Your advertisements will only be effective if they are targeted to the needs of those viewing them.

This past weekend we drove through the Hill Country here in central Texas out to a pumpkin patch. We took a small, two lane state road that had its fair share of curves and ups and downs. There wasn’t much traffic out on the road and we did see lots of motorcycles enjoying the ride and nice weather.

The drive was through some pretty remote country and we didn’t really see any development or billboard ads. However, when we approached the city of Marble Falls, there was a big billboard outside of town. It was the first one we had seen for miles. I thought it was kind of odd to be out there in the middle of nowhere. Then I saw what it was advertising.

The billboard was for motorcycle insurance. The billboard’s product may not have applied to my family cruising the Hill Country in our minivan but it was very applicable to all those motorcycle riders enjoying the same road we traveled.

It was not coincidence that the insurance company placed their billboard ad where they did.

Ad Placement

Seth Godin, in his book Purple Cow talks about the death of mass marketing and untargeted advertisements. Billboards could easily fall into the “mass marketing” category. Many companies fall into the trap of paying too much to reach too many people that are not potential customers. However, the example we saw out in the Hill Country was brilliantly positioned and it targeted exactly those people that would be riding by on motorcycles.

Laser-Guided Ads

Online advertisements are easily targeted to your audience. Keywords, search patterns, and user tracking information all allow advertisers to deliver ads with precision. How can you target your offline ads with similar efficiency?

Learn where your customers hang out. Find out what will catch their attention. Once you know, go make yourself visible in those same locations.

Spend Time with Customers

It wouldn’t surprise me if someone that worked for the insurance company was out on his Harley cruising the Hill Country and thought, “Hey, this would be a great place for a motorcycle insurance billboard.” How did he know that? Because he was out with the customers doing what they do and seeing the opportunities that other companies are missing.

Your customers are seeking validation of their decision to do business with you. Testimonials and case studies from fellow customers can help overcome doubts and close the sale.

Truly powerful testimonials and case studies come directly from customers. If you try to create a case study from scratch without the customer’s involvement, you are missing out on some valuable information.

Gather the Information

Sean D’Souza reminds us that we shouldn’t make testimonials too sugary. To create testimonials with substance, he suggests asking customers these questions:

1. What were your perceptions before you bought our product/service and were you reluctant in any way?
2. How did you feel as a result of using the product/service?
3. What specific results did you get as a result of using the product/service?

John Jantsch on his Duct Tape Marketing blog suggests you ask a client four questions:

1. What solution were you seeking when you hired us?
2. What did/do we provide that you value the most?
3. What has been the result of working with us?
4. What would you tell others who are considering hiring us?

Instead of guessing why a customer chose you or likes to do business with you, you can gather that information straight from the customer. You’ll probably even get feedback you weren’t expecting.

Combine these two sets of questions together to mix and match those that best suit your business and customer base.

Tell a Story

Asking questions of your customers and clients allows you draw out their “story” so you can then retell it to other prospective customers.

Your customers will each have their individual challenges and needs. You can relate situations and successes from previous customers via testimonials and case studies to prove that you can help solve your prospective customer’s problems.

Resolve Common Concerns

If you know your customers frequently have the same questions, you can leverage testimonials to show how others may have had those same doubts and yet your product masterfully delivered what you promised. Imagine the power your “frequently asked questions” page would have if your current customers answered the questions based on their own experience with you!

Your claims carry far more weight and credibility when you can back your statement up with those from real life users.

Prospective customers may not know all the great features and benefits of your product or service. Don’t overlook a simple step in marketing your products: tell your customers why they would want your product.

I was checking some football scores this past weekend on ESPN.com. Before the scoreboard launched, they showed me an intermediate page:

This ad was trying to promote ESPN’s premium service. However, all they could say to entice me was “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

If I don’t know what I’m missing, why would I want to sign up?

Why don’t you tell me I get extra articles and interviews? Tell me I get discounts and streaming online video of games.

Please tell customers what they get and why they should care.

Some customers will be curious and try to find out what they are missing even if you don’t tell them. However, that is the exception to the rule. Most potential customers, oblivious to your great product, will walk on by without further investigation.

First, tell customers about your product’s great features. Second, translate those into how they benefit the customer. By so doing, you’ll paint a picture that the customer can imagine and will compel them to proceed down the sales path.

The more comfortable you are with your customers, the easier it is to ask for referrals.

On our recent family vacation, my wife and I attended a melodrama at the Pickleville Playhouse. The lighthearted show created a very casual atmosphere. It was therefore very easy for the actor at the end to say:

If you liked the show, go home and tell all your friends. If not, then shut up!

If the stage had not been properly set (pun intended), then the customers (audience) could easily have been offended by that statement. Nevertheless, due to the comfortable atmosphere that Pickleville created, they could close with that memorable statement. In fact, the audience laughed and here I am at home telling all my friends about it.

On the flight home, we flew Southwest Airlines. They have always provided us great service in the past and this time was no exception.

As our plane taxied to the terminal, the flight attendant was making the standard announcements. Then she paused and said:

Remember, friends don’t let friends fly other airlines.

Once again, this could have come across as cocky or arrogant. However, the crew had created a very pleasant flight for us and this statement received a chuckle from those listening.

If you want customers to refer their friends to you, just ask. Follow up your great service with an invitation to have your customers tell others about you. Make it funny and they’ll be that much more likely to tell someone else!

Gross Margins are a great indicator of the health of your business. As you may know, you can calculate your gross margin with this equation:

Revenues - Cost of Goods Sold = Gross Margin

Marketing expenses usually come in further down the income statement. Therefore adjusting marketing expenses won’t directly affect gross margin, but would rather impact net income.

Since the Marketing department can do little to change the cost of goods sold, their focus falls on the top line revenue growth.

What are some things Marketing can do to help top line revenue growth?

• Drive increased sales volume to compensate for lower margin products
• Convert more website traffic to sales leads
• Upsell customers to higher margin products
• Communicate product value (not cost) and benefits to customer
• Cross-sell related products with higher margins to customer’s original purchase
• Use Good/Better/Best positioning of higher margin products
• Promote higher margins products over lower margin items

Your product lines will have varying gross margins and your marketing will need to react accordingly.

If you can convince a customer of the high value of your product, cost becomes a minimal factor in the buying decision.

Persuade a customer of your product’s value and they will:

• buy higher margin products
• not ask for or require discounts on a purchase
• buy more products
• become loyal, return customers

All of these customer actions will lead to sustained and growing gross margins.

Are you more likely to buy from a local company than a national chain? What if a local company started in your backyard and then grew to national fame?

Businesses that feel like they are local can have a competitive advantage over cookie-cutter generic national or global brands.

Ice cream shop Dairy Queen has branded itself as Texan. Their catchy little jingle on commericals sings “DQ … that’s what I like about Texas!”

They even go so far as to say their white on red logo is a “Texas Stop Sign.”

By the sounds of it, Dairy Queen may very well be a Texas business. However, they didn’t start here. They started in Joliet, Illinois in 1940.

Despite their non-native status, Dairy Queen has created a powerful Texas brand that sticks in customers’ minds.

Obviously, Texas is a huge market and merits the custom marketing campaign. However, the principles here are sound. Targeting your local population by helping them feel you are a part of their community will influence buying behavior.

Your local small businesses recognize the power of their “locally owned and operated” tag lines. Large corporations see the benefits too.

Remember, customers may not be local to you but they are “local” to where they live. How are you targeting your local customers?

You probably don’t think about termites all that often. I know I don’t. However, on the drive home last week I heard a Terminix radio ad stating that I have a 3 times greater chance of my home getting infested with termites in Austin (where I live) than in other cities.

Terminix’s advertisement triggered my imagination and sent me thinking about the worse case scenarios: Imagine your house destroyed from the inside by nasty little termites. You could face thousands of dollars in repair costs. Ouch!

When to Use Fear Marketing

Some products and services lend themselves to fear marketing better than others. You probably wouldn’t get termite pest control if you weren’t afraid of not preventing trouble. You’d skip the life insurance premiums or the flood insurance if you weren’t at least a little afraid of the unimaginable.

Consider your audience and product before firing off your initial salvo of fear marketing. You could use fear marketing to drive people to action in multiple areas of disaster prevention or mitigation:

• untimely death
• health and illness
• accidents (work or automobile)
• relationships
• safety
• home ownership
• extended warranties

There is an opportunity to leverage fear marketing to your advantage anytime a customer risks losing money, time, property, or life.

When Not to Use Fear Marketing

If your products will make people happy, please don’t dwell on the negative! Focus on all the positive things that will result from purchasing your product. Don’t overshadow your uplifting company and product with negative overtones of doom and gloom.

Not all people will respond to marketing by fear. You may want to balance any fear campaign with an opposite approach highlighting the positive outcomes. A balanced strategy will capture a broader, more diverse group of potential customers.

Fear Marketing Guidelines

Nedra Weinreich gives us several points to make our fear marketing effective:

1. Make sure the portrayed consequence of not taking action is severe, but not exaggerated.
2. Make the audience feel that the problem is relevant to them.
3. Provide a specific action that the audience can take to prevent the portrayed consequence from happening.
4. Ensure that the audience believes that the proposed solution is effective in preventing the consequence.
5. Portray the solution as something that the audience can easily do.

Provide the Happy Ending

You need to paint a picture for your potential customers that compels them to action. You want them to visualize themselves with a happy ending because they purchased your product. Your product becomes a security blanket that helps the customer sleep at night without the fear of a looming disaster.

A simple grammatical trick can make you stand out among your competition. Well, at least until they do the same thing!

Take a look at these slogans you’ve probably seen in the mass media.

SBC: “Fastest internet in Austin for the price”

Sprint: “The most powerful network”

Verizon: “America’s most reliable network”

Cingular: “The fewest dropped calls”

What do all these have in common? They all use superlatives. Do you remember that term from grammar lessons long ago?

This subtle phrasing helps the companies mentioned above appear as though they are the only valid choice. Superlatives are great at making a good first impression. However, when superlatives are flying all around, it may cause your customer to start to ask questions. Will your superlative claim stand up to scrutiny? Let’s take a look at these examples.

Fastest

I saw SBC’s claim “Fastest Internet in Austin for the price” on a roadside billboard. The “fastest” part caught my attention and I, driving by in my car, often didn’t get past that first piece and never read the “for the price.”

The second half of their claim is a big caveat, exemption, and doubt creator. What do they mean by “for the price?”

Don’t leave your customers guessing or even thinking there is a catch to your statement.

Powerful

Sprint claims “the most powerful network.” What do they mean by “powerful?” Are we talking about volts, amps, or mystical waves floating through the air? Something else? It is hard to say because they make the claim as if it is self-evident.

Your marketing statements should be self-explanatory.

Reliable

Verizon Wireless boasts “America’s most reliable network.” Surely this resonates with consumers whose current cell provider drops their calls or never seems to have an available signal on hand.

Use words that ring true with customers. A customer should hear your statement and then immediately picture how their current problem can be fixed by your solution.

Fewest

Not to be outdone by the competition, Cingular makes the longest statement: “The largest digital voice and data network and the fewest dropped calls.” What does the “largest network” do for me? Doesn’t that make it more crowded, harder to get customer service, and turn me into just another account number?

They may be wiser to stick with the final claim: “fewest dropped calls.” While not as broad as Verizon’s reliable claim, the dropped call statement would resonate with customers that are plagued by such.

Avoid marketing claims that also make you look impersonal.

Be the Best

Using superlatives in marketing claims can easily make you look superior to others. However, your claims need to relate to customer’s needs, make you look nearly perfect, and be truthful. Boasting your own strength or greatness will do little to persuade the customer to make a change and do business with you. Take it from the other side: what does your customer want–or need–to hear?

How often do you come home and see some type of advertising flier on your doorstep? It seems we get those almost every day.

How can your business stand out from such a continual stream of propaganda delivered straight to potential customers’ doors? How do you cut through the clutter and get noticed?

Marketing to the Doorstep

The other day I came home and noticed a little flower pot on the front step. It was positioned in the middle of the sidewalk up to our house so as not to be missed. I thought this was an odd place to put it and asked my wife about it.

She didn’t know it was there. Oh, I thought, it must be from a neighbor. However, that was wrong too.

Marketing That Makes You Look

When we went out to pick it up we noticed that all the neighbors had them on their front steps too.

The flower was a gift from the new Capital One bank branch that was opening near my neighborhood.

Through their clever flower marketing, Capital One got the attention that their junk-mail-sending competitors didn’t.

Capital One’s marketing effort got our attention and your advertising campaigns can too:

• Be where the customer can’t help but notice you - Capital One’s flower advertisement was unavoidably in the middle of my sidewalk
• Avoid traditional advertising delivery methods - If your message always come in the mail, over the television, or via paper fliers on my door, odds are you’re going in the trash or being ignored. Be different and you’ll get people to notice you.
• Give something of value - The flower gift we got was not expensive but it did have value. Who throws away a flower? No, you plant it. How often does your advertising and marketing message come attached to something that the recipient inherently values?

Marketing with Flare

Your customers are continually bombarded with marketing and advertising. You need to not only have a message that stands out from the competition but one that actually attracts the customer’s attention.

Once attention is earned, your message can deliver its payload and persuade the customer to take action.

One of the best panel sessions I attended at this year’s SXSW Interactive was Customer Service is the New Marketing. This panel featured speakers from shoe retailer Zappos, photo site Flickr, online calendar service 30 Boxes and Satisfaction.

The moderator, Thor Muller, has posted a recap of his presentation on his blog.

Zappos is Customer Service

The power house of customer service on this panel was Zappos. I was blown away at how dedicated they are in caring for the customer.

They made a conscious decision to spend money on the customer experience instead of marketing. The resulting word of mouth marketing has significantly grown their business. Zappos’ Tony Hsieh went through several things they do to provide a superb customer experience:

• Toll free number available 24/7
• Free overnight shipping both ways: for your order and returns
• 365 day return policy
• Fast, accurate fulfillment
• Friendly, helpful “above and beyond” service
• Will occasionally direct customers to competitor if Zappos can’t help them.
• Call center employees don’t have set scripts, they are instructed to customize the interaction with the customer and think for themselves. Call reps should talk on the phone like they would with their neighbor.
• Call center doesn’t have “call times” or sales-based performance goals. This allows the call reps to focus on the customer and not some impersonal number goal.
• Zappos started by only selling drop-shipped products. As they ramped up internal inventory, they saw they could only give the best customer service on products they directly sent the customer. It reached the point where they chose to focus on the customer and gave up 25% of their revenue (all from drop ship) to focus on only products they inventoried.
• Every employee, irregardless of position, goes through a four-week training, including phone time, to help them best fit the culture and know how to serve customers.

It is OK to apologize

You can admit mistakes. The very act of doing so will help generate trust with your customers.

Several panelists reminded us that it is OK to admit fault, and say “I’m sorry.” By making that statement, you’ll often lessen tension with the customer.

Handing Support Issues

You don’t have to fix everything. Some things are outside your control. If you explain the situation to the customer, odds are they will understand and may even help you fix the issue.

Flickr’s Heather Champ has a sticker on her keyboard that reads: “soft, pleasing tone of voice.” This reminder helps her stay calm when customers get irate. You need to have guidelines that you can’t let people cross. When they do, “don’t fall for the bait” and feed their anger by responding in kind. Remember: “soft, pleasing tone of voice.”

If you fix bugs in your software or process quickly, they won’t build up and affect more people.

Lessons Learned

Zappos’ Hsieh said that retail companies can compete at three main things: selection, price, or service. At most, you’ll get two of the three. You have to decide which ones you want to focus on. Zappos has chosen selection and service. By so doing they knowingly lose many price-centric customers (and that is OK!).

When your company decides how it will focus your efforts, remember, you can’t be everything to everyone. In order to provide a memorable and loyalty building customer experience, you can’t neglect the “service” part of the equation.