Gas prices are up. The stock market is down. A lot of things are going on in this economy that can scare a business owner to death. I’m here to tell you that - yes, there are frightening things going on but that doesn’t mean you need to panic. People will still buy products and services. What you will see missing is the low hanging fruit. What does that mean to you?

I believe in processes. I believe in measuring. I believe that you control what you control and worrying about the economy is like worrying about the weather. Yes, it can cause problems but you can’t change it. Instinct may tell you to cut your marketing & advertising efforts to save money. That is like not watering your vegetable garden because of a drought.

If the low hanging fruit is drying up right now - that is, the jobs that fall into your lap - do you think it wise to stop looking for new clients all together? My answer is a resounding NO. Listed below are 3 principles to help you get through this tough time.

1. Processes:
If you have processes for bringing in new clients, stick to them. Focus your efforts. Your sales force should still make the calls they need to. You should still ask your current clients for referrals. You should still work on your social networking. You should still plan verticals and look for introductions. This is the time to increase effort, not slow down. Contact your current clients and ask them how you are doing. If they have an issue, you can correct it and increase loyalty. If they are very happy, ask them why they hired you. If they say “fair prices”, ask them if they know anyone else who could benefit from fair pricing.

2. Measure:
Use simple means to measure the results of your advertising such as putting “ask for Mr. Green” in your ads when their is no Mr. Green in your office. Use “mention this ad and receive . . .” or “ask about our fall special.” Have your calls to action go to a specific landing page on your site and keep track of the analytics. Make sure the dollars you do spend are getting you leads. Remember that purchasing is an emotional decision and your advertising and marketing validates you and makes you more comfortable to do business with. This makes it easier for your sales staff to close the deal. You do, however, need to know if your advertising is reaching your prospects.

3. Spending:
Consider spending less on yellow pages and more on your website - this is a medium that you can control and change quickly if you add a new product, service or location. You can also add functions like “tell a friend” or a blog to encourage referrals and recurring traffic. Use google analytics to measure your efforts. Transfer advertising dollars to local Pay Per Click campaigns. Remember that these days 96% of people find local businesses through the internet. Consider doing a couple of e-newsletters in place of just one of your printed versions. Reallocating the dollars will allow you many more customer touches for the same price. Don’t stop the printed version - you may already have clients that look forward to that and you don’t want to disenchant them. Consider spending more time networking on sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo rather than just the standard networking groups. You’ll spend less money and time and reach more people. You may need training to use them effectively.

This is a time to sharpen your efforts, not eliminate them. In the end, you’ll be more effective and increase profits substantially when the low hanging fruit comes back.

Now get out there and look good.

Chris Motley
Motley Creations

©2008 Motley Creations. Use by permission only.

Tags: Advertising, analytics, Marketing, processes.

Did you know that the major players in the market spend around a quarter of their budget on knowing who they’re talking to? Even Pepsi has a target market and it’s not, “anyone who drinks soda”. If you haven’t spent time doing it yet, you might want to determine who your target market is. Who gets your service? Who readily pays and understands the value? Who will frequent your store? You might be surprised to find out it’s not who you think.

Once you’ve established this, you need to know why people buy. It’s usually for 2 reasons: To make themselves feel better or to solve a problem. We rationalize and justify later. If this weren’t true, credit card companies would go out of business.

Now you should know who you’re talking to and the reason they buy. Let’s layout some simple rules to follow:

1. Don’t put the declaration of independence on a postage stamp: Your ad is to generate interest so that you can close the sale - it is not a list of everything you do. The more you stuff into your ad, the more confusing it is and the more it makes you look hard to work with. Choose a product or service and go with that. You can always drive them to your website to find out about the rest of your products or services.

2. Call To Action: Once you have your product or service, give your prospects a reason to call now. “mention this ad and get 25% off”, “Offer ends Sunday”, “Act now, supplies are limited”, “Call now and get a free widget”, etc - You get the picture.

3. Tracking: Develop a system for tracking the response on your ad. Put a special phone number, tell them to ask for Mr. Green (when there isn’t a Mr. Green) or point them to a special landing page on your website. The point is to make sure you know what the return is on your advertising dollar.

4. Language & Photos: Use visuals and language that your prospects respond to. Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees - we get caught up in industry terms and trying to sell the benefits we think are important. People buy for their own reasons. If you are selling a beverage to men, you might use images of single women and talk about how it tastes. If you are selling to women, you might use couples and speak to less calories. You have to like your advertising but your prospects must love it.

Now get out there and look good.

Chris Motley
Motley Creations

©2008 Motley Creations. Use by permission only.

Tags: Advertising, budget, call to action, tracking.

So you spent a thousand dollars on a full page color ad in a local magazine. The salesman said it would be seen by just the people you’re looking for. He guaranteed thousands of people would see it on a daily basis. He said your phone would be ringing off the hook. Now you run a second ad in another publication. You seem to be getting some new clients but how can you be sure which ad is bringing them in? Can you really tell what your return is on these investments?

The answer is an unequivocal YES - there are several ways from the inexpensive to the fully automated (and costly). As I’ve said before, you are going to make mistakes in marketing. The key is not to make them twice. Thanks to technology, you can have the answers you need.

First, the inexpensive. Let’s say you have 2 ads running. Let’s also assume you have a phone system with up to 4 lines. Each one of those lines is a roll over line with it’s own number or 800 numbers. One way to measure is to put a different phone number on each of your ads - one of your roll over lines. Then you check on your phone records for direct dials to that line. But be patient. One week is not enough to see real results. Some studies show that people need to see your ad up to 20 times before responding to it.

Another inexpensive way is to buy a few clever URL’s (www.NoMoreClogs.com). Short and clever are best. At a cost of $8 a year, you can afford to experiment. Then you simply build a landing page that resides with your normal website and point the URL to it. Add Google Analytics (for free) and point your different ads to different URL’s. They can all be connected to your website, you need not have a separate hosting account for each and you can put all of your contact information as well as special offers and calls to action. At the end of the month, you’ll be able to see just how much direct traffic you received.

If your budget will allow, there are service providers out there that for around $300 a month, will set you up with phone numbers for each ad, route calls through their server, tell you what the result of the call was (connected, busy, abandoned or no answer) and even tell you who it was that called so you can call them back. They can do some truly amazing things. They can tell you the number of leads, average call duration, give you a cost per lead and assign a percentage based on overall advertising. Some will record the calls and even offer training for your staff. And this is just the tip of the iceberg!

Technology exists now to let you know exactly where your best dollars are spent. You will be able to do the math quarterly and make educated choices as to where to keep spending your money and, more importantly, where to stop spending it.

Now get out there and look good.

Chris Motley
Motley Creations

©2008 Motley Creations. Use by permission only.

Tags: Advertising, analytics, Marketing, technology, tracking.

Many times I get people in my office that say “I want more traffic to my website”. My first response is “OK. Why? Do you sell products on your site? Do you make money from the number of visits? Are you selling ad space?”. After the few seconds of confusion, they come back with: “I want people to come to my store and buy my products”. Now we’re getting somewhere!

Often times people put together their marketing or advertising strategies based on what friends in completely unrelated fields have done. Or they think they need a logo and brochure because that’s what “everybody” does. I’m here to tell you if their was a magic wand we could all wave at our businesses, all marketing and advertising agencies would be out of business.

The first thing you need to know is who you’re talking to. Maybe not the client who has spent the most money, but rather the client that “gets” your service. The one that signs the check with no problem because they see the value in your service. This would be your first “vertical” - your average client. You need to know something about these people. Are they mostly male or female? What is the general age group? What do they do for fun? Where do they get their news?

The old saying “birds of a feather flock together” is an old saying because it’s true. Go to the clients you have now and ask them to fill out an anonymous questionnaire with some of the questions listed above. Include questions more suited for your particular industry. Perhaps give them a reward for filling it out - maybe movie tickets. Pick a generous cross section - don’t just do 2 or 3.

Once you have your questionnaires filled out, go through and look for similarities. Do a good number belong to country clubs? Do a good number frequent a certain shopping district? Do a certain number read the same magazine or go to the same website for their news? Now you have specific places to advertise. Now you have other businesses that you can look into a partnership with - say, offering a country club 10% discount to their members for your service.

Don’t guess. Use this as a road map to your marketing until such a time as you can pay either a consultant to guide you or a professional agency to handle it from start to finish. Many people have the misconception that marketing and advertising is a necessary evil - that there is some mystic element to it. Not so. With today’s technology and a little creative effort on your part, you can raise the visibility of your business with the people most likely to use you.

Now get out there and look good.

Chris Motley
Motley Creations

©2007 Motley Creations

Tags: Advertising, Marketing, strategy, traffic.

Have you ever spent a few thousand dollars for an ad in a newspaper that ran for a week and received one call - maybe? You’re not alone.

I’m not saying don’t advertise in the paper - it’s a useful tool and sometimes necessary depending on your industry. I’m saying there is a powerful, trackable tool you can use to get to the people who are looking for your product or service. That tool is Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - otherwise known as pay per click campaigns. When going to Google, Yahoo, or MSN, you’ll notice the “sponsored links” on the right side of the page and sometimes at the top - these ads are pay per click campaigns.

In a nutshell, you choose the keywords that your prospects use when searching for you in search engines, set a budget as to how much you’re willing to invest and choose which area you want to advertise. Then you wind up and let it go - while tracking your results on-line. You can potentially get an astronomical increase of return on your investment for the same money. As with any media, there are no sure things.

First, the keywords: Google and several other sites will provide a tool to get a list of keywords they recommend for your site such as:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2

Once you have the words, it’s important to notice that each word has a “bid” price. In other words, what a company is willing to pay when someone clicks on that link. Some are relatively inexpensive and some are very expensive. So you need to do your research. What you don’t want is to pay for people clicking into your site and finding out it’s not the right fit for what they were looking for.

Next you set your budget. You can itemize how much you are willing to pay for a click and how much you are willing to spend a day and a month. Once you reach your limit, your ad stops showing up.

Lastly you need to establish where you want your ads to show. If your product or service has a limited region you can service, it makes since to only advertise in those regions. You can set it by cities, regions, countries, or even a set distance from your store.

There are several other factors not covered here as I would have to write a book to even scratch the surface. Some of those things are; Am I in an industry that would benefit from SEM? Is it better for me to pay a service to manage my account? Will driving traffic to my website ultimately achieve my goals (such as bring people to my store)?

Do your homework before you begin. Your time is valuable and some things are just better left to the experts. I know how to change the transmission fluid in my car but I’m not about to do it. What would take me hours will take the person with the right tools and experience only minutes.

Now get out there and look good.

Chris Motley
Motley Creations

©2007 Motley Creations. Use by premission only.

Tags: Advertising, budget, Pay Per Click, search engine marketing.