It's ALL About Trust & Confidence

When I was working in the computer industry years ago, I used to be baffled every time I lost a sale to IBM. I had the better product -- often by far -- I had the better technology, the better software, etc. I was an excellent salesperson, and excellent presenter and often established a close rapport with my intended clients. But again and again I lost the sale to IBM.

Why? Trust and confidence. IBM had the trust and confidence of the prospective consumer even if they didn't have the best solution. At the time, buyers took the attitude that if it were, in any way, a risky decision between any two vendors, go with IBM. You couldn't go wrong with IBM.

Trust and confidence is as powerful a decision force today as it ever was then. In fact, it may be MORE powerful than it was then. This is particularly true when doing business over the Internet -- you don't know who is on the other side of the network, but you do know that it's easy to look good on the Internet. Spam and phishing scams teach us that every day. But Internet net or not, it always pays to make sure you cover the trust and confidence dimensions of your product or service positioning.

How do you do that? How do you gain trust and confidence when you're new and small and unknown? Here's a few tips...

(1) Focus on customer lists, customer testimonials, and customer case studies. Make sure your marketing materials and web materials have a large number of customer pull-quotes, customer lists, and real-life case studies. These are more credible than more superlative copywriting.

(2) Focus on getting and communicating 3rd-party assessments of your products and services. Participating in product showcases, getting press pickups from a news release, and getting analyst or editorial reviews are excellent ways of getting credible 3rd-party assessments.

(3) Offer a free trial. If you can't do something to immediately improve the perception of trust and confidence, then reduce the risk. Allow your prospective customer to use the product free.

(4) Offer a strong guarantee. Same principle, reduce the risk.

(5) On the web, especially, consider subscribing to various authentication and validation services -- You can get TrustE, a non-profit web certification organization, or Better Business Bureau's BBBOnline, to certify your website.

These are but of few methods to boost your credibility and trust. Don't use just one, use them all! Look for more ways, too!

Here's a novel way that one client of mine found. The company produced a retail product that was sold through retail office-supply stores. Each year the company took out one small ad, in a regional edition of TIME magazine -- the least expensive ad they could buy. Then, for the rest of the year, they placed an outside wrap around their product that said: "As advertised in Time Magazine!" Clever. (But it's worth keeping in mind that even a small ad in Time Magazine is not cheap.)

Bottom Line: Every increase you get in the consumer's trust and confidence will pay you back again and again and again. Go for it!

Ignore Internet Marketing At Your Own Risk...

"The internet is coming!"
For years, we've heard the proclamations about the impact the internet would be having on our business: "The internet is coming, the internet is coming." Frankly, it's been a little like the old joke of the guy sitting on the edge of the bed telling his partner how good it's going to be. The fact is that most people just didn't see or, well, feel that the internet was going to be that big a factor. Well, sure, there was Amazon.com that turned the retail book industry on its ear... and, OK, there was eBay's success, and the whole online stock trading thing... but for most of our businesses, we looked at the internet as being business as usual, but with a virtual twist. Selling would still be selling. Shipping would still be shipping. Margins and profits would still be calculated the same way.

But it's not business as usual. The internet is upon us and if you ignore its ramifications on your sales and marketing, it might not be long before you'll be joining the ranks of manufacturers of buggy-whips, film-based cameras, and vacuum-tube electronics. And it's no longer "the internet is coming" ... it's here.

Here's a few data points to chew on...

* At the end of 2007, internet traffic to online commerce sites exceeded 3.5 million visitors per minute (Akamai Technologies statistics).

* In 2007, advertising spending on the internet will grow by 28.2% whereas all other advertising spending will grow by only 3.9% (Zenith Optimedia Research)

* In the largest markets (i.e. U.S., U.K., Canada, Japan, etc.) one out of every ten advertsing dollars is spent on the internet. In two years time, it will be one out of five. (eMarketer.com)

* Watch out Yellow Pages, search engine marketing is growing more than 50% a year and is already at $10+ billion. (SEMPO survey 2006)

* 83% of 1500 marketing professionals surveyed by Datran Media Research selected email marketing as the single most important advertising medium of 2007.

The Internet is Here!
Are you? Your company? Beyond using email for correspondence and for accepting the occasional purchase order, and except for creating a website as an online brochure for your company, are you taking your place in the world of internet marketing?

Here's a quick checklist to see where you are:

1. Do you build and maintain email lists of customers and prospects?
2. Do you send out regular promotional emails? Do you track click-thru rates?
3. Do you use autoresponders?
4. Do you advertise on search engines?
5. Will your web site emerge on the first page in a search of relevant keywords?
6. Do you use pay-per-click advertising in other venues?
7. Do you participate in, or sponsor, any internet affiliate programs?
8. Do you regularly track web site and web page traffic? Is it going up?
9. Have your brands been extended to address the internet?
10. Do you have a formal "link-in" program?
11. Do you utilize internet forums or article distribution services to increase web traffic?

If you can't answer "yes" to more than six of these questions, you're probably not doing enough to take your place on the internet. And if you ever expect to do so, you'd better act now.

Internet marketing is now, not later.
Many marketers have recognized that internet marketing is something they are going to need to address. But it's something to do later, when there's more time. There is no more time. The internet has rapidly become the most effective way of accessing and expanding your market. If you're not taking your place in that expansion, then you're losing market share -- and in an electronic venue like the internet, that means you're losing it quickly.

Don't underestimate the effect of the internet on your marketing. It's so important to your business that it deserves a very high level of attention and visibility. So much so, that it won't be long before forward-thinking companies begin to appoint a new type of CIO -- not Chief Information Officer, but Chief Internet Officer -- to head their marketing operations.

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Click KLynn Business Consultants to link to the KLynn consulting site.

The Two Most Important Marketing Communications Technologies...

That's right... there's only two. And they're not hi-tech. The two I have in mind are used in 95% of all marketing communications campaigns on the planet. These most important technologies are: writing and printing.

Why?

Writing. Doesn't matter whether it's for print or broadcast, if the writing isn't there, neither is your marketing. Writing is communicating. Copy is, more often than not, the carrier of your message, and the language of your call to action. Write poorly and there is no message. Write poorly and there is no call to action.

Good writing, for marketing communications, is more than simply shoving words around in an aesthetically pleasing way. Good writing requires a thorough understanding and articulation of the product and service benefits which are being communicated. It also requires good context -- that is, it requires an understanding of your market "position" with respect to your prospective buyer and your competitors. Can't articulate the benefits yourself? There's nothing to write about. Don't understand your "market position"? Likewise.

Printing. The physical manifestation of a very large percentage of the marketing communications done in the world, is in the form of printed material. Signs, brochures, letters, flyers, posters, packaging, magazines, newspapers, direct mail, billboards, and advertising specialties, all have to be printed.

The marketer that understands printing will outperform the one that doesn't. Here's a few simple examples of how:

= If Marketer A can print her direct mail piece in color for the same price that Marketer B can print his in black and white, she'll win.

= If Marketer A can print her direct mail piece postcard at 30% less cost than Marketer B can, she'll be able to mail more pieces than Marketer B can, for the same cost! In other words, Marketer A will be able to reach more of the market than Marketer B.

These situations are not unusual; they're very common. So common that you might begin to wonder whether your competitors know something about writing or printing that you don't.

The good news is that there are ways to learn the necessary skills. For writing, one of the best sources I know is the Direct Marketing Association. Copywriting seminar information (online and otherwise) from the DMA is available by clicking here.

For printing, you may want to check your local university, but the premier educator for all things printing is the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Their Print Buying Essentials course could well mean the difference between winning and losing to a print-knowledgeable competitor!

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Click KLynn Business Consultants to link to the KLynn consulting site.

"I Never Open Junk Mail!"

Invariably, this is the first thing I hear when I suggest a direct marketing campaign to one of our clients. But it's not quite the truth. They never open junk mail... except when they do.

To be sure, most people do not open their junk mail. For a good campaign, perhaps only 10%-20% will open it and only 1%-2% will act on it. That doesn't seem like a lot, does it? But then, why do we continue to get junk mail? Why does it seem, in fact, like we get more junk mail every year?

The short answer is: because it works. Here's how...

Let's take the example of mailing a promotion for a $250 item to 20,000 people. Here's the math based on a response rate of 1.25%:

In this example, we spend $14,500 in preparing and sending the mail piece. With a response rate of 1.25%, we get 250 orders giving us sales of $62,500. Assuming the product we sell is purchased from someone else, we may get to keep 40% of the sales with the remainder going to pay for the merchandise. That leaves us $10,500 after the costs of the mailing.

What this example illustrates is that -- even though 98.75% of the respondents do not open/act on their junk mail -- the campaign will earn $10,500! Imagine if the response rate were 2% instead of 1.25% ...then it would net more than $25,000!

With those kind of numbers, instead of asking why we get so much junk mail, we might want to ponder why we get so little!

Click here to link to the KLynn consulting site.

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Click KLynn Business Consultants to link to the KLynn consulting site.