and the education and resources you provide for your customers should all contribute toward fulfillment of your corporate mission and vision. The ambiance and atmosphere you create for customers and the climate and employee culture you provide for your team should reflect the ideals contained within them. And of course the overall experience that you create for your customers.

If your mission statement is truly your ideal, then keep it alive. Make it the focal point for yourself and for your employees. Work with vendors and manufacturers who will support the spirit of your mission and vision and partner with you in ways that are strategic in order to help you fulfill them. Hire people who will buy in, readily and with enthusiasm, and who have the ability to embody what it is that you want to provide for your customers day in and day out.

Where you invest your attention and resources tells the story of what is important to you.
At one time, your mission and vision were the center of your workplace universe, at least for a little while. Perhaps they still are truly important to you, but you assumed that people would understand just how important they are, simply because they the natural ideal for your business, without making them the literal measure of your business decisions and operations. Bring your mission and vision back to life by ensuring that they permeate every area of your business.

Make us believe!

And this, in turn, can probably be traced to something very simple: They don’t understand marketing.

The word “marketing” is connected with (and limited to) “advertising” in the minds of many business leaders. And advertising is expensive. By definition, it is visual, audible or other promotional representations of your business for which you have to pay money.

Even though it is often targeted in terms of placement to provide a business with potential exposure to members of their target markets, the return on paid advertising is often very small (or non-existent) since consumers have learned to tune out advertising across pretty much all media. To say that consumers have been bombarded with ads over the last few decades is to understate. Small wonder that we have learned to ignore the ads we see on TV, hear on the radio, which clog up our mailboxes or which frame out the articles and other information we’ve sought online.

But to limit your understanding of “marketing” to what constitutes “advertising” is to put your business at a serious disadvantage.

To give you an idea of why this perception exists in the minds of non-marketing professionals, check out  infographics like this one from CreativeDesigns.com that demonstrates marketing in the 1980s vs. marketing in the 2010s. Or Brian Solis and JESS3’s “Conversation Prism” which aptly demonstrates that today’s businesses can take advantage of thousands of different marketing strategies. The trick, of course, is determining which can actually produce the best return on your marketing investment.

And that brings me to the point: 8 ways to transform your marketing from a cost center into a profit center—in reality and in the minds of non-marketing managers and co-workers:

1. Put your mouth where the money is.
No – that’s not a misstatement of the well-known phrase, “Put your money where your mouth is.” Rather it’s to make the point that you must be able to specify what you desire to accomplish or what results you want to achieve for any given marketing campaign or on any given marketing channel. And then, be prepared to track, measure and report your results on an on-going basis.

This strategy has an added bonus: by measuring and reporting real results – results that provide your business with more followers, more leads, more customers, more sales – whatever it is that you want “more” of – you will greatly increase the probability that your boss, co-workers or employees will develop a better understanding of and appreciation for what marketing “does” to benefit themselves and the business.

2. Educate internally, about what marketing “is” and on the many ways and channels where marketing occurs. 
Do you attend staff meetings? Ask for (or take) 5 minutes to introduce your peers to a new aspect of marketing. Do you have daily huddles? Take 1-2 minutes to present employees with a marketing concept or tip. Offer to teach a marketing-oriented internal class or make marketing training part of your new hire orientation process. Don’t assume that all employees have a clear understanding of what marketing really is or the potential for return that well-executed marketing tactics can bring.

3. Include your marketing specialist in your product or service development meetings and discussions. 
All too often, purchasing, accounting and sales managers seclude themselves with vendors and purchase in quantities of products, which are then received and put into stores; and only then, after the fact, is marketing given their marching orders to develop demand for and sale through of the same products.

When, if consulted earlier in the process, not only would marketing have the opportunity to develop a full-scale, strategic launch campaign and the opportunity build demand and educate consumers prior to its arrival, but they would also have a chance to test market the products or may even be able to provide valuable input to prevent the expenditure of valuable resources –not just the money to buy the products, but all of the time, shelf space and other valuable resources needed on what are commonly referred to as “dogs,” (a.k.a. products your customers don’t want, don’t like and won’t buy).

4. Include marketing in other processes, too. 
Think about things like the disclaimers you put on your invoices or customer statements, your employee policy manual and hiring processes.  Anything that impacts the customer experience should be viewed from a marketing mindset, specifically, from the customer’s point of view.

5. Conduct an analysis of all customer touch points from the customer’s point of view. 
Recruit key customers to participate in focus groups. Conduct surveys to gauge customer satisfaction, potential interest in new products or services and anticipate other things that your customers want and need (that your business might be able to provide). Find out what your customers value that exists within your customer processes, what they don’t like, or what might be missing.

6. Engage in Content Marketing. 
Studies* show that leads obtained by way of inbound marketing (blogging, social media and other content marketing and curation platforms) cost 61% less than outbound marketing (including traditional advertising, mailings, etc.) Not only do these leads obtained via inbound marketing cost less, but they are higher in quality, and as a result, produce more conversions. Inbound marketing gives your business the opportunity to target your ideal client types by providing relevant, interesting content, and also gives you the ability to pre-qualify these same leads to some extent through the same content.
*source: www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/7243/inbound-marketing-leads-cost-61-less-than-outbound

7. Use SEO strategies.
I know, I know — one hears the term “SEO” and envisions that mastering SEO and SEM strategies will necessitate learning equivalent to that of a complex computer programmer. While you can go that deep if you so desire, you need to drop that presupposition. The truth is, SEO is as much a part of marketing today as is social media, as is advertising, as is your print collateral, website or any other channel. Get smart enough so that you are incorporating basic SEO strategies into all of your online content marketing, website development and email marketing. SeoMoz.org offers a wonderful and free Beginners Guide to SEO online.

8. Do research and stay on top of emerging trends. 
Marketing isn’t just responsible to help promote your business to people, it’s also responsible to find out what those people (a.k.a. customers and prospects) want. It’s also responsible to be aware of what is trending in content marketing so that your social media and blog actually provide content that draws web traffic and generates leads or stimulates in-store visits (you know, “shopping!”) It’s also responsible to keep abreast of what’s coming next and how to utilize it to help your business, like how smart marketers became aware of Pinterest and started using it for business long before the media realized that it had quietly passed up the much-heralded Google+ in terms of traffic, and engages its audience members in average minutes per visit more than almost any other social network; second only to Facebook.

Marketing is not the errand girl for the sales department or the janitorial staff for any other department when they make a mistake that impacts your customers.  Marketing is not a series of activities that occur.  Marketing is not reactionary. In it’s most powerful and effective form, marketing will be a proactive part of all of your business decisions and will be strategically essential when it comes to the success of your business.

Transforming your marketing efforts (or how you view marketing) from cost to profit isn’t just desirable – it’s absolutely critical for your business. Marketing, done right, can help you now and be a valuable resource to help you become more profitable in the future. If you view marketing as a cost center, or as expenses, chances are you don’t really have a good grasp of what marketing is or what it’s real benefit to your business can be.

But no matter how well-intentioned you and your staff are, at some point or another, mistakes will be made, products will be out of stock, poor service will occur, or even something beyond your control but all of which produce the same result:  an unhappy customer.

What you may not realize is that it’s often not the problem or shortcoming itself that results in a lost customer – not to mention the damage to your reputation as they share all the gory details (and more) with their friends and family, on social media, and by way of bad ratings and reviews left for your business as they look for ways to vent all of those negative emotions.  Often it is not the shortcoming or poor product or service that does all this damage – it’s how your business responds.

Sometimes unhappy customers leave your store or clientele without telling you first or without telling you why.  You may not have an opportunity to fix the problem before they leave and it might even be a while before you realize that they are gone.

Other times customers do give you the opportunity to rectify a situation before they walk – and these are the critical moments when every action you take and even all of your words really count.

Preparing for these moments ahead of time can make all the difference.

Do your staff know what to do when confronted by an unhappy – or even a very angry – customer? 

To better prepare them to deal with upset customers before it even happens: 

• Put your money where your mission statement is.  How many businesses that claim that they provide exceptional customer service or that customer satisfaction is their #1 priority?  If this applies to your business, then your policies should reflect that, including policies relating to returns, complaints and customer communications.  And if this is your business, then you should be investing in communications and other skills training and education for your employees.
• Develop a policy and a protocol.  Every employee should know who to call for help (or where to direct a customer) when confronted with an unhappy customer, complaint or return.
• Empower your employees.  Every employee should know the next step they can take to either remedy the situation themselves or get the customer connected with someone who can.
• Practice.  It can be upsetting for your employees to be confronted by an upset customer in the heat of the moment. Take time not only to train your employees in the policy, protocol and to know what they can do to resolve customer complaints, but also take time to practice, role play and conduct employee training to ensure employees have the tools they need.
• Show empathy, but don’t take it personally.  When customers are dissatisfied, sometimes even for what might be minor reasons, they can be very stressed and upset as a result.  Sometimes they are already stressed or upset by other things in their lives, so that minor upsets at your business result in an over-reaction.  Sometimes it’s not really about you, your business, or the problem that occurred.  Even if you are on the receiving end of what you consider to be an over-reaction, listen.  Show empathy.  Be sympathetic.  Keep the big picture in mind.

But preparing staff to handle unhappy customers and complaints is only one way to head off problems before they occur.  You can also: 

• Establish a formal feedback, suggestion or complaint communications system.
• Ask questions about customer satisfaction (and track responses) at the point of sale.
• Follow up after customer interactions with online or printed surveys.
• Periodically conduct surveys and polls.
• Use social media to solicit suggestions or ideas for improvements or to get an idea of how your clients tastes and preferences are evolving.
• Plan to create and use focus groups to analyze various areas of your business or customer touch points.
• Create a continuous improvement system and incentives for employees within your business.
• Reward and acknowledge employees who embody the idea of exceptional customer service.

And what about those clients who left without telling you why or giving you a chance to resolve the situation? 

• As soon as you become aware that you have lost a customer, reach out.  Email, call or send a note saying that you miss them and opening the door for a response – even if they will be telling you something you don’t want to hear.
• Send an email or printed survey to ask if they would be willing to share their reasons for leaving or why they chose the products or services of a competitor’s over yours.
• Track desertions and look for trends that would point to problems in your products, services, individual staff members (or departments) or processes.

It costs exponentially more in time, resources and life energy to acquire new customers than it will to practice any and all of these customer retention strategies (not to mention the fact that happy customers will be your best source of referrals for new customers!)  Remember that it’s not the problem itself, but how you react and resolve the problem (or fail to do the same) that will result in a lost customer and a damaged reputation.  Invest in the success of your business – take the steps you need to in order to deal with (or diffuse) customer dissatisfaction before it even occurs.

On one hand, I get it: your company = your baby.

This is something into which you have poured your blood sweat and tears, based on your vision. You want me to share your vision — and I can, and I do.

What I do not share (and this is what lies directly between your business and its best chance for success) is the fact that (based on how you react to criticism and suggestions for improvements) for you, criticism of your execution equates to criticism of your vision.

As long as you are unable to separate the two in your mind, you will continue to want people to tell you what you want to hear: Your business is awesome.

And as long as you believe that your business is awesome, your mind will be closed to the improvements that you could make that would truly make your business awesome in actuality, rather than awesome based only on your intentions (your vision).

Do you see the difference? You are smack dab in the middle of your own way.

The vision of your business – the good that you want to do in the world and in the lives of your customers – is likely awesome and from that standpoint, so is the intent of your business. But to fulfill your vision will ultimately require that you are able to separate the esteem in which you hold this vision from the way that you analyze and view the ways in which you are trying to achieve it.

How your business will become awesome isn’t equivalent to your vision statement. Rather, it’s entirely embodied in the strategies and tactics that you undertake in order to achieve it.

The next time a consultant or even an employee tells you something about the tactics and strategies you have in place that aren’t working, or which need to be put into place, don’t view it as an attack on the awesome-ness of the vision that you have for your business. Instead, embrace constructive criticism from customers, consultants, vendors and your employees—because the truths these individuals care enough to share with you can become the catalyst by which you attain the awesome vision you have for your business.

***
Little white marketing lies are common misconceptions that many well-meaning business owners claim to be true, but which usually aren’t.
In fact, these little white marketing lies might even be standing between your business and success.

The new book, Little White Marketing Lies will help you put these and other little white marketing lies to the test, enabling you to identify the true strengths and weaknesses of your business and put your business in the best position to succeed in the future.

We actually like it when we have a chance to use it. It’s kind of therapeutic, even fun. We get to figure out how to line things up perfectly to get the cut exactly where we need it, it saves us time and work, and it’s really efficient when it comes to doing what it was designed to do.

So we take it out, wipe the dust off, use it to trim the edges off whatever it is we’re creating, then we lock the blade back up and put it back up on the shelf until we need to use it again.

That’s how you use the paper cutter, but it’s no way to use marketing.
But unfortunately, it’s exactly how marketing is utilized in many small and even not so small businesses. You know who you are.

You’re the one who pulls the marketing tools off the shelf because that wunder-product that you thought would fly off the shelves, didn’t. So now, only at the end of the process, do you whip out some marketing in a last-ditch effort to sell a few units before you have to put it back on the clearance table.

If you are wondering what’s wrong with that model, I can help. Here’s what marketing can do for you when you give it a seat at your business process table every day:

• Working with your most valuable clients and/or members of your ideal client types to determine their most important needs and wants, so that purchasing decisions are more informed.
• Test marketing before you spend precious resources and allocate valuable shelf space to new products.
• Setting up a focus group to identify what product benefits (and selling points) resound most powerfully with members of your target market.
• Seeding the market to get pioneers and early adopters on board and talking about the product.
• Creating demand and anticipation among customers before the product arrives with teasers that speak to the identified real needs and wants of your customers across multiple communication and social media channels.
• Running a strong launch campaign across all of your marketing channels.
• Sharing product testimonials on print and in-store displays, in email marketing and on social media.
• Doing in-store sampling.
• Creating promotions for the product which represent genuine value to customers (and which are also profitable for your business).

Look how many marketing tools can – and should – be used before the product even arrives or the new service is made available to customers!
It’s much more difficult to create strong sales momentum around a new product or service after the fact! In fact, at that point, you have skipped several steps that are critical to the process, not the least of which is determining whether there is even demand for the product or service you want to introduce.

But in many businesses, the sales manager, operations manager and purchasing director sit down with manufacturers and buy product, receive it, stock it and put it on the shelves. Only then do they hand marketing a product brochure and tell them that it’s up to them to get it sold.

In many businesses, thousands and thousands of dollars are spent purchasing sophisticated phone systems, customer service reps (who, for some inexplicable reason, report to accounting, rather than sales) are hired and a significant amount of time and resources are invested in training them on the technicalities of answering a phone call, inputting an order, putting a caller on hold or transferring a call — but next to no time or resources are spent actually training them in communications and customer relations.

In many businesses, new techniques or even whole new services are learned, pricing set, menus and signage updated and then service professionals find themselves sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the phone to ring. Only then is marketing informed that they need to get people in the door to use the new service.

In many businesses, the controller comes up with what he thinks is a great new policy relative to how customers pay, register, check out or are invoiced. He writes a terse, accountant-like script and slaps it on a display for the cash register, sends it out in letters to all your customers and puts notes in bright red on all customer invoices (so they won’t miss it).

Only after a barrage of angry customer phone calls, dropped accounts, unsubscribe requests and other missives is marketing appealed to for damage control. All of which could have been avoided, had marketing and a customer-centric mind been part of the process and policy review process, part of the policy writing process, and part of the customer communications process.

Your paper cutter approach to marketing demonstrates not only that you don’t value or understand marketing, but it also demonstrates a serious deficit in terms of how important you believe your customers are, based on how little they factor in to your operational processes.

It’s obvious when a business employs a paper cutter approach to marketing.
And it’s just as obvious that it costs those businesses, big time, over time, in blown opportunities, poor customer relationship management, lost sales, diminished profits – it all adds up, doesn’t it?

Last week I wrote an article about how some people treat marketing like they treat the paper cutter, and how that’s not the way it was meant to be used.  Now, feeling guilt for throwing my 15 inch mandolin under the bus as I did, I feel obliged to make amends.

So here it is.

When it comes to solving a marketing problem (or any other problem) in your small business, be the paper cutter:

1. Do the math.  Unless you have very clear margins already established, when it’s time to use the paper cutter, you are generally required to do some math in order to make sure that you line the paper up correctly prior to cutting it.

Likewise, before tackling any complex problem or making major changes in your business, do the math.  Will the actions you take affect your customers?  Your staff or co-workers?  Will it impact the processes of other departments?

2. Line it up. Once you’ve done the math, you still have to line your project up correctly relative to the guidelines on the bed of the paper cutter.

Solving problems is great and making changes might be absolutely necessary; but you still need to line things up correctly before making your cut.  As you think through your strategy, make sure that your plan of action is aligned with your corporate guidelines:  your mission, vision and core values.

3. Decide how much you can do at once.  Most of the time when you use the paper cutter you are cutting multiple sheets of paper at once. But if you try to cut too many sheets at once, you will be unable to make a clean cut. You’ll be left with fragmented edges and crooked lines, and you might even have to start the whole project all over.

Complex problems and major change must often be done incrementally. Laying out your plan on a time line or creating a list of activities in order of importance can help you narrow your focus, so that you don’t try to do so many things all at once that they are not done well, or that the whole project fails as a result.

4. Finally, it’s time to cut!  For best results, bring the blade arm directly down, quickly and with the right amount of strength. If you make a slow, half-hearted attempt, you will knock your project off of its guidelines and end up with a crooked cut and a ruined project.

Once you have determined on a course of action, aligned your goal and strategies with your corporate guidelines and laid out your action plan on a time line, nothing should hold you back. You’ve done the necessary prep work to maximize your chances for success.  Set out, without delay with the confidence that only paper cutting planning can bring!

I pondered that, thinking about how often we believe that every problem can be solved if we can only apply enough logic and keep our emotions out of the equation. I realized that it just is not true. In fact, in many cases, the opposite is true.

Emotion has everything to do with the success of your business.

Take customer loyalty and brand advocacy. From a purely logical standpoint, they would only exist when high value and low price meet their optimum levels.

Logically, as customers, we would always shop for the best value for any item we want to buy. But once a business has successfully established and reinforced our satisfaction (this emotional – the way we feel that a company has exceeded our expectations) then, and only then, do they court our loyalty. Then and only then do they have a chance to win our loyalty in a way that transcends the lure of lower prices, better value or even better products offered by competitors.

But customer loyalty, referrals and brand advocacy are not based on logic. Customer satisfaction is based on a feeling. A customer must feel extra-ordinarily satisfied (which may or may not reflect the actual effort put forth by your business or employee). You can do everything perfectly and still not make someone feel that they received exceptional service.

Do you want your employees to be able to evoke emotion in the form of customer satisfaction?
Logically, the livelihood and financial success (not to mention the potential for raises and bonuses) for all your employees rests on the ability of your business to identify and attract customers and for your business to create customer loyalty and satisfaction—yes?

And yet in most businesses, despite the logic of this financial incentive, fewer than a third of employees feel (emotionally) engaged with or self-identify with your business.

Logically, your employees should be busting their butts to get your customers more emotionally connected with your business.
But they aren’t.

And since they aren’t, you have to ask yourself:  what is missing (or present) within the culture of your business that is failing to motivate your employees—who logically should be doing everything they can to work for business success that could translate into more financial reward for themselves.

What is it about your business that is failing to attract and engage your employees emotionally?
To develop customer loyalty or employee fidelity, you must work logically, strategically and authentically within the realm of emotions to:

• cause people to view themselves as a connected to your business (and to you, as its leader)
• go beyond logical reasons; you must realize that loyalty is an emotional response
• garner the faith of others based on history and trust in the promises that you make relative to what customers or employees can expect to be true of all of their experiences with you and your business

Only by understanding the role that emotions play relative to employee or customer loyalty will you be able to create the type of emotional connection needed to cause employees to go beyond the call of duty (and in turn to garner customer loyalty) on behalf of the team as a whole. And only by building an employee culture characterized by trust, honesty and a sense of shared destiny will this occur.

St. Patricks Day Marketing Ideas for Small Business:

St. Patrick’s Day Marketing Themes

When it comes to decorating or creating product sample displays, promotional coupons or graphics for advertising, email marketing or your blog or website, St. Patrick’s Day offers several strong decorating themes:

• Four leaf clovers and “Shamrocks”) which symbolize luck. Shamrocks are not four leaf clovers. A Shamrock is a 3-leafed old white clover, recognized as a symbol of Ireland. For free / royalty Free St. Patricks Day Clipart to use for marketing collateral, visit Clipartpal.com

Use St. Patricks Day clipart on coupons, mailers and displays, to create St. Patrick’s Day window displays, to decorate displays for sampling stations or for decorations for any special St. Patricks Day themed demo event or happy hours.

Four leaf clovers are considered lucky. In March, use social media to list reasons why you feel “lucky”:

• to have the customers that you have (why you are grateful)
• to live where you live (for your business to be located in the community/neighborhood where it is located)

Hold lucky drawings. Create custom messages with quotes about luck and the occasional ‘instant winner’ for scratch off cards or fortune cookies. Reward random “lucky” customers (such as the 10 or 100th of the day, etc.) with a free add-on, gift card for future purchase, or branded mug, t-shirt or another branded item.

• St. Patrick’s Day Happy hours.From National Beer Day on March 1 to St. Patricks Day, March is a month that provides you with a lot of reasons to have customer and prospect happy hours. Since you don’t want them to feel like stereotypical time share presentations, here are some ways to craft happy hours that make your customers happy at the same time that they make you happy by fulfilling your sales and event goals:
  • Happy hours that target your ideal client types. Create happy hours that are not intended for everyone, but which instead target your ideal client types (men, soccer moms, single working professionals, fashionistas, millenials, Gen Y, Gen X, Baby Boomers, etc.) by featuring activities and demonstrations that would be specifically of interest to them.
  • Offer real incentives. Happy hours in restaurants or bars are hours when appetizers and popular beverages are offered at a special price. Notice that these are items that are popular ones – items that your prospects and customers actually want – as opposed to an attempt to unload unwanted goods or services. They’re also priced compellingly; the discount or add-on offer represents a real motivation to the customer to come in, try and buy.
  • Pick low hanging fruit.Use happy hours to lure customers who love you in for a special appreciation event wherein they’ll have the opportunity to: Purchase more of what they love most, be able to join a VIP club, receive extra loyalty rewards, be rewarded for bringing friends, family or other referrals with them to the event. Or think low-hanging fruit in terms of geography: Invite the managers and employees of businesses near yours in for a private happy hour event, or work together with businesses located near yours to hold multi-business happy hours with cooperative offers and cross marketing.
• Leprechauns (who guard pots of gold, which can be found at the end of the rainbow).  Believe it or not, a leprechaun is actually a type of fairy in Irish folklore that usually looks like an old man and who – in contrast to the happy, helping way we usually view fairies – enjoys mischief, misdeeds and trickery. Despite that, if you catch one, you receive 3 wishes and if you follow one, you might just be led to his secret store – the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.Playing off this idea simply, you might decorate your small business in shamrocks, leprechauns, four leaf clovers and green, and place a pot of gold (chocolate coins) at the point of purchase as a thank you treat for customers.If you want something more engaging, you can create your own Leprechaun hunt for prospects and clients by leaving a trail of clues they can follow on Facebook, Twitter, your blog or in a series of emails. Use engagement responses and posts as entries into a special drawing, or feature a grand prize for the first to complete your contest and prizes for any runners up. To build excitement, you might create your own game of this kind which ends in a special happy hour event at your business.

  Or go big. Partner with local businesses and make a punch card or game board wherein people receive markers for visiting each of the participating businesses, attending a series of happy hour demo or sampling events, etc.

• Things Irish (such as Irish blessings).   Print Irish blessingson the back of business cards and hand them out at the point of sale, send them out in thank you notes, “we miss you” mailings for inactive clients, email newsletters, Facebook, Twitter or social media posts, print them on invoices, include them on flyers inserted into customer shipments, or display them as station talkers or at your point of purchase. Here are a few you may be familiar with to choose from (there are more featured at the link above):
  • May the road rise up to meet you • May the wind always be at your back • May the sun shine warm upon your face and rains fall soft upon your fields. • And until we meet again, may Gold hold you in the palm of His hand. (If you are uncomfortable with any religious reference, you can simply omit the last sentence.)
  • Wishing you a rainbow for sunlight after showers • Miles and miles of Irish smiles for golden happy hours • Shamrocks at your doorway for luck and laughter too • And a host of friends that never ends each day your whole life through.
  • May there always be work for your hands to do. • May your purse always hold a coin or two. • May the sun always shine on your windowpane. • May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. • May the hand of a friend always be near you. • May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

The special Valentine’s Day quote that can teach you more about branding your business is this: “Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.”

Throughout our lives, love is defined for us by the individuals closest to us. Our parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles, our early childhood caregivers and teachers, our sisters and brothers and cousins and then as we grow older, friends, boyfriends or girlfriends, fiancés and other significant others, and ultimately, our spouses and children.

When you think about the word “love,” everything that comes to mind whether happy or sad, joyful, painful – every memory, every twitterpated first date, every heartbreak – everything that has lent meaning to the word becomes part of its definition for you.

And here’s what this Valentine’s Day quote should teach you (or remind you) about branding your business: The brand (or name) of your business is just a word until people come along and give it meaning.

Because the brand of your business is made up of all of the meanings given to it by your customers, your prospects, your friends, your family – anyone who comes into contact with any aspect of your business.

All of these people assign emotional meaning to the brand of your business and the name of your business, with each and every point of contact. And every time they hear your business name, or your name, or one of your business’ representative names (your employees), all of those experiences work together to become the brand of your business in their minds.

You can’t control their perceptions. You can, however, work to design and control each and every touch point so that the meaning that customers and prospects assign to the brand of your business are infused with positive perceptions, words and meanings.

This is what branding is all about: the understanding that every channel by which a prospect or customer comes into contact with you is building the brand of your business in their minds.

And that’s why it is so important to take the time to define what you want those impressions to be and to design each touch point to consistently represent your desired brand image and messages. That’s why it’s so important to infuse your business culture with positive, customer-centric values and to hire people who share your values, so that your mission and vision can be fulfilled.

Your brand – the name of your business – is just words, until someone comes along and gives them meaning. Do you know what meanings are your customers and prospects assigning to your brand – and how to better affect what they are?