November 2010

I recently posted a video on my newly revised website called “The 3 Profit Vampires of Business and How to Defeat Them For Good”.

(Don’t ask me where I got the name… I think I was on a sugar high from my leftover Halloween candy. Incidentally, you can watch the video HERE)

One of the 3 things I talk about is “follow-up failure” which is marketing-speak for “you didn’t try hard enough.”

Many business owners and salespeople simply don’t contact their customers or prospects enough to get their attention.

They think, “I called/emailed/snail-mailed 4 times already! If they really want what I’ve got, they’d have contacted me by now.”

Here’s the thing…

It takes between 7-10 “touch points” for someone to actually buy.

You can probably remember times in the past where you’ve WANTED to buy something, but just never got around to it because things legitimately kept coming up – vacation, relatives visiting, toilet exploded, kids sick, and on and on.

Then it just died on the vine.

This is exactly the same thing that happens with your customers.

Now many would read “7-10 touch points” and say, “That’s great, but you know as little as it may sound, it’s also a TON of work! I don’t have that kind of time.”

Well, it CAN be a ton of work… but it doesn’t have to be.

For example, when I send out emails, I turn on a feature that tracks whether people opened them or not.

So when I follow up with the people that DID NOT open the email, instead of crafting an entirely new email (which really would be a lot of work because of all the copywriting strategies I use), I use a little trick…

I send the exact same email, but with a DIFFERENT subject line!

I’ve done this many times and I can tell you that it’s pulled in 5-20% more response with negligible “unsubscribes.”

You can also do this with direct mail by packaging the original message in a different way. For example, send it the second time around as a postcard, or in a different envelope with slight modifications to the introductory paragraph.

You don’t have to re-invent the wheel at every turn.

Cheers to your success!

Philipp

Incoming search terms:

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I am not a tie person.

My ideal “dressed up” scenario involves nubuck suede flip-flops.

But I do understand there are occasions that demand me dressing up like a penguin: weddings, funerals, Oscar after-parties…

Your marketing qualifies as a “black tie” affair… it needs to be formalized.

Some business marketing just throws on whatever their hands grab out of the closet first (i.e., spray and pray marketing, throwing anything up to see what sticks).

Others spend a whole lot of time and research to find the “perfect” trendy swimsuit fashion (i.e., copying what Madison Avenue or their competition is doing without knowing whether it’s effective in generating sales or not).

That’s about as bad as showing up at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner wearing board shorts and a tank top – you’ll barely have time to ask which fork to use before men with earpieces toss you flying head first over the red carpet and onto the street.

To paraphrase top sales consultant David Sandler, unless you have a formal process in place to sell your prospect, you’re at the mercy of THEIR process for NOT buying from you.

So how do you even begin to know how to put a formal marketing process together?

You need to ask yourself “What happens when…?”

For example:

What happens when I get a lead from an advertisement?

What happens when I get a referral?

What happens when they say “yes” to having a meeting with me?

What happens when they say “no” the first time?

What happens after they buy?

What happens if they haven’t bought from me in over 4 years?

Just knowing the answers to those questions will put you light years ahead of 90% of your competition and other businesses.

Doing that will at least get you the basic shiny lapels, real bow-tie, and cummerbund.

But for the diamond cufflinks, pocket square, and boutonniere, you need to go further…

Put all your answers into a flowchart diagram (check out http://www.gliffy.com).

This way you can see visually exactly what’s going on and makes it infinitely easier to make adjustments as you test and observe each step in your process.

Now go get ‘em, good looking!

Cheers!

Philipp

P.S. I had to reschedule last week’s marketing “jam session” to later today. The topic is video marketing. If you have any questions that you’d like the four of us to address, just add it in the coments below.

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