Work Backwards

Don’t start by just trying to create content – you’ll quickly run out of ideas and find that you’re just rehashing the same information over and over again. Your readers definitely will not appreciate this. Instead, begin by defining your goals. Look at what you want to accomplish, then look at how much material you’ll need to meet those goals. So if one of your goals is to update your blog twice per week, then you know that you’ll need 104 blog updates to cover you for the next year.

Plan Ahead

The real key to making sure that you always have enough content is by creating a calendar, and planning out what types of content you’ll need. So think about how often you’ll need to write sales letters, blog postings, twitter updates, and the like, and determine what you’ll need to keep your marketing machine running for the duration of the calendar.

This also allows you to refurbish some old content. If you’re looking at your marketing calendar, and you notice that you have a four-month gap on your marketing blog where you don’t mention much about SEO, then its acceptable to take an old article about SEO and re-work to fit into the gap. This is substantially less work, in terms of creating new content, than writing a totally original posting.

Find Hooks

Some of these are easier than others. First make note of calendar events – Christmas, New Years, Summer Holiday, which you can use as hooks for subjects. Blog posts are meant to be timely and to-the-moment, so holidays are a great hook for a blog post. Additionally, note events coming up that are personal to you, and which can be used as article hooks. If you’ll be attending an industry conference in March, you’ll definitely want to write a couple of articles about what you learned while you were there. This is easy for you, and interesting for your readers.

The other key to finding hooks is making an intelligent plan to capture inspiration when you see it. Keep a pen and paper, or a smartphone, with you at all times, and jot down a quick note when you see something interesting that you might want to write about later on.

First, we need to consider what exactly we are asking of our intended audience when we use QR codes as part of our marketing plans. Firstly, they require a smartphone to download a QR code reader to read the code in the first place. Then we are expecting them to have the phone nearby whenever they encounter a QR code, and on top of that we have to give them the motivation to actually scan the QR code for its information.   

This is quite a big ask really, so the way you approach the use of QR codes really does matter. Many companies are tempted to simply use a QR code in place of a standard web address on their advertisements and marketing materials, but to be quite honest this is a waste of the user’s time, and a waste of a perfectly good marketing opportunity.

Simply directing your intended audience to your website and hoping that they’ll be intrigued enough to browse the site is a futile effort. The key to getting the most of QR code marketing is to use them as a way for the end user to unlock information, rather than just sending them to a web destination and leaving them to find the rest.

So instead of just sending the user to your homepage, why not send them to a lead generation page where they can sign up for a free report or download your latest audio/video content? Or send them to a live forum where they can interact with both your company and other users to help generate discussion around yourself and the business.

Give them a reason to want to access the code in the first place, and give them exclusive access to valuable information they would otherwise not be able to have. Not only does this give the end user an incentive for accessing your code, but it also provides you with opportunities to capture new leads – which is such a better use of a QR code than simply sending them to your homepage and leaving them there!

The beauty of QR codes mean that you can put one on just about any kind of marketing material, and you can even update the information which is stored in a specific QR code so that you don’t have to keep reprinting them every time you want to create something new. 

This gives you the opportunity to be really creative with the information you choose to store within your codes, and how you choose to distribute them – so consider what information is going to be most beneficial to both your intended audience and to your business in order to make the most of QR code marketing.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

(Image by Stuart Miles)

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

People respond much better to a phone call than they do to a lot of other sales devices. Not only is a phone call much more personalised than, say, an email or a Facebook wall post, but it gives you an opportunity to tailor your speech to what the customer wants to hear, and gives you an opportunity to overcome their objections.

However, as powerful a technique as the phone call is, it also provides you with considerably more opportunity to alienate your clients that you get with most other sales techniques. Follow these three techniques to optimise your results when calling clients over the phone.

Bypass the Guards

As they say in sales, timing is everything. This is true in the most literal sense when you’re dealing with telephone marketing. The time of the day that you call can make or break you chances of success.

If you are calling a new client while they’re at work, you run the risk of getting stopped by gatekeepers, particularly if they’re a busy professional or manager. Gatekeepers are the secretaries and administrative personnel who surround your potential client or partner, and insist on taking a message. Bypass them by calling after before 9 am or after 5 pm. They’ll have gone home, leaving your client to take calls for themself.

Avoid Calling Your Clients at Home

Lastly, you run a risky gambit by calling people at home after work. People’s schedules vary widely, and you can never be sure that you’re calling at an appropriate time when you reach someone at home during the week. Calling a client during dinner or while they’re unwinding later is one sure fire to ruin the relationship. Unless it’s an emergency, save it for the daytime or the weekend.

Always Smile

Its sounds silly, but make sure that you’re happy while you’re talking to your clients. You can project confidence and enthusiasm through the telephone, and a lot of this is controlled by whether you’re smiling and thinking enthusiastically about building the relationship or selling your product.

On this same note, make sure to sound professional. Even more so than in face-to-face conversation, you can’t rely on pauses like “um” and “uh” to break up your sentences in a telephone call, and you must remember to be polite, and fill your speech with “thank you” and other words of consideration.

By following these few simple tips, you can improve your existing client relationships, and build new ones, over the telephone.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

To take a simple example, imagine that you were running a hotel. In looking to make your hotel the best one on the market, you could go onto a site like orbitz or expedia, and look at the reviews of your competitors, the other established hotels in your area and price range. However, by focusing on the lowest reviews, you could find exactly what customers didn’t like about the hotel, and find ways for your product to pick up on opportunities that were missed by your competitors.

You can do this in any industry, and with any type of business. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look, and how to properly turn the negative feedback into useful and constructive advice.

Begin by knowing where to look, and what to look for. This depends primarily upon your industry. There are hundreds of industry-specific review websites and social networks out there, some of them better known than others. Twitter and Facebook are obviously great places to start, as are social media sites like Yelp, provided that they are relevant to your industry.

To find additional review sites, just browse through what people are linking to on Twitter and Facebook, or do a Google search for “your industry + reviews.” You’ll be surprised just how many sites there are out there.

Once you find negative feedback, you’ll need to incorporate what you’ve learned into your business. So if you see a lot of customers complaining about a business practice that is common in your industry (even if the complaints are specifically directed toward your company), then you know to change that practice. For instance, if you see a lot of complaints about online marketers sending out too many useless emails, you might want to take a step back and think about whether you’re personally guilty of that sin.

On the other side, if you see a lot of people complaining about something that doesn’t exist, then you may have found a niche for your business to profitably expand into.

At the end of the day, it’s always good to know what customers are saying about your business, and the other businesses in your industry. And considering that people are 10 times more likely to post a negative comment than a positive one, looking for negativity is a great way to start.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

What’s more, many of the intended users of QR codes are still unaware of their real value or purpose so in this post I’m going to cover some of the basics and discuss the ways businesses can use QR codes within their marketing plans. 

What are QR codes?

The phrase QR code stands for “Quick Response” Code and in its most basic form a QR code is simply a barcode, in which you can encode many different forms of data which can then be read by a QR code reader.

How do they work?

QR codes are slightly different from barcodes, as although they are both a form of two-dimensional code, barcodes can only store data in a horizontal format (which is read through the spaces in between the vertical lines they are made up of), whereas QR codes can encode data both horizontally and vertically – meaning that much more data to be encoded in a smaller space.

How can you use them?

In order to view QR codes you need to download a QR code reader to your android phone (or smartphone as they are also known), and then use the scanner to take a picture of the QR code, which it will then scan and convert or direct you to whatever data has been stored in that code.

QR codes can be encoded with almost any form of data, which means that they can be scanned to show text, images, videos, maps or the entire content of a webpage.

In terms of using QR codes from a business perspective, there are numerous free QR code generators online through which you can create basic and permanent QR codes which you can then place onto any space you like, including giftware, advertising, clothing, printed products, packaging, signage, exhibition materials, as well as being placed in store windows – as they can even be scanned through glass.

You can also purchase QR code systems which can track the combined total of scans a particular code has received, as well as allowing you to produce one code that can have its data changed time and time again – meaning that you could print one code to be distributed and then update the data of this code every time you had a new offer or wanted to change the current promotion you were running, without having to generate and redistribute a new code for each.

How to download a reader to your smartphone

From a user’s point of view, there are a variety of QR code scanners that can be downloaded to most Android phones such as iPhone, Blackberry and HTC. Some newer models now have QR readers built in as standard as QR codes popularity and frequency of use increases.

iPhone

iPhone has a basic free QR code reader app by TapMedia Ltd, but you can upgrade to a HD version by DDQ for £0.69 and there are numerous other customisable versions to buy and download as well.

Blackberry

Blackberry Messenger 5.0 can read basic QR codes but if you are looking for something more sophisticated you can download either the Mobiletag scanner or the I-nigma app for free.

Mobiletag app allows you to create lists of results, track your decode history and search saved scans.

I-nigma allows you to save up to 50 decode results, which you can then share through SMS, Facebook and Twitter.

Other Android Phones

There is a whole heap of great free QR code readers available for other android phones, so here are some other suggestions:

·         QR Droid – free to use and can read, scan and generate QR codes,
·         Quickmark – fast scans and it reads both QR and Martix codes.
·         Redlaser – free, fast and superbly accurate.

QR codes are slowly catching on, as more and more businesses and users are starting to get to grips with how to use them to their advantage, but we seem to still be a fair way from the QR code becoming a staple of the UK marketing industry.

In future posts I will be discussing the ways businesses can really benefit from using QR codes as a legitimate marketing tool – so stay tuned for that.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

Word of Mouth

The oldest tool in the bag of marketing tricks, word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing device out there. Always start any marketing campaign with the people who you already know – friends, acquaintances, and previous or existing customers.

By winning these groups over to your side with a powerful campaign, you essentially give your ideas the ability to go viral in the oldest sense of the word. Think about the last new restaurant that you tried. Was it because they had a great sign on the front door, or was it because a friend told you that they had a great lunch special? Probably the latter. When you really make an impact on someone, you essentially create a door through which you can win over their social and professional circle.

Make it Stick

The key to this is making your marketing messages stick, so that your targeted groups can share them with other potential customers. Accomplish this by making them relevant to your potential customers, and by making your information add some value to your customers’ lives. The classic example is a hotel that provides a free map of the area in which it’s located, and advertises for itself and for affiliates on the map.

Leverage Technology

Of course, the internet has made this all possible on a scale never before imaginable. The groups with which people now interact regularly number in the hundreds or thousands. This makes it possible for an intelligently-designed message to spread worldwide in a number of days. Use this technology to your advantage.

When you’re making a new marketing push, ensure that everything can be shared by your targeted customers. So send them an email that they would be interested in forwarding to their friends and associates, or write a blog post that they can easily re-share or recommend on a social networking site.

By combining the old marketing tools of word of mouth and message relevance with the latest internet and social networking technology, you can make keep the best of your years of experience, while making your marketing messages relevant and successful in the modern day.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

As a general rule, creating interest in your product is among the most surefire ways to drive an increase in traffic, and to ultimately drive an increase in sales. Being interested means showing that you care about your customers, and making every possible effort to engage them and please them.

Be Interesting

While it’s never been easier than it is today to create an interesting product, and to generated natural interest around the product, there’s also never been nearly as much competition as there is now.

YouTube is the perfect example – while the popular video-sharing site has made possible the previously unthinkable idea of creating and distributing a video advertisement with no cost associated except the time that it takes you to product it, it has also driven allowed your competitors access to the exact same set of tools.

The key to creating buzz is indirect advertising. In this age where one can access nearly everything they want, totally free of charge, nobody wants to watch an advert. Instead, create a funny or informative video or article, and just include a link to your site. If you can be interesting enough that people share the article, then you be sure to have some of the excess interest spill over onto your website.

Be Interested

However, it’s not sufficient to just be interesting. You must also be interested in your customers. Thanks to the rise of the internet, its now possible to do this better than you ever could before.

Set up a blog and a Facebook fan page where you can see what your customers are saying, and where you can respond to them directly. Modify your marketing efforts to more accurately target your customers, and change your products if your customers are looking for something different.

The rule of being interested also applies to competitors within your industry. Read their adverts, both online and off, to see what they are doing, who they are targeting, and how they are doing it. Read the blogs of industry leaders, comment on them, and share their insights via your Facebook page.

By showing interest in your industry, you’ll not only learn more valuable information, but you’ll ultimately draw more attention to your own site, and your own products. And as we all know – more attention means more sales.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

There are some real benefits to purging your vast sums of emails every now and again, mostly for your own sense of organisation and control. Not only can your important emails end up being lost in the vast sea of contact you’re holding on to, but you may also end up becoming backdated when trying to respond to all of the contact you receive every day. Starting afresh can help refocus your efforts and ensure that your email account doesn’t simply become a filing cabinet for every last email you have ever sent or received.

There are two ways you can declare email bankruptcy. One is to close the account in question entirely and open a new one, whilst the other way is to simply delete everything up until a certain date. Closing your account entirely and starting again takes far less time and hassle, but this may not be possible for some – so clearing the account up to a certain point is a great way of spring cleaning your emails and regaining some structure and organisation.

If you think you have reached a point where you need to purge all your emails and start again, then here are a few issues to consider before you press the almighty “Delete All” button and dismiss them all for good. 

It may be worth considering going through your account and moving any important emails into a safe folder – although this is completely dependent on the amount of emails you have been hording and how much time you have to dedicate to this. Usually this will be something you do as you go along, but it’s possible you may have missed something so double check if you can. 

A great way to look for important information is to search by name. You should be aware of who your most important conversations are held with in general and this should help you find any vital emails quickly without having to wade through them all.

It’s also worthwhile sending out an email to all of your contacts, explaining that their emails have been deleted and asking them to contact you again if they are still waiting for a response. Hopefully, you’ll have managed to respond to the majority, but in case you have missed anything important this should help you catch it the second time around.

When you feel like you’ve done all you can to ensure that you haven’t lost any important communications, it’s time to press “Delete All” and wipe the slate clean. Now, doesn’t that feel better?

Once you’ve cleared your account of all unnecessary items, you need to start to reorganise your email system so that this doesn’t have to be a monthly occurrence. A great tip for gaining more control over your email account is to immediately set up separate folders alongside you inbox, such as Colleagues, Clients, Leads, Important Info etc.

Then, when you start receiving emails again you can begin to file the important ones away into relevant categories – leaving all the irrelevant correspondence in you inbox to be deleted at the end of every week. Make it a ritual on a Friday afternoon, before you power down and leave the office, to file the important emails and cleanse the rest. These five minutes a week will save you having to shut down and start again several times a year.         

Remember, the “Delete All” button is a last resort to help you reorganise your workload, so in future make it easier on yourself to keep on top of things and prevent the necessity for declaring email bankruptcy at all.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

(Image by Nokhoog Buchachon)

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

While the elevator pitch isn’t actually used in elevators (although it could be), the name alludes to the fact that it should ideally take about the same amount of time as a typical elevator ride.

The basic idea of the elevator pitch is to give potential customers an idea of what your business does, why it does it better than your competitors, and how you can translate your past successes into future benefits for them.

Keep it Updated

It’s essential to keep your elevator pitch updated as your business changes, and as your role within your business changes. You wouldn’t air the same commercials year in and year out, would you? Neither should you use the same sales pitch to clients from year to year.

Related to this is the importance of tailoring your speech to different groups of customers. While one subset of customers may care more about the potential cost savings afforded by your product or service, another group may be much more concerned with effectiveness, quick delivery, or any other aspect of your business. Stress the parts of your business that are most likely to appeal to the customer you are currently pitching to.

Nail the Delivery

Like with any kind of face-to-face sales, the key to your elevator pitch is in the delivery. You only really have one chance to delivery your pitch perfectly, which means that you have to understand your customer and understand what they are looking for.

Even more importantly, you have to make your pitch relevant and exciting. Open with an appeal to emotion, with a surprising statistic, or with anything that will catch your potential client’s attention and get him engaged. Once you’ve done this, you  can move into statistics, or the nuts and bolts of what benefits they stand to gain by using your product or service.

Above all, be confident. If you aren’t 110% sure of your product, then nobody else will be either.

Keep your elevator pitch relevant and updated, and when you get a chance to use, make sure that your delivery is perfect. In this way, you can make sure that when you get a chance to speak with a potential customer, you can bring them in every time.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

Sean has been named as one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers For 2012, which he is obviously thrilled about. The list has been produced by OpenView Labs, who have named their list of top influential sales leaders of today – and Sean has been put forward as an authority on lead generation and modern day selling.

Sean shares the limelight with the likes of The Sales Blog’s author Anthony Iannarino, thought leader Sharon Drew Morgan and best-selling author Jill Konrath. Sean has been tipped as an expert in his field and named as being one to look out for in 2012, so make sure you keep up to date with Sean’s blog this year to get your  fix of expert sales and marketing knowledge from the man in the know.  

Happy marketing!

Louise

Louise Denny

Marketing Manager