 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category
Have you ever seen a rock concert where the singer holds out the microphone in the middle of a song.
And not surprisingly the audience sings the lyrics of the songs, while swaying madly to the music.
Your audience should be so adoring, eh?
Well, if you can’t exactly be a rock star to your audience, you can most certainly create impact.
But won’t your speech itself create impact? The brain has a tough time taking in new information. As you step up to give your speech, your audience has to process an enormous amount of information.
It has to process the name of the speaker, decide on the credibility, decide the importance and validity of the information—and stay focused on what you’ve got to say, despite a million thoughts running through their heads.
To get the impact your topic deserves, you have to remove all the hurdles in the audience’s brain.
So how do you go about creating impact with an audience?
The three core steps are as follows:
1) Pre-warming the audience.
2) Carefully picking the time of day—depending on your topic.
3) Creating pre-speaking credibility.
Step One: Pre-warming the audience
Audiences don’t always know what you’re going to cover (even if you’re making an internal presentation). This makes the audience unsure, and out of their comfort-zone. The more they’re out of their comfort-zone, the more time they’ll take to adjust to whatever you’re presenting.
The way out of this dilemma is to send specific information to the audience in advance I didn’t say ‘information’. I said ’specific information.’
Let’s take an example
Let’s say you have a website with information. You can jolly well send them to your website, but that would be a bit of a mistake. Just as it would be a mistake to send them a folder full of information, or even a booklet.
Because most audience members are way too busy to look at your website, folder or booklet.
But if you send them the website, folder or booklet and get specific, the results change dramatically.
So if you send them to your website, make sure that you point out a specific article that they need to read. If you send them a booklet, get them to read a specific set of pages e.g. Page 12-16.
When you’re specific, you give your audience a chance to consume small bites of information.
If you aren’t specific, the audience tends to put your website, booklet in their to-do list. And they never get down to looking at it. And even if they do look at the information at the very last minute, you’ve got them focused on a specific section.
And as a result, they’re at least partially, if not completely pre-warmed.
But pre-warming is only part of the issue
Even a pre-warmed audience can’t handle information at certain times of the day.
Step 2: Carefully picking the time of day depending on your topic
You know as well as I do, that the worst time of the day to give a presentation is about 45 minutes after lunch. But this so-called speaker’s anecdote isn’t absolutely true.
It depends on the type of speech you’re about to give.
The only (yes, only) speech you should ever give 40 minutes after lunch is a ‘hands-on’ speech. This means you give basic instructions, and the audience gets into discussion mode.
A speech that involves minimal listening, and consist of mostly instruction, is fine to give after lunch. The key is to keep the audience moving till just before tea.
So if you design a speech that involves lots of discussion and interaction, feel free to have it right after lunch.
But what if you’re doing most of the talking?
If you’re doing most of the yakkity-yak, you’ll want to position your speech between the hours of 8-11am. This is the zone when the audience’s brains are running at full power. And after a good night’s rest they’re ready to absorb what you have to say.
The more the day lumbers on, the more information settles into their brain. And this makes it harder to absorb the information. So I’d always recommend the morning sessions. Fight for your morning slot. It’s well worth the slot.
However you could be the last speaker of the day and still be a super-hit
Provided you’re a comedian. Seriously. I’m not joking. Some of us are exceedingly good at making people laugh with our stories. We can give a perfectly good business speech, and have the audience rolling in laughter.
If you’re such a speaker, there’s no time better than the last slot of the day.
This is because the audience is now filled to the brim with information. And is looking forward to some ‘infotainment’.
If you’re capable of packaging the information in between peals of laughter, then it’s fine to be slotted as the last speaker of the day.
But if you’ve got high-density information, you want to get to your audience long as early in the day as possible.
Of course there’s always the issue of credibility.
Step 3: Creating pre-speaking credibility
In most cases, a speaker is introduced to the audience. However most people who introduce speakers are plainly bad at introductions.
They’re either too soft. Too muffled. Or they read from a pre-prepared sheet and go on forever.
If you wait to be introduced to an audience minutes before you speak, you’ve waited too late. You want to make sure your audience knows about you days, even weeks in advance. That they’ve had a chance to see not only who you are, but what you’ve achieved. They should know if you/or your company has won any awards.
They should know everything they can possibly know, and a good chunk of this information needs to get to the audience long before the event itself.
Most audience members will indeed do their research if they’re pointed in the right direction. Which means you should have the event publicized with the right
information, well in advance.
Most speakers just don’t do this groundwork.
They don’t pre-warm their audience with specific information. They don’t carefully choose speaking slots depending on their topic or style of speaking.
They don’t create enough credibility before they show up—often waiting for the last minute.
If you want to be the rockstar at your presentation, make sure you do your homework. And you’ll see the audience happily ’singing’ along!
Note: These steps apply to internal presentations too. e.g. Even if you’re well-known in your organization, your audience may not know of new information such as awards, new books you’ve written, or new milestones achieved.
If you get this information across to the audience in advance, you’re more likely to make an impact, whether speaking within or outside your organization.
©2001-2009 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Article written by Sean D’Souza.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas?Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.
Santa Claus Inc. is well and profitable, right through recessions, depressions and just about any economic scenario. The reason why his marketing strategies work better than yours, is because he uses solid, dyed-in-the-wool psychology. He knows he doesn’t have to use new fangled techniques, when his simple marketing has stood the test of time.
If you don’t believe in Santa, you’d better change your mind, because the fat man from the north pole rocks on and you too can do the same if you stick to the basics. Find out if your product or service matches up by reading the article below.
Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle All the Way…
If you go to the heart of Santa’s marketing, the one word you come away with is ‘consistency’. Generation after generation have been exposed to one brand, one message, and the same powerful imagery.
Just like Mercedes own the term ‘luxury’ and Volvo owns the term ’safety’, Santa owns the word ‘hope’. Every kid worth his Nintendo, hopes he’s got enough points on the goodness scale to justify a mountain of gifts.
Yet, most companies get tired of their own brand. They chop, change and pour thousands (if not millions) of dollars into a bottomless pit of mindless change. Take a look at McDonald’s advertising, for instance. McDonald’s own the word family outing yet their ads have been straying down the teenagerpath.
Does It Make Sense To Consistently Occupy One Niche?
You bet it does! Families go out with their kids to McDonalds. These kids sprout into budget-conscious teenagers that hang out at McDonalds. They have kids and grandkids and guess where they all end up. At the big yellow ‘M’, that’s where!
Santa doesn’t waver. His customers are kids. Like several marketers, he might have been sorely tempted to enter the gift market. With bad advice, he would have tried to get to teenagers, adults and everyone. Can you see the magic still working? Even the tiniest of niches is huge and niches have a way of expanding by themselves.
At the end of the day, it’s the consistency that takes the jingle all the way to the bank. Too many companies lose focus and give you seven reasons why you should buy from them. Santa sticks to one: Be a ‘good’ kid or you can keep hoping!
You Can Spot Him in the Middle of a Crowded Sky
Do you know anyone who comes to visit on a sleigh in the middle of the night? With reindeer and gifts? The reason why Santa stands out so vividly in our memories is because he’s different. The postman does the same thing, but leaves without the flourish.
It’s Really Important To Work Out How Your Marketing Message Differs
Santa’s core marketing term is not built solely on consistent branding but also on a very hard-nosed differentiation. Too much communication out there fits in with what’s safe. Customers have just one slot in their mind. You have to enter that slot at such an obtuse angle that they remember you for life.
Rose Richards runs Office Doctor. What sets her apart from all the rest of the administration crowd is the term, Small business pain relief. Can you imagine your reaction when you hear something like that?
The human mind is intensely curious and a marketing statement like that is pure bait. You want to know what pain relief she brings and how she goes about it-specially if you’re the one in pain. That’s only half the story. The construction of the message elevates her from simple number crunching to brain surgery and makes her unique.
If you want differentiation you need look no further than the guiding light of Santa’s sleigh– Rudolph, with his shiny nose. Can you even remember the names of the rest of the eight reindeer?
One very important point, however, is that the marketing message isn’t just different, but also customer-oriented. Rose takes the clutter out of administration and Rudolph provides a beacon for clearer navigation.
If you don’t have a benefit for the customer, just being different is going to get you nowhere.
Give and You Shall Receive
How many of you are out there networking like crazy? Trying desperately to fill in your steadily depleting bank reserves? You want, want, want! Take a look at Santa’s style.
He’s into giving first. If you probe deep into your mind, you’ll find the people you like best are those who have given you their time, their money or their knowledge. You trust them, and it’s very hard to say no when they ask you for a favor in return.
The deepest core of human emotions is fear. Every single product or service, without exception, is sold on the basis of a problem. The only known antidote to fear is TRUST. When trusts struts upwards, fear banishes itself to penguin land. The more you pile up the trust, the more you can do business.
Wouldn’t Santa be able to sell you just about anything? Would he be able to cross-sell and up-sell product? Santa could knock on your door next summer and you’d be more than happy to have him join your barbeque.
It’s up to you to build up the trust one Lego block at a time. Identify your clients and see what you can give them. It could be information, time or even a chocolate covered scrumptious cookie. It’s the old ‘What’s in it for me?‘ theory. If you can’t find something calorie-ridden for their minds or bodies, they won’t want to see you.
Play Santa. It works.
He Knows if You’ve Been Bad or Good…
Heck Santa knows his customers. He even knows when you are sleeping, or awake.
Then, there’s you. Look at your biggest customer. What’s her name? When is her birthday? Does she like Indian curries or sushi? In curries can she handle hot or medium? What does she think about you? What doesn’t she like?
You’re guessing for sure. You can’t be dead certain because you’ve been so busy looking at dollar signs that you’ve missed the plot completely.
The reason why Santa’s marketing works is because he intimately knows your individual needs. If you want a drum kit, you get one. If you want a Barbie, you don’t up sulking with a xylophone.
Santa knows because he’s interested in giving. To give, you have to know exactly what the receiver wants or your gift is not worth the packaging it’s wrapped in.
Some people worry about invading personal privacy. Hogwash! When was the last time you got upset because a supplier turned up with a big chocolate cake (your favorite) for your birthday? or with rare stamps for your son (because he loves collecting stamps)?
Santa’s invades our privacy gently and uses it to give, not to take. That’s why we don’t mind it. The tax department on the other hand, uses our information to take and therein lies the principal difference.
Once a Customer, Always a Customer
Santa Doesn’t Lose Customers. Period.
One of the primary reasons why he’s able to achieve this amazing feat is because he thinks of his customer’s customer. His customer is the kid, who in a few years gets a little wiser about Santa and his customer’s customer is the parent who has the amazing power to get their children to be nice notnaughty, if only for a short while.
Since the concept works in their favor, they do all the advertising. Without TV, radio or the Internet, Santa’s message gets a grip on millions of kids around the planet. These kids grow up and the marvel of Santa is handed down through the generations.
While It’s OK For Santa, How Would This Work In The Real World? Say, If You Sold Jeans.
Jeans West, a jean retailer, has several of the answers. I needed one pair, but Stephanie (the sales girl) sold me two–not by hassling me, but by gently reminding me I would get $20 off the second pair.
Then, with my purchase, she gave me a gift voucher of $10, for my use or to pass on. They, also signed me up for a loyalty program that offered to give me a 10% discount if I purchased over $250 worth of product in the next 6 months.
This Is Effectively What Jeans West Did to Make Me a Permanent Customer.
Step 2: She up-sold the product giving me good value for money.
Step 3: A gift voucher with a validity date, ensured an additional purchase. Or even better, the chance for me to pass it on to another person thus ‘creating a customer’ for Jeans West.
Step 4: Tying my fickle consumer head into a loyalty scheme. They wanted me to stay with them forever.
Santa’s steps may vary, but in essence he ties you into a solid loyalty program that is near impossible to get off. It’s ‘customer get customer’, rather than ‘advertising get customer.’ It’s cheaper and it works!
In conclusion here are the main points why Santa’s customers keeps coming back. These concepts may sound old, even trite, but have been proven time after time to work well. Test them against your company and brand to see where you can learn from the man from the North Pole.
1) Solid branding:We’re not talking lease here. Consistency is the key. This applies everywhere from networking meetings, advertising to any sort of communication that goes out. Keep hammering home the same unique message and put it up front. The weather changes all the time which is why we can’t trust it.
If you must change, it’s because your old message isn’t doing a complete job. I changed our first baseline from ‘Recession proof business principles’ to‘Reactivating dormant business clients.’
The proposition was the same but the second line got 10 times the response.
2) Differentiation:Santa knows he can be a courier with a difference. You, too, can create your own legend. Nike used Just Do It. Coke threw in the concept, Rum and Coke, indelibly burning the word classic into our consciousness. Sameness is in your mind. No matter how many brands exist on the market, your product has a fingerprint of its own. You just have to dig deep to find out.
3) Build trust by giving first.Life is all about sowing, then reaping-but sowing comes first. If you don’t give first, you will only get limited results. The more you stop thinking of yourself and focus on what the customer needs instead, the more you are trusted. Business is all about trust. If you don’t have it, you’re yesterday’s soup.
4) Know your customer… Like you know the hair on your head. Data collection and its optimum usage will get you right into their minds and keep you permanently rooted in. Every time they see you, they should think you are Santa coming to town.
5) Reactivate dormant clients They are all volcanoes. Sitting there with the power to erupt mightily. Figure out who they are and how you can work in tandem with them. Forget your product or service. That’s a given– It has to be good. Find out the ‘everything else’ factor and you will keep them for life.
Like Santa does…
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©2001-2008 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas?Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.
A graphic designer spoke to me last week. His graphic design firm — let’s call it XYZ Design — was number one in designing labels for a large wine company. Let’s call that ABC Wines. Now ABC wines had some really super wines. They loved the incomparable graphic design of XYZ design, and continued to use them for several of their major brands. This one client alone generated tons of work and income for XYZ design right through the year.
Then It Happened…
ABC Wines sold out to another wine company. This new wine company had its own in-house graphic designers. That effectively meant XYZ Design’s income and work flow were severely hit, causing them to scramble for new clients to fill the gap.
“If only I had done what you said,” said the owner of XYZ Design, ” and not line extended into web design and other forms of graphic design and communication, I would have gone down the drain too”
Not true.
Line extension doesn’t mean you run just one business or have one product.
No, it doesn’t mean that at all.
Multi-tasking existed long before the advent of computers and the more skills you have, the better off you are in today’s world. However, you have to name each ‘twin’ differently to give it a very distinct identity. When you do that, your client recognizes the difference and chooses that ‘twin’ for its own individual personality and character.
How Do You Line Extend Without Line Extending
In the case of XYZ Design, it would have to work in this manner. To all wine companies, they would enter the door as a ‘wine label design Specialist.’ To every wine company in the country and overseas, they would be known, not as XYZ Design but more so, as XYZ Wine Design Specialists.’
This would give the wine companies a specialist to deal with. It would help XYZ Wine Design specialists to build their reputation in the wine industry to a point where if any wine company decided to design a label, XYZ Design would be one of the main contenders.
Now, wine companies don’t do just labels. They do brochures, leaflets, annual reports, websites and tons of other stuff. Your question would be, how can I afford to lose out on that market?
Why You Never Lose Out On The Rest Of The Stuff
It’s called backdoor entry. Everyone (including your competition) is banging on the front door, trying to get in. You, on the other hand, quietly slip in through the backdoor, pick your goodies and slip out.
This is how it works in practice. If you do really good work designing wine labels, it’s almost inevitable that clients will ask you if you can design other associated material. That’s when you introduce your other company, “JKL Graphic Design” and “PQR Web Design”. Same company, different positioning and certainly different brand names. What this does, is it helps clients compartmentalize their thinking. They now think you have specialist groups working on specialist projects taking extra special attention.
This Does Two Things…
1) It helps each of your businesses take on a ‘character’ of its own without affecting the other, much like Air New Zealand is premium and Freedom Air is budget. The public knows they’re one company but still compartmentalizes them into two. You can change the character of each company, and help boil it down to the smallest possible niche, making you an expert in the category.
2) The client sees your multiple brands as different brands. When they need web design services, or when they need to recommend them, they call the web design experts. And so on with graphic design and wine labels or just about anything that you are handling.
Everyone Loves A Specialist
Would you allow a GP to work on your triple bypass? OR would you prefer a heart specialist? Even better, a doctor who does only triple bypass surgery? If you feel the difference, so does your client and to ignore this basic human instinct is to do so at your own risk.
How It Works Not Just In Business But In The Workplace Too
If you’re working in a job, the same rule applies. Be known as a genius for something. Know how several things work. But branding yourself in one skill makes you the expert. Every time the company has a fire in that section, you will be known for your fire-fighting skills.
On an ordinary basis, most employees are not known for any particular skill and wonder why they are on top of the redundancy list. Bosses don’t know what you do and why you’re special, because you haven’t been doing the ‘branding bit’. It’s better to be a specialist than the ’safe unknown.’
As Dire Straits sang in one of their songs, “Sitting on the fence is a dangerous course: You could get a bullet from the peace keeping force.”
Funny (But True) Phrases When You Forget To Obey The Rules
Jack of all trades, master of none. A bird in the hand, is worth two in the bush. And the best one of all: Keep it simple, stupid!
Keep putting these principles in action and you will see a marked improvement in your business.
©2001-2008 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.