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Category: marketing

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How to make money out of the stuff in your head

Kylie Fennell
These days you can find anything you need to know on the internet – though sometimes it’s hard to sift through the good, the bad and the ugly.
My point is that in an information rich society, marketers and businesses need to keep up – that is, they have to meet the demand for information.
 
Your potential customers want to know everything about your products or services, their features, their benefits, and useful tips they can use, all before they’ve handed over a cent.
 
You can resist all you like but to maintain a competitive edge and convince people to buy from you need to provide valuable content first.
 
More than value, you should be prepared to give away your ‘secret sauce’ recipe (up to a certain point).
 
In one of my previous posts I explained how giving away useful and free content is like the customer tasting a wine sample before buying a whole bottle. You are not giving away the whole bottle, just a sample to entice potential prospects.

It’s important to realise that future prospects are not necessarily your current customers. They may not even be in the market for your products or services at this point in time. What they are looking for is some easy-to-find, relevant information to solve their immediate problem. When they are ready to buy hopefully they’ll come to you – because you were so helpful.
 
Many businesses these days have taken this thirst for information a step further. They’ve realised we’re in a knowledge economy and leveraged this by selling the stuff they have in their head.
 
For example, a make-up artist may have been limited in income by the number of individual clients they could see – but then they started providing make-up tutorial videos for free on their website and even a Youtube channel.
 
All of a sudden they have even more clients. Then it builds to a point where she uses the free tutorials as a teaser for a whole online course she is offering, which she can sell and deliver to thousands of people simultaneously. 
 

Do you have stuff in your head you could sell?

Photo by meo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-head-bust-print-artwork-724994/

 

Customers don’t give a fig about pricing

Kylie Fennell

Your customers don’t actually give a fig about pricing!

More accurately, your ‘ideal’ customers don’t care about it as much as you think they do.
Many business owners, including myself, have spent hours agonising over price.
Women business owners particularly struggle setting their prices and being comfortable with their actual worth.
We ask ourselves: “How much would my customer be willing to pay?”, “Am I too expensive?”, “Am I pricing myself out of the market?”.
You could drive yourself around the bend trying to match your competitor’s pricing, but that is merry-go-round you don’t want to ride on.
For the vast majority of businesses, industries, products and services, your A and B list clients are happy to pay whatever price you’re asking, as long as they’re getting value for money.
Customers only need to be convinced they’re getting what they paid for, that is “It’s worth it” – and the beauty of value and worth is that it’s subjective.
To explain myself, value is in the eyes of the beholder, that is, pricing is directly related to “perceived value”.
As long as the perceived benefits you offer, stack up to the price you’re asking, then the customers you want will be willing to pay it.
The customers that don’t want to pay it, are probably your D-list clients – the ones that are going to be too much trouble to deal with and you don’t want anyway.
The benefits you can offer clients are almost endless but include:
  • Emotional benefits – does the customer feel good or happy buying your product or service
  • Social benefits – will it make the customer look good to others, or increase their social standing
  • Economic benefits – will it help them save or make money in the long run
  • Lifestyle benefits – will it save them time, make their life better
  • Moral benefits – will it benefit others, the community or environment
  • Feature benefits – what will the customer actually get and particularly can’t get from somewhere else
  • Risk reduction benefits – what do you offer that may reduce their fear or level of perceived risk buying from you or your industry.

Now I’m not giving you open licence to charge exorbitant prices. At the end of the day customers have to be convinced they’re getting value for money and the only way to do that is to match your pricing to your unique benefit statements.

Give them reasons to trust you and have a level of comfort buying from you.
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Marketing lessons from the Minions

Kylie Fennell

They’re everywhere! Minions by the millions! These pint-sized yellow dudes in overalls, goggles and a penchant for bottom jokes and bodily noises have taken over the world in recent weeks.

They first appeared in the delightfully clever Despicable Me movies and their very own Minions movie was released – conveniently – in time for school holidays. 

Of course this was accompanied by the usual marketing and merchandise designed to reel in kids and drag along their unsuspecting parents.

Convincing parents to take their child to the Minions movie (or in my case getting Granny and Da to take Master Five) wasn’t a hard sell. The Despicable Me series successfully marries 5-year-old toilet humour with gags that are as equally appealing to adults.

However the Minions didn’t stop there. The Minions went far beyond the usual promotion and took ‘Pester Power’ to a new level.

Pester Power 

Minions seemed to be popping up everywhere. Stalking me from every bus ad to shopping centre appearances. Then of course there were the McHappy Meal toys and Kinder Surprise toys.

Let me tell you –  “Hell hath no fury like a 5-year-old who didn’t get the Minion toy he wanted” or worse still – “I’ve already got that one!” – followed by said toy being thrown, tears and tantrums.


Welcome to the Power of Pester. That is, the marketing genius of getting children to pressure their parents to make a certain purchase.

So what can you learn from the Minions when it comes to marketing?

You can learn the difference between marketing to a customer and a consumer – and that sometimes you need to market to more than one person.

Customers vs Consumers

It’s important of course to know who your target market and ideal customers are.

However it’s just as important to understand your potential influencers – people who have the ability to influence others to buy from you.

Additionally you must understand, who is actually making the buying decision and the purchase?

You’re going to need to know the difference between Customers and Consumers.

Customers are those people who make the buying decision and purchase products for their own or someone else’s use, while consumers are the people who use the goods or service. 

Sometimes the customer and consumer are the same person, but often they are different. For example a parent could buy their child a new toy. The child in this case is the consumer and the parent is the customer. 

However this concept goes well beyond kids and toys.

Stop and really think about who makes or influences the ultimate buying decision for your products or services?


It may not be the person you initially think it is.

For example – putting generalisations aside for just a moment – often mothers (or those doing the grocery shopping) make a lot of household buying decisions for their spouses and children. When it comes to other types of purchases such as cars and trade based services, it may be a husband, father, brother or uncle with specific knowledge, influencing or making a purchase.

Finally, when it comes to marketing, you must consider how you’re going to reach your customers, consumers and influencers.

Don’t forget though that you should always tailor your marketing approach and messages to each person.

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Inspiration to Get You ‘Big Kev’ excited about marketing

Kylie Fennell 1 comment
When it comes to marketing inspiration and excitement – you can’t go past Big Kev – RIP big fella. Image source: photobucket.com

I’m on holidays next week. Just for one week. I’m not doing anything special but heck I’m looking forward to it.

It’s been a busy few months with the launch of my online marketing course and some exciting times with my clients.

The thing about holidays though is that you madly try to get as much work done as you can before you go on leave, so you can have a holiday. By the time you get to your holiday you’re stuffed!

Well that’s where I’m at. I have hit holiday preparation fatigue and need to write a blog post.

So here is a collection of inspirational marketing quotes to keep us ALL inspired. Enjoy!

1. “The objective of all advertising is to buy new customers at a profit. Learn what your customers cost and what they buy…spend all of your ammunition where it counts.” Claude Hopkins-Scientific Advertising (1923)

2. “In marketing I’ve seen only one strategy that can’t miss – and that is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last.” John Romero

3. “Good marketers see consumers as complete human beings with all the dimensions real people have.” Jonah Sachs

4. “Our jobs as marketers are to understand how the customer wants to buy and help them do so.”  Bryan Eisenberg

5. “Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication” Leonardo Da Vinci

6. “’Build it, and they will come’ only works in the movies. Social Media is a ‘build it, nurture it, engage them and they may come and stay’.” Seth Godin

7. “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is.” Scott Cook

8. “As you’ve noticed, people don’t want to be sold. What people do want is news and information about the things they care about.” Larry Weber

9. “Marketing is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world you are one.” Robert Rose

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY

10.  “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” David Packard

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.unique .branded .domain .extensions .excited

Kylie Fennell
Anyone who has started a business in recent and not so recent years has probably been down the frustrating path of first of all, coming up with a unique but relevant brand name, and then second of all, trying to secure a .com or .com.au site of the same name.

 The facts are, if it’s a great brand or business name, someone has probably already thought of it, and bought the domain name before you. To protect your brand you want to buy .com, .com.au and .net if they’re available…but that’s the thing. Everyone is already doing it.

For example, the .com domains are incredibly easy to buy and are often bought by domain hoarders and held for ransom. There is one particular .com that I don’t own that is similar to my main website, but the kind owner (who never wanted it in the first place) keeps offering to sell to me for a lot more than it’s worth.
This scenario often leaves the business owner with the option of having a less desirable domain extension (.never heard of it before) or having to choose a new name altogether.
This is all about to change!
Actually it’s already changing. Last year ICANN, the Internet’s naming authority, approved more than 700 new domain name extensions with up to 1300 becoming available over the next few years.
Now when you go to buy your domain name you may have hundreds of new domain extensions to choose from. So finding an address that fits your business is easier than ever.
Most of the new extensions are industry or location specific with some of the most popular including: .today .center .directory .agency .photos .international .academy .gallery. .sydney .melbourne .technology .properties .rentals .services
It’s not all great news though, here are the pros and cons.
Pros
  • You have more choice and have a better chance of securing your brand name of choice
  • It can help you stand out in the market and be more memorable
  • It can, depending on the extension, reinforce your brand values.
Cons
  • Public awareness of these new domains is still reasonably low
  • Until awareness grows you there may be some confusion in the marketplace, with some customers favouring more well known domain extensions or your competitors’ sites.
  • It is now more difficult to fully protect your company’s online identity and brand, as you would have to purchase almost endless variations of your website domain. You may choose to only purchase key ones. However for the ones you do purchase you can put a redirect on them to your main site.
  • At this point in time a local search in Google will often return local domains, for example searching in Australia you will more likely return an Australian domain name like .com.au or .net.au rather than a non-geographic or international domain extension.
That all being said, the negatives are likely to become less over the next few years as the industry and marketplace get used to the idea.

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Who ya gonna call?

Kylie Fennell

The true test of a business is how they handle themselves when things go wrong.

The best marketing efforts in the world can go come to a big fat zero if a business doesn’t provide great follow-up services.

Simply put, a business needs to let it’s customers know ‘who they can call’ when things go wrong.

These days it seems near impossible, especially with larger organisations, to get a name and a number or an email address for an actual person.

Customers are all directed to a centralised email address or number, and then you are shunted through a series of recorded prompts, dial 2 for X, 3 for Y, 4 for Z, hang-on there isn’t an option for me…what do I do now?

Eventually you may be connected to a person, who answers the phone with, ‘what’s your name, account reference, ID number, date of birth and shoe size’. You then explain your situation in great detail to a person who seems to be reading from a script of pre-prepared Q&As. Nine times out of 10 your query is outside of their expertise or authority, they put you on hold, where you wait for what seems like hours before you’re accidentally cut-off and have to go back to the beginning and start the whole process again.

Let’s look at it from the point of view of the customer:

  • They are “not feeling the love”
  • Their problem remains unsolved
  • They have wasted valuable time
  • They wonder if they made the right decision purchasing your product or service.
Now let’s look at it from the point of view of the person who took your call:
  • They don’t have the authority or expertise to help you
  • They don’t know you or have a relationship with you, so are less likely to be personally invested in solving your problem
  • They probably get abused by customers all day, just as frustrated by the process as much as you are.

Personally I love the idea of having Account Managers or Key Relationship Managers.

Customers love knowing there is someone they can call regardless of their issue. Someone who understands them and their needs, as well as relevant history and is personally invested in you.
Workplaces also benefit from account management models, where individuals are given responsibility or ownership of a function, account or region.
It makes their job more worthwhile and rewarding, clarifies areas of responsibilities, and enables staff to hone their skills and knowledge in a particular area.
The best model includes a back-up account manager, which provides continuity during staff absences, as well as enhances professional development of staff as they familiarise themselves with other areas.
If your customers don’t know ‘who they’re gonna call’ and aren’t feeling the love, you have a potential marketing disaster on your hands.
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What customers want – no sausages for you

Kylie Fennell 2 comments

It was a simple request. ‘Do you make up family packs of meat?’

The answer from my local butcher was a resounding ‘no’.

I persisted, after all I had been a regular customer for more than four years: ‘I’d be happy to take what ever is on special that week. Secondary cuts of meat, anything really and commit to ongoing purchases’.

‘No. We don’t do family packs. You can just buy whatever is on the shelf.’ (said in a very stern voice)

Taken aback, and feeling a little admonished, I quickly grabbed the first couple of items I could find on the shelf, paid and got out of there, tail between my legs.

From a personal point of view the situation was quite frustrating.

I’m a busy mum and I like to buy my groceries and meat in bulk. I also like to support my local butcher, so asking for a family pack was a no brainer for me. Not so for the butcher.

From a marketing perspective the whole situation was plain complexing. As far as I could see, it was nothing but a lost opportunity for the business.

Of course every business has and should have the right to dictate their products and services, but if you don’t listen to your customers and don’t take a ‘marketing’ approach to your business, you do it at your own peril.

Marketing ideas can come from many places.

Typically you can identify marketing opportunities by conducting market research, monitoring your competitors or reviewing sales figures.

However one of the easiest and most effective methods of identifying marketing ideas and opportunities is to listen to your customers.

What do your customers want?

If you are truly receptive to new marketing opportunities and ideas, your customers will give them to you – and the beauty of it is that if you have your listening ears on, you shouldn’t even have to come out and ask them.

Customers will often tell you what they want without prompting and if you listen carefully, you can create powerful opportunities for your business and ultimately make more sales.

Not every suggestion or a request from a customer is going to be worthwhile considering, but plenty of ideas are.

The key to this is taking a ‘marketing’ approach to your business, rather than a ‘selling’ approach.

What I mean by this is, ‘selling’ involves having an existing product or service and promoting what you already have to obtain sales. A ‘marketing’ approach means to refine or develop new products or services to meet market demands or target new markets – then of course sell them.

Using this approach means you are continually evolving, monitoring your internal and external environment and listening to customers.

Just because I only want to sell ‘X, Y and Z’ products, doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘X, Y and Z’ is what the market wants and will buy. You need to give customers what they want, unless they really aren’t the types of customers you’re looking for.

This brings me back to the butcher example. You may think, maybe the butcher doesn’t want customers like me – local mums buying meat for their families.

This could be the case, but for them they’ve lost an obvious opportunity. The butcher is located directly across the road from a school and I can tell you with all honesty if they had offered me a family pack of meat, I would have gone to school and told every mum I know about it.

Now though, I am looking for an alternative option. The convenience of having a family pack of high quality meat, outweighs for me the convenience of being just around the corner. I will happily travel now to the next suburb or further afield just to get my family pack of meat, which I will then in turn tell everyone about.

So are you giving customers what they want? Or are you giving them what you think they want? Or worse still are you guilty of giving them what you think they should want?

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Thing-a-ma-jigs and whats-a-mets – customer and marketing tools you need now

Kylie Fennell

In Marketing like most other professions there are always acronyms, abbreviations and jargon that are commonly used and can leave the marketing novice a little confused.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), CMS (Content Management Systems), COIs (Centre of Influence), Lead Magnets – you get the picture.

In the confusion some of these tools may as well be Thing-a-ma-jigs and Whats-a-mets for all the sense the abbreviations make.

Today I want to talk about a couple of those tools that you could benefit from having right now.

Specifically I want to talk about CRMs and Email Auto Responders.

A CRM is a Customer Relationship Management system.

It is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers.

There are thousands of options out there,  Capsule, Infusionsoft, Insightly just to name a few.

CRMs often involve using technology or software to organise, automate, and synchronise sales, marketing, customer service and communication.

CRMs can also be used to allocate tasks to follow up customers and track them. Additionally they can integrate with book keeping and sales systems.

When you’re first starting out a spreadsheet might be all you need to track customers names, details, sales history, and recent communication – at least initially.

However a good CRM becomes a critical tool as your business grows.

It can be invaluable for managing content, engaging with your customers and creating automated email campaigns. It’s incredibly important for large databases.

CRMs don’t have to be as complex as they sound or expensive. Some are free and many are low cost – thought you should always compare the functionality and features before committing to purchase.

They are often used in conjunction with an Email Auto Responder (such as www.mailchimp.com or www.aweber.com) for bulk and automated emails.
Many CRMs integrate with auto responder programs so the communication history will also be logged in the CRM and a customer’s sales actions may trigger a particular email in the auto responder program.
The goal of an auto responder email series is to convert the recipient to a purchaser or customer.
You will start by collecting an email address, which is added to a list(s) (subscription forms are often included along with unsubscribe features).
It may include an automatic welcome email (with a double opt-in process to confirm the subscription).
The contact will then receive ‘personalised’ emails as part of an automated series or specific campaign you have set up. Often there are ready to go templates you can just fill out for your email campaign.
However you must always follow relevant laws, regulations and terms of use when collecting and using email addresses, particularly ensure you’re across Privacy and Anti Spam legislation.
Once you have a contact in your CRM or auto responder you want to segment them so they can receive communication more specific to them or their actions.
Segmentation can be completed using the following or similar criteria:
  • Add them to specific groups
  • Tag them eg. lead, customer or key influencer
  • Segment them based on whether they have taken a specific action or not during an email series eg. Purchased or Not
  • Actions such as opened, clicked or not opened, has or hasn’t replied
  • Date of when they were added or changes to their profiles
  • Location, language or member rating, even birthdays
  • Purchase activity if integrated with E-commerce platform
  • Performance against visit goals you have set
  • Social data such as age, gender, followers/fans, social networks
  • Number of deliveries, opens, clicks, forwards, most visited locations, subscribers with most opens, locations, sales.
These tools often include great tracking and analytics. A snapshot can be seen above.
So now that I’ve demystified thing-a-ma-jigs and whats-a-mets it’s over to you to go out and get a CRM and Email Auto Responder and take your marketing to the next level.

How much does it cost?

Kylie Fennell

When it comes to marketing, everyone wants to know, “how much will it cost?”.

But a better question is “how much is a customer worth?”.

Marketing can be notoriously hard to measure in terms of return on investment.

Sometimes it can be difficult to prove a direct link between marketing activities and results.

In a previous post I explained some of the ways you can monitor and evaluate your marketing success. Some of these tips included measuring enquiries, sales, social media engagement, click through rates, customer surveys and media coverage.

Today I want to talk about cost per lead and cost per conversion.

The great thing about the formulas I’m about to explain is that they enable you to allocate a dollar amount to how much it costs to get a new lead and convert a lead.

This also helps you to identify the proportion of leads you’re converting.

Once you know these figures you can easily set yourself a benchmark and then regularly monitor and measure your success against the figures.

Your overall aim is to increase the proportion of leads vs conversions, overall number of conversions and decrease the dollar figure per conversion.

Once you know what dollar figure per customer you’re targeting you can also set yourself more realistic marketing budgets.

Some software programs and analytics programs have built in functionality to measure specific campaigns and their contribution to leads and sales, but this is mainly for online marketing activities and sales.

You can manually calculate how much getting a customer costs when it comes to all of your marketing activities with the following formulas. You will need to choose a time period for calculating the following figures and apply it across all the formulas. You could choose a 12 month period, a month or the period of a specific marketing campaign.

Marketing cost per lead (for X time period) = marketing costs (for X time period) / Number of leads (for X time period).

Marketing cost per conversion or sale (for X time period) = marketing costs (for X time period) / Number of conversions or sales (for X time period). 

You can take this a step further and calculate (from past sales data) the average value of each sale or new customer over the same time period and then calculate return on investment (ROI). If you have a type of business that typically holds onto customers for more than 12 months than calculate the average LIFETIME VALUE of that customer.

Your marketing ROI is the total value of your new customers or new sales over the time period or lifetime value of your customers minus the marketing costs OR

Marketing ROI = Sales revenue – Marketing costs (for X time period).

Of course the above formula only considers revenue so it doesn’t take into account other overheads that will affect overall profits but it does indicate the relationship between your marketing spend and sales. This is then another measure or benchmark you can use for future marketing campaigns and activities.

Finally you can calculate the Marketing ROI of each new customer by using the following formula:

Marketing ROI of each new customer = (Sales revenue – Marketing costs)/Number of new customers 

Finally you can also express Marketing ROI as a percentage with the following calculation:
Marketing ROI % = ((Sales revenue – Marketing costs)/Marketing costs) x 100

The percentage figures can seem a little on the high side but they once again will show the correlation between marketing spend and sales.

Below you can find a sample of these calculations for a fictional business over a 12 month period.

ANNUAL MARKETING COSTS $10,000.00

NUMBER OF (TARGET) LEADS IN YEAR		 1000

NUMBER OF (TARGET) CONVERSIONS IN YEAR		 300

MARKETING COST PER LEAD		 $10.00

MARKETING COST PER CONVERSION (CUSTOMER)		 $33.33

AVERAGE VALUE OF EACH NEW CUSTOMER OVER 12 MONTHS (SALES REVENUE)		 $500.00

TOTAL VALUE OF NEW CUSTOMERS OVER 12 MONTHS (SALES REVENUE)		 $150,000.00

OVERALL MARKETING ROI AFTER 12 MONTHS		 $140,000.00

ROI OF EACH NEW CUSTOMER AFTER MARKETING COSTS OVER 12 MONTHS		 $466.67
MARKETING ROI% 1400.00%

TIP: The above formulas are great for measuring marketing activities and their success but in business you also need to take into account your overall profit margins, so you may wish to ALSO deduct other overheads (NOT just marketing costs) when calculating ROI figures. This will enable you to make sure your marketing activities are well within budget.

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The marketing gift that just keeps giving

Kylie Fennell

I’m in a giving mood and I’m going to give you a marketing gift that just keeps giving.

My biggest marketing tip of all time relates to content marketing.

When it comes to the most effective marketing tactics, providing valuable content to your ideal customers wins hands down.

I’ve talked a lot in the past about why providing valuable content is…well…so valuable.

When you’re engaging with potential customers and influencers it is imperative that you build up some credits in the “trust bank”.

They need to believe that you know what you’re talking about and that you’ll deliver.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to create engaging content that builds credibility and delivers value to your target. Whether that content is a case study, media release, blog post or fact sheet, it doesn’t matter, the thing that makes it so effective is once you have created the content, you can then leverage it. And by leverage it, I mean LEVERAGE it.

Great content can be repackaged and redelivered across different mediums saving you valuable time, money and resources.

Say you have a great case study, then you promote it via your social media platforms, you create a video testimonial and post it to YouTube then share it, you upload that case study to your website, you include some of it in your promotional flyer, you use it for a media release, you follow it up with an email…the list of opportunities is almost endless.

The key to valuable content is REPURPOSE, REUSE and RECYCLE.

A popular blog post you created 12 months ago can be rehashed and used across other mediums.The even more valuable part of this is that it will also create additional communication touchpoints, which is critical in taking a prospect from the awareness stage to purchase.It’s widely accepted that it may take several different points of contacts (touchpoints) before a prospect takes the step of buying from you.Many talk about ‘Rule of Seven’ which states that you must contact your potential buyers a minimum of seven times in an 18-month period for them to remember you.

The number of touchpoints is debatable but most agree that in today’s world when we are overloaded with advertising and messages, the number of touchpoints may need to be higher and more varied.

As a result you need to get as much valuable content out there as possible and yes LEVERAGE the heck out of it.

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