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Small Business
Marketing Tip - Get Attention and Be Remembered
By Rikki Arindel
We live in a world of noise - not just auditory noise but total sensory
overload. Everywhere we go marketing messages are shouting at us day and
night. Hundreds of TV and radio stations, thousands of newspapers,
magazines and books, millions of ezines, brochures, and leaflets,
billions of emails and web pages. And unfortunately much of it is junk
so it’s hard to find the important stuff.
You have got to cut though the noise and get people to see and hear your
message. If people don’t see you or hear you then there is no way they
are going to buy from you. If people don’t visit your web site, read
your articles, brochures or sales letters, attend your seminars etc.,
why even bother to produce them.
Now I know this is going to sound blindingly obvious, but most important
ideas are just common sense things that we have stopped doing. The key
to getting attention is to give people what they are looking for. Find a
bunch of people with the same problem keeping them awake at night and
offer to take away the problem. People buy for two reasons only:
Desire for Gain or Avoidance of Pain.
The one that motivates us most is avoidance of pain, removing a problem.
What problem does your product or service solve? Look for people who
have that problem, market to them and you will get their attention
because that problem is on their mind, they are thinking about it they
are looking for a solution so they are much more likely to see your
message. This is what gives pay per click its potential and why it’s so
important to build tightly targeted mailing and ezine lists.
Write these words on a large poster and stick it up on your
notice-board.
Get Attention - Be Remembered
Now once you have their attention it’s a lot easier to keep that
attention and even get them telling their friends about you and becoming
customer evangelists, provided you get them to Remember You. This is so
important but so may businesses do nothing to be remembered. The cost of
acquiring a new customer is about 10 times the cost of repeat business
so it’s crucial that you do everything to make sure that customers
remember you and get into the habit of doing business with you.
Consider the Lifetime Value of a customer. One purchase may be worth
$100, but if that customer comes back to you just 4 times a year for the
next 5 years their value is $2000 - 20 times their first purchase. If
every year that customer refers another 2 customers to you who each
spend $400 a year, at the end of 5 years that one customer will have
introduced 8 customers with a total value to you of $10,000. Now if
maths is not your strong suit you will just have to trust me on this,
but if each new customer also referred 2 additional customers each year
you would have a total of 121 customers with a 5 year value to you of
$48,400. Nearly £50,000 dollars from one $100 customer.
What you are doing to make your customers feel really great about doing
business with you. Be creative. It’s not what they buy it’s who they
introduce that makes the difference. How can you overwhelm people with
the quality of your service, exceed their expectations massively, give
them real value especially values that doesn’t actually cost you much.
One day I was booked in at a small 3 star hotel. As I approached the
door, a lady welcomed me and opened the door for me. As I waited at the
reception to check in, she brought over a tray offering me a glass of
sherry or brandy while I waited. As soon as I had checked in a porter
took my bag and escorted me to the room showing me around. 15 minutes
later the reception called just to check that everything was OK. This
was an inexpensive 3 star hotel yet they delivered the kind of service
that even 5 star hotels struggle to match. The result; I became an
evangelist selling their hotel to friends and contacts at every
opportunity because they massively exceeded my expectations.
So the marketing process is - Get Attention to acquire new customers by
giving people what they want, - Be Remembered by massively exceeding
expectations so they do your marketing for you by recommending you to
their friends.
Author Profile
Rikki Arundel is an International Keynote Speaker, Trainer and Writer
and an expert in sales and marketing communications with an impressive
track record particularly in seminar selling.
Get your free copy of How to Get Customers Queuing up to Buy at
http://www.SpeakingandMarketingTips.com
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