Referrals for Life

The last few weeks I have written a lot about creative ways to work with networking groups. No, this is not a lead in for a topic shift.  I want to continue by discussing an opportunity to turn your networking group member profile into a 24 hour referral generator by adding your company’s or your personal video.

After the home page of a networking group’s website, the member profiles are the most highly trafficked pages.  Existing members browse profiles to learn more about their referral partners and site visitors (your prospects) drop by to determine if your business can help them. By adding either a personal video or your company’s video commercial to your profile you can,

1. Teach:  Show and tell your referral partners about the mix of products and services your business offers.  Your referral partners cannot sell your business within their contact spheres without a working knowledge of who you are and what you do.
2. Stand out:  I can almost guarantee you that you will be the only company in your pod doing this.  Browse the Business Networking International (BNI) chapters right now and tell us how many of the summaries feature video…few to none I bet, so who do you think will be remembered?
3. Communicate efficiently:  You can put a lot more information into a short 1 minute video than you could usefully add to a networking group website profile page (narration, visuals, music and text).
4. Increase clickthroughs:  It is an established fact that web promotions that feature video have significantly higher clickthrough rates than those with text and images alone.  In order for you to get profile browsers into your sales cycle you will want them to clickthrough to links pointing to your company site, blog or newsletter and your video’s content will give them a reason.

Here is a link to my business profile for one of the networking groups I belong to (click here).  Is your company video featured on your networking group’s website?  Give us the link so we can watch it (add your link).

Related Posts:

1. How Netoworking + A Cell Phone = Referrals!
2. Does Your Networking Group Have Fly Paper?
3. Use Your iPhone for More Referrals
4. For hundreds of ways to get customers to call you (subscribe to our newsletter) (browse archive)

Marketing Lessons from the Campaign Trail

I’m addicted to the 2008 presidential campaign. My nightly viewing habits over the past few months have centered on switching back and forth between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to find out what the political pundits have to say about the election, the candidates, and what will happen next. I know, it’s ridiculous. I don’t feel too bad because surely, I’m not the only one with this addiction!

I ran across an interesting article on Time Magazine’s website entitled, “The Five Mistakes Clinton Made.” The journalist, Karen Tumulty, shared what in her estimation were the key mishaps that Sen. Clinton made during her campaign. Out of the five, here are a few that stood out to me:

1. She misjudged the mood: didn’t understand that voters wanted to hear a “change” message instead of “experience.”
2. She didn’t master the rules: picked people for her team out of loyalty instead of relying on who were the best strategists.
3. She relied on old money: failed to incorporate the new model of online fundraising early enough in her campaign.

Politics aside, I thought that there were several key marketing lessons to learn from the article:

1. Develop a clear, consistent message for your marketing and public relations campaigns. It’s a good idea to develop your message based on research. Don’t be hesitant to fine-tune the message if necessary in order to reach your goal.
2. Put people on your team who can help you accomplish your goals. Go against the grain and pull from departments outside of marketing/PR when planning your strategies. Great ideas come in all shapes and sizes.
3. Technology rules. Cell phones, video, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and countless other technologies have changed how we communicate with each other. Make it a goal to investigate which one will help you reach your business goals and incorporate them into your marketing/PR strategy.

I’m sure that there are countless other marketing/PR lessons that we can learn from the election. What are a few that stand out for you?

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About Kristina Hill

An expert in marketing communications, Kristina Hill provides integrated marketing consulting services to small and mid-sized businesses through MarComm Creative Group, LLC. The business offers an array of services, including: public relations and media relations; media planning and placement; integrated marketing plan development and execution; and article, website, advertising, editorial, and sponsorship writing.

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1. CAABJ: Little Known Ways to Improve Your PR
2. How to Get In the Charlotte Observer
3. The Power of Your Press
4. For hundreds of ways to get customers to call you (subscribe to our newsletter) (browse archive)

Want to Repel Customers? Sell Value!

That’s right, I said it.  One sure way to hand prospective customers over to your competition is to go on in your web copy, your video production or your brochure about how valuable your product or service is.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret; value is not a benefit, it is assumed thus every business in your market has it.  If what you offer doesn’t have some intrinsic value, you should get out of the business immediately.  Pushing value is a little like promoting good looks at a beauty contest; it’s the price of admission.

Instead of touting your value; tell prospects how your car can save  thousands on gas, that your restaurant has award-winning lobster or your cell phone service supports the widest variety of the latest smartphones.  Let your competition own the value position and you will own the market share. 

Related Topics:

1. Why I Like the Word No
2. It’s About the Customer Not You!
3. For hundreds of ways to get customers to call you (subscribe to our newsletter) (browse archive)

5 Sure-Fire Ways to Extend Your Press Coverage

Click to Watch Jeff on Fox Sports

One of my clients, Jeff Jimmo was recently featured on a Fox Charlotte news program as a mixed martial arts expert commenting on the wave of interest in the sport.  Yes, I talk a lot about Jeff and his crew over at Ryan Hoover’s Extreme Karate because they do a great job actively marketing their business which includes courting the press.  I want to share with you how Jeff, his associates and quite frankly you can get a lot of mileage out of any television coverage that comes your way.

Just in case you are not yet aware, press coverage is one of the best forms of exposure your business can receive.  It is not easy to get but once you do, media coverage can package your company’s story for thousands to see; it can add instant credibility to your business; coverage costs nothing (assuming you have not retained an agency to get it) and it has a long shelf life if you do what I suggest.  Once notified of Jeff’s Fox program appearance I immediately fired off an email instructing him on a few things he should think about doing to increase the impact and longevity of his media appearance.  Keep the suggestions below in mind should the television media consider covering your business.

1. Immediately get a DVD copy of the final edited program:  Wait on this and your program is almost sure to be lost in a vast archive.
2. Add the program video to your website:  Add the video to your website instead of linking to the network’s instance of the video, as it will only reside on the network’s server for a short time before being replaced by newer programming.  Remember the operative word in news, is “new”. You can simplify this task by uploading the video to a sharing site like Blip.tv which will render a good quality Flash Video (.flv) version of your media and provide you with a code snippet that is a simple as cut and paste, to add to your web page.
3. Prominently feature the video:  Do not bury the video deep within your website where visitors are unlikely to find it.  This is a professionally produced marketing piece with a television network stamp on it that should be easily accessible preferably from your home page.
4. Notify your evangelists:  Let the vocal few in your professional and personal networks know about the video’s existence and ask your evangelists to, well, evangelize by forwarding a link to others on their respective distribution lists.
5. Pitch Bloggers and Social Media pools:  Let bloggers who cover your discipline know about the video.  You should know that bloggers reach out to networks of other bloggers making it possible for your story (if picked up) to spread throughout the blog network. Heck, give a popular blogger a short, informative blog post (200 words or so) that you feel the blogger’s audience could benefit from and include the embedded video code from your streaming service into the blog post content.  Don’t make your guest post an advertisement for you. Remember your demonstrated expertise and willingness to enhance the blogger’s community is advertisement enough. Make sure the content is exceedingly useful to the blogger’s audience.

If the press covers you, I guarantee following these tips will keep prospective customers and clients talking about your business.  Like that famous philosopher Forrest Gump once said, “that’s all I have to say about that.” How do you use your media coverage (click to comment)?

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1. CAABJ: Little Known Ways to Improve Your PR
2. The PR Refresh Video
3. For hundreds of ways to get customers to call you (subscribe to our newsletter) (browse archive)

Why I Like the Word No

While waiting to see the premiere of Iron Man and struggling painfully through movie trailers for the Hulk 2 and Don’t Mess with the Zohan, I was inspired to compose this post (don’t ask why). I took out my trusty BlackBerry 8830 and began to write. Not being a natural salesperson, early in my entrepreneurial journey I had a visceral fear of hearing the word no.  Like me, I am sure some of you might also take rejection personally. Even if you are a great salesperson my experience still might be of use, so read on.

Rejection was so hard to handle in part because I did not have what I call a “minimum” strategy; simply put, an understanding of what I would like to get, at a minimum, out of each sales interaction.  Back then I would simply walk away if a prospect did not immediately bite.  A few years wiser now, my minimum strategy includes asking the people I pitch if I can add them to the distribution list for our email newsletter and let me tell you the practice has worked exceptionally well.

For the recipient our newsletter delivers immediately usable customer acquisition techniques and for us each monthly touch strengthens our position as business problem solvers.  Remember the rule of 8:16 states that it takes at least 8 contacts over a 16 month period before a prospect becomes a real customer.  Our newsletter guarantees 12 touches in 12 months.

I was literally turned down flat by the first 10 companies I approached but within a year of sending our monthly instructive newsletter; we ended up doing business with 8 of these firms in large part because the newsletter kept us top of mind as problem solvers and the publication showcased much of our best work.  It did not hurt that many of our prospects saw their competitor’s projects starting to appear in our client showcase listings.  Man do I smile now when someone tries to shoo me off. 

What is your minimum strategy (click to leave a comment)?

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