Andy (Parkinson, our CEO) and I sat down yesterday over lunch at Paco’s Tacos to talk about the best market for one of our new services (more on that in a future post).

At Andy’s suggestion, we first made a list of qualities a good target market for this service must have. It’s not a long list. Clients need money to spend on marketing. They need a sufficient amount of traffic to their website. They need a product or service to sell. And it helps if they are not technologically savvy or the do-it-yourself types.

In less than 20 minutes, while eating lunch, we identified and rejected a half dozen potential markets, finally hitting on two that offered the most promise. Ten minutes later we had a plan for finding and creating customers. The bill came and we were done.

That thirty-minute exercise gave us focus and kept us from wasting money and time chasing after the wrong targets – or worse – having no target at all. It’s essential when you’re expanding your markets and / or your product offering; but I suggest taking a good look at your ideal prospects before jumping into any marketing program even when you’re not introducing anything new.

After all, markets change and it’s easier than you might think to be chasing the wrong prospects. I’ve seen it happen with some of our best clients.

Look around you

Your existing client base holds a wealth of information about who makes a good target prospect. If you take the time to identify the customers who are most profitable and easiest to work with and figure out what they have in common, you’ll have a remarkably accurate portrait of your best prospects.

Not surprisingly, it’s better to do this with data – not just with anecdotal evidence from your sales force or account management teams. Really. Take the time to pull the data and analyze it.

If you’ve never actually done this exercise before, you might be in for a surprise. I’ve had a client tell me their customer base was primarily Fortune 1000 pharmaceutical or oil & gas companies only to find when the numbers were run that the bulk of their business was coming from regional insurance companies. And a client who believed their sweet spot was companies with more than 5000 employees when in reality their best customers have 500 to 2500 employees. And a client who thought corporations provide the bulk of their business when actually academic institutions do. And so on.

These clients weren’t lying to me. They just hadn’t taken a real close, objective look at the customer base lately. Things change, and when you’re involved in it day-to-day the changes are often not so noticeable.

It’s important to look at the numbers, identify your most profitable customers and find out what they have in common – industry, annual revenue, number of employees, geographic location, number of purchase orders they write a month – whatever is appropriate to your product or service.

Now you’ve got a good, clear idea of what types of companies make your best customers and you’ve taken the first step towards describing your ideal prospect. You’ve also probably found some good places to target a marketing effort.

But don’t stop here.

Our buyers are individuals, not companies.

Now that you know the types of companies that make up your ideal customer pool, take a look at the individuals to whom you sell.

Again, what do they have in common with each other? Here’s a quick checklist of things to consider:

• Job title
• Age
• Sex
• Education
• Number of years of experience
• Achievements
• Associations
• Primary language
• Resistance to risk
• Decision-making style
• Professional challenges
• Values
• Goals

Roll all of this together to create a profile of your ideal customer. That’s a pretty good place to start to describe your ideal prospect. Doesn’t it just make sense to go after more of the people who make you most successful today?

Instead of worrying about a detailed marketing plan, get your essentials in order and then get going.

What do you need for really great marketing? That’s easy.

• A market
• A message
• Some goals
• A website
• Action

Who is going to buy your product or service?

Key word: “buy”. Successful companies no longer sell. We help buyers buy. This requires diving deeply into who your buyers are, what problems or opportunities they are facing and what’s keeping them from solving those problems or jumping on those opportunities.

Why should they buy from you?

Our buyers have options. In most cases they don’t have to buy from us. As marketers we must figure out what makes us the best option for the buyer. Then we must communicate it – at the right time, at the right place, and in the right way.

Where is the finish line?

Someone once said “If you don’t know where you’re going, you may never get there”. Similarly, if you don’t know what your marketing needs to accomplish, you could burn a ton of money heading in the wrong direction.

Setting marketing objectives is easy once you realize there is only one reason for marketing’s existence: to help increase sales. Start with your sales objectives and work backward from there. We’ll show you how to do that in a future article.

Your home online

Every company needs a website. That might sound like a terribly broad statement, but it’s true. You’re reading this blog so I’ll leap to the assumption you want productive marketing. You need a website – a good one.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking websites don’t matter and you might as well go cheap. Your website is critical. It’s your online sales force, working for you 24 / 7. It’s often your buyers’ first encounter with your company.

Act with confidence

Now we get to the good part. With the other elements in place, you’re well prepared to take action. Go get visible. Generate leads. Turn them into customers. Have some fun.

That’s easy, right? Don’t worry. It’s not as hard as you might think. Stick with us and we’ll share what we’ve learned. We’ll even keep learning together.

Fortunately, it’s no longer necessary to waste money on marketing. It’s well within every marketer’s reach to understand the who, what, where, when, how – and even why – of your customers and their buying habits.

Unfortunately, an unspeakable number of marketers still burn money.

That needs to stop. (Unless it’s your competitors who are doing the burning.)

We have the tools to identify where we want to go and let our buyers and potential buyers keep us on track. The problem is that marketers (being people) tend to get distracted by the latest fad and claims of easy wins or they are stuck doing things the same old way because it worked in the past.

Time to wake up and take control.

The path to winning more customers efficiently is tough but pretty straightforward. First and foremost, remember the job of marketing is to improve sales.  If someone suggests a marketing program that doesn’t make a direct, measurable contribution to sales, just say no. Later, when you have all the leads you need, you can play around with branding for the sake of branding.

Our goal with this Clicks ‘n Conversions blog is to share what we’ve learned – and continue to learn – about marketing that works. You don’t need tons of money or a huge staff or a fancy agency to do great marketing. You just need to focus.

In upcoming articles we’ll show you how to get ready, get found and get more customers for your marketing dollars. We’ll also show you how to make the best decisions, take the right actions and avoid distracting, money-sucking detours.

Just as technology and the internet have empowered buyers to drive their own decision-making process, marketers too have much to gain by using the tools and tactics available to them. We’ll show you how we use those tools and tactics to build powerful marketing machines for ourselves and for our clients. We’ll show you how you can use them too.

If you want to crank up your marketing efforts, get better results and save yourself some dough, subscribe to our blog and follow along with us. Be sure leave your comments, too.

Unfortunately, as things become cheaper and easier to do, they also become more poorly done.

At Clicks ‘n Conversions we see the downside of marketing applications affecting nearly every good company that comes our way. In general, these good companies are heading in the right direction; but they’re learning the marketing equivalent of an engineering truism: a CAD program does not make you a good airplane designer.

Here, in no particular order, is my list of 6 common examples of marketing technology driving mediocrity.

1. Pay-per-click advertising

Google has succeeded in making even the most inexperienced user feel right at home spending tons of money on pay-per-click advertising. Adwords (Google’s pay-per-click program) has a fantastically simple-to-use interface.

But guess what.

As Adwords has become easier to use, performance for marketers in general has tumbled. Costs have gone up and returns on investment have gone down. In reality Google has just made it easier for companies to waste a lot of money.

2. Email marketing

Marketers love email because they see it as nearly free. Hey, for $20 a month you can blast newsletters and spam messages to anyone on your list. As a result it’s become extremely difficult to get real messages through to people who value the content. Wonder why direct mail is gaining in use again?

3. A/B and multivariate testing applications

I applaud the people who are making testing options available to smaller marketers; but without some knowledge of what should be tested and for how long, marketers can waste a lot of time. Does a green button get clicked more often than a red button? Is it worth waiting six months to find out?

4. Website analytics

Like testing capabilities, website analytics can bring game-changing knowledge and good actionable data to marketers of all sizes. The problem is it can also paralyze you with data overload – often in pretty dashboard charts that provide information you don’t really need. How many analytics applications are cranking out weekly reports that no one reads?

5. Desktop Publishing

Desktop publishing is an ancient – but great – example of technology driving mediocrity. Since the day desktop publishing programs hit the market, the developed world has been inundated with really awful brochures, ads and websites. And by “awful” I don’t mean just ugly. At best they are ineffective; at worst they destroy the company’s brand.

6. Automated articles submissions, directory submissions, link building programs, etc.

These applications make it possible to blast an article, website listing, linking invitation or meeting request to hundreds or even thousands of recipients with the click of a button. On the surface it has a pretty good wow factor. But, when you’re sending the same message or content to everyone, quality goes out the window. Humans quickly realize you’re spamming them and unless the recipient of these blasts is another automated system, you’re going to be ignored. These tools can make you lazy.
 
Proceed with caution

As you may have noticed, my issues with these applications are not with the applications themselves. I think most of them are great. We use nearly all of them.

The danger in these applications is the absence of people who know what they’re doing. It takes some marketing expertise to drive the best results. Smart business owners will either set aside the time to learn the underlying concepts or set aside the money to hire someone who does.

I’m sure my seven are not the only “dangerous” DIY marketing applications. What others have you run across?

But something went terribly wrong.

While we were building our awesome marketing machine, the sales closing rate was tanking. Turns out it was continuing a rapid downhill trend that had begun well before we got involved. And everyone was busy blaming marketing.

“These leads are crap.”

Every marketing person alive has heard that complaint an endless number of times. Sometimes it’s true; the so-called leads really are crap. Sometimes it means marketing is tossing leads to the sales team too soon. And sometimes, as in this case, it means the sales people and their sales process are out of touch.

In this story – which is, unfortunately, true – the sales process had not changed in over seven years; but both the market and the buying process had changed enormously.

Competition, much of it on the sleazy side, had piled onto what had once been a lucrative seller’s market. Buyers were not only overwhelmed with choices; they had also become wary of vendor claims. And, the internet with its easy-to-access information for all had made buyers much more savvy decision makers.

Our client was using order-takers in what had become a consultative selling situation.

Has your sales process kept up?

Granted, your market may not have shifted as dramatically as our client’s had; but I guarantee you it’s different than it was seven years ago.

Our client wasted valuable time – and lots of money – with a knee-jerk reaction to falling closing rates. They assumed it was a marketing issue. It wasn’t. In the end it was a leadership issue. But it was also a communications issue. Had marketing and sales really been working well together; had management been asking the right questions; maybe much of this could have been avoided.

If you’re a business owner, I’m sure you’re keeping a close eye on sales and closing rates. If you’re a marketing person, you should be watching those numbers too.

The reason I’m sharing this story with you is to send out two messages:

1. When closing rates fall, it’s dangerous to assume all leads are bad.

2. Never before have markets, buyers and buying processes changed as fast and as much as they are changing now. Your marketing programs have to keep up. So do your sales processes. Just because it worked yesterday doesn’t mean it’s going to work today.

Our client got these messages the hard way. You can avoid that.

When was the last time you took a good look at your sales process?

From this perspective, it’s easy to recognize the need for marketing. Sales people are complaining, the pipeline is shrinking and people are beginning to panic.

But waiting for these symptoms to become apparent is waiting too long.

I think the best answer to the question “when do I need to start marketing” is this:

You need to start marketing now.

No matter what search marketing gurus may tell you, marketing takes some time to ramp. It’s not an ON-OFF switch you can throw whenever you need more leads.

Usually when business owners come to us saying “I need more leads NOW”, it’s too late to solve the problem elegantly or even painlessly. If you’re in that position, I don’t mean to make you panic. I mean to get you moving. The sooner you start, the faster the pain goes away.

The same is true of business owners who technically have a marketing program but haven’t been paying much – if any – attention to it. The time to focus is now.

Marketing has never been more important for a business than it is today. It’s never been trickier either. Buyers – not sellers – control the buying process. Marketing messages bombard our prospects everywhere they turn. Purchase decisions are more complex and require more thoughts. Buyers won’t talk to sales people until later in the process.

We need to pay attention.

Waiting for Godot

Some years ago, I ran the marketing communications efforts for a company that was being acquired by Lucent Technologies. In my mind that put everything on hold. My boss disagreed – rightly so in this case. He referred (endlessly) to Waiting for Godot.

In case you, like me, need a refresher on this classic Samuel Beckett play / book / movie, it is the story of two homeless guys who are unable to do anything else while waiting on the arrival of some mysterious person named Gadot. Gadot, of course, never shows up.

The point of that story – and this article – is that timing will never be perfect. No buzzer is going to go off saying “time to start marketing”. If you wait until you desperately feel the need for marketing, you’ll waste a lot of valuable time and you’ll find marketing costs more when you’re scrambling.

So, how do you get started – or where do you focus?

The answer to that question depends on whether or not you already have a marketing program running. I’ll break it into two articles and post them over the next few days.

Meanwhile, have you gotten yourself jumpstarted? If so, how?

One of the most common and aggravating methods involves simple failure to communicate. Specifically, promise things you’re unable to deliver and follow up with silence. For bonus points make it really hard for buyers to get answers.

Here’s what I mean.

A few weeks ago I ordered Dr. Michael Rafael Moreno’s 17 Day Diet. I know. It was featured on Dr Phil or Oprah. I don’t even watch those shows and I heard about it. So clearly I wasn’t the only one ordering a copy.

I placed the order online easily enough. They even sent an auto email telling me the order had been accepted and I would receive it in 3 to 7 days.

Then nothing.

When 7 days passed without a notice of shipment or a book delivery I went to the website and submitted a simple question – where’s my book?

Still nothing.

A few days later, I called. After waiting on hold because “we are currently experiencing higher than usual call volume” I eventually spoke with a live person who tried to help – although we did not speak the same primary language and he was not equipped to answer my questions.

Twice he told me my order had shipped and twice I requested a tracking number.  Finally he grew tired of the game and confessed it really hadn’t shipped yet. 

He also had no idea when it would ship. “Maybe this week. Maybe next week”.

Now least you think I’m being overly impatient especially at the holidays I want to point out that one of the major selling points of the 17-Day Diet – in fact the very reason it was created – is to help people get through the holidays without gaining weight.

Not sure which holidays they mean, but certainly not Christmas 2010.

So the company was overwhelmed with the response to their product’s mention on TV. It happens. Maybe they didn’t know Dr Phil or Oprah was going to give them a shout out.

We all know things go wrong. Unforeseen problems occur. Deadlines get missed. Stuff happens.

But ignoring it is never the best way to deal with the situation.

The 17 Day Diet people could have easily avoided my frustration – and that of their other customers – by simply manning up. In this case, all they had to do was send an email.

“Dear Susan. We’re sorry. We were caught completely off guard by the demand for our product. We’re working our hardest to catch up and will have your order shipped as quickly as is humanly possible. We’ll let you know as soon as it has shipped. Thanks for your patience.”

Boom. I’m on their side now.

Popular online software company, 37Signals, faced a similar challenge recently when their Campfire chat application suffered an extended outage. They could have chosen to deal one-on-one with people who complained, but this company knows better than that.

Instead of hoping people wouldn’t notice, 37Signals posted a highly visible apology on our Campfire pages, linked to a detailed explanation of what went wrong and what they did to resolve the issue and they gave every customer a free month of service.

Now that’s a company I’m going to stick with.
 
When we drop the ball, the customers who are affected notice. When we fail to communicate about it, we send a message anyway. Only this message says “you’re not important right now.” And that’s not the message any marketer wants to send.

I went back to the 17 Day Diet website as I was writing this article. To their credit, they have posted a note saying they’re running low on inventory and cannot guarantee orders will be filled by Christmas. At least they’re beginning to manage expectations – although I suspect a lawyer rather than a marketing person may have driven decision.

Meanwhile, I still don’t know what to eat at tonight’s cocktail party.

Now that the mid-term elections are over and my blood pressure is back to normal, I’d like to reflect on 4 marketing practices that make me ashamed to be a marketer.

#1: Robocalls
In the days leading up to this election, I received no less than one robocall per day, Saturdays and Sundays included. If you want to tick off your prospective customers, bombard them with and endless stream of automated, over-the-top marketing messages. Come to think of it, Twitter’s sponsored tweets might be just the ticket.

#2: Lack of full disclosure
One of the referendums on the ballot this year had to do with a community college that wanted to raise funds to expand. The question on the ballot only asked, though, if we approved the use of bonds to raise the funds. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? What it failed to mention is that if we voted ‘no,’ our property taxes would go down next year. Both my husband and I were duped by the lack of disclosure.

I’m all for painting a product in the best possible light, but I draw the line when it comes to leaving out important details that will leave a sour taste in the customer’s mouth.

#3: Catching you when your guard is down
This Halloween my neighborhood didn’t just have trick-or-treaters. We had political workers ringing our doorbells because they knew we’d be opening our doors that day. It takes a weasley marketer to capitalize on a day that’s supposed to be about the kids.

#4: Boosting a mediocre product up by tearing the competitor down
If your only choice was to buy a car that caught fire when you hit the brakes, and one that caught fire when you hit the gas, which would you choose? That’s how I felt about the political candidates on the ballot. Both sides had multiple, substantial flaws that were emphasized over and over again — and embellished — in attack ads. Unfortunately politicians can get away with this because after all, somebody has to win.

If you’re in the software game, I wouldn’t suggest a similar strategy of building yourself up by tearing your competitor down. Just give your customers a kick-butt product they won’t want to live without.

Sue Anderson-Lenz
Marketing Lure, Inc.

When I see – as I often do – buzzword-laden content it tells me a) the writer is either untrained or very lazy and b) there is great opportunity for improving conversions.

Yep, its harder to get beyond the buzzwords and figure out what your prospects really want or need to hear. Sometimes it feels like your brain is going to explode. But what a difference it makes!

You know what I’m talking about: mission critical, best practices, value added, low-hanging long tail fruit.

Give your readers a break and you’ll see a boost in your conversions. I can almost guarantee it. And for an interesting rant, go read Erika’s article:  Your and Your Little Buzzwords.

After trying many free press release services, I’ve come to the conclusion that most are not worth the time and aggravation.

However, there are a few freebie PR sites that I consider a cheapskate marketer’s dream. Here are three of my favorites.

To make my list, turnaround time from submission to distribution had to be reasonable (24 hours or less), stories had to appear in Google (either Google News or Google Alerts), and the site had to support hyperlinks, keywords, basic editing capabilities, and social sharing.

Freebie Favorite PR Service #1: PRLog

PRLog attracts approximately one million visitors per month. In addition to hyperlinks and keywords, the site provides basic tracking and categorization of news stories.

For the most part, distribution is the same day. Stories issued through this site are picked up by Google News and pushed out via Google Alerts. In some cases, I observed multiple alerts in response to one press release.

Stories can be shared with 15 different social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

My favorite PRLog feature is the dedicated press room that you can brand with your logo and company details, and link to it from your own website. My press room is slightly out of date, but you can check it out here.

Freebie Favorite PR Service #2: PressReleasePoint

PressReleasePoint attracts about one-tenth the traffic when compared to PRLog. Stories are not indexed in Google News and you’ll have to pay for tracking, but the site supports hyperlinks, keywords, categories, and Google Alerts. Here again, I’ve seen multiple alerts for one press release.

Social sharing is integrated with 13 different sites, five which overlap with PRLog’s social list.

Visitors can view your company information and press releases on a single web page, but you don’t get a dedicated press room like you do with PRLog.

Freebie Favorite PR Service #3: PitchEngine

PitchEngine traffic is on par with PressReleasePoint. I like this site because distribution is truly instantaneous. Within minutes of pushing out a release, you’ll see it come through as a Google Alert.

You can share your releases with 10 of the more common social networking sites. Eight of these sites overlap with the social sites included on PRLog and PressReleasePoint.

Tracking is included, but press releases on this site expire after 30 days. To keep them on the site longer, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid subscription.

Let’s share. Which free PR services are your personal favorites and why?

Sue Anderson-Lenz
Marketing Lure, Inc.