Archives for March 2011

Where You Fit In

What?s your goal? What?s your aim when it comes to social media? Or defining who you are? Or building your brand (personal or otherwise)? Or growing your blog?

Do you have targets? Do you have a measurement point of where you are now (or where you were at the start of your journey) to where you want to be in 3, 6, 12, 18 months or more?

What?s your end goal? What do you need to be seeing as a return?

Who do you want to impress? Who do you want to emulate, to build from, to surpass? Who do you want to be compared to as ?the next Blogger X, or Author Y, or Educator Z??

Stop.

Stop what you?re doing?right now.

Unless you?re doing it for you, you?re doing it wrong. Unless you?re?being you, you?re doing it wrong. Unless you?re doing it for goals that you want to achieve, as opposed to goals someone else has set, you?re doing it wrong.

Everything you?re doing, in fact, you?re doing it wrong.

Unless it?s?as you.

People aren?t interested in clones.

Blog readers don?t want you to be the next Blogger X.

Shoppers with kids don?t want you to be the next Toys R Us.

Fast food lovers don?t want you to be the next McDonald?s.

Why? Because these brands already exist, and they have their audience, fans and detractors. They don?t need more, and people looking for the ?more factor? won?t be their customers anyway.

But they will be yours.

If you work at it, and let them. And the best way to let them? Be yourself. Don?t try to emulate the brands they?ve stepped away from. If you do, they?ll simply step away from you too.

Instead, just be you.

Be yourself. Be honest. Be the brand you believe you should be. Because that?s where you fit in.

And?that?s where your customers will find you.

image: Stuck in Customs

How Many Relationships Are You Building?

?When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.? ? Dale Carnegie.

When you close a deal, what?s your next step? When you sign the contract, shake the hand and file the paperwork ? what comes next? Is there a next? Or simply a next customer?

Businesses talk a lot about ROI, or return on investment. They look at the man hours, financial costs, ad spend and more to get a customer to make the purchase. Every sale has to justify the outlay. But what about the customer??What about?their ROI from?you?

A sale isn?t just about closing the deal. A sale isn?t just about dipping your pen into the inkwell again before the previous signature has dried. A sale isn?t one-way traffic of the customer into your sales lair. At least, it shouldn?t be.

Imagine you?re Joe Average. You work 60 hours a week to make ends meet. You do your time, pay your bills, feed your family and keep a roof over their heads. Everything you buy has to be fine tailored to fit the budget. You see something you want and you put aside money diligently every week to buy it.

You go to the store, or car showroom, or furniture showroom. You talk shop with the sales guy, and he?s nice. Interested in you. Wants to help you make your choice. So you do. You pay the price, say thanks and go home and wait for your new purchase to be delivered. A week later it arrives, then that?s it. End of story.

Now, imagine it a little differently.?Imagine it as a relationship.

The Relationship Behind the Sale

You go to the store, or car showroom, or furniture showroom. You talk shop with the sales guy, and he?s nice. Interested in you. Wants to help you make your choice. So you do. You pay the price, say thanks and go home and wait for your new purchase to be delivered. Within 24 hours, the sales guy calls and confirms your delivery time. A week later it arrives.

A couple of days after delivery, your sales guy calls again and asks how your new purchase is. Not customer service. Not the after-sales team, but the sales guy who sold you your new toy. He wants to make sure you?re happy and that to call if you have any issues at all. You say you will, then hang up the phone with the biggest smile on your face. Now?that?s service!

Sales guys don?t have time to follow up, they?re too busy selling? No-one offers?that kind of service? This example is unrealistic? They do, and it?s not.

Sales is Service is PR is Service is Marketing

People are emotional beings. We live by how we feel; act on how we?re acted upon; respond to how we?re treated. All our decisions are based around our emotions and how we experience a moment.

Think of any business transaction you?ve had as a customer. The best ones will remain in your mind for all the right reasons, and chances are you?ve made repeat purchases with these vendors because of your user experience. The bad ones? They remain with you too; but your business with the vendor doesn?t.

So the next time you make a sale or win a new client, try this checklist if you?re not already using any of them:

Add the details to a database and set alerts for relevant promotions. Not just every promotion you have, but ones that are?relevant to your new customer.

If you received personal details like date of birth, send a birthday gift or card.

Set up calendar reminders for regular check-ins. Nothing so frequent to annoy, but regular enough to care.

If there?s a business near your new customer they can benefit from that ties into your sale, refer them. It shows you really have their best interests at heart, not to mention builds a great business relationship with the other business.

Sales are important ? every single business needs sales to survive. But quick buck sales only last so long; they?re simply bush fires that will run their course. Relationship sales that?genuinely caress our emotions, though??That?s the money right there.

How many relationships are you building?

image: dann_z

Revamps, Workshops and Telling Your Story

Though I try not to use this blog too much for self-promotional needs, I just wanted to give you a heads-up on some of the stuff that’s been happening behind the scenes.

Some you might be interested in, some not – and feel free to skip today’s post and come back tomorrow when normal scheduling has been resumed if you wish.

So, on with the heads-up.

Revamp of the Bonsai Interactive Website

Over at Bonsai Interactive Marketing, we’ve just unveiled the revamped design of our website. The previous one, while functional, didn’t really say who we are as a business. And, to be fair, it was a little too much show without there being a lot of tell.

So we got rid of the old and brought in with the new.

Now it’s a lot easier to navigate; you know exactly what we do; you can see examples of who we’ve helped; our calendar keeps you up-to-date with events and workshops you can attend; and our blog has also had a makeover. There’ll be a lot more focus on trends, analysis and case studies. This recent post about mobile marketing and loyalty is a good example of what to expect.

So please, feel free to check out the new site and subscribe to our blog if information is your bag. And if you’re looking for an integrated agency for your next project, hey, we might be able to help there too…

Upcoming Workshops and Webinars

As I mentioned above, one of the new additions to the website is our Events Calendar, to show you what workshops we have going on. For the most part, these have been with local or national businesses. But we’re opening these up a little bit further afield.

We’re in the process of putting together a series of webinars and online workshops (along with a very cool business resource that we’ll be sharing more details about soon – think For Bloggers By Bloggers, but for business). And we’d like your feedback.

While we already have set courses in place, what would you really like to get out of a webinar and training course? What topics do you feel are rarely covered, and what information would be really useful for you and/or your business? Leave your ideal topics in the comments below, and we’ll look at tailoring webinars around your suggestions.

Telling Your Entrepreneur’s Story

Over at my business partner Troy’s blog, he’s just launched a new series called The Entrepreneur’s Journey. It’s an ongoing series that looks at one of the hardest, yet often most rewarding, occupations – the entrepreneur.

It looks at the ups, the downs, the successes, the failures, the lessons and much, much more from some of the most tenacious people you’ll meet. It’s a great education in what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and offers pointers that you can take and use if you’ve ever thought about going into business for yourself.

The Entrepreneur’s Journey has already featured the likes of Marcus Sheridan, Mark Harai and Brandon Forder (disclosure: client), and, having seen some of the upcoming stories, it’s fast becoming one of my favourite blog series’ around (and that’s not due to any bias of Troy being my friend).

Check out The Entrepreneur’s Journey for yourself, and if you want to share your story, Troy has a form where you can let him know all about you.

So, these are the updates. Thanks for letting me share (and I really do recommend Troy’s new series if you have even the slightest interest in entrepreneurship) and hopefully we’ll see you over at the Bonsai blog or our next workshop.

Cheers!

Maxwell House and the Art of Great Business

Fact – 87% of consumers would switch brands to deal with companies associated with good causes. 87%.

That’s a whole lot of customers to lose if your business isn’t one that’s involved in good causes, either locally or nationally/internationally. Of course, making sure you support causes the right way is key too – no-one likes a bandwagon jumper, especially when it comes to helping people.

It’s something that coffee company Maxwell House clearly understands with their Brew Some Good initiative.

Waking Up the Senses

It’s not a new initiative, by any means. The Brew Some Good campaign has been around for about 2-3 years but, surprisingly, a lot of people still haven’t heard of it.

What the campaign aims to achieve is highlighting people that are doing good in the community, as well as share visions of optimism. Everyone knows about coffee and its ability to wake up your senses when you need a re-energizing hit; Maxwell House wants to highlight people that wake up your senses, by the good work that they do every day.

They do this by inviting nominations for people and organizations doing good in your community. Maxwell House then donates $10,000 to that person or organization, to use for their favourite cause.

It’s a great way of rewarding the amazing people that just go about their everyday work doing good without asking for anything in return, while involving the local community with a brand (in this case, Maxwell House).

Why It Works

There’s nothing flashy about the campaign. There’s no-one from Maxwell House screaming, “Look at how great we are for doing this.” They just view the nominations, encourage you to nominate your favourite causes, and help. Simple.

They also make sure that it’s clear how the help is being used. They have a bunch of videos on their micro-site that shows how a year’s ad campaign budget ($200,000) has helped 21 worthy causes. They even start their TV ads with the words, “Instead of watching a Maxwell House coffee ad, how about we all take an optimism break?”.

And then there’s the human angle.

As part of the campaign, Maxwell House uses videos of real people doing amazing things every day, like the one at the end of this post featuring father and son Dick and Rick Hoyt. It’s a touching story of overcoming adversity and the love a father has for his son.

There’s no Hollywood budget and special effects overkill – just a simple message with simple images. But it’s one that’s more emotional than most Hollywood efforts at emotion.

The Art of Great Business

A lot of businesses say they have (or aim to have) corporate responsibility, but don’t back up the goal with action. Or they make a token gesture to save on year-end tax and then nothing else.

Maxwell House shows that you can have an ongoing initiative, and one that seems so natural and obvious you wonder why others don’t run the same way.

And for that, I’d happily change my drinking habits. Which, as a coffee bean man, says a lot.

How about you – would you be more likely to support a brand that takes an approach like Maxwell House? What other companies are doing great things? Let’s highlight them.

This post contains a video. If you can’t see it displayed properly in your feed, you can view it directly here.