The ROI Guy with the Latest Research on Pricing and Performance

Hi, Richard Seppala, the ROI Guy here. Sometimes the hardest thing to deal with when you’re offering a product or service is determining your pricing. Well, a couple of new studies offer some interesting insights into how your potential customers are likely to look at certain price strategies.

First of all, it’s no secret that a wonderful way to create interest in what you have to sell, especially if it’s a new product or service, is to offer it for free the first time, bundled with an existing product. A freebie sounds like the perfect way to increase the ROI of a marketing campaign, right? Well, it just might be a big mistake – especially if it’s a new product or service!

According to “The Journal of Consumer Research,” people view the worth of a free item that’s packaged with an existing product as exactly the price you’re asking for it – nothing! They not only figure out you’re giving it away for free as a marketing gimmick – but that it must not be worth anything or you’d be asking for money.

The only exception? When you’re offering for free an existing product or service they’re already familiar with. Because they already know – and presumably trust – the freebie, consumers are much more likely to see it as a deal.

What does that mean for your marketing? Well, maybe you should just turn conventional wisdom on its head. Instead of offering the new product or service for nothing, maybe you do charge for it – but bundle an existing product or service with it for free. That way, it looks like the new product has value – and the customer, client or patient is also excited by getting something they already know and trust for free.

Another study by the same publication zeroes in on what they call “Opportunity Costs.” To use their example, that means if you’re out for dinner and you spend $10 extra on an appetizer, that’s $10 less you have to spend on wine, dessert – or even ten new songs on iTunes! In other words, by choosing to spend money on one thing – it eliminates your option to spend that money on something else!

Calling attention to “Opportunity Costs” can help improve your ROI marketing as well – because most people don’t think that way when they buy something. IKEA, the furniture franchise, used the idea cleverly in an ad showing an expensive cabinet containing one pair of shoes – contrasted with a cheap IKEA cabinet overflowing with shoes. By making explicit the idea that you can buy more of what you want by purchasing affordable IKEA furniture, they gave consumers a real incentive to shop there.

If you’re offering a discounted service, you can do the same thing as IKEA. For example, if you’re a dentist offering a deal on teeth whitening, your marketing could say, “You can buy this, this and THIS with what you’ll save on getting a brighter smile this month!” By showing in real terms what the money they can save will actually mean, you make it more real – and more attractive – to your customer base.

Everyone’s business is about money – so it makes sense that price is a vital part of your operation. Research like this is invaluable to helping us all to going beyond “business as usual” to communicate better with consumers.

Find out more about ways to increase your ROI at http://www.yourroiguy.com.

Paying Attention to New Prospects

Hi, Richard Seppala, the ROI Guy here. We’ve all been there – you go to a restaurant, sit down with your family or your date, and the place is packed. The service staff is swamped – they hurry past your table at 100 mph, trying their hardest to act like they don’t see you waving or even verbally asking for help.

Or you go to a bar, and the bartender is busy making drinks for everyone but you. Again, you don’t exist in their eyes. You don’t rate a pretzel or a bar napkin.

If there were Oscars for service staff performances, the “Best Ignoring of a New Customer” category would be overloaded with nominations!

While you’re walking out the door and thinking about where else to eat or drink, you know that on some level you can’t blame the waiters or waitresses too much. They’re obviously overwhelmed with the existing customers. At the same time, if they only acknowledged you were there and let you know you would be taken care of, you might still be in there, patiently waiting for service.

Small and medium-sized businesses, frankly, can’t help but have their own “Busy Bartender” scenarios on a regular basis. They run a tight ship and, most of the time, don’t have the necessary staffing to deal properly with new customer inquiries.

If you’re at one of those businesses where everyone is often too busy to deal with an incoming sales call, think back to those times when you couldn’t get anyone to wait on you. And remember how you were probably pretty upset that somebody you wanted to give your business to couldn’t even take the time to greet you.

Do you want potential new customers to be angry with you before you’ve even had a chance to sell them your product or service?

Of course you don’t. But sometimes you can’t help how busy you and your staff might be – and how little time you have to explain what you do or can provide.

That’s why automating that system can be a terrific solution and an amazing way to increase your marketing ROI. Instead of having new customer calls coming to your place of business, they can be relayed to an automatic responding system that (a) has a customized message responding to what advertising or marketing promotion they’re calling about (b) records the message and automatically transcribes it (c) provides a CTA (Call to Action) that offers to send free information if the caller leaves their contact info and (d) records and transcribes the contact info, and uploads it into customer service software that can be used for future marketing.

That’s a whole lot of vital marketing work getting done – without the business owner or staff having to lift a finger! More importantly, it looks after your new customer calls – and allows you to return the call on your own timetable.

Losing new clients and customers is a big problem for small and medium-sized businesses – it’s literally throwing money away. But automating marketing efforts is an amazingly affordable solution. It helps past marketing efforts pay off – and positions a business for the future.

Find out more about automated ROI marketing systems at www.YourROIGuy.com.  

Are You Losing Customers Who WANT To Do Business With You?

Hi, Richard Seppala, the ROI Guy here.   If you run a business, I’m sure you’d love it if someone knocked at your door, you answered it and, there, in front of you, was someone asking if they could be a client.  I think I know what the answer would be too!

Well, someone calling your place of business to inquire about a product or service isn’t any different than someone knocking on your door.  The only difference might be…who’s answering that call?

You could have the best marketing and advertising campaign in the world driving people to call you immediately – a campaign with a potentially amazing ROI – but if you lose your generated leads at the point of sale, that money all gets flushed down the drain.

For instance, maybe you’ve got a receptionist prone to going outside for a cigarette and forgetting to turn on the voice mail system. 

A prospect calls because of a great direct mail piece you sent out.  They’re ready to do business.  But, instead of getting a person answering their call, or, at least, a message, all they get, “Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.”

I could type out ten more “Ring’s,” but you get the idea.  You’re not making that sale.  Probably ever. 

Now let’s go with an alternate scenario.  Perhaps, as luck would have it, the generated lead calls after your receptionist’s butt break.  The receptionist says, in a tired voice, (it is 3 o’clock and the burrito they had for lunch is making them reaaaaal sleepy), “Hi, so-and-so’s office, can I help you?”

“Yes,” the prospect says, “I’m really interested in so-and-so’s so and so.”

“Oh,” says the Receptionist.  “Okay.  That costs so-and so.”

“Actually, I had a few questions first.  Does it do so-and-so and so-and-so?  And how long does it take?”

“I dunno,” mutters the Receptionist.

Awkward pause.

“Could you…find out?”

“Um…I guess…hang on.”

The Receptionist puts the phone down on top of the desk – not on hold – and goes back to ask you the question.  But turns out you’re talking with someone else on another line.  The Receptionist waits, not indicating it’s important in any way…finally asks the question…gets the answer…goes back and picks up the phone.

And gets a dial tone.  The receptionist shrugs and looks forward to another cigarette break.  No skin off their teeth.

The prospect who hung up?  They haven’t lost anything either.  They’ll just go on with their lives. 

Meanwhile, here’s what you’ve lost.  A sale.  More potential future business.  Contact information.  Marketing info on what campaign got the person to call in the first place.  And a big dent in your overall ROI.  You spent a lot to get that person to contact you.  And all you have to show for it is a turned-off prospect who thinks you run a Mickey Mouse organization. 

The last customer you should be losing is the one that’s coming to you, ready to buy from you.   That should be a no-brainer, but, unfortunately, all too often that’s exactly where we’ve stopped thinking our operation through - and we lose valuable revenue.

As the ROI Guy, I help my clients put together a variety of affordable solutions to make sure that their marketing campaigns are paying off and that sales calls are being handled correctly.  Those solutions run the gamut to training personnel answering the phones in how to properly deal with a sales call to setting up an automatic system that gathers all the information you need without you having to lift a finger.

When businesses actually look at how their sales calls are being handled, most are shocked to find out just how much money they’re losing at the point where it’s easiest to make it.  So make sure your generated leads are being handled correctly and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the improvement of your bottom line.

Find out more about ways to increase your ROI at http://www.yourroiguy.com.

The “Ins and Outs” of WOM Marketing

Hi, Richard Seppala, the ROI Guy here.  Word of Mouth (or WOM, if you can handle another acronym) has long been seen as one of the most effective ways to increase ROI inexpensively.  It’s the concept behind most of the social networking marketing going on today through Facebook, Digg, Twitter and other Web 2.0 applications.

But before you or I ever heard of the internet – and when computers were closer to the size of the offices they now sit in – one Southern California franchise built its success on WOM, as well as increasing their marketing ROI from their small-scale advertising campaigns.  

“Business Week” writer Stacy Perman recently wrote a book on how the “In-N-Out Burger” chain achieved cult status by, first, being the real deal, and second, using its very satisfied customer base to spread the word and increase sales.

A Typical In-N-Out Restaurant

Let’s talk about the first part – being the real deal.  “In-N-Out” insisted on putting only fresh quality ingredients into their burgers.  Not only that, but imagine a fast food franchise paying employees more than minimum wage, and throwing in great benefits to boot.  That’s what “In-N-Out” was all about from the beginning – treating both workers and customers as well as possible.  And because it was a privately-owned family operation, there was no stockholder pressure to lower standards in order to improve profit margins.  The family was free to build on its quality formula from the beginning when they opened the first restaurant in 1948.

Over the years they built up an insanely happy group of customers that visited the limited number of carefully-located sites regularly.  Celebrities began openly touting “In-N-Out Burger” in interviews without being paid to do it.  Patrons would drag in their friends and family and make them try the food.  “In-N-Out” fostered the cult by having secret “off-menu” items at restaurants that only the regulars knew about.   

But many a quality product has foundered through lack of marketing expertise.  In this case, the management knew how to use their customers to their best advantage.

In the 80’s, they pulled off a relatively inexpensive marketing campaign that tapped into their grassroots WOM appeal – and hit the ROI bulls eye by taking the franchise’s cult status into the mainstream.   Periodically, they would give away “In-N-Out” bumper stickers to customers.  They would then send out spotters to write down the license plate numbers of cars with the bumper stickers on them and hold drawings to award prizes such as trips to Hawaii, video recorders, microwaves, etc.  It was a tremendous success.

At the time, a restaurant trade magazine wrote, “The burger Goliaths doing business in Southern California must surely envy the kind of hometown customer enthusiasm which can turn little David in the form of In-N-Out into a self-advertising car cult.”

A new exciting service I now provide, “I Refer,” uses this same method of using your already-satisfied customers to build your WOM appeal.  WOM, used the right way, is way more inexpensive and delivers way more powerful ROI than any conventional marketing techniques.   Find out more about “I Refer” at my website, www.yourROIguy.com.  

By the way, if you’ve never had the chance to have an “In-N-Out Burger” and you’re wondering just how good they are, let me give you an idea.  You know Gordon Ramsey, the notoriously short-tempered and world-acclaimed chef who slices and dices contestants on a regular basis on “Hell’s Kitchen?”  One time he stopped by an In-N-Out for the first time, had a Double Double, drove away – and five minutes later, came back for another one!

Why Your Marketing Shouldn’t Be All About You

Hi, Richard Seppala, the ROI Guy here.  Would you believe a picture of a frog can improve your ROI?

Well, it’s true.  While most conventional marketing would have you believe that your brand should represent your company or business, it’s much more powerful if it’s relatable to your customers instead.

You probably just read through that last paragraph without taking any of it in – because you’re still wondering about the picture of the frog.  Okay, okay, I’ll explain.

A new study took as its springboard the fact that one out of five new table wines introduced to the marketplace had pictures of animals on the label.  Not only that, the AC Nielsen company found that so-called “critter wines” outsold the others by more than two to one!

This goes back to the old sales canard that emotions are much more effective than facts when it comes to advertising.  Consumers like animals on labels because they can process them faster than some abstract logo – and in this case, familiarity breeds buying, not contempt! 

To test this theory, researchers had participants in their experiments visualize an object like… a frog!  They then showed them two wine bottles – one that had the object they were to visualize on the label and another that didn’t.  Most picked the wine bottle with the object they were already trained to recognize.

The strength of this effect, however, did diminish depending on how much time people were given to choose which a wine bottle.  If they were asked to pick instantly, they’d go for the familiar label.  If they had a few seconds to think about it, then fewer opted for the familiar.

Obviously, if a wine label were to truly represent itself, it would have the traditional picture of grapes or a vineyard, as many still do today.  An animal really has nothing to do with wine as a product – but the sales success of critter wines proves that it doesn’t matter. 

People like friendly-looking animals – it personalizes the brand and makes it more accessible.  Which explains the ongoing success of Tony the Tiger, Smokey the Bear and other animal pitchmen – or, should I say, pitchcreatures.

If you put an out-of-the-box image – whether it be animal, vegetable or mineral - on your product or service, it actually could improve your overall ROI even though it may have no direct relation to what you do.  As long as it doesn’t work against your business – I don’t know that a cockroach would be a great logo for a restaurant, for example – it would be a plus if it evokes a happy, familiar reaction.   That kind of imagery – even if just used for a single direct mail piece or marketing campaign – also makes you stand out in a crowded marketplace.

For example, go to my home page at http://www.yourroiguy.com – and you’ll see an illustration of me changing into my “ROI guy” superhero costume, just like we’ve all seen Superman do a million times over.  That’s an image that most of us are very familiar with and can lock into immediately.

And again, the cartoon really doesn’t have that much to do with me.  I’m not really faster than a speeding bullet – however, I can make your ROI more powerful than a locomotive.   Stop by my website and find out more about how I can make your marketing super-strong!

How a New Study Can Help You “Touch Up” Your Marketing 

Hi, Richard Seppala, the ROI Guy™ here.  According to a new study about to be published in “The Journal of Consumer Research,” shoppers who actually touch products while they’re shopping are more likely to pay a higher price for them.

Why?

It has to do with something the experts call “the endowment effect.”  When you own something, you attach more value to it.  And touching something causes you to have more of a sense of ownership to the item. 

Suzanne Shu, a UCLA marketing professor who co-authored the study, says “When you touch something, you instantly feel more of a connection to it.  That connection stirs up an emotional reaction — ‘Yeah, I like the feel of it. This can be mine.’ And that emotion can cause you to buy something you never would have bought if you hadn’t touched it.”

How did they prove this was the case?  Well, they put a Slinky and a coffee mug in front of 231 undergrads at the University of Wisconsin.  Around half were told they could touch the products – the other half were told, “Hands off!” 

Afterwards they were asked how much they would spend to buy each product.  The results were clear – the students who were allowed to touch said they’d spend more for each item. 

Now, most of you probably don’t own a retail store, so you’re wondering – what does this have to do your business?  Or your marketing ROI?

Well, let’s go back to the original study – because they added another layer to it.  The undergrads who weren’t allowed to pick up the items were then asked to imagine picking them up.  Same result as the actual touching – the valuation of the product went up for those students.

This means that whatever product or service you’re selling, if you can make your potential customer feel the benefit with your marketing and advertising, you’ll probably increase your ROI with that campaign.

Say you’re a chiropractor trying to increase business?  Have your marketing reflect the relief your prospect might feel from your treatment.  Now, if you’re a dentist, you might think a prospective patient might not want to “feel” your treatment vicariously.  Then you concentrate on how that patient would feel with whiter teeth or new dental implants.

It all goes back to being benefit-oriented – don’t make your advertising all about you, make it all about a positive effect on your prospects.  And continue that kind of targeted marketing through auto-responders and recorded messages set up to answer calls from  generated leads.

The more you make your potential customers “feel” what they’ll get out of your product or service, the more of a connection you make with them.  And that’s what helps boost your ROI.

For more tips and tricks on how to improve and increase your marketing ROI, visit me at  http://www.yourroiguy.com. 

Let me finish by practicing what I’m preaching here…imagine you’re touching more money in your business bank account thanks to increased ROI…

Hi, Richard Seppala, the ROI Guy, here to talk about how, in business as in everyday life, people can be your biggest asset – or your biggest liability.

Let’s say you dropped a few grand on some new advertising, with your new toll-free number prominently displayed. Now, you’re excitedly waiting to see just what your ROI (Return On Investment) will be. You’ve got a receptionist taking sales calls and, when you’re in between appointments and phone calls, you check in with them to see how many new customers you have.

The answer comes back – “Zero.”

That’s the number you definitely don’t want to hear when it comes to ROI. But it’s a number that’s very possible, especially when you have someone answering your phones who’s not trained to do it properly.

For example, that receptionist might not be asking for people’s contact information when they call. Or they may be scribbling that all-important info on a Post-It note that gets lost in the shuffle. They may not be properly selling your services or engaging callers on a personal level, just matter-of-factly giving rates or other information without any follow-up questions.

On the other hand, you just might have something of an alchemist answering your phones – someone who can turn a nothing phone call into sales gold without even trying. They strike up conversations with prospects who call, and immediately find connections between what they need and what your business provides. That’s what you call a natural.

More probably, you have someone in between. If they’re in the mood and they “bond” with the caller, they can make the sale and improve on your bottom line. If they’re not in the mood, or they’re busy with other tasks, they’re very abrupt, to the point and not as helpful as they need to be.

As a business person, you want a consistant presence on those phones – and consistent results. That’s what an ROI call tracking system can provide. It’s usually not a matter of replacing the person taking the sales calls – it’s a matter of training them in how to take those calls. If they haven’t had any sales training, they may have literally NO idea they’re not doing it correctly. It’s just answering the phone, right?

Wrong. It’s really a sales position - one of the most important sales positions in your company. It’s when you have your best shot at your best potential customers – the ones calling you because they’re interested in buying your product or service.

An ROI phone tracking system means you can review the phone calls and see where you’re obviously losing customers. The results are always dramatic – it’s easily the most affordable way to recover lost revenue and markedly improve your marketing ROI

The Human Factor is always an unpredictable one. But you can minimize your risk and increase your marketing and advertising ROI through systems that both record how calls are handled and also automatically collect valuable contact information from the caller.

Find out more about my services that can do that and more at www.yourroiguy.com.

“The ROI Guy” Reveals How to Even Out Business Ups and Downs 

Businesses of all sizes are now looking at their bottom line and realizing they’re hungry for customers.  Suddenly, because of the recession, they’re cooking up new recipes for their marketing and advertising for the first time in a long time to try to feed their starving sales and revenues. 

A year or so ago, those same businesses may have been fat and happy – and so overstuffed with profits that they didn’t really worry about their marketing and advertising efforts, let alone the Return on Investment (ROI) they were generating. 

That’s because, when times are good, we easily forget they can turn bad.  We begin to think the stock market will always be moving up, real estate will continue to rise in value and customers will keep flying through our doors.

And then we stop trying.  What’s the point?  We got it made, right?

Well, unfortunately, wrong.  The Feast has turned to Famine and how well you survive the bad times will now depend on how well you marketed yourself during the good times.

There’s only so much time in the day – that’s a fact.  And when you’re busy with existing clients, it’s hard to make time to cultivate new ones.  But you need to make the time to make sure the necessary marketing and advertising is in place, and use ROI Measurement to make sure that marketing is effective and your generated leads are being handled properly. 

Otherwise, you’re running a reactive business, not a proactive one.  You’ll undoubtedly begin to lose some of your existing business just through natural attrition and you won’t have the new client base to take up the slack.

That means no matter how busy you are, you need to set aside the necessary time and resources to market continuously.   That process includes:

1)    Taking a step back and looking at “The Big Picture.”  Going beyond the day-to- day grind to get an honest overview of where your business is and where you can take it is invaluable.

2)    Creating an on-going marketing plan based on that Big Picture, to maximize opportunities and generate leads.  What’s the best venue to reach potential customers?  How can you generate the maximum number of referrals from your existing clients?  What’s your marketing message going to be?

3)    Measuring your ROI.  Again, you can be doing what you think is amazing marketing and advertising – but if prospects aren’t responding to it, or, worse, are being mishandled when they do respond, you’re wasting time and money. 

Hopefully, you’re not being too badly affected by the current economic downturn – but if you are, it’s never too late to put some aggressive marketing into place to start turning things around.  Just remember – when things pick up again, continue to monitor and re-evaluate your marketing efforts.  Don’t rely on the Feast when there might be another Famine lurking around the corner!

I’m Richard Seppala, The ROI Guy.  Visit me at http://www.yourroiguy.com to find out more marketing tips and tricks to help your business boom. 

But first, let me ask a quick question - can you afford to lose a sale - or a potential new long-term customer - in these tight times?

That was pretty easy to answer, I’m willing to bet - with a great big fat, “NO!” But how much money is slipping through the fingers of businesses all across the country, just because they’re not put into the sales funnel in a correct or timely way? Marketing info that’s directly coming into them?

That’s why I created “The ROI Bridge,” a CRM integration system that’s designed to work automatically with our Lead Generation Hotlines. Those Hotlines already capture the name, phone number and email address of each generated lead, and also identify which of your ad campaigns generated the lead.

Now, with “The ROI Bridge,” all that contact information is transcribed and converted into a format that is sent directly into Infusionsoft so you can implement seamless follow-ups. With this system, your business captures sales call data in a format easily used for later campaigns, bringing a whole new level of automation to your marketing efforts. That saves you two very valuable things - time and money.

This is how it works. TCS provides you with one of our Lead Generation Hotline numbers. You advertise that people interested in your product or service can call that toll-free number to request a free information packet - and they won’t even have to talk to a salesperson to get the freebie.

We then provide you with a custom pre-recorded message that will ask for the caller’s phone number, name, address and email.

What “The ROI Bridge” then does is capture all the contact info from the call, transcribe it, and upload it into an Excel sheet (and, as noted earlier, we also flag the ad source that generated the call to measure its effectiveness at the same time). That Excel sheet is then put into the proper follow-up sequence into Infusionsoft, the premiere automated marketing software for small and medium-sized businesses.

In other words, you no longer have to rely on your receptionist to get all the data you need. Generated leads will call to receive the free packet and leave all their marketing data behind to get it. That data gets automatically entered into a system that you can easily use for follow-up and future marketing campaigns.

The ROI Bridge enables you to do the kind of automated marketing that large corporations do - but at a small business price! Plus you get to measure the effectiveness of your advertising placements at the same time.

So if you’re looking for an amazing new ROI marketing tool, look no further than The ROI Bridge. For more info about how it can help bridge your revenue gaps, contact me at info@yourroiguy.com.

ROI Measurement Creates Accountability and Cuts Your In-house “Pork!”

 There’s been a lot of debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus package over the past few weeks, as well as his efforts to curtail wasteful spending at the CEO level of major banks and corporations who are receiving major bailout packages.

What’s pretty clear is when the Dow Jones kept climbing and climbing, there was plenty of money to go around at financial institutions – and that, in turn, caused a lot of risky, wasteful behavior at the very top levels.  When the stock market started nose-diving, suddenly all those chickens came home to roost – leaving a lot of dead ducks along the way. 

Even more disturbing was the fact that when the big bailouts started getting handed out to the big companies, there seemed to be no accountability in terms of how the money was used.  When the car company CEO’s arrived in Washington DC in their private jets looking for taxpayer money, the public was outraged.  When other executives awarded themselves giant bonuses despite the fact their companies almost completely melted down, the outrage grew.

If you run your own business, maybe some outrage is overdue on your end about where your money is going.  Not to say you’ve been awarding yourself multi-million dollar bonuses or buying yourself a Gulfstream – but you may be bleeding money when you don’t need to be.  And that might be dragging down your bottom line at a time when you definitely can’t afford for that to happen.

That’s why taking a good hard look at your business’s Marketing ROI (Return On Investment) is more essential than ever.  When you have to carefully budget every dollar, you want to make sure that dollar is doing the job you want it to.    You may have increased your marketing expenditures – many business people do during a recession – but pumping in that extra money could just be a waste of resources if you’re not measuring your ROI.

Are you advertising in media venues that no longer work for your business?  Are you missing out on other placements that could create more lead generation?  More importantly, are generated leads that call as a result of your marketing being handled correctly?  Have your personnel been trained in how to handle sales calls effectively and efficiently?

If you don’t know the answers to the above questions, then ROI Measurement might be the most cost-effective tool you can use right now to give your business its own “stimulus package.”  Using ROI tools in the right way will increase sales, and that means more cash coming into your business.  Which beats waiting for Congress to pass a bill that makes sense.

I’m Richard Seppala, Your ROI Guy.  Visit me at http://www.yourroiguy.com to find out more about how to stimulate your business’s economy – without government intervention!