How Can I Get More Advertisers For My Free Newspaper?

April 2, 2008ServicesJay

About a year ago, I started publishing a monthly tabloid size newspaper that covers all the arts-entertainment-fun stuff in certain part of a rural Midwest state. It covers 10 counties and is a free distribution of about 10,000 copies per month.

Our publication is full color offers advertising about 1/3 of the price of our competition’s b/w rates. The paper is fantastic and we hear rave reviews from all the people that pick it up. It is distributed in about 100+ locations.

In a small population rural area of the Midwest, our ad prices are very affordable ($220’ish for 1/4 page), but for the ma and pa stores that are around here, they can’t spend that kind of money. Would I be further ahead to do something that is like a $30 business card ad with black ink on colored 11 x 17 copy paper with arts, entertainment, etc. and make $900 per town, per month (or bi-monthly) and do it in 10-15 area towns? This would eliminate the need for full color printing ($1,500+ monthly) and we could just utilize the copier in house to do it for much less.

Or, would I be better to continue to keep offering what we are doing now, but just keep working on the sales and be happy with the sales that we are currently getting or get in the future from the bigger companies?

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Jay’s Answer:

Another idea: educate the potential advertisers. Create a study of your existing advertisers. Ask them to do ad tracking for you (track the number of calls + in store visits that are a result of the ad). You may need to give your existing advertisers an incentive to do this work for you.

The result is that you will be able to say: For an ad of this size, this type of store generated N traffic.

When selling ad space to mom-and-pops, you’ll be able to ask them to multiply "N" by the average sale they make, and it should become an issue of ROI, not emotion.

Unscrewed: The Consumer’s Guide To Getting What You Paid For

April 1, 2008Book ReviewsJay

Unscrewed: The Consumer’s Guide To Getting What You Paid For (by Ron Burley) provides some strong tactics for resolving customer service problems where you know you’re in the right. It’s a great way to learn how to market your needs to an organization, guerrilla marketing, and also how to improve your own business’s customer service.

Ron drew upon his background as a broadcast journalist to create 5 key strategy principles:

The Principle (“A company will do only what is in its financial self-interest”). Therefore, if you have a problem, you need to show the company that satisfying your needs is in their best interest.
The Purpose (“The purpose is to reclaim money, assets, or equity while minimizing time and effort”). It’s not about getting (emotionally) even, it’s simply a business transaction.
The Promise (“It will cost much more to ignore me than to take care of me, and I am willing to spend an unlimited amount of tie and energy to get what I’m due”). You’ll be making yourself into a nuisance for the expressed purpose of ensuring other consumers won’t become victimized.
The Power Tools (“Technologies that you use to leverage your position with your opponent”).
The Plan (“…is designed to recover what you are due; it includes an acceptable goal, adversary research, a specific strategy, and an honest assessment of the situation”). The plan matches the situation with your resources to get the result you’re after.

Each of his strategies are based on an in-your-face little-crazy approach. If you threaten a business person with a lawsuit, bodily harm, or to damage their reputation, you’ve eliminated the opportunity for a quick resolution. Instead, you call upon your Free Speech Rights to tell people about your true story. A zealot is hard to ignore.

Each strategy is detailed using a real-life story. He gives a background to the problem, his solution, the result, and an examination of the specific of why exactly the solution worked.

How Aikido Can Save Your Business Marketing

April 1, 2008Book Reviews, Creative Business IdeasJay

Aikido & Creative Marketing Strategy Aikido is a Japanese martial art based on “blending with your opponents’ energy”. As I learned during my 12+ years of training on the mat, victory over others is a matter of physical and mental training. In business, you need to win over your customer prospects and stand out from your competition.

Ground Yourself/Center. Masters are confident and aware of their own expertise. They also know what they don’t know, creating partnerships and learning opportunities to improve their limitations.
Relax. Focus on your goal, but don’t try to be able to do everything well. Do your homework, then let your knowledge pick your best choices through grounded intuition. Know how you use the tools at your disposal, and use them optimally.
Awareness. Know your competition. Don’t be afraid of them. Pay attention to what they are doing and their intentions. Know your own relationship to your business environment.
Extend. Reach out to your customer, but don’t lose your own business “center”. Keep your core values intact, and you’ll be able to authentically offer your services.
Don’t Resist. See what your customer is asking of you, and adjust to their needs. If what you’re doing isn’t working, stop struggling and be willing to experiment with something else.
Pay Attention. Great marketing is about leading, not reacting. Don’t try to play “catch up”, seize new opportunities and anticipate needs.
Connect To Something Larger. See the big picture of what your customers need and how your offering fits into that image. From your customer’s perspective, it’s not all about you, it’s about their needs.
Lose To Win. A great strategist knows when to give (“lose”) to get (“win”). By focusing on a business strategy that builds on your skills, you can adjust your short-term actions to achieve your long-term goals.

Martial arts and marketing mastery both require continually improving and practicing. You must constantly be willing to seek out new information, try it out, and see what works (and why it works). Just because someone offers a technique that works for them doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for you or your business. If you don’t make mistakes, you won’t learn. Seek out senseis (teachers) to get feedback on your practice.

If you’re interested in learning more about martial arts strategy, I recommend “The Art of Learning“. It’s a fascinating introspection of the training necessary to produce martial arts “miracles”, written by a former chess master who became a world champion at Push Hands.

10 Rules For Great Taglines

April 1, 2008Creative Business Ideas, Names + Taglines, Starting Outstrategy, wordsJay

Taglines A tagline or a slogan is a phrase (for example, “Just Do It™”) intended to get “stuck” in prospects’ heads. The tagline should be short and memorable, like a great piece of haiku.

The following are my rules for creating great taglines:

Don’t be “cute”. Cute often is seen as “cheesy”.
Do focus on the benefit to the customer.
Don’t repeat any of the words in your company’s name.
Do spend time with a thesaurus.
Don’t use more than 7 words (human short term memory limit).
Do use short words.
Don’t use well-worn phrases.
Do use an emotion word to invoke the benefit (pain, pleasure, safety, etc.)
Don’t think a tagline replaces good marketing strategy.
Do ask your existing best clients what they think of your tagline.

The best way to get something to “stick” is to capture your potential customer’s problem and pain and show the solution. Don’t write a tagline from the perspective of how great you are – no one really cares.

Let’s say I’m looking to hire the best Realtor that I can find to sell my house. I’m looking for someone who: has a proven track record, is a great listener, is a great negotiator, and can get me a great deal. Period.

I filter every Realtor that I meet against my list. Which of the following Realtor taglines would be most likely to appeal to me?

Your Realtor With Heart
Finding Your Dream Home
Your Realtor For Life
I Know Your Neighborhood
The Hardest Working Realtor You’ll Ever Meet
Selling Homes Is All I Do

How Can I Get More Contracts For My Freight Forwarding Company?

March 31, 2008ServicesJay

It’s almost 1 year that I have started a freight forwarding company, and I have pumped in almost half a mil but I haven’t broken even yet. We are international freight company and we ship everything to everywhere, but our goal is getting contract from manufactures for import or export, the problem is I don’t know what exactly should I say while contacting them so it would attract them for a meeting?

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Jay’s Answer: Instead of calling new accounts to sell them, call them to find out how (or if) they use freight forwarding. If they don’t use it, then you have a great opportunity to teach them how teaming up with you can be a big money-maker for them. If they do use it, ask who they use, what they like about it, and what it would take them to switch. Don’t try to sell them just yet. Just collect the data initially, and keep in touch with them as you move toward their "tipping point to switch".

How Can We Find New Markets For Our Engineering Design Software?

March 28, 2008ServicesJay

We are the successful distributors of a well known brand in Engineering Design Automation and our products are accepted more in the markets at national level. We are in the process of building a team to create new markets for obvious reasons. We invite your creative/innovative suggestions on making this project more successful.

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Jay’s Answer: There are 2 main directions to go in: extending your existing market (by offering add-on products/services) or building new markets (by leveraging/repackaging existing products/services in new ways).

To extend your existing market: survey your users to find out what software/process they use before & after using your product/service. If there’s a common theme, consider either developing your own solution to that product/service or co-marketing with those companies to build the client base. Included in this strategy is offering classes/consulting for using/applying your tools.

In building new markets, this includes not only different niches, but different countries, and different computer hardware. Consider different industries, different sized companies, etc. Look for competitor companies, and see who their clients are. Might they be yours someday? If you’re planning to woo existing competitors’ clients to you, make sure your software stands up to a SWOT analysis and can import from their format. Don’t forget that localization can open up new markets through a simple process of translation of software.

What Is A Good Tagline For A Graphic Designer?

March 27, 2008Names + TaglinesJay

I am a graphic designer. I am trying to come up with a slogan – how does this sound "We design for you with passion!" or "We design with passion for you!". I am your typical creative type, very passionate about my work and customer service!

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Jay’s Answer: People don’t want passion, they want results. They want to know that you’re easy to work with, produce great results quickly (and on budget), and intuitively can convey their minds’ eye idea into something tangible. As you know, people don’t know what they need until they see it.

Your tagline ideas suffer from two problems: 1) the mention of "passion" and 2) repeating the word "design" (which is already in your business name). Taglines should focus on the benefit of your services.

Therefore, consider some of these taglines:

Your Ideas + My Designs = Great Results
Get More Customers With Better Graphics
Enhancing Your Business Image
I Listen. I Create. You Look Good.
I Make Your Business Look Good
When Clip-Art Just Won’t Do

What Is A Domain Name Worth?

March 26, 2008eMarketingJay

We are starting a business for which people will get a lot of information via our website. The problem is, the name that we want to use is parked. We paid Godaddy to give us an estimate of what it might cost to have this name with .com, .net etc. The .com name, they estimate could cost between $2,000 and $9,000.

My question is, have there been any studies done where we can see the validity of spending this kind of money in order to secure a name. In other words, is it going to be a worthwhile investment to secure the name? My gut tells me it is because this is the name people naturally think of without any prompting when we tell them what we are all about. I’m assuming that we eventually would educate potential buyers about any name we choose. After all, what does Pepsi mean? BUT, it also seems to me that it would be so much easier and FASTER to name ourselves what people naturally would call us and use to find us on the web.

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Jay’s Answer: If the name wasn’t taken, and it’s the name people think of off-the-bat, I’d suggest taking it.

Given it has a $2-5K cost, you need to evaluate if it’s worth it to your business long-term. If your competitor got this URL, how would that affect you?

I recommend to my clients that they pick names that are easy to spell and remember. That’s what sticks in people’s brains when they’re talking to each other. If you are a for-profit company, get a .com suffix.

Names are what you make of them. Ideally, the URL matches the company name. If not, people who type in: yourcompany.com and get a different website may wind up at your competitors’.

What Is A Good Tagline For A Southern California Realtor?

March 25, 2008Names + TaglinesJay

I am developing a new brochure and need a new tagline for this changing real estate market in Southern California. I would like an "action" tagline and have come up with the following and don’t love them:

I am very professional and offer a lot of service- I have been told I am much more of a consultant vs a hard core sales person. Below are my potential taglines:

Focused on Results
Bringing your Dreams Home
Making it Happen
Making Real Estate Happen
Helping you Move in a New Direction

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Jay’s Answer: People hire real estate experts for two things: to sell and to buy property. Buyers are looking to hire someone who can help them find their property quickly and negotiate a great price. Sellers are looking to get the fastest sale, with the fewest restrictions, at the best price.

Key questions :

Are you targeting buyers or sellers? While you can certainly provide service to either market, who do you want as your clients?
Your website indicates you’re focused on homes (not commercial) property, right?
All realtors claim great service, that they can do it all, etc. What have you done that backs up this claim?

Remember that a tagline hopes to capture the essence of what you do in very few words, so it can stick in someone’s mind. Answer the key questions to create an on-target, benefits-based tagline. Make sure that the key concerns of the buyer/seller are also addressed.

Here is a quick analysis of your potential taglines:

Focused on Results – Results of what? Isn’t everyone?
Bringing your Dreams Home – A clever play of "dream home", suitable for a buyer. "Bringing" is vague, and it doesn’t help tell the reader what you do.
Making it Happen – What is IT? Very vague.
Making Real Estate Happen – Very vague.
Helping you Move in a New Direction – Another clever play on words, but it doesn’t really say anything.

How Can I Sell More Bidets?

March 24, 2008Products, PublicityJay

Our bidets fit on any existing toilet and can dramatically reduce the need for toilet paper. I have approached hospitals, nursing homes, decorative plumbing showrooms, and contractors with little success. Our sales are abysmal. We have the best looking bidet out there our price is right in the middle compared to our competitors and still we are dragging. I have approached the medical field etc. We even have high rankings under all the major search engines. Please help!!!!!

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Jay’s Answer: If you have high search rankings, how’s your traffic? How many people search for bidet monthly?

A bidet is a product that’s ahead of its time in the US. Many people haven’t seen one, and few have used one. If they haven’t used it, odds are they won’t want one. Therefore, having people have the experience of using one would be ideal.

Start with a niche that needs your product: people suffering with hemorrhoids. A bidet is ideal for them. Start locally – your local proctologists, colon specialists, etc. Perhaps install one in their office bathrooms, etc.