Category Archives: marketing

Better marketing? 

Keep it simple 

Sometimes the old clichés are worth remembering; sometimes new perspectives help keep them fresh.

Here’s a short summary of good marketing advice with thanks to all my favourite gurus – including Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, Henry Mintzberg, and … your Uncle Ralph:

  • Be authentic and sincere. You can’t fake it if you don’t really care. Nobody cares what you know, or what you’re selling, until they know that you care about them.
  • Focus on the target market; be selective. Know them and what they want. If they’re not like you and you can’t relate, they’re not your market.
  • It may be simple, it’s never easy.
  • The best people in sales and customer service love to solve customer problems. They deliver what marketing promises and build customer satisfaction.
  • Market feedback drives marketing strategy.
  • Have a purpose. Build a business with meaning. Have a mantra, not a mission statement.
  • In advertising, persistence is the key to success. Be patient, persistent, polite and persuasive.
  • Be consistent in protecting your brand, your reputation and your legacy.
  • Are you a Porsche or a pick-up truck?
  • Don’t do it all yourself. Use professionals well.
  • The goal is always loyal, long-term, profitable customer relationships.

For more Random Ramblings of your Uncle Ralph visit:  LearningEntrepreneurship Blogs. 

Be better. Do Better. Be an Enlightened Entrepreneur.

Del Chatterson, your Uncle Ralph

Learn more about Enlightened Entrepreneurship at: LearningEntrepreneurship.com Read more of Uncle Ralph's advice for Entrepreneurs in Don't Do It the Hard Way & The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans - 2020 Editions.

 Read more Blog posts at: LearningEntrepreneurship Blogs. 

 

 

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marketing

Biggest Entrepreneur Mistake #5

Marketing is NOT Everything

(An extract from DON’T DO IT THE HARD WAY – Avoid the Seven Biggest Mistakes that Entrepreneurs Make.)

Marketing is not everything. But it is the first important step in a three-part process to deliver satisfied customers who keep coming back for more. That’s the primary objective of every business: building loyal, long-term, profitable customer relationships.

It’s a Three-part Process: Marketing + Sales + Customer Service to achieve that objective.

Marketing is an area that many entrepreneurs often neglect or do the absolute minimum badly. Marketing is similar to the restaurant business; we’re all exposed to it enough to think that we understand how it works and we can do it ourselves. It’s never as easy as it looks. Both marketing and the restaurant business present challenging requirements for both expertise and creativity. Success is never guaranteed.

In the three-part process, marketing, sales and customer service activities must all be aligned to deliver a consistent customer experience with the company and the brand that builds a customer relationship from first-time buyer to long-term customer. The marketing and sales efforts bring in the first order and customer service delivers on the rest.

Each step has to be done consistently well for consistent profitable growth to be achieved.

Don’t make the Biggest Entrepreneur Mistake #5 – Marketing is NOT Everything  

Be better. Do Better. Be an Enlightened Entrepreneur.

Del Chatterson, your Uncle Ralph

Learn more about Enlightened Entrepreneurship at: LearningEntrepreneurship.com Read more of Uncle Ralph's advice for Entrepreneurs in Don't Do It the Hard Way & The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans - 2020 Editions.

 Read more Blog posts at: LearningEntrepreneurship Blogs. 

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customer service, management, marketing, sales

Marketing is Storytelling

Do you have a good story?

Seth Godin and I agree on a lot. Not everything, but a lot. Seth wrote the book on Permission Marketing and All Marketers are Liars. You'll notice he decided that title was unnecessarily provocative and also incorrect. He revised it to more correctly state that all marketers are storytellers and I agree.

I was recently reminded of the importance of good storytelling by a visit to the Montreal Auto Show – a showcase of marketing by big spenders at the automakers. They were focused on new car design concepts and electric vehicles, not so much on the company story which for many of the legacy carmakers is not very appealing.

I liked the story of a new player in the EV market – VinFast. VinFast is the automobile manufacturer in Vietnam that is part of Vingroup, currently Vietnam's largest conglomerate, founded in 1993 by Pham Nhat Vuong, a local billionaire who made his initial fortune in Ukraine when he sold his instant noodle business to Nestle. Vingroup currently operates in thirteen business sectors in Vietnam. VinFast is dedicated to building electric vehicles, "better than Tesla, at lower prices, with longer warranties and higher performance." And with a much better story of the entrepreneur-owner than the one Elon Musk has been writing for himself lately.

How good is your story? You’ve spent a lot of time and money on branding and product development to convince your customers to stick with you, but do they also love your story? That may be the deciding factor in holding their long-term loyalty.

(FYI: VinFast is accepting orders now for delivery in Canada by April. If not their car, then maybe their stock is a good buy. They’re planning for an IPO listing on NASDAQ this month. Note: NOT a stock tip! I’m not qualified. Just sharing the information.)

Be better. Do Better. Be an Enlightened Entrepreneur.

Del Chatterson, your Uncle Ralph

Learn more about Enlightened Entrepreneurship at: LearningEntrepreneurship.com Read more of Uncle Ralph's advice for Entrepreneurs in Don't Do It the Hard Way & The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans - 2020 Editions.

 Read more Blog posts at: LearningEntrepreneurship Blogs. 

 

 

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branding, marketing

Where did that come from?

Explaining sales is hard to do

As a wise marketing agency executive once said, “I know that half of our advertising works, I’m just not sure which half.”

I have the same impression of my own efforts at sales and marketing. Something’s working, I’m just not sure what.

So how do you keep doing what’s working, if you don’t know what’s working. You keep pushing, testing, monitoring and adjusting to continue getting better results. It will never be a straight line between cause and effect.

When you toss a message bottle in the ocean the ripples ricochet and send it in many different directions. It may touch the shore miles away or bump a passing boat at sea before it’s picked up and the message is read. And that person may not even care. Will they toss it back or send it to someone you intended it for? I hope you threw a lot of message bottles into the ocean. (It’s a metaphor. Please, no more plastic bottles in the ocean.)

It’s worth remembering the mysterious magic of The 4Ps of Effective Salesmanship – Patient, Persistent, Polite & Persuasive and applying those principles yourself.  They still work for me.

As you may have noticed, I’ve published several books recently for entrepreneurs and about entrepreneurs and I’m trying to follow my own advice. Be Patient, Persistent, Polite & Persuasive in applying the sales and marketing tactics that are most appropriate to the product and the target customer/reader. But it's strange how sales work.

Here’s an example.  My royalty statements recently showed a sale of 152 E-Book copies of my novel, Merger Maniac. That was unusual, so I drilled down into the details.  Apparently a bookseller in South Africa bought them from my U.S. distributor for re-sale to an online education site in the U.K. I hope they didn't think it was a text book on mergers. It’s a novel! About crime and corruption in the international computer business of the 1980s. I haven’t seen the reviews yet. And I haven’t been able to track down the buyer or the 152 new readers.

So I don’t know what buttons to push to make it happen again. I’ll just keep pushing the same buttons and hope I’m hitting the ones that seem to be working. Reviewing results and tracking down the details to improve performance wherever I can.

You should continue to apply the same tactics to your own sales and marketing efforts.  And enjoy the results even if you can’t explain them.

Be better. Do better.

Del Chatterson, your Uncle Ralph

Learn more about Enlightened Entrepreneurship at: LearningEntrepreneurship.com

Read more of Uncle Ralph's advice for Entrepreneurs in Don't Do It the Hard Way & The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans - 2020 Editions.

Read more articles at: LearningEntrepreneurship Blogs. 

 

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Enlightened Entrepreneurship, learning, marketing, sales, salesmanship

Image is everything

Don’t let packaging become a problem

Does your packaging provide a competitive advantage? Does it appeal to customers and enhance your brand name? Raise your corporate profile?

Or is it annoying and dysfunctional? Loud and obnoxious, attracting the wrong kind of attention.

The trick is to make packaging decisions in favour of the customer first. Not just for flashy presentation on the shelf or to prevent shoplifting. Think about those packages you hate and make sure you’re not among them. Like those giant colourful, appealing boxes of cereal that turn out to be only two-thirds full. Or Gillette razor-blades that are locked down and set off alarms if you want to take a closer look.

Is that really helping sales? Making it look overpriced and hard to buy?

Some packaging is all about presentation and not at all practical for consumers when they get it home. Buy a new shirt or pair of socks and you’ll ask yourself, “Why do they need all the paper and cardboard wrapping? And 27 pins buried in painfully hard to find places?”

heinz-ketchup-bottlesAnd then there’s Ketchup. Fifty years of impractical glass bottles that were a challenge to get the tomato paste out of. Was it really a branding strategy to build a cult following of unusually persistent dedicated buyers? Pissing people off is not usually a good sales tactic. Finally some genius at Heinz introduced the squeezable upside-down plastic container. Great! And much easier to consume large quantities. Now that has to be good for sales.

How good is your packaging?

Instead of wrapping up your stuff in flashy exaggerated marketing B.S. and tying it down tight so nobody can steal it, think about higher values of being functional, appealing, authentic and socially and environmentally responsible. Easy to open, but secure from tampering or inappropriate use. Non-polluting.

And stop worrying about people stealing it.

Try giving it away instead. Those people may just become loyal repeat customers and raving fans who tell everybody how wonderful you and your product are. Those giveaways may be your best-performing marketing initiative.

Be better. Do better.

Your Uncle Ralph, Del Chatterson 

Visit LearningEntrepreneurship.com for more Blog posts and articles.

Join our mailing listfor regular e-mails with ideas, information and inspiration for entrepreneurs.

Check out Uncle Ralph’s books:"Don't Do It the Hard Way" and "The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans" Both are available online or at your favourite bookstore in hard cover, paperback or e-book.

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attitude, marketing

The Wanna Be Market

Are you the hunter or the prey?

dreamingHave you noticed how many serious businesses are marketing hard to the Wanna Be market? Wanna be a writer, movie star, professional athlete or internet millionaire? Buy my stuff.

Appealing to everyone who has a dream and is looking for the short-cut to realizing it. Stroking egos and offering to share the secrets, there is a constant barrage of pitches to keep the dreamers spending money and chasing the dream.

The super-spammers continue teasing us with guaranteed success for only $9.97, or $397, or $1997. But now the offers for fast, cheap and “guaranteed” solutions are also coming from Amazon, Shopify and dozens of other mainstream suppliers. Every celebrity guru, pop star, athlete and coach has advice to sell on how you too can be rich and famous, just never give up on your dream.

My advice is to do less dreaming and dig a little deeper into the case studies and testimonials. You’ll find that the real secret, beyond having a dream, is having the talent, doing the hard work and being effective at marketing and promotion. Then a little luck and strong endorsements will help. There is no guarantee, but if you can check off all those requirements, then you are well along the path to realizing your dream. If not, then find a new dream that you can succeed at. It is always a question of finding what makes you unique, what you are good at and what you like to do. Those three make the winning combination.

Of course, marketing to the Wanna Be market has always been here. Convincing consumers that they have to have the product to be happier, healthier, more cool, beautiful, or successful has always been part of persuasive marketing tactics.

You know it works, but the next time you recognize it, check whether you are using it or being used.

Are you the hunter or the prey?

Your Uncle Ralph, Del Chatterson

Read more at: Learning Entrepreneurship Blogs. 

Join our mailing list for more ideas, information and inspiration for entrepreneurs.

Click Here to check out Uncle Ralph’s books, "Don't Do It the Hard Way" and "The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans" Both are available online or at your favourite bookstore in hard cover, paperback or e-book.

 

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marketing

This article is an extract from Uncle Ralph's, "Don't Do It the Hard Way". Read the book.

Marketing, Sales or Customer Service?

Are choices to be made? Do we need to deliver on all three?

Bplan strategy“First let’s define better the three elements of this process to build long-term valuable customer relationships:

Marketing – understanding the market and defining the target customer; building awareness, interest, and attraction; and, identifying prospects.

 Sales – converting interested prospects into qualified, buying customers.

 Customer service – delivering products and services as promised to ensure that each customer is a satisfied, repeat customer.

Each step has to be done consistently well for the results to be achieved. But a choice still has to be made - which element are you going to be best at? Will you win from competitors on marketing, sales, or customer service? You cannot be best at all three.

In my experience managing a second-tier brand name in computer hardware, we knew that we couldn't possibly out-market the multinationals, but we could out-sell them, one customer at a time. We spent a minimum of time and effort on marketing. Respecting basic principles of clear and consistent messaging and being creative at avoiding large expenditures worked for us.

Winning on customer service was also a challenge - it's expensive for any manufacturer to compete on warranty terms and technical support.

So we went back to salesmanship, even in the service department - coaching staff on persuading the customer to be reasonable, patient, and give us another order, please! We carefully explained to our service technicians that the best result from a call for tech support was to turn a complaint into a compliment and then pass the call to a sales rep for another order.

You can achieve success by being selective, instead of trying to be good at everything.

So take a look at your strategic positioning, your performance and your options in marketing, sales and customer service - then choose, focus and build one of them into your competitive weapon.”

Your Uncle Ralph, Del Chatterson

Read more at:Learning Entrepreneurship Blogs. 

Join our mailing list for more ideas, information and inspiration for entrepreneurs.

Click Here to check out Uncle Ralph’s books, "Don't Do It the Hard Way" and "The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans" Both are available online or at your favourite bookstore in hard cover, paperback or e-book. 

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customer service, marketing, sales

Evolution of Do-It-Yourself Marketing

confused-man1Don’t do it all yourself

It struck me recently in a meeting with two young entrepreneurs that we were struggling to do it all ourselves, when we should instead be calling on professionals who actually have the relevant expertise and experience to get the best results for the minimum expense.

Especially in social media marketing.

It looks easy, but it’s not

We’re all busy Tweeting, Facebooking and connecting on LinkedIn, thinking we know what we’re doing. It all seems a necessary and obvious part of our marketing programs. But are we accomplishing anything? Raising awareness, building our brand, attracting prospects and future customers? Maybe not.

Much like running a restaurant or retail store, consumers recognize good versus bad performance, but that does not mean they know how to succeed at it themselves. It is never as easy as the experienced professionals make it look. It is usually better to pay for advice to get it right the first time, instead of learning from the painful and expensive mistakes that may result from doing it ourselves.

We’ve been making the same mistake in do-it-yourself marketing for decades. Back in the 80’s, it was fun to play with all the available fonts and graphics in the new desktop software and then blast away with junk faxes. Not so much fun to discover that clients soon went from impressed to annoyed. Not the reaction we were going for.  But we repeated the mistakes with junk e-mail. Eventually, we learned to be more respectful of inboxes and social media connections to build and retain customer loyalty and engagement.

We have done the same with other marketing initiatives, trying to imitate the best. It looks easy, but it’s not. Choosing a brand name, slogan, graphics design, writing copy on websites and brochures. It all seems acceptable to the entrepreneur, until an experienced professional points out the lack of a clear, consistent strategic message directed at a well defined target market and customer.

Use the professionals well, help them help you

Don’t make the classic mistake of the entrepreneur who prefers to do it himself badly, rather than pay for an expensive professional. Entrepreneurs by nature are curious and self-confident and will certainly try it on their own. Just remember to stop when you have learned enough to be a better, more knowledgeable client so that you can direct the experts to get the results you want within the budget you can afford.

Try it, learn, and then get good advice to do it better.

Your Uncle Ralph, Del Chatterson

Visit also: LearningEntrepreneurship.com:

And check out two new books by Uncle Ralph, "Don't Do It the Hard Way" and "The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans." available online or at your favourite bookstore. To learn more or buy a copy: Click here

 

 

 

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entrepreneurs, marketing

Choices to be made or all part of a continuum?

I believe they are the three elements of a process required to build long-term valuable customer relationships. Which is the primary value proposition of most businesses. (Buy once and goodbye forever is not a business model that works for anybody. If you can find one, please let me know.)

The three elements defined:

  1. Marketing - to build awareness, interest, attraction and generate customer initiated action in your direction.
  2. Sales - converting interested prospects into qualified, buying customers.
  3. Customer service - ensuring that each customer is a satisfied, repeat customer.

Each step has to be done consistently well for the results to be achieved. But a choice still has to be made - which element are you going to be best at? Will you win from competitors on marketing, sales, or customer service? You cannot be best at all three.

From my experience as a second tier OEM brand name in computer hardware, we knew that we couldn't possibly out-spend or out-market the multinationals, but we could out-sell them -one customer at a time.

Winning on customer service was also a challenge - it's expensive to compete on warranty terms and technical support. So we went back to salesmanship in the service department - coaching staff on persuading the customer to be reasonable, patient, and give us another order, please!

So take a look at your own performance in marketing, sales and customer service - then choose, focus and build one of them into your competitive weapon.

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customer service, marketing, sales

Seth Godin has to be the best at capturing concepts and then communicating them creatively.

You may know him best from his books, if you've heard of "The Purple Cow", "Survival is not Enough", "Meatball Sundae", "The Big Red Fez" or his original claim to fame -"Permission Marketing".

His Blog is also recommended reading for thoughtful inspiration on marketing and communications in general. (Click on the Blog link in the right margin.)

But even Seth Godin doesn't get it right all the time. And he admits it as he has re-issued his book "All Marketers are Liars" under the new title, (same contents) "All Marketers Tell Stories".

As he discovered, it may be a catchy title, but it is insulting and unappealing to the intended audience. Another lesson learned.

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business books, marketing