Apr 14, 2015 | Customers, Marketing, Small business
It is all about what goes in
Unlike a funnel for petrol into your tank, sugar into your cake, or production ingredient into your ribbon mixer, in a sales funnel there is no bloody gravity!
You have to create the gravity!
You have to create the customer energy, commitment, interest, whatever it takes to move from one point to another more committed point, and eventually to a transaction.
Not easy.
Most marketers inherently hope if not believe their prospective customer is just hanging out for their product, that even if they do not yet know it, their product will be the saviour. That is not because they are misguided or simple, that is how they are trained, and those that stick with it are usually the more optimistic, and sometimes thick-skinned amongst us.
The reality is that most customers are distracted by life. Their kid is sick, their car just terminally broke down, their daughter is going out with the “wrong” bloke, or they are planning a holiday. They really do not give a flying fig about your brand new, shiny, world beating gizmo anyway, and it is just easier to be nice and not tell you to piss off, and be busy when you ring, than to be a bad guy. You just misunderstand and wonder why the order has not come in yet
This rant was motivated by another of those annoying self proclaimed experts that extol the unmatched virtues of their particular cure-all, in this case a digital funnel template. Must have scraped my email from the website, twitter, or some turd sold it to him. Now my inbox is being flooded with spam, with the writer becoming increasingly concerned at my health because I have not yet bought.
“Just do X, so easy anyone can do it, and for an investment of just $279 for my exclusive, all singing all dancing funnel and 15 minutes a day the cash will roll in”.
Bullshit.
Selling is hard work, best done by professionals who understand their market, products and customers well, and have the emotional intelligence to work with the prospect to deliver value via a transaction. It never happens just because somebody bought a template.
Sales Funnels can only be as good as the input allows, and the process facilitates. When you need someone who can do this stuff properly, call me.
Apr 7, 2015 | Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Innovation and context
The first axis of innovation is the product. French born and educated artist, mathematician, philosopher, free thinker Marcel Duchamp who took American citizenship in 1915 submitted a piece to the prestigious Exhibition of independent artists in New York in 1917.
The piece was initially rejected by the exhibition organisers, but later lauded as a turning point in art, from the ‘retinal’ meant to be just seen to something meant to be more philosophical.
It was a piece titled “Fountain” and was in fact a porcelain urinal, the first if its kind.
My point is that the first urinal publicly displayed can be created and installed by an “artist” and Duchamp was a genuine artist in the widest sense of the word.
However, the second installation of a porcelain urinal, because it is not an original idea, is done by a plumber.
The second axis is context. Duchamp’s urinal would not have been so famous, such an artistic turning point (I still have trouble with the whole idea) had the photograph that started it all not been by a renowned photographer, taken in his studio, and lauded by the intellectual press at the time as ground-breaking. Had Duchamp just installed his urinal in the public loo down the road, it would probably not have been any more than a fancy pisser, unnoticed in the chaos of life.
What the difference is was the context in which his porcelain urinal was presented.
When you need someone who understand the differences, and how sensitive they are, give me a call, and I will be delighted to help you manage the context such that your pisser has the opportunity to become a piece of art.
Apr 1, 2015 | Communication, Governance, Innovation, Leadership
How do you know
Some pretty smart people say some pretty dumb (with hindsight) things.
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Patent Office has been widely credited with this quote in 1899. He may not have said it, but it was reasonable at the time given the pace of innovation that had occurred for the previous 50 years. It is no sillier than Bill gates saying in 1981 that “640k should be enough for anybody”, or “Man will not fly for fifty years,” Wilbur Wright, 1901.
It is really hard to get a handle on all the stuff you do not know, by definition, you do not know you do not know it.
However, coming to grips with the opportunities that become available when you discover something from an unknown left field is where the gold is.
So how do you begin to see things you do not know you do not know?
This question is not common, but has come up a couple of times ion the last few years when working with clients with deep technical knowledge, but perhaps a narrower than ideal breadth.
In considering the answer, there appears to be few simple strategies to put in place:
- Be constantly and remorselessly curious, and ask questions. Anyone who has had kids knows that for a few years, the most common question they have is “why”. Go Back to your childhood, and ask why all the time.
- Have a diverse group of people around you who will challenge the thinking, preconceptions assumptions and most importantly, the status quo.
- Be prepared to give and receive honest feedback. There are rarely any right answers when you go looking for the unknown, just more questions, and the often unexpected and insightful responses you get from people, use them.
- Make sure others know you do not know, and are seeking answers, not offering solutions.
- Read widely and with great variety. This is now easier than it has ever been, we are overwhelmed with information sources, and the problem is curation and absorption rather than finding stuff out.
We are undoubtedly in a knowledge economy, competitive advantage is in knowledge, so gathering, sharing and leveraging it should be high on every enterprises agenda, from multinationals to the small business around the corner.
Mar 30, 2015 | Branding, Communication, Marketing
What is my position?
Over the years I have seen hundreds, probably thousands of statements of various kinds intended to position a company, product, opportunity, and most are crap.
As a marketing graduate decades ago, in one of my first challenging situations, an interview for a job I wanted, I was asked what “Positioning” meant. My answer which I realised at the time was waffle, indicated I really had no idea.
The answer now is pretty simple:
“Position is how customers and potential customers see your product, what it looks like through their eyes”.
Doesn’t matter if it is a position statement for a product, or a statement for business, the rules are pretty much the same;
Who is it for,
What is the need,
What is the product,
What is the key benefit to the buyer,
A competing alternative statement
Product name and differentiator.
For example:
For households
Who do not have enough room store all their stuff,
Ebay is an on line auction site
That offers access to thousands of potential buyers
Unlike advertising in local newspapers
Ebay will reach more buyers to get the best price and get you back some room.
Pretty simple really, but the construction takes some thought.
Mar 27, 2015 | Management, Marketing
Digital evolution
It is fascinating to observe human behavior. Of great interest to me is the intersection with the practices evolving to deal with the digital world, manifested in all sorts of unexpected ways.
One is the huge range of digital tools now available using the so called ‘Freemium” model. Give away a subset of the software’s capability for free, thus getting trial and hopefully conversion to the paid versions. This has been very successful for many platforms, LinkedIn, Mailchimp, Surveymonkey, and is increasingly being applied by platforms to generate advertising revenue as they offer free user access to the platform.
On the other hand, over human evolution, there are lots of common characteristics evident, three in particular that are relevant to any discussion of the freemium model that most would recognise:
- People want what they cannot have.
- People chase things that are moving away from them
- People value what they have to pay for, irrespective of the payment being in effort or some other means of exchange.
At first glance the Freemium software model is breaking these evolutionary rules, but on closer examination they are actually using them to their advantage.
By making the paid capabilities of the software explicit as free users try to do more and more with the familiarity that comes with software use, they get frustrated with the limitations and upgrade to the paid version.
For small businesses, whatever the business they are in, from the local retailer to service provider, combining these forces can work for you.
For example, if you want your car serviced, do you want it serviced by the bloke who can fit it in today, or the bloke who is so busy you have to wait 2 weeks?
It might also cost a bit more.
Creating some tension, then enabling people to resolve the tension, generally delivers greater satisfaction with the outcome, as those converted find ways to justify to themselves the value of their decision.
It has certainly worked with me, and it allows small businesses particularly to experiment at low cost, with nothing at risk apart from a bit of time.
Mar 17, 2015 | Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
marketing funnel
Creating a marketing funnel is the basis of all digital marketing initiatives. If you put the term into google, you get back 3 million plus responses, many of them having nice illustrations attached that in one way or another, look like a funnel, with stages and various names attached.
However, there are very few places with useful advice on how you create and manage a funnel, perhaps it is easier than I have found it.
Every situation is different, and every prospect needs to be addressed personally in some way, nevertheless, there are a number of generalised stages I have seen, which drive the manner in which you deploy the digital tools.
Step 1. Create a “Hook”. A “Hook” is something that arrests the attention of someone in the target market. This implies, accurately, that you have defined your target market in considerable detail. I am working with someone who is an expert at setting up self managed superannuation funds. His target market is the owners of small businesses that rely on the owners presence, often they are tradesmen, who are over 55, and have not put enough money away enough for retirement. The “Hook” we have evolved is “If you are over 55, and behind in savings for your retirement, you have the opportunity to use a tax effective self managed super fund which delivers a doubling of your net worth in 7 years”.
This statement is in 4 parts:
It identifies the prospect very clearly,
It is very specific about the situation the prospect finds themselves in
It tells them of a solution to the situation
It makes a big promise.
Without the very specific definition of a target market, the Hook is less effective, as it does not speak to anything specific to which a reader will relate, it becomes too general.
Step 2. Generate traffic. This can be done by a variety of means, using both paid and organic means. Organic is slower, and is centred around personal networking, blog posts, articles, and other content that gets shared on social platforms. It is a passive approach. By contrast, paid traffic generation can be very effective with the great degree of target definition that can now be generated by all the social platforms. For my self managed superannuation (SMSF) client, we are targeting the small business owners with a very specific and targeted Google Adwords campaign, coupled with an extensive organic program.
Step 3. Customer capture. Having driven traffic to a website, you need to do something with them to progress them through the steps towards a transaction. Usually this involves the download of something of value for free in exchange for a name and email address. The lead is then followed up with a staged set of automated emails that are responsive to the actions of the potential customer, often offering further “freebies”. This tactic is now so widely used that it is losing its effect, so increasingly it is being supplemented with the further offer of something of greater value still for a minimal amount, $3-7. This does two things:
It qualifies the lead as a real lead, not just a freebie follower,
It gets leads used to using their cards to purchase from you.
Step 4. Transaction development. This process can take many forms, from the gentle prompting towards a transaction that can be a highly iterative and lengthy process, to the maximisation of a sale by adding value to the original offer. By way of example, it takes me ages to come to the conclusion that I need to buy a new suit, it is a substantial cost, and occasional purchase. However, once in a shop, the opportunity to also sell me a tie, belt, shirts, and perhaps another pair of shoes is real. The upsell stage, or as McDonalds have perfected, “would you like fries with that?”
Step 5. Remarketing. Once you have a customer who has bought and hopefully had a good experience, it is easier to sell them again, and again, and over time you can build a very good picture of what they like and what they do not by their interactions with your database. Again, by way of example, I still buy a lot of books, real books from one of the few remaining bookshop chains. I have a card that gives me a discount based on purchases, yet they insist on sending me emails with offers that bear no resemblance to the purchase habits exhibited on their database via the card. Utterly stupid, and exactly the reason they will go out of business eventually. Amazon will never make that mistake, their offers are very specific and targeted to behaviour, not just of the individual, but of the cohort of individuals with similar behaviours that can be ascribed to the individual. In addition, once someone subscribes to your database, you have their permission to market to them, so irrespective of where they may be in the funnel, there should be processes in place to periodically “re-tweak” their interest.
Funnel management Toolbox. There are a range of tools, digital and otherwise, for each step in the sequence, and their relative performance is the subject of much very effective review, so I will not repeat it. Suffice to say several specific tools are necessary for any effective automation.
- Registration page . To attract the registration and manage the delivery of the “freebie” and of the leads details to the auto responder software. There are many around, but Leadpages seems to have the game pretty well sewn up. Recently both Facebook and Twitter have added “one click opt-in” capabilities to their sites that leads people directly to your autoresponder.
- Autoresponder software. Absolutely necessary, and there are a host of suppliers, from those with simple tools to those fully integrated with CRM systems with more bells and whistles than even the most sophisticated and technically savvy medium sized business will struggle with, so my advice for the small businesses where I operate, is to keep it simple. Mailchimp and Aweber are the most popular around my patch, and both work well.
- Creativity and originality. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for some of us this does not yet come in a box, or made available for download, it resides between the ears of real people.
- Customer centric copywriting skills. As with the above, not available via download. It is one thing to get all the digital tools right, but someone still has to be able to make them work to optimum levels, and the copy writing skills and experience needed are significant.
- Technology implementation . Again, somebody who knows what they are doing with this technology. It is one thing to know how it works, it is another entirely to actually make it work. Implementation simply is not as simple as all the vendors would have you believe, for most small businesses, implementation sucks.
PS. The illustration at the top of the post is confusing, hard to understand, and not at all like the last one you saw. Just like in life!!
