Know What Your Prospects Really Want
We can’t deny that we buy “things” that make us feel better.
We don’t buy products, we buy solutions. Even the things we “need”, whether they are brand name, bargain or environmentally-friendly, are purchased because on some subconscious level they make us feel good about our choice. In today’s market, we have a tremendous choice between products, but ultimately we buy the brand that makes us feel better about ourselves.
I can’t tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi, but I buy Coke because my Dad did when I was a little kid. Over time, I’ve associated buying this brand of pop with family memories and good experiences.
That’s why we buy expensive clothes, cars, shoes, and highlights for our hair. Our lives were bearable before we bought these products, but somewhere along the way, someone created a “want” that turned into a “need”. Suddenly, we thought that purchasing these things would make us feel better, they did and they became part of our everyday lives.
In his post Do Not Ever Promote Your Products or Services, Ritu Pant of Marketing Hackz says:
Your customers are interested in only two things while purchasing your product or services – Good feelings and solution to the problem. Everything else is secondary to these two elements that customers require.
What solutions are you selling your customers? How are you making them feel better about themselves?
Think of your own reasons for buying products and services. What motivates you to buy? Think of all the reasons that you feel better for purchasing those products. Now apply that to your own products to set yourself apart from other sellers.
Essentially, customers begin the buying process by looking for a solution to their problem, but their decision to buy will be based on their feelings about you, your sales approach and your company.
Whether you are selling products or education, if you’re not thinking about how it will make your customer feel better about themselves, you’re not selling it.
Pamela Weir is a Marketing Copywriter. If you are looking for a sales writer with experience creating website content, press releases, squeeze pages, and sales pages, please visit her Copywriting Services page for more information.
Email Marketing, The Right Way…
For far too long, I worked for a corporation whose entire newsletter philosophy was all about spamming strangers.
Their email program didn’t have an opt-in, they barely sent notice that it was coming and they didn’t really care if their message was important. Basically, it was a quarterly advertisement that they sent to people who had unwittingly given their business cards to our sales representatives. Through email, they offered nothing of added value. If you had ever read one of the company’s brochures, you were already up to date with the company’s idea of “news”.
I didn’t agree with this policy. For a long time I fought for an opt-in page, a change of topic, an unsubscribe method, an email distribution application or service that stopped spamming, but none of seemed valuable to the sales department. If they asked for people to sign-up on their own, they may never have a distribution list.
What then?
I knew that the company could really have benefited from an email that took a recent industry problem and showed their “list” how our products solved that problem better than anyone else could. Their business double-speak was unbearable. A nice “you” thrown in occasionally could have really helped their bland copy as well.
In an age of permission marketing and relating to your customer’s needs, I just didn’t see how an unsolicited email detailing our many years in business and name-dropping customer list was really all that helpful, or inviting.
Seth Godin wrote about this recently in his email checklist.
Item number 8 sums up the the ways they could have improved their customer communications:
The definition of permission marketing: Anticipated, personal and relevant messages delivered to people who actually want to get them. Nowhere does it say anything about you and your needs as a sender. Probably none of my business, but I’m just letting you know how I feel. (And how your prospects feel).
This is certainly not new information.
I left the company because the majority of their marketing methods were similar to their newsletter policy.
How many of these email no-no’s have happened to you personally, or as a business owner?
Pamela Weir is a Marketing Copywriter. If you are looking for a sales writer with experience creating website content, press releases, squeeze pages, and sales pages, please visit her Copywriting Services page for more information.
Lessons from a Garage Sale
This past weekend my family and I hosted a Garage Sale to raise funds for our Canadian Cancer Society Relay For Life team, the CareBears.
I was unprepared.
Actually, that’s an understatement. I’ve been so preoccupied with Market to the Moment lately, it seems as though I’m always working, or thinking about work.
I had ample notice. I’ve known about this event for about two weeks, and I had more than enough time to rummage for items to sell. Regardless, I found myself running around the house at 6:00am trying to make up for lost time.
Luckily, I had the foresight to stop at a local party supply store to buy make-up for the face painting kiosk that my family had already advertised and set-up.
I arrived an hour late. For anyone who knows me, this is typical.
We’ve had these kinds of events before. My parents hold a yard/garage sale almost every year. Until this year it was just a casual get-together where everyone sits around hoping that they make $10.00, but this year was more meaningful.
I learned three things from this event:
> I don’t have a knack for pricing items that you would sell at a Garage sale.
I remember the price of these items when I purchased them. I know how much I would expect to pay for them in a used item store, but when it comes to developing price points for my own junk, I just don’t know where to start.
I don’t go to a lot of Garage Sales. I’m not an Up-at-6:00am-Saturday-Morning-Bargain-Hunter. If I need something I’ll order it online, or even venture outside the house to a retail store to get it. If it’s on sale, fantastic. If it’s not, oh well.
In my experience, items bought from the end of someone’s driveway either don’t work once you get them home, or they have several vital parts missing.
> A Garage Sale is not a great place to raise funds for a cause.
We did have many people donate to the cause without purchasing anything. It seems as though everyone you meet now has a Cancer story.
The Bargain-Hunters were a little less understanding. The fact that we wouldn’t budge on our prices probably lost us a few sales, but I don’t feel bad about it. Honestly, I was disappointed that people still haggle over one or two dollars despite the fact that we had several huge signs stating that all of our proceeds were going to Cancer Research and Not-For-Profit Programs.
I had no idea that a child’s bike, barely a year old, was worth only $5.00 at a garage sale.
Especially when you are trying to raise money for Cancer. Seriously people.
> Don’t have tweens run the face-painting/candy skewer stand.
I probably don’t have to add much text to this lesson. We found our stand unorganized, uninviting and unmanned for the majority of the day.
Nothing says “come get your child’s face painted” like a huddle of scowling teenage girls.
The most valuable lesson of all: Don’t let someone else put a value on your cause.
If you believe in what you’re doing, don’t compromise because someone else has an opinion. Your opinion is just as valuable as theirs.
In the end we may have lost a few sales, but we feel better because we know that a person who would spend 5 minutes to talk you down $0.50 is not someone we want to do business with anyway.
Pamela Weir is a Marketing Copywriter. If you are looking for a sales writer with experience creating website content, press releases, squeeze pages, and sales pages, please visit her Copywriting Services page for more information.
The Value of Twitter
Lately, it seems as though I’m spending too much time bouncing around the internet. In order to stay up to date, I frequent a lot blogs and read the latest news about social media. In my recent ventures, I’ve notice that everyone, at some point in time, has been involved in a discussion about Twitter .
For those of you who don’t know:
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. (Wikipedia )
The topic of this ongoing discussion seems to be whether Twitter is truly a valuable social marketing tool, or a colossal waste of time.
If you watch this video you can see why most nay-sayers find it more frustrating than useful:
For my business, I use many different types of social media. A lot of them are much better at wasting time than Twitter. Personally, I can’t stand getting caught “Online” with MSN Messenger. My status is permanently set to “Offline”. And as far as I can tell, Facebook is a perpetual “poking” machine. I can easily spend the first four or five minutes of my visit just poking everyone back.
For me, Twitter creates value by allowing easy interaction with people who pique my interest with their random, witty updates. By following the right people on Twitter, I get instant updates on their posts, services and events. I’m also offered Twitterverse (as it is dubbed by frequent users) specials and giveaways just for being a member and following the right people. I can interact with other marketers and writers to see what they are talking about and discuss the most recent issues that effect the industry.
I can follow people like Seth Godin and Wil Wheaton. It’s always interesting to find new people to follow. You can follow people who grab your attention through the feed on the main page, or you can link to the profiles of people who are engaged in conversations with users you are already following. Everyone brings their own perspective to the conversation.
As a bonus, there are many Twitter client applications that you can download to your Mac or PC that allow you to interact more easily with your peers. I prefer Twhirl , which functions similar to MSN Messenger and tucks nicely away into the corner of my laptop workspace and I don’t have to stay logged into Twitter’s website and hit refresh every 10 seconds. The updates of people I’m following automatically generate toolbar pop-ups. When I see an interesting update, I can instantly click on the pop-up notice and respond. Some of the other applications are Tweet-r, Spaz , and Twitterific .
I’m fairly new to this particular social networking tool, but I find it extremely valuable and fun. Although updates are short, the service allows you to insert URLs and participate in new viral marketing techniques. No one is shy about sharing links to great website content or blogs. The best people to follow are the ones who share links to insightful information.
Other than the occasional spammers, who are quickly identified and blacklisted, I think it can be a great means of socializing with the right people and spreading your message. And if I don’t like someone, I can simply unfollow or block them.
The great thing about Twitter is the ability to interact with people you admire, and have the chance to observe or participate in some great conversations, 140 characters at a time.
Pamela Weir is a Marketing Copywriter. If you are looking for a Marketing Professional to assist you with social media, and social networking for your company, please visit her Services page for more information.
Proper Use of a Press Release… This is Not It
This post is about a month late.
I had planned on writing a post on April 2nd, when I first stumbled on the Press Release.
I’m not going to say much about it. It really needs no explanation, but I thought it was worth noting because it’s an example of the Labour Congress’ blatant misuse of Press to downplay a very serious issue.
Well… they probably hadn’t intended to make light of the issue, but this doesn’t help the public’s view of their commitment to solving the problem.
I know, it was April Fool’s day. This was intended to be light-hearted and in the moment of the festivities (are there April Fool’s Day festivities?).
Here is their first release of the day:
Our Kind of Tax Cut
Labour welcomes government action on women’s wagesOTTAWA – The Canadian Labour Congress today welcomed news that the federal government will finally move to close the persistent and growing wage gap that sees Canada’s working women paid an average of 70½ cents for each dollar earned by men.
“Lower taxes for lower wages: higher taxes for higher wages. It’s plain old common sense that works for women. We work just as long and just as hard to support our families as men do in this country. It’s about time something was done to address the fact that we get paid less for our work,” says Barbara Byers, Executive Vice- President of the Canadian Labour Congress.
Last month, the CLC released a report that showed just how deep Canada’s pay inequity problem has become. The report, “Women in the Workforce: Still a Long Way from Equality” revealed that Canadian women who work at full-time jobs throughout the entire year earn just 70½ cents for every dollar earned by men who do similar work. Worse, the report showed that this wage gap was growing and growing fastest among women with post-secondary education.
“As women file their income tax returns, they see they are paying taxes on wages where they’ve done a dollars’ worth of work for thirty cents less. It’s not fair and, finally, the government has decided to do something about it,” says Barbara Byers, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress.
According to Byers, the Minister for Women will announce plans to have women pay, on average, 70% of the income taxes on their wages that men pay. Because nearly 40% of women who file income tax returns already don’t earn enough to pay federal tax (according to Revenue Canada statistics from 2005), the impact on the federal treasury is something the government can manage.
While greater access to affordable child care, higher minimum wages, and meaningful pay equity laws would do more to close the wage gap between Canadian women and men, Byers says this is an April 1st to remember. Web site: www.canadianlabour.ca
My point is, they could have picked a different issue or dealt with it in a different way. They actually released this to an international PR website. So, it was released as genuine news about labour equity and tax cuts.
I’m sure it’s not the first time a company has done this, but it certainly should be the last time a governing body does this.
They issued this retraction, which was released later in the day:
April Fools! – Cutting taxes really doesn’t help
April 1, 2008
OTTAWA – Earlier today, we issued a release about plans to have women pay just 70% of the income tax on their wages that men pay as a measure to compensate for the fact that women earn, on average, about 70 cents for every dollar earned by men who do similar work. Of course, it was an April Fools’ joke.
While it’s true that something needs to be done to address this problem, there are better answers. To learn about them, visit onceandforall.ca or look for the Equality! Once and For All! campaign on our web site, canadianlabour.ca.
The Canadian Labour Congress, the national voice of the labour movement, represents 3.2 million Canadian workers. The CLC brings together Canada’s national and international unions along with the provincial and territorial federations of labour and 136 district labour councils. Web site: www.canadianlabour.ca
I agree that tax cuts aren’t the appropriate way to solve the problem, and the likelihood of the Government taking a stand in this way is pretty far-fetched.
Maybe they were attempting to gain more support by creating awareness of the situation and making people angry. Maybe they thought that this would spark some huge debate in Social Media and people would contact them or support them in their fight. If they were purely looking for a laugh, it didn’t work.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not averse to humor.
I just don’t support their idea of a joke.
Pamela Weir is a Marketing Copywriter. If you are looking for a sales writer with experience creating website content, press releases, squeeze pages, and sales pages, please visit her Copywriting Services page for more information.
