Test Your Marketing Savvy Here

Just about the time you think you know something about marketing, along comes our friends at eMarketer (The First Place to Look) in their Nov. 30, 2007 issue, "What are Marketers Thinking?"

Before I give you the link so you can see the answers, I have some mind-bending questions for you.  (Oh, I can see this is not going to work because you are scrolling to the end for the link.  I'll bet you go to the last chapter in the mystery novel to see how it ends, too.  Don't you?)

The eMarketing issue just sings customership!  They surveyed more than 600 members of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) to identify the Top Marketing Trends for 2008.

This is great, useful information if you are polishing your marketing plans for 2008.

First question.  Where do you think the hottest action and greatest results are in marketing?
Is it search engine optimization, personalization, green marketing, word of mouth, marketing basics or something else?

Next, how savvy are you on the demographics?  Which are the most important? Go ahead. Before you peek at the answer is it Generation X, Generation Y, Generation Z, Boomers, or some other group?

How are you doing so far? Where is the greatest opportunity for marketers in countries other than the good ol' USA?  Is it India, Brazil, China, Eastern Europe or somewhere else?

This question is the most fun.  Who are the most important marketing gurus? There's a whole list and our personal favorite, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers were right in there, with Seth Godin, Peter Drucker, Malcolm  Gladwell and Tom Peters.  But where did they fall on the scale?   

Give it your best guess and then look at the answers. Then get back to working on your marketing plan for 2008 because it's December already and you need to put that plan into gear, soon.

If you need help attracting more cuistomer or wowing customers in 2008, give me a call or drop an email. It's what we do.

Blogs to Grow Your Bank Balance

Where is the blog that is all about your business and the choice you made this morning, soon after getting out of bed?  It’s here and we at the Duct Tape Marketing Channels wish to have a word with you:  Focus.

Every day when you arise there are two basic choices open to you:  Go to the beach.  Go to work.  If you choose work, then all actions from that point on for the day need to advance your business and the reasons why you chose work over beach.

This is what you find every day at this blog and on the other eight channels at the top of this blog page.  This one, we suggest, is as essential as any of your daily habits that make you the great talent and income generator that you are.  Shower, coffee, morning stretching or aerobics,  business clothes, and high priority e-mail—all the same as checking in with this blog to see what we have done for, created for you, or synthesized for you.

We assume you know this.  Maybe today is the first time you’ve seen this blog.  Maybe today is the first time you realized that there is no money in wasting your time surfing the Internet.  (That’s beach activity—surfing, along with other activities that tap into those saved up vacation dollars.)

This reality came to us, again, in recent weeks when we spotted a new study, conducted by Digital Marketing Services, Inc., cited in eMarketer, that find blogs are more likely to deal with personal matters than politics or current events, and nearly 50% of bloggers see the activity as a form of therapy.   It tells us blogs are more likely to be about friends, family and personal interests.

It that’s what you are looking for, it’s not here. If you are running a small business or looking for every advantage possible to start or expand your business, this is the blog to keep on your RSS feeder.  New to RSS as well? Within this blog are several references on RSS, what about it, how to put it on your desk top in 5 minutes or less and let it feed you relevant information while you focus on your customers and your work.

Finally, let’s be clear about who you are and what we mean by small business.  Anything that fits within the Small Business Administration scope of service is what we address.  For most of you, with fewer than 500 employees, that’s you.   Look closer.  Most of the people commenting on this blog and sending email to us are running businesses with fewer than 50 employees.  In fact, millions of businesses are about that size.

Does this work for middle-size and larger businesses?  Absolutely, if they want to look at the entrepreneurial spirit and innovation teams within their businesses.  The laws and advantages of smaller business are at work there.  They just have to remember where they came from and how much fun it all was before things got big and bureaucratic.

That’s it.  Go to work.  Pluck from any one of the Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channels one idea or marketing reminder for this week. You can find a dozen or more great, practical, immediately possible ideas a week, across the nine blogs in the Channels. Try it.  Work it. Keep at it.  Profit from it. Pay yourself a bonus from the additional income and make a list of all the things you want to do for the days you choose “beach” instead of work.

Systems and Silver Bullets

Can you have a business without customers?  The two words assume the other, don't they?  For example, if there were no businesses in the world and no such word as business, then the concept of customer disappears as well.

Let's put this another way.  As your mother or father may have asked you --or perhaps, yelled at you, "Where do you think money comes from?"  Henry Ford gave us that answer back when he was setting up a system to build an automobile on an assembly line.  He said all money comes from one place--customers.  You see, the workers in his plant  became confused and thought money came from the company, in a paycheck.  Ford was quick to remind them, the money did not come from him; rather, it came from customers. Everything else was the system between them and customers.

Marketing and selling, then, seem rather basic--like taking your next breath, if you are to identify, attract and add customers for your business.  If it is so essential and so natural, then why would any business owner or participant in the daily rituals of commerce struggle with marketing and selling?

Too many seem to have a tough time with this.  Is it because they expect people to just know how wonderful they are and seek them out, then beg to buy whatever they have?  Or is it because they are still not sure what generates business?   

The answer comes packaged in one word and it creates customers and plenty of them, 100% of them time.  That word is system.   In our 30 years of working with more than 600 businesses with customers in every state, plus international trade, the answer has not changed.   And the percentage is not 95% or 99% but 100%.

If you struggle at all, you are not using a system.  Wait a minute, you say?  You have a system but it is not 100%?  They you are not working it as a system, nor are you using it 100% of the time.  This is not a partial option.  Do you want customers?  Do you want to have them come back or refer you to someone else?  Get your system working! And stick with it, because the alternative is not pretty, not profitable and not any fun.

Several important events this week remind us of the importance of a system.

First, there was John Jantsch on Sept. 21 in his teleseminar to hundreds of small business leaders, presenting "The Seven Steps to Creating the Ultimate Small Business Marketing System."  John's Duct Tape Marketing is the first small business marketing program that treats marketing as an integrated system. At the core of the system is a series of steps and strategies, in various stages, that any business, regardless of size, can use to finally produce stunning returns from a consistent marketing effort.  The teleseminar introduced an ambitious project to teach his system in 12 one hour sessions--with homework between the sessions,  to as many who are in need of a system--and one that always works.

Harry Hoover of Hoover Ink and his reinforcement of the system message came to us this week, thanks to Michael J. Katz, Founder and Chief Penguin at Blue Penguin Development, Inc.  In Michael's E-Newsletter on E-Newsletters--September 23, 2005 Issue #136, he takes us on a field trip to Huntersville, North Carolina, to learn from Harry that the search for the silver bullet in marketing is a waste of time and money. Three elements in his system get the job done every time: Focus, discipline and consistency. Hoover has devoted the last 25 years to marketing and systems that work.

One of the best demonstrations of the 100% success of a system is Robert Middleton, Action Plan Marketing. If you don't think you have a system yet, get thee over to Middleton's site, buy the Info Guru Marketing Manual, and follow directions.  If you think you have a system but you have not exceeded your goals and expectations, you probably don't have a system.  You need the tools and advantages of Middleton more than the business owner or manager who has no system at all. 

While you are picking up the Info Guru Marketing Manual, take a close look at his Website Tool Kit and notice how that provides a system for creating customers.

Once you experience a system at work, you will see how unnecessary it was to struggle or worry about money, ever again. Look closely at every business that seems to be doing really well and you'll find a system in place to attract the types of customers best for them and other systems that turn those customers into referral agents, ambassadors or evangelists for the business.

Can you have systems within systems?  Not really.  It just seems like smaller systems fit inside of "total systems" but it's all interconnected.  So this is easier than you may know. You've heard of the digestive system, haven't you?  When that system isn't working, then the whole body--human system, is affected.   The same is true for your customer creation system and marketing system. 

Think of customers and treat customers like your business is going to be around for awhile and you want their continued patronage and referrals.  Get away from transactions and into your system. If you treat a customer like a one-night stand, that's call a transaction.   

Go for the relationship and the referrals instead.  It's the future of business.  And we'd like to see your business in the future.

Two Reasons to Read This: Customers + Money

As simple as this all sounds, you might be amazed at how many business owners and business leaders in companies and nonprofit organizations make this complicated.  You need two things to start and grow a business--customers and money, in that order.

In a high-powered board of directors meeting last month, I asked the well-educated, experienced business leaders, What is the first thing you need to start a business?  One voice quickly said, "a business plan." Silence followed. There were only two possible answers and they got it wrong.  No, my wise leaders, I said, we start with customers.  Those are people who know you, believe in you and tell you that your service or product is so good they will buy it if you start a business.  Then you get the money, from your own pocket or you may write that business plan to get it from a business investor.

The best business plan I've seen in action--for every size of business, is one page and visual.  Matter of fact, it's so clear and simple it fits on the screen of your Palm or other handheld information tool.  It shows you where the money is and how hard or easy it will be to make it.

In the time it takes to finish this blog, you can create your own Business Action Plan.  Start with one sheet of paper and draw a box (4 lines).  Now divide it into quadrants. (That’s two more lines, one vertical in the middle and one horizontal in the middle to form four boxes all touching each other.) Name the vertical scale customers:  Current Customers and New Customers/Prospects. Make the horizontal scale product/services:  Current Products/Services and New Product/Services.

So the four possible combinations -- the labels for each of the four quadrants, look like this:
Current Customers buying Current Products/Services
Current Customers buying New Product/Services
New Customers/Prospects buying Current Products/Services
New Customers/Prospect buying New Products Services

Every day, in the drama and decisions of your business, you work with these  fours scenarios in terms of what it costs you to do business and how much work it takes to achieve a certain level of income and profit.  The objective of the game of business is to move from the box you are in now to the one with the best customers and most profit. Where do you make the most money?  Right, if you pointed to the quadrant where current customers, who know and trust you, buy more of the current products and services offered now, proven to work over time and you have success stories that support this.  Those are the testimonials and referrals you are putting on your website and in your proposals.

In which quadrant do you see the risk at the highest level and where you may work for some time, living off of your savings or a business loan?  Right again if you said, there in the quadrant with the new customers or prospects who barely know you, buying a service or product that you just invented or just added to your business.  Isn't that the way it is with most new business start ups?  Specifically, a lot of new customers trying out new services and products?  Every business that started and made it remembers those days.  That's the toughest row to hoe.  Why buy an unknown from someone you don't know?

The point is, it is all about customers.  And that takes us back to the article that Michelle Nichols writes this week for BusinessWeek Online.  In her column, The Holy Grail of Sales, she presents a fresh, clear way to pick three paths in your search to achieve more money and more customers at the same time.  Her story starts out with a client wanting to know how to sell more and make more money.  He thinks there is something special about that.

In addition to a constant stream of intensely practical information which you can -- and should, put into action immediately, we count on Michelle to make us laugh and make us better at the most important elements of business -- connecting with and through customers.  Sign up for her free newsletter on her website Savvy Selling International.