Want a R600 Google Adwords Voucher?

Yeah baby, I just got accepted into the Google Engage program. They gave me 10 Adwords vouchers each worth 600 bucks. If you want to give Google Adwords a try, leave a comment below with your email and I can help you claim it.

Too busy lately to blog much these days :(

Marketing Nirvana

Okay sonny, I've been away for a while ... And in between I've had new business ventures, a car accident, a never ending insurance claim (finally settled), a chainsaw massacre tooth extraction and plenty of 'moments of marketing clarity'.

[Which if you read this little blog in your corner of the world - can literally explode your business with more customers.]

* Side note* - some web designers really suck. Scuse the interruption but holy *^! Yellow text, white text on dark backgrounds, gimmicky fonts, poor navigation, hard to find phone numbers, shitty flash sites - and don't forget about the annoying sounds that play once you enter a site.

Don't worry about the car crash willy nilly ... I'm still writing this and luckily NOT from a wheelchair or hospital bed. However I did get a bright flash after the crash.

A bright flash of marketing nirvana!

And then it occurred to me. Why don't we do more of the obvious but not so obvious things. You know. Like lets say:

You're the supplier of goods to retailers or other businesses. You sell something they must buy from you again and again (wood, rubber, plastic, glass, lenses, whatever). Why not help your clients sell more. The more they sell, the more YOU SELL. Why not give samples to their salesmen. Why not run low cost high impact marketing on behalf of them.

If you don't wanna spend money, fine. Get your team of marketing guys together with theirs. Let your salesmen trade sales techniques, stories or experiences. Mastermind together. Remember, if your clients must buy stuff repeatedly from you - you might as well help them sell more ... so you can sell more.

Wish I could write more often. Still so much to share, yet so little time. Alas, I bid thee farewell ... for now.

Holy Fudgecakes! Read this

I'm so excited about my latest discovery. Oh yeah, haven't written in a while because I'm so busy. But man I'm so pumped I have to furiously hammer this out of my keyboard.

A marketing dream has come true ... I've somehow stumbled upon a program that monitors & records web visitor behavior. Kinda spooky - but listen. You'll be a kid in a candy store once you realize the POSSIBILITY.

Say you have a website and you need to improve conversion rate - either in more sales, more leads, better sign up rate or whatever. You install a little program called Cicktale and voila! Done. You are on your way.

Here's what it does:

*It lets you see where people click, look and interact with your site. So now you can see where visitors drop off, seem confused, are wowed and AND it allows you to see heatmaps, click reports, funnel drop offs, recorded videos of visitor interactions the whole shebang. And more importantly: How they leave your site.

Bucko, this is profound!

If you can see where people drop off or bounce from your site you can FIX IT - without dare I say the biggest marketing sin: Guessing!

Not only that but you can see on which form fields (like say in a quote request hint hint) people are stumbling on. You literally have the insider knowledge helping people getting what they want. Which means, a better conversion rate for you.

Check it out now:

https://www.clicktale.com

You won't be sorry. Oh and you can use it for free ... Buy me a caramel vodka shot later. Gotta run.

P.S. Happy New Year Twinkeltoes

This type of Facebook marketing is dumb in its ‘cleverness’…

Man, I just have to get this off my chest before I explode from the inside out. Here is why:

Initially I thought I was going to share with you, my dear reader, a smart and savvy marketing trick, referral strategy, sales secret or other hot marketing tactic… But no. We have been interrupted comrades! None other by a marketing ‘strategy’ most business men and women probably feel really smug about.

This is none other than a certain type of marketing blitz on Facebook which seems completely innocent on the surface. In fact, it looks so harmless, well thought out and provocative. Some will say that this is the new way to get and keep customers. Its not.

Here is the ‘genius’ client attraction strategy formed by social media guru’s in a single sentence:

“Hey customers, please like us on Facebook.”

Normally, NORMALLY – this would be a good idea. Because when you get a customer to ‘like’ you on Facebook , this happens:

ü  You get the voodoo of commitment and consistency from your own customers (when one person takes a stance on something, he will usually try to find evidence to back it up and go to great lengths to prove his point – according to Cialdini’s breakthrough marketing book Influence – this is kindergarten for you, right?)

ü  You can now message your customer repeatedly for free on Facebook, just by updating your company status

ü  You get to inform your customer of events, new products and competitions thereby increase the amount of sales and buzz for your company

HERE IS THE PROBLEM:

It’s stupid! Rock dumb! Imagine this … Why would I advertise another company (Facebook) on my instore windows, on my radio advert, on my 6 figure commercials, on my company cars and my other expensive media if I’m selling laundry cleaning services?! 

Or if I’m selling carpet cleaning or construction, or fast food, clothing, or heck deodorant man. Do you really think housewives will rush to their computers the moment they hear ‘like our laundry mat on Facebook’ drop their groceries, lock the doors and put the babies to rest to talk about dry cleaning?

Wait, you haven’t even heard the best part of this yet.

They have to do all that, plus login to Facebook, avoid all the darn distractions, 3 friend requests, 7 messages and remember to ‘like’ your Facebook fan page to start talking about dry cleaning. Hell no brobeens. That’s never going to fly in a kajillion years. Heck there is a better chance of a spaceship landing in my backyard.

And you know what the best part is? What infuriates me beyond the rage of the incredible Hulk?

The guys doing this ‘marketing strategy’ often don’t even give the actual link to like the darn page! They just advertise randomly, hey like us on Facebook. Or just some Facebook looking thumb on a store window. I kid you not. Oh my ***.

Not only are they advertising another company and forgetting to sell their own, it simply is not practical. I mean really, who is going to start discussions on Facebook about beans, ties, chairs, dry cleaning or roll on? And even if you do – what are you going to talk about? “hey Facebook fans, check out my our new can of beans, today!”

And these guys (only men can be so brainless – we really do a lot of stupid things) who advised local businesses to do this … are a sorry lot indeed. I’d hose them down with a firehose like I would with a pig in mud. It’s never going to work. What you should rather do instead is …Sell you, your company and your product.

Raymond’s Rampage / over

P.S. I don’t really own 6 figure commercials, store windows and company cars … If I did you won’t be hearing from my sorry ass again … I’ll be in Hawaii with my new friends J

P.P.S. Look I’m really kidding about never hearing from me again. I’m always gonna be here ranting and raving, moaning and groaning, rioting and rampaging about marketing so you can grow your business and provide for your family. But please, put the beans away on social media. 

Need leads? Pay per phone call

You don’t have to advertise to get leads. Only pay for every qualified lead you get.

How does it work?

We do the marketing for you from A-Z. That means we get customers to request a quote from you. After which they ring you up.

What is the downside?

We only provide you with leads – you have to close them. However, only customers who want a quotation or specific offer will call you. Also, not every business qualifies for this type of service.

How do you track the leads?

By using a 3^rd party call tracking service we can show you the caller ID, phone number and other information for you to make sure that you are actually getting the phone calls from our pay per lead program.

How much does it cost?

It varies from business to business. We can do a small initial test as a courtesy to you, so you can make a better decision on whether or not this is for you. Call 016-366-7032 to find out if you qualify. Or email info@leanmarketing.co.za

Pre-emptive Referral Marketing

July 23 2012

21:44,

Hey readers, fans and groupies [you know who you are :)]. You probably know that this is the #1 marketing website in South Africa. Nobody disputes that. Heck it even says so on the homepage of this website. Okay. Enough of that. Let’s get down to business.

More importantly YOUR business. Are you getting enough clients? Could you close more? Could you sell more? Are you pounding the phones like a maniac? Are you meeting people? Are you hustling enough? You say you are raking it in like a kid in candy store? Good. Good. Good.

No wait, what’s that? Oh you want to do better. You want to get the fastest growth for your business in the shortest amount of time possible, with absolute zero investment?

Sheesh, you sure want it all don’t you. You greedy little cave goblin you. Well fine. Raymond the Rainmaker is going to give you what you want. More business!

This translates to:

Getting a constant stream of customers

Look. Clients are your business. End of discussion. Without a repeat stream of them (and lots & lots of them) it’s nigh impossible to build an empire. And here is how to do it. My latest creation:

Raymond’s pre-emptive referral marketing

Just a fancy way of saying: create conditions in your business where referrals become automatic. Don’t wait for customers to give you a referral. Ask for it! But ask for it before the job complete. Roughly 2/3^rd    

of the way through the job.

This gives the client enough time to evaluate your service (get more sold on you, your company and your product) plus that golden window where referrals happen.

Okay you’ve opened the door. If the client gives you a referral you don’t dare stop there. (who says you have to stop there?). Ask for the endorsement/cross promotion. Here’s how it can go:

“Say Joe, thanks for the referral, I’ll be sure to render a proper and just service to the client you referred. I’ll even give you an update as we move things along.”

10.5 Referral/Cross Promotion Mechanisms

·         “Now Joe, I see you have a 1000 facebook fans, could you recommend me to them as well?”

·         “Now Joe, I see you have a company profile on your website with you and all of your staff, could I write up something about myself so I can put it on your website too? As your legal/marketing/advertising/financial [or whatever you sell] department?

·         “Joe could you mention me to your twitters fans?”

·         “Joey my boy could you give me a shout on your google places page?”

·         “Joe, could you give me a linkedin recommendation?”

·         “Joe could you send a couple of emails to your contact list? Ja the emails are all here, I just need you to approve them and click send. No wait you won’t even have to do THAT. I’ll copy and paste them, you give me a nod and I’ll hit the send button. After all, hitting that send button is just waay to much work for a lazy bum like you (Never talk to your clients like that … unless you can go all the way through.)

·         “Joe could you mention me on a facebook status update?”

·         “Joe could I leave my business card/marketing information on your desk in your store for a few days?”

·         “Joe could you make a little youtube video for me on your youtube channel?” [Scratch this one – you do all the marketing for the client and put it on his channel. Clients don’t want to do any ‘work’.]

·         “Joe what if I made a small insert into your monthly direct mail newsletter?”

·         “Joe could I write a guest post on your blog?”

These are just some ideas to get the ball rolling for you. But remember these are only mechanisms. A channel to get the referral. You still have to warn your client in advance that you will be asking for one. You still have to educate your client on why it’s in his best interest to refer you. Basically you still have to do referral marketing 101 and choose the right channel for the right client in getting the referral.

Okay my brain is fried right now, so this is it. Hope you work those referrals and I’ll see you next time!

Raymond H. Smit

"South Africa's Marketing Guru"

P.S. There is nifty little function in Facebook where you can tag people. If you’re a company doing a tradeshow/event for example you can meet a lot of people, take pictures with them, and then tag them later on Facebook. They may just give you a like on Facebook … hint, hint.

Free Google advertising for your business

Yes! Celebrate the 89cent petrol price drop with some free advertising from Google – the granddaddy of online search.

It’s true. You can get your business on the top of Google without investing a lot of time, energy and effort into SEO. (SEO is just a geek term for ‘search engine optimization’). The answer? Google Places.

[Side note – Google received 10.2 billion search queries last month (yes, that’s billion with a B)]

Have you ever searched Google and see that little map jump up? Like so:

The map on the top right hand side shows a local search is performed. And your business could be in top few listings just like mine (leanmarketing.co.za). However, this is not for everyone. Let me explain:

People search commercially when certain events are triggered in their lives. Like when you get crazy and decide to get married you search on Google for a venue. When your geyser goes kaboom you search online for a plumber, right? When you need to stay overnight in another city you look on Google for a B&B or a hotel. Makes sense?

See specific events trigger these online searches (like the leaky plumbing which creates the situation where you start searching for a plumber). And naturally, the place to start a search is Google.co.za – even the stats from Google Trends confirm this:

But I am getting ahead of myself. Just, remember this:

Events & “stuff” happen in the customer’s life > this creates a need > customer performs a Google search > customer chooses a service provider (I’ll get to this matter in a moment).

That is why, one of my clients (a kitchen company) is rocking local search. People move into a new house or they decide to revamp their place and go online and search. Simple as that. So if your business is similar to the types of businesses I described above, where people actually go and look for you – go claim your listing!

No, wait, stop. Not before you read this. There are only a few spots in the top places you can rank for locally. And Google obviously have a set criteria in deciding which businesses to put at the top. As far as I can tell, Google puts emphasis on:

·         The distance between your business and the centroid (actual distance between your business and the city)

·         Amount of reviews you have in your listing

·         The quality of reviews you have in your listing

·         How specific your selected categories matches up with the search query

·         Completeness of  your Google Places listing

And of course 70+ other factors Google takes into account. However, don’t let that discourage you in getting, keeping and maintaining your listing. It is much, much easier than optimizing a business to display naturally on the top of a normal google search.

If you would like me to either:

·         Set up a listing for you

·         Revamp your existing listing

·         Boost your local ranking

Phone me on +27 016-366-7032 and I’ll take a look at your listing.

Peace.

P.S. Almost forgot. Here is how people (mostly) decide on where to click after they searched in Google. By following a hierarchy of search click through rate:

·         First Google position: 36.4%

·         Second Google position: 12.5%

·         Third Google position: 9.5%

·         10th Google position: 2.2%

·         Top three positions in Google earned 58.4% of all clicks

·         The top 10 positions in Google earned 81.1% of all clicks

·         The second page of Google earned 14.4% of all clicks

Thanks to Optify for those stats.