Quick Links to Article Topics

1. What Makes You Stand Out
2. Use A Powerful Headline
3. Make Them An Offer
4. Talk About The Benefits
5. Tell Your News
6. Take Away Their Fear
7. Call To Action
8. Make It Seem Urgent
9. Use Testimonials
10. Use Exciting Graphics
11. Complete Contact Information

It is important that business owners understand the basics of writing a good advertisement.

All businesses need promotion. I have seen thousands and millions of dollars wasted on ineffective, poor or outright bad ads—and I want to save you that pain. But most importantly, I want you to expand your business and effective advertising in all its forms is essential.

After all, you need new customers because without them your business will fail. The good news is that the core principles of how to produce a proper advertisement apply to practically anything you may want to use as a promotional tool.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Brochures
• Emails
• Fliers and other mailers and handouts
• Magazine and newspaper ads
• Online advertisements (display, etc.)
• Postcards
• Web sites, including those used with online advertising
• And more.

It can take a bit of trial and error (testing) to build an ad or ad campaign that really works, but following these 11 tried and true tips can help you get the results that you’re hoping for.

1. What Makes You Stand Out From Your Competition?

People come in contact with advertisements from all types of businesses all the time.

So, what will make your potential customers buy your company’s product or service versus going with one of your competitors? That’s what you have to figure out and focus on with your advertisement. Show your potential customers why your business is their number one choice and why they shouldn’t even consider your competitors. Then, there is a good chance that they won’t.

What I am talking about here is commonly referred to in marketing circles as the “Unique Selling Proposition.” In his excellent book Reality in Advertising, author Rosser Reeves defines what a USP is:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer-not just words, product puffery, or show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, for this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition must be one the competition cannot or does not offer. It must be unique-either in the brand or in a claim the rest of that particular advertising area does not make.
3. The proposition must be strong enough to move the masses, i.e., attract new customers as well as potential customers.

Here are some good examples of products with a clear USP from Wikipedia:

• Head & Shoulders: “You get rid of dandruff”
• Anacin “Fast, fast, incredibly fast relief”
• Domino’s Pizza: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less-or it’s free.”
• FedEx: “When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight.”
• M&Ms: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”
• Metropolitan Life: “Get Met. It Pays.”
• Southwest Airlines: “We are the low-fare airline.”

There are many more examples.

The goal here is to help you develop your USP yourself.

What makes you different? Unique? What do you have that no one else does? This is the kind of thing you’re looking for.

For example, my marketing firm is about to start working with an immigration attorney and I already see several things that can make her stand out from the competition. For one, she’s an immigration attorney that is also an immigrant. She also contributes to an online magazine to assist others who wish to immigrate to the U.S. through education. She is a colorful personality and instantly likeable. And although she does not deliver different services than her competitors, she has some unique ways that she conducts business that few others do. We plan on using all this when developing her USP.

Please keep in mind that any USP is almost better than none, and that this can change and be refined later.

One more thing to keep in mind is that you do not have to be the only one doing something or delivering some product to include it in your USP. It can be something others are doing, but no one else is really promoting.

Get out a pad of paper and some pens and have fun with this. I am sure you will start coming up with brilliant ideas right off the bat!

2. Use A Powerful Headline: Grab Their Attention!

People scan things quickly. They come into contact with so many advertisements each day that they can’t possibly read each one. This is why you have to make sure that your advertisement actually grabs and keeps their attention.

You do that with an effective headline.

The greatest advertising man in history, David Ogilvy, said “On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

The question you need to ask is “Who are your trying to attract? What would get their attention?”

Yesterday, I received an email newsletter from a recruitment firm with the headline “Would You Hire Obama?” As a CEO who is interested in recruiting new talent, this caught my attention. It drove me to their website and I read the entire article, learning about their unique process. As a result, I requested a sales call for next week.

All that came from an effective headline.

I have written sales letters that have gotten tremendous response mainly due to powerful headlines.

In one case I helped a company sign more than $1 million in contracts with a single letter.

In another, I obtained one sales appointment for every 200 letters – and this for a service that started at $10,000!

In still another case, I created a flier that was sent to a very restricted, high-end list of 134 names which resulted in nine sales appointments with the first mailing!

Great headlines come in many forms.

Ogilvy once remarked that he would write an advertisement in three hours and then take three weeks to come up with the headline.

Some headlines are newsworthy, such as in the release of a new service or product. Others have a very strong benefit. Most are specific, as opposed to general, in their facts. Others use a negative angle (such as “reducing costs” as opposed to “increasing profits”).

Jay Abraham, an online marketer and consultant, compiled a list of the 100 best headlines ever written.

3. Make Them An Offer They Can’t Refuse!

Consumers love a bargain. So offer them a good one so that they’ll come back to you time and time again.

Whether you’re offering an unbeatable price, a free trial, free shipping or a bundled package, going out of your way to provide your customers with a good deal will help you be successful.

Once you come up with your irresistible offer, make sure that you advertise it proudly. When people see that you have something great to offer them, they will have a difficult time resisting it.

In determining how much you can spend for an introductory product or service, think of the overall Client Lifetime Value (CLV), the amount a client will benefit a company over time, for your firm.

One client I worked with was initially hesitant to lose $150 in profit for an intro service to acquire a new client. He was extremely surprised to discover though that those new clients had a CLV of $5,000 – a number more than 33 times the initial investment in terms of lost profit. So he had been losing $4,850 every time he didn’t invest the $150 to obtain a new client.

This is a very powerful concept and can make or break your business. To understand more, take a few minutes and watch this video by Jay Abraham.

4. Talk About The Benefits – What’s In It For Them!

Explaining the features of your products or services is important, but explaining the benefits for the customer is really what it’s all about. After all, people are more interested in what they get from your services than what you do. Make sense?

This is not complicated. Here’s what you do to figure this out:

1. List out all your services (or products).
2. For each one, list out everything that service (feature) does.
3. Then, next list out what the result of each feature is – the benefit for the client.

For example, say you are a tax accountant. One feature of your service is that you have a website where clients can log in and access their tax documents 24/7. The huge benefit is that it saves time and inconvenience for the client.

5. Tell Your News: Create an Advertorial!

Webster’s Dictionary says that an “advertorial” is “an advertisement that imitates editorial format.” In other words, it’s an ad that looks like a news article!

Here is why this is important.

People are seven times more likely to read a news article than an advertisement.

People come in contact with regular ads all day long. There is really no incentive for them to read your ad if you don’t offer them more than what everyone else is offering.

Creating an effective ad that grabs attention and provides plenty of information isn’t always easy. But an advertorial can achieve this as it is far more likely to be clicked on and read.

This type of advertisement encourages readers to get interested in your company because it includes more information. Readers want to read more once they realize the article isn’t just advertising your business but helping them. For example, the ad can provide them with lots of advice, tips and information and how your company and products can help them.

The best example that comes to mind is an ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal more than 60 years ago. The ad ran with the headline “What Everybody Ought to Know About This Stock and Bond Business” and contained a mammoth 6,540 words! It was presented in advertorial format and generated 10,000 inquiries in a single day.

Now that’s results!

6. Take Away Their Fear: Make Your Offer As Risk-Free As Possible!

People are nervous about spending their money. There are too many scammers and low-quality products out there. People worry that they’ll be wasting their hard-earned cash when it comes to many products and services.

If people fear that they’re going to lose their money and regret their purchase, they are unlikely to purchase your product. But, if you remove these doubts, people are given an incentive to give your product or service a try.

So it’s a great idea to offer a risk-free guarantee. Knowing there is no risk and that they don’t have anything to lose by purchasing your product or service, is a powerful purchasing inducement. This “reverses” the risk and places some of it on the seller. This is called “risk reversal.”

If potential customers know that they can get their money back if they aren’t satisfied, they’ll be less concerned about wasting cash and will be more likely to give it a try.

Plus, a lot of people instantly feel better about a product if the company is willing to stand behind it. It shows that your product is worthwhile and that you aren’t afraid to back it up with a risk-free guarantee.

Almost all major department stores (Sears, Bloomingdale’s, Dillard’s, Macy’s, Walmart, Target, Hudson’s Bay in Canada, etc.) use risk-reversal and have a money-back guarantee on their products. Last week, I purchased a high-end television from Best Buy for my father and the first thing I was told was that I could return it anytime within a specific period. Got to love it.

Other types of companies do the same thing. Two days ago I received an offer for an information product that sells for $4,500. The seller used a risk reversal strategy to promote the product and build confidence in it and him. The offer only asked for a $500 deposit which was fully refundable to test drive the product for a month. I’d get my deposit back if I didn’t think the product was worth it within that time. An excellent risk reversal approach (just like the money-back guarantee) and I am going to take him up on it.

7. The “Call To Action” And Asking Them To Buy – Or Not!

Don’t just tell your potential customers about what your company has to offer. Encourage them to take action. Tell them directly to click on your ad, order your product, pay for your service, etc.

For example, your “call to action” can encourage people to email you for more information, to fill out a form to find out more about your services, to join your weekly or monthly email newsletter or to purchase your product or service. It could even direct users to click on your ad to take them to your website rather than just looking at the advertisement.

You need to use exciting words and persuasive language to give that extra push.

Here is an excerpt from one of the most successful advertisements in history, a magazine ad that sold the famous book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” in 1937, showing both the risk reversal and call to action.

8. Make It Seem Urgent, Give Them A Reason To Buy NOW!

You don’t want to just plant the seed with your ads, you want people to move forward and do something about your offer NOW.

When people see an ad and think about giving a company a try later, they might actually mean to do so. But, people most often move on with their lives and forget all about the ad and the product that they might have been interested in. Therefore, you have to encourage people to act now rather than later.

You can create this urgency in any number of ways.

For example, you can make your irresistible offer time-limited. If people see that they only have a set amount of time, such as a few hours or days, to snag an unforgettable deal that they’re already pretty excited about, they will be more likely to make a move now than later. Many people assume that they’ll be able to get the same deal later on. But if they know that they can’t, they’ll be more likely to take the deal now.

That isn’t the only way of creating a sense of urgency. You can also bring in an upcoming season or event when your product will come in handy to make people buy now.

Regardless of how you might choose to do it, it’s important to let your potential clients know that NOW is the time to make a move.

9. Use Testimonials

One of the most important parts of creating an effective ad is building up trust and interest in your company.

Remember that people have a lot of concerns these days, particularly when they’re online. It is important to build trust in your business, its products and services so they know that your company is the right choice. You can do this by showing that others in the past have been pleased with their decision to buy from or work with you.

A great way to do this is by adding a testimonial or two to your ads from those who are satisfied with your company and its products.

Today, countless people rely on online reviews when shopping for new businesses, products and services.

People trust other consumers and want to know what they have to say about a company. You can’t make people look for online reviews about your business, but you can give them the same peace of mind by adding a testimonial from a current client who is pleased with what you have to offer. Seeing that other consumers who are just like them, are happy with your product can encourage potential clients to give you a try.

10. Use Exciting Graphics

People are visual.

Plain text on a plain background can be boring. People don’t always want to read everything that has been written in an ad or an article.

You can appeal to the visual interest that your clients have by adding exciting graphics to your advertisements.

For example, you can post a picture of what you have to offer, or you can post something that is going to grab attention. You can take the pictures yourself, or you can look for royalty-free, no-cost images online. Regardless, adding something visual will help draw more attention and interest to your company.

11. Complete Contact Information

You would not believe how many times I’ve seen advertisements, often expensive magazine ads, posters, billboards, etc. without clear-cut company contact information.

Don’t make this mistake.

You’ve told them what you’re selling, now tell them where to buy it. Anything else is a waste of money.

You should use your ads to link people to your website for more information as part of the contact information. This is imperative for several reasons.

One, if people check out your site and are impressed with it, you have a better chance of turning them into real clients.

Secondly, you can track how your ads perform and what leads are generated on the website to get an idea of how well your campaign is working. So, if you are not achieving the results that you’re looking for, you will know where you need to make changes.

Always DELIVER

Remember that you should always over-deliver when it comes to your customers.

Creating an effective ad is great, but your advertisements won’t get you far if you aren’t making your customers happy. Therefore, you should focus on providing all of your customers with the best experience that you can.

If you always deliver more than they expect, then you never have to worry about anyone being disappointed. Then, you will see your clients come back time and time again and they’ll be more likely to tell their friends about your company.

Making Yourself Stand Out

These 11 tips for creating an effective ad can help your promotions stand head and shoulders over those of your competition. You will be able to make eye-catching ads that will get people excited about what you have to offer. That will help improve your conversion rate of making prospects into real customers.

Advertising is important and good advertising is what will help your company succeed.

The post 11 Simple Tips to Creating An Effective Ad appeared first on Target Public.

Branding isn’t just about a pretty logo, i
t’s about your bottom line!

“Branding” is one of those buzzwords that gets tossed around a lot these days. It would be easy to assume that this is only a subject that multinational corporations should be concerned with. But if you assumed that, you’d be missing a major opportunity.

Branding applies to every business, large and small, local and international. It can make or break you and frankly you can’t live without it.

No matter what your business is, chances are very good that you’ve got competitors nearby offering the same or a very similar product. Whether you are an architect or interior designer, a mechanic or law firm, there will be others in your town.

If you sell groceries, a fine dining experience, real estate, auto mechanic services or business consulting, you’re not alone.

Branding is what distinguishes you from others offering similar products and services.

1. Create Strong, Consistent Branding

Branding could be defined as:  “The process of creating a unique identity for a product or service which distinguishes it from its competitors.”

The purpose of branding is to set a product or service apart in the minds of customers, so they remember it, develop loyalty and know what to expect from it.

Think of brands you know, especially ones you like. Starbucks, Ford, Toyota, Aveda, Apple, Home Depot, Nike – these are all well-known brands. You probably have an association in your mind with each one, favorable or unfavorable. Like them or not, they have successfully differentiated themselves from other brands in the marketplace.

• The person who buys Tide detergent is more interested in getting clothes clean than someone who prefers a no-name brand to save money.
• The Starbucks crowd wants a premium product in an aesthetic setting as opposed to Dunkin Donuts customers who don’t care about the experience and just want donuts and coffee.
• A woman who only uses Aveda products has reasons she considers important, even though she pays more for them than the woman who buys Suave products at the drugstore.

Well-known, international corporations have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building and maintaining an image for their brand. Sometimes even large companies make incredible mistakes that damage the brand. It can take years to restore their strong brand in the minds of the consumer, if they ever recover at all.

Consider American Express credit cards. As Al and Laura Ries write in The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, “AmEx used to be the premier, prestige credit card. Membership had its privileges…In 1988, for example, American Express had a handful of cards and 27 percent of the market. Then it started to introduce a blizzard of new cards…. The goal, according to the CEO, was to issue twelve to fifteen new cards a year. American Express market share today: 18 percent.”

2. Discover Your Core Values and Use Them in Branding

So you’re not Nike, Apple or Starbucks. That’s fine. No matter what industry you’re in, the more you can develop a strong identity which sets you apart from your competitors, the better.

Branding can be a challenge for business owners. Even a successful business may not realize which principles have made it so successful.

• Consider a successful auto repair shop. Let’s say that what made it successful was personal attention and caring customer service – the mechanics would always take the time to patiently educate customers until they really understood it. This would be a big part of that company’s brand. If this garage then tried to advertise “faster repairs than anyone else,” it would completely miss the core essence of their brand. Big mistake.
• Suppose a college town has a coffee shop that only hires students. The clientele is 97% students from the university across the street. Then the shop is sold and the new owner staffs it with his family. They downgrade to a slower Wi-Fi because it’s cheaper. The students who used to come to study and greet the employees (who could sympathize with them on upcoming finals) rapidly find somewhere else to sip coffee. Why? The new owner neglected to grasp the core elements at the heart of the earlier owner’s success. He didn’t understand the brand.

Every company needs to understand the core values at the heart of their success. This might take a little soul-searching or deep conversations with loyal customers to truly discover it for yourself. However, it’s totally worth it.

3. Get Your Customers’ Help to Get It Right

You’re spending money on marketing all the time—every business is. The trick is making sure you’re making the most of it. Are you getting the best possible return?

Correct branding can save you tens of thousands of dollars in marketing because your message isn’t watered down. You’re conveying exactly the right message to exactly the right people.

• Does your message truly resonate with your audience?
• Does it really convey the essence of who you are as a company?
• Does it really “speak” to potential prospects and draw them toward you?

Don’t just use your “best guess” here. Ask past customers. Ask people unfamiliar with your company as well. Get different viewpoints on your brand and strengthen it with what you find.

Summary

Branding isn’t just about a pretty logo. It’s about your bottom line.

At Target Public Marketing, we understand the ins and outs of branding and have helped countless other businesses like yours get their message straight. We can do expert analyses to help you isolate the exact core of your company’s brand and help you correctly convey it to others.

It’s a relatively fast service that we deliver routinely. And for what you receive—a clear company identity that can be used to guide all future promotion—it’s a bargain.

Reach out. We’re here to help, whether through casual conversation or an in-depth service.

Read Article #2 in The Rules of Marketing Series: Learn How to Win the Game of Local Search

The post 3 Branding Rules To Maximize Your Marketing Spend appeared first on Target Public.

“I have no time,” “I don’t know what to do,” “It costs money,” “I don’t need to market,” etc. etc. But the excuses I’ve heard most often relate to how “expensive” marketing is.

So I decided to publish this article to convert you, if you think like this, into a real marketer. Because the truth is there are a whole bunch of ways to market your business for little or no cost.

Let’s begin your transformation.

1. Start a Website or Blog

Although you might think that you need to hire a professional web design company to develop a website or a blog for your business, this isn’t the case.

Yes, if your business has been around a while or if you want a tailored look or special features, such as high-end design or an eCommerce platform, you will need to hire a company like Target Public Marketing.

But if you are on a tight budget, you can probably do it on your own. There are free platforms out there that you can use to create an attractive, fully-functional site without paying a dime! For example, you can get a totally free, high performing blog from WordPress.

You will have to pay for a domain and Web hosting, but you can find these things for about $5 a month (such as from GoDaddy). For this minimal investment, you can build a reasonably good home base for promoting your business.

2. Get Active on Social Media

If you haven’t used social media (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, etc.) to promote your business yet, you are missing on an opportunity to potentially have your company or its products go viral (“viral” refers to a marketing campaign that takes off through massive sharing among social accounts or email).

Hundreds of millions of people use social media sites on a daily basis, and the chances are that you use them too for personal reasons.

Although you might have seen advertisements for pricey social media marketing campaigns and social media tools, you don’t need any of these things to get started to promote your business. You can sign up for business pages on LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest for free.

By creating complete business profiles and pages, working to gain followers by regularly posting interesting and informative content is a great way to make your business more well-known and to keep your audience base satisfied.

It may not necessarily lead to more sales or leads directly. But it is great for public relations and brand awareness. See my previous article, “Why You Don’t Get Leads from Social Media (And What To Do About It)…”

3. Get Added to Internet Directories

There are a ton of highly reputable website and business directories out there, and you need to make sure that your business is listed on them. For example, Yahoo and Google offer these listings, as do Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.

The listings are mostly free and you might be surprised by their value.

Many of these sites have top search engine rankings. So people looking for your business will find these links quickly because they end up on the first page of search results.

You can also gain traffic and potential customers from those who are viewing these sites looking for businesses that are similar to yours.

4. Get Active with Online Communities

No matter what your business or industry niche might be, chances are good that there are plenty of related online communities out there that you can check out.

From forums to social media groups and more, these communities can provide you with many great opportunities to promote your business.

When interacting with others on these sites and communities, it is important that you contribute useful and helpful information and not promote your business overtly. But in the process of doing so, you can post a link to your website and say with which business you are associated.

This can help you gather up a nice network of connections and establish you as a local expert in your field.

Once people get accustomed to seeing your name and recognize you as an expert, they may want to give your company a try or send business your way.

5. Email and Forum Signatures

Whether you’re posting on forums or sending an email to your grandma, you should always keep your website’s URL and your company’s contact information in your email signature. It’s free and easy to do, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a powerful tool. It can spread awareness about your business and help people connect your name and face with the name of your company.

With most free email programs and on most forums, you can set your signature once, and it will appear at the bottom of all of your correspondence without you having to take any additional steps. Quick, easy promotion.

6. Press Releases

There are websites out there that allow you to submit press releases at no cost. So you should consider utilizing these resources when you have some news to share about your business. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering news, but it should be news.

By submitting a press release, you expand your reach and let more people know about what your company has to offer and even possibly reach an interested journalist who will then contact you for a story.

7. Ask for Reviews

Review sites like Google+ and Yelp make it easy for people to rate their experiences with your business. By asking your valued customers to leave feedback on these sites, you can help spread awareness about your business and get valuable feedback from your client base at the same time.

Plus, you might be surprised by the number of people who use these sites. Positive reviews can help encourage users to give your business a try rather than checking out what your competitors have to offer.

8. Guest Blogging

If you have friends in a similar industry as your own, such as those who you might have met through online communities, you can always ask to submit a blog post for their websites.

When writing the post for them, make sure that you don’t make it sound too sales-like or for the purposes of just promoting your own business. Instead, focus on providing some information or tips of substance and value. But ensure you do have a blurb at the end about yourself and your business with a link back to your site.

The whole endeavor needs to be high quality. Remember that guest blogging is only valuable on reputable websites. So don’t take just any guest blogging opportunity that you can find. Instead, find opportunities on websites that you know are well-respected and are frequented by individuals who are interested in your niche.

9. Create an Email List

An email list is essential. With a signup form on your website, you gather the names and email addresses of people who are interested in your product or service. You can also add the names and email addresses from business cards of prospects that you have gathered. Or any other list of people interested in your business.

Mailings to these lists are tremendously effective. The list members are prequalified because they have already expressed interest in your business by signing up or getting in contact with you. Your mailings let them know what your business has to offer, and you can keep everyone up-to-date on any special deals, offers or sales that you might have.

It is easy to get started with an email service like MailChimp. Most have free versions. As your list builds and your needs become more sophisticated, you can upgrade your account.

10. Share Pictures and Videos

Sites like Instagram and YouTube are very popular, and you can become a member of these sites easily and without spending a dime.

Once you have set up an account and a profile, you upload your videos and photos and take it from there. You start to interact with other users to spread awareness and drum up business.

For example, your videos can tell people about your business. Or you can focus on education-style videos that will teach people more about your industry or type of product.

See my article on how to start taking your own videos immediately at little to no cost.

11. Blog Comments

Checking out blogs that are related to your industry segment can be a lot of fun. Not only is it entertaining, but it can help you network and spread the word about your own business.

Sharing helpful, insightful comments are a great way to become a part of the conversation on a blog. It shows to others you are an expert in your industry.

Don’t just leave a quick comment and a link to your site. That’s bad form and just spam. Make sure that you provide some sort of value to the community and the conversation. People will be more likely to be interested in who you are and what you have to say and just might check out your website.

12. Offer Deals or Giveaways

People love free stuff. So offering a good deal or a giveaway on your website or social media business page is a great way to get more interest and business. You don’t have to offer anything big. Often, a small item will do the trick.

These can be something like a coupon code for free shipping or a percentage off an order. But the business this generates can be great and people often share the good news with their friends.

Don’t put yourself in the hole with the offer. But offer something.

13. Network and Collaborate

It’s always a good idea to have friends and connections in your business niche.

Such connections provide a wonderful way to promote your business online for little or no cost. For example, you can ask to exchange links with your online friends. This is a good way for you to bring in traffic and business, particularly if your online buddies have popular and well-respected websites.

However, the links on such an exchange need to be “no-follow” links for Google’s sake. This is a technical subject beyond the scope of this article, but one of my staff wrote something about this that you should read.

14. Utilize Classified Listings

Although Craigslist is the most well-known, there are plenty of online classified listings out there that you can use to advertise your business. Most of these directories are free. What more needs to be said.

15. Affiliate or Referral Program

Start an affiliate or referral program so you can reward your loyal customers for sharing the news about your business with their friends and associates.

There are free online programs out there that you can use to keep track of these programs.

You only have to offer a small percentage of your sales or a set cash amount to those who refer customers to your business. But those loyal customers are sure to appreciate an opportunity to make a little bit of cash for sharing the good word about a product, service or business that they like and use.

16. Check out the Way Your Staff Interacts With Prospects

Review how your prospects and customers are dealt with by staff or messaging software for improvements you can make:

• How are people greeted by you and your staff when they call in?
• When someone sends an email how fast do they get a response?
• Is it the kind of email you would like to receive?
• When you call to reach someone and leave a voicemail, will the message entice the recipient to call you back as soon as possible?

These improvements to your sales line are not only inexpensive for you to implement, they are a necessity because you are hemorrhaging sales if they are wrong.

17. Publish an Information Pack

You should put together an information pack on your business or products that someone can download from your website. It can be as simple as a PDF document..

The key is to leave some information off your site and offer it only through the info pack. That way the prospect will have to reach out to you, by online form, email or phone, to get a copy.

For example, you can have testimonials on your website or blog, but leave off any case studies and put them in the info pack. Or you can have tips on the use of your product or how-to information or recipes, etc. and use them for the pack. Just ensure the information is valuable and worth the download.

Do it!

While you may be a bit uncertain about doing some of these strategies yourself, learning how to promote your business with little or no cost is a great way to increase traffic, improve your bottom line and help you achieve your goals.

Luckily, the Internet can help you with all of these things and more. If it’s too overwhelming, we are always available to help!

The post 17 Ways To Promote Your Business For Little Or No Cost appeared first on Target Public.

Content marketing: what it is, how to do it, including a case study example and program!

What is Content Marketing?   

Per the Content Marketing Institute “content marketing” is:

“The marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience [your prospects] – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

In other words, it is a knowing method of getting your message into the hands of your potential customers.  Rather than using ads, billboards or mailers to push your message across, content marketing provides valuable information to build trust and confidence.

Gradually, your valuable content builds familiarity and a sense of community among potential customers so they come looking for you as soon as they need your product or service.

Content marketing feels new because it’s only been named and developed as its own subject since the new millennium.  But in fact, every newsletter, booklet or article that helped a potential customer understand how to utilize a company’s products has been based on this strategy. For example, John Deere, the farm equipment company, began publishing a magazine called The Furrow in 1895.  Obviously, content marketing has been around quite a while.

What Content Marketing Means to You

Content marketing applies to nearly every business or industry. You just have to understand the basic principles and get clever with your particular customers.

That said, it can helpful to look at examples of it in use so that you can see how it would apply to your specific niche.  Let’s get practical with it.  I’ll choose an uncommon industry to show you how it could apply everywhere.

Let’s look at how a small tutoring center could use content marketing to attract new customers.  This is a business everyone can relate to, yet very few people would actually understand how to market.

Sample Content Marketing Strategy for a Tutoring Center

The staff and management of the center start by clearly envisioning their ideal client and that client’s needs.

Let’s assume their prime client is the mother of an 8 to 18-year-old child. The staff then asks 30 of these women about their biggest challenges in relation to their children’s educations.

It turns out that getting their kids through homework each day is a battle.  The kids often fib about assignments and seldom put their best efforts into the work.  They listen to the problems and troubles mothers have with their children and start creating an outline of interesting videos, articles and other content which helps the moms solve these problems.

By providing potential clients with plenty of valuable content, the tutoring center proves their expertise and becomes a thought leader in the minds of their prospects. However, they never actually give away their primary service for free (which is one-on-one tutoring).

Lastly, before embarking on their content marketing campaign, they work out an outline of the content they’re going to create and place all these different ideas on a calendar stretching over the next few months.  Now they don’t have to think about what they are going to create for any particular week – they just execute.

Sample Content Outline for a Tutoring Center

Here are the content elements that should be used for this campaign.

a. Videos

These do NOT have to be fancy, but can be very simply shot with iPhones or inexpensive video cameras. A corner of a classroom or small study setup would make a good background. They would publish these videos on YouTube and on their blog, then share them via social media and email.

Example topics would be:

• How to set a homework schedule that still leaves time for fun
• Running efficient homework time, from start to finish
• Surviving science projects
• How to have productive conversations with your children about problems in school
• 10 ways to inspire your child to get creative with homework assignments
• The ideal study space for getting homework done

b. Photos

With schools there are often excellent photo opportunities and with smartphones these days, everyone has a camera (to get some bright ideas see our article 10 Ways To Use A “Selfie” To Boom Your Business).

Some quick content is a photo and caption of an interesting event such as a celebration, students doing practical assignments, etc.

c. Downloadable booklet

“A Mother’s Guide to Helping Her Children Succeed in School” as a title could be used as a short guide that gives the top tips and advice the tutoring center would want any parent to know.

d. Articles

The center would regularly publish articles on their blog. By sharing these via social media and sending them out to their email list, they regularly have people visiting their website to read their newest posts.

Example topics for articles would be:

• Helping your child deal with bullying in school
• What to do when your child complains about her teacher
• How to deal with your child’s school administration
• When is it truly necessary to change your child’s teacher or school?
• Interacting with your school about study assignments
• Helping your child develop simple educational goals

e. Podcasts

Podcasts are basically short audio recordings – like radio shows over the internet.  The center could create podcasts and share them over social media. Ideas include:

• Interviews with teachers on the best support they get from parents
• Interviews with school administrators on what they wish parents knew
• Interviews with parents who developed workable systems of getting their kids through their homework.

f. Finally, an all-day event

The tutoring center could hold an open house or another similar event. Tutors and teachers could speak and it could include booths featuring different study products and services to help parents with their children’s educations. All services and products complement the tutoring service, none compete. The event is filmed (again can just be informal smartphone video), photographed (ditto) and summarized with who attended, their reactions and feedback, etc.

What the Tutoring Center does with these Things

All of these articles, videos, photos and so forth, will need to be distributed.

For example, the tutoring center should:

• Post them on their blog, which will be part of their website
• Share them multiple times on Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter
• If appropriate for a business/professional audience, LinkedIn may also be an option
• Share different appeals, descriptions or features highlighted each time, and other data of interest to parents
• Upload videos to YouTube, where they can be embedded and distributed by students in social media, etc.
• Distribute through other blogs/websites, in your industry, by simply approaching them and asking if they would be interested.

Become the Authority Using These Tools

As you can see content marketing is immensely valuable.

Regardless of which type or types of content you create, if you provide real value to people, they will recognize you as a leader in your industry.  You’ll be referred to their friends as “I saw this interesting article about [topic] the other day…” and so on.

More importantly, when they are looking for a service you provide, they will then think of your company.

So start creating your content today.

We can help you if you need it.  For our clients we produce content on a regular basis, and we automate some of these tasks.  For example, we install software on website that automatically distributes content on social media that we’ve either set up for the client or they have themselves.

So, as always, feel free to contact us.

To your success!

The post How To Become An Authority In The Minds Of Your Prospects Using Content Marketing appeared first on Target Public.

It is a valid question.

After all, today’s recruits are technologically savvy. They’ve been using laptops since elementary school and are active on social media, to say the least. So they have certain expectations. And in a candidate-driven market where top personnel are scarce and hard to find, in many cases they call the shots. For your part, you certainly want to “put your best foot forward.”

I want to provide some guidelines for you, a checklist of sorts, that you can use to evaluate your existing business website, the cornerstone of your business online.

High cost of personnel recruitment

But first let’s look at some facts on the cost of personnel recruitment. In 2012, Dun and Bradstreet said that the cost of replacing a manager is roughly 1.5X their salary: “If a manager makes $60,000, then your company can expect to spend $90,000 searching for a replacement. Of course, not every employee is worth as much as an experienced manager. Employees that perform unskilled tasks cost less to replace. The 150 percent average rate, however, could apply to any job position. Unskilled workers just get paid a lot less than experienced managers” (How Much Does It Cost to Hire a New Employee, Feb 14, 2012, by Matt Thompson).

And according to another study from California, even the lowest employee in the company will cost you $4,000 to hire on average. Considering that companies hire more than one employee, the total cost of recruitment is extremely high.

I could go on, but you get the point. Having a website that assists you in the recruitment process (not actually turning key prospects away), is vital to hiring the personnel you want working for you.

Key questions to ask about your website

Take a look at your website from totally different eyes, those of a potential hire for your company:

• At first glance what do you see?
• Is it appealing or repelling?
• Does it look modern or dated?
• Does it turn you away or pull you in so you can find out more?
• Does it look like a company that you would like to work for?

There are a number of things that can affect these various factors including:

1. The design of the site should be modern and fresh. This is not to say it should look like a video game, it must look like a business – but not like it was designed in the 1990s! (If you want some guidelines on this for your business contact us here for a free website review.)
2. The graphics, including the photos, should be of the highest quality and create a positive instant impression. Today “high definition” is commonplace and people are used to seeing slick photos. Moreover, there should be people if at all possible, in the photos similar to those you are trying to attract to come work for you. Makes it sound like they have to “look” a certain way which is slippery ground. Instead suggest “Moreover, you should include photos of your smiling staff and great work environment on your About Us or Hiring page.”
3. The fonts that are used throughout should be modern, but this is a second consideration to readability. Do not make your text too small or grey or anything that makes it hard to read. It should be easy to read so it communicates instantly, and the writing should be friendly and approachable when it comes to style.
4. The site should be fully functional. In my line of work, I look at websites all the time that are dysfunctional. One site in Austin, for example, had an email address on it no one ever checked. Another in Toronto had a form offering a free estimate that did not work. Etc.
5. It should be mobile friendly. Today’s generation is multiplatform (desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones and smart watches). So make sure that your website is adaptable and accessible on all these devices.
6. Host on a fast server. Hosting is one thing you should never be cheap about. Aside from other necessities such as security, it is imperative that your site loads fast in searches. If it does not you will be penalized in search engines because too many people will instantly leave a slow-loading website.
7. Make your website social media friendly. This is to say it should be integrated with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others. This will make it easy to share content.
8. Have the right content. The best way to explain this is to use a real-life example of a dentist I visited. I searched for a new dentist and found this guy on the internet and was immediately drawn in by a clean, well-designed website. But what really hooked me was all the photos he had on the site of his team having fun in the office, during holidays, etc. My immediate thought was wow, this must really be a good place to work. Staff are happy and happy staff means excellent service for me. So I was in. If your website achieves a similar result to my dentist’s you will be in excellent shape.

Again, if you need help or advice I encourage you to contact our office. We will be happy to help.

Until next time!
George

The post Enemy at the Gate: Is Your Website Killing Your Hiring Process? appeared first on Target Public.

The rules have changed and the challenge is greater—but so are the rewards…

Remember when a “local directory” was just the Yellow Pages?

No, not Yellowpages.com – I mean the actual book. You know – real paper, heavy as a sack of bricks, thrown down on your doorstep and cracked open to reveal a teeming mass of hundreds, if not thousands of local businesses.

Remember the shops vying for your attention with astonishing attempts at advertising alliteration – A-A-A Awesome Plumbing, AA A-1 Fabrics. AAA Absurd Business Name?

You get the idea.

For decades, that was the only game in town and the best-known “trick” to achieve local visibility and success in the eyes of Joe or Jane Doe in Yourtown, USA.

But the game has changed dramatically. When’s the last time you actually opened a phone book, much less received (or kept) one?

The effort to be front and center hasn’t stopped, but it has changed playing fields.

And it has new rules.

Online local search is the undisputed “Yellow Pages” of the day…on steroids. It includes yellowpages.com by the way, but they’re not the only game in town anymore, not by a long shot. Having a rewarding local search presence requires being listed correctly and consistently in every top directory out there, and then some.

And the days of winning by squeezing multiple AAA’s in the front of your business name are A-A-A thing of the past.

There are new tried-and-true methods that work even better than the old-school “tricks.” Use these to get a leg up on your competition.

How To Get Found By Local Customers

Wait. You haven’t heard of those? What about Factual? Infogroup?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone if you are drawing a blank. Those four not-so-household names are the vital “data aggregator” listings.

In a nutshell, aggregators are the hard working, behind-the-scenes data sources, in greater or lesser degree, for the “famous” directories everyone has heard of: Yelp, TripAdvisor, Yahoo Local, Google Maps and so on. Think of them as the unheralded publicists to the stars. Without them, the big companies would miss out and not know what you want them to know about your business.

Good. So it’s easy then, right? Just get listed in those few data aggregators and sit back and wait for the customers to find you and flood through your doors.

Ah, if only. It isn’t quite that simple. Let’s pull the curtain back a little further.

There are key rules to know and follow. Otherwise, you’ll be that unfortunate business that, in bygone days, missed the deadline to get in their Yellow Pages listing, making them invisible.

Here’s the must-know essentials

1. NAP time is vital

   NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone. Your business name, address and phone must, must, must be consistent (did we mention must?) across every single listing.

   Why would it not be consistent? Well, your business has an online footprint already, probably within a week of your doors opening. If you’ve been around a while, you have a Jurassic-size footprint across the web – your Chamber of Commerce may have you listed, the Better Business Bureau and other “official” organizations likely list you online as well. Not to mention your address is on your website and can be “scraped” that way and listed by any such website, and it likely has.

   These potential inconsistencies can create online confusion you aren’t even aware exists. You’re official business name is “Alan and Sons Plumbing”, but it’s listed in one location as “Alan Johnson and Sons Plumbers” or “A.J. and Sons Plumbing and Repair” somewhere else. Those different results, and business owners are often as bewildered as anyone as to why they appear differently, can be viewed as different businesses within local search results.

   Have you changed names over the years, particularly during the “Internet Age”, aka the last 20 years? You are virtually guaranteed to have incorrect listings.

   The result of NAP inconsistencies is these data aggregators and other local search players will not see a unified, clean identity for your business. It looks unprofessional, in a word. As a result, they aren’t likely to “recommend” you to those doing local searches. At best your “online power” is being diluted. At worst, you aren’t showing up for some local searches at all. Instead, potential customers see the business “next door” who has everything properly set up.

   Don’t take it personal, they’re just computers. And it can be fixed so that they do YOUR bidding as well.

2. NAP corrections

   

   As a vital first step, you need to find all of the online directories where you are listed and ensure your listings are correct.

   This is often called an “audit” and “verification” step. It’s the first step we do with any local business clients. It includes “claiming” the listing, because as mentioned above, some of these directories find your business identity online from who-knows-where and use it to auto-create a listing for you. Take control back. You deserve it!

   What does this local search audit and verification accomplish?

   Inevitably we discover two things when completing the process:

   1. The business has odd variations scattered throughout its online listings. Anything from not having the proper street extension, to having an old phone number or a business name inconsistency.
      
      One client was literally “off the map” – Google had their map listing about 40 miles away from their actual office. Another had two listings everywhere – their old business name and their new one. The result was that people searching for these businesses couldn’t find them, both online and in the real world.
   2. The next discovery we make is the one you want – once those elements are corrected, the business improves its local search positioning and visibility, often dramatically.*
      
      * Inevitable disclaimer: This is particularly true if the business was not doing well, e.g. far down the local search results. Also, we’d be remiss to not point out that results are often significantly improved with additional marketing basics such as a properly built website and other local search content set up…why yes, that was an impeccable segue.

What Else To Know About Local Search

Well, there’s plenty, but without the NAP steps done above, the rest is like trying to get a car rolling without an engine. You might be able to push and shove it a few feet online, but soon enough you’ll watch competitors with everything in place race by you.

So in brief, what makes a well-oiled winning local marketing machine?

One that has a powerful engine AND great aerodynamics, a turbo booster and sweet racing stripes to boot.

Start your engines with:

1. website: solidly built, well-structured with core on-page search factors
2. site content: relevant, quality local-oriented
3. business address: your addresses properly listed on your site (there is behind-the-scenes code for your website that helps “identify” and “locate” your business for search engines the right way),
4. consistent NAP: having consistent NAP on the key directories. Having above and beyond the number of “standard” listings, especially if you are in a specialized profession, e.g. dental, medical, legal, etc.
5. reviews: getting reviews on the key review portals (Yelp, Facebook, Google+ and specialty sites as applicable like Houzz), and
6. social: active social profiles and activity which we include to being “locally” social such as interacting with local relevant blogs/channels.

Yes that can be a bit overwhelming, and isn’t done in a weekend to be sure. When your preferred game is running your business, helping your customers and delivering a great product or service it’s wise to bring in hired experts.

That’s where local search experts (ahem) can save you hours of confusion or added errors damaging your local presence.

The game WE love to play is to get your great product, service and business more visible. To stay on top of the “tricks” and “secrets” and have businesses reap the rewards. (The tricks and secrets are also known as hard work and paying attention.)

We’ve successfully raised client’s online search position from essentially invisible to top of the stack.

And all without renaming their business to “AAA Absolute Best Company.”

So if you are looking to be found by customers searching for what you have to offer, consider the local search basics above. And if you need professional expertise, just let us know on our contact page.

Read Article #1 in The Rules of Marketing Series: 3 Branding Rules To Maximize Your Marketing Spend

The post Learn How to Win the Game of Local Search appeared first on Target Public.

That said, as you doubtless know a smartphone is a phone, computer, photo and video camera all rolled into one.  I wrote this article to give you some bright ideas on how you can use your phone to grow and protect your business by leveraging its simple-to-use but powerful features.

Specifically, I am going to give you 10 ways to do this either with photos or videos:

1. News: This can include getting a new client, company wins and good news, welcoming new personnel on board, a holiday special you are running, etc. It can also be industry news such as you commenting on a breaking news story.
2. Onsite: If you are a contractor on a job site use photos or video to blog about what you did for a client such as completing a new job or even how you did it.  The same goes for trade shows or related company events.
3. Quality control: Video or photos can show your personnel what they did right on a job, and what needs to be corrected.
4. Legal documentation: To protect your business from future legal action, to show that you complied with an agreement or even to show a client what an excellent job you did.
5. Training videos: Except for live and in-person, there is no better way to train people than by video – and this is especially the case when they are remote.
6. Public relations: Want more exposure on YouTube?  Then brand your own video series, like “Andy’s Corner” and build a following.
7. Video FAQs: That answer common questions from client or prospects.
8. Validating staff: When your people do well send them a quick video clip or selfie to let them know you appreciate their work.
9. Sales: Video can be an extremely powerful sales tool. Want to set up a meeting with a prospect?  Try sending them a short video clip!
10. Recruitment: Be creative here such as showing your team having fun and thereby making it easier for you to attract top talent.

We have incredible technology at our fingertips and with just a few creative ideas, we can unlock it and put it to work for our businesses.

Have you used mobile phone photos or video to creatively promote your business? Let us know in the comments!

The post 10 Ways To Use A “Selfie” To Boom Your Business appeared first on Target Public.

I have been writing things in one capacity or another for almost 30 years. I don’t even really consider myself a writer because I don’t write for the love of it. I write because I want or need to communicate something and happen to be decently good at it.

What I found works

There is a caveat here. This is not meant to be an Oxford Dictionary compendium of all the writer’s block remedies in the world, but just those few things I have found personally to be successful for me. They may or may not work for you. But I have a sneaking suspicion they might.

It was going fine until…

To get to the nub of the matter, there have been times, just like you, I have been sitting at my desk, staring blankly ahead, thinking about going to Starbucks and just not getting my work done.

What to do about it?

The usual scenario is that I have been merrily writing that letter or that article and all of a sudden in the midst of a paragraph or at the beginning of a sentence, I stall. I know where I want to go, have all the information I need, but what I was going to write doesn’t seem so good.

I am sure this has happened to you. You start and stop a few times, but it doesn’t get any better. After five minutes, you are frustrated and think you should get up and get something to drink or walk away. Then when you come back, you still don’t get anywhere. Sound familiar?

The solution is simple.

Write what you were going to write initially. Write that stupid sounding sentence and continue on. You are self-editing too critically.

If you just write that sentence, you will find your writer’s block will magically disappear. Usually, when I do this, I look back a few sentences later and find that that sentence wasn’t so bad after all. Or it dawns on me how I could word it better.

This has been a life saver for me. So much so, I can genuinely say I don’t get this type of writer’s block anymore.

I can’t get started!!!

While this scenario is generally what I consider writer’s block, there are three other situations that might prevent one from starting to write when one has some writing to do. So I will share my solutions to those as well.

The first situation is that I find I am not interested in the subject.

I have to write something. I don’t want to or I put it off. For instance, I was thinking about writing something for our company blog, but couldn’t come up with a helpful marketing idea to go on about. So I was going to leave it. Then I realized I was more interested in something about writing and came up with this article. And it has just flowed.

The second is I don’t know enough about the subject

Generally to write about something, you have to know a lot more about the subject than just what you are going to write. So if I sit down and I am interested in the subject, I have to review if I actually know enough about it. This is quite simple to diagnose. If I can’t explain the subject to myself, I know I have research to do. When I get more information, I can then write about it. Situation solved.

The last is attributable to procrastination.

Sometimes I just have to take myself by the scruff of the neck and sit down and do it. Usually it comes down to necessity— there is a deadline and it takes that extra pressure to get onto it.

No help for it, mate. Then the job gets done.

There is one more reason for not writing. But it is not writer’s block. I will leave it to another blog article.

I hope you found the above helpful.

The post The Busy Executive’s Prescription for Writer’s Block appeared first on Target Public.

Ancient Sparta had two kings. If one fell in battle or became incapacitated, the country would never be without a ruler. This made Sparta tremendously stable and absolutely confident in times of war.

Ingenious.

This one idea was so simple and solved so much, but was never repeated by any other Greek city-state (or any nation since, that I know of).

This was “thinking outside the box.”

Many people’s thinking is trapped within the confines of what’s easy, what’s comfortable, what’s typical. This is called thinking inside the box. Or, being “normal.”

However, in business, the truly disruptive force–the one who changes everything isn’t normal. They’re someone who thinks outside the box. They’re someone who applies principles from one part of life to a completely different area that no one ever thought of before.

Thinking beyond the norm

As another example, if you are running a marketing campaign that is producing a certain amount of success you may consider running a public relations campaign as well to boost overall results.  In my marketing agency, we have some clients who were very happy to get a good chunk of their business from customer reviews on Yelp.

Since they weren’t paying for it, their thinking went, why should they spend anything on marketing? Typical small business thinking.  Well, the answer became abundantly clear the following year when they got some bad reviews and their new business leads dropped considerably. Suddenly, they came to us screaming for help for an urgent solution.

A more modern example of thinking outside the box is the automotive company Tesla, founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk. Tesla is a luxury automotive brand featuring totally electric cars.  According to a USA Today article from last August, “The swoopy electric sedan outsold all models from other luxury brands – Porsche, Volvo, Lincoln, Land Rover and Jaguar…With 4,714 new Teslas registered over the six months, it even topped some established conventional luxury models like Lexus GS at 2,298, and Audi A6 at 1,619.”

All its competitors were traditional gas-burning cars and established brands. Tesla was a brand-new-no-one-heard-about-before brand featuring “risky” technology: all-electric cars.  Land Rover, for example, was founded in 1948.  Jaguar was 1922. Lincoln was founded in 1917.

When was Tesla founded? 2003. Yet it is now dominating the market with a totally revolutionary product. This is thinking outside the box.

Be Different

Are you selling furniture?  Offer potential buyers free furniture polish if they buy from you.

Does everyone in your industry get their business from trade shows?  Start doing webinars.  Bring the show to them.

Are your competitors lagging in technology?  Create a valuable smartphone app and offer it at no cost.

Analyze your competition.  Businesses in the same industry tend to do the same type of advertising.  Do something different.  Look at other industries–what are they doing that works?

I’ve noticed, for example, that all restaurants tend to distribute copies of their menu to houses and businesses in their surroundings.  I would do this, if I were running a restaurant.  But I would also distribute fliers with the special of the week.  A single offer on one flier.  Very few restaurants do this.

Is everyone in your industry promoting increased profits?  Promote decreased costs.  It’s essentially the same thing but from an opposite angle.

Survey your clients, past and current.  Why did they buy from you?   Do you have testimonials?  Look for common elements and promote those benefits.  This is a type of survey.  In my experience less than 5% of businesses ever do surveys.

Tell your personal story and use it to build your brand.  Be memorable, very few of your competitors will be!

Simple Will Suffice

This stuff doesn’t have to be complicated.  Something simple will suffice.

Once I was headed to Los Angeles for a conference and found out at the last minute that the state legislature was looking at passing a bill into law that would have been of benefit to my clients.

Opposition was apparently significant and it looked like the bill was going to get killed. I was literally getting on a plane the next morning and had to get ready.  The only option was to do something that would be potentially effective and yet take little time.  So I pulled up a personal story of a victim I knew about and, in one draft, put together an email to the legislature off the top of my head explaining why the bill was a great idea and why it had to become law.

Despite millions having been spent to kill it, the billed passed into law and today that state is the only one in the world that I know of which has such a law on the books.

Have a Plan

It is important to have a plan. Spend time working on one. It’s imperative. Most of your competitors won’t even have a plan!

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu stated that “…the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all!” It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.”

One technique I use often is to draw things out.  If I’m in a situation, I draw it out.  This way I visualize all the elements involved and can “see the box.”  I have a marker board in my office just for that purpose.

I remember a time when I got a call from an advertising agency that needed help closing a deal.  They were pitching an advertising contract for a large shopping mall and, because it was significant, major agencies had arrived on the scene and were working on some major pitches themselves.

Using large sheets of paper I drew out all the players: the client, the competing agencies and what their strengths and weaknesses were.  I also drew out a flowchart of the typical ad agency pitch process.  It soon became apparent that there were weaknesses we could exploit.  One of these in particular was something no one else was doing, or likely to do.  It just jumped off the page!

I was so confident that I discounted my services by half with the remainder due only if the agency won the contract.  They won and I was handsomely paid.

Remember, if you want the same result as everyone else, think the same way they do. If you want to rise above—if you want to do something different—you have to think outside the box.

The post Thinking Outside The Box appeared first on Target Public.

But unforeseen problems can sometimes arise that take a bit of cunning to resolve.

A new building, built on new land with brand new address

One such circumstance occurred with a client of ours – an expanding dental practice.  They were opening an office in another city and had built a new, state-of-the-art facility on the access road adjacent to the main highway.  It was a totally new structure, built where nothing had existed before.  So it had a totally new address.

Several weeks prior to the clinic’s opening, we were given the new postal address and went to add the location to the practice’s Google Places for Business account so that it would be listed on Google Maps in time for its grand opening a number of weeks down the road.

Setting up the new location on Maps

When you add a business to Google Places for Business, in order to verify that the business actually exists, Google sends out a verification card to the address.  The card has a PIN code that needs to be inputted back into the online application before Google will fully list it.  This card can take a week or so to get delivered but our experience was that it arrives pretty fast.  You can also verify by phone but as no one was manning the new clinic’s phone, this method couldn’t be used.  We had two or three weeks so we could afford to wait for the card.

The verification card never arrived, twice

We used the new postal address in the online setup and, low and behold, Maps apparently had it in its system.  The street number was there with only a slight change of wording for the access road.  No error messages that the address didn’t exist or anything. Happy day, smooth as silk!

Except the card never arrived.  A week later, because the phone was still not manned, we had another card sent out.

It never arrived either.

We couldn’t understand what was going on.  Google apparently had the address for the clinic but the card didn’t get there.

Oh, oh, the Maps address was wrong!

Then realization dawned – Google’s address, even though similar, wasn’t compatible with the postal address.  So the post office couldn’t find the clinic. Agh!

Immediately, we called Google.  Yes, you can call Google and it isn’t that hard.  You just have to know your way around their Google Places for Business interface.

How to phone Google Help

This is how you do it (this assumes you already have a Google Places for Business account set up for your business.)

1. Go to the Google My Business Help Center and logon to your Google account.
2. Click “Contact Us” near the upper right. (see image below)
3. Request a call and follow the instructions and fill out the form to leave your phone number.  Google will ring you back almost instantly.  Their staff are typically very helpful.

This was done for our client and we spent almost an hour on the phone getting it worked out.  Actually, it took two phone calls and, as the new clinic’s phone was now manned, we were able to get the address verified without waiting for a card to be mailed.

Getting it right

In the end, the client’s new business had the proper address on Google and was finally set up on Google Maps to be found and is being found today.

All is happy!

It just shows that what you think should be a simple and straightforward matter can evolve into a problem of magnitude.  Who would have ever thought that Google would have an address in their system that didn’t agree with the post office?

But the way things are going, perhaps in the near future, we’ll be phoning the post office to adjust their address because it doesn’t agree with Google!

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The post What if Google Maps Can’t Find Your Business? appeared first on Target Public.