Marketing in Tough Times: Part 3
We wrap up our conversation with John Jantsch on today’s Bigg Success Show. John is the author of the fantastic book, Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide. So far, we’ve discussed:
Part I: getting closer to customers and building your business with strategic partnerships
Part II: how to add value to improve customer loyalty
Let’s continue …
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John, what if you’re a business that’s been around since … 1942. You’ve gained trust, you’ve been reliable, but you notice customers trying out your new competitor. What do you need to do?
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One thing that’s happening, just like you described, is that the way in which people are finding companies and the way they are getting information has forever changed because of this little thing called the Internet. I have found that companies may be doing a great job, but they have not embraced the new ways in which people want to get information – the Internet, blogs, search engines, e-mail marketing, and mobile marketing. If you’re not at least trying to understand how your market is changing, you probably are going to get left behind. So when people ask me what they should be doing in 2009, I typically say to embrace the web and create web presence as opposed to thinking that the web site you put up five years ago is good enough.
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It’s interesting … I was talking with a business owner not long ago whose customer base is 45 and older, very well-to-do and educated. His perception is that his customers aren’t on the Internet because they’re older. But that’s no longer true.
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No, and another misperception, of course, is that “I’m just selling stuff here in town. I don’t need to sell stuff on the World Wide Web.” I read a statistic out of Forrester the other day that said that 83 percent of adults are now going online to search locally for products and services. That’s shoes, legal services, and the plumber across town … as opposed to buying a sweater at some online store across the world.
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In times like these, advertisers are hungry for that revenue too. With your competition cutting back, isn’t this an opportunity to really stand out in a way you can’t in good times?
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Well, I think there are a couple of opportunities. One is that there are deals to be had in print and broadcast advertising. I’m not saying that we want to prey on bad times necessarily. But there are opportunities to buy some lower cost advertising right now, to the tune of ten cents on the dollar. But the thing that I would focus on, in addition to getting closer to your customer, is building a systematic approach to converting leads. In some cases, this doesn’t cost anything. But in most cases it pays the greatest dividend. One thing that happens in good times is that the phone is ringing a lot. You get a little bit lazy. Sometimes you say, “Hey, I could be there on Tuesday … maybe” or “Call me back again. We’re a little bit busy right now.” We get some bad selling habits, bad lead conversion habits. When the number of leads starts drying up, then it becomes really, really important – when you do get those opportunities – that you turn them into customers. I’ve found that, by creating a systematic approach that really focuses the entire brand on making every sales and marketing touch a positive one, it can dramatically impact the percentage of leads that you’re closing.
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And you have all sorts of systems that small business owners might be interested in – from how to get more referrals to creating a marketing system.
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Yeah, in essence that’s what Duct Tape Marketing is. Duct Tape Marketing is a brand that is meant to represent very simple, effective and affordable marketing tips, tactics and tools. Essentially it is a system that says, “If you follow these principles and go from Point A to Point Z – then decide that you’re going to do it again next year, but you’ll do it bigger and better – small business owners start to realize that marketing is a system. It’s not an event or the idea of the week, which is how most people treat it. We also have a network of coaches that use our system and actually install our system into small businesses. With a foundation and a set of principles, marketing doesn’t have to be that creative or expensive. It just has to make sense. It has to work and you have to work the system consistently. Once small business owners understand that, then marketing doesn’t seem so hard.
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And marketing is everything … all the time. That’s what you’re saying.
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I tell people … it doesn’t matter what your business makes, ships or sells … that you are essentially in the marketing business.
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We thank John so much for sharing his time and wisdom with all of us. Learn more at his site, Duct Tape Marketing.
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And we thank you for spending time with us today. According to some people, Monday is the unhappiest day of the year. Join us next time when we discuss how to escape the Monday blues. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00310-011609.mp3
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(Image in today's post by duchessa)
