Talk to the Expert

Talk to the Expert

by | Dec 14, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

Some consumers make purchase decisions based on relationships and some make them purely on price. They are referred to as either Relational or Transactional customers.

If your business sells on price alone, this information may not pertain as much to you. If you would like to sell more on relationships, pay close attention and heed this information.

Chris Lytle, the author of The Accidental Salesperson, says “If you become known for what you know instead of what you sell, buyers will come to you for help and advice instead of the lowest price.” The good news is, they will pay more for your knowledge than they will for just the product!

Chris goes on to explain “To become known for what you know, you have to actively market your knowledge instead of your product.”

A group of hugely successful auto parts stores created a strong market position with the DIY category by promoting and exploiting the knowledge of their employees. They had employees that loved Ford, others that knew Chevy, Chrysler, or Dodge inside and out. Even some that were more knowledgeable about the older “muscle cars”. This knowledge took the focus off of the price and put it squarely on the fact that they had people with the knowledge, and they had the parts.

As they say, knowledge is power, and the more knowledge you are perceived to have, the more people will look at you and your company as the “experts”.

In Eight Ways to Market Your Knowledge, the author suggests that you have an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on your website. Monitor the questions your customers are asking and publish your answers clearly in layman’s terms. Allow your prospects and customers to ask questions online, and always be prompt in posting your answers. Most importantly, take credit for your answers and make sure the public recognizes the answers came from you.

Click here if you want me to deliver all Eight Ways to Market Your Knowledge. 
A Bottle of Happiness

A Bottle of Happiness

by | Aug 18, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

Today, I’m going to share with you a story that began 135 years ago.

Coca-Cola taught the world to sing in perfect harmony and it also taught all of us some great marketing lessons!

On May 8th, 1886, Dr. John Pemberton sold his first glass of Coca-Cola at Jacobs Pharmacy in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.

Advertising has played a key role in Coke’s worldwide dominance since the beginning when John Pemberton invested $77 in advertising while he was only making a $50 profit. 

135 years later, Coke, as it is affectionately known, is served 1.9 million times every day, and remains one of the most recognized brands in the world.

After decades and multitudes of marketing campaigns, Coca-Cola remains consistent in communicating one very powerful and effective message, “Pleasure”, using two very powerful words, “Enjoy” and “Happiness”. A product that makes people, smile, laugh, sing, and brings pleasure to our daily lives, never goes out of style. 

A major reason for Coca-Cola’s success is the emphasis it places on the brand instead of the actual product. Coke rarely talks about the taste or ingredients, instead, it focuses on what the product does for you and to you. It doesn’t sell a drink in a bottle, it sells “happiness” in a bottle.

There are a number of marketing lessons local businesses can learn from Coca-Cola’s long history of marketing successes, as well as from their famous marketing blunder. 

One of the most important lessons is the value of targeting emotions with your advertising. Who doesn’t remember the emotional appeal of a multi-ethnic choir standing on the hilltop singing, “I’d like to teach the world to sing…it’s the real thing.” 

And what can be more nostalgic than the Christmas spirit…everyone has seen the mysterious Christmas gift-giver, Santa, drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola. 

Have you ever noticed the Coca-Cola bottler’s trucks are always clean and in excellent repair? They “walk the talk”. 

No Knee-Jerk Marketing – Remember the failure of New Coke, followed by the rapid return of Classic Coke? Coca-Cola blinked when a sweeter Pepsi product was winning the Pepsi challenge in blind taste tests. Coke overreacted by sweetening their New Coke to the dismay of loyal customers who wanted “the real thing”. 

The most successful marketers hold the course and do not overreact to competitors’ campaigns. 

Click here to get the 8 Coca-Cola Marketing Lessons you can use to grow your business. 
 
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Transactional vs Relational Customers

Transactional vs Relational Customers

by | Aug 4, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

One is more profitable. One is more needy. Both are important to the overall success of a business.  Understanding how to identify each type and how to turn transactional customers, when possible, into relational can be a huge boost to your business.

Every business has basically two types of customer profiles: 

1.) Transactional Customers
       – Only care about price
       – Have no brand or business loyalty
       – Demand more, but pay less
       – Consider themselves buying experts
       – Often return merchandise or complain about service when they discover the “cheapest” solution was not the best solution.

Warning:
Don’t confuse “traffic” with sales.  Because transactional customers contact you so often per purchase, their “traffic” can cause you to think the majority of your customers care only about price. Seldom is this the case. 

 2.) Relational Customers
       – Want a salesperson or expert they can trust
       – Need help and advice
       – Are more loyal to brands and businesses
       – Are less demanding and more profitable
       – Become repeat customers

Relational customers make fewer visits per purchase than transactional customers but generally account for a minimum of 50% of sales and more than 70% of profits.

The Bottom Line

We attract the kind of customers, relational or transactional, by design. If you would like to design a more profitable business and attract more relational customers, click here to see our Profitable Customer Marketing Checklist.

What I just shared with you arrived in a few hundred peoples email this morning. It’s this weeks edition of my Sound ADvice newsletter and you can have it delivered to your inbox too by filling out the info in the Sound ADvice newsletter box below.

Let me take a moment add a few more insights.  

All of us have a little bit of transactional and relational buying habits in us as consumers.  All depends on the item or service we are considering spending money on as to what our priorities are.  The problem I see that too many businesses don’t understand is that they think price is a higher priority than trust when we are spending money.

Several years ago, I was doing a Customer Needs Analysis with a HVAC dealer and he was talking about their quality and experience and all these great things that were relational.  But his marketing was focused on offering discounts and I asked him if he liked giving away money.  He was a little insulted until I challenged him to market his company the way he talked to me.  He was afraid to because his competition advertised price discounts and he was playing follow the leader.

I talked to another HVAC dealer and got them to minimize the discounts in their marketing and focus on trust and expertise. They took my advice and saw their sales double over time.

Want help figuring out how to market your business and you are in northeast Indiana?  Contact me.  I’ve been doing this successfully for years and am currently the General Sales Manager of WOWO radio.  My team and I will be glad to help.  Scott@WOWO.com is my email.

Staying Connected in 2021

Staying Connected in 2021

by | Jan 13, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Depending upon your business category, acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Knowing this, it only makes sense to do everything you can to maintain a relationship with your current customers, better known as Core Customers.  

So, what exactly is a Core Customer?  A Core Customer is someone that has done business with you in the past “X-period of time” and has the potential to do business with you again. 

The “X-period of time” depends upon the purchase cycle or how often purchases are made within each business category. For example, in the automotive category: A typical person purchases a vehicle every 3-½ years.  In the plumbing business, less than 20% of the population uses a plumber every year and 50% of the population only needs a plumber every 4 to 6 years. In the hardware business, it can be 1 time per month or more.

If your current customers have purchased from you within your “purchase cycle” time frame, these people should be considered a “Core Customer”.  As a business owner, you want to connect and reconnect with people between purchases until, at minimum, they are out of the “purchase cycle” period.

The other important question is, how often do you need to keep in contact?  It can vary to some degree depending upon the buying cycle, but the rule of thumb is 3 to 5 times a year, with a minimum of twice.

The first thing you must do is identify your business’ buying cycle. Then, identify who your current Core Customers are. 

If you do not have a list of your customers and their contact info, start to create one.  The only info you need is the name, mailing address, email address, date of purchases, and if possible, what they purchased and the transaction amount. 

Having this information is useless unless you USE it!  

Statistics show that the success rate of selling to a new customer is somewhere between 5-20%. The success rate of selling to a Core Customer is 60-70%.

Keeping your current customers is one key to success, but we must understand that regardless of what you do, you stand to lose 20% of your customers each year due to attrition in one form or another.  Therefore, it’s paramount that you continue to attract new customers that turn into Core Customers.  Once you’ve created the relationship, do everything you can to stay connected!

Click here to read 8 Tips to Keep Connected with Your Core Customers and protect them from predators (your competition).
 
What I just shared with you is from my weekly Sound ADvice newsletter that you can get delivered to your email Wednesday mornings free of charge by signing up in the form below.
 
Yesterday I met with a business owner that understands the value of staying appropriately connected with his customers because he knows the lifetime value of his clients.  He’s looking at doing something that perhaps you should do to.
 
 
I also have another way to help you keep connected with your core customers and invite people who are not your customers to become one this year.  It’s an advertising and marketing program with WOWO radio.
Whether or not you do the steps I mentioned to keep connected in a personalized manner, by staying in front of your customers with marketing messages on WOWO radio, you are continuing to connect with them every time they hear your business on the radio.
 
Contact me, Scott@WOWO.com , and I’ll connect you with someone from my team that can show you how it works.

Caring For Your Customers

Caring For Your Customers

by | Dec 15, 2020 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

Do you appreciate your customers?  Think about this for just a minute and then answer it honestly.

I’ll ask you again, do you appreciate your customers? I mean REALLY appreciate them!

We’ll assume that you answered yes. Now, here is the most important question.  Do they KNOW that you appreciate them?

Appreciating your customers is one thing. Making sure they KNOW that you appreciate them can be the difference between keeping them as a customer and potentially losing them to a competitor the next time they need the product or service you offer.

There are 4 main reasons why customer retention is so important to a company’s success and growth.

  • Affordability:  It’s 5-25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing company.
  • ROI:  A 5% increase in customer retention can increase your revenue by 25% or more.
  • Loyalty:  It goes without saying that retained customers buy more often and spend more than new customers.
  • Referrals:  Word of Mouth is still the BEST and cheapest advertising. 

This concept seems very logical and so simple that we would think every business would be doing it, right? Wrong!  The truth is that most don’t.  

Another truth is that making sure your customers know you appreciate them takes effort, and effort often-times means time and money, or both.  But it’s worth it.

Tip #11 in the 11 Ways to Show Your Customers You Appreciate Them is “Create a Thank You Video”.  Tip #6 is “Sending a Handwritten Note” and #7 is “Make a Personal Phone Call”. While both #6 and #7 are more personal, creating a video is unique and different and it can save you time. Create one video with one generic thank you message, and the rest is as easy as sending an email.

As competition continues to grow bigger and stronger, making sure your customers KNOW they are appreciated is key to continued growth.  To see all of the 11 Ways to Show Your Customers You Appreciate Them, click here.