I talk a lot about having an effective and compelling message as the basis of your marketing. Without it, just about every aspect of your business will be frustrating — poor reaction to campaigns, prospects who “need to think about it,” sales people who complain that leads are poor quality, price pressure, and on and on.

Here is a short video post I did a few months ago on this topic.

I recognize, however, that the way I explain the importance of this issue — the words and examples I use — won’t do the trick for everyone.

So I scoured the Internet for additional insight.  I encourage you to check out the articles below. There really is no more important issue than building your marketing and selling system on top of a message that grabs your prospects and draws them in like a magnet.

K.I.S.S!  Jeff references the same issue that kicks off my “How to Get Your Ideal Prospects to Stop Ignoring You” webinar – that fact that we are inundated with thousands of messages each day – so simple, plain language is best.

Simple Slaps: The Guide to Effective Marketing Messages

Scott Smith, a Bay Area PR expert, has a great 3-part series on his blog that gives you a roadmap for developing a “message down” communication plan to help your business or product become top-of-mind among press and your target audience.

How-To Capitalize On Messaging

A good reminder to focus on the results our clients and customers want.

How to Deliver an Effective Marketing Message

How important it is to use emotion in your message.  Sid’s analysis of why the Southwest Airlines advertisements are effective will help you understand how emotion plays a critical role.

The Anatomy of an Effective Content Marketing Message

Short article that points out 3 potential issues with your marketing message and how to improve upon it.

Effective Marketing Message Importance

I feel this issue is so important that I also put together a webinar on the topic that runs a couple of times per week (see “How to Get Your Ideal Prospects to Stop Ignoring You“ to the right).

I hope you find the articles I reference, and the webinar if you choose to attend, helpful in creating messages that help your business break through the clutter and earn a flood of new opportunities. Questions? Recommendations for additional material? Add comments below so we can all improve. Cheers! Andy

There’s one change you can make that has the potential to instantly improve the effectiveness of all your marketing — improve how relevant, targeted, and compelling a message you use.  If you are a small business owner seeking more high-quality leads, this should be one of the first things you review.
 

You know about the Publisher’s Clearing House Prize Patrol, I imagine.  They get to go around and give out big checks to sweepstakes winners.  Kinda cheesy I know, but I want you to think about one aspect of that job – do you think the prize patrol folks ever worry about intruding on the winners?

If your job were to go around giving away money or simply assisting those in need, would it ever occur to you that your help may be unwanted? Sounds silly, right?  If you were clearly out to deliver a benefit, you wouldn’t stop to wonder if you were imposing.

As a business owner or sales person, we often do feel like we’re imposing when we follow up with a prospect.  Why?  Because we’re only thinking about our side of the equation – the benefit (profit) we receive on each sale to a customer.

But wait, what is the customer’s side of the equation? Think about it as a consumer. Do you ever buy something that is worth less than the money you spend on it?  Hmm.  Probably not.

I know it can be hard to “calculate” the benefit of a good meal, a new laptop, or a freshly steam-cleaned carpet, but wouldn’t you agree that we’re always comparing the price of something to the benefit we’d receive?  If the price seems too high, we hold onto our money.  If the price seems lower than the value of what we’ll get in return, we spend.

For a customer to buy, the benefit must be greater than the price. 

Value flows from the seller to the customer.

We, as sellers, deliver a benefit, just like the prize patrol.

There’s one more lesson to be learned from the prize patrol – Sally Smith doesn’t get Jim Johnson’s check.  Not everyone is a winner.  Not every prospect you meet is interested in, or capable of receiving, the value you provide.  Following up diligently with a process that allows both you and your prospect to determine if there is a fit is critical.

Not sure if you have a good follow up process in place?  Be sure to request your free copy of The Profit Generating Machine by simply providing your name and email address to the right.

Let me put one doubt or fear out of your mind. It’s not that you don’t have valuable products or services to offer.

Unfortunately though, the problem certainly isn’t them. You know the phrase “it’s not me, it’s them, right?” Well, it isn’t them, it’s you. More specifically, it is how you are communicating.

As the potential for our prospects and clients to be in a state of “information overload” only increases, it becomes that much more important for us (as marketers) to communicate on “their side of the river.” What do I mean by that?

I mean that we (as marketers) must let go of our need to talk about us, our experience, our products and services… before eventually getting around to the benefits and results we can help our clients achieve (and ideally doing or communicating something that actually gets them closer to those results).

So if the challenge our typical client faces were truly a fire, our attempts to get their attention would include things like:

• an e-mail news tip “3 inexpensive strategies for keeping a fire from spreading”
• a series of videos that visitors to our website receive when they opt in to our e-mail news list “FirePROOF: A 5-Video Series for Fire Battlers Who Want to Squelch Any Fire Without Getting Burned”
• case studies that show our clients’ success in putting out and avoiding all kinds of fires…

Notice I haven’t spoken at all about our years of experience, the products we use, the list of services we offer, etc. Our clients don’t care about those things until later.

For more ideas about how to get the attention of your ideal prospects, and what to do after that, claim your free copy of The Profit Generating Machine: Owner Assembly Instructions, and gain instant access to the video tutorial too, by using the form to the right.  You will learn ways to instantly improve your message and get a better response from your efforts. Cheers!

In the last post I talked about the risks of trying to launch or fiddle with multiple marketing strategies at the same time. I personally believe this is an essential lesson to embrace, so I want to make sure I am communicating this concept well.

If my stalled car analogy left you scratching your head, please call, e-mail or click on chat below. I sincerely want to help you understand the benefits of putting your energy behind one thing at a time – this lesson alone has the potential to transform your business.

I feel so strongly about this that I am devoting a second post to the same idea.  So (assuming that the whole stalled car idea made sense), let’s take a closer look at the downside of jumping from one project to another – The Calendar Effect.

Let’s say you have just 3 different projects (marketing strategies in our case) that you could work on, poke at, fiddle with, whatever your favorite term.  Your tasks may include things like:

• doing research to purchase a list or find alliance partners you could work with
• writing new copy to describe your product or service
• working with someone to help put together a flyer
• preparing a series of communications that will be used in e-mail or social media

And of course, you have to plan time to follow up with your initial leads from this new strategy, make adjustments to the marketing you put in place, measure results…  When you break down what it takes to launch and properly follow up on just one marketing campaign or new strategy, it takes real time and effort.

Moreover, we all know the world doesn’t stop while we put together our marketing. Often a series of tasks that in theory might take a few days of work can truly take weeks to complete.

For simple numbers, let’s say that each of our 3 marketing strategies would take 4 weeks of effort to research, implement, and properly evaluate. If we were to give into temptation and switch from idea to idea each week, rotating from one project to the next, this is what would happen:

We’d be working away for 10 weeks before even one of the strategies was producing good results! 

Have you picked up on the other flaw in this plan?  Think about my prior post (and the reason I say “in theory” on the table above).  Coming back to each project every 3^rd week means we’d be pushing on a stalled car every time – attempting to figure out where we left off, questioning decisions that seemed clear before, trying to coax others (vendors, friends, partners) who were previously helping us to move off of their project-of-the-moment to pay attention to our project-of-the-moment…ugh!

In the real world, the 3 “4-week” projects handled in this momentum-killing, juggler fashion, would take many more weeks to complete.

Now let’s look at how a focus on one project at a time would look on the calendar:

So would you prefer to have momentum work against you while business-getting strategies remained hidden from the light of day for weeks and weeks?  OR would you like to have momentum work for you, with business-getting strategies out in the world working on your behalf as soon as possible?

Had a good turnout Tuesday night at the free workshop sponsored by Contra Costa County SCORE, SBDC, and the library.  I always enjoy talking with business owners grappling with real challenges in attracting new prospects and building profitable relationships.  Here are a few pictures of  the event “Marketing: Small Tweaks Yield Big Results.”

I will likely do some more events in the new year, so stay tuned.  Per my previous post, I am always interested in hearing what business owners are struggling with the most.  Add a comment or drop me a note.  Perhaps I can tailor my next topic around your unique challenges.

Getting new clients, patients, or customers can be a frustrating process.  Sometimes it’s not clear what to stop doing, start doing, or do differently. 

So what is frustrating YOU?  I would love to hear what your biggest struggles are as you promote your business and attempt to obtain new clients.

Post comments below.  This will allow me to provide information and share strategies that will be more helpful to you.

Often it is easy to assume that getting more of something requires spending more money. Luckily, that is not always true. When working with a company that would like to generate more leads, I start by reviewing what they are already doing. In almost every case, there are a number of improvements we can make without spending a penny more.

Here is a short list of places we can all look for “free” leads that saw our bait but just didn’t bite.  These tips can apply to websites, brochures, advertisements, emails, and even our business cards.

Headline.  Almost everything in marketing starts with a headline — the subject line of an e-mail, the top of a datasheet, the header of a website and more. How are your headlines? The best ones connect with the underlying, burning issue that our best prospects face at an emotional level (be sure to check out my prior post on Breaking the Preoccupation Barrier) . We can also think of a headline as a “promise.” To what new state we can deliver our clients with our product or service? Paint the picture of the place they want to go in the headline and we have a winner.

What they get, not what we do. With a headline that grabs attention, the content of our message (be it a video, text and an advertisement or e-mail, images, etc.) will produce better results for us if it describes the benefits our clients get, not the content of what we do or the methods of how we do it.

Testimonials.  “Social proof” is a powerful force.  No one wants to be the “sucker” who experimented with an unproven product or service and got burned.  Demonstrate that we have helped others get what they wanted or where they wanted to go, and new prospects will feel more comfortable.  Have our happy clients or customers tout the benefits of doing business with us, and we will have even better results.  Testimonials about our product or service can go on the home page of our web site, on a brochure, in an email newsletter, even in our email signature.

Next topic, taking advantage of these principles with an effective call-to-action.

People are busy. We’re all preoccupied with our own stuff. When trying to get the attention of our market, we first have to break them out of what they are currently thinking about.  We can’t get them to listen to what we have to say if they (figuratively speaking) have their headphones on with the music blaring, right?

Our challenge is to get them from where they currently, past the neutral zone and into a more receptive frame of mind concerning what we want to communicate to them.  When we interrupt people from what they’re engaged in, whether verbally or in print, they automatically and subconsciously ask themselves these four questions:

1. Why are you bothering me?
2. So what? Who cares?
3. Why should I believe you? In other words, “What’s in it for me?”
4. Why should I do something about this now?

If we can’t give good answers to those questions, and do it very quickly, our chance of getting them to give us any more than a cursory look or listen will rapidly vanish.  A proven way to dramatically increase our chances of getting and holding the attention of our best prospects is to connect with what they desire (that we can help them with, of course) at an emotional level.  Facts, figures, and features usually don’t cut it.  So what do I mean by an emotional level?  I personally find the breakdown of seven emotions provided by Denny Hatch in his book “Method Marketing” to help considerably:

1. Greed — getting more of something
2. Exclusivity — being one of the few that own something or belong to something
3. Salvation — being saved or rescued from something negative or harmful
4. Fear — being afraid of missing out on something or having something negative happen
5. Guilt — feeling remorseful about doing or not doing something
6. Anger — being upset, irritated or mad about something happening or not happening
7. Flattery — made to feel good about something you did or you have

So take a look at your marketing, are you successfully breaking the preoccupation barrier by connecting with your audience on the “wavelength” of one of the above emotions?  If you’re not sure, I encourage you to request a copy of “The Seven Levers of Profit Growth” (to the right of this post) for more ideas.

Next post, generating more leads without spending a dime!