Basics - Basics - Basics

Secret Shoppers do a pretty good job of helping you see your business from a different point of view. This week, just have a friend shop your store and report back to you.

Remember, it doesn't matter what you think of your business -- it is what your customers think. Find out.

Have a great week.

Are your commercials up to date?

Today is the first day of summer.

Are your commercials talking about the right thing?

Remember, you need to make sure that your commercials (audio and print) are timely and tied together. If you are promoting something in print, you should be promoting the same thing in broadcast.

What better time than the first day of summer to double check your commercials.

Have a great day.

Word of mouth

How is your word of mouth advertising?

When I talk to people about advertising, they like to tell me that word of mouth is their best form of advertising. Here is what I tell them.

1. If your word of mouth is not good -- no form of advertising will really help you. Remember, advertising is about telling your story. If you don't have a good story, it is hard for any medium to help you.

2. Word of mouth advertising is slow. You have no control over the speed or accuracy of word of mouth. I can assure you of this, bad word of mouth will be faster than good word of mouth.

So this week, work hard on building your story so all your advertising can improve. Have a great week.

Do you have company coming?

We are expecting some company this week. So this weekend, we were doing a few of the maintenance chores. You know, the kind you know you should do, but really never get around to it, unless company is coming.

So what marketing "chores" do you need to do that you have been putting off?

A new training program so your employees provide better service.

Talk to your graphic designer about updating your logo.

Perhaps it is a new commission plan for your sales team.

Believe it or not, that is all a part of your marketing plan. Better hurry, you know how company just sometimes shows up.

By the way -- we are offering a lunch and learns for web advertisers at Hometown Radio. It's every Wednesday and Thursday at 11:30. We will buy lunch and get you in an hour. Call (417) 334-6003 Have you seen our new site yet? www.hometowndailynews.com

It's always about marketing

I was with some friends on Friday night. We talked about everything under the sun.

A brief comment inspired this post. We began talking about a business where my friend had made 4 major purchases. He said that the owner of the business will barely give anyone the time of day when he is in the store.

We are talking about a business who does a considerable amount of advertising. Remember advertising can only do so much - you have to walk the walk - not just talk the talk. I believe that the owner should talk to every customer that he sees, but he should at least be smart enough to know his top customers.

This week, take some time to see how you might be hurting your marketing. Because it's always about marketing.

Do you know the answer?

How many more customers do you need to hit your goal?

In order to answer that question, you need to know the answer to two questions.

1. What is your goal?
2. How many customers are you serving everyday?

There are two types of people reading this right now.

1. The people who know the answer and thinks this is a pretty simple entry.
2. Those who are thinking, I really should know that?

If you want your business to grow, answer these questions and then start working to get from point A to point B. Good Luck!

You are always marketing!

Realtors will tell you that curb appeal is a huge part of selling a home. What kind of curb appeal does your business offer to your customers? If you can't keep the weeds and grass mowed in your own business, how do you expect a customer to believe that you can help them?

The same concept is true with your company vehicles. It is important to make sure that they are saying what you want communicated to the public.

Who is answering the phone? More and more companies are going to automation. It is more efficient and to that degree I understand. However, is the automation easy for the caller to work through? Nothing will replace a warm voice with a caring spirit answering the phone in your business. Your customers appreciate it.

On the reverse side, there are those of us who should not be answering the phones on a regularly basis. If you have the wrong person answering the phones, your business will suffer.

These are simple reminders, but sometimes it is the small simple stuff that turns into monsters. Think about how your business is doing in these areas. Have a great week.

Don't be afraid to say what your customers are thinking!

General Motors has had a tough few years. Have you seen the TV commercial where their CEO talks about paying back the government loan? He admits in that commercial that he knows that some Americans were skeptical of the loan and he goes further and says that he understands.

Burger King, who has a history of all over the road marketing, has a similar ad where the "king" is breaking into McDonald's Headquarters to get their blueprint for their sausage biscuit. The announcer says something to the effect of, original no - but it tastes great.

The trainer Chris Lytle introduced me to the saying - truth is better than creativity. Straight Forward honesty is refreshing in advertising...try it. Try these steps.

1. Write your commercial as if you were writing to your best friend. Be direct, clear and concise.
2. Stop worrying about what you know -- we don't know what you know, tell us all the reason why you do things.
3. Then let a few of your close customers read it and pay close attention to their reaction.

You will probably be surprised at what they didn't know about your business and they are your best customers. Then get to work putting that information into your advertising. Good Luck.

Fish where the fish are

I had a great conversation with a smart marketer this week. We were talking about getting people into his business. We talked about how the majority of his business were males. Should we work on getting the females more interested or maximize his core audience.

I will always say focus on the core. Here is the old example that says a lot about this topic. A lot of advertising reps will approach restaurants and ask them to identify their weakest day. Then they put a plan on to help that day.

So if Tuesday is their weakest day we have to convince people to

1. Eat out on Tuesday.
2. Then go to the restaurant.

or we focus on Friday or Saturday where more people are already going out and now we have to convince them to come to the restaurant. Let's fish where the fish are.

To me, it's like taking an employee and always focusing on improving their weaknesses. We help them improve their weakness a little. While we could be helping them improve their strengths a lot.

Happy Fishing!

Don't be annoying!

I was watching the Card - Mets game on Saturday.

As usual, some clown was in the second row talking on a cell phone and waving to the camera. You could tell that the person he was talking to was telling him that they saw him on TV. After a while, I began to feel sorry for the guy. Then I thought about how many commercials are in the same mode. Here is what I mean:

1. They just want people to see them. They are willing to jump up and down, wave, or whatever it takes to be seen or heard.

2. There is nothing communicated. You can't tell me that much was going on in that conversation except - what do you see now? Can you see me? Look I'm waving.

3. It is more annoying than anything else.

So this week, check out your commercials and see if they have more in common with the guy on the cell phone. Hopefully they don't.

You may be afraid to do this.

This week, I want to grade your advertising messages. Give it a 1-10 on the following criteria.


1. Explaining what the product/service will do for the end user.
2. Ad speak – what phrases are in your marketing that you would never say to your friends?
3. Timely. Are you talking summer, spring, fall, or winter?

The time you take to finish this assignment will help you improve the return on your investment. Good Luck.

How are you on making the difficult decisions?

Part of good marketing is having the right team on the right job at the right time. Sometimes good people are trying to do the right job with the wrong skill sets. That is when the difficult decisions need to be made.

It is important that we remember that these decisions strongly effect our marketing efforts. When we are asking people to do a job that is outside of their skill sets it hurts them, our team, and ultimately our efforts. Especially when they are dealing with the customers.

Is there a tough decision that you need to make this week? Chances are the decision has been made. You just need to act on that decision. Remember, marketing is so much more than just advertising and packaging. Have a great week.

What is stopping you?

This week it is quick and to the point.

What is stopping you from increasing your business?

Is it a product problem? Do you need to make changes with what you are offering your customers?

Is it a people problem? Look at your staff and those around you. Can they get you where you want to go. A few years ago I made two additions to my sales team. When they came on board I became an immediately better manager - because I had a better staff. You might love them. But can they get you where you want to go?

Is it a you problem? Are you working hard enough as an owner or manager to make it happen? Are you relying enough on your team or are you trying to do it all yourself?

Is it an advertising problem? If you are in good shape with the above questions, you probably need more people to know about your business.

Spend some time this week thinking about these questions. Ask your key personnel for help. find the answers and you are well on your way to increasing your revenues and hitting your goals.

Sometimes you just have to ask?

Last week, I was involved with a sales meeting, where we asked our team a series of questions about their jobs. It was enjoyable, informative, and provided us some opportunities.

It also showed me how I was in the way of the team. I walked away with a game plan to make sure I can remove some of the stumbling blocks in the teams way. (These were real stumbling blocks not just imagined on the teams part)

Is your business putting stumbling blocks in your customers way? Some examples could be, but are not limited to:

1. Expecting the working people to shop your store during 8a - 5p, Monday through Friday. That is a problem and one of the reasons the box stores do so much business.

2. Not having a web presence people can use to truly shop with your store. Complaining about or ignoring on-line shopping are not good strategies, getting into the game is.

3. Not finding out the big boys weak spots and attacking those spots. Goliath had a weak spot and our guy David found it, attacked it, and won.

4. Listening to the wrong people is a stumbling block. How do you know who to listen to? -- they are usually the one telling you the things you don't want to hear.

How do you find out? Follow my lead and ask. You will be surprised what you find.

If you ain't growing your dying!

In it's simplest form, marketing your business is about telling your business story.

So, how are you and your team improving your story? What did you do last week that helped you improve? The ole "If you ain't growing you're dying" is not proper English, but it is true. More importantly, it is something that we have to handle for ourselves, we have to have our own self improvement program. I beleive that it starts at the top.

Managers: Are you reading books? Are you putting that knowledge into action? Are you allowing the people who answer to you to teach you? The job of manager is not to "be in charge" or have the I the manager syndrome, it is to orchestrate. And when you can get everyone on the same page playing to their strength you can make beautiful noise.

Employees: How are you improving every day? Whether you have a manager that supports this or not, it is vital that you are working everyday to get better. If you are a sales person, you will find that your clients will get better when you get better.

So what does this have to do with marketing? Marketing is telling the businesses story. When the story is created by people who are hungry to learn and implement the learning, the story is better and better stories make for better marketing. Go find a book and read it.

Do you customers know what you do?

Most people know the old saying about giving a speech, tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. In radio, we try to promote what we are going to do, then do it, then tell them what we did. My boss says it best, if you don't tooteth your own horn, no one will tooteth it for you.

What about you? Are you tooting your own horn? I see a number of businesses who are doing some incrediby nice things for their customers and not getting the credit. Now, I understand that most of us were taught to be nice and not brag about things. This is dangerous in business, here's why.

1. What is given this year is expected next year.
2. If you are doing more than your competition and you don't tell your customer, they will never know unless they start doing business with your competition.
3. You are training your customer to expect more and more freebies.

We have a vendor who usually twice a quarter, would out of the blue send us some material. His email would say "here are some freebies". I sent him an email and told him that I appreciated that very much -- but I would suggest that he cahnge his wording. Instead of freebies -- say something like....For having a great credit history with our company, we wanted to provide you a good customer bonus.
This reinforces good habits and does not cheapen his product. So now if I call up and say, I need some more freebies, he can easily say, that was becuase you paid your bill x amount of months in a row on time, etc.

Make sure that your customers understand what you are doing for them and the value of your gift. Give them a specific reason why you are doing it.

Marketing is an ongoing job. You are either getting new customers or reinforcing the customers you have. You have to train customers and like anything else, it is important to start early.

Merry Christmas!

It is the first of March. What is your advertising talking about?

I saw a business marquee the other day that said Merry Christmas. To give the business credit, they are closed for the off season -- but that sign should still be promoting their reopening date.

A big part of your marketing is making sure that you are saying the right things at the right time. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Create an outline of your marketing. What will you be talking about when? Put together a timeline of what you need to be doing.

2. Create your copy as far in advance as possible.

3. Make sure that all your marketing is talking about the same thing. Your marquee needs to reflect your print, which should reflect your broadcast, and your web. Try to have one message in all your advertising.

4. Make sure your front line people know what you are talking about. I could tell you horror stories of people advertising a huge discount or sale and the associates did not know about it. Make sure everyone and everything is working together.

Have a great week.

It was a breath of fresh air, a real shot in the arm

Last Friday was a great day for me. I had the opportunity to meet with a client (since I did not ask his permission, I will protect his identity)who truly "gets it."

He has a grasp on his industry and what is going to be happening in the next ten years. His beautiful new building is a great example of how he has been preparing for these changes.

There are a lot of things that we can learn from this person. I am limiting our talk today to just four things.

1. He was patient. His previous building offered very little space. However, he was able to understand his plan, work his plan and keep his employees excited about the future. He is more than an owner, a manager, he is a leader.

2. He understands the importance of people. He treats his employees in a such a way the best of the best want to work for his company, sometimes even at a lower pay scale. Don't mistake this for being a push over boss, he knows what he wants and he expects his people to make it happen. However, they are treated in a such a way, they are excited about going to work.

3. He has a clear picture/understanding of his business. He is not trying to be all things to all people. In fact, an affiliated company was making it difficult for him to take care of his customers. He simply refused to do business with them.

4. He is brave enough to dream. By preparing for the future now, while the economy is down, he realizes when the economy comes back, he will be ready for an explosion of growth and profit.

The question this week, what can you learn from this man? I encourage you to have a real conversation with the person in the mirror and rate yourself on these four listings. Good Luck.

The Marketing Moment, Volume 7

This week concludes our discussion on the top 6 mistakes advertisers make. Let's recap our first 5:

1. Advertising without a goal or objective.
2. Having a small "presence" in a number of different mediums.
3. Placing ads instead of a campaign.
4. Treating mediums as a commodity.
5. Trying to build a business with Yellow Pages

The number 6 is listed below:

Having a Them vs Us attitude with your media representative. You need to work with reps who understand marketing and want to help you grow your business and not just sell. However, you have responsibility with that too. If you have the us vs them attitude or think it is your job to beat them up on price, etc -- The best of the best will not want to work with you.

Like any industry there are top notch pros and bottom feeders who sell advertising. That truth is real in every medium. To be a successful advertiser, you need to find and work with the top notch pros. As stated above, you have some responsibility with that as well.

If you are an advertiser who enjoys beating up the sales rep, getting the lowest price, than taking forever to pay, you are not creating a partneship that will serve you in the future. A good rep (admittedly sometimes is hard to find) will help you. They will offer you suggestions, give you advice, and will do their best to get you in on limited opportunities. If you are beating them up, you probably will not be notified about the limited avail options.

Business is hard enough for you, you need to surround yourself with people who will help you be successful. You don't need a yes person or someone who is solely worried about having a great relationship with you. You need a pro who will provide honest, direct feedback and information, even if you don't want to hear it.

Sometimes there will be personality conflicts with your rep. You may not like them. But before you pick up the phone and ask for a new rep, give them a little time. Are you looking for a friend or do you want help in building your business? If that person provides quality ideas, great customer service and honest feedback, why do you need to like them? To me, confidence and respect are much more important than liking someone.

Take care of the great reps and they will take care of you. Good Luck.

The Marketing Moment, Volume 6

We are up to 5 in our common mistakes that advertisers make. This one will upset some folks, I will be gentle. To recap our first 4 mistakes:

1. Advertising without a goal or objective.
2. Having a small "presence" in a number of different mediums.
3. Placing ads instead of a campaign.
4. Treating mediums as a commodity.

The number 5 mistake is listed below:

Trying to build a business with Yellow Pages. The yellow pages is a directory. When people have made their decision, they may go to the yellow pages to get a number - so the yellow pages might be the last thing they saw before coming to your business, and when asked, the customer mentions that they saw you in the yellow pages. But no one has ever built their business with yellow pages.

I am proud of the fact that I have worked in radio for nearly 30 years. I am proud of the work that the stations have done and I continue to be blessed to work with true professionals. When I decided to do this blog, my intention was to talk about all types of advertising and not down play everything but radio. You might read this blog and question that statement.

People are wasting money in Yellow Pages. There is nothing pro-active about yellow pages, it is a directory. Once the decision is made, people will look in the yellow pages and find your number. By the way, they will also find all your competitors numbers. Since you are listed with your competitors, your yellow page rep will tell you that you need to have a bigger ad to get noticed.

Additionally, they will push you to add some color, bold listings, pictures, etc. By the way, do you know that the only way most yellow page reps earn commission is selling you more this year than last year? That puts the rep in the position not to worry about what you need, but what they need.

Taking that same money and investing in a proactive medium, like internet, billboard, newspaper, radio (at least I put it last) you can gain share of mind with your prospects; something that yellow pages will never provide for you.

If you still feel like you must be in the yellow pages, please think about reducing your ad size greatly. Good Luck.

The Maketing Moment, Volume 5

In our first four weeks of The Marketing Moment, we have talked about:

1. Advertising without a goal or objective.
2. Having a small "presence" in a number of different mediums.
3. Placing ads instead of a campaign.

This week, we are up to 4 on our list of advertisers mistakes.

Treating mediums as a commodity. Whether it is print, radio, billboard, TV, you are buying an audience. If the medium has a huge audience, the price is higher. Supply and audience should drive the rate. If you only buy on rate, you may have lost the game before it started.

Most people do not go to a car dealer and expect to buy the top of the line products for the same price as an entry level model. However, there are a lot of advertisers who are all about price.

Of course, you need to get the best deal you can get. You need to be smart with your budget, you need to make sure that you can pay for what you buy. However, paying the lowest rate is usually not the best deal. Let me explain.

You advertise when you can't go see someone. You are hiring a salesman that can reach people you can't talk too. Regardless of the medium, you are buying an audience. Once you have a strong audience and you couple that with strong frequency and a motivating message, you will get results.

The more results a medium gets for advertiser, the higher the demand, the higher the demand, the higher the price of the advertising. The lower the results, the reverse is true. With that in mind, you need to ask yourself why the medium is so much cheaper than all the others. Usually, it is in direct correlation with the results.

I am not saying that there are not over priced mediums, there are and you need to be careful. I am saying, if someone is a whole lot cheaper than everyone else, be careful with your money. Good Luck.

The Marketing Moment, Volume 4

We are continuing our conversation about the top six mistakes that advertisers make. So far, we have talked about the importance of having a goal and the problems with trying to advertise in to many mediums. This week we are talking about the actual ad. The third mistakes in our top six list is below:

Placing ads instead of a campaign. Smart advertisers have a consistent theme, their offers may change, but the theme and message remains consistent.

What is it that you want people to know about you? Actually, that is not the correct question. Please don't be offended, but what you want them (your potential customer) to know about you and what they (your potential customer) want to know are very different.

Most advertisers will say something like, we are locally owned. We have a friendly staff, etc, etc. What your customer wants to know is how will doing business with you improve my life. What are you going to do for me? Talk about me, not you.

So what is your constant theme? Is it based on knowledge of your staff. When you do business with us, we will provide you all the information you need, we will walk you through it.

Is it based on customer service? If it is, put some meat with the claim. For example, "If someone has not greeted you and offered to help you with in ten seconds of you entering our store, we will hand you a $50 dollar bill." People will hear that and test you.

What is your promise, what do you stand for, how will you improve your customers life. Determine that and then tell them in every ad, build a campaign around those issues. Just be sure your staff is delivering on what you are promising.

Good Luck.

The Marketing Moment, Volume 3

This week is a continuation of our discussion of the 6 major mistakes of advertisers. Please feel free to review last weeks entry to remind yourself of mistake 1, advertising without a goal.

But now, we have a goal. We know how many people we need to see in our store. So how do we get there? At Hometown Radio, we believe that Reach (The Number of people who see, read, or hear your message) Frequency (The number of times they see it) and message (Are you communicating to them how you can improve their life) are the three central components to getting results.

The second biggest mistake is "having a small "presence" in a number of different places, without dominating any place" (IE...trying to reach too many people) Roy Williams, The Wizard of Ads, talks about reaching 100% of the people convincing them 10% of the time or reaching 10% of the people and convincing them 100% of the way.

Remember the TV Commercial with the three little ballerinas? They all had a small amount of milk in their glass and they could not reach the milk with their cookies. Obviously a problem. Then, they combined all their milk into one glass and the problem was solved.

Take a look at your advertising. Are you unable to reach your prospects because of too little frequency. Sometimes, advertisers see their competition advertising in a medium and they feel like they should be there as well. Before you realize it, you have a very small amount of milk in a number of glasses, but not enough to have an impact.

You can learn from most successful advertisers, whether it's radio, billboard, print, or web. When they advertise, they are dominant.

What can you do? If you are in a number of different mediums, you can probably improve your advertising, simply by spending the same amount of money but concentrating that money in fewer places.

Do some homework this week on how you are spending your advertising dollar and see if less places can mean more results. Good luck.

Marketing Moment, Volume 2

Last week, we discussed advertiser's most common mistakes. This week, I want to go into a little more detail. Let's refresh on the first mistake:

1. Advertise without a goal or objective. If you don't know where you are going, you will never know if you get there. Advertising to "get your name out" or to "support" various programs can be good -- but it's not advertising as much as it is public relations.

The obvious first step is to create a goal. But be careful, it is easy to say that my goal is to increase 10% for this year. But exactly what does 10% mean. You need to be able to show your work. For example:

Business "A" wants a $100,000 increase in sales for 2010.

Their average ticket is $100

Their average closing ratio (The % of shoppers who actually buy) is 50%

Business A needs to add 1000 new customers in 2010. But since they sell 50% of those customers, they need to see 2000 new customers per year.

167 per month

The store is open on average 26 days per month, so they need to increase 6.4 people per day.

The question is are there 6.4 people in your market going somewhere else every day to shop for what you sell.

Admittedly, this is a simplistic approach. But are you doing the math on your goals? Do you know for sure what your business needs to do to hit their numbers?

Here are a couple of obvious variables:

Attrition: There will be a percentage of business you must replace from death, people moving, becoming unsatisfied, etc.

Increasing your closing percentage or your average ticket: If you increase either one of those then the number of new faces you need can decrease.

Do the math and find out what you need to do to hit your goals. Then ask the question; will the advertising I am currently doing help me bring in the right amount of people?

Do simple record keeping and track the amount of people who visit your store everyday and the weather conditions. It is a little bit of work but it helps you see traffic patterns, closing ratios, etc.

The Marketing Moment is designed to help you reach your goals. Admittedly, I come from a radio background. My training, expertise, and experience is with radio. However, I understand marketing and how to use all forms of advertising. I hope you will join me every week and together, we can improve the results you are getting.

The next time you need a speaker, make it easy on yourself and call me. I will inspire, motivate, and entertain your group. Check out my speaking demo at www.bransonbusiness.blogspot.com then call (417) 339-6568 for availability. The only way I look good is making you look good for booking me.