When I ask my clients and seminar attendees about social media I’m always surprised to hear how few have a proper social media strategy.
Many still believe social media is a fad and is not relevant to their particular industry. But with 60% of UK internet users on Facebook, it’s hard to think of a demographic it isn’t relevant for. There are examples of restaurants, gyms, hotels, estate agents, photographers, dentists and even farmers who have run massively successful social media marketing campaigns. When they work they can deliver unparalleled ROI. Here’s what the stats say…
“74% of small business owners who were early adopters, and have been using social media for years, say it’s helped them close business…” Inc. Magazine.
“[SMEs] with 100 to 500 followers generated 146% more median monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers” eMarketer.
“50% of small businesses say lead generation is biggest benefit of social networking” SocialMediaExaminer.com
“Nearly a quarter of SME owners [in the UK] aged 18-21 see social media as an essential part of marketing, while less then one in ten over the age of forty shared this opinion” WinWeb
With any new technology there are those who embrace it immediately, those who are more cautious and those who resist it completely. Can you believe that there are still some businesses with no website? It was the same pattern when innovations such as mobile phones, computers and the internet arrived. I was one of those resisting social media till about 18 months ago.
Ideally you want to be in the early adopters or early majority region. Invest too early and you will find yourself using an immature technology – it won’t work properly yet, will cost too much and its user base will be too small. Invest too late and you will be playing catch up with your less cautious competitors who are already better educated and established than you.
I would say small business owners just starting to invest in social media now are in the early majority region. By investing in social media I mean writing a strategic plan, dedicating x hrs a week to it, running competitions, outsourcing etc – not just dabbling with Twitter or Facebook.
Hopefully I’ve said enough to convince you that social media marketing is a marketing strategy you should be considering seriously. Next time I will discuss what you need to do to get started, with a step by step guide on social media marketing for SMEs. Leave your comments below and remember if you want to be notified when I publish my next blog post you can subscribe to the blog by clicking here.
After a short hiatus I’m back with more highly-practical business advice for SMEs. There’s plenty more coming in the next few weeks too. I’m currently in the process of writing an ‘SME Social Media Marketing For Dummies’ guide.
This week’s post can be found over at granttree.co.uk. Its about one of my favourite business books The E-Myth Revisited and why highly technical people don’t always get ‘the business side of things.’
Marketing and sales are skills that can be learned, just like any other skill in business. Some believe there is a mystique or knack to sales success. Its true that natural talent plays some role but it’s a long term commitment to learning and self-development that is by far the most influential factor. Those who have successfully grown businesses will all tell you the same thing.
All the mistakes you are making or are about to make have probably been made by others before you. The education is available to you in so many ways now – books, seminars, webcasts, podcasts, blogs and mentors. You just have to go out and find the relevant information.
The faster you learn, the faster you can build your earnings and success. Those who claim they don’t have the time have not made the connection between learning and earning, and have therefore not made the commitment to prioritise their learning time.
These skills need to be mastered like any other technical skill – not delegated, outsourced or left to chance. That takes time and dedicated effort. I spend my time at work helping to facilitate and accelerate this learning by distilling down information found in these resources and coaching further on how this education can be applied practically to a business.
Below I’ve listed three of my favourite educational business books and explained why they’re so valuable:
Little Red Book of Selling:12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness by Jeffrey Gitomer
The best book on sales. I’ve read this book 5 times or more. Its also a simple read with no jargon.
The key principle is how to build trust, relationships, credibility and add value to people so that you never have to sell again – instead people ask to buy from you! Many of the strategies are linked to the psychological and emotional reasons why human beings act the way that they do. When you understand these principles, sales becomes a process of simply helping people to buy.
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
The 1st book I give to any business owner client. It explains the difference between being self employed and owning a real business. A real business is one that works without you because you have put into place high quality systems and a high quality team.
Emotional Capitalists: The New Leaders by Martyn Newman
Fantastic book. Engaging and powerful tool enabling business leaders to apply emotional intelligence competencies to improve performance. This book contains the theories and tools communicated in a straightforward non-technical way.
I was so impressed that I spent 3 days with Martyn, becoming accredited to coach business owners to improve performance by applying the principles of emotional intelligence.
A massive part of your company’s value is contained in the knowledge and expertise of the staff and directors. Recently Google were reportedly offering $500,000 bonuses to mid level developers to stop them moving to Facebook. They clearly see the ideas and knowledge of the people in their business as one of their biggest assets.
You can put in more hours than your competition but ultimately this kind of strategy isn’t scalable or sustainable. It’s usually the entrepreneur that out-thinks their competitor that wins in the end. In other words – work smarter, not harder. The first step in working out how to do this is to get yourself up to speed by asking the experts that have been there before you.
So are you and the others in your business investing enough time, consistently every week, to learn these vital business skills? If anyone has a particular sales or marketing topic they want to learn about, post it in the comments section or on the Facebook group and I will try and recommend some relevant books, seminars and blogs for you. Thanks for reading.
In my previous blog post, I mentioned 5 common sales and marketing mistakes that I’d noticed SME businesses in London were making. Over the next few posts I’m going to be talking further about each one, starting today with failing to properly test and measure marketing campaigns.
Why is this important? Surely we’re all busy running our businesses and we haven’t got time to waste tracking the fine details of our marketing. Wrong! Spending time on marketing techniques that don’t work would be wasting time.
Imagine getting into a plane and you had a peek into the cockpit, only to see none of the complicated looking dials or screens that you’d expect. Nothing, just blank panels The pilots are literally flying blind – how would you feel? Whether you reached your end destination or not would be purely a matter of luck.
Don’t run your business as if you were ‘flying blind’, hoping you make it through on luck alone. Because you’re more than likely to end up crashing.
A great case study on how to do this properly would be my client Andrew, MD at Purely Gadgets. They measure many marketing stats:
· Weekly sales on web · Number of web hits
· Click through rate %
· Incoming calls
· Incoming emails
· Emails replied/resolved
· Number of new prospects added to database
· Customer satisfaction %
· Sales growth %
· Calls unanswered
· Affiliate sales
And many, many more. Yes, these are all trackable.
They are reviewed every week at the team meeting. They know exactly what marketing is working, what needs to be improved and what needs to be stopped immediately.
Did this highly data-driven approach to marketing work for Purely Gadgets? Yes and with massive success – This week they won the prestigious London Business of the Year award for Marketing. What a result and what an example to follow.
So are you flying blind? What extra aspects of your marketing could you be measuring and using to make decisions with? Leave a comment below or let us known on the Facebook group.
I’ve run 8 sales and marketing seminars in 2010 so far. In each one I’ve tried to make the event a two-way discussion and I’ve always encouraged people to openly share their opinions and experiences with the rest of the room. In this post I’m going to be revealing what I’ve learned from the 200+ business owners and entrepreneurs who have shared their concerns about the problems they face in sales and marketing.
The most common issues that seminar attendees bring up can be broken into 6 main areas. Perhaps by seeing what problems other business owners face you can identify areas in which you could improve your business.
1. Testing and measuring marketing results – very few knew their marketing Return On Investment % (ROI%). I can’t stress enough how important this is. We all know that 80% of marketing doesn’t work. By knowing which 80% you can focus all your time and resources on the remaining 20% that DOES work.
2. Education – Marketing and sales are skills that can be learned. They make the difference between your business standing still and your business growing. They need to be learned and mastered like any other technical skill – not simply delegated, outsourced or left to chance (or what some would claim are the economic conditions dictating their success)
3. Specific strategies – The specific strategies that business owners flag up time after time include USP’s & guarantees, strategic partnerships and referrals. I’ve blogged extensively about each of these topics and you can read more by following the links on the right hand side of the page. If you want to ask a question post it on the Facebook page where myself and the other London business owners in the group will be happy to offer you some advice.
4. Social Media – most had not implemented a meaningful or consistent strategy. Social media marketing means more than occasionally dabbling with Facebook or Twitter. It means thinking strategically, setting milestones, testing and measuring. The biggest challenges people faced were lack of time and lack of knowledge. As a marketing tool social media is here to stay and it’s something you shouldn’t ignore.
5. Video testimonials – I asked each group how many currently have a video testimonial. Only 2 people out of 200+ attendees had one. If you’re looking for a way to truly differentiate both your company and the way it markets itself, this has got to be it.
6. Sales conversion rate – almost everyone wanted to improve their customer numbers by improving sales conversion rate (from prospect to paying customer), yet typically less than 20% were measuring and tracking this figure. This is the most important key performance indicator for anyone involved in selling. If you don’t know what it is, you can’t focus on the weaknesses in your sales process and you can’t work out how to fix them.
The final seminar of 2010 is scheduled for December 3rd, further information can be found here. If you want to attend make sure you get your tickets well in advance. This is a popular event and seats do get filled up quickly.
After Google YouTube is the most used search engine in the world, yet why do so few businesses use video to promote their services or showcase their happy customers. Of the 39 Businesses I have coached over the last 4 years, only 1 has a video testimonial so far.
I’ve just had client testimonial videos shot last week and am eagerly awaiting the results. So why bother with video testimonials:
· Video is a stronger communication tool than the written word, due to the added dimensions of voice tonality, facial expressions etc.
· Video therefore provides a greater level of emotional connection with the viewer, which leads to a higher sales conversion rate
· Its cheaper than people think – a good quality video can be shot for much less than it could be a few years ago
· Video testimonials feel more believable than written testimonials. Prospects are more likely to trust that they are real and genuine testimonials.
· Its a source of differentiation and competitive advantage – assuming you get in quick before your competitors try it!
· Provides a higher level of customer commitment and loyalty than a written testimonial. We’ll save the psychology behind this statement for another day
So here’s your chance to be proactive and creative with your marketing… and have fun too! What do you think?
Perhaps you already have testimonials from happy customers – fantastic! But is there more you could be doing? This week I’m going to be looking at 3 things: the content of your testimonials, how to use them as part of your marketing strategy and what medium is the best for communicating their message.
1) Quality – What are your testimonials saying?
Not all testimonials are the same. For instance the typical “company x did a great job and we were very satisfied” isn’t an attention grabbing and convincing testimonial. Are prospects going to rush to phone you because of those words?
Its much better to ask customers to fill out a testimonial where they are answering 2 or 3 key questions that explain the buying decision they went through and how they overcame any fears they might have had. When a prospect then reads the testimonial they have clear answers to any questions that are causing them to hesitate from buying. Here are some examples:
· Why did you choose us?
· What have been the benefits of using our product/service?
· What would you say to anyone considering using our product/service?
2) Marketing – who knows about your testimonials?
There are so many obvious ways to market your testimonials. Most businesses only use a few of them.
· Website home page and separate testimonial pages
· Customer letter – printed and laminated
· CD or DVD
· Framed in your office
· Shop window
· Social media pages
· Strategic partner website
· Included in copy for ad campaign
3) Communication – how are you communicating your testimonial?
Most Businesses have brief written testimonials that perhaps appear on the company website. However the written word cannot express the power and meaning nearly as well as the spoken word.
This is where video is proving to be so powerful. Not only is the message clearer to understand, but the visual element adds the speakers emotion and non-verbal signals, making it a more compelling message.
Additionally a potentially more emotive method could be the “live” testimonial. This is where a customer describes their experience to a prospect live in person. I have used this technique at the end of seminars and it also gives others the chance to ask questions and understand more about the benefits.
I will be exploring a few of my favourite tips with examples in my next post. What do you think of these ideas? Have you tried any recently?
This one is a bit cheeky but it makes an important point. As coaches we run many seminars across the UK. One of my colleagues has known a business owner for the last 3 years and in that time has been consistently marketing his seminars to him with the goal of getting him to attend, but with no luck. This is a highly respected colleague who’s successfully coached many businesses, yet this business owner never felt the need to attend.
In one of life’s little twists of fate, the business owner’s accountant registered for one of my seminars. His accountant then asked him to come along too – and he agreed straight away!
What caused him to change his mind?
The accountant was being coached by me. All he said to his client was that he needed to be at the seminar and learn from the information which would definitely help his business. This short testimonial was enough to overcome 3 years of sales resistance!
Testimonials work. They sell your product far more effectively than you or your team ever can.
So, do you have testimonials and how are you using them?
As ever, we’ll explore in more detail over the coming weeks.
Any business must have a consistent stream of new leads in order to grow. Many focus on lead generation for a few months, stop when they acquire new customers, then re-start when the work dries up! Sound familiar? This peak and trough pattern fails to build growth because the marketing isn’t consistent.
I’ve established that many businesses are not consistent with their lead generation due to lack of time, cash, skills etc.
Referrals usually require no investment and relatively little time each week, especially compared to other common lead generation techniques such as networking, strategic partnerships or even social media. These are all great strategies, but they’re “slow burners” usually taking months or even years to get results from. If you need instant results, referrals provide that. Plus there’s the huge untapped potential of referrals – most only scratch the surface compared to the number of referrals you could be getting.
The time required is even less when your referral process is systemised – eg. you may use pre-printed referral cards, a referral script, train a team member to ask or design a customer feedback form that asks for referrals.
So as you’ve probably gathered over the last few weeks, I’m a huge fan of proactively seeking referrals in return for the great service that you provide.
I’m challenging my blog readers to suggest a better way of attracting fast, high quality leads? What do you think? Do you agree that referrals are the answer or not? Fire away here on this blog and I promise I’ll respond to any ideas. The challenge is on…
We’ve established from the previous post that there is much more potential in referrals than most business owners realise. However aside from thinking laterally, or in some cases at all, about how many referrals you could get there may be other factors limiting the potential of your referral strategy. When it comes to the moment of asking, does something in your conscious or subconscious stop you? What could those reasons be?
1) Do you really believe your product or service is good enough? Just think about that for a moment. Do you always ask, or does something happen during sale/delivery that stops you. This is crucial… if your service wasn’t of consistent quality you will know it and you will back down at that crucial moment.
2) Do you know how to ask for a referral?
Many I coach are not sure how to approach this:
- Verbally
- Via a feedback system
- Through your website
For most it will be verbally, in which case have you scripted how to ask so that you can do so with confidence?
3) Is the cost of referrals stopping you?
Some believe that they should pay commissions to secure referrals. Yet that goes against basic human psychology and the law of reciprocation. If someone receives outstanding service, then they will naturally reciprocate by telling others about that positive experience. We call them ‘raving fans’. The receiving of a commission does not facilitate this as they would have done so anyway had you not paid.
If any of these reasons apply to you, please let me know in the comments section below and tell us what you’ve decided to do about it!
