Read More...]]> This is a question that we get asked all the time – Now along side some trade secrets to ensure that we get reliable delivery people, the backbone of our guarantee is our GPS tracking system.  We’re often getting asked how that works, so I’ve recorded a short video to show you.

Read More...]]> We’re expanding the business, with new areas being brought on and leaflet delivery franchises being made available and as such, I’ve decided to take on a full time operations assistant to free up my time to work more on the business.

Yesterday, I conducted a number of interviews, and one of them, I’m sorry to say must lay claim to a record of the shortest job interview ever. Here’s what happened.

The young lady attended the interview, on time, smartly dressed as you’d expect someone to be at a job interview. We got the pleasentries and introductions out of the way and I opened the interview in my usual manner by asking what she knew about us. I like to see that a candidate has done a bit of research and preperation.

I was astounded at what came out of her mouth. Here’s what she said.

“Nothing really, I don’t really know what job I’ve applied for – I’m just after any job I can get.”

There followed 30 long seconds of silence, during which I decided that I was not going to offer her the job, I ended the interview by politely telling her that perhaps she should have done a bit more preparation and that there were other people that I had already seen that had researched us as a company, found out a bit more about the role and put some effort into their preparation.

I wished her well and asked her to leave.

I could have spent the next half an hour or so going through the motions, but to be honest, rightly or wrongly, in those opening moments of the interview, I’d lost interest in her, I’d already made my decision that I wasn’t going to employ her, so why prolong it – I value my time highly, so I spent that the next 30 minutes doing something far more productive.

This young lady may have been the best worker ever, I may regret ending the interview so soon without finding more about here, but the impression that I got from the initial encounter removed any desire I had to see if she had the required attributes to work with me.

I’m all for personal development, training and mentoring an employee, but at the interview stage, it is the candidates job to convince me that they understand what I need in a member of staff and that they either have the required skills, or that they possess the aptitude to learn and develop new skills to meet my requirements.

This then started me thinking. An prospective employee attending an interview is effectively doing a sales pitch, for them to offer me their services in exchange for me giving them money. Whilst I’ve entered the market place by putting out an advertisement saying that I’m looking for a new employee I’m effectively their prospective customer.

Two lessons jumped out at me here.

1. First impressions count… Alot. Think about your first dealings with a prospective client. You know that you’re good at what you do. You know that your clients are happy in the service you provide. But unless you make a great first impression, you may never get the chance to demonstrate that you are the right person to help them.

So, how are you answering the phone? What does the greeting area in your building look like? If a client turns up unannounced, what state is the office in? How are you/your staff dressed? Think about all of the things that are valuable in creating a first impression.
2.  The more you know your prospect and their needs, the easier it is to match your service to those needs.   Are you finding out about your customer either pre-interview or during the interview before you try to sell them your service or are you blindly pitching what you do in the hope that it’s what they need.

Do you know about their company, their industry, who their competitors are?  What problem is it that their trying to solve by speaking with you?  What are they looking to acheive? What have they tried before?  What did they like/not like about their previous solution?  What’s worked for them in the past?

Once you know all this information, it becomes alot easier to offer your goods/services showing that you understand them, you understand what they need and you can propose your solution in a way that fits their needs.

Read More...]]> Firstly, A happy new year to you all. I hope that you had a great xmas and new year and that you’ve managed to get a decent break.

Like a lot of parents at Xmas, we’ve been a victim of some very successful marketing by certain companies and gone overboard with our sons christmas presents. But there was one present in particular that impressed me with their marketing, not just to get the sale, but to maximise how much I’ve spent with them not only to start with, but probably for the next 1-2 years.

Have you heard of Skylanders? It’s the latest gaming craze available over all the gaming platforms such as Xbox360 and the Playstation3. If you haven’t heard of it, what’s different is that with the game software, you get a “Portal of Power” that plugs in to your machine. Then you have a selection of toy characters that are placed on the portal and as you do so they come to life in the computer game.

The clever thing about this is that each character has its own unique powers and abilities, some perform better in different levels of the game and some areas of the game are not available unless you have a certain type of character. There’s over 30 characters to chose from (At the moment – I’m sure there’ll be more soon) and the initial starter pack comes with just 3 – But also with a collectors poster letting you know what others are out there ready to be unleashed onto our TV.

There’s an online version of Skylanders as well, where they’ve captured our details in order that my son can see his monsters Lair – Now I know that each time a new beast has been launched, I’ll be notified about it. And at £8 per Skylander, I know, that over the next year or two, I’m going to be in for at least another £100, probably double that when they bring out new accessories and software upgrades.

The makers of Skylanders, have clearly understood you shouldn’t be finding customers to make a sale, you should be making sales to find a customer. Once you have a customer, you need to know how to get them buying from you again and again and then make it easy and desirable for them to do so.

What could you do in your business to get your customers increasing the number of times they buy from you?

Read More...]]> I’m staying on the Muppets theme this week, not because I’m excited by the fact that the Muppets are realising a new movie (Honest!!) but because I’ve just seen another superb example of marketing, demonstrated by the director Jason Segel.

Jason had a clear vision of who he wanted to target.  In this case, laser targetting a specific person who he wanted to star in his movie. Hollywood star Amy Adams.  So what he and Kermit did was to create a video specifically inviting her to join the cast. In truth it probably wasn’t the only thing they did to attract her but it shows a bit of thought, a bit of creativity and effort that they’ve done to get what they wanted. Take a look at this video.

You can take away a number of learning points from this – Firstly, know what you want?  Who do you want as a customer?  Be as specific as you can on this, down to a named person if you can.  That way you can craft your marketing message to speak directly to them.  If that’s not do-able for you, then what’s the next common demoninator?  Get your target market segmented into as tight groups as you can and make your message specific to that group.

Secondly, put some effort into your message.  Don’t be lazy here,  show your target that you really want to work with them and that you’re prepared to put some time and effort into them.  Make them feel special, that you’re going to be attentive to them. When they read your marketing piece, you want them to feel that you’ve prepared is especially for them.

OK you haven’t got the budget that Segal has, but you’ll see if you watch this video that it doesn’t need to be expensive.  This video could easily be recorded in as good a quality using a handheld flipcam or similar.  But your message also doesn’t need to be video. It could be any other media, but just make it laser focused on the person that you are reaching out to.

Read More...]]> As I’m getting older – (I reached 40 this year),  I’m starting to realise that there’s very little new under the sun.  Most “New” announcements and “New” gizmos are just re-inventions or recycling of existing stuff.  Take a look down the toy isle of your local supermarket for instance.  I spend a lot of time there with my 6 year old lad, especially as he’s writing his letter to Santa.  The toys that are featuring more prominently now are Star Wars, Transformers, Dr Who, Lego and The Smurfs.  All the things that where around and that I wanted when I wasn’t far off his age

This isn’t a bad thing though.  Often, tired ideas are updated with the use of technology,   they’re improved to make them more useful, more  appealing and more fun. My lightsaber didn’t make a “Swooshing” noise when I hit my dad with it and we had to pull a string on the back of our action men to make them talk.

The Muppets,  one of my all time favourite shows,  – I still enjoy watching their movies now, are absolute experts at taking an idea and converting it into their classic humorous stlye.

Take a look at their production of Queens Bohemian Rhapsody for example, it’s hilarious, especially the bit where Animal is calling out for his Mama.

So, where’s the message here,  what can we take from this and apply to our businesses.  Well for one thing, the same rule applies to marketing.  I’ve spent alot of time studying the marketing gurus such as Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer & Joe Vitale and they all do what we should be doing.  Building a Swipe File of marketing that works and they employ a technique called Swipe and Deploy

A Swipe file is a collection of adverts, marketing pieces, articles etc that have elements in them that are deemed to be “Good Marketing”.  They then re-use those elements, reshaping and remoulding them to fit the product or service that they are creating their new advertising piece for.  So for example, they’ll have a swipe file of headlines that they re-use time after time such as “They laughed when I told them that I could teach someone to play the piano in 7 days” and “They laughed when I told them that my accountancy practice could save them £1000s in taxes”

I’ve put together a “Swipe File” of 101 headlines which you can have simply by clicking here. Feel free to deploy them in your own marketing and advertising.

So, are you going to try to re-invent the wheel with your marketing or are you going to be a marketing muppet by taking an existing idea and recreating it to fit your style and brand.

Read More...]]> This morning I saw an excellent advert on TV from Lego.  Now my 6 year old boy loves lego.  He’ll sit there for hours putting the little bricks together, sometimes building meaningful models, other times just building a wall or laying them out in colours.  Whenever we’re up town he always wants to go to the Lego shop to see the lates Harry Potter or Star Wars model.

Up until this morning,  I wondered why the little plastic bricks were so expensive and how can they justify the prices they are demanding for their kits.  (The Harry Potter nightbus will cost £25 for example and the Star Wars Millenium Falcon is approximately £130) After all, they are just plastic bricks aren’t they?

But, this morning, I saw this advert – It brought home to me in a very good example of selling benefits rather than features. It’s a very strong message, that Lego aren’t just selling plastic bricks, but their selling an experience, a tool to spend quality time and interact with your loved ones.  After watching it, I couldn’t help myself thinking about which kit to buy my son for christmas and imagining the hours spent with him building/taking apart and rebuilding the model.  To me that’s well worth the price tag.

I thought that their strapline encapsulated the whole message -”Build Together”.  That just says it all and it says it at a deep emotional level that gets over any price objection.

Take a look at the video – and see how you can apply this to your advertising.  Don’t just sell your widget,  think about what your widget does for your customer – How it will benefit them, how it will help them get what they want.  You press this button and you can wave goodbye to worrying about whether your competitors prices are too cheap and yours to high

Read More...]]> I was up at Solihull last week at a Seminar run by Nigel Botterill.  If you’ve not heard about Nigel, then he’s worth doing a bit of research on and reading/listening to some of his material  Nigel has built 8 seperate million pound plus businesses in the last 5 years and it’s fair to say that he is one of the countries leading direct marketers.

I’ve been fortunate to know Nigel and his team for the last 5 years and I’ve learnt alot from him.  Success leaves clues!  Take a look at this short video as Nigel explains the top three things that you can do to maximise the results that you will get from direct marketing.

Read More...]]> I took an interesting phone call today, with a guy who started of by saying that “50% of marketing doesn’t work, if only he knew which 50%” He really believed this saying.  He wasn’t a happy man and kept referring to the fact that he had spent thousands and thousands of pounds on marketing and advertising and he had nothing to show for it. To him, the cost of marketing of his business was a necessary evil, something he had to do “to get brand awareness” and “Because my competitors are doing the same”

Unfortunately, we take a number of calls like this on a daily basis from people who are convinced that there isn’t a better way.

The saying that 50% of marketing doesn’t work but you don’t know which 50 was first used back in the 1930′s and that is where the saying belongs.  We’re now in the 21st century and with the technology that is available today, there is absolutely no excuse, no excuse whatsoever to say that you don’t know where your customers are coming from. Yet very few business owners have any idea.

When we ask our customers and prospective customers how they get their business – The stock answer they give is “I ask” – That’s simply not effective enough.  Most of the time your prospects won’t remember whether they’ve seen an advert, found your website or heard you on the radio. If you have staff, you are very mistaken if you think that they will ask the right questions to find out this information.

Therefore It is VITAL that you have a robust mechanism in place for monitoring the number of enquiries that  every piece of marketing you do has generated and that you can work out the return that you have received from that investment.   Note that I’ve used the word INVESTMENT rather than the word COST.

Without testing and measuring and without knowing these numbers, you’re potentially just throwing money down the drain, at best hindering the growth of your business and at worse driving your business into the ground.  Once you have a grasp on the numbers, you can then make an informed decision as to what marketing channels to spend MORE money on and what marketing channels to ditch.

Once you’ve worked out what marketing channels are sucessful for your business, you then have an unlimited marketing budget.  Let me explain.  You pay Google £5 for their pay per click advertising, because you have set up a proper system, you know that this has generated £50 in sales.  Question – How many £5′s would you like to pay google?  The only sensible answer is “As much as I possibly can!”

Another example a bit closer to home for us – Let’s say you ask us to deliver 5,000 leaflets and your payout it £200.  You know, because of the system that you have in place that these leaflets generated over £2000 of business, then unless you can’t handle the increase in work or you did not want your business to grow, you have no  valid reason for not arranging to deliver at least another 5000 leaflets if not double/treble that amount.

We have now embraced a system where for a very small fee, our customers can categorically tell, without a shadow of a doubt exaxtly how many calls they have received from their leaflet campaigns. And forcustomers asking us to print and deliver more than 20,000 leaflets we are including this completely free of charge.

We can also adapt this technique to absolutely any form of marketing that you do.

If you’d like to find out more about this system, then click this link.

Read More...]]> Now I could be known as a rather portly chap.It’s not genetic, it’s not that I have a slow metabolism or that I’m big boned, but it is that I have an aversion to salad and a love of cake. I make no excuses. I know what I eat and unfortunately I eat the wrong things,

So, about once a year, I go on a crash diet – The Cambridge diet is the one that works for me. It’s extreme, consuming only 650 calories per day in the form of milkshakes (without the milk of course) and I’ll lose approximately 7lbs per week. Last year I lost nearly four stone, but unfortunately I put it back on, simply because when I came off the diet, I did not change my eating habits and went back to my old ways. I’m back on the diet now.

But, I know I’m fooling myself. Unless I change my habits when I come back off the diet, I’ll be back to square one in a few short months. If you ask any physician, nutritionist or personal trainer they’ll all tell you the same thing. A quick fix crash diet will only work in the short term. To maintain a healthy weight, a lifestyle change is needed, with sustained and disciplined effort and accountability to yourself as to what you eat as well as the discipline to undertake regular exercise.

So, what can this teach you about marketing your business?  Look at the similarities. Most small businesses will identify they have a problem. (Not enough enquiries/sales) and they do a quick fix by doing some marketing activity e.g. a leaflet drop, a direct mail campaign, an email blast or some cold calls.

They then get some results and they get busy servicing the orders that they have generated and they are happy that they’ve achieved results.

However, they start making excuses in a false belief that the good times will carry on without any further effort. They cease their marketing and go back to their old ways. And guess what happens… Their order book and sales pipeline decline until they realise that they have a problem again and they then do some marketing – And so the cycle continues.  Similar to the Yo-Yo dieter that will never maintain a healthy weight – The Yo-Yo marketer will never maintain a constant stream of customers and the business will not grow to the level aspired to.

So what’s the answer to this problem?  How can a small business owner maintain the momentum and continuity in their marketing?  I could write pages on this, but for the purposes of this blog entry, I’ll focus on just one aspect.  If you want your business to grow and make you money, you must realise the most important aspect of any business is marketing.  In business, without a sale, nothing happens and it is the right mix of marketing done on a consistent, disciplined and  regular basis that will get you results.

At The Leaflet Delivery Company, we work with our clients to develop continued door drop campaigns to ensure that they get the exposure they need on a consistent basis.  Our clients that get the best results are the ones that have us deliver their leaflets on a monthly basis.

We can handle as much or as little of the work that the client likes, from designing the leaflet, taking care of the print,  the distribution and even analysis of the returns.   It works like clockwork, once instructed, the clients are safe in the knowledge that each month one aspect of their marketing mix is taken care of with very little effort from them.

What are you going to do today to ensure that your marketing is not left as an afterthought or an activity to do when you experiencing a quiet period?

If you’d like to have a no obligation chat about how we can help you, please give me a call on 01908 760800.

Read More...]]> WeBuyAnyCar.Com, Go Compare, or The Meerkat?

Webuyanycar has that horrible tune that you just can’t get out of your head once you hear it.  Go compare – The cheesy fat bloke singing very poor opera and that bloody meerkat that has got loads of people saying “Simples” whenever they can.

I find these adverts painful to watch – But, and a big but – They Work.  I’m in the market for a new car at the moment, guess where I went to get a quote on selling my existing vehicle – And then I found myself on the Go Compare site looking for quotes for insurance.

Whilst extremely irritating, they are extremely clever pieces of marketing.  They’re clever on a number of fronts.

1. They grab attention – They’re not just dull boring adverts – Like them or hate them, you can’t help pay attention.  They smack you straight between the eyes and shout “I’m here – Listen to me.”
2. They’re Viral -  My 6 year old sings “Webuyanycar” – Probably just because he knows it annoys me, “Simples” is regularly said now and It won’t be long before it features in the Oxford English Dictionary and the fat guy is often talked about.
3. There’s potential for a merchandising income stream – The Meerkats for example have been on sale for a long time in toy shops and supermarkets.
4. They are consistent and they use multiple media – If you think about it, you’re probably exposed to one of these three messages every single day – Either through radio, TV, newspapers, internet banners and the viral effect.

So what can you learn here?

• Firstly, when marketing your business you need to be creative – We’re subjected to thousands of advertising messages every day and we’re becoming immune to them.  You need to find an approach to grab attention quickly.  When having leaflets delivered for example, you need to stand out from the rest of the crowd – Use different shape and sizes – Use imagery and words that are going to grab attention.
• Use multiple media types to promote your business – Try leaflets, newspaper and magazine advertising, direct mail and internet marketing,  but do it as a joined up campaign, getting consistent messages across.
• Repetition – There’s an old saying that the worst number in marketing is 1.  People buy when they’re ready to buy, not when you’re ready to sell. By constant repetition and constant “touches” with your prospects, you can be assured that when they’re ready to buy, it’s you that they contact first.  We find time after time, that our clients get much better results the second, third and fourth time that they deliver leaflets to the same house.
• Don’t be afraid to try something different – Don’t follow the crowd in your industry – Stand out from the rest.  Don’t be afraid to be irritating – What’s the worst that can happen?  I’ll tell you what – People that are not buying from you now, still won’t buy from you – So what!  Some of them will.  I’ve proved that, as even though all three of these advertising campaigns irritate me beyond belief – I’ve still found myself contacting them as a potential customer.

So, what are you going to do different?  If I can help in any way, then give me a call on 01908 760800