PetesWeekly

No Really, Service Excellence?

June 2nd, 2011 | by | marketing

Jun
02

May I be direct?

Your service is not excellent. Your offer is not unique. You are much like the rest of us – struggling to make sense of commerce and fighting the same demons. (The past few months of testing service and sales response levels in SA have shown us at Sales Motor how awful almost all of us are.)

Maybe, after a few years of banging your head against the coal face, you will build some great habits that your clients will like enough to give you money for.

Even then, if you tell us how good you are, we will not believe you. The SA government uses the phrase “service excellence” 15,100 times on their websites. In their case it is more hope than real, like my relationship with Cindy Crawford. The phrase now means as much as “Ja nee.”

More than 28,100 SA sites talk about their “unique service”. That too no longer means much. “Eunuch service” would be more truthful.

I think it is time to stop talking so much about it and start doing it a little. Now, that is something people notice. And it is almost easy!

Over this past month some of my clients have made great sales. And a bunch have not. They differ in just one respect: All the clients who get the sales phone back within 30 minutes of a web enquiry.

When a person sends you a request via your website they don’t quite know what to expect next. Folk in SA have lost hope that much will happen. And, indeed, very little does.

In Norway, if you ask a plumber to visit on Monday at 10am, he will arrive between 9:59 and 10:01. In SA, if you ask five of them to visit on Tuesday at 10am, the only guy to arrive, at 1pm on Thursday, will get the job.

So, when a prospect gets a phone call back from a real person, within thirty minutes, there is a stunned silence, often followed by “Fok me, I have NEVER had such service before.” (Women will often say “Wow” instead of the more robust male response.) I know this because we’ve been testing it for the past 12 months.

At this point you do not have to talk about your service. You have just shown it off in all its shining glory. That memory will stick. Folk offering great service don’t have to mention it. The rest of us do.

This past week I helped a few of my clients work through their own sales processes to adjust to doing it this way. Their sales results improved overnight. (When so few folk in SA offer any service at all, it is not hard to stand out!)

We test our clients after a few weeks, to see if their follow-up is any good. At the same time we test the firms competing with them. And the really great news is that they are all so slow, and so bad, that it really is easy to be better.

A fast email is much more efficient, but not nearly as effective. The call starts a dialogue that your prospect needs so that they will trust you enough to give you money. In a world with so much technology we sellers forget that our clients want relationships.

May I suggest that it might be a good idea to be the first in your field to look at this issue, rather than the second?

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Sell more and visit foreign lands.

June 2nd, 2011 | by | marketing, selling

Jun
02

Once you have travelled around the world a little, as I have, you begin to notice the difference between your average South African and the normal folk that populate places like Australia, England, and Norway. You even begin to notice the very distinctive South African accent.

As long as I lived in South Africa, I had no idea how South African I sounded. The moment I walked through London the very first time, and heard a South African in the distance, I realised quite how loud we are, and quite how unique our dialect is.

It is even more so in Norway where one doesn’t often hear English being spoken in public. One is tempted to rush up, hug the poor fellow, and invite him around for a braai tonight at your igloo.

The single biggest difference between a South African and anybody else, at least in every country I have visited, is that the South African is a master at the art of offering unsolicited advice. This makes us pretty unique. In the rest of the world, most folk will respond if you ask for help. But they will keep their distance until then.

This does not happen when a South African is around, whether this is in South Africa, or anywhere else. You can be, for instance, in a supermarket, looking at the range of adult diapers on offer. Most of the locals will diplomatically leave you to your ponderings. Not so your basic South African.

“I see that you are looking at the adult nappies?” Is the opening gambit.
“Hmmm.” Is the usual, very embarrassed, response.
“May I suggest that you take the extra large, silicon-based, waterproof, ShyteNoMore, and take the big packet because it’s much cheaper? I have tried all of the others, and that’s the one that works best.”
“Hmmm.”
“The regular size simply doesn’t hold enough to make it worth the trip to empty it. Trust me, three bars of sugarfree chocolate and that’s my bundle!” Our South African hero helpfully offers.
“Hmmm.” The victim mumbles desperately hoping that a heart attack – whether his own or the South African’s – might end this agony.
“Hey Janet, “our hero calls across three aisles “I told you that I wasn’t the only one with this leakage problem. I just met another guy who also needs those extra large  ShyteNoMore  nappies that you keep laughing at!”
It is usually at this point that our deeply embarrassed victim shuffles away, possibly to the WC to cram a large wad of toilet paper into the back of his trousers while he walks to the nearest supermarket where South Africans are no longer welcome.

It doesn’t just happen to strangers. Befriend a South African, and you’re inviting a one-person-expert on everything into your life. Their knowledge knows no bounds, and they are always happy to offer guidance on issues like raising your children, your garden, your engine size, why Norway and Britain should not allow more immigrants in,… I could go on, but you get the point.

What’s even worse is when you find yourself doing it. Women typically don’t like us men because we offer answers and solutions long before they have finished explaining the problem. For them the joy lies in the explanation, and the subsequent discussion. They don’t want answers, they want dialogue.

Folk living in Norway and Britain don’t even want the dialogue.

Which brings me to the point of this email. The best sales advice I can offer: Shut up and listen for at least five minutes for each minute you speak. When you speak, don’t mention – ever – how great your service is. People will believe you as much as they believe Telkom’s current statement about their service: “You will enjoy uncompromising service excellence and an unparalleled range of affordable communications products and services.”

Your sales will rocket. Your prospects will respect you. And you will earn enough money to be able to pester strangers in any foreign land you care to visit.

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What we think we know

June 2nd, 2011 | by | entrepreneurial life, marketing

Jun
02

A few days ago someone asked whether we could help her find clients for her guest house. Well, what an invitation. That’s what we do, and if we don’t – for you – it costs nothing. (30 days, or it’s gratis!)

For instance, our best client happily admits to knowing nothing about marketing, and is quite happy with his lack. We sent him 76 enquiries last month at an average price of R7 each. Just one sale pays our bill to him a few times over. And Easter is supposed to be an awful month. These were leads from hospitals, restaurants,  and even the military in a few African nations. (OK, so that was an unashamed nudge, but I needed to boost my confidence for what follows.)

I began by explaining how we work.

“Nope, that won’t work with my business,” she exclaimed. Then she told me all about what guests want when they are looking to reserve a night. I explained that we’ve been looking at this sector for about a year, and spent a chunk of money researching. And then I mentioned that we’d had some success already in Plett.

“Nope, only people over sixty go to Plett,” she said, “and they don’t expect to pay instantly.”

We continued in this vein for a few minutes while I looked for a razor to end the misery that was my life.

I was destroyed of course, finding out that I know so little about marketing. It did not seem worthwhile mentioning that a bunch of the 60 year olds seemed intent on running the Knysna Half marathon in July. And I could not bring myself to talk about our successes for a B&B in Cape Town (5 enquiries per day) lest she tell me what was wrong with them as well, even though one had already stayed and paid.

It was a long morning until the optician called to tell me that my new specs were ready. I get new specs every 18 months or so. Diabetics have eye issues that you don’t want to know about. On top of that I had two cataract ops a few years ago. This means that light pours in, but not in a very focused format.

I have been using two sets of bifocals. One for reading and short distance, and one for driving, with the bifocal lens letting me see the dashboard. As you can imagine, I am a very inspiring driver. Often I inspire other road users to keep their distance.

A few years ago the optical crowd introduced a new type of lens, called a progressive lens. It combines three lenses into one – reading, short distance, and long distance. I was an early user. At least I was for a week or so. By the end of the first week I had fallen down a few stairwells, and even fallen off my chair in a bistro, while just sitting on it. Fortunately an old woman at the table behind managed to catch my breakfast egg in her lap.

By now I knew that progressives were a very bad idea. Indeed, you can focus much better, but you will fall down a lot more than you want to.

Last year they tried selling me a progressive set again. They’re expensive, so I wrote it off as a marketing ploy. After all, I was an expert on the subject of using these lenses to explore the floor close up. Which brings me back to the point of this article. What we think we know is more often wrong than not.

Last week I was forced to use a progressive set. And all I can say is WOW! The product has improved so much over the past few years (while I was not following its progress) that I feel like I have new eyes.

And as I sat at my desk much later that same day it hit me that I was no different than said business owner, thinking I was an expert in a field where I had less than perfect knowledge. Awfully sobering.

I’ll end, if I may, with some feedback from very old client. Old being about 75, rather than in the sense of being a client for a long time. He was referred to us after some awful experiences after an expert prepped his site for Google. (Number of enquiries dropped from a few per week to about none per year.)

He was as cynical as only old people can be. He’s only been on board for three weeks, but gets about 4 enquiries per day. (A good number since he sells high value property and last year he received just 1 web lead.)

“The response to date has been surprisingly good and has necessitated action to achieve a spread of agents across the country. I have not been so busy and re-invigorated for a very long time.”

I must ask him if he also uses progressive lenses.

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Sales Practice.

May 26th, 2011 | by | marketing, selling

May
26

Things change when you have a steady flow of enquiries. I can say this because I have spoken to 50 small firms over the past two months who have found such a steady flow.

Firstly, you get lots of practice. When you are confronted by a live person once each month, maybe, it’s very easy to panic. You are so worried about losing the sale that you lose it. When you have two leads  (or five) arriving each day, without fail, you know that you can mess today. And still, two new prospects will arrive on Monday, and Tuesday, …. So, you don’t take life so sternly. You have more fun.

And with that fun you improve your sales approach. You relax and begin to listen, rather than fighting to close each sale. You no longer care too much whether this one prospect doesn’t become a client because you know that the next one will.

Number two, you get lots of new ideas. This only applies to the owner of the firm, I’m afraid. In the superb book Rework, the fine team at 37 Signals point out something that I at first thought insane.

When one client suggests something, they say, ignore it. Don’t even write it down. One person suggesting something is an anomaly. But if you are the owner you will soon notice when a few people start suggesting much the same thing. And that happened with about 10% of our clients. They have enough new requests for something that they didn’t offer at first that they have rejigged their sales model. In all cases they have doubled the profits from each sale by adding something to the sale that their prospects suggested.

Thirdly, of course, you get lots of sales. A few weeks ago I mentioned Frank Betger`s maxim: “If only I can tell my story to enough people, no matter how bad I might be at it, I will make sales.” That’s what we have seen as well.

Many of us spend our days with our backs to our clients, focused on making stuff, pushing paper, and chasing banks. It’s so much easier to just avoid clients. No tough questions to answer, awful choices to make, or mistakes to say sorry for.

But, the owner is by far the best salesperson in a firm. She can decide quickly; her passion shines through; she `feels` the problems that clients face because she has a lot of skill in dealing with those problems. This is  why she is in this field.

Contrast this with a salesperson who is in this firm just because of the paycheque, and on June 1 will start selling used cars, , or frozen chickens because the pay is better.

Just so that we are clear on this matter, I have nothing against selling used cars, passports, or frozen chickens. Although I am little bothered by those that are three months past their sell by date, and returned to the factory for a solid chlorine rinse before being declared fit to eat again.

There is one last thing to think about. When a firm has a steady flow of prospects, that venture no longer relies on the owner as much as before. Each of those prospects is, at first, a stranger. And this means that a new owner can take over on June 1, and the prospects arriving after then won`t know that the old owner is taking a break in the south of France.

In other words, it’s much easier to sell a venture when the owner is not the only source of sales. This occurred to me as I was thinking about the number of my friends facing retirement. They`re not able to sell their stake because their firms are so reliant on their contacts, some of whom go back to van Riebeeck`s birthday.

Apart from word of mouth, and that word of mouth is almost always about the owner and never about the firm, their firms have no other way of finding sales. This means the owner can’t retire. This might not be an issue for you, but there are some jobs that have a 14 to 80 age restriction. Plumbing, for instance, is not the kind of day job one wants having already spent 60 years  dealing with other peoples` shyte.

The people that buy what you sell pay for your future. The more you have the merrier it is.

Sales Motor

Please check out our simple approach here. Very little BS, and lots of prospects.

We help clients sell first aid training, electric vehicles, creche enrolments, boxes, gate motors, wendyhouses, rentals, valves, legal services, steel wire, coffee, and a whole lot more.

Each client that has joined us despite having an existing Google campaign has halved their adspend and doubled their enquiries. Maybe we can do the same for you?

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No Really, Service Excellence?

May 18th, 2011 | by | marketing, selling

May
18

May I be direct?

Your service is not excellent. Your offer is not unique. You are much like the rest of us – struggling to make sense of commerce and fighting the same demons. (The past few months of testing service and sales response levels in SA have shown us at Sales Motor how awful almost all of us are.)

Maybe, after a few years of banging your head against the coal face, you will build some great habits that your clients will like enough to give you money for.

Even then, if you tell us how good you are, we will not believe you. The SA government uses the phrase “service excellence” 15,100 times on their websites. In their case it is more hope than real, like my relationship with Cindy Crawford. The phrase now means as much as “Ja nee.”

More than 28,100 SA sites talk about their “unique service”. That too no longer means much. “Eunuch service” would be more truthful.

I think it is time to stop talking so much about it and start doing it a little. Now, that is something people notice. And it is almost easy!

Over this past month some of my clients have made great sales. And a bunch have not. They differ in just one respect: All the clients who get the sales phone back within 30 minutes of a web enquiry.

When a person sends you a request via your website they don’t quite know what to expect next. Folk in SA have lost hope that much will happen. And, indeed, very little does.

In Norway, if you ask a plumber to visit on Monday at 10am, he will arrive between 9:59 and 10:01. In SA, if you ask five of them to visit on Tuesday at 10am, the only guy to arrive, at 1pm on Thursday, will get the job.

So, when a prospect gets a phone call back from a real person, within thirty minutes, there is a stunned silence, often followed by “Fok me, I have NEVER had such service before.” (Women will often say “Wow” instead of the more robust male response.) I know this because we’ve been testing it for the past 12 months.

At this point you do not have to talk about your service. You have just shown it off in all its shining glory. That memory will stick. Folk offering great service don’t have to mention it. The rest of us do.

This past week I helped a few of my clients work through their own sales processes to adjust to doing it this way. Their sales results improved overnight. (When so few folk in SA offer any service at all, it is not hard to stand out!)

We test our clients after a few weeks, to see if their follow-up is any good. At the same time we test the firms competing with them. And the really great news is that they are all so slow, and so bad, that it really is easy to be better.

A fast email is much more efficient, but not nearly as effective. The call starts a dialogue that your prospect needs so that they will trust you enough to give you money. In a world with so much technology we sellers forget that our clients want relationships.

May I suggest that it might be a good idea to be the first in your field to look at this issue, rather than the second?

No Comments »

What we think we know.

May 2nd, 2011 | by | marketing

May
02

A few days ago someone asked whether we could help her find clients for her guest house. Well, what an invitation. That’s what we do, and if we don’t – for you – it costs nothing. (30 days, or it’s gratis!)For instance, our best client happily admits to knowing nothing about marketing, and is quite happy with his lack. We sent him 76 enquiries last month at an average price of R7 each. Just one sale pays our bill to him a few times over. And Easter is supposed to be an awful month. These were leads from hospitals, restaurants,  and even the military in a few African nations. (OK, so that was an unashamed nudge, but I needed to boost my confidence for what follows.)

I began by explaining how we work.

“Nope, that won’t work with my business,” she exclaimed. Then she told me all about what guests want when they are looking to reserve a night. I explained that we’ve been looking at this sector for about a year, and spent a chunk of money researching. And then I mentioned that we’d had some success already in Plett.

“Nope, only people over sixty go to Plett,” she said, “and they don’t expect to pay instantly.”

We continued in this vein for a few minutes while I looked for a razor to end the misery that was my life.

I was destroyed of course, finding out that I know so little about marketing. It did not seem worthwhile mentioning that a bunch of the 60 year olds seemed intent on running the Knysna Half marathon in July. And I could not bring myself to talk about our successes for a B&B in Cape Town (5 enquiries per day) lest she tell me what was wrong with them as well, even though one had already stayed and paid.

It was a long morning until the optician called to tell me that my new specs were ready. I get new specs every 18 months or so. Diabetics have eye issues that you don’t want to know about. On top of that I had two cataract ops a few years ago. This means that light pours in, but not in a very focused format.

I have been using two sets of bifocals. One for reading and short distance, and one for driving, with the bifocal lens letting me see the dashboard. As you can imagine, I am a very inspiring driver. Often I inspire other road users to keep their distance.

A few years ago the optical crowd introduced a new type of lens, called a progressive lens. It combines three lenses into one – reading, short distance, and long distance. I was an early user. At least I was for a week or so. By the end of the first week I had fallen down a few stairwells, and even fallen off my chair in a bistro, while just sitting on it. Fortunately an old woman at the table behind managed to catch my breakfast egg in her lap.

By now I knew that progressives were a very bad idea. Indeed, you can focus much better, but you will fall down a lot more than you want to.

Last year they tried selling me a progressive set again. They’re expensive, so I wrote it off as a marketing ploy. After all, I was an expert on the subject of using these lenses to explore the floor close up. Which brings me back to the point of this article. What we think we know is more often wrong than not.

Last week I was forced to use a progressive set. And all I can say is WOW! The product has improved so much over the past few years (while I was not following its progress) that I feel like I have new eyes.

And as I sat at my desk much later that same day it hit me that I was no different than said business owner, thinking I was an expert in a field where I had less than perfect knowledge. Awfully sobering.

I’ll end, if I may, with some feedback from very old client. Old being about 75, rather than in the sense of being a client for a long time. He was referred to us after some awful experiences after an expert prepped his site for Google. (Number of enquiries dropped from a few per week to about none per year.)

He was as cynical as only old people can be. He’s only been on board for three weeks, but gets about 4 enquiries per day. (A good number since he sells high value property and last year he received just 1 web lead.)

“The response to date has been surprisingly good and has necessitated action to achieve a spread of agents across the country. I have not been so busy and re-invigorated for a very long time.”

I must ask him if he also uses progressive lenses.

No Comments »

Travel Risks

April 14th, 2011 | by | marketing, travel

Apr
14

I have spent the past few weeks thinking about why guest houses and BnBs struggle to fill their beds. It is not just the sixteen other local offerings that compete although that does not help either.

Rather it is that most of us travellers really fear risk much, much more than we want bliss.

Our hero, a good looking dude who hails from Oslo, looks for a place to stay in Cape Town. After fighting through the hundreds of pages all purporting to offer him travel nirvana, he opts for the City Lodge at the harbour. Why?

He does it for the same reason that he goes to McDonalds rather than a fine steak house or pub with a name he does not know: Because he knows exactly what he will get. Hotels tend to be much more of a muchness, so he is not going to get surprised.

No doubt he will complain mightily because the last City Lodge he stayed at in Tel Aviv did not serve ham or bacon at breakfast. But if he eats a Big Mac and chips (much as Norwegians are not crazy about anything other than fish and potatoes, preferably boiled) he does not have to worry about throwing the better part of the cost of his return trip at some quaint South African dish involving worms and raw meat – no matter how much it moves him.

Most tourists don’t like surprises. The kind of surprises I refer to are when you arrive at your guest house to find that it is being rebuilt. (Although that happened to me at the Sandton Crowne Plaza a few times.) Or when there is no Web connection. (Which some of us need more than morning coffee, and maybe even morning oxygen.) Or when the owners are in the middle of a divorce and the tension is a tad unsettling. (But that’s for some other time.)

So, if surprises are bad, then consistency is good – no matter how low the standard is.

Most guesthouses cost a lot less than an hotel. And most of the time the owner is there to point you at the best stuff to see around the area. (Unlike most lesser hotels where the workers seem to be imported from the planet Mute because they barely speak, let alone any language I know.)

So, when I am in Cape Town I now stay at Jambo Guest House in Green Point – when Barry and Mina have space. It costs less than most hotels, except possibly the chain which combines the shower, toilet, and the basin into a cubicle the size of my trashcan, in a room where I can reach the window and the door from my bed, at the same time.

For much the same price, I get a glorious bed, a large romping space with wireless Internet, a fine bathroom with fluffy towels, a short walk to a superb steak with great Shiraz, a short walk to the V&A Waterfront, and a short walk into Cape Town. This makes it a great place for a business traveller.

Don’t get me started on the huge breakfast. Norwegians are not slim and trim because, as you might suspect, they are genetically blessed. Rather it is the astounding price of food that keeps us all in a state of semi starvation. So SA meals are all much better, especially Jambo’s breakfast which makes a Norwegian smorgasbord look rather sad.

Barry also has a pub where that last hour before bed passes gently fueled by great SA Shiraz and planning early retirement, which in my case now means 69. But hey, if it means I can travel to South Africa at will, and that’s the whole of July this year, then it can’t be too bad.

But, and here is my point. I stayed up the road at the City Lodge for years before making the change, and only because I knew him well by then and had run out of excuses. Small establishments are not competing with each other. They are competing first with our desire to reduce risk. This human condition is fascinating.

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Sales Quotations

March 2nd, 2011 | by | marketing, selling

Mar
02

Here is a true story. (All my stories are true. If I made them up in a novel you would not believe them.)

My new client, Dave (not his real name) sells a product that we all need. It is a high value item. We each buy one every 10 years or so. Dave wants some help finding clients. That’s what we do, so we dive into action.

Within 10 days Dave has received more than 50 leads, some of which are worth about R250,000 if the deals come through. (Hotels need this product en masse.)

Dave calls up. He is not a happy camper. Turns out that the leads are not turning into sales. We hear this often so we start at Dave’s coalface: How does he respond when an enquiry arrives in his email inbox. (Or in the boxes of his office slaves.)

That’s easy. The prospect either gets a quotation or a price list. We ask to look at the covering email.

The covering email is a problem:

  • No mention of Dave’s firm.
  • No gentle thank you for the request.
  • Not even a phone number for the prospect to call to place the order.

In other words he sends a standard SA quotation. Even if a prospect wanted to buy, she could not.

“Dave, please tell me that you at least called that fellow looking for 500 units last week?” (No chance, that prospect got the ‘standard’ email.)

So, no sales, and it’s not the leads that are bad, it’s Dave’s process.

I told this story on Tuesday night to 100 SA business owners. I asked them how many of them had a simple response process in place. (In other words, how many had taken some time to think through the process by which a stranger becomes a client.) Just one in five!

  • It’s not just a prepared response for a possible big sale. (In which case an instant phone call is crucial, in my humble view.)
  • It’s also a response for a possible small sale.
  • And it’s even a response for a NO sale. (That might be someone looking for a job, or for help to do it himself. In this case a polite email response is useful to say that Dave cannot help, but offering links to a few sites like the industry association, or Dave’s biggest competitor who might have the time to get involved.)

We’re finding more than 11,000 sales enquiries each month, and many of our clients treat each one as if it’s the first they have ever seen. Hint: An ounce of routine is worth a ton of inspiration. (Not sure who said that but I heard it somewhere.)

We call the document we send to a person (to persuade them to give us money) a quotation. It isn’t. A quotation is something clever a famous person like Errol Flynn once said: “My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.”

I think of it more as a sales proposal. A proposal should come after some dialogue. For instance, you and a stranger snuggling up on the couch to discuss your future. As you find common ground, and find that this person likes your jokes, you get comfortable together. After a while you make a proposal – based on what you know about the other person. And you indicate how much you really, really want to spend the next 200 years in her (in my case) arms.

A sales proposal is not quite so personal, but it also should not be like walking up a stranger on the street and suggesting a quickie – which is the way most small business sales quotations appear.

“Here is our price list.

If you want to buy one of these you must deposit 80% of the purchase price into our bank account within 3 days of ordering, as long as it is a day starting with a ‘T’.

We don’t have time to include any nice words from our clients about how great we are, because, well, you’re not important enough to us. So we’ll just tell you that we offer a unique service and that excellence is our motto.

We know that you wanted this for your children, but we don’t have time to tell you how our children’s product differs from our office product or garden product because, well, you’re not important to us. And besides, we’re too busy making the blerry things.

Our order process is so obvious that we’re not going to waste time detailing it here. Just remember that all orders need to be lodged in triplicate, with an official order number, between 3:30pm and 4:30pm. As long as the day does not start with a ‘T’.”

The good news is that the service bar in SA is so low that my pet earthworm can jump over it. It’s like scuba diving. When a shark appears you don’t have to be an Olympic swimmer. You just need to swim a little faster than Dave.

No Comments »

Want A Powerful Stream of Prospects?

February 3rd, 2011 | by | applied tech, marketing, webinar videos

Feb
03

Below is the launch video of Marketing Motor, a superb engine to help any smaller business build a solid stream of sales leads.

It will make you look at marketing from an entirely different angle. In this video we:

  • Build a new website from scratch;
  • Build a complete advertising campaign for Google;
  • Publish the site;
  • Publish the Google campaign;
  • And see our adverts appear on the front page of Google within 30 minutes from the time we start.

There is a lot of noise surrounding Google and Internet marketing strategies. We don’t really get too involved in that. Our sole focus is to help our clients get more sales. (If we get it right, they stick with us. If we don’t, they don’t. So we’re pretty focused!)

Click here to view the video (or download it for later).

Marketing Motor Launch Video

Marketing Motor Launch Video

Comments Closed

How well does web marketing really work?

January 31st, 2011 | by | marketing

Jan
31

I like pens. I’d like to compare buying one in a ‘proper’ store with the online experience.

If you find a genuine pen store (and there aren’t too many around) it tends to only stock the fast moving brands and models. Like any other store, 20% of the brands account for 80% of the sales. (Of course, that 80% of the brands that they don’t stock don’t account for too many sales!)

The pens are always locked away to stop footpads from stealing them. (Footpads, of course, are avid scriveners.)

Asking to hold the R3000 gold nibbed Mont Blanc means that you’re competing with the three other people in the store. Roald Dahl wants a BIC. JK Rowling wants some paperclips. And Ernest Hemingway wants directions to the nearest travel agency.

After deciding that you want the pen (only because there is nothing else you like, or because you feel guilty for spending an hour there) you find out that your nib of choice – EF (ExtraFine) – is out of stock.

The real life experience, in a word, sucks. (And don’t bother asking for ink, which comes in any colour you want, as long as it’s black.)

Last week I read an article about a fountain pen that a bunch of writers regard as truly great. It’s the Platinum 3776. It is a very long way from being amongst the 20% of pens that comprise 80% of sales, so it’s hardly likely to be in your loocal store.

After reading a few reviews, I started to search for it, and a few seconds later bumped into the Cult Pens site. (A seamless Google marketing experience because the team at Cult Pens anticipated what I might want.)

I ordered the pen. And a few bits and pieces. And some amazing ink. It took a couple of hours to drool and dream, but Roald, JK, and Ernest were nowhere to be seen.

And that’s why Google works so well. No matter how small the niche, enough folk in that niche want what you sell to make Google your best friend. (As a seller and as a searcher.)

These past few weeks we have run a few tests using our new marketing tools .

Adwords Campaign Results

Google Adwords Campaign Results

In one case, selling products (puppies) over four 4 days:

  • Google displayed our ads 768 times.
  • 198 people clicked on them.
  • 27 people asked for puppies.
  • These 27 enquiries cost just R49.62 in total.
Google Adwords Campaign Results

Google Adwords Campaign Results

In another test, selling services (dancing lessons) over a ten day period:

  • Google displayed the ads 995 times.
  • 72 people clicked on them.
  • 22 people enquired about enrolling in classes.
  • These 22 enquiries cost R23.13.

Irrespective of what you sell, search engines reach people in ways, and at times, and in places that no other medium can. And, done correctly, all you’re doing is putting your hand up to answer somebody’s questions. It’s about the only time when you have a person’s full attention.

The video of the webinar is here.

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