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Customer Demographics and Super Bowl Commercials

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:36:42 +0000

Customer demographics almost ASSURES that you did not like all of the Super Bowl commercials this year! If a company truly tried to make something for everyone it would be a colossal failure. So how does this translate to small business marketing?

As small biz marketers, sometimes we just want to do one commercial (or one ad or one website) that will appeal to everyone. This rarely works as the same thing that a 24 year old male would like is generally not something that a 50 year old female would find funny or endearing. If you are marketing to a certain age group, socio-economic status or sex, you are targeting a specific customer demographic.

Easy Peasy Customer Demographics Superbowl Commercial

While we were watching the Stella Artois (beer) commercial featuring Adrian Brody crooning in a night club, men across America were rolling their eyes and women were saying, “now that is a beer commercial that I can get behind!” Nothing fancy, just selling a romantic evening with a nice piece of eye candy. Some of the great twitter comments I found was were:

Stella Artois just effectively marketed a beer to a woman. WIN. | We all certainly paid attention! AND In a world where @namechanged didn’t exist, Adrien Brody could serenade me in Parisian nightclubs whenever he waaaaants

If you had to make a guess, which demographic is this one playing to – Teenage boys? Nah, probably 35-55 year old women who are not huge beer drinkers but who account for a huge percentage of the viewing audience. Last year’s Super Bowl had 106.5 million viewers, and near as I can tell the viewing audience is about 60 percent male, 40 percent female (there were not great statistics about this online). That means that by ignoring almost 40 MILLION women, most beer companies miss the mark and wind up showing us stupid slapstick, boy humor or muscle car chase ads.

Buy American Customer Demographics

One of my favorite ads this Superbowl was for the Chrysler 200. Now the car featured in a just a couple of seconds of the spot, what the ad agency was selling was a “buy american”, support the home team kind of vibe. Having grown up in the rust belt of Northwestern Pennsylvania, I can tell you there is a large part of the country that is Pro-America and whose heartstrings got tugged last night.

Additionally, these people are in the 40-plus customer demographic which places them squarely in the socio-economic class that can buy a luxury vehicle. Some Twitter comments included:

We are loving the Detroit shout out by Chrysler and Eminem Best storytelling of the night. | Chrysler. Imported from Detroit. THAT was a badass commercial. | I really like seeing Chrysler use the Detroit/America angle for a tug at the American pride and heart.

Compare that with some of the quotes about the snarky, controversial ads that Groupon was running which were intended to be a, “parody of a celebrity-narrated, PSA-style commercial that you think is about some noble cause (such as “Save the Whales”), but then it’s revealed to actually be a passionate call to action to help yourself (as in “Save the Money”)?”

While they thought it was cute, the comments that I saw included, “Groupon Tibet is most tasteless ad I have ever seen. Unbelievably exploitative. Stunned. | Did Groupon just make light of the political struggle in Tibet? Who wrote the ad, Kenneth Cole?”.

While one bad series of commercials will not sink Groupon, did they actually think that this kind of publicity would help their squeaky clean, take my money and I get a deal public persona? If the commercials WERE made for certain customer demographic, I cannot pick it out easily. To me it seems like they were more of a vanity piece for Groupon who said on their blog, “The trouble was figuring out what to do and with whom to work. We had tried working with creative agencies before and had never been that impressed. Our peculiar taste in humor made it really hard for outside agencies to come up with concepts we liked.”

Small biz marketers – remember this when making your commercials or YouTube videos! While it okay to have personality when making videos, it is equally important to focus on WHO you are trying to reach and what that message should be!

Well there you have it, my top two Super Bowl commercials targeting customer demographics! If you have a favorite and want to include a reason why I will add it to the post, just leave a comment!!!

Real Life Networking – Making Marketing Work

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:05:07 +0000

Real life networking can make a huge difference in how fast you can grow your business. Getting out there and talking to groups of people who have the ability to hire you can produce high quality leads.

BUT, (you are saying to yourself), if that is the case, why are you schlepping around to 20 networking events a month and getting no business? There are myriad considerations that you need to look at to determine if you are doing the right kind of networking. Here are my top tips:

How To Pick A Networking Group

Picking a networking group based on demographics – If you are selling a product that only is used by companies with 25 or more full time employees, networking off of meetup.com may not work for you. You may have to join Chambers of Commerce or industry trade groups to get the kind of buyer prospects you are looking for. On the other hand, if you work with small business owners (like we do), many of the meetup groups are perfect for finding propects who may be able to use our services.

Picking a networking group based on interest – If you are involved in boat sales, picking a networking group that is involved in boating or water sports will fit the bill. In this case, you better be passionate about the product you are selling or they will spot you as a phony a mile away! This kind of networking requires that you know a lot about your industry, AND it is a brilliant place to get speaking opportunities.

Picking a networking group based on the time it meets – This is SUPER important. If the networking groups you belong to all meet at night and you are an early bird, you may miss meetings and also not be at your best to shine. I would love to join some of the networking groups that meet in the evening around here but know that I would be cranky and would find excuses to get out of them. Instead I focus on finding groups that meet during business hours with the kinds of prospects I am looking for!

How To Pitch Yourself or Your Product

Know what you are selling – It is impossible for people to buy something from you if your product offerings are vague. Stand up and say in a clear voice, “I sell X” OR “I work with X types of businesses to…” OR even the old standby “I am looking for the types of clients who…” I attend a bunch of networking events where people talk about their services like THEY don’t know what they are selling. “Well, we work with, um, I guess the kind of people, ah, well I guess I like to work with”. ARGG. NO ONE is going to give you their hard earned money unless they know that you are going to give them a value for it!

Tell them what is in it for THEM – Instead of saying “we are a metrics focused company with legacy technology, leveraging the power of the internet…”, say “we help small business owners get their websites found on the internet”. I see A LOT of selling features versus selling benefits at networking events.

Do not tell them everything about your company all at once – I have seen many networkers come to one networking event and never show up again. Invariably, these people spend about 10 minutes in the middle of the 1 minute commercial telling everything about their company, as fast as they can. This never works, “real” members roll their eyes and stop hearing you after about a minute and half!

Marketing Materials to bring to Real Life Networking

There are some great pieces that you should bring to networking events and I rarely see anyone with handouts so you are going to stand out even more.

Your business card – make sure you have your Facebook and Twitter names on this too. Businesspeople are looking for how to stay in touch with you which will equal more sales!
An offer for a free consultation – offer a 15 minute free phone consultation. Basically you are getting people to make your follow up calls for you!
Upcoming events – if you are having an open house or sale, give people a handout with the date, time and location. Extra credit if you print it on a colored piece of paper that will stand out from the rest of the papers!
Your brochure – I order mine from VistaPrint so that I can buy them cheaply enough to give to everyone I meet. Having a high end brochure that you are afraid to “waste” is a recipe for disaster.
A coupon – offer a discount coupon good for a set period of time or a set dollar amount.

If you are going to take your time to go to networking events, make sure you are using that time to the best of your abilities. Take every opportunity to speak if they have a member spotlight, get business cards from everyone and enter them into your database. Do one on ones with people who could help your business or be a prospective client. In general, make it worth your time and effort!

Direct Sales MLM Case Study – Green Cleaning Products

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:34:11 +0000

Being a small business owner is sometimes a challenge. Knowing where to spend your time and what to spend your money on marketing-wise can take some thought. One of our MLM or Direct Sales Marketing clients who is rocking her marketing is Rae Ann Dougherty of Green Cleaning Products!

Rae Ann who represents a direct sales or MLM company got a blog from us earlier this year and has definitely embraced using that as her “HUB” for all her marketing materials (a hub is where you send all of your traffic to one centralized place). Her business focus is Green Cleaning Products and so we identified the keywords Green Cleaning Products, Natural Green Home Cleaning and Green Janitorial Supplies as the three that we would target.

Now just having her site up would not have worked any better for Rae Ann than having a static website. With that in mind she has done a lot of things to promote her site both online and offline.

Advertised in a local publication driving traffic to her website
Set up Twitter and Facebook accounts that target green cleaning product sales as well as recruiting direct sales or MLM reps
Monitored her Google analytics to target good post topics like “baby safe cleaning”
Written FABULOUS evergreen posts on topics that would appeal to the green cleaning public
Targeted local keywords like “Denver” and “Boulder” to try and get local traffic
Sends out postcards to her client base reminding them of ordering and driving them to her site

The other big thing she is doing right to succeed is focusing her attention on a category (green cleaning products) not marketing herself as a direct sales or MLM representative of WowGreen. She does that because if she ever wants to switch companies or if her company shuts down, she is not out of business. We don’t even need to change very many links!

Anecdotal Things I Am Going To Keep Checking

One of the things that Rae Ann is doing also is to have a static home page with links to her authority posts deep linked. I am not sure if I am a fan of having a static front page as it reduces the number of keywords that you can potentially rank for BUT it should be great for helping her to increase her rankings for those particular subjects. I can not wait to find out how this works as there are frequently people who do not like the fluidity of the blog format home page.

If you would like to find out more about how to improve your MLM or Direct Sales marketing numbers, give us a call today! 727.415.9165

Keyword Marketing Capitalize On Current Events

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:39:51 +0000

Keyword marketing has reached a new level and super exiting level. ANYONE can rank on page one in Google for a search term that thousands are searching for if they capitalize on current events.

So what are current events in the Keyword Marketing world? Current events are thing that are new and noteworthy that people will be searching for OR large events that have their own humongous marketing budgets that you can piggy back on.

How can a motorcycle race team use Apple’s Marketing dollars to get viewers?

So you know Apple, Steve Jobs and all of them? You know their marketing budgets run in the millions of dollars right? And you know that they just launched the iPhone 4 with a digital video camera. They are IN THE NEWS! Well this little team of motorcycle racers in Colorado did a GREAT job of leveraging the power of all that marketing by being one of the first people to USE the phone to do a mini documentary on an interesting subject (the phone has been out less than a week at this point).

iPhone 4 Short Film – “156 Turns” – Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with Ducati Multistrada

Another whackjob, I mean GREAT marketer who will be capitalizing on this launch is the “will it blend” guy. He takes perfectly good things and blends them. Why this is so brilliant marketing-wise is that he is showing how good his product is AND getting more and more viewers by each and huge product launch that is out there. He has blended iPhones, iPads, Olympus cameras, and even Facebook. Each of these are a great keyword that most everyone is chasing but that he is getting ranked for!

So how can a small business owner do this? Well a Flip video camera costs less than $200 bucks. And creativity costs nothing. One example that springs to mind is one of our clients who paints horse portraits. She could pair the term “horse portraits” with “Kentucky Derby Winner” or “Belmont Stakes Traditions”.

For people who sell makeup, look to the Grammys, Oscars, Miss America, etc. For those who sell toys, Santa, Christmas, Child Star Birthdays and more would be good. Basically you need to put on your thinking cap and try to find topics that are in the news now that would be a good match for your industry!

Blogging Success Stories for Small Biz

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:24:08 +0000

Blogging success can sometimes be hard to judge and having goals is vital to knowing whether you are doing well or just spinning your wheels.

When you are blogging (or for that matter doing any marketing that takes time away from your real work), you MUST know what you are trying to accomplish. Here are sone of the results that you can measure to see if you are succeeding….

Blogging success indicators

Posting regularly – this is a biggie! I find that small business owners often want immediate results from their blogs. They feel that throwing up a couple of posts should bring a flood of visitors and traffic to their door. This is not going to happen. Blogging is a get rich slow kind of gig where you build up content and a following over time.
Getting readers – it would be lovely if you started writing and then people just magically found you. Well this part is going to take work also. Make sure that you list your web address on all of your outgoing emails, have links from your social media and association pages and tell everyone you know what great information you have on there. One of my best suggestions is to follow that up by bookmarking every post on places like Digg, Stumble Upon, Propeller and others. These give you back links and can generate real human traffic.
Make it easy for people to sign up and receive your blog posts automatically. I have never found anything as good as the free service Feedburner by Google for this. When you offer this to your readers, basically they are going to get an email or an update to their reader every time you post something. WOW!
KNOW what your readers want to hear about. When you get comments on your blog posts, make a note that that post sparked interest. Do a Survey Monkey to find out what is top of mind for your readers. Check your Google Analytics to see what keywords people are using to get to your site and write more about those topics!
Write about current topics of interest. You can go to the front page of Twitter and see topics are trending OR use search.google.com to search your industry and see what other people are finding interesting now.

So, after you do all this, HOW do you get more business from a blog? Well people buy my products almost every day from my blog, which they find because of my quality content and posting. SOOO that tells you e-commerce is a great thing to consider for your blog AND…

I wrote a post about My Top Ten Tips for How To Get Paid Speaking gigs. A woman named Maria Todd commented and I wrote back in the comment section to thank her. The next night I was at an event and woman had a golf shirt on with Ask Maria Todd embroidered on it! We talked for at least a half an hour on ways to generate more speaking engagements, what pricing models work and whether we are pro NSA or not. Now I am SURE that I will get at least a couple more speaking events from her suggestions which always lead to more money in my pockets!

Features Versus Benefits Part Deux

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:14:08 +0000

My features versus benefits post asking whether you are selling the steak or the sizzle is one that pops up quite a bit on my google analytics. It seems like every small business marketer has struggled at one time or another with trying to figure out what is a feature and what is a benefit.

Basically, features are facts about the product or service that you sell. They tend to be VERY important to the person who is the manufacturer or service provider but which are less sexy to someone who is buying it.

Benefits are what it will do for you. How it will affect your life or your profits. Benefits are why late night television infomercials work so well. We get sucked into the idea that by spending a couple of bucks we can learn to sell real estate for millions of dollars or dehydrate all of our groceries so that they will stay fresh for years.

I was sitting around watching TV the other day and a mini infomercial came on for the Mister Steamy, a gizmo that is used in your dryer. As I am always interested in good marketing, I took a peek.

The features were….

It is a round ball
There are about quarter inch nubs sticking off of it
It is yellow
It is used in the dryer

At no time did the pitch man mention any of those things. The entire commercial was devoted to selling the benefits of the product. Now I am a pretty savvy consumer but with these types of benefits I was intrigued….

All my clothes would look new and pressed
My sheets would come out hotel smooth
My shirts would be magically ready to wear
It softens clothes while you dry with no added expense of a dryer sheet
If I needed a shirt in a hurry, I would have it in seconds without an iron

Those are some great benefits for me! Then when they doubled the offer for the same price, I almost bit. NOT because I thought it would work but because I WANTED all those time saving conveniences they said I could have to be true!

Great marketing will not fix a bad product. But if you are a small business owner with a great product or service to sell, please look at your sales sheets or website product page. Do you have features listed that are important to you or have you outlined all of the benefits to your customer?

If necessary, you can have your benefits at the top of the page and the features at the bottom so that once they are “sold” they can check out the details BUT they will never pour over all the specifications for your product until they believe that it can help them in some way!

There are no affiliate links in this post and I am sad to report that while mr steamy has great marketing, a product review site said that the actual functionality is non existant.

How To Write and Promote A Micro Magazine

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:12:47 +0000

A month ago I had no idea how to write a micro magazine, although I did know how to promote it if one should magically appear. Here are the hows and whys of my brand new How To Marketing micro magazine!

Check out the FREE How To Marketing Magazine

Why write a micro magazine?

I have to say that two of my favorite marketing gurus could not be further from each other in opinion. Seth Godin is an old school, permission based marketer who helps you get in the right frame of mind without specifics about how to implement your great ideas. Gary Vaynerchuk is a new school marketer who is taking advantage of technology to grow a new media empire, again without too many specifics about how to do that.

So when both of these guys said that the wave of the future is having a magazine (or email list) with ads that target a niche, I took notice. Here is Seth’s post on Micro magazines and a future of media and a great Gary video on Where niche marketing is going for small business.

Hmmm…so both of them think that building up a following for something you love and being able to advertise to them is a good idea. I DO think having a website or blog as a destination is great BUT what about a magazine?

How do you pick the topic for your niche magazine?

It was pretty easy for me to pick the topic for my magazine! I started with marketing which is REALLY a broad niche. Then I took a look at my clients which include small business owners, entrepreneurs, Realtors, MLM or Direct Sales and then some local businesses like Retail and Restaurants. NOW it is possible that even that is too broad BUT I have to tell you, I am NOT going to make a magazine and distribution channel for each one of those so basically I am targeting businesses up to about 10 employees with relatively small marketing budgets.

How do you get content for your magazine?

So I wanted to do a sixteen page magazine, figuring if I ever print it I will have four 11X17 inch pages folded. That is a LOT of content. Because I like marketing so much, I tend to gravitate towards friends who like marketing also. So I did the only thing I could think of! I told my in-person networking group I needed articles, I emailed friends and also posted it on facebook. Here is the breakdown of where the articles came from:

In-person networking – four
Friends – two
Business Partners and past clients – four
Facebook – one

For the next issue I have someone already willing to write and a leftover half from a prolific friend. This time I had 11 articles and wound up having 20 pages.

How do you set up a micro magazine

I have a confession to make, I am graphic designer so this is REALLY unfair to people who do not have access to unlimited design time. I used Adobe InDesign for the layout of the magazine and made all of the ads myself. I used photoxpress.com for some free photos to include in the articles.

Some things I would change about the original design after the fact:

It looks more like a webpage with a header across the top
The marketplace section is very busy
I would have more pictures instead of masses of text
I would write an editor note or article myself (I was wiped out and did not have one brain cell left to spare on writing)

How to market your micro magazine

This one was easier for me than the average bear BUT here goes some ways you can get the word out there

Post it on facebook on your profile or business page
Set up a business page for just your magazine www.facebook.com/howtomarketingmagazine. Make sure you get 25 fans so you can get the custom url
Do an event on facebook the day it launches
Tweet it on Twitter – www.twitter.com/marketinghowto
Set up a blog with the book to download in PDF format – www.HowToMarketingMagazine.com
Do a press release on www.Free-Press-Release.com
Make sure to write a blog post about your launch and bookmark it!
Send a graphic of the magazine and a templated announcement to your authors so that they can send it to their spheres
AFTER you get a decent response you can do more like facebook ads, google adwords, etc. DO NOT spend money yet because there WILL be things you need to tweek and you can be sure people will email you to tell you about it!!!!

Well there you have it, it was harder work than I thought it would be BUT now I have a super great freeby to offer, I can sell advertising on my site and in the magazine AND I have a focus for growing a list of people with like minded marketing interests.

If you would like to find out how to get a snazzy magazine like this for your small business, I would be happy to give you a quote…1 MILLION DOLLARS…:) Okay, maybe not that much BUT I will tell you that if you do not that the ability or software to do the desktop publishing and graphic design, this puppy would cost a fortune in time!

How To Write a GREAT Sales Letter!

Small Business Marketing Say EXACTLY What You Are Selling

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:21:43 +0000

Small business marketing does not always come naturally and I see a lot of mistakes out there. One of the biggies is assuming your customers know what you sell!

Now if you are a florist, I assume you sell Flowers BUT you may have the neatest gift shop ever in your store too! Mechanics fix your car but maybe you have the best detailer in the world and could make my car beautiful and functional. Here are some examples, check and see if any of them sound like you…

I LOVE my accountant, he is grouchy and nags at me and is an old friend of my husbands. When I was going to buy life insurance, I did not use him. Not because I would not have, because I did not know he sold it!
I have a great new client, Lisa Keyes who is a health and wellness expert. We are doing her a new marketing plan including a blog so we were talking the other day and she said one of her customers went to a MD instead of using natural stuff to help with allergies. I HAVE ALLERGIES and did not know that Lisa could help with them!
One of my favorite Tampa Bay Realtors, Gary Ubaldini, tells the story of how his dentist sold his house without him years ago. Gary had never told the dentist that he was a realtor!

Sooo…do your clients know what you do? Are you sure?

PS – We were hiding our light under a bushel also…:) If you would like to find out more about the small business marketing products we offer, check out our creatively named products and services tabs above…:)

Facebook Marketing How To Get More Referrals

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:24:43 +0000

Facebook marketing is all about keeping in touch with people in a very friendly kind of way. Getting and giving referrals becomes SO much easier because of the low technology barrier and connections that you have within Facebook itself.

There are three kind of business owners I find out there in regards to Facebook Marketing:

The ones that think it is stupid and a time waster – If you read my blog with any consistency I doubt you are one of THOSE people but if you are, leave now!
The ones that do not get it but understand that it is a marketing channel and who at least take a little time to chat there, play games or even have a business page.
The last group is people who are dedicated to using every marketing trick in the book and who understand that any good marketing program takes time. I LOVE these people!

So my buddy and client Brian P. Forrester of Tri County Mortgage sent me an email today from Facebook. A client he had not spoken with for over 8 months said her nephew needed to be pre-qualified for a loan and could he give her a call. Digging deeper, Brian said that, “She knew me from before, but I am not sure I would have been top of mind if not for FB.”

Click the link if you would like to keep up with Clearwater Mortgage man Brian P. Forrester on Facebook…:) Make sure to “friend” him!

Now I KNOW all your clients and past customers are referring machines for you and that you tell them at the end of every phone call that “you are never too busy for their referrals” BUT, and this may come as a shock to you, most people are not great at recommending ANYONE. They do not want to seem pushy or recommend someone that is a bad choice for their friend.

When you are doing Facebook Marketing and are out there with a bunch of friends or fans, there is a good chance that people will be more willing to refer to you. You may already be friends with that person through a contact or they can suggest you as a friend so the new person can see you are a normal business person dedicated to providing great service.

Additionally, they are already using Facebook so they do not have to search for your phone number or email, they can just type in your name and then message you.

SO, if you are not on Facebook, at least check it out today. If you ARE on Facebook, find some new ways to get your message out so that you can get more leads!

If you would like to learn to use Social Media Marketing like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to grow your business check out our social media videos. I am going to be adding a video today on some practical Social Media Marketing tips! The cost is just $47 for a lifetime membership but as I add more it could go up so get in early!!!

Small Business Marketing Naming Concepts

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:11:56 +0000

Every once in a while I like to get back to old school marketing and talk about how small business marketing naming concepts work in the real world! People will ONLY buy what they can understand and they do not have your knowledge of the back story of your products.

This is the WORST name for a product I have ever seen (the name of the business is kept secret for obvious reasons)! They are a butcher and sell meat products. Naming a product “55 Pound Lamb Carcass” may be factual BUT I wonder how much it improves sales…:) I especially like the fact that they talk about dead sheep and then put a picture of the little wooly lamb next to it!

The other end of the bad naming concept spectrum is someone who has a great concept but does not name their product or even set the parameters for what it entails. There is a woman in my networking group who has gotten SO much better. Before she talked about how she sold “happiness” and “feeling good”. That IS focusing on the benefits of her products BUT we had no idea what-so-ever what she was actually selling! Now she is actually saying what her product is and I have to think that she will sell more of them!

So your homework today is to:

Make sure you have named your product or service
Check that it is not an icky or offensive name
Confirm that other humans can understand what you are selling even if they do not know about you
Then sell, sell, sell!

Click here if you would like to find out a little more about features versus benefits…