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The Seven
Secrets of Effective Marketing
by J. Michael
Farabe
Click
Here for Short Version
> Secret #1: Knowledge is
Power
>
Secret #2: Technology is
Your Friend
> Secret #3: Your
Greatest Strength is You
> Secret #4: Position
Yourself as an Expert
> Secret #5: Date First,
then Marry
> Secret #6: Measure and
Track Everything
> Secret #7: Don’t Be
an Island
Imagine, you’re building a
house. Could you build it without tools? How ‘bout just one tool?
Say, a hammer? Might
prove pretty difficult, next to impossible … okay, let’s face it …
definitely impossible. There’s
all kinds of things you’d need to do that you couldn’t with only a
hammer. 
Okay, what if
you had an entire tool chest of tools?
Hammer, saw, drill, screw driver, wrenches, sockets, sanders,
levels and so on. Could you
build it, then? Getting
closer, right? Yet,
there’s still the cost of all those tools plus the time and
money required to become educated and skilled in using them.
Not to mention, the time, money and knowledge it would take to
learn how to build an entire house.
It’s this learning curve that I believe is the
number one roadblock standing in the way of most small business owners
taking the correct steps towards effectively marketing their businesses. I have been helping market the product and services of small
businesses for over 25 years and I can tell you that about 97 percent of
all small business advertising fails.
I don’t care if it’s newspaper advertising or television or
radio or billboard or direct mail or even the Internet.
The results are the same. Switching
from one media to another is like moving the deck chairs around on the
Titanic.
The delivery medium isn’t what needs to be
changed or even the message (although the message and how it’s
presented is far more important than the medium).
What needs to be changed is the overall strategy … bottom line.
In most cases, small business owners either try to
build their marketing with a single tool or perhaps two or three
marketing tools or more. They
randomly use an entire suite of tools with no idea what those tools will
really do if anything.
Basically, they throw anything and everything at the wall, hoping
something will stick. This is far worse (and far more expensive) than using a
single wrong tool or even two or three wrong tools simply due to the
sheer volume of expense. Each
of these approaches work poorly because the underlying strategy is
flawed.
The single tool approach or Silver Bullet method is
like using an eye dropper to put out a raging forest fire. For example, let’s say an advertiser chooses to run their
message on a popular local radio station.
That station reaches about 3 percent of the listening market.
Now, let’s take a look at those words “listening market.”
What exactly does that mean?
Is the “listening market” the same as the entire potential
buying population? Absolutely not. Why?
Because not everybody listens to radio.
So, you’re really reaching less than 3 percent, right?
Now, you’re potential customer market is further diluted by the
time of day your message plays. In
the middle of the night, there are less listeners than at morning drive
time. Even if you air it at
the time of day when the largest number of listeners are tuned in,
you’re still not getting the entire listening audience, let alone the
entire potential buying market. Your
impact is further diluted by the fact that most radio listeners are
channel surfers. When the commercial comes on, they’re on down the
dial searching for what they tuned in to the radio for in the first
place (hint: not
commercials). But let’s
give your radio commercial the benefit of the doubt and assume that no
one channel surfs and 100% of the listeners stay tuned in and actually
want to hear your ad. What
about other external distractions, such as problems at home, crying
children, traffic, arguing siblings?
There are thousands
of distractions every day. This
dilution effect is why you better take out a small loan if you are
planning on having any kind of impact, at all, with traditional
media. The same goes
for cable TV, newspaper, direct mail.
Again, like I said earlier, it’s like trying to put out a
raging forest fire with an eye dropper.
The second approach or the Everything Plus the
Kitchen Sink method costs a fortune due to the sheer volume of
advertising you must purchase and if by some stroke of luck one of the
ads works you’ll never know it. You
won’t know if a particular ad worked or if it was the combination of
all the ads together that made the one you could measure produce
results. PLUS (and this is much worse), you won’t know why that
particular tool worked or how to repeat it in the future (except
to run the whole mess of ads again).
So, what’s the answer?
Knowledge, plain and simple.
So, the first
and most important Secret of Effective Marketing is to educate yourself
in the science and art of Guerrilla Marketing.
What is guerrilla marketing?
It’s similar to guerrilla warfare.
Imagine your business is a small rebel army fighting a much
larger, better financed Super Power. If you go toe to toe with the Super Power (or giant) using
traditional tactics, you’re going to get crushed. So, the smaller rebel army NEVER goes toe to toe.
It NEVER uses traditional tactics.
It seeks out clever alternatives, searching for battles it can
win. Instead, the smaller
poorly financed rebel soldiers pick small ambush-type skirmishes where
they strike lightning fast and take the Super Powers weapons.
The larger Super Power has virtually no defense against these
tactics. Being large and
bureaucratic, it is difficult for the Super Power to maneuver quickly or
change plans without calling a board meeting or forming a special blue
ribbon task force. So, in
this manner, the Super Power’s finances are gradually drained, while
the smaller rebel force grows stronger and is equipped with the weapons
they took in the skirmishes, basically forcing the Super Power to
finance their rebellion.
But how can this be done in businesses, you ask?
You’re not suggesting that I steal my competitors equipment,
are you? By no means,
absolutely not. We are not
suggesting that you do anything illegal or immoral. What we are suggesting is that you work smarter, smaller
niche markets (or specialty markets), instead of the big general
markets. You can service a
niche (or specialty) market better than the larger competitor.
You can respond to the changing needs of that niche market
quicker. It costs less
money to advertise and service a niche market and as you make growing
profits in the smaller niche market, you can use that money to finance
growth into other niche markets.
Learn to Market a Small Business, Not
a Big Business …
The key is to learn everything you can about how to
market a small business,
not a large business. Virtually
everything in marketing nowadays is designed for big business, not
small. Example:
advertise on Super-Duper Search Engine and reach millions of
potential customers. Sounds
great, right? Wrong.
In order to advertise effectively in the big boy’s market, you
will need millions of dollars.
Why? Because you
will have to keep doing it over and
over and over. Why? Because the
public is literally being assaulted by an avalanche of hundreds of
thousands of ad messages per day. So,
for them to notice your name or message among such a flurry of noise,
let alone remember it, would take a miracle or a lot of repetition
(basically, total saturation). Therefore,
placing a banner ad on just one Super-Duper Search Engine and for just
one time is not going to cut through the mind-numbing blast of
advertising noise. It’s
going to take a lot of expensive repetition and definitely more than one
advertising medium. You’ll
need to add national blanket coverage on television, radio, newspaper,
magazine and billboard. To
do that kind of marketing effectively, you have to saturate the market
like Pepsi Cola does. Everywhere your potential customers would look they would
need to see your company’s name.
Just like everywhere you look you see Pepsi Cola:
on cups, shirts, signs, in magazines, newspapers, billboards,
television, radio, etc. Major
companies spend millions of dollars every year to saturate the national
general market. Notice, I
typed “general market,” not “niche markets.”
The savvy guerrilla marketer learns how to work the
niche markets.
The second
most important secret of effective marketing is:
work the niches more effectively by tapping into the power of
technology.
With technology, you can run circles around your
larger competitors. You can
service your customers better and quicker. You can run your company
leaner, more efficiently and with less people (saving you big money and
lots of headaches). Remember,
your greatest strength is that you’re the owner, not just a hired
hand. Therefore, you care
more. The trick is to show
it, not just say it! Technology
allows you to clone yourself. Wouldn’t
it be great if you could hire people and they cared about your business
as much as you do? Well, with technology, that’s exactly what happens.
Technology can kick your niche marketing efforts
into high gear. On the
Internet alone, you can penetrate niche markets and seduce new potential
customers by drawing them to your website where you can show them
(through an email newsletter or an online workshop) how much better you
will service them than the big boys.
Imagine providing an online question and answer
center. You could do this
with the help of NextStopOnline’s eMarketer’s toolkit (provided free
when you signup). To find
out how, click here.
Remember,
your greatest strength is you, your concern, your knowledge.
That’s what your customers are buying.
Otherwise, they could just go to the bigger competitor and
purchase from one of their hired hands, right?
But do people really buy anything on the Internet?
You’ve tried to sell stuff on the Internet and it didn’t
work. You built a site
yourself or worse hired somebody to build you an expensive site and it
just sat there on the vast cyber sea floating aimlessly with hardly any
visitors and virtually no customers.
You paid good money
to have your site submitted to over 1500 search engines and still
nothing happened. You’re
not buying the hype. Nobody
really buys stuff online, do they?
The answer is:
Yes, marketing on
the Internet does work. People
do buy stuff. You just have
to know how to do it. Rule
#1, throw everything you thought about selling online out the window,
because it’s a whole new game in cyberspace.
Again, back to Secret #1 “Knowledge is Power,” your first
step in succeeding at marketing on the Internet is to get to know your
customer: how do they use
the Internet and for what? Do they passively sit in front of the computer monitor like
the television screen or do they get involved and interact and make
decisions? Have they been
to college or are they high school dropouts?
Are they married with kids or single?
Are they male or female? Above
thirty or below? Do they
look at ads online or look for information to help make buying
decisions?
Instead of guessing, let’s find out for sure and
look at some stats …
Discovery #1:
Internet Users Spend Twice As Much Time Online than on TV
According to a study conducted by the Stanford
Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, researchers found the average
Internet user spends 3 hours per day online, almost double the 1.7
hours the average respondent spends watching television. The study also found the more educated an
individual, the more likely that person is to be online. Over 40
percent of respondents with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree said
they'd used the Internet the day before.
So, what does this mean in terms of selling products and services
online? It means that the
Internet market is educated, has money and spends more time online than
in front of the tube. In
fact, online retailers saw a
24 percent increase in sales in 2004;
growth through 2005 is projected to achieve another 22 percent. This 24 percent growth rate outpaces traditional retail,
which saw an increase of only seven percent last year.
Discovery #2:
More Women Online than Men
Part of the reason for these
online growth figures is that there are more women online than in the
past. Women now account for
over half the U.S. web population and women make over 70 percent of the
household purchasing decisions.
Discovery #3:
Faster Connection Speeds Means More Purchases Online
Also, Internet connection
speeds have dramatically improved, which means it’s easier to use the
web. Internet users don’t
have to wait around for pages to load.
Plus, the experience is more content rich, complete with video
and music (much like television).
The number of U.S. at-home broadband users increased 36 percent
in 2004, accounting for 55 percent of the total U.S. at-home users
by the end of December, according to the latest data from Nielsen/NetRatings.
If this robust
adoption rate continues, almost 70 percent of all U.S. home users will
have broadband connections by the end of 2005, according to forecasts
based on Nielsen data in the "January 2005 Bandwidth Report.”
So, the Mini-Van Mom is now online and making
decisions for her family and purchases!
There’s more …
Discovery #4:
More Purchases, More Money Spent per Purchase, More Often
Broadband proliferation is already having a
quantifiable effect on online retail purchases. Nielsen's recently
unveiled MegaView Online Retail Service, which tracks online purchasing
behavior, reports 69 percent of all online retail purchases were
conducted over broadband connections in November 2004, averaging $158.21
spent per person. That dollar amount is 34 percent higher than the
$117.89 average spent per person via narrow band connections in
November.
In addition to outspending their narrowband
counterparts, broadbanders connect to the Web more frequently and for
longer periods. The average broadband user connected to the net 59 times
in November, 34 percent more frequently than the average narrowband
user, who connected an average of 44 times. Broadband users also visited
online retail sites more frequently, averaging 18 visits in November.
In terms of total time spent online, broadband
users averaged 22 hours a month in November, versus 18 hours averaged by
narrowband user.
Discovery #5:
Over Half the Online Shoppers Research First Before Buying
So, what do
all these numbers mean? It
means, now that the Internet is becoming more convenient and easier to
use, consumers are spending more time on it and more money.
Okay, so all
we have to do is put one of those in-your-face-type-ads up online and
people will buy, right? Wrong. Remember, the Internet consumer is a well-educated,
intelligent individual and according to all the statistics, does his or
her homework before making
a buying decision.
Roughly, half of online shoppers conduct
research online before making an online purchase, according to a
study performed by DoubleClick in conjunction with comScore Networks.
This research was based upon a panel of 1.5 million U.S. Internet
users. Contrary
to conventional wisdom, the study finds most users complete
product-related research weeks ahead of their actual purchases. The study also shows that the research conducted by users was
generic rather than brand-related.
That means, we’re dealing with an open-minded buyer.
Discovery #6: Good
Old-Fashioned Customer Service
The
bottom-line is that the Internet consumer is a well-educated, savvy
purchaser who is using the Internet as a research tool.
He or she is not looking at banner ads (in fact, click-thru rates
on banners has sunk to an all-time low of just 1 percent).
Internet consumers don’t have to click on banners.
They can ignore them and focus on what they’re really looking
for … information to make an informed decision.
What this
means for the average web site owner is that a greater emphasis should
be placed on providing valuable information for potential customers, a
greater emphasis should be placed on trying to help the potential
customer by answering their questions through powerful interactive tools
like online newsletters and workshops and discussion rooms, rather than
simply adding to the avalanche of advertising white noise and posting
yet another banner ad that will inevitably be ignored 99 percent of the
time.
What this means is that your greatest strength is
you … your knowledge, your expertise, your willingness to truly help
your potential customer by guiding them to the right answers.
The savvy Internet buyer is not responding to glitter and hype.
They are responding to helpful information, to good old-fashioned
customer service.
They will respond to you if you make yourself
available.
By the time,
we are 18 years of age, we will have seen over 140,000 TV commercials,
states Jack Trout in his new book "The New Positioning."
We are bombarded everyday with a blizzard of ad messages on TV,
radio, billboards, T-shirts, banner ads, coffee mugs, coupon books, all
shouting in glitz and glamour, trying to out-perform the other for
all-powerful consumer’s valuable attention.
You see, there’s only so much time in the day and not every ad
is going to get seen or heard, most will be edited out.
Our job as consumers is to edit most of these messages out, leaving only
those that have actual value to us as individuals.
Our job as site owners is to provide valuable
information to those individuals we can actually help.
The Goal is to Discover their Needs and to Qualify the Potential
Customer
The successful marketer must be more than a mere traffic magnet.
The smart marketer focuses first on serving the needs not
only of his/her customers, but potential customers, as well.
Qualify your potential customer first by determining their needs
and then by becoming the Expert who can fulfill those needs.
You have to be more than just “in” business.
A company's advertising message must go from being "in"
business to being "the" business of choice. Where people used
to ask "Why should I buy this product or service?" today, that
question has changed to "Why should I buy this product or service
FROM YOUR SITE?" The
answer is always, “because we have already helped you find answers to
your questions. We have proven ourselves of value to you.”
It’s by accomplishing this that trust
and confidence is built with an actual qualified prospect.
Ellis Verdi, once president of the National Retail Advertisers Council,
coined the term "top-of-mind awareness" as the most
effectively provocative form of marketing now available. The idea is to
create, within the subconscious minds of prospects, a psychological
"anchor" that causes people to choose, when a need presents
itself, one company over another instantaneously. The goal, therefore,
is to market one's site in specific ways so that it stays at the top of
their minds at all times.
In other words, since people no longer have the time to shop around,
when they do have a certain need they will go to the site that happens
to be at the top of their minds at that very moment.
Position yourself as an Expert and you will be at the top of
their minds. You will come to mind first because you have already proven
yourself of value to the consumer.
Sounds great, but how do I do that?
First on the list is provide visitors to your site
with a Free Newsletter, have them sign up for it and then email it to
them each month. This is
called an opt-in newsletter. You
can take this concept one step further by tapping into the traffic on
other sites or networks (like NextStopOnline) to sign-up for your
newsletter. Click here
to find out how you can do this.
If you don’t have a newsletter yet, but do have
information to share, have visitors to your site sign-up for Free Info.
This can also be done with visitors to NextStopOnline.
Click here to find out how.
Another great way to position yourself as an expert
is by writing an article and submitting it to publications like Explore
Online (the official news magazine of the NextStopOnline
network) or by writing a column in NextStopOnline’s “Ask the
Experts” section. Both of these options offer levels of marketing that are free
or low-cost.
There are many ways to position yourself as an
expert. When you join
NextStopOnline for free by clicking here, you will be
given access to Knowledge Central, an invaluable treasure-chest of
marketing articles, tips and ideas.
The single biggest mistake that most small
businesses make when advertising, promoting or marketing their business
is that they try to make the sale too quickly.
Compare advertising to dating.
When you first meet someone, you don’t usually jump right away
from saying “Hi” to “Will you marry me?”
No, you usually court for awhile. Go out for coffee or a drink.
Maybe, go to a movie and dinner.
As you get to know one another better and trust is developed, the
relationship becomes more serious, the willingness to take a bigger and
bigger risk grows. Eventually,
the relationship is strong enough and there’s enough trust that the
question, “Will you marry me?” can be asked.
It’s no different in a business relationship.
Instead of asking a total stranger to make a big
commitment, why not start with a less risky option.
Don’t ask them to buy right off the bat! Why not start with a smaller risk? Ask them if they would like a Free Report or a Free
Newsletter.
Several things are accomplished by doing this.
1) you get their name, email address and the answers to a
few qualifying questions about them, their needs and interests
and 2) you get permission to contact them via the Free
Report or Newsletter, which gives you the ability to continue moving
them incrementally towards the sale.
At NextStopOnline.com, we implement this Courtship
Method of selling in everything we do.
Our Ask the Experts section is a beautiful example of this
method in practice. Also,
in our Pa$$Key – 2- Savings section, you can see the Free
Newsletter tool in use.
If you don’t scientifically measure and track
your marketing, then you are flying blind. It’s that simple.
Without measurements, you won’t know what’s working and
what’s not. You could
dump something that is working, thinking that the results are coming
from something that is not. Or
vice versa.
At NextStopOnline.com, we track everything.
We don’t guess at it.
We know.
We’ve spent the past five years developing and
testing and redeveloping and retesting every single idea, concept and
tool that we use to guide Internet surfers to web sites.
There’s no guess-work to it.
The single most
powerful tool at your disposal is your fellow small business owners.
Therefore, make yourself dependent on them and they on you.
Together, you can form a powerful alliance of ideas, solutions,
talents, valuable traffic and more.
Compare for a moment an alliance of web sites to a
wagon train. Imagine a
single wagon taking off across the Old West and attempting to cross the
wild frontier alone, facing unimaginable hardships, treacherous terrain,
dangerous animals, extreme
weather and more. Their
chances of survival would be next to none.
Now, imagine that same wagon crossing the frontier
in a wagon train. Instantly,
their odds improve dramatically. Not
only is their power in numbers, but also talent, ideas, solutions and
fellowship.
The same is true of our alliance of web sites
called NextStopOnline.com. We’re
sort of a cyber wagon train or railway.
NextStopOnline is basically an automatic way to position yourself
to share traffic through a link exchange process with potentially
thousands of related sites.
Sounds great, but will this concept work?
Research shows that the most effective way to
market a web site is through exchanging links with other sites. This is a tried and proven method of Internet marketing. It’s
also until now been a very expensive and time consuming method.
The research recommends it as the method of choice but
conveniently leaves out the incredible amount of time it takes to
contact the literal thousands of sites required to make the link
exchange process work effectively.
That’s where NextStopOnline.com comes in.
By simply clicking a button, your site is automatically
positioned to cross-promote other sites through NextStopOnline.
You promote them. They
promote you.
You don’t have to email anybody.
You don’t have to pay any money, unless you want
to by upgrading to spotlight coverage.
You only have to exchange one link with
NextStopOnline.
It’s that simple.
Sign up for Free: click the signup button and
within seconds you’re part of our network of quality family sites. You’re no longer an island, sitting out there by yourself,
waiting for traffic, hoping visitors will find you. You’re part of a powerful network of quality sites with an
arsenal of Internet marketing tools available to you, such as:
Ask the Experts (position yourself as an expert), Explore!
newsletter (targeted email marketing -- reach your target audience for
less than a cup of coffee per day), Explore Online (tell your
story to an affluent, educated audience of female buyers), the Passport
- 2 - Savings lead generation program
(pay only for qualified leads).
So, now you know the Seven Secrets of Effective
Marketing. You know, it
takes more than a hammer to build a house.
You know that knowledge is power and that technology is your
friend and that it’s not smart to go toe to toe with a giant.
You willingly accept that you are your greatest strength and if
you position yourself as an expert, they will come … looking for
answers. You’ve learned
that it’s not too bright to ask a total stranger to marry you –
it’s better to date first. Go
out for coffee. Maybe, a
movie. Then, ask the big
question – will you buy from me?
We’ve shown you how you can accomplish this for free or at a
very low cost utilizing NextStopOnline.com’s easy-to-use marketing
tools. You’ve discovered
the importance of measuring and tracking
everything. And finally,
you’ve found that being an island is not good. It’s better to be a
wagon train. Or perhaps,
even a train …
And the conductor shouts: “All aboard …”
Sounds great!!!
Let's get started ...
Count
me in. What do I have to do to get started? Just click
here.
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