Need Help with Small Business Advertising?
June 11, 2008
Small businesses need all the help they can get when it comes to creating successful and effective advertising messages. This is why many small business owners cringe when they hear the quote attributed to John Wannamaker that goes, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
You can almost hear the cries of agony from small business owners through your monitor….
“HALF of my advertising is going to be WASTED!?!?!
You mean I have to spend TWICE what I need to spend to get my advertising to work?”
Um… that may be overly optimistic. Seth Godin writes in his post 5 Common Cliches (done wrong):
Half my advertising works, I just don’t know which half. Actually, it’s closer to 1% of your advertising that works, at the most. Your billboard reaches 100,000 people and if you’re lucky, it gets you a hundred customers..
I deliver even worse news in my book and elsewhere on this blog… it’s possible that what IS working in your advertising messages may actually be HURTING your business instead of helping to build it.
I’m just overflowing with good news today, aren’t I?
It gets worse. Dominic Canterbury in his post “I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half” hits the nail right on the head when he writes:
I’m telling you this because as an independent business, you probably learned most of your marketing tricks by watching the big, successful companies. Very sensibly, you might have presumed that huge and expensive marketing departments headed by big-name gurus would actually know what they’re doing.
Turns out, though, the big boys really don’t know what they’re doing. No doubt some of it is working, but they don’t know how, when or why. And to make matters worse, it’s looking like the really big, flashy and expensive stuff is actually the least effective.
UGH! If you can’t learn from the big guys, then where can you catch a break? Well, there is a silver lining to this dark, dark advertising cloud… watch the successful SMALL businesses in your area and see what they’re doing.
The problem with this approach is you can’t see EVERYTHING they’re doing because you can’t be everywhere at once. However, there is one thing you can look for in successful marketing messages… usually they speak to the solving a problem for a tightly targeted customer. (Read my post The Power of Pain for more on this subject.)
Creating a tightly targeted “niche marketing” message is the first step in creating affordable AND successful small business advertising campaigns. This is my cue to shamelessly self promote my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results.
Niche Marketing for Small Businesses
May 19, 2008
When your business is small, you must develop a laser focus on your customers. Who they are and most importantly, why they buy from you. It doesn’t matter if your B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) the key to marketing success is to be extremely specific in describing what you do for your customers.
This practice is frequently referred to as “Niche Marketing“.
Many small business owners worry about excluding potential customers by tightly targeting a niche market. They worry that if they speak specifically to one customer, they may alienate other customers. Most small business owners err on the side of being so general that their potential prospects have no idea why they should do business with that business.
Anita Campbell provides a GREAT illustration in how frustrating it is when a business doesn’t define their niche in her post Does Your Business Have a Niche or Specialty?
Think about this: have you ever had the frustrating experience of visiting a website or talking with someone for a half hour only to end up afterwards with no idea whether their company would be a good fit as a vendor or provider. You come away knowing they are software developers. But you have no idea what kind of software or whether it’s in your price range. Or you discover that they are marketers. But you can’t tell whether they serve Fortune 500 companies or a 2-person business.
It’s been my experience that the confused mind says no. As a potential customer, you may SPEAK with a provider at a conference for 30 minutes without knowing whether or not that business might be a candidate to provide a solution… but only because you’re physically present anyway. When it comes to the web… and a potential customer visits a web page that does not offer a tightly targeted solution written with that visitor in mind… well, that visitor will appear in the log files as someone who stays on a page only SLIGHTLY longer than a search engine robot.
Mike Stevens writes in “Get Rich- with a Niche”
The bottom line: Hook a customer with what you do best, and then, once they’re a customer, hit on them for projects that are beyond your sweet spot but will help you expand your offerings. It works, and it’s the most efficient way to build your business.
In my book, Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results, I take you step by step through the process of defining your target audience. While marketing experts agree that targeting a niche market is a key to marketing success, few take you through the process of defining that niche market.
Small Business Marketing Success Online
May 14, 2008
The formula for small business marketing success is the same online as it is off line. Small business marketing success lies in your ability to successfully identify your target customers and then create marketing messages that speak directly to those individual’s goals, problems or desires.
If you already have customers, then you are selling either products or services that solve your customer’s problems.
On the services side, accountants and bookkeepers solve accounting problems while therapists solve a myriad of psychological problems.
On the products side… if you’re selling cars, you’re not only selling a solution to a transportation problem but you’re also selling a means to achieve a goal AND a desire! If you’re selling clothing, then the problem you’re solving is nakedness… and depending upon the type of clothing you sell, you could also be selling a means to achieve goals and desires.
The key is, if you’re in business, you’re offering solutions to problems people have. Ideally, these are problems that people are willing to write checks in order to see resolution.
With this perspective, you can see that marketing is merely the act of getting the word out about the solutions you offer. Suddenly, your direct mail campaign will take on a different twist.
Instead of “selling” you’re “solving”.
Instead of pushing, you’re offering solutions.
When you view your marketing as merely the act of getting the word out about the solutions you offer to everyday business problems, suddenly the world is your oyster. Those grains of sand irritating your target customers are your golden opportunity to shine. This is your chance to solve a problem, win a client and save the world all in a simple, elegant act of using your skills, talents and abilities.
Now, with your new rose colored marketing glasses, you can see the different avenues available to you to “get the word out”. For some independent service professionals, just removing the stigma of “selling” from the equation is enough. For others, recognizing that what they’re really doing is spreading the word about the solutions they offer is all it takes to open the floodgate of ideas.
One client of mine is working on developing a television show for a local cable network with another service professional. When these two professionals realized how well their services “dovetailed”, they approached a local television studio with an idea for a show. Because of their unique “offering solutions” mind set, the station jumped on the idea and their show is now ready to begin production.
Another client began offering teleseminars addressing the core problems being faced by clients on a daily basis. By offering these free teleseminars, she offers practical solutions callers can take and implement immediately. Instead of using these teleseminars as “selling” vehicles, she uses them as “problem solving” vehicles. It’s worked like a charm. Participants love her low key approach and her client load is now so heavy, she’s had to hire an assistant 4 days a week just to handle the workload.
Remember, marketing is merely the act of spreading the word about the solutions you offer to potential client problems. Is your marketing (or lack thereof) hurting your business?
Have Google Adwords Let You Down?
May 9, 2008
Have you been beating your head against the wall, trying to make Adwords work for you?
Google Adwords is for chumps…or at least for people without an eye on the advertising ROI.
Google Adwords used to be easy… easy to use and easy to make work. But things have changed and not for the getter. Winning with Google Adwords today is hard. If you’re winning with Adwords, then you’re in the minority.
The reality is that it’s REALLY hard to make Google Adwords work for the average small business owner, especially the one whose business isn’t internet related.
For example, I have a web development client who spent THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of dollars over the past year running Google Adwords. She has hired consultants to help direct her Adwords campaigns, one of whom set her up to spend $1500 in one month without so much as a single new lead, let alone a customer as a result.
When she turned to me in frustration, I did an analysis of the number of people searching for her “ideal” keywords. The research clearly showed that there just aren’t enough of her target customers searching for her solution via the internet.
It’s not a matter of tightly targeting her customers… she’s done that.
It’s not a matter of her customers not NEEDING her product… they do.
It’s not a matter of the quality of her marketing materials… when she speaks in person and promotes her product, customers flock to the website and the orders POUR in.
The problem is that her tightly targeted target market just don’t know her product exists. If they don’t know it exists, then we can’t expect them to go searching for it on the web. We need to find a way to let them know it’s available.
We need to look to other avenues to promote her product.
I’ve begged her try traditional media to promote her product, but it’s way too much “work”. The fact is, Adwords is easy and familiar. Direct mail marketing on the other hand is “new” and therefore “hard”.
The basics of direct mail marketing are amazingly similar to the principles behind running a successful Adwords campaign. The difference is Adwords is reaching the “active” user… the user who knows he/she has a problem and is heading to the internet for a solution.
However, there is another type of customer… the type who knows he/she has a problem and has no idea where to start. This “passive” user needs to be reached via “active” media… such as direct mail, radio or television.
Meanwhile, I have another client who hired me for marketing consultation. He read my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results and wanted one on one help.
We first defined who his audience was and why they would hire him. We then created a tightly targeted message specifically for his audience. We invested in producing a television commercial to deliver that message and then started running his tightly targeted message on a cable network which squarely targets his ideal target client.
So far this year, my client has spent less on production + ad time than my Adwords using client spent on just adwords alone. Oh, and the client running television saw his website traffic figures grow to 5X their pre-ad traffic figures PLUS he’s seen new clients as a result.
The 2nd client got measurable SUPERIOR results for less money thanks to the smart use of traditional media.
Yet another one of my clients built her business on Adwords… but that was four years ago. She called today to ask my advice about traditional media. Her latest Adwords invoice was sky high and while her click through rates were dropping at an equally dramatic rate. Meanwhile she’s noticed that more and more “local” people are finding her. That’s probably thanks to her prominently displayed address on her web site. Her keywords plus her location = top SERPS in natural search for a long tail keyword.
So that got her thinking… what if there were a better way? What if she could reach people who hadn’t begun to search for her solutions via the web. After all, 5 out of 6 people in the world aren’t even ON the internet!
My formula for success with traditional media is as follows: Make sure the call to action is to visit the website. That way, you can watch the logs to see if the message is making an impact. If it is and the phone isn’t ringing, then you know to tweak the web copy. If visitors aren’t showing up at the website, then it’s time to tweak the traditional media message.
The same it true with Google Adwords. However, instead of paying for your message to be delivered to a broad television or radio audience, you’re paying for your message to be “hand” delivered one at a time to individual customers.
Sure, there are still some campaigns that can be run for a “reasonable” sum. However, if you’ve noticed all the banner ads on blogs lately… there’s a lot of discouragement amongst Google Adwords faithful and they’re turning to other avenues to present their marketing message. If your audience is internet users, then that’s your other option. On the other hand, if your audience is geographically local, then give your local media a stab at delivering your marketing message.
Getting To Know Your Customers…
May 7, 2008
When Sam Walton was alive, he was notorious for “showing up” unexpectedly in his stores to talk with his customers. He’d wander the aisles and talk to associates… in the later days these unsuspecting associates weren’t even aware that they were talking to their boss… and the founder of the largest retail company in the world.
Sam Walton enjoyed knowing his associates and his customers in a personal way. It’s a trait shared by other successful business men and women throughout history.
The 247 Wall Street blog talks about CEOs Who Don’t Get Out Often Enough, And Some Who Do
The hallmark of some of the most successful companies over the last fifty years is that the CEOs spent a great deal of their time with customers and company locations around the work. Probably the two most famous travelers were Willard Marriott and Sam Walton. At one point, Walton visited hundreds of stores a year. If these CEO wanted to know how they were doing with the consumers who spent money with them, they did not have to check with anyone else in management.
The post goes on to list 9 CEO’s who are apparently ‘out of touch’ with their customers. Of course, the measurement tool used is the price of the company’s stock, which if you think about it is a GREAT indicator of how “in touch” management is with the “people”.
They also list CEO’s who are doing a great job. Amongst their list is James Sinegal of CostCo (COST).
He isn’t just in the stores. After a fashion, he is the stores. He started the company in 1983. According to the company, he tries to visit every one of the CostCo stores at least once a year. He gets the gold metal for CEOs who spend time in the field.
I work with business owners who have fewer than 20 employees. Because of the nature of that business, it’s hard for the business owner to get “isolated” from their customers. To you who are toiling in the “trenches” take heart!!! Your connection with your customers is essential to your success.
Several of my clients are doing everything in their power to REMOVE the connection with their customers. I get it… because sometimes I LONG for a barrier between my clients and me. However, when I get in those moods… I try to shake it off… because when I start looking at it from the CLIENT’S point of view, I inevitably get great insight into how I can make my services more VALUABLE to my clients.
If you don’t already, get to know your customers. When you know your customers, you can craft compelling message which enable you to get more customers just like them!
Create Your Own Niche Market
April 24, 2008
Sarah over at 37 Signals is inspired by a show on Fine Living called “Quit Your Job“. The show focuses on average people who left the “rat race” to pursue the joys of self employment.
“[These people] didn’t leave their careers to make millions, they just made a lateral change to a job that is more fulfilling and makes them happier.
Life is too short not to love what you do, and it’s much, much too short to wait around until someone hands you a billion dollars.”
One of the featured businesses is Pet Camp. According to the web site…
Pet Camp® has completely rethought the traditional boarding kennel. Since the beginning, one vision has shaped everything we do: what would our pets like?
In keeping with that vision, Pet Camp now offers two great adventures to choose from – our main campground for both dogs and cats and Cat Safari, our strictly-for-cats “outdoor” adventureland.
America’s love affair with their pets has increased exponentially during the past decade. Pet Camp’s founders Virginia Donohue and Mark Klaiman recognized that traditional “boarding” where a dog or cat is confined to a cage and allowed moderate breaks wasn’t good enough for people who think of their dog or cat as a member of the family. So they created a Pet Camp®… where … well, I’ll take it from their web site…
At Pet Camp®, your dog enjoys a heated, private run, comfortable bed, and tasty meals and snacks. We provide regular exercise in individual or group settings, as well as Very Individualized Playtime for that Very Important Pet.
Camp play areas and private runs are always clean and well ventilated with soothing music playing 24 hours a day. We dedicate ourselves to making sure your camper’s stay is comfortable, stimulating and safe. The biggest problem you’ll have is coaxing them to come home again!
This is a perfect example of a couple who “created” their own niche market. There are lots of options when it comes to boarding your pet in San Francisco… but there’s only one Pet Camp®.
Oh, and because the founders RECOGNIZE the emotional investment made by the humans who pay the bills… so they’ve created a blog where they feature “camper cameos”… so pet parents can see snapshots of the day’s activities via the web.
By putting slight “spin” on their services… and keeping their clients in mind… Virginia Donohue and Mark Klaiman have created their own niche market and can truly sing the praises of quitting your job and pursuing your passion.
Finding Your Niche Market
March 13, 2008
One of the biggest challenges a new business owner faces is finding his/her niche market. Identifying and targeting a niche market is the foundation of all marketing activities. Ideally, a business foundation is built upon meeting the unmet needs of a target market.
Micheal Gray was inspired recently by an announcement made by an airline stewardess. In his post, Untapped Niches and the Mile High Club
“think about the markets other people shun or stay away from, find creative ways to fill a service people want that no one else is offering. When you have niche where the number of people who are willing to compete is minimal you can command higher prices and profits. “
This is an example of creating a business around an unmet need.
While Micheal’s idea is inspired, it’s important to note that higher prices don’t necessarily equate into higher profits. Higher prices are usually the result of the increased cost of customer acquisition or increased costs of serving a specialized market.
When there is a “hidden” niche market, it’s usually for a reason. For example, last year I launched a partnership focusing on targeting a tightly targeted niche market. Our tightly targeted niche market are coaching professionals who are launching their business and need a web site. Several dozen web sites later, it became OBVIOUS why this market was “hidden” and “untapped”. (Truth be told, it wasn’t very hidden… several other web development companies have targeted that niche market. We created our product to fill the gap when one of these companies decided to close up shop.)
See, coaches are highly talented and creative individuals. As a group, they need a LOT of hand holding and instruction. Most are intimidated by the web and as boot strapping entrepreneurs…. they need a lot of instruction, a lot of hand holding but offered at a minimal price.
On our end, we had to put in a LOT of work “up front” creating a structure for providing for this niche market’s support needs. While to the casual observer, it appears we’re making high profits…. we really aren’t. Support is literally eating up most of the “profits” of the business at the moment. If I were to outsource support… the profits from this partnership would literally disappear. As a result, we recently revamped the pricing structure of the product to reflect the cost of providing this support.
The moral to this story: there’s a reason “hidden” niche markets are hidden. However, creating a product or service for that hidden market may indeed be your path to business success… just be prepared for the “hidden” reasons why your undiscovered niche market is up to now, undiscovered!
Finding your natural niche market
January 31, 2008
Many, many businesses start out trying to be everything to everyone. When asked who their target customer is, the reply is invariably: everyone!
"But you don’t understand! EVERYONE can benefit from my products and services!"
Oh, I do understand. Over at the Women Owned Business blog, she (I assume it’s a she…. the blog owner doesn’t give much personal info on the blog’s about page) gives a GREAT example of th in the post :Entrepreneur Strategy for Women Business Owners - Your Niche Market
The more specialized, the easier it is to stay focused AND be effective. Think of it like MEDICINE.
A general practitioner needs to know a little about everything. A pediatrician needs to know all about children. A pediatric specialist focuses all their reading, conferences and training on ONE main area of children’s medicine.
Even when it comes to medicine, even the general practioner STILL can benefit from targeting a niche in the market.
My primary care physician is a homeschooling mother of three. Her practice in the area is relatively new, yet she’s finding more and more homeschooling parents "discovering" her practice. Word of mouth is a WONDERFUL way to build ANY business and I’m sure that her name comes up at MANY homeschooling group meetings in the area. Even though my physician doesn’t "officially" target homeschooling parents, she’s found that her style of practicing medicine works well with homeschooling parents.
That’s the beauty of targeting a niche market. Word of mouth marketing happens NATURALLY for those who tightly target a niche!
What many beginning small business owners fail to realize is targeting your niche market doesn’t mean thinking small at all.
Our county’s estimated 2006 population is 252,724 and of those 40,435 are between the ages of 5 and 18. I’ve heard somewhere that 1in three children in Florida are homeschooled, so to find the number of homeschooled children in our county, merely divide 40, 435 by 3 and you’ve got 13, 478 homeschooled children in our county.
I haven’t asked, but I’m pretty sure that if my physician attracted just 10% of the homeschooled children in our county to her practice (13,478 X .10 = 1,347) plus their parents, she would probably have to consider closing her practice to new patients.
However, if she were NOT to tightly target her "marketing" by sharing her status as a homeschooling mother…. well, then there would be no "reason" for her homeschooling mothers to recommend her to their friends! "She’s a GREAT doctor!" doesn’t motivate as well as "She’s a GREAT doctor who ALSO HOME SCHOOLS HER BOYS!"
Niche marketing doesn’t mean thinking small… it means using laser like precision to carve out an audience. Instead of competing with every other doctor in the county, my physician finds herself in the position as the ONLY homeschooling physician in the area!
What’s your natural niche?
Target your Niche: Essential first step in creating a marketing strategy
January 21, 2008
The first step in creating a marketing strategy is to identify your niche or target market.
This will provide the foundation you need to develop your marketing strategy. When you zero in on your target customer, you’ll find it MUCH easier to create marketing messages that "connect" with your customers.
Many businesses find identifying a niche market difficult. The owner will look at his client or customer list and say, "THEY HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON! They’re young… they’re old and they’re everything in between! I have women, I have men and I have children as customers! I have married people, single people and divorced people as customers! How can I find some demographic that all of my customers have in common?"
If this is your battle cry, you are not alone!
First, let’s "reframe" how you think of targeting your customers. For example, one client of mine came to me a year ago with just such a lament. Media rep after media rep had hammered the point that targeting his niche market meant identifying the age, gender and income of his ideal client. However, when we began to look BEYOND the surface, we found one interesting thing ALL of his clients had in common: They were all relatively affluent and they were all interested in healthy living. In the end, his clients were interested in health foods, natural and whole foods AND exercise.
Suddenly, everything came into focus. His television commercial is now running on Food Network and we’re creating POS pieces to place in local gyms and health food stores. All because we looked BEYOND the simple demographics and dug deeper. In the "marketing biz" it’s known as "behavioral targeting"…. when a group of demographically diverse people are targeted based on behavior instead of age/income/gender.
Many business owners find identifying a niche market difficult and that is why I wrote Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results. In the book, I help to simplify the process of defining your target or niche market.
Right on Target
December 10, 2007
Within a year of launching my web development business, way back in 1998, I was introduced to a new type of service professional, the Life Coach.
My relationship with this profession began when I developed a web site for a newly minted coach. While I had done other websites before, this was the first time I had thoroughly enjoyed the process. Here was an individual who was bright, intelligent who possessed some serious self awareness. I was engaged and really got into the whole project. My enthusiasm showed in the work I did. My client told her coaching colleagues about me and my enthusiasm. As a result, they came to me and I developed MORE coaching web sites. Before you knew it, I had stumbled into a niche market
