HIGH PERFORMANCE MARKETING for contractors
MEGA marketer May, 2012 • Volume 5, Number 5
The Newsletter for Members of the MegaMarketer Coaching Club
Maintaining a Consistent Image, Online and Offline
FOCUS of the month
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t took a while for the Web world and the marketing world to become conjoined. At first, the only people on the World Wide Web were the technical types that wrote like they talked – in high-techmanese. Then everything went flipside up or, rather, flipped upside down, and marketers looked at the Web as the new frontier. Even that isn’t reading the situation quite right – so let’s go back to the word “conjoined.” Your online and offline marketing should be linked together like inseparable, conjoined twin communicators. They share a message, an image, a purpose. Indeed, they share the heart of your effort to reach your customers. What to do? Make your image consistent across all media. Your web design should be consistent with your vehicle signage which should be
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Inside This Issue
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Closing More Sales
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losing a sale. Yep, that’s where the rubber meets the road. Or, in another sense, where your marketing meets your money. How many sales do you want to close? Rather than looking for a particular number, let’s assume the word “more” describes the goals for all. We all want to close more sales. So what do we do? Create more opportunities for sales, which includes: Develop and follow a balanced marketing plan, mixing hard-hitting lead generation with image and retention marketing. Stay in touch with current customers who represent the majority of your future sales. Train for closing techniques. Increase the transaction amount with a welltimed upsell. Raise customer service standards. Set your sights on profitable customers, which means: Don’t become the low-price leader and lure the bargain shoppers. Work to make value, not price, the factor that that prospect uses to evaluate your solution. Discuss the benefits of your solution and show how you are adding value in ways they may not have anticipated – like
your awesome customer service, thoughtful freebie, warranties, etc. Honesty breeds honesty. You want your prospect to be straightforward with you, so be straightforward with them. This is not a shell game where you are trying to sell something but you don’t want to tell something. By using straightforward communication in a helpful, advisor-like tone, you will glean information from your prospect that will bring stronger potential to closing the sale. Take good notes. It shows that you’re listening and enables you to restate what your prospect told you. Keep nurturing your leads. In most cases, a “no” can be seen as a “not yet.” Keep your “not yets” in the pipeline with a well-designed lead nurturing program. Stay in touch. Help them make the right decision with financing, guarantees, warranties and extras. All members of our Coaching Club have access to the brightest and freshest solutions from the top minds in and out of contracting. Check your benefits summary and take action! – Adams Hudson President, Hudson Ink Corp.
America’s Contractor Marketing Newsletter
Contractor Marketing that Works.
April Coaching Call Recap
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hanks to all those who decided to QUIT waiting on web leads and instead, MAKE them happen. Funny how that can change everything about your business. If your online marketing isn’t generating visits, activity and sales, it’s just a drain of time, resources and wasted hope. April’s call put an END to that with: yy The 2-Step Lead Generator – Finally, a simple way to rocket leads, and you saw PROOF that this works. yy The most important single item for an email – Most people make you ‘guess’ what this is. We showed you samples. yy The 12 Most Powerful Email Elements – Don’t just “make up something and send it.” This is marketing, folks. You saw how to build opens, clicks and readership. Do just 3 of these and watch your results rise. yy The Most Vital Link to Online Response – It’s like drawing hungry shoppers in with the scent of coffee and donuts. You just put the “bait” online and tell them it’s there! yy How to create (or use predone) reports for maximum response. Again, proof before your eyes.
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So, put the things you learned into practice. You saw it done. You can do it. Or we can do it for you. Point is: Knowing HOW but not doing it is a recipe for frustration.
Survey of Online Women Shows Blogs Trusted Sources
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logHer, an online media community, recently released an annual study of women and social media that shows that blogs are a trusted source for many women making online purchases. According to this survey of 2000 online women, 81% trust the information and advice they receive from blogs; Pinterest also comes in at 81% as a trusted source. That’s compared to 67% for Facebook, 73% for Twitter. Blogs, however, garner the highest level of conversion – moving that highly valuable “trust” into “action” for 61% of online women. Compare that to the trust/action conversion rate of 33% for Facebook, 31% for Twitter and 47% for Pinterest. The survey also showed that 41% of women look to blogs to learn about new products, 39% seek out product recommendations and 36% use blogs to make purchase decisions. For its part, Facebook is mostly used to have fun (77%) or to stay in touch with family and friends (87%). According to Mary Beth
MEGAMarketer
Gonzalez, a senior VP at BlogHer, blog readership is a key indicator that a woman uses social media to find product info when she is about to buy. In making this case, she points out that: � 59% of the women in the U.S. general population who actively use social media report that they turn to online or social media as part of their purchase process. � Among women in the general population who read blogs daily, the number who turn online to drive their purchasing rises to 81%. Gonzelez asks, “With all the advertising dollars pouring into social media, how can marketers aim those dollars effectively?” She recommends aiming for women who read blogs, and trying to catch them early in the process. She notes that only 23 percent of general population women overall go online or to social media as the first step of their purchasing process, but that figure rises to 35 percent among women in the general population who read blogs daily. May, 2012
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May, 2012
MEGAMarketer
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TIMELY PUBLICATION PLEASE RUSH Monthly Marketing Map
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he dog days of summer are just ahead and that means more than just temperatures heating up. Now’s the time to use your PowerPack’s hardest-hitting Direct Response ads to capture the sales and leads your competitors are too lazy to get. If you miss sales now, you’ll be missing them for the rest of the Summer. HVAC – Capitalize on the warm weather for pre-season replacement offers and last minute tune-ups. Let your customers know that you’ll take care of their home comfort now – and they can enjoy the rest of the summer. You can also take advantage of World Asthma Day this month to showcase your IAQ exper-
do to waterproof their homes, and turn preventative maintenance into a gold mine.
tise. Don’t miss the chance to pick up publicity by offering free IAQ testing around this day. Plumbing – Did you know that 5 of the top 10 Most Preventable Homeowners Insurance Claims are plumbing related? Your customers don’t know either. Burst washing machine hoses, shower leaks, water heater leaks… not the sorts of things you want to happen while you’re away on vacation. Educate your customers on things they can
Maintaining a Consistent Image, Online and Offline consistent with your print ads. There’s a reason two-year-olds recognize fast food chains before they can read. The icons are iconic. Consistent. They look the same in your hometown as they do 800 miles away. What kids see in person looks like what they see on TV. So, if someone found your company in an online search, and sees your vehicle in his neighborhood, he should be able to say, “I saw their website.”
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Promote your site goals internally. If you want your company to present a consistent image,
everyone in your company needs to be consistent. If you have a new logo, make sure it’s the one being used – not the old one. If you have a new tag
line, make sure it’s the one being used, not the old one.
Plan for continuing Web updates. Your website needs to be continually refreshed with new content. This is good for your search engine rankings, which can draw prospects through positive SEO, and you also have an opportunity to give your current customers a reason to return to your site.
Electrical – Arc fault breakers have only recently been added to the Electrical Code in many states. That means that most people haven’t even heard of them. Knowing that a breaker is available that can detect arcs of electricity and trip automatically to prevent home fires offers peace of mind and a sense of security to homeowners. And when you are the one to offer that peace of mind, you come out on top every time. Send questions or suggestions to: coaches@hudsonink.com, call 1-800-489-9099, or fax to 334-262-1115. You must include your name and company name. Free Coaching Call In Days: Silver Members: Fridays, 1-4pm CST. Gold Members: Wednesday and Thursday, all day. Platinum: Whenever you darn well feel like it.
MEGA
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HIGH PERFORMANCE MARKETING for contractors
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