Greathouse of Marketing

Compelling content: (web site, blog, YouTube, social media and so on) Helpful, how-to’s, interesting, cool, viral (worth sharing), top ten lists.  Be educational, both with basic helpful tips and in how your business works.  See http://www.crutchfield.com/App/Tab/Learn.aspx to see some helpful content Crutchfield provides to customers.  Whole Foods Market (http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/) is an excellent example of what an awesome blog looks like. Most experts recommend using the url blog.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/blog as the address to your blog, but, if you are just starting out with a blog it’s okay to use a free one like Wordpress.com or BlogSpot.  Whatever platform you are using, blogs, Youtube, social media; do not push out a sales message, it’s more about being informative and helpful.  I've repeated this several times, it's so you will remember.  Nothing wrong with promoting the business, but that’s secondary to sharing.  If you ever have trouble coming up with content ideas, pick a buyer segment that you are presenting to.  For example, a cell phone repair and retailer might write the top ten iphone tech tweaks for an advanced user and helpful hints for a beginner.  When you start a blog or make videos, it’s about demonstrating thought leadership, illustrating that you know what you’re doing.  The results of an active web presence is a lot of content, a better search ranking, and some new customers.  It’s also good to refer someone to a blog post or video you made about something that is a common issue, “Oh, I made a video on how to set up your email with the iphone, here’s the link.”  All of the content you put out also helps target ideal customers.  Remember, everyone is not your ideal customer.  You should build an ideal customer profile like the FBI does with serial killers.  It sounds a bit crazy, but you really should understand who your ideal customer is.  John Jantsch talks a lot about this topic in The Referral Engine. 

Referral Engine: Get people to refer your business.  First, by caring; providing great customer service and that extra bit of effort, because you genuinely want to help people, creates authenticity or trustworthiness.  People remember and will openly refer remarkable, honest businesses. Going through the motions benefits no one.  I’m looking at you, boring hostess at Olive Garden. Rally the troops, everyone in the business has to be in on the plan, Olive Garden manager. (I’m just using OG as an example, I haven’t witnessed any underperforming staff).  Remember this: a friend’s recommendation carries much more credibility than any advertisement or TV commercial. 

Word of mouth is the most powerful of all the marketing tools, that’s why referral is so important. Plus, the result of a implementing a notable business is you have in turn tuned your business to run at optimal levels of performance.  When this happens “a prospect is presold by a happy customer, the process of making a deal and deciding on a price is a pretty short one”- Referral Engine by John Jantsch. 

Second, it’s okay to express to customers you welcome referrals. In fact, you should build a system of processes into your business.  This is actually a good litmus test in confirming whether or not the products/services that a business provides is worth recommending.  Why?  Because if the business owner does not have the faith to do so then why would anyone else.  Make some changes if necessary.

We'll elaborate on referral techniques in a later post, because there is so much a business can do to generate referrals.