A key ingredient to strong relationships is developing emotional connections. At the end of the day it’s not what you say or do, but how you make people feel that matters the most. In order for someone to feel good about a relationship, they must know the other person truly cares about them, both personally and professionally. “3rd Street Marketing has met and then exceeded our hopes and expectations. The staff is easy to work with and very accommodating. Their sincere and enthusiastic effort to understand our needs is evident and greatly appreciated.” - Pam Botis-Shoreline Village

With the Internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire by email or with tools like Twitter. The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously,  so don’t be afraid to get creative and think outside of the box.

This is why building long term relationships and going above and beyond is imperative to a company’s success. Everything is customer service. Every action you take — the design of your web site, your content, how you answer email — communicates something to your customer. About serving her. About helping her.  Be a good listener. Take the time to identify customer needs by asking questions and concentrating on what the customer is really saying. Listen to their words, tone of voice, body language, and most importantly, how they feel.

“3rd Street Marketing isn’t just about cranking out text. They see the bigger picture – how our products fit together, what our customers expect of us, and how our partners compliment our solutions”. -Carrie Kulak-SafeStone Technologies, Inc.

• What can you give customers that they cannot get elsewhere?
• What can you give customers that is totally unexpected?

Ask yourself these types of questions when reviewing your businesses current CRM strategy. Price and quality can be easily copied – how you create and manage customer relations is much more difficult to imitate.

Cad Engineering could see that even though they are one of the premiere companies out there, the brand did not reflect that.  They asked 3rd Street to bring  their website into the 21st century.

We wanted the site to reflect Cad Engineering’s precision and attention to detail. It was important that the site be user friendly so potential clients could easily see the services they offer, and an impressive portfolio of recent work.

CAD Engineering’s tagline is “We believe in aiming for perfection!” and now they have a website that proves it!

Most viral content and successful social media campaigns follow a similar pattern. After watching the same formula unravel throughout the Kony video, I felt compelled to expose the blueprints of a viral marketing campaign.

6 Essential Elements For Any Viral  Marketing Campaign:

1. High level of emotional content - People act on emotion not logic, so you must align with their emotion, put them into an emotional state, and then ask for action.

2. Deadlines/Milestones - April 20 2012 milestone “We will be putting up posters, stickers, and signs of Joseph Kony in every city, on every block possible in order for the rest of the world to (literally) wake up and see that we want change. Invisible Children seeks to make Kony infamous worldwide and the video sets a deadline of Dec. 31, 2012 for Kony’s capture.”

3. Clearly defined villains and heroes - Kony and the LRA V.S. the world

4. Specific calls to action - Sign the petition, order the bracelet and share the video. The combination of a clear and easy call to action with explicitly defined benefits has made the campaign very successful.

5. Well crafted storytelling - Incorporating the directors child and the Ugandan boy Jacob helped create a parallel between two cultures.

6. Targeting influential people with reach - Identify and engage communications channels that are open to your message, influential, credible, and that have reach.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the process of incorporating each of these elements into your viral company. We’ve been doing this for a while and would be glad to lend some advice on how you can customize each campaign element to resonate with your  audience. Shoot us an e-mail or give us a call, were happy to help.

And in case you missed it…

In search of: The Best Online Reading Experience

His article reminded me of an eBay selling example from my 2005 book on eBay marketing (I can’t believe it’s been 7 years since it was published!). The following is from one of the storytelling sections of “The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing“:

Storytelling Sells
Stories capture buyer attention, bring in wide ranges of audiences, and provide an engaging context for explaining almost anything. You can tell all kinds of captivating stories on eBay. They can be one line long or the fill up three conventional, mythological acts. The best dramatic stories involve a dilemma, a struggle for truth or reason, and a solution.

Many typical eBay stories involve cleaning out an attic or finding a rare item at a swap meet. These are often true stories, and they reinforce the uniqueness of the item. If your products have interesting stories attached to them, especially stories that motivate shoppers, be sure to include them.

The following are five proven story formats for selling on eBay:
• Stories of product origin
• Stories of product scarcity and uniqueness
• Stories of customer life improvements
• Stories of product development, engineering, and/or production process
• Stories of artistic creation

Here’s an example of telling a story, selling the dream, and selling value in a listing for rare Roman coins:

“Imagine Owning a Piece of History from the B.C. Era for Less Than TWO DOLLARS Per Coin!”…”The Romans built an empire which lasted over 500 years (from 27 B.C. to 476 A.D) and encompassed a quarter of the world. Think of all the gladiators, nobleman, and soldiers that have come into contact with these coins! Many of these coins were buried more than 1500 years ago by Roman soldiers who were going off to battle. Many did not return, and thus their money (these very coins) were left in the ground only to be discovered millenniums later by archeologists.”

A story like this attracts far more bidders than one that simply says, “Please buy our coins. We think you’ll find that they’re nifty.”

Now, that said… ask yourself, “Would I rather make 500 phone calls? Or is it worthwhile building a network of Facebook and Twitter followers?” Multimedia advantages aside (e.g. demos, jpegs, and video showcasing your products and services), social media tools scale much more easily than phone calls, post cards or index cards on the bulletin board at the local coffee shop.

Yes, you need to make personal contact with customers and balance your messaging with “real world” efforts, like direct mail, display advertising and the like. However, social media is gaining in importance every day as everyone from your grandmother to your attorney jumps on these platforms, tools and communication channels (the important ones right now are Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter – Google+ is good for tech co’s and thought leaders, but it’s a big  mystery as to whether it will gain any kind of mainstream traction).

So, getting the word out on social media channels is crucial. And, to go viral with Social Media Marketing (#SMM), you need strong connections to living breathing people. Here are the three keys to getting the word out:

1. The strength of your connections
2. The level of your engagement
3. The quality of your message

These also apply to your personal communications, of course. The point is that it doesn’t matter what communication channel you use. Use your phone, a postage stamp, an email, Twitter or Facebook. But pay attention to those three keys. These are what will determine who will go to bat for you.

#1 has to do with who cares about you and you. The root of this “caring” lies, interestingly, in the quality of care you direct toward your customers and prospects. If you care about your audience, then you’re putting yourself in their shoes every day, trying to figure out ways to benefit them.

#2 has to do with the quality and quantity of your interactions. How many “touches” do you have with customers and friends/followers? Are you bugging people or offering them real value and insights? Are you answering their questions and trying to help them when your solution is not working out as planned?

#3 is an extension of #2. If you’re selling *anything* these days, you’re in the content production business. Ask any exec in upper management at Starbucks, and they’ll tell you that they’re in the content production and experience business. They nailed down coffee production, franchise and supply chain issues long ago. Their key differentiator is now “experience enhancement.” That means testing store designs and content (e.g. music selections and messaging on displays), engaging with “hub” or power/influencer users online and in the physical world at events, and constantly pumping out relevant information (whether it’s regarding philanthropy projects, music, books or coffee facts).

Content has always been king, and you need to produce it well in order to make any kind of impact in this world. That goes for software companies, shipping companies, French fry peddlers, freelancers, web designers, lawyers, dog walkers… everybody.

Here’s a good example. Check out Freshbooks, and notice how many times they encourage visitors to either “take the tour” or sign up for the 30 day free trial . . on the home page. Mailchimp does it, too, but they’re a little different. They close traditionally, with a free sign up button and a link to the advantages and benefits of the platform, but they also close softly with links to guides and content marketing vehicles. These include how-to videos and some really nice, free PDF ebooks.

In any event, when you continually close throughout your pages, you increase your chances for success. You build deeper relationships with customers and prospects; you guide readers through your site; you usher people toward the shopping cart; you up-sell and cross-sell, loading their cart up with extras and complementary products; and you generally get them to move in your direction or begin saying yes to your entreaties.

That said, you may be asking, “What’s up with the title of this post?” (Hint: rent or download the movie Glengarry Glen Ross.)

I would also add that you should personally mix with people in your industry (customers and other experts) to show them that you like them.

What?

Yes – this has been upheld by psychologists. People who understand that the person selling them something likes them also understands how that person will work with their best interests at heart. It’s got to be genuine, of course. And it doesn’t matter if they don’t like you! This liking will open doors for you, increase your traffic, and help build your business perception (or brand) into one that customers respect and admire.

Authority, Scarcity and Closing Hard: Part I

My 2.5-year-old son just learned how to swim. He learned to swim a short length of the pool in two days, and then he swam a large length of the pool in four days. This post isn’t supposed to be a brag session about my son. Instead, it’s a brag session about his instructor and the way the guy delivers on his promises, promotes his product, and closes new referrals hard.

I may as well plug the guy right here. His name is Tom Bradbury (works in Southern California) and he’s just dang good at what he does. He takes kids from 17 months of age on and puts them through a no-nonsense swimming workout that’s designed to get them swimming fast and water-safe for life. He guarantees that your child will swim in two days. The first day is a bit edgy for the parents, because he just escorts the kids (in groups of two and three) into the pool with a gruff, “I’m the boss” style. Most of the kids quickly offer him respect and trust his every move. Their crying subsides rather quickly. Other pupils persist with their whining, but by the third day they too are finished and enjoy swimming around.

So that’s how it works. The beauty of it, however, is the business at hand. Tom charges $300 for a 9-day program with 20-30 minute sessions each day. He works with 2-4 kids at a time, and he appears to be busy for about 3-4 hours a day, maybe more. Do the math. It’s a nice little business. He’s been doing this since 1957. He’s also a child development specialist/speaker.

We heard about his swimming courses through a friend who got into a morning session. We tried to sign up, but his scheduling person said that he’s booked through 2006. We went back to our friend and asked if there was a way to “weasel in.” Tom told our friend that he had an opening in the noontime slot in two weeks. We showed up on that Monday, check in hand, ready to pay the master. He was in the pool and had a sign up that said he wouldn’t take payment until Wednesday — when he could show us that our son was actually swimming.

While training the new swimmers, Tom offered up various quips to the parents in attendance, for example:

- I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this since 1957.
- It’s my job to get this child swimming and safe for life.
- Your child is my customer, not you. You’re the conduit — you showed up with the check.
- I’ve trained more than 75,000 children all over the world.
- I just spoke at Columbia University about child development.
- We’re not blowing bubbles and playing patty cake here. You showed up with a need, and I’m meeting it.

Sounds abrasive, but he’s really a nice guy. And you quickly understand that he’s a pro. You immediately witness structured technique and immediate progress.

You also notice that he’s ginning up new business as he guides the children around the pool. He talks to the parents in attendance occasionally, and they invariably mention friends that they’d like to refer to him. He hems and haws and then tells them how their friends can get around his scheduler. He tells them to sneak the pupil into one of his classes in a couple of weeks — then he’ll see what he can do.

I don’t know if Tom is aware of all of the things he does right — from marketing, promotion and influence perspectives (I suspect he does). My guess is that he’s just learned his techniques and habits as a matter of business over the years. He’s smart and has incorporated some very effective techniques that have been a part of the advertising and marketing canon for centuries.

In the next post, I’ll dissect some of the things he does right. This post is getting a little long. In the mean time, maybe you can beat me to the punch. Post your thoughts, and we can make this an interactive discussion.

It’s understandable, really. Sales dropped off, revenue declined, and budgets dried up. Writers and designers were let go, and depending on the severity of the crunch, so were marketing managers and even VPs. The companies were presented with some interesting dilemmas: If you’re not out there actually selling, with improved messaging, persuasive solution descriptions, and ongoing communication with your customer base, then you’re not getting any new results, like improved sales, refined strategies or breakthrough ideas.

The predicament affected all aspects of the selling process, including:
· lead generation
· trade show communications
· Web messaging
· email campaigns
· direct mail
· sales support collateral
· presentations

As a result, sales departments had to adopt new “guerilla warfare” strategies in order to proceed without updated support collateral. They were left to their own devices to generate leads and sent into the field with sub-standard briefcase tools.

Many companies looked on the bright side and saw the economic conditions as an opportunity to separate themselves from the pack, improve their bread and butter products, and pound their competition into submission. They still didn’t have a lot of revenue to support marketing projects, but they were able to complete key initiatives with a lean and mean approach to production, a re-emphasis on digital document delivery (rather than costly print) and the utilization of outside consultants, writers and designers.

Fortunately there’s a well-educated, technologically skilled open market of freelance professionals that offer these kinds of services. For a fraction of your usual training, HR and actual production costs, you can hire a freelancer on a piece-by-piece basis.

There are several benefits to hiring outside help:

· Most freelancers will always be around, honing their skills and industry expertise even when business is slow.
· Professionals that are dedicated to a specific industry are less likely to switch their focus and disappear. Young, full-time hires, just out of college or new to the industry, often switch careers and plans with much higher frequency.
· Costs are significantly lower than in-house production, especially when focusing on per-project production costs. Full time staff requires payroll and HR support, medical benefits, desk space and computer equipment. That adds up, especially when no projects are in the pipe and you can’t turn off the money spicket.
· You don’t need to retrain or start from scratch with seasoned professionals.
· Professionals dedicated to your particular industry have good visibility across the market. They already understand your competition, your markets and your customers.

The benefits of outsourcing make as much sense in good times as they do in bad. When things were booming, executives were hopping from company to company, leaving projects in the lurch and disrupting production. We all saw that in the late 90’s and early 2000′s. Even low level production staff were making good dough and then heading off to travel or pursue some other avenue. During the downtrend, marketing management and production staffs were severely reduced. Outsourcing has proved invaluable in both scenarios.