The SMALL BUSINESS BRANDING day was held for the first time at a beautiful and unique location, the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. The BRANDit production was organized by its two founders; Bjarney Ludviksdottir, international director and producer, and Runa Magnus, the international branding lecturer, and author of the upcoming book “Branding Your X-Factor”. This special day was dedicated to small business owners and their executive team, and designed to give them insights into the 8 steps to sharpen their success with high-performance strategies from 8 leading European business and branding experts. [Read more…]
I Love It When People Can’t Stand Me!
I met a friend and former colleague the other day. She asked me what reaction I had got to my last blog post and email I sent out to my followers. The reason she asked was that someone had come to her and expressed her dislike. That person did not know how to react to my email, whose subject was: “No one wants to be an ass, do they, …?” It was clear that this person was offended by this.
My friend did ask them whether they had actually read the email, and it turns out that they did not, so there was no way they were going to get the joke – oh well…
My reaction: Sheer joy! I thought it was great! OK – please don’t get me wrong. It was not my intention to make that person feel bad in any way and I am sorry for that. However, I am very very happy when someone really hates the stuff that I do. Why? Because if someone hates it, it is more likely than not that someone completely loves it! And that is what I want.
Eenie Meenie Miney Moe
I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Marketing is all about building relationships. The stronger a relationship you* can forge the more likely people are to buy from you, buy from you again and to create more business by telling others about you. You want some people to hate you and others to love you. Let’s be realistic – no everyone is going to love you – it’s just not possible! Those that love you will not want to do business with anyone else but you, and those that don’t, well, if they hate you enough, you will definitely be talked about ;)
If everyone thinks you’re just ok, you* won’t matter enough to people for them to choose you over anyone else. If you are ok, and that one is ok and the other one is ok as well, people may as well use eenie-meenie-miney-moe to choose who they do business with. Or even worse, make their choice solely based on price – and that is when business will start to get really tought!
* please note that when I say “you” that refers to your business, product or service – but can also refer to you yourself if you are what you are marketing.
Be Pink!
Don’t Be An Ass – You Need To Do Market Research!
I woke from a bad dream the other day. I was working with a large group of people and suddenly I realised that they were just making up things about their target groups, rather than having any real information. And it reminded me of something I have always known, but one tends to forget. None of us can read minds! (If I am wrong, and you can, please get in touch because I really really really want to talk to you! :)
Not only did I assume that they knew they had to do some research to get to know more about their target groups – and thereby assumed they could read my mind – they also assumed they knew everything there was to know about their target groups – and thereby assumed that they read minds and knew all kinds of things about people they had never even met!
So what? Does that matter? [Read more…]
Get Your Customers to Get You Even More Business!
We all know that it’s great when our customers are happy and spread the word, as I have discussed in other posts. However, we tend to just cross our fingers and hope for the best, rather than taking matters into our own hands to increase the chances of them referring more business to us. What, if anything, can we do?
Be Great!
You have to be worth people telling others about you. People will not refer others to boring businesses, or “just ok” businesses. They will however recommend businesses they think is great. So to start off with, you have to have a great product or service, but you also have to consider the total customer experience – your brand and all your brand touchpoints! Great businesses are not made by accident, and those that are truly great won’t need to spend as much time and money on their marketing (remember what Seth Godin said about small business and branding? ;) How can you improve your product, service and the customer experience?
If you have a great product or service, help your customers help their people by making it easy for them to recommend your business.
How Can You Help Them Create More Customers for You?
Your Most Powerful Marketing Question?
We all know that it’s great to have happy customers that tell others about us. Those that hear about us this way are much more likely than others to do business with us, and sooner, than those that hear about us through other ways. We also know that referrals are one of the most powerful marketing tools out there, and can cover the marketing process and get the sale, even without anything else coming into play.
All businesses, products and services can benefit from referrals in some way, but the general rule seems to be that the more expensive the purchase or the more personal the service, the more important it gets. If you get someone to clean your house, for instance, you would like a referral – right? But they can also influence much smaller purchases and less personal. If a friend tells me that the Wagawaga bread at the Boom Boom Bakery is great, I am much likelier to buy it, right?
Word-of-mouth is one type of referral, but there are various ways one can get them and increase the likelihood of getting them. Why should we just cross our fingers and toes and hope that someone recommends us when we can do things to make it so? ;)
So, we come to that question, which may indeed be one of the most important ones in your marketing…
“Would you recommend … to others?” (insert the name of your company, product or service) [Read more…]
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