Whatever your business, the lifeblood of that business is your customers. Without them, you don’t have a viable business and it won’t make you any money.
Too many businesses make the mistake of constantly seeking new customers to sell to while ignoring the customers they already have. A lot of money is spent on marketing to prospects while little, if any, is spent on marketing to the existing customers.
Making your customer feel special
Just think about it, you’ve spent time, effort and money in getting a customer to buy from you – are you just going to sell to him once, or are you going to make every effort to sell to him over and over again?
If you can communicate to your existing customers that they are special to you, you will find it far easier to sell to them than to a crowd of unknown prospects. Business owners need to remind themselves constantly that their customers are people, and people like it when they are made to feel special in some small way.
So, how can you get this idea across to your customers? By communicating with them on a very regular basis! With the advent of so many new mediums in social media – Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In to name but a few – some people think this is the only way to communicate now. That would be an incorrect assumption as not all of your customers will be in that particular social media audience. There are still those customers out there who want to get something from you via email and snail mail – yes, people still do want to get something in the mail!
My recommendation for effective communication with your customers would be to have several different ways of communicating with your customers
phone
email
direct mail
some well-chosen social mediums
It’s my belief, based on my own experience with clients, with businesses that I do business with, with some of the major corporations that we all deal with on a
Which ones should you use?
daily basis, that using all of these together will reach far more of your customers in their way, at their time. If you choose to use only one method of communicating with your customers, you will be limiting your success with them. Your decision to choose only one could be based on time, money and/or effort – a very normal way to deal with this. But email is relatively inexpensive with a wide reach; social media is free for the most part and direct mail can be inexpensive but have a great return on investment (ROI).
I recommend that you try several different ways at once, integrating them whenever possible. If your website is the ultimate place you want your customers to land, then all other communcations with them should point them to your website. You can connect your blog to your website, use Twitter to promote your blog, use Facebook to promote your blog and your website, use an email newsletter to direct people to Twitter, Facebook, your blog and your website. Are you starting to see the pattern here?
Next post will discuss each of these in a little more detail.
Feel free to ask questions that you want addressed.
You’ve heard enough about Facebook by now to know that you probably should be doing something about using it in your business. But like many others, you are probably also wondering WHY and HOW?!
This article will address the WHY part of that question.
In a nutshell, if you add a Facebook Fan Page to your overall marketing strategy (and Yes, you should have one of these!!) you will supplement your efforts at driving traffic to your website or phone.
Here are 3 really good reasonswhy your business should have a Facebook Fan Page and why it is imperative that you do it NOW as opposed to “just as soon as I can find the time”.
Excellent Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Very effective communication tool
It’s FREE!!
Let’s take a look at these in more detail so you can see how they apply to YOUR business.
Excellent Search Engine Optimization:
If you have a website for your business then you surely are aware of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how much time and energy is spent on this. The idea is if your website is optimized with the right keywords and meta data, the search engines will find your website, like what they find and then place you high in their rankings of other websites similar to yours. Good SEO will place your site high in the organic (non-paid for) listings when folks search for your product or service. A Facebook Fan Page will supplement all of your other SEO efforts.
You can add content daily and change it out at will. The static pages of your site once indexed, remain that way because they typically don’t change much. Search engines like new and updated relevant content and will index it well if they see it happening on a regular basis. Posts to your Facebook Fan Page can be done daily, even hourly if your audience is receptive enough.
You can add unlimited photos and videos to your Facebook Fan Page. Tag and describe these with your top keywords and you give the search engines many more reasons to visit and index your site.
Very Effective Communication Tool:
Of the 350 million users that are on Facebook almost daily, do you think any of your customers are among them? Absolutely! So use Facebook to converse with them in their style. Of course, first you need to get them to come to your Fan Page and become a fan. You can do that many ways – email signatures, newsletters, mail invitations. Just find the customers that choose Facebook as their favored communication tool and interact with them regularly. Take a llok at Coca Cola’s Fan Page to see how they interact with their fans and you’ll see how powerful a communication tool this really is!
It’s FREE:
This the greatest reason why your business should have a Facebook Fan Page – it’s completely Free to use! You can double or triple your SEO efforts at no cost to you, but some well-planned time. The speed that good fan pages are showing up all over the search engines is phenomenal! If you don’t take advantage of this, you will most certainly be left behind.
I left Orlando early on November 6th for a drive up to Atlanta for the Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle (GKIC) Infosummit. This was my first time to one of these esteemed events and I was well-armed with fresh notebooks and pens, and a mind ready to soak up all kinds of information. Oh yeah, I was also the proud owner of an Acer Netbook so I could tweet and facebook as I learned!
There were quite a few speakers that I wanted to see and learn from – Mari Smith, Christ Cardell, George Foreman, Mike Koenigs, Sonia Simone – to name but a few! I was particularly looking forward to some presentations by Dan Kennedy – his no BS style of delivery and succinct points make it easy for me to understand what he’s talking about… most of the time anyway! He did not disappoint and I wrote a TON of notes. I had been told that Frank Kern was someone to behold and listen to. What I hadn’t been told was that I should have brought my own booze so I could REALLY enjoy Frank Kern at his best!
Jackie Ewing & Dan Kennedy
Leading up to this infosummit and all the way throughout, I heard from different people that I should hunt for the 2 or 3 things that I could learn at this conference that would change me and my business. “All that way and all that time just for 2 or 3 things?” I asked myself, thinking I must have heard wrong. But no, that was the clear message. So, for whatever they are worth to you, here are the 3 main lessons that I learned at this GKIC Information Summit.
Think more about the WHO you are marketing to as opposed to what you are trying to sell. Care about people.
Use social media to supplement what is already working – blog, email, direct mail, etc. – create a loyal following by delivering great content to them.
Your ultimate goal should be profitability. If you remain invisible to your customers, you will not bring in any revenue.
Not major revelations by any stretch, but these 3 messages resonate throughout my notes from various speakers and presentations.
1. Think more about the WHO you are marketing to as opposed to what you are trying to sell. Care about people.
We know that the bulk of our business has been done with the people in our lists – every business should be tracking the people that buy stuff from them. If you’re not doing this, shame on you! You are leaving a ton of money on the table that you should be putting in your pocket.
If you know enough about the folks that have already purchased from you, you are armed to sell them something else – if you do it right. We should no longer be thinking about our database as a wall that we throw a ton of crap at and hope something sticks. We should be educating ourselves about our customers, our herd, our people. We should know what they like, what they don’t like, when their birthday is, what their dog’s name is… and on and on. The more you know, the more you know!
Frank Kern
The overriding theme from this conference was the relationships you should have with your “herd”. Frank Kern himself admitted that he simply did NOT like his customers before. When he changed his attitude about his business, what he wanted from it and how it should provide him with the lifestyle he wanted, he also changed his attitude about his customers. He got rid of the ones he didn’t like and went after more of the ones he DID like – what a concept! Doing business with people he liked became the fun he wanted it to be. Of course, he wants you and I to do the same!
Jackie Ewing & Mari Smith
2. Use Social Media to supplement or augment what is already working for you.
The constant roar about social media – what it is, how to use it, what NOT to do – is downright deafening at times! How on earth is anyone supposed to make sense of it all? Well, listening to those who have already drowned out the noise, found what works and emulating them is as as good a place to start as any! Many of the speakers gave actual examples of how Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or YouTube, or a combination of some or all of these, helped springboard their businesses from mediocre to money-making in a relatively short space of time. Of course, hearing their stories with all the hindsight available to them sort of condenses it into a great story, but bottom line is – they still managed to do what you and I really want to do!
Instead of getting overwhelmed by everything that’s out there, it was recommended that we pick three or four of the main social media mediums that we feel comfortable with and use them all the time. Communication is what it is all about and social media simply allows you to communicate with a whole lot of different folks in a whole lot of different ways! Learn a few of them and learn them well. When you have mastered those, start adding one or two more to the mix. No one medium will be the immediate answer, so work as many of them as you can make work well.
Thanks to Mari Smith, I have a far better understanding of how to use both Facebook and Twitter to connect with my target audience. And the really good news was that I get to be me while doing it! A little zany is allowed.
3. Your ultimate goal should be profitability.
Jackie Ewing & Chris Cardell
It is still very true to say that it doesn’t matter if you have built a better mousetrap if nobody knows about it. This message was very clear from ALL the speakers. You can’t just wave a magic wand and have your business suddenly be ultra profitable; you actually have to do some work and then tell everybody and anybody that will listen that you have the better mousetrap and it will solve some problem of theirs that has been haunting them forever!
Most of us have information on all kinds of subjects. If we have chosen our niche and can impart information on that niche in various mediums – writing, pictures, video – then we have a product to sell. The goal is to make money from what we know. Part of that is finding the cultivating the people who need to know what you know and will be willing to part with their hard-earned cash to do it.
I didn’t really understand why so many folks GIVE so much of their content away. It just seemed to go against the grain of making money. Well, I now consider myself re-educated and reformed! Chris Cardell spoke a great deal about how he built his online business. He started out giving stuff away and people just loved his content. So, when he was ready to give them even more fabulous content – his people were ready to buy.
George Foreman
To sum up the Infosummit (if that’s even possible, given the HUGE amount of information that was available all day, everyday!) George Foreman put it very simply – in the three things that he instills in his children:
1. Get up early in the morning. Things happen early, be a part of them!
2. Learn from older folks (or in our case, people who have what we want). Listen to their stories and learn from them.
3. Strive to be the nicest human being you can be. Truly, honesty is always the best policy and nothing comes across better than a genuine person.
So, here I go armed with all this new, old stuff. The ultimate key for me now is implementation. The rest of it is only as good as the action that I take.
If you like what you read here, or not, and have comments to make, errors to point out to me, whatever – please feel free to comment below.
In case you haven’t heard about the newest, most fun way to connect with people, here’s an update on Poken – a replacement for your conventional business card. Use a Poken usb to create your unique identity complete with contact details, social media network information and use it to connect with others and exchange your contact details.
Say goodbye to business cards and say hello to Poken!
Visit ClubPoken.com for a complete overview of all the new Pokens in the collection and make sure you get your own!
Here’s a quick video introduction to Poken, presented by Stephane Doutriaux – creator of the Poken.
Just got introduced to this nifty little thing – my Poken. It contains my social media contact info – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – with many more to choose from.
When I meet someone else with a Poken, we high four with their little hands and our information is automatically exchanged – how neat is that?!
You can collect up to 64 contacts at one time. Then just plug it into any computer with a USB port and internet access. The Poken will open a browser asking you to sign in to your account, it recognizes that you have pokened and uploads the social media info on the folks you just met. You can choose to save the data as vCards as well!
This little thing is HUGE in Asia already and growing wildly in Europe. I just HAD to get some!
Pokening in Miami Beach
Started “pokening” this week at the Florida Governor’s Conference on Tourism in Miami Beach.
Stay tuned for more updates on this nifty thing.
Email me now at jackie@jtewing.com if you want more immediate info or just plain want your own Poken!
