Your "Promoters" are customers who not only buy from you, but urge their friends, colleagues and family to. How do you find them? By asking them to answer the magic question:
· “How likely are you to recommend our company’s products or services to a friend or a colleague?” on a scale of 0 to 10. The scores mean:
9 or 10: these are your "Promoters"...they drive your profits
7 or 8: these are passives, lukewarm...don't count on them to drive profitability
6 or less: these are detractors...they're dissatisfied with your company and vocal about it, driving new customers away
Learn as much as you can about Promoters. They are your customers who buy the most from you and are the most likely to be receptive to new offers. When you find new customer segments with attributes shared with these promoters, you’ve found a Design Target.
Is this valuable only to large companies? Certainly not! This technique is highly valuable to small companies. ...
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If you’ve had a marketing class, you’ve learned that segmentation is the key to marketing success. But, in the heat of battle, most companies are dazzled with the allure of large customer groups. As a result, they waste precious resources chasing customers they are ill equipped to serve. They overlook smaller clusters of loyal customers that they understand best: those that are loyal and the most profitable.
Small companies that want to increase profits need to forego chasing large customer groups and instead practice focus.
1. Identify their Design Targets. This is a core customer group within their target segment that’s their sweet spot: those that they can serve better than anyone else. This group shares attributes with their target segment and makes similar purchasing decisions.
2. Thorough Self Exam. They unerringly assess their own capabilities and, avoiding wishful thinking, compare their operational strength ...
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A study recently published explored why people talk about products, how product discussions differ online versus offline and what companies can do to generate more buzz.
Online findings. We are very aware that we’re being watched and are motivated to post about brands that we believe others will like. Professor Berger calls this “motivated transmission.”
Offline findings. Face-to-face discussions are different: it’s less about motivated transmission (we’re less worried about being watched) and more about what products are top-of-mind at that point in time. Interesting products may produce immediate discussion as a novelty, but the topic fades quickly. Being interesting doesn’t result in staying power.
Key driver. Word of mouth isn’t driven by glitzy products. The most important driver of discussion? It’s the accessibility of a product. People just naturally talk about what they see and are currently thinking about. They’ll talk about the drink in thei ...
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There was a terrific paper published in the Harvard Business Review in 2006 written by Fred Reichheld, retired director of one of the world's leading consulting firms, Bain & Company. His paper, titled "The Top 10 Reasons You Don't Understand Your Customers" provides a broad-based insight into what's wrong with the everyday way we try to learn more about our customers.
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For people interested in helping their small businesses grow, I'm teaching a class in entrepreneurial marketing this January at Lindenwood University. Talked with the class today about the many low cost ways they can communicate with prospects and customers. Several of the students come from family businesses and their experience is typical...we do word of mouth. That always translates to "we don't do anything other than hope customers say nice things about us to other people." This is a problem. Successful word of mouth means you actively help people say nice things about you and your products. You ask for testimonials and post them on your web site and put them into literature. You ask them for referrals and then contact those to whom they refer, not wait for somebody to call. You give them referral cards and offer small gifts as a "Thank You". You ask for referrals on your web site. It's always you that makes the contact; you don't wait. You engage in the social media sites of Facebook and LinkedIn making ...
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When people say they want to advertise and promote, the first thing they have to do is decide on an objective for that advertising or promotional material. There are three and only three things that they can achieve (when successful): inform, persuade or remind. Notice that we said ...or remind, not and remind. You have to decide which ONE of these objectives you want it to achieve.
For new products or for prospects who are unaware of the existence or benefits of your products, you probably need to inform. For prospects who are aware of your product and for customers being wooed by competitors (don't they always?), you should be persuading them of the superiority of your product due to its superior benefits. Finally, for those loyal customers happy with your product, you can't just forget them and expect them to keep buying. You need to keep reminding them of how happy they were in the past with the product and how they were benefited by it.
Some people say "We need to do it all in one ad. It's too ex ...
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Many mail pieces/packages would get better results by moving the offer to the very start of the copy. That’s because all readers look for a hook as they quickly scan any advertising material … and drift away instantly if they don’t see value immediately.
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This is an open forum for small business marketers to share new ideas, valuable tips and proven strategies that make our companies’ communications the most relevant … and powerful. We’ll be watching the trends – what works and what doesn’t – and reporting the results to you.
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This is to test out images and a you tube clip.
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