[For feed readers and email subscribers, click here to see the podcast player: Who's Spoiling Your Customer?]

The customer experience is the number one factor of customer loyalty. While products and processes are important, the experience customers receive may be more important.

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Lior Arussy, President of Strativity Group, a customer experience consulting firm, joins host Jay Ehret to discuss how customers choose a business and why they would choose you. It takes an exceptional customer experience to win customer loyalty.

Guest: LIor Arussy, President of Strativity Group
Host: Jay Ehret, Dean of Marketing Know-How at TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 18 minutes

Selected Quotes from the Show:

“The customer is coming with the best of the world experiences they’ve had, and they’re saying “Why can’t you do that?”

“We live in a world where it’s exceptional, or it’s a bust.”

“Any branding effort is attempting to create an emotional connection. All we are saying with the customer experience is: Fulfill it!”

“Uneventful is not a place to be. That’s not a differentiation. Uneventful means you didn’t harass me, (not) ‘I love you.’ Totally different type of emotion, and totally different price point you can charge.”

~ Lior Arussy – Strativity Group

Resources to Build Your Exceptional Customer Experience

Links to articles, webinars and tools:
Strativity Knowledge Center (download reports, white papers, and tools)

The Customer Experience Map Tool – Includes free downloadable tool and tutorial

Free Customer Experience Design Webinar – Recorded and ready to watch

[For feed readers and email subscribers, click here to see the podcast player: Marketing Folly Podcast]

When everyone else is doing it, shouldn’t you? Unless you’ve first asked the question: “Does it Make Sense?” …maybe not. You could be following the path of marketing foolishness.

In this special post-holiday episode of Power to the Small Business, Spike Jones, author of Brains on Fire and a digital communications specialist, joins host Jay Ehret to take a fun look at how seemingly good marketing ideas can really be marketing folly.

Guest: Spike Jones, Group Director of Engagement at WCG, Austin, Texas
Host: Jay Ehret, Dean of Marketing Know-How at TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 24 minutes

Episode Show Notes

Spike Jones’ Marketing Follies

1. Crowd-sourcing  Missteps:  Not having guidelines in place, allowing the brand to be hijacked.

Lesson: Instead of “Hey, what do you guys think?” …allow your customers to have a voice in a pronounced, pointed, exact way. Use guardrails to keep the crowd-sourcing focused. You don’t have to do what the crowd says.

2. Hijacked #Hashtags:  Remember, you don’t own the hashtag.

Lesson: Be aware of what’s going on in your brand culture. You cannot control what people say about you, as Starbucks discovered with their hijacked #spreadthecheer campaign.  Have some context before you put something out there. Think like the public.

3. Feed the “Great Content” Monster:  Great content is really advertising, such as the Red Bull Stratos campaign.

Lesson: Content managers and content divisions are really just a new name for copywriters and graphic designers. We are really just slapping a new label on an old concept. Great content is really engagement and great ideas to engage customers. It is marketing foolishness to think content marketing is some new concept.

You may be interested in this review of Spike’s book: Passionate Movements Have a Barrier to Entry

Jay Ehret’s Marketing Follies

1. Looking for The Next Big Thing:  This is a symptom of businesses looking for answers outside of the business to market their business.

Lesson: It is marketing foolishness to believe that the answer lies outside the business; that if you can just hitch your wagon to the next big thing, everything will be alright. The next big thing lies within your business; it’s not external to your business.

2. Using Free Tools Only: There are so many free tools, businesses are unwilling to invest in their business.

Lesson: If you only use free online tools, you eliminate options that could be successful, such as advertising. Just because something is free, doesn’t mean it works. It is marketing foolishness to not ask this question about free tools: “Does it make sense?”

3. Not Having a Website: Facebook only allows 15% of your fans to see your posts.

Lesson: It is marketing foolishness to not have your own piece of real estate on the internet. More than a third of all buyers will visit a company’s website before making a purchase. Your website is permanent and can tell the story of your business and even engage potential customers.

Contact: Contact Jay Ehret to suggest guests for to schedule a marketing consultation for your business: jay<at>TheMarketingSpot.com or call 254-399-8093

You may be surprised at how many of your customers are really your brand advocates, ready and willing to spread the word about your business. You just need to give them a nudge in the right direction. In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Rob Fugetta, Founder and CEO of Zuberance, and author of Brand Advocates, joins host Jay Ehret to discuss how to turn your brand advocates into brand promoters.

Guest: Rob Fugetta – Zuberance.
Host: Jay Ehret – The Marketing Spot
Length: 24 minutes

Rob Fugetta on Brand Advocates:

Definition of Brand Advocates – Highly satisfied customers, or others, who are willing to recommend your brand or product without pay or incentives.

Start by asking the ultimate question for customer loyalty:
“On a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends or colleagues?”

Steps to Tapping Brand Advocates for Word of Mouth

1. Identify - Ask the ultimate question across a variety of customer touch points and communications channels.

2. Energize – Making it easy for your advocates to recommend them.

• Create ratings and reviews for your products.
• Collect advocate stories and testimonials.
• Get advocates to share content and offers with their social network.

3. Track your results.

Selected Quotes from Rob Fugetta:

“True advocacy cannot be paid for or manufactured, it can only be earned.”

“It’s really not about marketing to your advocates; it’s marketing through your advocates, and with your advocates.”

“Marketing is about more than clicks and impressions; it’s about building a movement around your brand.”

SHOW LINKS:

Buy the book: Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers Into a Powerful Marketing Force
Rob Fugetta at Zuberance
Rob Fugetta on Twitter

Podcast Episode #83 of the internet show about small business marketing

In business, you are what you read. But what you read and where you read it is changing. In this episode of Power to the Small Business, business book expert Todd Sattersten will guides us through those change. Sattersten should know, he co-wrote The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, and he coaches business book authors. It’s time to find out what’s going on with business books.

Guest: Todd Sattersten – Biz Book Lab
Host: Jay Ehret – Dean of Marketing Know-How at TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 27 minutes

– Todd Sattersten on Business Books  –

I. Business books are generally lagging the (e-book) trend vs. fiction.

“Until the technology (book-marking, highlighting, commenting) catches up, I think you’re still going to see business books bought primarily in the print form.”

II. Business books are getting shorter.

“Business books are getting shorter. They are more about a single idea vs. a plethora of ideas.”

III. The retail store is not dead….for the best sellers.

“It is impossible to be a best-selling author without having that book in the retail environment…. 80% of (the big name best-sellers) sales happen in the retail setting.”

IV. The definition of a book will change.

“When you look at how different we experience books in the electronic space, that we’re almost going to have to find a way to call them something different, because I think we are going to interact with them differently.”

Todd Sattersten on choosing a good business book to read:

1. Ask your friends. These people know who you are and know your preferences.
2. Scan the table of contents of a book. The language they use will tell you if it’s a good book for you.
3. Read the index of a book. Look for terms that match up with the problem you are dealing with.
4. Read the introduction of a book. You will learn what is the promise of the book.

Todd’s top book recommendations for entrepreneurs:

The Partnership Charter by David Gage

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

SHOW LINKS

Todd Sattersten’s Company: Biz Book Lab
Todd’s Article: How to Read A Business Book
The Marketing Edge Webinar Series

Podcast Episode #82 of the internet show about small business marketing

To help us decipher the results we’ve tapped a member of the panel who helped determine those rankings. In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Mike Ramsey of Nifty Marketing joins host Jay Ehret to discuss the rankings and both their correlation and causation on local search.

Guest: Mike Ramsey – Nifty Marketing
Host: Jay Ehret – Chief Educator at TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 26 minutes

– SHOW NOTES AND LINKS –

The different types of search results:

Organic Search Results: The big list of results that includes everything on the internet.
Local Search Results: Search engine results that highlight local businesses.

To see the difference, do separate searches for these two terms:
“How to wash a car”
“Car Washes”

The Top Local Search Ranking Factors:

1. Physical address – In the city where the search is taking place.

2. Verifying your Google Places Pages – Claiming ownership of your listing on Google Places (as well as Bing/Yahoo)

• Note: Mike Ramsey does not believe that this is a major factor. His own study did not reveal a high correlation. He also still recommends that you claim your Places page so that you can own and control the information within the listing.

3. Proper category association – Choosing the proper category within your Places page listing.

4. Volume of Structured Citations – Any time Google finds an online reference to your business name, your business address, and your business phone number grouped together. Structured means on a website that codes and specializes in these listings, such as Yelp.

• Important for “location prominence, ” or the ability of Google to trust you are the business you claim to be.
• Mike Ramsey says that one of the fundamentals of local search is having consistent information across the IYP (Internet Yellow Pages) network.
• Mike recommends that you take your listing information exactly as it appears on your Google Places page and use it to submit in that exact format everywhere else.

5. Quality of inbound links to your website – Local search results are very tightly connected to your organic rankings and how your organic website ranks.

• Quality Inbound Link: The link to your website comes from an authoritative site

Mike Ramsey’s Study of Top Local Search Factors:

Online Reviews of your business – Mike found little correlation between local search ranking and the number of reviews. However, reviews are important for superior click-through rates.

Citations (see #4 above) – The high-ranking listing had many substantially more citations than low-ranking listings. Mike emphasizes that while he sees a high level of correlation with this factor, he is unsure of the level of causation. Mike’s opinion is that there is some level of causation, meaning having more citations causes you to have higher rankings.

*See a review of Mike’s findings at SMX Advanced: Actionable Local SEO Tactics
*See Mike’s slide deck of the findings: Hardcore Local Search Tactics

SHOW LINKS

Mike Ramsey’s Company: Nifty Marketing

Free Marketing Webinars and Ebooks: The Marketing Spot

Podcast Episode #81 of the internet show about small business marketing

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Brian Massey, the Conversion Scientist joins host Jay Ehret to discuss how you use your website to get more leads and customers. He will describe the five primary website patterns and prescribe a conversion strategy for each.

Host: Jay Ehret – Chief Educator at TheMarketingSpot.com
Guest: Brian Massey – The Conversion Scientist
Length: 28 minutes

– SHOW NOTES AND LINKS –

What is Website Conversion?

Find someone who is not a customer and convert them into a customer. On a website, it’s taking a visitor and converting them into either a lead or sale.

Five Website Patterns and Their Conversion Strategy:

I. The Brochure Pattern

Purpose is to provide enough information to whet the desire of a prospective customer and tell them how to get more information.

Strategy:

• Design – Fits the personality of your business and your customers
• Logical, Tree –like navigation
• Contact info must be easy to find.

II. The Portal Pattern

Overall, the primary goals of a portal are to get people to stick around, to view more pages, and to join or subscribe.

Strategy:

Home page – Crucial to Conversion

• Feature specific content
• Highlight company and products, but don’t say too much about the company

Navigation

• Site Search
• Drill-down navigation, nested menus, links to related content
• Highlight specific content
• Author pages

Enrollment

• Know your abandonment rate.
• Eliminate friction and make it easy for people to sign up

III. The E-Commerce Pattern

Strategy:

Category Pages

• Home page has specific offers
• Keep non-selling information at a minimum
• Have search on the pages

Product Pages

• Show the product
• All the info necessary to say “yes”

Shopping Cart

• Flexibility and optimization

IV. The Considered Purchase Pattern

Strategy: Start a conversation by email

V. The Site-as-a-Service (Saas) Pattern

Strategy:

• Sample the product
• Use a Google style pattern to convert triers to buyers

Selected Advertising Quotes from Brian Massey:

On the importance of content in website conversion:

“He who has the best content has the best conversion rates.”

On website conversion strategy:

“We can’t really see conversion as a button color, or a landing page, or a specific event. It really is about picking the right strategy that gives you opportunities to convert visitors.”

On website conversion tactics:

“This is the key with conversion: your audience is going to surprise the hell out of you.”

SHOW LINKS

Brian Massey’s Website: www.ConversionScientist.com
Related Articles on Website Pattern Conversion Strategy:
The Five Core Patterns of Conversion Marketing

Get updates on: The Marketing Spot Group Coaching

Podcast Episode #80 of the internet show about small business marketing

If you want to make your cash register ring with advertising, what do you do? Get creative. But just what is creativity and how do you use it to create great advertising? In this episode of Power to the Small Business, author, advertising expert, and ad agency creative director Luke Sullivan tells us how we can create great advertising.

Host: Jay Ehret – Chief Officer of Awesomeness at TheMarketingSpot.com
Guest: Luke Sullivan – Creative Director at GSD&M and author of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This
Length: 29 minutes

– SHOW NOTES AND LINKS –

What is Great Advertising?

The convergence of advertising that is fun, exciting and interesting, with advertising that makes the cash register ring.

Luke Sullivan’s Creative Process:

1. Fully understand the business, what it does, what it wants to accomplish, who it targets, who the competition is.
2. Figure out what the business has, that people want, that the competition isn’t giving them.
3. Sit down with a pad of paper and a pencil. Face a blank wall. Don’t look at beautiful settings, instead turn yourself inward.
4. Then draw a little square on a blank sheet of paper. Fill it with something interesting.
5. The objective is to take everything about the business and burn it down into a single idea that is interesting. It might be a visual, and idea, a movement.
6. If you can’t get your idea into that little square, it’s not a big idea.

Selected Advertising Quotes from Luke Sullivan:

On the necessity of creativity in advertising:

“It is not required. But that means all the weight goes on to your product… When you don’t have a great or breakthrough product, then maybe you are going to need to align some marketing in your favor. Then, I think creativity is the best business tool you have to unfairly beat the competition.”

“Creativity needs to be in service of a commercial purpose. If it’s just creativity for creativity’s sake, well then it’s just art.”

On creating great advertising:

“You need to figure out the one thing; the one thing that you can tell your best customer that will get them to lean in and talk about your product.”

SHOW LINKS

Luke Sullivan’s Blog: www.HeyWhipple.com
Buy Luke’s Book: Hey Whipple, Squeeze This

Get updates on: The Marketing Spot Group Coaching

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Podcast Episode #79 of the internet show about small business marketing

Last week I presented at the 140 Characters Conference, New York. My presentation was titled: Now is Your Brand? But this conference was more than just a speaking engagement, it was an incredible networking opportunity and a chance to learn about marketing. In this episode of Power to the Small Business, I share some interesting conversations I had, and my big take-aways.

Host: Jay Ehret – Chief Officer of Awesomeness at TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 21 minutes

Honking Just to be Honking:

“Now is not your brand, now is the future of your brand.”

Let Texas be Texas:

“Let New York be New York and let Texas be Texas.”

Hybrid Vigor:

Networking Instead of Marketing:

SHOW LINKS

Topic: What do to, what not to do.

Podcast Episode #78 of the internet show about small business marketing

Host: Jay Ehret - Chief Officer of Awesomeness at TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 27 minutes

– SHOW NOTES AND LINKS –

Marketing Traps:

1. Discounting – Thinking the reason people are not buying from you is because your price is too high. See also: 3 Predictably Irrational Pricing Strategies and What Should You do About Discounting?

“It’s not the price tag that determines whether or not the customer will purchase. What does determine the sale is the value of what you are selling.”

2. Facebook – There have only been a few minor success stories for businesses that try to sell on Facebook. See also: A Facebook Fairy Tale – Horror Story and What should you do about Facebook?

“Most businesses put in time on their Facebook page with very little return on that time.”

3. Letting a media sales rep handle your marketing – Don’t let your rep come up with your creative and your campaign. It will look and feel like everything else on that medium. Maintain full control of your message and tell them what you want to run. Hire outside creative help if necessary.

“It’s not that they’re dishonest. They aren’t. They just don’t know what they’re doing. They’re a disinterested third party who hasn’t had the proper training.”

4. A good idea – Something really cool that doesn’t have a link to anything you’ve done in the past, nor anything you will do in the future. When that idea runs it’s course, the value of that idea is also over. See also: Opportunity Cost and the Danger of a Good Idea.

“Good ideas, they look pretty, but they’re tomorrow stealers.”

5. Going to an industry specialist – Most businesses from the same industry pretty much look all alike. The reason is they read the same industry trade publications and blogs, follow the same standards and methods of operations promoted by the same industry specialists.

“The only way you get talked about is if you are remarkable. And if you look like everyone else in the industry, you’re not going to get remarked about.”

Marketing Treasures:

1. Google local listings – You can improve your phone traffic if you raise your position in Google local listings. See also: Local Search Results and Local Search: The Game is Changing

“Claim your Google Places page and then optimize your home page on your website and raise your position in the Google local listings.”

2. Reading Books – Read three books on a subject and you will be an expert on that subject. Your ability is a combination of the books you read plus your practical experience. See also: Don’t just read a business book, digest it. and The Essential Small Business Reading List.

“Podcasts, blogs…they’re great. But, nothing beats books for in-depth knowledge.”

3. Tagline / Hook – An out-of-the-ordinary visual or verbal identifier. See also: The Importance of Taglines in Branding and What Your Tagline Says.

“A tagline, a hook, is something that customers can hang their memory on. Think of it as a ‘memory hook.’”

4. Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools – They help you analyze your website traffic and improve your search engine rankings. See also: Online ESP: Reading Your Customers’ Minds with Web Analytics

“I fully acknowledge that Google is the Evil Empire. But I’m going to use their free tools to help my business.”

5. A meaningful brand identity – A psychological, emotional relationship between a business and customers. See also: What is a brand? and The Branding Process Explained for Small Businesses.

“A brand by-product is customer loyalty.”

SHOW LINKS

Premium Webinar: How to Create, Write and Leverage a Blog
Registration Information: Jay Ehret’s Blogging Webinar
Webinar Discount Promotion Code: Power40

Topic: Local Business Market Share

Podcast Episode #77 of the internet show about small business marketing

In this episode of the Power to the Small Business podcast, social theorist and author John Gerzema joins us to talk about the potential spend shift to local small businesses. Gerzema is co-author of Spend Shift: How the Post-Crisis Values Revolution Is Changing the Way We Buy, Sell, and Live. Gerzema says the time is right for local businesses to claim a larger share of consumer spending. People are less likely to trust larger institutions and they want to spend money with you. But are you ready to earn it? Gerzema shares some insightful advice and gives us the three keys for your business:

• Character
• Authenticity
• Narrative

Guests: John Gerzema – Author and Global Chief Insights Officer for Young and Rubicam
Host: Jay Ehret - TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 17 minutes

Email subscribers and feed readers – If you don’t see the player, click here to listen to Power to the Small Business
You can also download the mp3 file here: Download Power to the Small Business #77 (for personal use only)

SHOW NOTES

What spend shift?

Consumers are ready to embrace local brands, to shift money from larger institutions to local businesses. The question is, are you ready for the shift? Is your brand ready for the shift?

Customers will not just do business with you because you’re local. You still have to give them a reason. But when you do, they are more likely to do business with you. The three keys (from Spend Shift), character, authenticity, and narrative.

The Virtuous Circle:

The more  of a contribution you have to make to your community, the more will people are to embrace your brand.

Know your customers, how will you give back through your brand.

65% of people are willing to pay a premium for companies that made a contribution to the local community.

Show Links

Buy the Book: – Spend Shift
John Gerzema’s website: JohnGerzema.com
Kaleisia Tea Lounge: TheTeaLounge.com
Event: 140 Characters Conference NYC
Jay’s Website: TheMarketingSpot.com