MARKETING, NOT SELLING: THERE IS A DIFFERENCE!

WELCOME ALL!

This is part of an occasional, free marketing newsletter. It is included in our pages to inform you and to share what we know. If you want additional information, e-mail us as shown at the bottom. Feel free to pass any of this on to others.

We develop materials on marketing, customer service, sales, and other business and management topics.

Despite confusion about what marketing is, without it no business can succeed. The best definition of marketing is anything you do to get OR keep a customer. This means the most important forms of marketing are customer service and referrals. That’s a good reason for focusing on how to build relationships with customers and potential customers. You can build relationships in person or online. Even your advertising and brochures can help build relationships.

Having reviewed a large number of sources concerning the way successful marketing is conducts, We present a select few we believe are most important to many businesses. Apply as you might wish and let us know how it came out. We learn and grow through our business friends and contacts.

The best methods for you will differ depending on your personal style, your industry, and your budget. But these should give you some ideas. Despite the increasing impact of technology on marketing, most of the key things you can do are still aimed at standing out in your market and building relationships. If we were to pick the top key points, the below would rate very highly.

• Make your advantages easy to understand. Bullet and bold the established benefits you offer. Keep them in the forefront of the customers mind. The insurance industry, as well as many other businesses, are very good at this. Focus on how quickly you can provide your services or products. Be sure your customers understand how your advantages can WORK FOR THEM. Set yourself apart from competitors through great service and attention to the NEEDs of your customers.
  
• Resist the temptation to be everything to everyone. Just as customers screen you, you should decide who you want to serve. When you determine the kinds of customers with whom you can work with best, meaning SATISFYING THEIR NEEDS, you can achieve efficiency that translates to reduce marketing costs and MORE PROFIT. Some consulting firms work only with one customer per industry so they will have no apparent conflicts of interest. You can bet they select customers carefully, and that customers are flattered by the partnership approach. Consider creating a checklist of who shouldn’t hire you! It will help you focus, and may impress the right customers if you share it with them.
  
• Develop a referral system to get information to prospects directly. Word of mouth is the least expensive, most effective way to get new business. Have customers write on the back of their business cards why they do business with you and keep these mini-testimonials handy. Call or contact your customers to let them know you are available to DO SOMETHING FOR THEM. This shows them you care about them as well as their business. Advertising is effective. And, don't neglect the opportunities the WEB provides.
  
• Use online marketing. You don’t have to have a Web site to do business online. You can send personalized e-mail yourself or use a WEB mail service and pay only for the leads generated for you by advertising on many sites. You can research potential clients for better presentations. You can gather customer input quickly and inexpensively as well as see what other businesses are doing. You can post free ads in discussion groups and on message boards.
  
• Don’t emphasize selling, help people MEET THEIR NEEDS. When you can show the customer you have his interests at heart, you will become a CONSULTANT AND TEAM MEMBER to, and a PARTNER WITH HIM. When you’ve earned trusted advisor status, HE WANTS TO DO business WITH YOU. Our consultants help customers make money THE WAY THEY WANT TO. Let them build their own business. Concentrate on providing the information, know-how, products and services to assist them. When you put the customer first, you earn long-term loyalty that is more profitable than a quick sale.
  
• Partner with other companies reaching your market. This might be neighborhood merchants cooperating on a sidewalk sale, or Digital Equipment partnering with Infinite Technologies to better serve the Bank of New York. Or it could be you partnering with a charity to create a fund raising event that brings attention to both of you, like Service Merchandise and Goodwill did.
  
• Shift the risk to yourself and help customers profit. A believable guarantee makes it safe for prospects to give you a try. Very few people will exploit a generous guarantee compared to the extra business it generates. YoyoDine is one of many companies that guarantee you results from their online advertising. Even Kaiser, the big HMO, found a money-back guarantee to be successful.
  
• Be friendly and personable. To build relationships you have to build a personal connection. Handwritten notes, particularly thank yous, are well received. The customer deserves your special attention. After all, without them we would not be sucessful. Created a waiting list and great referrals by greeting visitors and asking them for cards and some comment on what they might need from you.
  
• Create free publicity. Our old Construction Computer Applications Newsletter had a hard time finding reviewers for computer programs of interest to readers. Our reviewers not only got publicity from their reviews, but we gave them referrals. A large CPA firm specializes in citrus growers. Every year they do a survey of their clients’ costs of operations. The survey data helps their clients benchmark their operations, positions the CPAs as the experts, and gets the CPA firm publicized in trade articles. Inquiry Handling Services gets regular publicity from newsletters and articles, as well as a book they wrote for their industry. And Luxury Limo received major coverage about a special rate created to allow three “regular” women to share the commute in a limo at about the cost of carpooling.
  
• Integrate your marketing. This means that everything you do should convey the same message and represent what you stand for. Putnam Investments manages $150 billion in assets. All their literature, and even their office, conveys the same message. Viva Knight, a script consultant, rents mailing lists from the same magazine he advertises in. If he also wrote articles for the same magazine, it would add to the integrated approach.