(Photo by Patrick Hoesly)

It’s too easy to think (and hope) that there’s one-size-fits-all marketing advice. Your marketing strategy needs to reflect many aspects of your business. But one aspect that’s often forgotten is: How many sales do you need?

If you’re a general contractor, you don’t need a hundred (or even ten) clients – you likely need just a couple – since each “sale” will take you 6 months (or more) to satisfy. If you’re selling widgets (or smart phone applications), then you may need to sell tens of thousands to earn a sufficient income. These extreme examples would need different marketing systems (with a different lifetime value for these different customers).

If you need a large volume of clients, then you’re better off with a low-touch approach: email blasts, Facebook, Twitter, a well-stocked website, and easy-to-understand examples of your product or process. You don’t have enough time in the day to send everyone a personal email or phone call – and it’s likely not worth your time to do so. It is worth investing in tools to increase your online conversions – since you can scale the traffic to a website through advertising, but need to ensure that your visitors will become customers.

If you need to gain just a few clients, then you’re better off with both a low-touch and high-touch approach (personalized emails, follow up phone calls, personalized packets, and face-to-face consultations). For example, law firms routinely use pay-per-click advertising (low-touch) to find (high-worth) clients – and they routinely pay a lot of money for high-value clicks (for example, the cost for a PPC click for “new mexico mesothelioma lawyer” is over $400). The lead time is likely long for high-value clients, so it’s important that you start looking for your next client as soon as you get a new client. It may feel like you’re on a never-ending treadmill, but it’s better to keep a constant system in-place than trying to do a “big push”.

Remember: your marketing investment should be in proportion to the number of people and the value of each of these to your bottom line.

(Photo by Victor1558)

If you have an idea of a new product or service you want to offer, it doesn’t mean that your prospective customers will want it or care. So, before you start spending significant time & money, identify a niche and schedule a series of informational interviews to get the answers to the following four questions.

Remember that the goal of an informational interview is to learn by listening. An informational interview isn’t a sales call (but it may result in a sale). It’s not a long-winded presentation (in fact, limit the interview to ten minutes – and don’t go beyond the time unless it’s a mutually beneficial conversation). There’s no gimmick. It’s one-on-one since you want to hear individual voices, and not collective ones (i.e., it’s not a focus group).

Here are the key high-yield questions to ask:

1. Are they aware of the benefits of your offering? While you may know why what you’re selling is dramatically better, it doesn’t mean that the benefits you’re focusing on matter. So, first ask if they know what you know about your (unique) benefits. You’re not asking, “Do you believe that my offering has these benefits?” If they reject the benefits as useless or not valuable to them, your interview is basically over. If they’re interested in learning about the benefits, offer to share the knowledge – but do so quickly. If your interviewees don’t care about your benefits, rethink your marketing approach.

2. When would they use it? How often? Just because they know about the benefit doesn’t mean they personally want the benefit. So, qualify the potential sale. By knowing when they’d use it you know how to market it best. And knowing the frequency you have the makings of computing a lifetime value of this potential customer/market.

3. Would they use it in-house, or offer it as an add-on to their offerings?  If your offering fits into your niche’s business model, it’s possible that what you’re offering is something they (or you) might be able to sell to their customers (as something value-added).

4. Would it be okay for me to contact you again? Your goal is to keep the door open for further communication.

By showing respect and interest during your interviews, you’ll establish yourself as someone worth staying connected to.

(Photo by Jukka Zitting )

If you’re trying to capture some of your competitor’s clients, the first step is to make your marketing plug-compatible (your offering can replace the competition’s offering as-is) – rather than trying to introduce your “better way to achieve the same goal”.

No matter how much better your new thing is, if people have to initially spend a lot of time adjusting to it, they likely won’t buy it. If a new smart phone is hard to use, people will complain and won’t recommend it to their friends. If you have a better application to manipulate numbers from spreadsheets, make sure that your software can import all major spreadsheets. Your über-fidelity headphones that require a different headphone jack won’t cause the world to dump their music players to buy your headphones.

As a minimum, provide a seamless migration experience, so they can trade the old for the new, without feeling any initial “pain”. This migration won’t immediately provide access your new game-changing features, but it will make sure that your prospective client’s investment in the “old” technology isn’t lost. In fact, you’re giving your customers a huge gift: a path to the future.

Only once people have migrated, gently provide the necessary education to have them benefit from your new offering. You don’t want them to invest their time and money migrating only to find that they wound up where they began. You want them to be able to have the best of both worlds – continued access to their past (“comfortable”) system and an opportunity to do something unimaginable in the near future.

New may be better. But old is safer. Build a bridge between the two for your marketing success.

(Photo by Sami)

Even if you’re scared to balance your checkbook, to create a sustainable business you need to be able to calculate some basic business variables. Without this knowledge, you have no idea if your marketing is working, if your business is profitable, or if your pricing is reasonable.

To start with, you need to understand your COG (cost of goods). How much does it cost you to produce that widget? There’s the cost to create the widget (or purchase it) – your hard costs (if you create 10 widgets, it likely costs you ten times as much to make as the first one) Lurking in the background are your soft costs: utilities, rent, insurance, payroll, etc. By knowing your COG, you can determine if your pricing reflects your costs.

Your next variable is COA (cost of acquisition). How much money does it take to get a new client? How many pay-per-click campaigns? How many newsletters? How many phone calls? How many magazine advertisements? How many TV placements? You can’t start by copying someone else’s COA – their effectiveness depends not only on their actions but also on their offer.

Finally, determine your LTV (lifetime value of a customer) – how much money will your new customer likely give you over the span of time they use your product or services? If you charge $25/month for a service, and they use your services for a year (and then “graduate”), their LTV is $25 x 12 = $300.

A sustainable business requires a LTV > 4 * COA – or in English -“the amount of money your average client gives you over their relationship with you must be at least four times your cost to acquire them”. You need to have a well-funded sales cycle to ensure ongoing profitability. If you seek investors, they’ll know that if they loan you more money to acquire customers, they can rightly expect a clear return on their investment from your LTV.

If your LTV is out-of-whack with your COA, then consider either: raising your prices (to increase your LTV) or reducing your COA (by increasing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts). You don’t need to be a math wizard – but you do need to be money smart.

(Photo by Dick Unhe)

The next time you find yourself arguing with a prospective employee, manager, or client, stop. Even if you win the argument, it’s likely you’ve lost something else in the exchange.

It’s fine to disagree. It’s fine to argue the merits of something. But when the argument escalates to being between two people, something else entirely is going on.

1) Spend the time to deeply understand what your “opponent” is saying and needing. Make sure they understand that you know. Then, instead of making them wrong, find something that you both have in common. A common goal. A common win. Then, find a way to achieve it, even if it means that you don’t win, and they don’t exclusively win.

2) Identify what they need to feel like they “win”. Identify what you need. See how you can take care of both of you. This is the art of the skillful mediator (or martial artist). If the only choices appear to be “A” or “B”, there’s likely a “C” that requires a bit more savvy to detect. Find it. Make it clear that you’re trying to find a solution other than the black and white options you both are presenting.

3) Ensure that you keep the discussion about things, not personalities. It’s easier to keep an argument from escalating if you don’t feel that you’re being attacked. So, if an argument shifts to being about you and them, shift it back to the thing that you’re discussing. If ultimately the issue is about personalities, then stop arguing and start listening. People don’t argue as a first step in problem-solving. If they’ve escalated to an argument, it means that likely one of you isn’t listening. Make sure it isn’t you.

You may win a battle short-term, but you’ll be much better off working towards a shared detente, and perhaps even mutual success.

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Whether you’re being a good Samaritan on the road or writing a marketing brochure, there’s an art to knowing how to give good clear directions. And it begins by knowing more than just where someone wants to go.

Since directions need to be based on the goal of the listener (and their skills), you must deeply understand their needs: where exactly do they want to go (their problem), when do they need to get there (their timeline), what restrictions they may have (time or money resources), and their familiarity with the territory (their skill level).

If you give detailed information to beginners (or those truly lost), you will only make them more confused and frustrated. For beginners, you need to make the steps direct, easily verified, and with clear landmarks. You want a “beginner” to feel confident that your directions will take them where they want to go. In fact, have them repeat back your directions to you in their own words to have them internalize/visualize your suggested route. Once underway, you’ll want them to remember how good your directions were, so if they get lost again, they’ll look for you.

But if you give simplified directions to experts (or those who know the area), you will only insult them. For experts, find out what’s missing from their (mental) map of the area, and help them to complete it. Explain how this piece fits into their worldview, and let them ask further questions. Respect their expertise and you’ll earn their respect.

Giving great directions is like great marketing strategy. You begin by asking, then listening, and offering your passionate expertise to help others. You don’t tell someone that where they want to go is a bad choice and instead tell them about a better destination (unless they ask). You want them to achieve their goals with the least effort and with deep thanks to you.

(Photo by Spirit-Fire )

You just had a brainstorm of an idea. It’s obviously a winner, and yet no one has seen what you’ve seen. So before you bet everything on this “sure-thing”, here’s what you might want to do.

1) Identify who will pay you NOW for what you’re planning. Not who might be interested. Not who might give you some money. Who will eagerly pay you cash for your new idea? You might say, “But if I tell people what my brilliant idea is, someone is likely to steal it from me!” While it’s possible, it’s quite unlikely. Ideas are the easy part. Putting the ideas into action is the hard part. Warning #1: You are having trouble identifying prospective customers.

2) Identify what your prospective customers buying today. If you’re thinking that your new business’s success is based on stealing customers from the established leader – be careful. The “old guys” may be myopic, but they are likely fierce competitors with more resources that you have. Warning #2: You are betting against the house – and the house wins over the long run.

3) What can you do that others simply can’t? If you’re planning to attack a market leader (see step #2), identify what you can do that clearly doesn’t fit with their business model. If they sell to Fortune 100, then target smaller businesses. If they only handle big projects, then specialize with small projects. Can you add personal value-added services? Warning #3: You are planning to do something similar to your competition, but with a slight twist.

4) How can you build a network that trusts you? If you don’t have a strong network already, build it first. You’ll need to leverage them when you have something ready to market. Then, start to ask questions, listen to their answers, and learn from the dialogue. Building a trusted network takes time. Warning #4: Your marketing strategy is “If I build it, people will find me and want to buy from me.”

5) Test your big idea in smaller pieces. If what you’re planning hasn’t been done before, odds are it’ll take a considerable amount of your resources. So, instead of building the “final product” first, build a small version of it. Call it an “alpha test”. Can you get people interested enough in trying it? Can you get people interested enough to pay for it in its current state? Many successful companies started with a “big idea” and during their testing of the “small pieces” discovered that the “big idea” wasn’t that marketable, but their “small piece” was applicable to a different problem. Warning #5: You can’t break down your big idea into small chunks.

If you’re starting a new business or initiative and see that no one else has staked their claim – you could be a genius or an idiot. Don’t be the last one to figure out which you are.

(Photo by Theresa Thompson)

It’s not enough to have something that people like. It’s not enough to have something that people are lined up to buy. It’s not enough to be seen as the “better choice”. Since we can all be ultimately replaced, you need to provide a service or skill that’s clearly indispensable.

Initially you’ve been taught to identify a niche, clarify the niche’s major “pain points”, and solve them. That’s what everyone knows. And it’s good enough to get you started. But if you’ve seen success in the niche, odds are others have also. And they’ll be eagerly trying to leapfrog your offering.

Be invaluable. If you’re invaluable, you’re clearly the go-to person for solving the problem. If you’re an employee, being invaluable equates to job security (no one else could do the job as well as you). If you’re a business owner, it’s the opportunity to market yourself as the go-to person (especially, if others have failed trying to solve these problems). You’re the undisputed expert with a long list of testimonials of happy customers.

Be humble. It’s easy to think that being invaluable means you have permission to lord over your customers. Don’t forget that people aren’t truly interested in you. They’re interested in what you can do for them. Keep your focus on the benefit you keep providing (that no else does/can). Others may be able to replace you, but make it clear that that’s second-best. Focus your marketing message that your services (or products) are more efficient and more proven (and less risky).

Be flexible. As you work your way up the marketing “food chain”, don’t get lured into thinking that being invaluable is enough. Remember that others have come before you thinking similar thoughts, and it’s likely you don’t remember their names or products. Keep learning from your competition, your customers, and other markets. Be willing to be wrong. Be willing to go back to school to keep your learning fresh.

(Photo by woodleywonderworks)

I recently heard the story about a person who teaches conflict resolution classes to high school teens. In one of his classes, he asked the boys if they would like to learn a line that will always “work” to “get” a girl. They were extremely interested, and leaned in for the magic words.

He said, “So, what do you think?” They were dumbfounded, expecting to hear something about commenting someone on their looks. But what creates a connection with someone (especially with someone used to being talked at) is the opportunity to be listened to.

In your own marketing, if you’re talking at someone, you’re likely to not get the results you’re looking for. We’re all busy. We’re all behind on our to-do lists. We’re often too short-term focused to achieve long-term goals. We’re head down looking at our internet screens. But underneath it all, we’re all human. And as humans, we want to be “seen”. We want people to really take the time to understand what we’re thinking and needing. And ultimately, we want help to achieve our goals.

The next time you talk with a prospective client, include their perspective in your sales pitch. Ask them what they think about an issue/problem and really listen to their answer. The truth may not be what they said, but what values/needs are underneath their question. Being a good listener involves more than simply nodding your head sagely. It requires actively paying attention to all the signals, asking leading questions, and patiently waiting for the deeper connection. You’re not a therapist, but you are providing a therapeutic service. Give your (prospective) clients the true gift of  dialoguing with you.

Remember: You can’t sell a solution if you don’t really understand what the problem is.