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Small Business Marketing: “For The Hundredth Time, It’s Not
Business to Consumer or Business to Business Marketing, Silly…
It’s People to People Marketing!”
Oh
Mamma, get the smelling salts out!
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times…
businesses don’t speak to other businesses or to consumers,
it’s PEOPLE in businesses who speak to other people in other
businesses or, directly to customers!
Yes, it’s about people connecting with other people.
But it seems as if business owners love to get clobbered over
the head with the same message hundreds of times over… and still
refuse to ‘GET IT’.
Proof?
Just cast your eye over the dozens of unread marketing
promotions, sales letters, email campaigns, brochures in your
own life. And, what about the number of business collapses in
any industry sector you care to name… in any place in the
world you care to name!
Yes. The virus of embedding a bland, lacklustre
personality-less sales message has ripped into the heart of
every category of business you care to name. And, quite frankly,
it’s boring the heck out of most of us.
After all, we’re all ‘end users’, of some product or service,
right?
Oh, and let’s not forget to mention that most of the
incompetent advertising and marketing created today, is simply
ballooning the coffers of the marketing consultants and
advertising agencies.
How?
By simply proclaiming “innocence” for their marketing dabbling,
and all the while, sweetly liberating oodles of cash from the
hapless and ‘none the wiser’ client.
The Best Marketing Strategy in The World Won’t
Cure a
Business or Services That’s As Cold As Ice
If you were to believe that a new technological strategy (blogs,
podcasts, webcasts, multimedia messaging…) a new customer
database tracking software, a new joint venture partner, a new
blah blah will do the trick in turning a lifeless, dull and
energy less business, into rip-roaring passionate profit
machine, it won’t.
In fact, all it will do is multiply the recipient’s misery,
magnify the businesses’ lack of personality, and highlight the
fact that the whole communication process is fraught with
quick-fix band aid solutions.
THE CURE?
It’s pretty simple really…
It’s by speaking and communicating to people in a way that
treats them as emotive, caring feeling people, and not as
nameless, faceless, corporations or individuals.
I mean it’s amazing why there seems to be a distinct divide
when communicating to a person, whether they be an end consumer
or a business entity.
Fact is, communicating to them is exactly the same process.
But somehow, from somewhere (probably plucked out of thin
air!) there’s the notion that “my clients are different”. So
that means they need to be talked to in sophisticated
language, they need jargon, they need pomp, the need
ceremony, they need ego feeding, they need buttering up,
they need… !!
They don’t.
No matter who it is: whether we’re communicating to the
president of a multinational, the owner of a mom and pop store,
the dean of a college, a retired engineer who’s an end consumer,
when we BORE THEM, WE LOSE THEM!
And, as an aside, isn’t the same true within families and
personal relationships?
The richness of communication and the deepest of
relationships occur when there’s a continual investment of time,
energy, conversation, feeling and respect.
When the human electricity fades, when the laughter subsides,
when the dull ‘n drab rules with increasing monotony… BOREDOM
creeps in. Leading to… !!
What was it that was highlighted on a recent Oprah Winfrey
show about failing marriages? The women said that the reason for
the split was “he just didn’t pay enough attention to me,
anymore!”
Pretty instructive, don’t you think?
An Electronics Components Seller:
From Bland and Boring to… Hot and Happening!
Would you like to know how a dejected, deflated and out of
sorts supplier of electronic components (yawn yawn!)
turned his marketing into a storm of activity and lit up a once
dreary and bland marketplace for his products and services?
This is a simple account of a man who couldn’t muster the
action to change things in his ‘boring business’, let
alone allow the thoughts to enter into his mind that his
electronic parts business was much more than simply talking to
manufacturers in part numbers.
To him, there was no romance in his business. There was no
excitement. No enthusiasm.
And, although he won’t mind me saying this, he wouldn’t
even engage in a simple direct marketing exercise where he was
asked to inject a dose of passion, a dash of oomph, a little
flavour of excitement into a promotional writing task.
He was, by all accounts, dwindling on the fringes of
extinction!
It took some time for this fellow to loosen up. Judging by
the troubled and forlorn look on his face, there was probably a
lot going on in his life. He felt he was ageing, rapidly…
consistently banging his head against up and coming competitors
all having fresher, innovative ways of doing things... feeling
the daily wrath of his significant other – his wife of nearly
twenty years.
Through a little more uncovering, it seems that his was
one of a dozen companies in this funny little industry, all
chasing the same business clients in the same lifeless,
monotonous way.
Will a little further investigation, it seems as if
prospective clients were concerned about two things –
price, and reliable delivery. Now, in any market,
knowing a number of key factors about what prospects are keenly
concerned about, would be valuable information.
Breaking Through the Boring Barrier
This guy needed liberating from his mental dilemma, so,
after a stroll down to the bar and after slugging down a few
beers, he loosened his tie and then, somewhat feeling liberated
from his own mental chains, his thinking took on a new ‘lease
of life’.
In fact, he seemed to have a crazed zeal about him that
would have frightened the hardest of thugs in the darkest of
alleys! Somehow, it seemed an appropriate time to issue a
challenge to him to come up with a lively passionate sales
letter to send to companies that he didn’t have as customers.
Anyhow, after a couple of months had passed, a letter came
in from our friend. I thought he was going to mention that he
tried the new personality style of marketing and promoting and
that he was laughed right out of his industry.
But, the opposite occurred!
Here’s the result of what happened:
Sending just 100, 3-page letters to his targeted audience, he
had a response from 22 shocked, bewildered and amazed new
prospects, of whom 18 came on board as new clients who later
wrote £150,000 worth of business with him over the next
12-months!
You see, his new style marketing and reader friendly,
direct response marketing letter - a letter that focussed
all the attention on his prospect and contained an entire chest
full of truly wonderful marketing and copywriting secrets -
won people over… in droves.
And, part of the reason for such interest was he wrote his
letters in red ink on shocking pink paper! Also, attached to the
letter was a regular parts catalogue that had a huge hot pink
sticker on the front of it that said “Boring, but
necessary”.
Yes, he certainly did the necessary thinking, and
then followed it up with the crucial ACTIONS on changing
his personal circumstances. And… he certainly created more than
a stir in his limp marketplace. In fact, he was the happy
creator of a marketing revolution in his once-dreary little
industry.
This man done something that most others won’t do, no
matter what business they’re in or what they’re selling - he
humanised himself. He gave people the biggest reason for
dealing with him and his company… his genuine, authentic
personality!
He became a warm, vulnerable, sincere person in his market
place and people loved him for that. He became a three
dimensional person instead of a flat as a board, monotone,
one-dimensional person.
He breathed life into his most promotable asset… that
being… HIMSELF!
How about you?
R C. Hireker is a Promotional Copywriter and Marketing
Consultant Specialising in Creating Personality Driven
Marketing. Who Says Marketing and Advertising Has To Be Hum
Drum Boring? FREE, 7-Part Ad Course in Creating Copywriting That
Sparkles & Sells. Send blank email to:
KillerAdCourse@Aweber.com . For Smart marketing insights and
thinking, go to…
http://www.Raja-Hireker.Blogspot.com
You can reach the writer of this article by Email at the
following address:
RCHireker@Simple-Marketing-Solutions.com . Or, by Phone,
anytime, 24 HOURS A DAY, 7-DAYS A WEEK, on: 44 (0) 208 764 1085
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