4 - Marketing

Contents

1. Understanding The Game
2. Define Your Playing Field
3. It's A Campaign
4. Home On The Farm
5. Making A List And Checking It Twice
6. Targeting The Tigers
7. Marketing Warfare
8. Belonging
9. Nickel Dime Marketing
10. Circles
11. Get Back To Me
12. Follow-up
13. Renewing Old Friends
14. Personal Branding
15. Seminars and Talks
16. Articles

1. Understanding The Game

   In the early stages of growing your company your survival and success will depend 90 percent on selling. So you and any staff, must talk about your company and its product everywhere you go - on sale calls; in line at the movies; at PTA Meetings. For the next few years you've a mandate for nonstop selling.
 - Alan Gregerman, in Success Magazine

We will cover how to market your service in more detail later. I want you though to re-read the above quote, and take it to heart. Your job the first year at least is not to the President of your company, or whatever title you want to use. Your job is to be the sales force for this new Mystery Shopping Service in town. It is a mental attitude, and an entirely different way of approaching business.

Marketing for a personal services company, like a mystery shopping service is an interesting challenge. You have nothing tangible to sell, no tires to kick, no really compelling pictures you can put in a brochure.

It all boils down to a game of numbers, and a game of chicken and egg. Numbers, because like all sales situations, you must be prepared for rejection from the majority of people you approach. Chicken and egg, because it is also true that people tend to hire those whom they know, and sometimes it seems you can't get to be well-known if you don't get clients.

If you don't blow your own horn, someone else will use it for a spittoon.

Unless you make yourself well-known. This is no game for those who are shy or for some reason hesitant about self-promotion. You must make yourself such a large image, that when they think of improving customer service they can't miss you.

This doesn't mean you should be pompous, act like some important big-shot, or be pretentious. In fact, some of the best self-promoters are among the quietest, most "ordinary-folk" types around. Always nice, always willing to help others, but always looking for ways to promote as well.

Of course, you can't make yourself well known to everybody, unless you commit some major crime and make it on the evening news. So the first move in the game is to define your playing field.

2. Define Your Playing Field

I recommend that you specialize in some particular geographic area, or in one type of client. My specialty area is the Pacific Northwest, so if I use Independent Shoppers it will primarily be in that area. I also have special focus concentrations on three fields: international trade, webmasters, consultants, and Internet marketing. Sounds pretty scattered, but remember that I have been doing this for some time. Each niche was built up over time, and is continuing to be built.

3. It's A Campaign

That may be the second thing to understand about the game of marketing your services. It is going to take time. How long will depend on how vigorously you market, and how many contacts you already have. It may be six months, it may be a year before you are bringing in enough money to start enjoying this.

Time is yours to use. Don't panic when after two months of running ads and mailing letters you have nothing to show for it. On average, it takes 9 impressions of somebody seeing your ad, reading your name, hearing about you before they are ready to buy. Too many would-be entrepreneurs give up just about when things were going to start turning around for them.

So plan on your marketing campaign to be a long-term, even lifetime, thing you must be committed to. Don't give up. Don't ever give up. Don't even think about giving up.

4. Home On The Farm

One concept that works very well is borrowed from the field of real estate. You probably get regular newsletters and other mailings from a particular Realtor. You get a Christmas card and a New Years calendar from her. You may never even have met this individual, but she seems to have an interest in you. That is because you live in her "farm", the part of town she claims as hers.

In the early stages of growing your company your survival and success will depend 90 percent on selling. So you and any staff, must talk about your company and its product everywhere you go - on sale calls; in line at the movies; at PTA Meetings. For the next few years you've a mandate for nonstop selling.

- Alan Gregerman, in Success Magazine

What she is aiming for, of course, is that when it comes time to list your house or begin looking for one of your own, you can't think of real estate without thinking of her.

The idea is the same in your marketing. Like a Realtor, any one message you send to a prospect is likely to arrive when they are NOT in the market to buy your services. But you persist. You know that unless you are constantly finding ways to make them aware of you, you might as well have disappeared from the face of the earth. You must work your "farm" on a regular, ongoing basis.

5. Making A List And Checking It Twice

First thing to do is to lay out the fence lines of your farm. You can't afford to market to everybody, so specializing in a type of client and a geographic area helps. These are your farm boundaries. It certainly doesn't mean that if called you won't work with somebody from elsewhere. It only gives you a way to concentrate your marketing efforts.

If you are going to concentrate on clients who are dentists on the east side of the city, that is your farm. Your next step is to make a list of these people.

You can compile such a list from the Yellow Pages, but a more modern way is to use a CD phone directory, like Select Phone. It can give you all the dentists (or any other type of business) within XX miles of a certain spot, or all of them in a particular zipcode, etc.

You might also decide to have a market "farm" which extends far beyond your local area. Recognizing that there will be additional expense involved for travel and communications, you can pick any particular sector and compile a list of the companies that do business in that sector.

You can also rent a list from any competent mailing list broker. You should be able to describe your target prospect to the broker, who can then suggest lists which will best hit the target. These lists might come from association memberships, from credit card purchase files, or even from magazine subscriptions. Different lists can be merged together. For instance, a broker can merge a dentist list with one that shows owners of yachts. Now you have a list of well-heeled dentists.

However you get your list, it won't do any good unless you use it.

6. Targeting The Tigers

Let's assume that your target market, your farm, was all the computer software firms in the Seattle area. Certainly you have enough target firms to make a reasonable farm.

Now draw a line through the top 20% of the firms. They are the leaders, but they are less likely to hire you until you have top-notch credentials and a substantial record of success behind you.

The leaders in all likelihood already think they know how to do things, and usually have inhouse people whose job it is to evaluate customer service.

What you want to target is those under the top 20%. This is where you will find the "tigers," those working extra hard to catch up to and pass the leaders. The owners of these companies are the most eager to find some way to boost their business.

You can still, and probably should, market to the top players in any field, but you'll get faster results going after those with ambition to knock the top players off the top.

7. Marketing Warfare

If that sounds rather violent, don't be surprised. The entire field of marketing is dominated by the warfare metaphor. The best marketing books are called Guerrilla Marketing. We speak of advertising campaigns, offensives and defensives.

Continuing the warfare metaphor, the steps to marketing success are:

Identify targets:

Prepare weapons:

Launch attack:

Infiltrate:

Secure objective:

Once you do have a client, do everything you possibly can to make them happy. Remember, this first client is the springboard to future success. What if you blow it with the first one? No worry. It just means that the next one will be your springboard, but you will save a lot of time if you capture the first one as a satisfied client.

Interrogate & enlist:

Acquire new targets:

Repeat:

Repeat the entire cycle over and over and over again.

8. Belonging

If you are going to do business with the executives in business or government, or even nonprofits, you have to become a person to them. You have to be where they are, or at least be part of something they identify with.

You should certainly join the Chamber of Commerce, the local Home Based Business Association (or if there is none in your area, a national group like the Olympic Home Based Business Association),
and any community business groups.

You should also join any trade associations that your prospects are likely to belong to. If you are targeting the real estate professionals, for instance, you need to join the Association of Realtors. In some cases you will not be able to join as a full member if you don't meet the professional requirements, but most groups have an auxiliary or associate membership status. In most cases, you still get to go to all the meetings, trade shows and conventions, but not vote. Your prospects will see you at those events, you don't need to bring up the fact that you are just an associate member.

9. Nickel Dime Marketing

There is a marketing techniques which takes almost no money but may very well be your most effective. It is actually two techniques or two behaviors which if you carry them out religiously will reap huge rewards. They must however be a commitment which you invariably carry through with.

First, make a commitment that every day - weekends and holidays included -you will give out five business cards. Or 5 fliers or five sales sheets or five brochures. This must always happen.
If it is 11 p am at night and you have only given away 3, you had best head to an all night supermarket and find somebody to give to cards to.

The key is that it must be done every day. The first time that you do not do this, that old demon procrastination will sneak in. It is just like a New Year's resolution - if you don't carry through every day it will not turn into a habit. If you do, however, accomplish something as simple as passing out five every day, at the end of the first year at least 2000 people will know about you. Five times three hundred sixty-five is 1,825, and some of those business cards will get passed on or posted on bulletin boards.

Now for the ten, or dime part. Every business day, before you begin working, you should have a contact list drawn up . Your contact list should include at least ten people that you will contact that day. You cannot stop working that day until you have reached those ten people. By mail, e-mail, fax, phone or in person is not the real important thing.

What is important is for you to get in the habit of contacting other people. It is very easy in your own business, especially a home business, to "cocoon". To sit there fiddling with your computer display settings, wishing that the phone would ring so you would finally start making some money. If you contact ten people every business day there will be another twenty-five hundred or so people who know about you. More importantly, you will not lose valuable contacts, friends, and prospects by lack of staying in touch.

I can just about guarantee that if you will only do the nickel and dime marketing faithfully, you will have little need for more expensive methods. Your clients base will continue to grow and improve and you will be well on your way.

10. Circles

While on the subject of wasting time, let's be clear about your time management and how marketing must fit into that time. There is only one more important thing than marketing for you to accomplish in any day, and that is making sure that your client is happy. Marketing is the second most important thing.

I recommend that you set aside a certain block of time every day in which you will do your marketing. At least one hour per day will be required. Ideally, you should spend two to three hours a day for marketing.

This should go on even if you have a good, regularly paying client. Many a Mystery Shopping firm has gone broke because they counted on revenue from a client who either terminated them unexpectedly or went broke themselves. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

What will you do with your marketing time? That will include such things as follow-up letters for your clients, direct mail pieces to prospects, meetings for marketing purposes such as Chamber of Commerce luncheons, and of course telephone work.

Think of circles of people. You should spend time developing a number of contact circles or networks. One will be other business owners that you can call on for advice or for overload work help. Another circle of contacts will be those who also are well connected, either politically, through business, or social grouping. Yet another circle of contacts will be information resources providers.

A special circle of contacts are what Dr. Jeffrey Lant calls his Mandarin circle. Like the ancient Mandarins of China, the goal is to have other people do everything possible for you. This network is composed of those individuals who can help you in some way for a fee. For instance, if a client needs a brochure designed, you could do it yourself, but why? Have a desktop publisher who does good work do that for you, and than sell the product to your client taking a small commission for yourself.

You are limited in the amount of time that you have available. The more people that are doing things for you, the less you will have to do yourself. Your best utilization of time is to be marketing for new clients, managing your Independent Shoppers, and staying in contact with your current and past clients.

11. Get Back To Me

Part of your marketing success will be determined by how well you communicate. How well you communicate with your clients so they stay happy. How well you communicate with your networks so that they don't slip away. How well you communicate with your prospects, so they are clear about the benefits of using your service.

Most of us don't communicate very well at all. Some like to talk, but that doesn't mean they are good communicators. The ability to listen is far more important than the ability to talk.

Fortunately, these communications skills can be easily acquired. There are many books and tapes on effective communications, and I encourage you to study them. Everything from the tone of your voice through your vocabulary and body language all are important factors. You need to study, learn and understand.
One of the best skills to develop is that of skillful listening.

A good listener is worth their weight in gold, and you can become a good listener.

Let's take an initial consultation as a typical scenario. You meet the prospective client, and settle into your chairs. Take out a notepad and pencil. This is important. You need to take notes, because that more than anything tells the other person that you are really listening and paying attention.

Ask them to explain their situation to you, and then shut up and let them go. Most will be more than happy to tell you the whole story. You can continue to show interest to ask a few questions that have simple answers in this process, but you don't want to interrupt their flow.

After they are done, summarize in a very short form what you believe they told you. You don't need all the details, just describe the substance of what you understood. Then lead them through the next part of the consultation with a few probing questions - questions that are not easily answered by a yes or no.

Don't be afraid to not say anything. Silence is something that most people deal with by trying to fill it. If your client tells you something, simply nod your head and be quiet, and the client will shortly say something again, often blurting out what they really hadn't intended talking about. These spontaneous silence-fillers can be a great help in determining what the real problems are.

The next stage is to set some accomplishment goals. If the client needs A, B, and C done, try to find out what a good timetable for accomplishment would be, and what the budget would allow. More importantly, work to define what success would be like in each of the goal areas. The more definite and measurable, the better.

As the two of you develop a consensus on what needs to be done by when, continue to take notes on each item. Then it is time to wrap up that meeting. Tell the prospect that you will submit a proposal to them that gives them the way to accomplish their goals, and options. Now you can go away and put that proposal together.

If you do this right, then at the end of the meeting the client feels they have been listened to. Since you both agree on the goals and what success meeting the goal would mean, your client is ready to sign.

Of course, once you have a deal, the real communication needs escalate. Use the same techniques in each meeting, and you'll usually do well.

The only exception is if you are expected to make a presentation. We'll cover presentation skills shortly, but for now let me give you one plug. If you have any problem or insecurity about getting up in front of others and speaking, you should go to a Toastmasters meeting. You'll probably want to join, because there is no other way to become an accomplished speaker so quickly and at the same time having so much fun.

12. Follow-up

If there is one thing and one thing only that you learn about marketing here from what I have written, I hope it is this:

Follow-up!

Study after study has shown that getting a purchase from an existing customer is much easier and less costly than getting orders from the public at large. In fact, the average customer is worth 8 to 10 times their initial purchase. If somebody pays one hundred dollars for a series of Mystery Shops, they are worth at least $800 to $1,000 to you. They are worth that in repeat and referral business - but only if you stay in touch with them, and continue to market to them.

In order to do this effectively, something should remind you that it has been six weeks since you talked to that person, or whatever the maximum interval you want to have between contacts.

A tickler file works as well as anything. A tickler file is simply a date card file (real or in a computer) that has 365 index cards in it. If you are using real cards, 3x5 is a convenient size. If you are using a computer to run everything, I recommend a program called Info Select. Whichever way you set up your system, the tickler file works like this:

Everybody has their own card. Every one of your clients, everyone of your networks. On that card you put their name, and how many days it should be between contact with you. You can have varying rates for active clients, inactive clients, casual network people, active lead referrers, etc. That is up to you. I recommend that you don't let any of those intervals be longer than 4 months.

Everytime you make contact, you simply move the card back in the card file the appropriate number of days. It helps to have a calendar handy that has the day of the year function. Every day, before you start the day, you make up your contact list. You can of course do much of it several days ahead if you like. Simply look in your tickler file for the date, and list the people to contact that day. Remember dime marketing - here it is automatically taken care of.

My schedule:

Days Contact Type

2 Active clients with email

2 Active order placers with email

5 Active order placer without email

5 Active clients without email

7 Members of my associations with email (I have several associations I run, including the Olympic Home Based Business Association, the Global Trade Society, Golden Dragon Society, Learnhow.to Insiders Club, Biz$hop Entrepreneurs Network, and a few others)

15 Active network with email

30 Inactive clients with email

30 Members of my associations without email

30 Prospects with email permission

30 Seminar attendees with email

30 Media network

30 Inactive network with email

30 Casual inquirers with email

50 Inactive clients without email

50 Active network without email

60 Seminar attendees without email

60 Prospects without email permission

90 Inactive network without email

120 Casual inquirers without email

365 "Dead" File - people with whom I've lost touch, or whom more than a year has gone by without any response from them. I try once a year to locate and renew them, by email preferably.

This may seem like a terribly complex way of doing things, but it really is incredibly simple. It can get costly to stay in touch with everybody by mail or phone, which is why I much prefer e-mail nowadays. Even so, the return is worth far more than the cost even with regular mail.

The form that contact can take is quite varied. The methods I prefer are e-mail, telephone, postcard, newsletter, and letter, in that order. That also tends to correspond exactly to the amount of work and cost for each method. Call me cheap and lazy!
In actuality, people receive a variety. Almost everybody will get a newsletter from time to time, almost everybody gets a catalog at least once a year.

13. Renewing Old Friends

14. Personal Branding

Catch phrases and trends tend to come and go in the marketing field. One of the hottest phrases these days is the epitome of this self promotion. It's called "personal branding".

Think of a woman who seems to be able to do anything around a home. Who do you think of? Martha Stewart. Think of somebody's who is tops in the field of motivational training, and in the sales of motivational tapes. Odds are you think of Tony Robbins.

Both of these people have made such an impact that their names spring to mind. What they have created is a personal brand, just as Camaro is a car brand or as Nabisco is a food brand name.
Just like those consumer brands, they make sure that the brand name is first and foremost on everything that they do. They are unceasing in their promotion activities. Their name is in front of you all over the place. There are many competitors in any field, what personal branding tries to do is make sure one name pops into a prospect's head when thinking of hiring someone to help their customer service efforts.

Personal branding is an extremely valuable part of your marketing. No, you may never achieve the prominence of Tony Robbins. Or Zig Ziegler. But you just might! Even if your fame is somewhat less than theirs, achieving a level of fame automatically helps all of your other marketing efforts. The more prominent you are, the less of the other - and usually more expensive - methods you will have to employ.

The key then is not to be shy at all about promoting yourself. Plaster your name on everything that goes out from your office. Put your name in big letters on your work. Yes, it might look egotistical, but what it really is just smart marketing.
Dr. Jeffrey Lant publishes a huge, densely packed book on the subject, which is recommended, called " The Unabashed Self Promoter's Guide - What Every Man, Woman, Child and Organization in America Needs To Know About Getting Ahead By Exploiting The Media." The book has been called one of the best business books in America. Dr. Lant is certainly not shy about self-promotion himself, and has carved out a niche as a non-profit fundraisert and as a small business consultant.

How do you get famous? There are many paths, but all have one common element - it takes work to get yourself in front of the public.

15. Seminars and Talks

There is probably no better method of self-promotion than to get up in front of a group and talk. While this may seem frightening at first, it really does get easier each time you do it. It may even end up being fun!

If you are self-conscious at all about your speaking ability, then I strongly recommend you check out the local chapter of Toastmasters. This is a club for people who want to learn how to speak in public, and the meetings are almost always enjoyable.

You'll get to practice and receive for free suggestions and critiques that are worth thousands of dollars. Even many accomplished professional speakers continue to go to Toastmasters meetings for the help and the good times.

Then begin to talk. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter how much they pay you (likely nothing to begin with). This is a craft and an art, and you need to practice. There are all kinds of local groups, community organizations, and social clubs that are looking for speakers for their luncheons and meetings. Just contact them and ask who is in charge of speakers, and you're likely to get a slot rather quickly.

Once you have practiced giving some presentations, it is time to start getting paid for them. There are really four avenues to success, and you can go down all of them at the same time (although #4 is not likely till you get some success in other areas).

1. Community college continuing education programs offer a wonderful chance to teach adults. You are generally NOT allowed to promote your own business there (even passing out a business card is often a no-no), but you get paid by the hour or by the number of students. And you don't need an advanced degree to teach continuing education classes.

2. There are private adult education companies, such as Learning Exchange in Sacramento and Seattle, Open U in Minneapolis, First Class in Washington DC, etc. They are always looking for good new seminar ideas, and they allow you to do back of the room sales. These companies do all the marketing (mostly including you in their catalog) and registration. You just show up and speak, for
a percentage (about 25%) of the registration fees.

3. You can arrange and put on your own seminars. Find a place to hold it, then promote and advertise like crazy. If successful, the big advantage is that you don't split with anybody else.

Another is that you are working on your Personal Branding. It will require a lot of work to market and promote, and there is some risk in doing it this way. But what is that old saying about the more risk,......?

4. You can sign on with a Speakers Bureau to pitch you as a speaker to conventions, business trainers and others. They will take a hefty percentage, but again you are relieved of the marketing. Obviously, the more famous you are already, the more eager the bureaus will be in signing you up.

Speaking also gives you a great opportunity for BOR (back of the room) sales and follow-on consulting work. I still continue to speak at community colleges and private adult learning centers, despite the relatively low pay, because I usually get at least one consulting assignment from each class. A few of those will continue on to be long-term clients.

16. Articles

If you have a published article, guess what? You are now an expert! It is not difficult to do, and can work wonders for your credibility.

Look especially at articles for whichever niche market you are going after. If you want to work with computer software companies, then you'll want to pitch your article ideas to the trade magazines and newsletters that serve the software industry.

Always pitch an idea first. The best way to do this is a query letter. Simply describe what you article would be about, and why you are a good person to write it. If the editor likes the idea, they will send you a letter back or call you telling you to go ahead. It may be 'on spec' - meaning they can always reject it later and not pay you, but as your writing skills and reputation grow, more and more will be on a straight fee basis.

Trade publications are always looking for good articles from people of interest to their readers. A good source to find these publications is Writer's Market, which also has articles on how to write your query letter.

Not only will you get paid for these articles in most cases, but you'll also be able to use the article as a marketing tool. The publication may provide 'tear sheets,' or you can simply make a photocopy of the article. Always be sure that you have the right to do so when negotiating with the editor - even though you wrote the article, if you sell it with all rights you'll have to get permission to reproduce it.