Be Bold. Rise Above The Noise.

Posted by Paul Morin at 2:51 pm Boldness, Brand, Marketing, Positioning 15 Responses »

Sep 262011

Be Bold. Rise Above The Noise.

As an entrepreneur, it is important to be bold. We live in a world where there is so much “noise” of all sorts, that if you’re not willing to be bold, it’s likely that you will get “lost in the shuffle”. Think about it; how many TV ads, radio ads, emails, billboards, print ads, and other marketing messages do you receive in a day? What percentage do you think you pay attention to?

The bold are not always loved, but typically they are respected and in a lot better position to be remembered and ultimately, to be successful. Particularly as a relatively new venture, but also true for more mature businesses, one of the biggest challenges you will face is making yourself and your company stand out from the rest of the pack. Without being bold and trumpeting your strengths and differentiating factors, it is unlikely that you will stand out and succeed.

I realize that this concept of being bold will not appeal to everyone. In fact, a lot of the time, I’d rather “fly under the radar” as well. Unfortunately though, as an entrepreneur, you typically need to find a way to be noticed, in order to be successful. This is not to say that you should be obnoxious, but it is to say that you will probably have to do some things that you’re not entirely comfortable with, in order to become known. Use your imagination. The wilder, the better. Stay within the law, of course, but with those guidelines, the sky is the limit.

Take for example mega successful billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson – he used to do all sorts of death defying daredevil stunts to promote his early and very successful company, Virgin Records. I’m not advocating necessarily that you risk your life, but the more different and exciting that you and your company can be (within reason, given the industry you’re in, of course), the more known and successful you are likely to become. Be creative in your boldness.

If it makes your stomach turn just thinking that you need to be bold, try looking at it a bit differently. Don’t think of it necessarily as the peacock, strutting its beautiful, loudly colored feathers in an effort to be noticed. Rather, think of it as “finding your voice”. I hear this phrase used quite a bit in the online, blogging and social media space, and being more of an auditory person, it has a visceral appeal for me. In essence, it says that you don’t necessarily need to make yourself stand out by being “loud and obnoxious”. Instead, you can do so by finding “your voice,” or unique and distinctive way that you communicate with your target market and other constituencies.

As long as the “voice” that you choose resonates with your constituencies, you can establish yourself as someone (or some company and brand) adding value with a unique perspective and approach, which makes you someone worth listening to. I think Apple, one of the most recognized brands in the world, with one of the most loyal groups of followers and customers, does a great job of getting its “voice” across to its markets. It does such a clever job of doing so, in the way its products are designed and in all of its communications, that the target market actually believes that it’s “their voice”. And as you know, most people love the sound of their own voice.

So, if you’re sitting there thinking, “I don’t want to be bold and obnoxious,” well, you really don’t need to be in order to establish your “voice” in the marketplace. You must, however, be unique and most importantly, be adding value, from the perspective of your target market and other key constituencies. Remember, if you don’t find a way to rise above the “noise,” no one will ever know about the great products, services and solutions you provide.

I look forward to your thoughts and questions. Please leave a comment (“response”) below or in the upper right corner of this post.

Paul Morin

paul@companyfounder.com

www.companyfounder.com

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11 Essential Elements Of A Basic Marketing Plan

Posted by Paul Morin at 11:49 am Marketing, Marketing Plan 10 Responses »

Sep 142011

Some Elements of a Basic Marketing Plan

11 Essential Elements Of A Basic Marketing Plan

If you are going to sell products and/or services, you should have a marketing plan. You could just “wing it” like most people do, but you are likely to have better results if you do some planning up front. You don’t need to go crazy and come up with a 100-page marketing plan, but just as with everything, if you have some idea where you’re trying to go, it’s likely going to be easier to get there.

So, here’s an overview of the elements of a basic marketing plan, as well as a few tips about how to look at them and how to optimize your results. Note: marketing plans come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of sophistication. The elements covered here are the fundamentals. You can and should go far more in depth, if you are so inclined.

Marketing Plan Element #1: Brief Description Of Problem You’re Solving For Customers

I like to see marketing plans start with a “problem statement”. That immediately forces the entrepreneur to think about and articulate what they are selling in terms of the customers’ needs. As you know, customers buy benefits, not features, so it’s key to consider what problem your product and/or service is solving for your prospective customer. That’s what they’re buying. For example, to use the old marketing adage (paraphrasing), customers don’t buy a drill; they buy the ability to make a hole.

Marketing Plan Element #2: Description of Your Products and Services

In this section, provide a description of the products and services you offer, or plan to offer. Nothing fancy here and you don’t have to go into scientific or technical detail regarding every aspect of your offerings. Rather, this is where you describe your offerings and how they solve the customer problems you identified in Element #1.

Marketing Plan Element #3: Overview of The Market Opportunity

Here you cover the overall size of the market, in terms of units and dollar value. If you are coming out with a new, innovative product, there may not be sales of that specific product, as yet. However, that is not an excuse for not trying to estimate the overall size of the market for what you’re offering. Having an overall market size estimate is important, particularly in order to “sanity check” your sales goals and projections. Depending how far and wide you will distribute your product or provide your service, make sure that you break the market size estimates into relevant geographic sub-totals.

Marketing Plan Element #4: Competitor and Substitute Analysis

This section will include a matrix of your competitors that sell the same product or services, and of substitutes, which may not be exactly the same, but may solve some, or all, of the problem that your prospective customers care about. As discussed, your prospects don’t particularly care how the problem is solved; they just want it done as quickly, easily, and economically as possible. Another important point here is: don’t commit the cardinal sin of saying “we have no competitors,” or “we have no direct competitors”. While that may be true, it’s probably not. Even if it is, you still need to understand and articulate how prospective customers are currently dealing with the problem you’ve identified. That is, after all, the basis of the opportunity you’re going after. Without that problem and resulting need, no one would buy what you have to offer.

Marketing Plan Element #5: Discussion of The Segments (Niches) You Will Target

You described the overall market above, in Element #3. It’s now time to dig deeper and identify the relevant segments of the market. This is a place where big companies and other sophisticated marketers spend a lot of time and money on analysis. The better you identify and understand the needs of the various segments of the market, the better you are able to market and sell to them effectively. Don’t think simply, “we’ll just get one percent of the overall market and that will be a big sales number”. It does not work that way. You must determine, based on a variety of factors, which segments are most attractive and focus on selling to those segments. Those factors include: the composition of the market in the geography you are targeting, the products/services you are capable of providing, your marketing budget, etc. As a small company, you simply do not have the resources to sell and market to the market as whole. You must pick your segments and focus, focus, focus. Obviously, you can course-adjust as you learn from your research and results, but you must be very focused, especially at the beginning.

Marketing Plan Element #6: Your Marketing and Sales Objectives

How will you know if you succeed with your marketing plan? You need to have goals to measure your results against. Those goals should include overall revenue targets, as well as objectives broken down by product, service, geography, etc. The more specific you can be with these goals, the easier it will be to communicate them to your team and have commensurate rewards and accountability. Even if you don’t hit your goals, you at least will have a benchmark and you can then adjust for future periods. Whatever you do, don’t put together a marketing plan without including goals. That would be like setting out to sea without a particular destination in mind. It would be hard to know if you arrived. It would also be hard to plan other important aspect of the journey, like how much fuel (“marketing budget”) and provisions (“other resources”) you would need along the way to your target destination.

Marketing Plan Element #7: Review and Analysis of Pricing

Pricing is one of the trickiest elements of marketing and probably the one I get the most questions on. At the end of the day, you want to set your price right at the point where you’ll maximize your profits. Good luck with that, particularly as a small business without a massive amount of historical price and demand data. As an entrepreneur, you need to look at price in terms of what the market (competitors) is charging and what it is costing you to provide your product or service. The last thing you want to do is set the price too low, lose money on every sale, and try to “make it up in volume”. Conversely, you don’t want to set your price so high that no one buys from you. There is a happy medium. You will need to test various price levels to find that happy medium. As you do so, bear in mind that the more “commoditized” your market is, the less potential you will have for deciding the price you can charge. In a fully commoditized market, the price will be set by the market and you will either have to be able to make profit at that level, or get out. In other non-commoditized markets, there may be a very wide range of prices for essentially the same product or service, with the pricing difference largely based on good marketing, positioning and differentiation. Test, test, test, in order to find the optimal pricing for your products and services.

Marketing Plan Element #8: Description of Sales Plan and Distribution Approach

Here you will describe in detail the approach you will take to selling and distributing your products and services. Will you have a direct sales force? Will you sell through partners? Will you sell online? There are many possibilities and usually you will use a combination of approaches. It will depend heavily on what you’re selling, how complex the sales process is, the scale and scope of the markets you are going after, etc. Make sure you take into account how your margins will be affected by which sales approaches and channels you are employing. As with all aspects of your plan, you will need to keep testing, so you can find the optimal mix over time.

Marketing Plan Element #9: Advertising Approach and Budget

How will you advertise your products and services? Will you use print, television, radio, internet, etc? How much will you focus on each? It will depend to a large extent on what you are selling, how large your ad budget is and how wide a geography you are targeting. You will want to set up a line-item budget for each advertising medium you will employ. In the next step, you will track the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing in each medium, which will help you determine where you should spend more, and where you may want to cut back. Again, this is an area where you will want to test and course-correct constantly.

Marketing Plan Element #10: Metrics To Be Tracked

Depending on your market and the products and services you are offering, certain marketing metrics will be more important than others. The ultimate goals is to track “touches” (impressions, views, other interactions, etc.) on clients that then convert to inquiries, leads, prospects, and ultimately, sales. Not all prospects that see your advertising and marketing materials will buy, of course. Your objective is to figure out which of your advertising and marketing approaches are providing the most “bang for the buck” and do more of those. You will find that what “works” will vary by market segment and geography. You must steadily test and “tune” the approaches you are using. The more detailed the metrics you track, the more precisely you will be able to do this “tuning.

Marketing Plan Element #11: Marketing Strategy Feedback Loop

It is critically important that in all steps above, you are constantly testing and course-adjusting according to the results that you achieve. If you are going to put money, time and other resources into marketing and sales, you owe it to yourself (and your investors, if you have any) to keep close track of the results and make sure that you are optimizing your “spend” as much as possible. Also, don’t get complacent and think that what’s working today will continue to work the same way in the future. In the dynamic world in which we live, where change always seems to be accelerating based on technological advances, it’s important to remain vigilant and make sure that your approaches are “changing with the times”.

There you have the elements of a basic marketing plan. Have you put together such a plan? What elements did you include? Which parts do you think are most important? Are there others that you’d add to the list of “basic elements”?

I look forward to your thoughts and questions. Please leave a comment (“response”) below or in the upper right corner of this post.

Paul Morin

paul@companyfounder.com

www.companyfounder.com

Don’t miss an issue of Company Founder! Subscribe today. It’s free. It’s private. It’s practical information for entrepreneurs and leaders interested in taking it to the next level.

How To Sell More With Cognitive Dissonance

Posted by Paul Morin at 8:07 am Cognitive Dissonance, Marketing, Selling 9 Responses »

Aug 312011

How To Sell More With Cognitive Dissonance

Even though the vast majority of people will tell you that they “don’t like to sell,” when pressed, they’ll still admit to you that they’d like to know how to sell more, right?

Selling anything is a very uncomfortable process for many people, almost as bad as public speaking. This is not the article to go into all the reasons for the overwhelming discomfort felt by most when they even think about having to sell something to someone. In brief, at the core of the discomfort is a fear of rejection and a great hope that the prospective customer will just figure out that our solution is better. For those of you who have fought the sales and marketing battle for any period of time, it’s understood that most prospects don’t “just figure it out”.

So, if you don’t love to sell, this article will not fully help you overcome that feeling, but it will give you a better understanding of a tool that you should be using constantly to conquer even your most hardened, “objection rich” prospects. That tool is cognitive dissonance, or as I sometimes like to call it, “cog diss” or “Socratic cog diss”.

Ok, so what is this cognitive dissonance? It is defined by Webster’s Dictionary (merriam-webster.com) as: psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. In other words, you cannot believe two different (and inconsistent) things at once. If you give it a try, you’ll realize that almost always, your mind will grind to a screeching halt and basically force you to choose one or the other opposing belief. If it doesn’t, or you refuse to make a choice, your mind will send you (figuratively) around and around in circles until you finally make a choice between the “incongruous beliefs”.

What does cognitive dissonance have to do with sales and marketing, you ask? Everything. In sales and marketing, whether subtly or very directly, we are trying to convince a person or a group of people to make a purchase, or take some other specific action. In order to do so effectively, we must persuade them to believe that going with our product or service is the right thing to do. We must convince them, or better yet, have them convince themselves, that purchasing our solution will best solve the issues that they want to solve. We know we’re not offering the only solution, but we want the prospect to come to the conclusion that we’re offering the “best solution”.

In order for the prospect to think that our solution will best solve the problem or issue they are facing, it is likely that we will have to help them change what they already believe! Chances are that when you show up on the scene, whether it be virtually or in person, the prospect does not have the preconceived notion that you are the best solution and the sale is “yours to lose”. Does that happen to you often? If it does, then congratulations, as you and your company have done a great job of positioning your brand and offerings in the marketplace. For everyone else, listen carefully. Just about the only way for you to overcome the “objections” running around in the mind of the prospect, will be to introduce cognitive dissonance to the “conversation”. Let me give you an example to clarify.

Let’s say that you sell financial planning services. To keep it simple, let’s say that you focus just on helping clients optimize their investment portfolios, based on their risk appetite and other key factors, such as age, current and desired future lifestyle, etc. If you sell such services, one of the common objections you probably run into is, “thanks, but I have that covered with a financial planner friend of mine that I’ve been using for ten years”. This objection is not uncommon in all kinds of industries, with the prospect’s essential belief being, “I don’t need another solution; I’ve got this covered”. There are probably few prospect objections more difficult to overcome than this, particularly in this specific case, where the clever prospect plays the “friend card” and also refers to the long-term “10 year” solution already in place.

In such cases, and in all cases where the prospective customer has convinced himself or herself that they’re “all set,” the best tool that you can put to use, and perhaps your only real hope, is cognitive dissonance. How do you do it? First, you must do your homework and understand in great detail the true risks the prospect faces with their “all set” attitude. Next, you must ask a series of questions in an unobtrusive and inoffensive way that cause the prospect to understand that maybe they don’t have it all covered after all. Finally, you must demonstrate with as much certainty as possible that your solution offers a much higher probability of satisfying the concerns that they have about potential risks they face and benefits they seek in making this purchase.

Now back to the financial planning services situation, to make the example more concrete. Let’s say that your prospect tells you they’re “all set”. Rather than walk away with your tail between your legs, ask them for the chance to ask them a few questions, in order to “confirm that they have some key emerging market risks covered”. They’ll object again, with a strong desire to “protect their certainty” – by the way, no one likes to be in a state of cognitive dissonance – uncertainty is uncomfortable. Assure them that you’ll be brief and won’t waste their time. When you sit down with them or speak with them on the phone, your job will be to “sow the seeds of doubt” (cognitive dissonance) in the top five areas of risk that they likely face in their “all set” state of mind. Given that the tax code and other factors related to financial planning change with great frequency, you probably won’t have a shortage of potential “doubt seeds”. Choose and utilize those that you believe to be most relevant to the prospect.

There are a couple of caveats to using cognitive dissonance in your sales and marketing. First, and perhaps most importantly, you will have to find a balance between pushing hard enough and not being condescending. You’ll need to test this. Being condescending is not likely to get you anywhere. Finding just the right mix of “cog diss” is likely to get you results beyond what you’ve ever achieved in the past, so it’s worth seeking and finding the balance. Second, don’t expect miracles. Moving prospects off of long held beliefs and objections is very difficult. In most cases, you will not get through to them, particularly on the first foray. Think of it as a war, not a battle. Keep “going after” those deeply held, but usually not-very-well-thought-out, beliefs of your prospective customers, and with perseverance, it will likely yield excellent results.

The key to remember in this cognitive dissonance approach is that it is very hard, if not impossible, for people to keep “incongruous beliefs” in their mind for very long. They simply cannot co-exist simultaneously in someone’s mind without “driving them crazy”. Your job then is to make sure that the beliefs you are trying to introduce must win at some point in the battle or the war, otherwise the pre-existing beliefs will have won, de facto. Sometimes the prospect truly is “all set” and well-served, but in many industries, that is the exception, rather than the rule. If what you’re offering truly is the better solution, you will feel very comfortable regularly providing the seeds of cognitive dissonance, so that your prospect can come to the right conclusion and buy from you!

We have had great success with this “cognitive dissonance approach” and mindset in our businesses. I’m very interested in your thoughts, comments and feedback about your own experiences. Please leave a comment or feel free to contact me at the email address below.

Paul Morin

paul@companyfounder.com

www.companyfounder.com

Just Remember: Hope Is What You Are Selling

Posted by Paul Morin at 8:50 am Hope, Marketing, Selling 4 Responses »

Aug 202011

Just Remember: Hope Is What You Are Selling

If you would like to improve the results of your sales and marketing, just remember that hope is what you are selling. There is very little certainty in life, so with every purchase we make, we are hopeful that it will give us certain results.

There is a deep psychological basis for this “hope,” which is rooted in what you often hear characterized as “people make decisions for two reasons – to avoid fear or to seek pleasure”. If we explore this a little deeper, the avoiding fear piece seems pretty straightforward; it is, at least in large part, the famous “fight or flight response”. The “seek pleasure” part is a bit more complex though, as the “pleasure” can come from an extremely wide variety of sources, including the simple hope that certain aspects of our lives will improve or we will get a feeling of comfort and peace, even if for just a short period of time.

Let’s look at a few examples of how we make certain purchases to seek the “pleasure” of hope for a certain feeling. The first example would be buying and eating candy or junk food. Why do we do it when we know it has no nutritional value and in fact can be very bad for our health? We do it because we are hoping that it will give us a pleasurable feeling. We hope that it will quickly satisfy our sense of hunger and relieve our headache caused by low blood sugar. We hope that it will satisfy our “sweet tooth” or make us feel happy and soothe our anxiety when we’re depressed or upset about something. We don’t do it for purely rational reasons; we do it largely for emotional reasons, as we are hoping it will give us a certain feeling.

Now let’s look at a much more expensive purchase: a luxury car. Why do we spend two or three times as much money on a luxury car, when there are other perfectly good cars that will get us from point A to point B just as quickly and as safely? We do it because we hope that having such a car and riding around in it will make us feel good about ourselves. We hope that it will give us a sense of importance and status in society. We may also hope that it will give us a sense of exhilaration when we step on the gas pedal and go from 0 to 60 in 4.6 seconds. We hope that having that luxury car will give us a wide variety of feelings that will make us happy.

We’ve talked about some products, but how about services, even business services. Are they purchased based on hope as well? Absolutely. Just about every purchase that is made in the business world is also based on hope. As I stated in the beginning, and as you are no doubt aware from your own experiences, there is very little certainty in life. This is equally true in the business world. Take, for example, the purchase of strategy consulting services, or coaching services. What is the hope of the buyer of such services? Depending on which class of services, the hope is likely for better performance of the business or of the particular executive contracting the services. The contracting executive could also be hoping to alleviate the workload of his team and free them up for other tasks he hopes to focus on more. In either case, the purchaser may hope that the improved results lead to a bonus for him or her. That bonus would then allow them to make other purchases that they hope will give them other good feelings. You see how the cycle continues.

So now that we’re talking about hope and expectations, we get to another very important point to bear in mind in your sales and marketing: prospective buyers love testimonials. Why is that? Well, given that there is no true certainty that what you’re offering will give them the feeling(s) and results they hope to obtain, they want to hear stories of others who have used your products or services and enjoyed the exact results they are seeking. This is often referred to as “social proof”. It’s pretty straightforward, but often overlooked. Prospective buyers are just trying to close the gap between hope and certainty. They know they are unlikely to close the gap 100%, but they’d like to get as close as possible, before taking a closer look at your offering and ultimately, taking the risk and pulling the trigger on making a purchase.

This leads us to another fundamental point: customers are buying benefits, not features. This notion of hope can help us gain further understanding into why it is so important not to make the common marketing mistake of focusing on the features, rather than the benefits, of your offering. Prospective customers simply don’t care about the features. They want to hear about the benefits that are aligned with the feelings and results they are hoping to achieve by buying your product or service.

When you are planning and executing your marketing and selling, make sure you dig deeper to understand the hopes and aspirations of your prospective customer. This applies equally whether you are selling to consumers or businesses. Regardless of whether we’re talking about a bottle of perfume or a high-speed copy machine, every prospective customer has hopes attached to their potential purchase. You must understand at as deep an emotional level as possible what those hopes and aspirations are, and you must then position your offering to be the one that best satisfies them. If you approach all your marketing and sales from this “hope” perspective, you are likely to be very pleased with the results you achieve.

I look forward to your thoughts and comments. Leave a comment below.

Paul Morin

paul@companyfounder.com

www.companyfounder.com

Do You Truly Add Value? Are You Differentiated?

Posted by Paul Morin at 2:05 pm Differentiation, Marketing, Strategy 7 Responses »

Aug 152011

Do You Truly Add Value? Are You Differentiated?

Whether you are an employee or an entrepreneur, you will want to ask yourself this question: Do I truly add value? If you’d rather use more popular terminology, it would be: What’s my value-added? Either way, answer honestly. Also, ask yourself, am I differentiated? Your present and future livelihood depend on the answers to these questions.

What is meant by value-added? Since we’re focused on entrepreneurship and leadership, I will answer from that perspective, but if you are still an employee, the same logic applies. Value-added simply means that in any transaction or activity with which you are involved, what value are you contributing? The funny example I always think of is when there are three people standing around filling a pothole on the road, with two leaning on their shovels and the other one doing all the work. In that case, the one actually filling in the pothole would be adding value by exerting physical force to get the job done. If you were being generous, you’d say the other two may be providing moral support and/or direction. If not, you’d say they were not adding any value and were simply taking up space and “converting oxygen to carbon dioxide”.

Let’s look at an entrepreneurial example. Let’s say that you are a broker or “intermediary”. There are hundreds of different types of intermediaries, but let’s use the example of an M&A advisor. More specifically, in this example, let’s focus on a sell-side M&A advisor – someone who advises people selling their companies. You will hear such a role referred to as everything from “business broker” to “investment banker”. Each label used has different connotations which generally differentiate between the size and sophistication of the deals handled. You’ll often hear the term “business broker” in the context of selling smaller “mom and pop” type businesses, where the term “investment banker” usually is used in the context of larger and more complex deals.

What is the true difference between the value-added of a “business broker” and an “investment banker”? Often, not much, but sometimes the difference can be dramatic. A “business broker”, in many cases, is at least perceived as doing not much more than matching a buyer with a seller. Such value-added certainly is vital in getting any transaction done, but it’s seen as commoditized, as it often does not involve much specialized knowledge. The value-added of an “investment banker,” on the other hand, is often perceived as including match-making PLUS deal structuring, negotiation, usage of an extensive network of other high-level tax, accounting and legal professionals, etc. While in reality, these differences may not always exist, that is usually the perception and for this reason, “investment bankers” are perceived as adding more value and therefore, they typically end up earning significantly more compensation than “business brokers”. In this game of added value and differentiation, often times positioning and perception are just as important as reality.

How does this value-added and differentiation picture look in your product or service business? What is the “special sauce” that you bring to the table that makes prospective customers want to choose you or your company and its offerings? If your answer is “not much,” you need to begin to remedy this right away, because just as in a workplace environment, particularly in lean economic times, those that can’t point to specific, differentiated added value that they are bringing to the table, are typically among the first to be shown the door. The corollary to that is, even if they’re not shown the door, they’ll often have to work for less compensation, just to keep the client or the job. Without demonstrable value-added and the ability to position themselves appropriately, they simply have no leverage in keeping their current clients or finding new ones.

Why do you think it is that the top salesperson at a company often earns more than the CEO? It is for this very “value-added reason”. The value-added of a top salesperson is easy to identify and quantify. It’s how much of the company’s product or service they sold over a certain period of time. And in some companies that are a bit more sophisticated in their measurement of value-added, it’s how much they sold AND the profitability of those sales. In the end analysis, adding value is not just about generating sales, it’s about generating PROFITABLE sales. Keep this in mind as you’re thinking about your own value-added and differentiation scenario and strategy.

Where do you as an individual, and where does your company as an organization, add value in the marketplace? How is that differentiated from what every other “player” in the game is doing to add value? How well have you been able to position yourself and your offerings as adding significant value in the marketplace? The answer to these questions is CRITICAL, because without differentiation, commoditization, which typically yields a scenario of lower prices and profits, will soon be knocking at your door.

I realize that to some extent, these concepts of value-add and differentiation are “strategic thinking 101,” but what I see in my own businesses and advisory work is that too many people, even otherwise excellent CEOs, can fall into the trap of not seeing commoditization creeping in from every angle. Most markets these days are extremely dynamic. You need to make sure that you and your business remain dynamic as well and constantly examine ways to add more value, differentiate, and stay a step ahead of the commoditization reality.

I look forward to your thoughts, comments and questions on the topics of adding value, differentiation and commoditization. Leave a comment below!

Paul Morin

paul@companyfounder.com

www.companyfounder.com

5 Common Mistakes To Avoid In Marketing Your Small Business

Posted by Paul Morin at 1:41 pm Marketing, Marketing Mistakes 18 Responses »

Aug 022011

Five Common Mistakes To Avoid in Marketing Your Small Business

Is marketing your small business not going as well as you would like? There is always room for improvement! The following five common mistakes are fundamental to effective marketing and sales. If you are committing these mistakes in marketing your products and/or service, correct your approach as soon as possible and you may be surprised how quickly your sales and profitability head in the right direction.

Common Marketing Mistake #1: Not Focusing On The Prospect

90+ percent of the marketing materials I see are focused on the many wonderful attributes of the SELLER! Their marketing communications focus on them — where they went to school, how big their business is, their wonderful office location, the great technology they have, etc.

Is this what the prospective customer really cares about? Or are they more concerned with hearing that you understand their problems and can help them with the challenges they are facing right now?

Rather than telling them that your company is such and such, tell them you and your company understand the issues they are facing. Tell them you understand them and in fact, your whole focus is on helping people in their exact situation address those and similar problems. You’d like them to know that you can’t get enough of helping people like them and you’ve done it effectively, over and over again.

You can and should, of course, let them know that you and your company have the necessary qualifications to get the job done and solve their problem. But rather than just listing your credentials, get that message across by telling them the many stories of how you’ve successfully helped others with the same challenges they are facing. Show them the knowledge and insights you’ve applied to help clients solve similar issues.

Common Marketing Mistake #2: Trying To Be Too Clever

If you read and study enough advertising and marketing pieces, you will realize that the vast majority are trying to be clever – too clever.

The point of marketing and advertising is not to show people how smart you are or how great a vocabulary you have. The point is to get your prospects to take a specific action. To call you. To buy your product. To join your email list. The surest way to NOT make this happen is by using too many big words or fancy concepts and images, or by using subtle graphics that you think are cute or clever, but that leave the prospect wondering what you’re talking about.

Prospects are bombarded by advertising and marketing messages and images these days. This constant bombardment has forced people to be even more selective regarding what they pay attention to. Not surprisingly, what most often grab and hold prospects’ attention are messages that are clear and are clearly relevant to issues they facing right now.

Develop the habit of writing very directly in all your business writing, and particularly in your advertising and marketing materials.

Common Marketing Mistake #3: Emphasizing Features Rather Than Benefits

The famous example goes, “People don’t buy a hole puncher (or drill), they buy the ability to make holes”. Or people don’t buy a driver (golf), they buy the ability to hit the ball further and straighter off the tee and impress their friends.

When you are marketing your product or service, don’t expect that simply writing up a long list of incredible features will magically incentivize your prospect to take out their credit card (or check book, or purchase order) and buy what you have to offer. It simply does not work that way for the vast majority of buyers.

Rather than tell them, “my product is all this,” or “I’m all that,” tell them, “You have this issue you are confronting and what I am offering is the best way to solve that problem, quickly and economically, as we have proven over and over, with challenges just like yours”.

Common Marketing Mistake #4: Not Offering a Guarantee

Your prospects are worried that your product won’t work for them. So put their worries to bed by offering a risk-reversal – that is, a satisfaction guarantee. Unconditional, strong and long guarantees usually deliver the best conversion rates to you.

This may seem like big risk to you, but if it does, ask yourself this question: How good is my product/service? If you believe in what you are offering, you are less likely to have a big concern about offering a satisfaction guarantee. If you’re still concerned, offer the guarantee for a limited time and see how it goes.

If you look around, you will notice that most of the savviest marketers out there offer a no questions asked, unconditional money back 30-day (minimum) guarantee. This is not easy to apply to certain products and services, of course, but for most, it works very well.

Common Marketing Mistake #5: Not Creating a Sense of Urgency

You need to have a call to action at the end of your sales letter or other marketing piece that tells your prospects exactly what to do next (e.g., “get out your credit card and click here to get started now…”). But you also need to give your prospects a good reason to act NOW, otherwise they may become distracted and never come back to your marketing piece. As discussed, prospects are bombarded with other offers and other sensory inputs on an almost constant basis these days. We increasingly live in the “age of distraction”.

The solution? Create a sense of urgency by:

Reminding the prospect that her/his pain and problems will be over when he/she buys the product or service.
Offering a limited-time discount or bonus offer.
Offering a limited quantity of products.
Offering a bonus or discount to the first few hundred (or whatever number makes sense in the context of your offer) people who order.

You just learned about five common marketing mistakes that may be causing your marketing not to work as well as it could. To the extent you haven’t already, get to work now on correcting these issues. It will be some of the most productive and profitable time you ever invest.

Don’t just pick and choose the methods you like best. Instead, address all five mistakes … and enjoy the results!

I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Paul Morin

paul@CompanyFounder.com

www.CompanyFounder.com

5 Things Small Business and Startup Marketers Can Learn From The Royal Wedding

Posted by Paul Morin at 8:34 am Marketing, Media, Public Relations, Storytelling, Uncategorized 1 Response »

Apr 292011

I have to confess that I’m not someone who sits glued to the TV watching the royal wedding ceremony and proceedings. In reality, as a entrepreneur, advisor and peak performance coach, I am more fascinated by just how fascinated others are with everything royal, including the royal wedding. As I went into our kitchen today and saw several members of my family watching the ceremony, then I switched on the television in the other room and flipped through a ton of channels covering the same thing, I had to ask myself, what can be learned from this obsession with royalty and royal weddings. So, here are my thoughts.

First and foremost, when you would like to catch the attention of the media, make sure you are providing them with a topic/story that their viewership cares about. If you don’t, you will get zero coverage — NONE. If you do, the sky is the limit on the amount of free publicity you may be able to obtain for your startup or small business.

Second, remember that everyone has a dream, or many of them. And remember that for many, as is apparent based on the media bonanza on all things royal and in particular the royal wedding, people’s dream(s) often revolve around childhood fairy tales and a “real life prince and princess”. Hardly anything captivates the mind of many people more than stories of princes and princesses, particularly those with happy beginnings and presumably, happy endings.

Third, when you can come across opportunities to mix royalty and non-royalty in your story, by all means, do so. This captures the minds of massive amounts of people even more than just the basic royal wedding scenario. Rags (not really, in the case of this royal wedding) to riches stories are what much of the public yearns for. These stories give people hope and belief. Be sure to weave your own stories into your startup (or small business) marketing, as stories are how we communicate and learn best as human beings.

Fourth, in your marketing and public relations, be sure to tie in to major media stories “of the day,” just as I am doing with this post. It helps to keep your content current and it allows your audience to relate your material, whatever it may be, to something that they are currently fascinated by. It can also help from an SEO point of view, if done correctly and consistently over time, but that’s a much longer story for another day.

Finally, where possible, make your marketing more personal. Be willing to divulge a bit about yourself, so that your audience and prospective customers will see you as a person, and they will not see your small business or startup as just one of millions. Help your audience understand that you, like them, are just another “commoner” trying to create your very own rags to riches, little girl or boy grown up, meeting royalty and finding your place in your castle story.

The more you make the growth of your startup or existing small business feel like the wonder and fascination of the royal wedding and the “real live prince meets princess,” falls in love and lives happily ever after story, the more likely you are to capture the attention of the media and your target audience. The connection is not literal, of course, but remember, we live on analogies and metaphors and we make emotional decisions, and then justify them with logic. So even if yours is not a true royal wedding story, make it metaphorically so.

We look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Paul Morin
paul@companyfounder.com
www.companyfounder.com

www.uncoveryourniche.com [free business idea screener]
www.investorpitchtemplate.com [free template for equity investor presentation]

Marketing Basics - Create Your Customer Avatar

Posted by Paul Morin at 8:53 am Copywriting, Customer avatar, Market Niche, Marketing, Niche, Target Market 3 Responses »

Apr 132011

When you are marketing and selling to your target market, or your market “niche,” should your copy read as if you are speaking to a large group or to an individual? Ask any marketing expert and without hesitating, they will tell you that almost without exception, you should be writing or speaking to an individual. As much as we may all be part of much larger groups, we like to feel unique and we want to have our particular needs addressed, not those of everyone around us.

So as a marketer, how do we accomplish speaking to one individual and still manage to touch on the benefits of our product or service that address the needs of a large percentage of our target market? The answer is quite simple: we create and address in our marketing a “customer avatar,” which is nothing more than a composite of the most important characteristics of all the members of the niche we are trying to reach and persuade. Many experts even suggest that we give that “person” a name and put a picture of “them” (someone you think approximates their most important characteristics), so that we can keep them top of mind and so that when we are marketing to “them,” the words flow naturally, as if we were in a conversation with a good friend.

As you create your customer avatar, which characteristics should you include? The answer: as many as possible, so that you can get as complete a picture (in your mind) as possible of the “person” you are marketing to. The list below is not all-inclusive but indicates some of the characteristics you should include as you build your customer avatar:

Age
Gender
Income
Likes/dislikes
Emotional hot buttons
Greatest wants
Greatest fears
Greatest frustrations
Greatest goals and aspirations
Most difficult macro and micro events they’ve live through
Most pressing issues right now given whatever is happening in the world
All traits that are relevant to how you create your offering and target your marketing

Note: the characteristics that you list for your avatar need to be very specific, particularly in the areas of wants, fears, frustrations and aspirations.

Now that you have created your customer avatar, it is key that in all your marketing, whether it’s written, audio, or video based, you speak to this person. It’s important that you speak directly to them and don’t use generalizations. Remember, your avatar wants you to address their specific needs. Will you miss some people in your target market this way? Yes. However, if you’ve built your avatar correctly, you will be speaking directly to the persons with all the characteristics that you want your ideal customer to have. Your message is thus much more likely to get through and have the persuasive effect you are seeking.

It’s possible that you are targeting multiple niches in your business. Depending on how different those niches are, you may therefore want to create multiple avatars, so that when you are marketing to a particular niche, you can be “talking to” the avatar that is most relevant.

You may find the whole process of create a customer avatar a bit odd in the beginning. It’s not often that most of us have the occasion to create imaginary people. However, if you’ll give it a chance, you will quickly see how much easier it is to write copy and to speak in a way that really gets through to your target marget, thus improving the results of your marketing and sales efforts.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and questions about creating your customer avatar. Leave a comment below, or in the top right corner of this post. We read and respond to all comments.

Paul Morin
paul@CompanyFounder.com

CompanyFounder.com
Twitter: @companyfounder

Don't Forget Maslow In Your Marketing

Posted by Paul Morin at 9:04 am Marketing, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Uncategorized, Urgency 3 Responses »

Apr 122011

American psychologist Abraham Maslow pioneered an approach to understanding human behavior that he called “Humanistic Psychology”. He believed that every person has a strong desire to reach his or her full potential, which he referred to as “self-actualization”.

Maslow’s insights into human nature quickly allowed him to realize that self-actualization was not the most pressing need for human beings. This led him to create his most famous contribution to psychology, now commonly referred to as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, illustrated below.

As can be seen from the graphic, Maslow represented the basic levels of human needs in a pyramid, or hierarchy. The needs flow from the most basic survival requirements, such as food, water, and shelter, to the pinnacle, which Maslow referred to as self-actualization.

So what does this have to do with marketing? In reality, you should always bear this hierarchy in mind when you are marketing or selling anything. It is fundamental to try to understand where your audience falls on this hierarchy, whether you are selling to an individual in-person, or marketing to a large group of people dispersed across a wide geographic area. Either way, presumably you are marketing to human beings, all of whom are impacted by the Hierarchy of Needs and whose behavior will be greatly affected by where they fall on the pyramid at a particular point in time. Let’s look at some examples to further understand this.

The first example we’ll look at is an extreme one. Let’s say that you decide to make a foray into Africa with your marketing, as you’ve been told that the self-improvement program that you sell could likely help the people of, let’s say several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, find their way out of poverty. So, you put together a seminar and begin to advertise it throughout the region. You quickly realize that the only responses you are getting are from a few government officials and members of wealthier families in the area. You have wasted money on marketing and realize that your foray into Africa, at least the way you approached it, was a failure. So what happened? The answer is quite obvious: you were trying to market a self-actualization product to a target population, a large portion of which has not even satisfied their most basic physiological and security needs.

Now let’s take a less obvious example, which also illustrates the importance of “niche” markets and market segmentation. Let’s say that you sell electronic security systems and monitoring services. You decide that based on the demographics of a certain part of your city, you will focus your marketing efforts in that area. One of your prime indicators is that the area has a lot of families and you know that on average, families with children are very concerned about safety. There are several small, affluent neighborhoods in the area you’re looking at. Given that the demographics are similar, you don’t think it matters much which one you use for your test, so you choose neighborhood A. As it so happens, a competitor is thinking along the same lines and chooses neighborhood B, which is very similar, but a couple miles down the road. You run your test and achieve a 10% success rate on a key sales metric. You later find out that, using exactly the same marketing approach, your competitor achieved a 30% success rate in neighborhood B, a couple miles down the road!

So what happened? Your product and service offerings are very similar. Past experience has proved that your sales forces are roughly equal in closing skill. Your marketing materials are virtually undiffferentiable. You ran your tests at almost exactly the same time. What was the difference that caused your competitor to have a result 3 times better than yours? You may have already figured it out – neighborhood B had had a rash of home robberies in recent months, so the residents there were very concerned about the Safety Need referred to on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The residents in Neighborhood A had not had a robbery in their immediate area in over 5 years. Maybe your competitor got lucky, or maybe they did their homework, but either way, they achieved much greater results because the market they targeted had an immediate need for what they were offering, due to a pressing concern to satisfy their Safety Need.

This second example also illustrates that it is not just important to bear the Hierarchy of Needs in mind in your product creation, marketing and sales efforts, but also remember that the consumer is focused on satisfying immediate needs, particularly at the lower end of the pyramid. In fact, regardless of where someone may fall on the pyramid, the reality is that the majority of the time, they are focused on satisfying relatively short term needs. Sure, there are some “planners” out there, particular those who at the present time fall higher up on the pyramid, but the vast majority of customers and clients you are likely to target, spend most of their time trying to satisfy immediate or relatively short-term needs. This is true whether they’re focused on physiological needs, safety needs, affiliation needs, esteem needs, or even purpose needs. If it’s not immediate or urgent in their minds, most likely it gets demoted in favor of something that is more pressing. Bear this in mind in your marketing and other persuasion efforts; you must not only hit the target with the right message for where they are in the Hierarchy, you must also try to hit them at the right time. If you don’t, as the saying goes, your message is likely to go “in one ear and out the other”. Since it’s tough to predict the exact correct moment, this is an argument for having ongoing and frequent interaction with prospects, obviously without overdoing it to the point that they just “shut you off,” in order to increase the probability that your message will be in front of them at that moment when the need your offering can satisfy becomes immediate or urgent for them.

Keep Maslow in mind as you go about your business. If you have comments or questions, we’d love to hear them. Leave a comment below or in the top right corner of this post.

Paul Morin
CompanyFounder.com
Twitter: @companyfounder
paul@CompanyFounder.com

Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Three Words To Make You More Persuasive And A Better Marketer

Posted by Paul Morin at 7:47 am Credibility, Marketing, Negotiating, Selling 13 Responses »

Apr 082011

Who would have thought that the Greek philospher Aristotle could help you be a better business person? Well, if you want to be more persuasive, and by extension better at sales, marketing and negotiating, it’s worth thinking a bit about three categories that Aristotle used to describe means of persuasion. Those categories are Ethos, Pathos and Logos.

Ethos refers to the character or credibility of the speaker – or writer – the person trying to get their message or argument across. The listener or reader is going to have an impression of the level of credibility of the person trying to persuade them. This impression will be based on past interactions, reputation, and the manner of communication, among other factors.

Pathos relates to emotion. It is an attempt to persuade by appealing to the emotions of the person(s) you are trying to persuade. This appeal can be based on analogies, metaphors or stories that evoke the emotions of your reader or listener. It is well known that humans are accustomed to learning and passing on knowledge and wisdom through stories, so being able to weave a good story that touches someone emotionally is an excellent way to win them over.

Logos refers to logic. In this case, you are trying to persuade someone by using a well-reasoned, logical argument. You are persuading based on the belief that your audience will respond to an appeal that is structured in a logical, left-brain manner. Using this form of persuasion is seductive, as it gives you the (usuallly false) sense of comfort that if you can just make your argument tight enough, then your audience will have to be persuaded. Unfortunately, it’s not usually that simple.

As you’ve undoubtedly realized by now, these three categories usually do not work independently. In other words, it’s unlikely that by just using one of these forms of persuasion you are likely to persuade your audience, or at least not as consistently or to the extent you would like to. Why is that? Let’s consider an example to understand why these three almost always work together.

Let’s consider the example of someone that comes to you on the street, trying to persuade you to give them a few dollars because their car has run out of gas. For all of us who have lived in a big city at some point in our lives, this has likely happened at least once or twice. So what happens in this scenario? Well first, presumably you do not now this person at all, so they start out with very little credibility (Ethos). Strike one. Next, they have a very short time to get your attention and to use much logic (Logos). Strike two. Finally, they may stir up a bit of emotion in you, as you may have run out of gas at some point and had to look for help. Or you may just feel bad for them for being in an unfortunate circumstance.

So would you give this person money? What are some of the factors that may affect the degree to which they can persuade you? To begin with, if they’re dressed like you or dressed very well, you’re likely to give them a bit more credit (Ethos). Next, if they tell you a story that is more likely to relate to an experience you’ve had, or to your current situation, they may have more credibility and may at the same time touch you a bit more emotionally (Ethos, Pathos). Finally, if they tell you up front “this may sound a bit crazy,” you’re not likely to expect much logic or reasoning (Logos), so you’ll likely hold them to a lower standard on this category and the short time they have to give you a logical story won’t necessarily count against them as much.

What are some of the things that could work against them? How about if they’re dressed very shabbily, perhaps to the extent that you may even doubt that they have a car at all? How about if you’ve heard this story many, many times before, at least one or two of which were found to be complete fabrications? And what if in the short time they have to give you any semblance of logic for their plea, they give you a story that makes no sense to you at all, either based on the vocabulary the’re using or the numerous faults in their reasoning? All of these could cause you to say “no” (at least in your head) before they even start talking.

In this example, we’re talking about someone who walks up to you on the street looking for money. What does that have to do with business? With sales and marketing? With negotiation? Well how different is this scenario in reality than the many times people try to persuade you each day, whether it be in-person, by telephone, television, radio, or internet? In all of those cases, just as with the person who approached you on the street, each of the persons or organizations trying to persuade you is going to have varying levels of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in your mind. An unknown person or organization that comes to you, regardless of how they come to you, is likely to have very little credibility (Ethos) in your mind at the beginning. True, they may be able to make an emotional appeal (Pathos) and you may be moved, even though you don’t know them well. They may also be able to put together a solid, logical argument that you see as having merit (Logos). But even so, are you likely to buy from them, or be persuaded by them?

What can you do to increase the likelihood that when you are making appeals to individuals, they are going to be persuaded by you? The answer is in the combination of Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Any one of these approaches used in isolation is not nearly as powerful as when it is used in combination with the others. What you need to do is use Ethos, Pathos and Logos either all at once, or better yet, in a sequence that makes sense.

What is the right sequence in which to use Ethos, Pathos and Logos when you are trying to persuade others? There are many approaches that can work. One that is tried and true is to first use Ethos, then Pathos, then Logos. The idea goes like this: first you must be a credible source before the audience will even open their ears and begin to listen to your emotional and logical appeals. You can build your presentations, marketing and sales pitches in such a way that they follow this sequence. You may also get away with, and in some situations even be better off with, first appealing to their emotions, then letting them know that the appeal is coming from a credible source, and then finally giving them your logic for why they should take a particular action. One thing that is clear though, is that if you try to give them logic before you’ve even touched on emotion or credibility, you’re not likely to get too far in persuading them.

There are myriad ways that you can work toward establishing Ethos, evoking Pathos, and delivering sound Logos, but regardless of how you decide to approach it, hopefully this article has given you a solid grounding in the concept Aristotle put forth over 2,000 years ago. Hopefully too, you will not try to use just one of these categories of persuasion, but rather use them together to maximize your persuasive potential.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and questions on the concept of Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Please leave a comment below or by clicking on the top right corner of this post.

Paul Morin
Twitter: @PaulAlanMorin

CompanyFounder.com
Twitter: @CompanyFounder.com

Email: paul@CompanyFounder.com

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