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…

Personality Can Make You Money – Or Cost You Plenty!

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. 

Hi, Richard Seppala “The ROI Guy,” here with another great new marketing breakthrough available NOW from my Total Census Solutions!

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! 

Are Your Sales “Falling Through the Cracks?”

 Hey, here’s a news flash.  The economy?  Not doing so well. 

And for anyone who thought a new year and a new president would provide an instant fix?  Well, scratch that off your wish list and start waiting for the Easter Bunny, it’s about as likely he’s going to show up.

We’re officially in a recession and some experts have even begun to whisper the dreaded “d” word – “Depression.”  Which, you might find, is also the name of the most prevalent state of mind among many salespeople these days.

Now is not the time you want money slipping through your hands.  But that’s precisely what happens with entirely too many businesses every single day – even when times are good.  Unless you measure the ROI of your marketing, advertising and customer service in a thorough and accurate way – and make the necessary adjustments based on the results – you could literally be losing thousands of dollars every week in lost sales.

Imagine trying to heat the inside of your home in the dead of winter – but the house has giant cracks in its walls, so any warm air has absolutely no chance of staying above freezing.  Number one, you’ll be shivering in your living room and, number two, your heating bill will go through the roof.

With the financial “freeze” icing down the markets,  the situation isn’t much different.  Your revenues could be going down, but, in desperation, you may boost your marketing and advertising dollars to heat up your sales – after all, common advice is to redouble marketing efforts in hard times.  So you could end up spending more and more – but still not see any upward movement with your sales figures.

If you haven’t bothered to measure ROI performance, you may not even be targeting the right group with additional direct mail or ads.  Not only that, whoever is handling prospective customer calls may be completely mishandling them – by not gathering critical contact information and not leading the caller to the sale of the product of service.   Those are big “cracks” in your sales walls – and more money isn’t going to fix those cracks, just drive your bottom line even further down.

Proper ROI measurement will fix those cracks, however – and, if you react correctly to the data, you’ll end up spending less to get more positive revenue results.  And less for more is definitely an awesome business model for these times!

So before you start blindly throwing around marketing dollars in a panic to recover dwindling sales, strongly consider investing in ROI measurement to determine what works and what doesn’t.  An airtight sales machine is an efficient one that costs you less, pays off more and helps you get through the toughest of times.

I’m Richard Seppala, Your ROI Guy.  Visit me at http://www.yourroiguy.com to find out more about making your marketing dollars go farther during this recession.

Achieve Your Marketing Goals By Using ROI Measurement!

When it’s Super Bowl time, we all hold our breath and hope for a good game – not one of those lopsided laughers where, by halftime, everyone knows who’s going home the winner.  That happens all too often – one team seems completely prepared and makes all the right moves, while the opposition just falls apart and never gets their mojo back.

You know which team you’d rather be like when it comes to your business – the one that knows how to get the results they want and doesn’t invest in a lot of strategies that go nowhere. 

And that’s why measuring your ROI (Return on Investment) is crucial to your marketing and advertising efforts.

Imagine a quarterback closing his eyes before making a pass, then making the throw and hoping the ball comes close to a receiver.  What do you think his chances are of successfully completing that pass? 

That ball will probably end up in the giant tub of Gatorade on the sidelines.

When many businesspeople do direct mail or internet/media advertising, they’re a lot like that quarterback that can’t see where he’s throwing or who he’s throwing to.  They’re picking concepts, copy and placement that fits what they think will complete their marketing pass – but, in reality, the majority of the time, they have no idea where that “ball” is really landing.

Now more than ever, in this time of economic difficulty, when you spend marketing dollars, you want to make sure they’re being spent in the right way, not thrown away.  Especially with the proliferation of advertising outlets on the internet, you have to make sure you’re targeting the right ads to the right audience.

And doing that right only gets you to ROI “halftime.”  After you’ve successfully generated leads, the all-important second half is now on the shoulders of your customer service representatives.   And what people don’t realize is that’s when the ball can REALLY get dropped.

Let’s say your quarterback – i.e. your marketing – hit the target.  You successfully convinced a customer to contact you about your product or service.   Great news, right?

That depends.  If the receiver fumbles the ball – or starts running in circles – you still have absolutely no chance of scoring a goal, no matter how awesome your quarterback might be. 

In this instance, your “receiver” is whoever answers calls or inquiry emails – a sales person, a receptionist, whoever has that responsibility.  That person needs to guide the generated lead to buying a product or making an appointment, rather than just giving out “yes” and “no” answers.  That’s how you get the ball across the goal line.  Too many times, your advertising is much more effective than you realize – and then the sales phone call is completely mishandled, costing you thousands and thousands of dollars over the long haul.

Investing in measuring the ROI of both your marketing efforts and your customer service sales performance is critical to the success of your operation.   It allows you to make important adjustments that lead to more sales, more profits and a better bottom line.  And in these tight times, we all need to make sure every dollar counts.

I’m Richard Seppala, Your ROI Guy.  Visit me at http://www.yourroiguy.com to find out more about how to make sure your sales and marketing efforts are winners.

Why Click-Counting Alone Doesn’t Cut It

With the advent of online advertising, everyone thought it was a cinch to measure a marketing campaign’s ROI (Return On Investment).Well, to more specific, they didn’t think it was a cinch – they thought it was a click.

Every time a consumer clicked on an internet banner or text ad, that ad got complete credit for the conversion.If the ad generated enough clicks, then that was a successful ROI, right?

Well, I hate to be wishy-washy, but yes and no.

First of all, with the explosion of affiliate networks and marketing, click fraud has become rampant.You can’t be entirely sure real people are actually involved, unless an online sale is made – then at least there’s someone paying real money!

Second of all, you still can’t beat the personal touch when it comes to sales conversions and lead generation.Studies show that conversions are five to ten times higher when you actually engage people on the phone. Even though most people research products and services online, studies show that 60 to 90% of them still buy offline.

That means the phone needs be a vital part of your marketing efforts, especially if you’re not a brick-and-mortar operation.With the right training, whoever takes consumer calls at your company can make a big difference, not just in converting them to cash-paying customers, but also in collecting more detailed, solid marketing information from them for your records.

And it’s still easy to measure the ROI of individual advertising campaigns and marketing materials that prompt a prospect to call for more information.By putting specific keywords in online (and offline, for that matter) ads – and even using different phone numbers linked to the specific advertising media you’re using – you can track which ad made the difference in getting someone to pick up the phone and call.

It’s hard to have an effective “conversation” with a potential customer through banner or text advertising – or through your landing page or website copy.People may have questions you may not have even considered in your copy – or they may just need to be reassured by talking to a genuine person.The phone call, brief as it may be, builds a relationship through personal interaction – and results in more quality data as well.

Encouraging phone calls in your advertising and marketing – and knowing how to handle those calls when they come in – really helps you nail down the elusive art of ROI measurement.You can’t beat the personal touch when it comes to both market research and sales conversions.

For more about ROI and how to maximize it, visit my site at YourROIGuy.com.Until next time, I’m Richard Seppala, The ROI Guy.