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Member You - Small Business Marketing Strategy - Make Your Promotion Sticky
Every so often, I’m hired by a company to develop a marketing plan for its business. Yet after conducting my initial assessment, I discover that the company’s lack of a marketing plan isn’t the problem. The real problem is the company’s poor service. For these companies, spending any money at all on marketing is like pouring fine wine down a sinkhole; a complete waste. If your company’s service stinks, fix that first. Then, worry about promoting your company.The Pillars of Servi
Making this benefit memorable is a different trick. What if you ran a week-long promotion where you gave a dime to each customer who shopped at your store? The reason—the next time they are shopping where there’s a meter they’ll have a dime, courtesy of Your Store, the home of “always free, always close parking”. The idea here isn’t to come up with a dozen promotions. Rather, it’s to flesh out the little things that can set you apart from the competition. This is the type of exercise you can spend a few days on, thir
Have you ever felt like your career is going nowhere? Perhaps your job was once very fulfilling, and you had this dream that you were on your way to the top. You kept climbing the ladder and it seemed you were on the right track, and then suddenly, something pulled the ladder out from under you. You came crashing to the ground. You felt hurt, bruised, ticked off, even downright mad. You were afraid that life was going to pass you by. Now crazy thoughts fill your head. You are afra
Stickiness is an idea described by Gladwell in The Tipping Point. For our marketing purposes, stickiness is how well your marketing message is remembered by--sticks with--your customers and prospects. Stickiness can be achieved by a catchy phrase or a clever marketing gimmick or some type of giveaway or a clever slogan. The idea is to get customers to remember your business; to make it stick with them inside their mind.
The following is a simple exercise designed to help you with building your next promotion or clarifying your brand. Set aside, say, fifteen minutes and just look at your company’s strengths. For now, please forget about your company compared to the competition. This isn’t a discovery exercise in figuring out where your company is positioned in the market. To start with, simply list features and benefits of your primary products or services. Remember, a feature is a function, the “what it does” of a product or service. A benefit is a “what is does for the customer”. There is a world of difference between the two. We suggest you build a simple table on your computer, or you can even rough it out on a piece of notebook paper. Construct four columns, with the following column headings:
- Feature
- Benefit
- One or two Words that Sum Up Benefit
- How to make it Sticky
Underneath the four columns, list ten or twenty rows. It’s best to write down loads of features and benefits, even ones that you think trivial, and then eliminate ones that aren’t relevant to your marketing efforts. So the first two columns may have twenty rows, while the last two might look half full. You might be able to combine certain features and benefits with the same marketing message or device. Your time will be well spent if you conjure up even a couple decent marketing ideas that help to effectively communicate your company’s Brand to your customers.
For example, if ample parking is a plus at your shop, then list “plenty of free parking” as a feature. The benefits would include “no money spent on meters; no wasted time looking for a parking space; customers don’t have to walk far to our store”. A couple words that sum up your parking might be “free, close-by parking”.
Making this benefit memorable is a different trick. What if you ran a week-long promotion where you gave a dime to each customer who shopped at your store? The reason—the next time they are shopping where there’s a meter they’ll have a dime, courtesy of Your Store, the home of “always free, always close parking”. The idea here isn’t to come up with a dozen promotions. Rather, it’s to flesh out the little things that can set you apart from the competition. This is the type of exercise you can spend a few days on, thir
In any business, keeping in touch with your clients is important. It is especially important if you are in a service or product related company. In order to get repeat order, referrals, and increase customer loyalty, the customer needs to remember your name and needs to know how to find you.Who to Follow Up With There are many people you would want to follow up with, not just those that are considered to be “clients.” • Those that placed an order.
The following is a simple exercise designed to help you with building your next promotion or clarifying your brand. Set aside, say, fifteen minutes and just look at your company’s strengths. For now, please forget about your company compared to the competition. This isn’t a discovery exercise in figuring out where your company is positioned in the market. To start with, simply list features and benefits of your primary products or services. Remember, a feature is a function, the “what it does” of a product or service. A benefit is a “what is does for the customer”. There is a world of difference between the two. We suggest you build a simple table on your computer, or you can even rough it out on a piece of notebook paper. Construct four columns, with the following column headings:
- Feature
- Benefit
- One or two Words that Sum Up Benefit
- How to make it Sticky
Underneath the four columns, list ten or twenty rows. It’s best to write down loads of features and benefits, even ones that you think trivial, and then eliminate ones that aren’t relevant to your marketing efforts. So the first two columns may have twenty rows, while the last two might look half full. You might be able to combine certain features and benefits with the same marketing message or device. Your time will be well spent if you conjure up even a couple decent marketing ideas that help to effectively communicate your company’s Brand to your customers.
For example, if ample parking is a plus at your shop, then list “plenty of free parking” as a feature. The benefits would include “no money spent on meters; no wasted time looking for a parking space; customers don’t have to walk far to our store”. A couple words that sum up your parking might be “free, close-by parking”.
Making this benefit memorable is a different trick. What if you ran a week-long promotion where you gave a dime to each customer who shopped at your store? The reason—the next time they are shopping where there’s a meter they’ll have a dime, courtesy of Your Store, the home of “always free, always close parking”. The idea here isn’t to come up with a dozen promotions. Rather, it’s to flesh out the little things that can set you apart from the competition. This is the type of exercise you can spend a few days on, thir
When you need serious improvement of the quality and volume of traffic to your website from any search engine, Dallas search engine optimization is what you must look for. Dallas engine search optimization doesn’t just target contextual search engines, but also local search engines and vertical search engines, which are industry-specific. The primary goal with Dallas search engine optimization is to meet the needs of visitors by matching them with the websites that offer those exact thi
- Feature
- Benefit
- One or two Words that Sum Up Benefit
- How to make it Sticky
Underneath the four columns, list ten or twenty rows. It’s best to write down loads of features and benefits, even ones that you think trivial, and then eliminate ones that aren’t relevant to your marketing efforts. So the first two columns may have twenty rows, while the last two might look half full. You might be able to combine certain features and benefits with the same marketing message or device. Your time will be well spent if you conjure up even a couple decent marketing ideas that help to effectively communicate your company’s Brand to your customers.
For example, if ample parking is a plus at your shop, then list “plenty of free parking” as a feature. The benefits would include “no money spent on meters; no wasted time looking for a parking space; customers don’t have to walk far to our store”. A couple words that sum up your parking might be “free, close-by parking”.
Making this benefit memorable is a different trick. What if you ran a week-long promotion where you gave a dime to each customer who shopped at your store? The reason—the next time they are shopping where there’s a meter they’ll have a dime, courtesy of Your Store, the home of “always free, always close parking”. The idea here isn’t to come up with a dozen promotions. Rather, it’s to flesh out the little things that can set you apart from the competition. This is the type of exercise you can spend a few days on, thir
One of the mistakes that some entrepreneurs who are opening a dollar store make is to use overhead shelves on the sales floor for the storage of boxes of excess merchandise. While storing merchandise on the sales floor can be done, it must be done with care. If not done properly there is the risk that sales will suffer. Don’t let that happen to you.Often the boxes that merchandise is shipped in are plain, dull brown colored. They may be damaged or marked up with scuffs and other
For example, if ample parking is a plus at your shop, then list “plenty of free parking” as a feature. The benefits would include “no money spent on meters; no wasted time looking for a parking space; customers don’t have to walk far to our store”. A couple words that sum up your parking might be “free, close-by parking”.
Making this benefit memorable is a different trick. What if you ran a week-long promotion where you gave a dime to each customer who shopped at your store? The reason—the next time they are shopping where there’s a meter they’ll have a dime, courtesy of Your Store, the home of “always free, always close parking”. The idea here isn’t to come up with a dozen promotions. Rather, it’s to flesh out the little things that can set you apart from the competition. This is the type of exercise you can spend a few days on, thir
Trying to start a successful Internet business? Are you overwhelmed with the many online business programs available or worried that you'll lose money by investing in them? While many offers sound too good to be true, there are some very good ones available - but how can you be sure? Learning to read between the lines will better prepare you for what's seriously involved.Many Internet businesses are simple to operate. If you understand how it works you will be amazed at the simpl
Making this benefit memorable is a different trick. What if you ran a week-long promotion where you gave a dime to each customer who shopped at your store? The reason—the next time they are shopping where there’s a meter they’ll have a dime, courtesy of Your Store, the home of “always free, always close parking”. The idea here isn’t to come up with a dozen promotions. Rather, it’s to flesh out the little things that can set you apart from the competition. This is the type of exercise you can spend a few days on, thirty minutes at a time, here and there. It’s hard to pull everything up and out of your brain in one quick setting; better to let ideas percolate around inside for a while.
Oh, and don’t forget the People marketing element when working on this. After you make a good beginning on your list, share it with the Bloom Team. They will no doubt hand you some valuable marketing ideas for that last column, but there’s often another benefit. Because many of them are close to the customers, they may have customer feedback on actual Benefits that you may have overlooked.
Best of luck--and please do share with us any of your success stories or ideas that have worked well for you.
© 2006 Marketing Hawks
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