Duct Tape Marketing Feed Digest

Applying Drip Marketing to Your Staff

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:48 GMT

A very effective approach to lead generation and nurturing is something called “drip marketing.” The idea behind the tactic is that you design a series of contacts, via email, postal mail, or phone, that are routinely dripped out to a prospect as a reaction, for example, to them signing up for an event. The power of this technique is that for the most part the entire process, once designed, can be automated with technology. This automation makes it easier for you to focus on other forms of engagement with the prospect knowing that they are receiving consistent touches and gentle reminders that you are there when ready to serve their needs.

I believe this same autoresponder drip marketing approach should be utilized internally as well as a way to supplement the training of staff. Small business are usually pretty bare when it comes to training. Who has time, right? Basic job functions are usually about the only thing that's taught, but everything else that's going in the company, important as it may be to the total engagement of the team, is often left to chance after the first day of orientation.

Why not set up a series of emails delivered over a 90 day period to each new hire do things like

teach important product and service features
share detailed information about the ideal customer and core differentiators
contain real live customer success stories and testimonials
outline the marketing plan for the coming year
feature other staff members and their stories

I'm not suggesting that you can use this approach to replace processes, manuals and human interaction, but even in very smallest of organizations, this type of drip training would allow you to go much deeper that you might, while helping your new team member feel much more a part of team, no matter what the job title. Remember, marketing is everyone's job and the best way to send this message is to educate your staff as though they were a customer.

You can employ a low cost autoresponder tool such as AWeber, iContact, Constant Contact to handle the automatic delivery of your content. All you have to do is write the series of email once and then enroll each new employee as part of the hiring process.

Image credit: Steve Beger

Weekend Favs for July Twelve

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:32 GMT

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Weekend Favs for July Twelve

I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is also fav image of the week)

Enjoy!

Good stuff I ran across this week

Aardvark - new service that allows you to ask questions and get answers from either a network of people you know, such as Facebook friends, or other aardvark subscribers. Answers come via IM in about five minutes. Interesting way to get fast information.
Audio Boo - not sure what the name's about, but this is a nice tool for posting quick audio bits to twitter or facebook. You download an iPhone app and then record and upload your audio. You can use a photo from your phone as well. The service then takes your location and other info you give it and creates a post on AudioBoo, but also tweets and updates your Facebook status if you like. Nice way to do audio on the fly. Here's a sample one I did.
Google Squared - this is a tool that's part of the Google Labs for now, but it hints at their desire to integrate some apps with search to give results that are more intent driven. You put in a search phrase and it gives you results in a spreadsheet format. It's still early on but I think this approach has some nice potential for market research. Here's a square for mountains in Colorado

Image credit: Alberto Mari

Adding the Facebook Fanbox to Your Web Pages

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:50 GMT

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Adding the Facebook Fanbox to Your Web Pages

Facebook recently released a widget called the Fan Box designed to allow folks with Facebook Fan Pages to embed a widget featuring Fan Page activity on their web site or blog. The image below is a Fan Box pulled from the Duct Tape Marketing page on Facebook.

Duct Tape Marketing on Facebook

Steps for getting your own Fan Box
1) Log in to your fan page (OK, so I guess you better set a page up if you haven't yet, huh?)
2) On the left sidebar you'll notice a link that says “Add a Fan Box”
3) Grab the script or iframe code and place it on your site. You can change some display setting through advanced link, but the minimum width is 200px.

This is another way to cross promote content and activity in the social network and might help remind you to add updates to your fan pages!

Content Creates Engagement (ducttapemarketing.com)
Facebook Fan Boxes: Embeddable Facebook Pages (mashable.com)
Facebook Launches Fan Box Widget To Instantly Turn Visitors Into Fans (allfacebook.com)

Content Creates Engagement

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:38 GMT

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Content Creates Engagement

Engagement is the buzzword of choice when social media experts get together to pontificate. And while I agree that engagement, and ultimately action, is the payoff of social media, few social media experts talk about how it's really created. Engagement is not really created by being a nice, genuine, caring and attentive sort of chap on twitter. It's hard to create much momentum in any kind of social network without some of those qualities, but true engagement, engagement that leads to customers and partners, is created with content. Or, perhaps more accurately, engagement is created with engaging content.

I know you're likely sick of me talking about the need to create lots of education rich content, but there's just very few ways around it as a typical small business. Some exceptions, marry into lots of money and buy super bowl ads, get Miley Cyrus to wear your product on stage, or get Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble to argue publicly about the merits of your feature set - baring these, think content creation.

When it comes to effective social media use, I personally push towards using a great deal of energy and activity to create awareness for your content. So, of course if you're to take this advice, you've got to have lots of content. Many people do little more than create small talk on social networks and then wonder why they can't get an ROI for time spent. Most small businesses will be far better off if they look at their status updates on LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter, not as a way to tell the world about what they are doing (unless it's creating content), but as a way to shed light on valuable content housed either within the particular social network or elsewhere online.

This means uploading videos to Facebook, creating events, such as webinars and optimizing them using the Facebook Events app, uploading PowerPoint presentations to Slideshare and using the Slideshare app for LinkedIn, and creating a quick hit point out of your latest blog post and pointing to it on twitter. That’s how engagement leads to orders.

I’m not suggesting that you don’t also have to make referrals, point out other people’s great content, and provide great answers to questions posed on that network – that’s just smart networking, regardless of the platform, and it’s also an important trust building function. But, at the end of the day, if someone, looking for a solution, can’t find that you have in detailed, multi-format, education based content, then social media participation for business purposes can feel like a big fat high school mixer.

So, if you're one of those that's determined social media is a big fat waste of time, then I'm suggesting that what you've really discovered is that your sparkling personality isn't enough to make social media pay.

Image credit: luc legay

Social Networks for Entrepreneurs (killerblog.com)

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:23 GMT

how nike unleashed the power of "personal metrics":http://ping.fm/KkP68

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:21 GMT

martin sorrell on Cannes: sounds like the Fall of Adv and Rise of PR argument by Al Ries?: http://ping.fm/dRiwK

Is the Online Business Manager a VA on Steroids?

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:41 GMT

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Is the Online Business Manager a VA on Steroids?

Marketing podcast with Tina Forsyth (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download - subscribe now via iTunes

For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I visited with Tina Forsyth, author of Becoming an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Role with your Clients (and Yourself) Forsyth wrote her book to help train, initially VAs, in more advanced roles of helping business owners “run” the business.

Here's her official definition of the Online Business Manager: A virtually based support professional who manages online based businesses, including the day-to-day management of projects, operations, team members and metrics.

However she likes to look at the role from a bit of a different angle - what is the purpose of an Online Business Manager beyond ‘what they do’?

The role of the OBM boils down to one simple thing: To free up the business owner so that they can focus their time and energy on the things that only THEY can do in their business.

What she found after writing her book was that yes, lots of VAs and marketing assistants wanted this information, but lots of business owners started to contact her as well to learn where they could get an OBM. Recently she started training would be OBMs in a 16 week certification program.

For the business or individual stuck with too much to do and no way to manage it - the OBM might prove to be a solid answer.

USA Today's Ask an Expert Steve Strauss on Duct Tape Markting (ducttapemarketing.com)
How to Be More Interesting (ducttapemarketing.com)
Michael Port on Make a Referral Week (ducttapemarketing.com)
Creating a World Wide Rave (ducttapemarketing.com)

What’s Your Signature Response to Problems?

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:29 GMT

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

What’s Your Signature Response to Problems?

I’ve written often that one of the ways to create goodwill, positive buzz and happy customers is to exceed expectations. Responding proactively to problems offers, in my opinion, one of the easiest ways to exceed expectations available.

Problems happen, that’s a fact, and you can choose to respond to customer challenges, problems, let downs, screw-ups and mistakes in one of two ways. You can ignore them and create the kind of friction that drags your trust into the ground or you can respond in such an over the top, out of control, nobody does that kind of way that can turn problems into gold mines. If you want to exceed expectation, choose the latter!

Most everyone is familiar with the Nordstrom’s policy of refund – no time limit, no receipt, no questions asked. It’s an example given whenever someone talks about customer service, but it’s really a signature response to a customer problem and it’s become something that creates incredible word of mouth for them.

Creating what I call your signature response to problem solving takes a little thought, planning, implementation and even training, but it can become a very valuable tool for your organization.

Invite and reward feedback

The first step to making problem solving a core marketing system is to encourage customers to tell you when something’s not right. This may seem like a simple thing but there is plenty of research that suggests somewhere near 90% of your customers experiencing an issue will simply go away quietly unhappy.

You should clearly state in all your marketing copy that you welcome feedback and won’t rest until your customer is thrilled. Spell out guarantees, return policies and make it very obvious how to contact you via phone, mail, web, or email. You should also build satisfaction surveys, results reviews and even random phone follow-ups into your standard operating procedures.

Of course, it’s not enough to just ask for feedback and then send it down a black hole; you’ve got to respond.

Create a response

In order to get the full impact with this idea you need to design the manner in which you will automatically respond in order to solve a customer problem. Some of this can and should be handled through clearly spelled out, no strings attached, guarantees and return policies, but you need to add some flair as well.

Adding some creativity in this step is how you turn a response into a signature response. For example, does the CEO show-up with a bouquet of flowers, does the customer immediately receive a month of service free and a dedicated service rep to help guide them through the challenge, do you do whatever it takes to make it right?

The key here is to do something that gets the customer the result they are after but also offers a little wow that they can’t help notice, because it was unexpected.

Occasionally we receive notes from customers who have purchased one of our products, but feel it isn’t what they thought it would and want to return it. We cheerfully refund their purchase price, but instead of asking them to return it, we ask that they make it a gift to another business owner. It’s a pretty simple thing on our part, but it really creates a warm response each time we offer it.

Empower the team

Another really important piece of the problem solving puzzle is blame. When you make a mistake, admit it and move to fixing it. When your customer makes a mistake, well, move to fixing it. There’s no gain in getting the customer to admit they were wrong, even when they are. One of my favorite business expressions, said to my staff in my best dad voice is: Fix the problem, not the blame.

The way to make sure that your signature response to problems is actually delivered as designed is to empower your staff to fix the problem, not the blame!

Let them know that while you have a set of policies designed to make their life simple and your business profitable, they can do what it takes to make the customer happy. Now, if that makes you more than a little nervous that you will be taken advantage of then perhaps you need to refine whom you are attracting as customers. There will always be people who try to take advantage of your willingness to please, but the key lies in setting the proper expectations up front in all of your marketing messages.

Saving a deal gone bad by reacting in a way that is generally unexpected is how you create positive buzz and customers for life.

Image credit: pixeljones

Customer Service Is Defined By Customers (staygolinks.com)
Guide: A Brand Strategy Checklist (thecauseisthehabit.com)
Seven Steps to Better Customer Referrals (myventurepad.com)

Weekend Favs for July Five

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:12 GMT

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Weekend Favs for July Five

Enjoy!

Good stuff I ran across this week

Monitoring Social Media Metrics - Nice “how to” article that uses Google Docs to create SM spreadsheet. I know I've run across more than one frustrated marketer that was charged by the boss with showing some metric on the effectiveness of Social Media.
Keyword CSV file on Yahoo Pipes Demo - this video shows you how to take a series of keywords from a CSV file and uses Yahoo Pipes to run each keyword through various searches.
GraphJam - Graphs are often used to illustrate business information, both good and bad - this very funny site uses the graph to illustrate some very interesting statistics like “the amount of ink in my printer” - laughing is good medicine!