Category Archives for "Marketing"

Trustmarks

Trustmarks are images or logos that endorse your business by reference to a third-party company or business.

There are two types of Trustmark:

Endorsement Trustmarks

These show other companies or organisations trust your product or service. Sometimes funding bodies, for example, ask you to display their logo when they reward a grant. This may be an advantage because the fact you received a grant shows a third-party recognises your work.

Other possibilities might be

  • organisations with which you work in partnership,
  • bodies that accredit your work, or
  • past customers.

Of course, you should always get their permission before you display their trustmark.

They are an at-a-glance equivalent of testimonials.  Some websites display them together, perhaps as a band above the footer.  If you have a testimonial, you could display the trustmark with it.

Safety Trustmarks

The second type of trustmark are logos that reassure the visitor to your site that it is safe. So, if you are taking payments through the site, for example, you might display the PayPal logo to reassure visitors making payments.  This does not mean PayPal endorses your site’s content from but it reassures because a third-party records the payment.

This type of Trustmark is usually displayed close to where it is relevant.  So you will display the PayPal logo where you request the payment.  If your site sells a lot of things you might show it in your header, so the visitor can see it applies to the whole site.

Conclusion

If you can display trustmarks, it may be an advantage but many websites manage without them and it is probably not worth chasing such endorsements. If you have them, use them and if not don’t worry about them!

This is part of a post sequence about the second element of the circuit questionnaire, products services and causes.

The Art and Science of Selling

Older readers will remember the adverts that began with a doorbell: “Ding Dong” and will immediately respond: “Avon calling”.  The point of the advert was to soften up the viewers for the “Avon Lady”, when she called.  How many have even noticed that practitioners of the art and science of selling on the doorstep have disappeared?  Very few people these days sell from door to door.

It seems doorstep selling began with the Fuller Brush Company in the United States.  They were the origin of the term “foot-in-the-door”.  Many companies, including Avon Cosmetics, copied the Fuller Brush Company and it seems a good salesperson was often a welcome visitor, building long-term relationships with their customers.  However, the current image is of the brash salesperson who will not take no for an answer.  Where have they gone?

It seems it’s the Internet what’s done for them!  Whether this is a blessing or a curse probably depends on whether you believe Internet sales are better or worse than doorstep sales!

Daniel Pink in his book “To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading Convincing and Influencing Others” (subtitle from 2014 edition) charts the decline of doorstep selling and the surprising rise of selling in general.  His point is not that Internet sales have usurped the place of doorstep sales but that we are all salespeople now.  Or most of us!

His argument is other changes apart from the rise of the Internet mean we are all practitioners of the art and science of selling now.  He highlights three trends that have led to this change.  The archetypal doorstep salesperson has given way to the professional who incorporates selling into their daily work and perhaps is not aware they are doing so.  I suppose it depends on how you think about your work.  I’ll mention his three main trends here and comment on how they relate to the local economy.

Entrepreneurs

Every local business is dependent on selling its product service or cause.  This is most obvious with retailers perhaps but there are plenty of self-employed freelancers who must learn how to sell.

The self-employed, who abandon employment to sell their skills and knowledge, are sometimes called the precariat.  Many are not very good at sales and barely cover their costs.  Many are not successful and either change their practice until they find something that works or go under.

The problem for many entrepreneurs is believing what they offer has real social value.  It is hard to sell something you don’t believe in.  Their failure to believe in their own offer does not necessarily correlate with what they offer.  For every brash salesperson selling something over-hyped there is the too timid entrepreneur who never quite convinces about something that is really rather good!

Successful businesses usually find a business community who offer support and bolster confidence to sell.  Whilst some businesses could benefit from a healthy dose of brashness, perhaps it is quiet confidence in a good product or service that ultimately wins out.  And perhaps many businesses would benefit from other businesses singing their praises!

Selling in the Community

Community and voluntary organisations are often in a similar place to local businesses.  They may be selling a cause and so they are not necessarily seeking finance but they are still engaged in sales.  Perhaps the main difference between these organisations and local businesses is that usually, they are not dependent on the success of their enterprise.  People promoting a local cause will often do so in their spare time, whilst remaining in employment.

Leaving aside possible clashes with their employers over the cause they promote, the primary difference may be lack of experience.  Many will think of their selling as promoting a cause or campaigning and do not associate it with the marketing local businesses do.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of common ground and perhaps mutual recognition and sympathy would lead to more collaboration.  Businesses may be able to help organisations with marketing, whilst some community organisations may have valuable local knowledge.

Elastic Businesses

Entrepreneurs can find they are marketing alongside representatives from more established businesses.  These are not from the sales department because many larger businesses have done away with their sales departments, flattened hierarchies and declared that everyone is responsible for sales.  Many workers find their role stretches to cover far more than they would in the past and everyone has some role in promoting their company.

Selling through your role in your business is increasingly your responsibility.  If in promoting your role, you bring more customers to the business it is all to the good.

Many workers are waking up to the fact that they belong to a community.  It may be local, perhaps a city or region or it may be online.  They are part of a community, customers and collaborators who may bring customers to the company.  The challenge is to navigate the sea of people who seem to be creative on a shoestring.  Building relationships with entrepreneurs, third sector and in business, can bring greater benefits to larger companies.

Education and Medicine

Pink’s point here is that not all selling involves money.  The aim is to persuade others to take a course of action for their own benefit.  So, a teacher needs to sell learning to their pupils or students.  A doctor needs to persuade patients to change their diet to help them return to health.

By extension just about any activity needs a sales approach.  Community and voluntary organisations often find they are marketing a cause.   They may want donations or time or members or signatures or letters to MPs.  How do they move people to support their cause?

Sample Cases

After he makes the case that selling is a natural part of being human, Pink goes on to show how it can be done.  This is the best part of the book, as Pink describes the characteristics of a good salesperson and suggests practical exercises to improve their approach to sales.

Sample Cases follow each chapter, practical things anyone can take up and use.  So, this is essentially a practical book packed with simple tools anyone can use.  I suspect it is something I shall return to many times.

If you are active in local marketing you will find this book a useful practical guide to the art of selling.

Are you comfortable with being a salesperson?  If you are in any business or profession, you are almost certainly expected to sell things.  How do you go about it?

From One-Off to Repeated Sales

Repeated sales are the Holy Grail of Internet Marketing. If you have a good product or a service and it is possible to create a good digital version, you can sell it on-line. Many of the get-rich-quick schemes promoted by Internet marketers involve repeated sales.

I would never dissuade someone from trying this if they have a suitable product or service. However, there are a lot of second-rate offers online. Most people are better at providing one-off services or products.

A Case Study – for Repeated Sales

I am aware of one organisation that has provided an excellent service for over forty years. Over that time they have generated a lot of really useful information, they have a pool of people, mostly casual, who design and deliver the service and a list of members and contacts, satisfied customers who have in the past made donations and interest-free loans to the organisation.

Potentially they have a global market and could extend their list and probably find customers who would buy most of what they produced because they support the organisation.

In every respect this organisation could easily market its service online. The organisation is making an annual loss and will in a few years cease to trade. The reason they won’t market online is because they value the personal nature of the service they provide.

Whilst I understand their concern, I think they have made the wrong decision for two reasons. First, whilst delivering the service online may not be as personal as delivering it in person, it is not the same as an impersonal service. There are many ways an online service can be made more personal.

Second, delivering online products and services does not rule out delivering an in-person service. The organisation knows this but has not understood that an online service could subsidise their in-person work. It could in practice lead to increased in-person work.

Of course, these are judgements that have to be made all the time and it is not always easy to get them right. My approach would be to generally encourage organisations that have something genuinely first-rate to roll it out to the biggest possible audience. If it is that good, then the world needs to have access to it.

Developing Ideas

But what if you are developing an idea?  The chances are you are not ready to build a repeat sales product until you are confident you have designed a service that warrants it.  It is not too difficult to produce a high-quality one-off service. You need skills, experience and knowledge but if you have them you are most likely able to find packages that sell and are worth the money.

The hard thing is turning these packages into products that can be repeatedly sold. Not only does the package itself need to be high quality but also you need to be able to market it.

So, here are some intermediate steps you can take to test your market. Products you give away at first can be withdrawn and revised and incorporated into a premium package at a later date.

  • An ebook is a good way to test the market and grow your email list.
  • There are a variety of on-line documents, eg reports, guides, resource lists, diagrams, infograms …
  • A blog can be used to grow readers and encourage comments.
  • Videos can be made available through YouTube and used to build your email list.
  • Audio is good for things like meditations. People use them when jogging or driving.

None of these are likely to generate much income alone but they can be used to test your market and build email lists. They help you practice turning your activities into products and can be used to test a future premium product and perhaps incorporated into a premium product at a later date.

For most products be cautious about the value of what you can put together. Many services deliver for their clients and never put anything online. One reason for this will be that they lack the material someone will value and be able to use without expert guidance.

This is part of a post sequence about the second element of the circuit questionnaire, products services and causes.

Availability

Availability is another aspect of timing for offers of products services or causes. For services, availability is closely related to capacity. The issue is not the best time to launch or promote an offer. It is periods when we can’t take on more clients (and so disappoint them) or have too few.

Work may be seasonal. A coaching service may find work slackens off at Christmas and during the summer holidays. A hairdresser on the other hand may find these are periods when there is more work.

Whilst you can anticipate times of year when work increases or decreases, be prepared to be surprised! Is a sudden fall in sales seasonal or an issue such as adverse publicity?

How to Respond to Times When Work is Scarce or Plentiful

A fall in sales may be an opportunity to make a special offer. If you have spare capacity, it may be better to sell it at a reduced price than to do nothing. If the spare capacity includes paid staff, this will be more important.

Address oversubscribed services with increased capacity. Self-employed people offering specialist services may need to find some way to spread customers over the year. However, if too much work is a serious issue then  maybe the shape of the business needs attention.  Increasing staff is only one option.  Sometimes you can change the way you deliver a service to cut time commitment. For example a one-to-one service might be delivered to groups.

There is one remedy many businesses overlook when tackling over-subscriptions.  That is increasing prices.  Higher prices will result in fewer customers (keep increasing them until the numbers drop to something you can manage) and possibly more income.  With fewer customers, you may be able to increase the time available for each customer and so the value of your offer will increase.

Whilst these may not be pressing issues for you, it is worth having a few ideas in advance to carry out should need arise.

This is part of a post sequence about the circuit questionnaire’s second element, products services and causes.

Making Changes to Your Offer

Products services and causes change.  There are many reasons for making changes to your offer, for example:

  •  you discover new aspects or approaches.
  • you make changes as you get to know your market and respond to its needs.
  • offers might change on a seasonal basis, locally sourced fruit and vegetables for example.
  • things change with fashion or even set the fashion.

If something sells well, it may not be urgent to change it. However it may be possible to anticipate the market and introduce a change when sales begin to dip. Anticipating changes in the market and knowing how to respond is something you increasingly understand with experience.

External and Internal Pressures

Change might be driven by internal or external pressures. External pressures drive change in your offer over which you have little control. Fashion or changing seasons might be examples.

Internal pressures are changes you undertake as your offer evolves and you learn more about the market. The market itself does not change but you identify changes that better fit your market’s needs. There may be good times to introduce these changes but overall they are not dependent on external events.

Sometimes changes have little impact on marketing. A consultancy service might change its offer but the consultant reveals the details only when making an offer. Such a service sells through reputation and not so much through the detail of its offer.

A shop selling large numbers of products might plan seasonal campaigns or occasional promotions of one product.  They may launch new products at certain times of year based on their experience of seasonal changes.

Like everything else, this is worth considering even if changes to your offer are likely to happen after long periods of time.  Everything changes and it is worth knowing when and how your offer might change, so that you prepare for when changes need to happen.

This is part of a post sequence about the second element of the circuit questionnaire, products services and causes.

Launching New Offerings

Whilst an established product service or cause will be selling, new offerings may take time to become established.

So, what happens when you introduce something new to the market? Earlier in this sequence about products services and causes, I posted about unique offers. Understand the distinction; your offer does not have to be unique to be new to the market. It always helps to identify aspects of an offer that are unique; after all why should someone buy from you if your offer copies everyone else’s?

However, this post is not about the unique aspects of an offer, so much as the timing and how you launch it on the market. If you have not marketed this particular offer before, how do you introduce it to the market?

Here are some things to consider:

  • Do you know who its potential market is?
  • Do you know how to contact them?
  • To what extent is the market aware of the offer? The awareness ladder may be helpful here.
  • Is the offer aimed primarily at a local market? It may be the offer has to be made locally. A baker, for example, is unlikely to aim for an export market. Anyone offering a service is likely to focus their efforts in a local market. However, others may want to focus initially in a local market, to iron out any issues before a bigger launch.

Another thing to consider is whether you want to launch your offer with maximum impact so that you get a lot of immediate attention. The alternative is to slowly publicise your offer. You might want to do this so you can pilot a new offering, before you launch it on the open market.  The following approaches begin with the more gradual and move onto those with a greater immediate impact.

  • Referral marketing is a slow and steady approach and effective locally.
  • Local media, ie things like flyers and business cards through to launches in local media.
  • If you have a shop front, consider how introducing a new product might impact on existing products. For example, is it worth giving publicity to a new offer so that people come to the shop and see older products?
  • Local presentations, if your market gathers for meetings, it may be possible to offer a presentation
  • Online marketing can support local marketing or be for a wider market beyond the reach of local approaches.  You might use approaches such as SEO or social media.
  • If you have established online contacts, using email lists, it may be worth considering a product launch.

Whatever option you choose, there will be a lot of detail to work out, so it is worth giving thought to these issues before you introduce something new to the market.

This is part of a post sequence about the circuit questionnaire’s second element, products services and causes.

Price and Profitability

Pricing Causes

Marketing need not result in a sale, where a sale is a financial transaction.  So, do causes have nothing to do with price and profitability?

There are a few things to bear in mind:

  • Not all transactions are financial, eg offering something in return for an email address. You may be building an email list so you can keep interested people up-to-date with your cause.
  • Running a cause does not rule out financial transactions. You may have knowledge, skills or experiences that can be turned into products or services that generate income for your cause. How you use the income may be an issue; there are rules for charities, for example. But many charities employ staff and use income to pay their salaries.
  • For some causes, the return on a financial contribution may primarily benefit a third-party. This is true for donations, for example. This does not rule out some benefit for the donor, eg news of how the charity spends donations or training that furthers understanding of the cause.

If there is a financial transaction then the same rules apply as for products and services.

Pricing Products and Services

Pricing products is not the same as pricing services. If you are selling a product, it is likely there are similar products on the market and their pricing is likely to impact yours. If you have a unique product, you may be able to charge what you like, at least until someone comes up with something similar or an improvement!

Services usually have more freedom to find their own price. The main thing here is not to charge by the hour. Be clear about the benefits and charge for them. The main constraint may be your reputation but do not let modesty restrict your prices.

Remember if you provide a service, the number of hours you devote to each client is limited. This means you will be able to provide the service to a limited number of clients over a given time period. So, if you need to raise £2500 per month you can do this by increasing the number of clients or increasing your prices. The former means more work for you and so at some point will hit a limit.

Products and services can be combined and either or both can be combined with causes.

Profitability

The questions in the circuit questionnaire perhaps do not do justice to profitability but here they are with my comments.

How much does it cost you to make the product / provide the service?

First, the cost to you to provide the product or service is important, especially if your price is below the cost. However, the important thing is the benefit from the product or service and this may have little relation to the cost.

Another point to consider is time may be as important as the cost. A coach may have low costs but time may be a major constraint. Is it possible to reduce time per client whilst increasing the benefit? If the benefit increases, so can the price!

How big are profit margins?

Profit margins the difference between costs and the price per unit. However, where time is crucial, you need to calculate how many clients you can manage and work out how much you need to charge to meet your needs. Products could have low margins but that may be OK if you can sell lots of them.

What other ways might there be of providing this product / service at different price points to suit different types of customers? Let’s get creative!

This is a good idea up to a point but there is also the need to have confidence in your marketing. If you have a good product or service, well marketed, it is possible potential customers will find the money, even if it seems steep at first hearing. This will work if you are confident your offer will return something of greater value than their initial outlay.

In summary, your pricing depends on the value of your offer and your confidence in that value. You need both!

Just How Important are Features?

Products and Services

We’re often told it is benefits that sell a product or service. Nevertheless, it is easy to forget and try to market a product or service’s features. Usually, prospects are not interested because they do not know they need those features. So, just how important are features?

Features are elements of the design of a product or service. If you sell your product or service with through its benefits, there comes a point where your prospective client or customer will ask: exactly how are you going to deliver on your promised benefits?  This is where features come into play.

Features can make a product or service special but it is important not to overdo it. For example, if you are selling a coaching service, you might offer two sessions per month. It might be tempting to think three or four sessions would be more attractive. It might but remember there is a limit to the workload your client can take on. You don’t want to overload your client and it is also more work for you!

Types of Feature

Your clients or customers need to know what they will receive for their money. An attractive list of features presented at the right time, ie once the prospective client or customer has understood the benefits, can go a long way towards making the sale. So, your features might include:

  • The core elements in the offer you are making. For services you need to be clear about monthly features and features that are one-off. Core elements can be products, services or both.
  • Documentation of various types, eg notes or recordings
  • Delivery, eg is it online, by phone, by post, video, audio, pdf, etc.
  • Any bonuses are usually relevant but not essential to the main offer. You can introduce them in a list of features or use them as incentives to purchase in various ways. You can also have surprise bonuses, although you can’t use these to market your product or service!
  • For services, the duration of the offer if it is time limited

Pricing

Pricing is a special case. It is a feature but you may not need to include it if it is likely to vary according to the needs of the client. You may also wish to include incentives, such as discounts, which you can introduce as you get to know your prospective customer.  Prices can also include variations dependent on the payment method.

Be clear why your features are special and what they offer that other similar products or services don’t.

Causes

Causes are different because usually the beneficiary is a third-party. So, the benefits are not primarily for the supporter. If someone is going to donate, however, they will want to know where the money is going and how it will be used.

Therefore these features are of two kinds. Some will relate to the delivery of the benefit to the beneficiaries. Or if the cause is a campaign, how the campaign is to be carried out and what support can be contributed to the campaign.

The other type is features for the supporter or donor. These might be things like reports, access to information, training for direct action, etc.

So, sign up for our direct action workshop, £20! The benefit is two-fold, the person who pays attends a workshop and the resulting direct action may bring about beneficial changes. Similarly, the features will be two-fold. The person who pays gets a workshop (and possibly lunch!) and perhaps joined up because a feature of the workshop is that the direct action is non-violent.

Remember this three-way structure of benefits and features. We normally consider a transaction as two-way. A business sells something to a customer who needs it. However, it is likely in almost all transactions, there are third-parties, those who have a stake in the transaction.

Implicit Causes

Where there is a cause, the beneficiaries are likely to be obvious. In a natural disaster, the beneficiaries are the main point. For some causes there are beneficiaries but they are not readily identifiable, eg climate change impacts everyone’s life, a general benefit.

But a transaction between a wholesaler and retailer for example, includes the retailer’s customers. These customers clearly have a stake in the transaction and where they have expectations of the products, in terms of quality or environmental impact, there may be a cause in there too.

And consider any commercial transaction where there is no cause articulated, there still may be hidden causes, such as additives to foods or environmental impact. The customers may not articulate interest in this aspect but it can have implications for their wealth and well-being.

The point is maybe the features of any product or service includes an implicit cause and that is the well-being of stakeholders. We see this already in some products, eg “this cosmetic was not tested on animals” is a feature of the product and relates to a particular cause that concerns some of its users.

Clearly this is a complex area and requires further exploration.

The Golden Triangle

Don’t confuse the Golden Triangle with The Value Triangle, which poses a question for potential customers about their priorities. The Golden Triangle is a question for you, about your priorities.

Imagine three intersecting circles. In each you list your answers to three questions,  What:

  • do I love doing?
  • am I great at doing?
  • is there a demand for?

The overlap between your answers is the Golden Triangle!

Enjoyment

One big advantage of being self-employed is you can choose what you do. Although you are free to choose, there will be constraints. The Golden Triangle helps you find out what is possible within those constraints.

If you are in paid work, you are likely to be doing some things you do not enjoy, possibly things your employer does not enjoy either!

There will always be things you have to do that you do not enjoy. Tax returns spring to mind,  (If you do enjoy doing your tax returns, try phoning the UK tax office and you’ll soon change your mind!)

But if your main work is something you enjoy, then you will have the energy, the incentive to get on with it.

Capacity

However, being enthusiastic is not the same as being good at something. Sometimes you need to practice and enthusiasm may carry you some of the way. Writing is a good example of a skill you might enjoy but still requires practice to develop a readable style.

You need to be aware of how good you are at your main business activity because this will have implications for your confidence and even such basic things as your prices.

Market

Finally, your biggest constraint is finding your market and offering something it needs. It pays to develop your marketing alongside any product service or cause you develop.

Using the Golden Triangle

It is a good idea to do this exercise early on so you can design your offer to meet these three criteria or at least get as close to them as you can. One approach is to take each of your offers or potential offers and ask the three questions of it.

Do I enjoy doing this? Am I good at doing this? Do others appreciate this? If you have a lot of options, you may be able to rank them according to these criteria.

Finally, it is worth underlining why enjoyment is importance , particularly if you are self-employed. Taking pleasure in your work will help carry you through more difficult times. Obviously, sometimes you need to do things you don’t enjoy so much. But if overall you take little pleasure in what you do, perhaps you need to review what you are doing.

Also, remember you may find an activity you didn’t expect becomes enjoyable as you become proficient and learn more about it. So, don’t allow experience of current enjoyment cloud your ability to find something else equally enjoyable and possibly better business!

Do you enjoy your work? How did you find work you enjoy?

Origin Stories for Products Services and Causes

A few weeks ago I published the post your business story and most of it applies to origin stories for products services and causes.

I argued why your business story is likely to need less prominence than your personal story.  The same applies to origin stories for specific products services and causes. Unless they have some unique origin, the story of you slogging away for months is not likely to be gripping. This is not to say the story should be omitted, it may answer questions potential customers are asking. So, how you write the story and the way you present it is important.

Origin stories for causes are more likely to be interesting and so may need more prominence. Causes need to be promoted to people who are not aware of them and will not gain personal benefit from supporting them. So, a good story may be an excellent way to capture their attention and gain their support.

If you happen to have a good story, the same is true for products and services. Remember the story does not have to be long. A couple of sentences may be all you need to get it across. There’s no problem telling longer stories; a good story will hold your site visitors’ attention. Remember you can use audio or video as well as written copy.

Three Useful Questions

Here are three questions that might help you find an origin story for each product, service or cause. Try writing your answers; take as many words as you need and then edit them and be ruthless!

  • What was going on for you at the time you developed your offer? This is an opportunity to describe the background to the story. Were you actively seeking something to offer or were you engaged in something else that led to a happy accident? This is where you can refer to your personal origin story. Don’t dwell on this unless it is really important. You are likely to find, when you write a couple of sentences, they draw you on to the next question.
  • What did you notice that showed there was a need for this? This is the problem to which your product, service or cause is a solution. This is important because it is where you capture reader’s attention if they share the problem. You can show you understand the problem because you have experienced it or been close to people who have.
  • How did you develop it? Developing a new offer depends on two insights. The first is the problem and the second is the solution. There is often more than one solution to the same problem and so this part of the story is about how you solved the problem. If you are competing with other solutions,  your story will help you show why your solution is the best.

Your offer’s origin story may be an important part of your sales funnel.  On the awareness ladder, it is at step four, where you differentiate your product service or cause from other solutions in the market.

It’s always interesting to share examples and so if you know any compelling origin stories, share them in the comments.

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