Online Marketing for Small Businesses – a Social Media Primer
Small businesses that use online marketing have a number of tools at their disposal, including blogs, search engine optimization, review websites and other inbound marketing techniques. However, what may end up being the Internet’s most important contribution to advertising and brand awareness is social media networking platforms. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Yelp! are wonderful devices that make reaching out to customers simple and, most importantly, cheap.
Unfortunately, not every small business owner is internet-savvy enough to instantly capture a broad and deep customer base. This can make engaging with users on these services intimidating. With a little bit of practice and some clear guidelines, such efforts can actually be quite successful. Here are some of the most important lessons for using these social platforms to garner leads and additional business.
Establish a Policy
No two companies use social media in exactly the same way. For instance, some may choose to simply make Facebook posts and tweets messaging tools that inform customers about the latest promotions and discounts that an organization is running. Others may choose to use these services to actually contact customers and offer them deals and savings. Either way, be sure to set up some guidelines that will keep an organization’s tone consistent throughout a campaign.
Designate Users
In keeping with a consistent feel, it is a good idea to establish which employees will actually generate content for a social media website. The importance of these services is making it so that some organizations choose to hire full-time networkers to maintain their various profiles. However, this may not be necessary, depending on a business’ intent. Either way, choose an employee who is somewhat tech-savvy, grammatically sound and can maintain a level of professionalism that won’t sully a company’s good name.
Coordinate With Other Efforts
The odds are good that a business using social networking websites will have at least some other efforts ongoing in the online world. If this is the case, coordinate social media messages and profiles with them. Blogs and Facebook posts can link to one another, while promotions being held should be advertised as much as possible on these platforms. Even something as simple as the images and fonts used in traditional advertising should match those used on Twitter feeds and blogs.
About the Author: Guest Post by Myron Corp. Located in Maywood, New Jersey, Myron is a global provider of imprinted promotional products and works closely with businesses to integrate these products into their marketing mix. Myron manufactures quality items such as promotional calendars, personalized pens and other giveaways and corporate customized gifts designed to build brand awareness and customer loyalty.
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Remember Visual Hierarchy in your Advertising
Whether you are creating bill board, an exhibition stand or leaflet you need to pay attention to how you will direct people around your publication. The concept of visual hierarchy is one of the first things that graphic designers learn and it allows you to emphasise important elements in your publications with ease.
In fact I’m using it right now and you’ve probably used it today as well. Visual hierarchy is useful when it comes to creating attractive, easy to read adverts, ensuring that potential customers easily absorb your message.
Contrast
This will come up again and again in this post, but anything that contrasts from the rest of a piece will stand out and be seen as important. For example if you pattern of blue dots with one red dot then the red dot will immediately be noticed.
Size
It is fairly obvious that larger elements tend to be ‘heavier’ than smaller elements. So the more important the image is the larger it should be in comparison to other images. So you would usually want to make the most important part of an image the largest. Though there are exceptions to this rule. For example a single small but contrasting element surrounded by larger elements, will stand out creating a vulnerable impression.
Position
In Western cultures we tend to scan pieces from the top left to the bottom right in an ‘E’ pattern. Having said that the first place we tend to look at is the centre. So a distinctive central image will attract the most ‘weight’ and after that whatever is in the top left corner. Think of a billboard as opposed to this article. Probably the first thing you notice when you look at a billboard is near the centre. In contrast when you look at this article the first thing you notice is the title. This is because there is nothing distinctive in the centre, just a block of text.
Position has another crucial role. If you arrange everything in an organised pattern then anything that breaks that pattern will stand out. (Type dare to be different into Google Images to get an idea of what I’m talking about).
Colour
For some reason different colours tend carry different weights, with red and black seeming to be the ‘heaviest’ with green and yellow being the ‘lightest’. You will see over and over again red being used to distinguish an important item, think of fire extinguishers and alarms, there is a reason why they tend to painted red.
Whitespace
Whitespace, though it can be blackspace, or green whatever your background colour is really, helps to organise the information and prevent it appearing overwhelming. If you have ever tried to scan a long text message for details you will know how annoying a stream of text is. By putting spaces between elements then it allows you to group them.
Grouping
By grouping elements together you can show that they are related. For example without reading this paragraph you can still tell all the words are related because they are closer to each other than they are to the words in other paragraphs. In addition the whitespace between the paragraphs helps to establish them as separate groups. You can also establish relationships by repeating elements, so for example the sub headings in this article are seen as a group because they bolder than the rest of the text.
I hope this article has helped give you a basic idea of the principle behind visual hierarchy and how they can help make you publications easier to read and more informative. There is a wealth of information out there which can help you understand
About the author: Daniel Frank regularly blogs about marketing and design is currently writing on behalf of Nimlok Exhibition Stands.
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LinkedIn Publicity: How Online Press Release Distribution Can Help You with Your LinkedIn Marketing Efforts
Online press release distribution has not lost its power to create buzz and brand awareness. In fact, in speaking with many business professionals who have used our distribution partner’s press release services, we’ve been told:
- Their press releases were picked up by 40+ online sites and media news stations.
- Their press release placement brought additional credibility to the launch of their new books, products and services.
- They started to dominate the search engines – and “own” their keywords as search engines love optimized press releases
- They doubled and tripled their website traffic
- Multiple reporters and media professionals contacted them for additional interviews and media opportunities that give them more exposure.
- Their website now ranks higher on Google – because online press release distribution is a powerful link building too.
Here’s an additional benefit of online press release distribution that no one else is talking about…Online press release distribution will help you with your overall LinkedIn marketing efforts.
6 Ways Online Press Release Distribution Can Help You With Your LinkedIn Marketing Efforts
1) The press release generated publicity can provide you with instant credibility with your LinkedIn profile visitors.
For example my client Sara LaForest’s headline reads like this: “Top Management Consultant Featured in Business Week, Fast Company & WomenEntrepreneur.com – Connect and Find Out Why”. This shows readers immediately why they should trust her and why they should trust what she has to say.
Here are some of the other ways you can highlight your publicity on your LinkedIn profile:
- Create a quoted media positions
- Showcase your media mentions within your summary
- Add the publications section to your LinkedIn profile
- Create a media kit on your LinkedIn profile using Box.net
2) Showcasing your press release generated publicity will prove to journalists that you are media worthy.
On LinkedIn you should be looking to connect with journalists, editors, online radio show hosts and other media professionals. Now for those media professionals to accept your invitation, you have to prove you are credible and newsworthy. When your press release is published by a top publication, you have completed half the battle because you have given yourself expert status. Now, you just have to build a relationship with the media professionals you connect with and show them that your information is relevant to their audience.
3) Use press releases to promote your LinkedIn group and community.
We recently created and distributed a press release that promoted Skip Weisman’s Workplace Communication Strategies group – and it was published on CNBC.com. This helped him:
- Increase his LinkedIn group membership by making more people aware of his group.
- Give him a reason to re-announce his group again to his email list as well as any LinkedIn connection that were not already members of his group. Any time you have a success, you should be letting your connections know.
- Give new connections a reason to join his LinkedIn group when we sent out group invites.
4) Your press release placements can position you as a thought leader in your LinkedIn group – and those other groups you belong to.
I like to create discussions around a topic and link the discussion to a press release or article I’ve written that gives more information on the topic and is featured on a top website. This automatically gives me a third party endorsement which offers more credibility than if the information was just placed on my own website or blog.
5) Use your press release placement as a springboard for discussions.
For example, I distributed a press release titled “More Journalist on LinkedIn Than Any Other Social Network, Study Shows”. I then created this discussion within LinkedIn group: “How are you using LinkedIn to get you more publicity?
In the LinkedIn discussion summary I put “In the press release below, I reveal that 82% of journalist are on LinkedIn and that is more than any other social network. So now I am asking you, how are using LinkedIn to build and maintain relationships with media professionals to get you more publicity?”
I then linked the discussion to my press release on Yahoo News.
This helped me:
- Get more exposure for my press release
- Create a discussion among publicity professionals as they provided their insights. I then responded to their feedback with other ideas and explained to them how I can help them with their LinkedIn publicity efforts
- Start a discussion among small business owners and other business professionals who wanted to learn how to get more publicity by using LinkedIn
6) Getting published or featured all over the Web on top websites and blogs will give you access to more people who will want to connect with you on LinkedIn.
You will have people coming to you seeking your advice. They will see your press release and then look you up on LinkedIn wanting to connect with you. For example, as I was writing this article, I received an invitation to connect that said, “Hi Kristina, I just read your tips in Canadian Advisor’s Edge Magazine – I’d like to connect with you and learn more.”
Your Next Steps
Now that I have shown you how online press release distribution can help you with your LinkedIn marketing efforts, it’s time you take action and start writing your press releases. If you need help, check our my Instant Press Release Templates at http://www.40InstantPressReleaseTemplates.com
About the Author: LinkedIn marketing expert Kristina Jaramillo helps small businesses and organizations get more publicity, prospects and profits using effective LinkedIn. Now, at http://www.HowtoGetMorePublicitywithLinkedIn.com, you can gain full access to her FREE 14-Day LinkedIn Publicity E-course that shows you how to create an expert LinkedIn profile the media will love, how to build relationships with the media plus sneaky ways to get more PR using LinkedIn.
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Internet Video Formats: Which is best for your Video Marketing?
OK, so you’ve decided that getting some web video on your site and social media profiles is a great idea to make you more eye-catching to customers and put your SEO (search engine optimization) on HGH. You understand that video marketing is a fundamental part of your overall search engine marketing and social media strategy. Bully for you! Now on to the tech stuff. Video formats can be overwhelming and vary depending on the equipment the video was shot with, the kind of computer you use, and the final destination where you want to host and serve up your on-demand video as part of your video marketing plan.
So which is best for you?
Lorraine Grula offers these tips from her years of experience as a top shelf video photographer and producer in ReelSEO.
Web Video Guidelines
Depending on whether you are doing research to get started with web video or if you are making use of existing equipment and software, you may be limited to formats as follows:
- Raw Video Format — As determined by your camera or, currently, your recording software. For instance, the software I record SmartVu Video Interviews with processes raw video optimally when stored as Windows Movie (. wmv). I have a PC based application. Your camera or software may have a different standard, particularly if you are using a MAC.
- Editing Basics — Your editing software may also have a limitation on formats of video it will accept and types that it works the best with. My videos are substance related, not glitz and glamour, so I use programs like Corel Video Studio and Windows Live Movie Maker. Most video editors will accept almost all the standard raw video formats, but you’ll want to confirm.
- Video Platform– What type video format works best with your online video platform that will work as your host? Will you host it on your site? Take into account Adobe Flash for speed reasons of loading without buffering. YouTube? They convert your incoming video to Flash (.flv) for display. If you’re using a 3rd party, ask about their preferred video format.
Obviously if you have a mismatch in your video camera output and your editor, for example, you’re up a creek without a paddle and will need to convert your raw video to be accepted by the editor. Avoid this, as every conversion results in quality loss for the video. Limit too many conversions.
High Quality or File Size?
Look, with internet video marketing, you are looking at a tradeoff between two things when recording, editing and finishing videos: resolution and file size. Lorraine talks about compatibility too in the ReelSEO piece, and we talked about that already. The greater the quality, the larger the file size (usually), and that means the longer the buffer when loading the video on your player upon demand (particularly if uploaded straight from your site server). If you want super-clear quality, the first thing you need is a work-horse computer loaded up with RAM and an uber-fast processor. I am a PC guy and I had to get an I-7 Dell to accommodate recording Hi-Def video. My old PC (5 years old) could not manage the large files without Japanese Monster Movie style mis-tracking between voice and image and I was forced to record at lower resolutions until upgrading.
The Main Video Formats for Web Video
If you ‘re trying to find the best of both worlds and your hardware can handle the recording and editing, see this brief (did I say brief?) summary of web video formats you’ll be utilizing:
Windows Media Video (. wmv)
This is the basic PC video file format that comes with Windows set up for Windows Media Player. It is well-known, delivers acceptable quality and a fairly small file size. Want higher quality? Record or finish-edit at a higher resolution and the file size increases accordingly. The advantage of .wmv is that it’s standard with all Windows PCs and, if shot in low enough resolution, can actually be small enough to share via email. I use this format for SmartVu Video Interviews and then stream them on Youtube, and they convert without much issue with good finish quality.
Audio-Video Interlaced (. avi)
This is the original video format from Microsoft and has a tendency to create very large files unsuitable for sharing, but of good quality for master files. For sharing, most videographers finish-edit the file in another format to lower file size. According to Grula there is some inconsistency with the codecs (tech video term here) depending on the recording device, making. avi not a great choice for small business video and novice producers.
Motion Picture Experts Group MPEG-4 (. mp4)
Increasing numbers of video producers online are loving .mp4 as the format of choice. It has the H-264 compression codec which is considered top drawer, and is quickly becoming the basic output of camcorders and video cameras. For online sharing the .mp4 format is moving toward the universal preference and in fact is recommended by Youtube, the big fish in the platform market.
Apple Quick Time (. mov)
This format has been around a while and is standard from Apple Quick Time, but is not restricted to Macs. File sizes are big and quality is high. If super-tight quality is your concern, this may be your format.
Flash Video (. flv)
This is the most popular file format on the web today, usable in the Adobe Flash Player which is standard on 99 % of all computers. Video sharing websites like Youtube, Vimeo, etc. take your existing videos and convert to flash for streaming to watchers of the site. File sizes are small, it streams fast, and the flash player can start playing the videos while they are still loading which is fantastic for longer videos (5 min or more). If you host video on your own server, converting to. flv is almost a requirement for user experience. I have used the Riva converter to convert some. wmv files to flash and noticed quality degradation in exchange for the file size and speed issue; nevertheless, Youtube conversions seem to be very clear.
Tips
Here is my recommendation to small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to get into video marketing on their websites and social media profiles.
Record raw footage in the best possible format for your device. If that is .mp4, you’re one step ahead of the game.
When editing, finish the video in. mp4. Test to see if your quality is acceptable with no degradation. MPEG-4 is much simpler to upload and move around. If you see a quality reduction, save finish edits to the same file format as your raw footage.
Upload your videos to a video sharing platform. I recommend Youtube. It is the most popular, gets the most traffic by far, and let’s face it. Google now owns Youtube. If you’re streaming video on your site from Youtube or another site, which one do you think will get the greatest SEO results and page 1 positioning? Youtube will convert to either .mp4 or .flv and do a fine job with it, taking that off your plate.
Now you just need to learn how to use Youtube without providing 100 options for people to leave your video and go view something else. I’ll tell you more on that in a later article.
About the Author: Want better results from Video Marketing? Smart Company Growth helps business SEO by Video Interview Marketing to generate site traffic and build trust with prospects to spike inbound leads. President Karl Walinskas works with companies on Growth Strategy and LinkedIn Marketing for brand building, and has authored Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership and been published in AOL, SiteProNews, Selling Power and a million more.
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Conduct Your Own PPC Audit in 6 Easy Steps
Any idea how your PPC account is performing? No? Well in 5 minutes you’ll know exactly the steps to take to make sure your PPC campaigns are profitable for your business.
1. Review Past and Present Performance
You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. Conducting a solid PPC audit requires reviewing past and present performance, and we suggest you look at a minimum of 3 months worth of data before you begin. Looking at this data alone can show you where changes may be necessary. Once you are familiar with this data you can create a benchmark for the future performance of your account.
2.Review Your Goals
Take some time to step back and review:
- What is the goal of your PPC campaign?
- Are you focused on offering products, services, or both?
- What kind of conversions are you seeking? Do you want visitors to subscribe to a newsletter, fill out a form, purchase a product, etc.?
It may seem obvious, but if you haven’t asked yourself these questions recently, it’s time for a review. You can’t possibly have a successful PPC campaign if you haven’t defined what “success” you are looking for in terms of goals, objectives, and specific metrics.
3. Examine Your Budget
Look at the competition, average cost-per-click, and ad position for your chosen keywords, and select a budget that seems appropriate. Different industries have different levels of competition for the industry-standard keywords (check out these top 20 most expensive keywords). Also examine your cost-per-click, CTR, and conversion rates, as these factors all will affect a budget.
4. Analyze Your Current Campaigns
Carefully examine your campaigns, ensuring you have a variety of keywords segmented into many different ad groups. Remember, one campaign ALWAYS needs multiple ad groups. More ad groups mean more specificity, and specificity is a key to a great AdWords campaign. Do your ad groups have more than one ad showing for A/B testing? Well they should. Are your ad groups as tightly constructed into niches as they can be?
5. Ad Copy and Landing Page Adjustments
Develop your ad copy by creating compelling and unique calls to action. Ensure that your copy stays closely relevant with your target keywords and test a variety of different ads to see which ones work best.
Once users click your ads, make sure you are sending them to relevant landing pages. Above all, you want to give users what they are looking for—don’t make them dig around for what you promised in your advertisement. If I clicked on an ad for light-up sneakers, you can bet I’ll want to see those flashy shoes front and center! Ads irrelevant for what someone is looking for will turn into a bounce, which is money you just wasted, misinforming a visitor who was looking for something specific.
Send visitors to well-constructed, tailored landing pages that are relevant to the ads they clicked. Don’t just dump them on the homepage. If your site needs serious construction, review the basics of information architecture.
6. Continue Testing!
The folks who are the most successful with their PPC campaigns are the ones who are constantly testing and improving their campaigns. Your AdWords account will never improve if you leave it on auto-pilot.
If you are feeling lazy and don’t want to do this work yourself, check out WordStream’s new free tool, the AdWords Performance Grader. It serves as a mini PPC audit, grading your campaign on key metrics such as CTR, Quality Score, Landing Page Optimization, and Ad Text Optimization, as well as other PPC best practices. The tool compares your performance to other advertisers in similar budget brackets so you get an idea of how you measure up to your competitors. It also points out where your campaign needs improvement and offers actionable tips for improvement.
You’d never set a camper car to cruise control and then go make a sandwich, and the same applies to your PPC campaign—it requires constant attention. You can take a minute to jam to a great Queen tune, or relax to some NPR easy listening for a bit, but if you just set and abandon your PPC steering wheel, you’ll never get where you want to go.
About the author: Megan Marrs is a marketing associate at WordStream, a provider of PPC software and managed services, as well as keyword software for discovering and organizing keywords for SEO and PPC.
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The 3 Steps to Starting Your Email Marketing Off Right
Recently, Small Biz Bee posted 5 ways to bore your email marketing subscribers – what not to do. So the question is, what should you do to get results from your marketing emails?
The experts push for split testing and segmenting, and those are important – later. For now, if you only have a handful of subscribers and are still finalizing your initial set of messages, you need to start with the basics.
First, sight your goals
If you don’t have a clear destination, you’ll never get to it. Your message stream won’t be focused, your web forms may not match your follow ups and any inconsistencies may bruise your brand’s reputation.
“What are your goals?” is a broad, vague question. You may want to use these more focused questions to help you find your answers.
Once you’ve determined those goals at the end of a path ahead of you. What steps do you need to take to get there? List them out and scratch them off as you go. Stick to your path and eventually, you’ll get to your destination.
Then, decide how to track your progress
You can gather a whole lot of data on your campaign’s performance. Email service providers track opens, clicks, downloads and more, and Google Analytics provide even more depth.
In theory, this data shows you what to improve for better results in the future. But if you focus on all of it, you’ll be scrambling around tracking every upswing, downswing and flatline that appears, wasting energy instead of making decisive, effective improvements.
Instead, use those goals you’ve determined, you can figure out what you want to focus on tracking. This guide breaks it down.
This data can tell you a lot, especially if you have time to really break it down and make improvements based on the results you see, but it shouldn’t be your main focus – that should be somewhere else.
Focus your gaze on the people around you
It’s people who sign up for your emails, who buy from you, who link you up and talk you up when you wow them – or who, if you don’t impress, don’t.
So focus on them. If they reply to your email (you’re letting them, right?), respond. If customers ask for special treatment, give it to them (within reason).
If you have the time and manpower, link up with your supporters on Facebook or Twitter display your brand as more of a personality. (If not, focus on building relationships through email conversations.)
Once you get “there,” go further
That destination we mentioned earlier? I’ll tell you the secret to success. Don’t stop when you get there.
Reset your sights, perhaps on finding on ways to create emails efficiently or strategies to automate how your lists interact.
And by all means, make sure you go back to split test and segment. 
Photo Credit: Biscarotte
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Three Qualities Your Brand Must Have in a Down Economy
Your brand can be one of your most valued assets, especially when you’re facing challenging business conditions. Here are three key qualities your brand must have in a down economy:
1. Your brand must be loved by your customers.
A customer will stand by a brand even in a down economy. But to maintain that kind of loyalty, a customer must really love that brand.
Arguably, one of the most successful brands in modern history is Apple’s iPhone. The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone, and therefore it didn’t start the category — but the iPhone was a game-changer in the category. Why? Some of it was because of cool features, like its intelligent touchscreen, which removed the need for a physical keyboard, like the keyboard on the Blackberry. The real game-changer, though, was the iPhone’s huge and continually growing library of applications. With these applications, customers could do things they couldn’t do on other phones. The iPhone became much more than a phone — it became a smart, sexy portable productivity powerhouse.
Customers don’t just think the iPhone is good, they think it is GREAT. They don’t just like the iPhone, they LOVE it. Apple translated that success into what essentially was a larger version of the iPhone, the iPad, and the same thing happened. Even in a down economy, Apple continues to prosper.
How does a small business learn from this lesson? Use the knowledge you have of your target audience to build a branded product or service that surprises and delights a customer, and you will have a raving fan for your brand. It could be easier than you think — it may just take the addition of one differentiating feature, or highlighting a product benefit no one else has, or relying on a great support representative to make your service stand out.
When your customer loves your brand — you have a great brand.
2. Your brand must have the right combination of rational and emotional appeal.
People think about brands, but they also have feelings about brands.
The rational aspect of a brand is the part of the brand that appeals to a consumer’s rational mind – the brain, the head, the thought process, whatever you want to call it. The emotional aspect of a brand is the part of the brand that appeals to a consumer’s emotions – that person’s heart and soul – how that person “feels” about a brand.
If a brand appeals to a consumer on both a rational and emotional level, it has a very strong chance of becoming a memorable, long-lasting brand. Brands that accomplish this often achieve category leader status.
How does a brand appeal to both the rational and emotional sides?
Basically, the rational argument for a brand involves conveying sensible, practical facts in the brand’s marketing messages. Depending on the product, it may be facts such as saving money, protecting the environment, or offering high quality.
The emotional side is quite different, however. Typically, to evoke emotion, a brand has to make a compelling case or paint a picture that creates a certain feeling. Instead of facts, the emotional side of the brand deals with benefits and feelings – things that make the consumer feel good. Often a brand will lead with the emotional aspect because it has higher impact (and it is less rational) so it might create a desire on the part of the consumer to purchase the brand. The rational aspect is then used to support the purchase decision.
It is particularly important to recognize both the rational and emotional arguments for your brand in a down economy because buyers are making tough choices about where to spend their money. A rational argument will appeal to the need for a product or service, while the emotional argument will speak to want — a customer’s desire to have it.
3. Your brand must be truly differentiated.
Today, very few company, product, or service ideas are truly new and unique. You can almost be guaranteed that someone, somewhere, has developed a product or service similar to yours. And even if you bring a unique product or service to market, it won’t be long before another company comes out with a look-alike. This is just the nature of the competitive marketplace.
This doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless! Use a brand positioning statement to help identify your brand’s unique qualities. A good brand positioning statement includes:
- Likely Brand Buyer – This is the person who is most likely to be interested in buying your brand. Often this person is described as being part of your “target audience.” The likely brand buyer should be described as specifically as possible: gender, race, age, income, geographic area, employment, interests, etc. Ideally, you will build a descriptive profile of one or more target audiences for your brand.
- Competition – The statement should position your brand against existing competition so the target audience can distinguish between your brand and someone else’s.
- Product Benefit – The single most compelling benefit of the brand.
- Unique Brand Promise – The unique selling proposition of your brand.
The brand positioning statement will help you make sure you are creating a brand position that is as differentiated from your competition as possible.
Pay attention to building your brand even when times are tough — and your brand will still be around when the economy improves.
About the Author: Barry Silverstein has over 30 years of experience in branding, advertising, and marketing. He ran his own direct and Internet marketing agency for two decades. He is a branding/marketing consultant, professional freelance business writer and the author of the new eGuide, Branding 123: Build a Breakthrough Brand in 3 Proven Steps. Branding 123 is available for $2.99 at the Amazon Kindle store, for the nook, iPhone and iPad, and at Smashwords.com. More information is available at www.123eguides.com.
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A Marketing Strategy That Works: Shaping Consumer Perception
Perception is reality.
Sure, this is a phrase we’ve all heard before but marketers know better than anyone how true the phrase actually is. You can have the greatest product in the world but when it comes to getting others to purchase and use that product, what matters most is how your customers view it. Read more
Why Your Email Funnel Should Have a Custom Thank You Page & How to Start One if Yours Doesn’t
There are many reasons why you should consider creating a custom Thank You page for your email funnel. For one thing, a custom thank you page is more personal, creating a one on one atmosphere between you and your visitor. Read more
No-tell Marketing: Four Techniques to Make the Sale Without Telling the Tale
Go to any bookstore and you will see the shelves filled with books on salesmanship. Everyone seems to have some kind of advice on how to sell things and more specifically, how to sell things that nobody wants to people that very often don’t need them.
For sure, how to sell ice to an Eskimo is a hot topic. But a subject you don’t see discussed nearly as much is how to sell things which people may very well want or may very well need—but which fall into one or more of the “unmentionable” categories. These might be things you can’t fully discuss—or things you can’t show. In some cases, they may even be things you can’t name. But you need to sell them anyway.
So how do you do it? Well, believe it or not, this challenge is not as uncommon as you might think and it is a challenge which has been tackled many times in the past. Advertisers need to do this all the time. And over time, they have honed a few time-tested techniques which have proven to make sales like this not only possible but also very effective. Here are four of those techniques:
- Create a mental analogy.One of the most brilliant ad campaigns in recent history was 7Up’s “Uncola” pitch in the 1970s. At the time, the soft drink market was dominated by Coke and Pepsi’s cola brands. Without directly badmouthing the competition, 7Up managed to craft a mental equivalency between the monopoly of the cola industry and the mass tyranny of large societal superstructures. Through the simple use of one key catchphrase, 7Up positioned itself as different and daring—and proud to be so. The mental analogy was critical to sales because the image of rebellion characterized much of society at that time and it was particularly effective in appealing to the large and expanding youth market.
- Cast the corporation in a positive light.When your product has some negatives, you sure don’t want to talk about them even though a lot of people might already know about them. So what do you do instead? One very successful strategy is to focus on the corporation itself by cultivating a positive corporate reputation. Create a focus on the integrity of the company and the positive things it does for the community. Talk about how the corporation seeks to better the circumstances of the local residents and the initiatives it sponsors to improve the local cities and towns. Stress the company’s philanthropic advances and its charity work. By focusing on the positives of the company itself, the advertisers will see those same positives trickle down to the products produced by the corporation. And the product negatives will be trumped and in many cases, eradicated completely.
- Use an outrageous image to paint a mind picture.Talk about withstanding the test of time! It was back in the early sixties when magazine ads first appeared showing a hot blonde in a boxing ring wearing only a bra, shorts, high heels, and boxing gloves. A ridiculous image? Maybe, but that gal who was a knockout in her Maidenform sure sold a lot of bras back then. The advertisers took advantage of a time-tested memory trick—the association of something you want to remember with an outrageous mental image. And the key to the trick is that the memory association becomes stronger when the image is more outrageous. In the Maidenform campaign, the image was as Freudian as it was outrageous, capturing the concurrent themes of strength, independence, and of course, sex. The appeal of this ad campaign was indisputable and also long-lasting, as it ran for more than twenty years.
- Sell by implication. As early as the Sixties, Right Guard was mostly a manly brand of deodorant. As such, its advertising would generally emphasize male attributes; i.e., strength, virility, etc. So then why was it that one of Right Guard’s most successful ads showed a woman’s hand clutching a can of Right Guard aerosol spray? The ad promised a tough solution to perspiration. But what it showed conveyed a deeper message—a message that couldn’t be overtly spoken, at least not back then. The implication of a sexual tie-in with the product was powerful enough to supersede less dramatic product benefits. Dry armpits are great—but some other things are even better.
There is more than one way to skin a cat—and more than one way to sell. The conventional approach where you show the customer a product, talk about it, and tout its benefits is all well and good—if you are allowed to do it. But such is not always the case. When you can’t say everything, then you need to be more subtle. And when you use the right techniques, it can become very easy to make the sale without fully telling the tale.
About the Author: Marni Mutrux is a staff writer for v2cigs.com.V2 Cigs offers the industry’s most innovative electronic cigarettes. An e-cigarette is a non-smoking alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes.
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