So, I receive a coupon in the mail yesterday for Breakfast at Taco Bell.  Looking at the images, it was clear that I would either love or hate the options offered with no middle ground as an option.  Within seconds my mouth watered at the thought of a breakfast burrito from a place that specializes in Mexican food rather than some lame attempt made by a burger joint.  Jump the time frame to 2 minutes and I’d committed to breakfast at The Bell this morning.

This morning, I headed out the door excited for my breakfast burrito and iced coffee and my mind was obviously thinking “outside the bowl” (cereal bowl).  As I pulled into the Taco Bell parking lot at a few minutes after 7am, there were only 2 cars in the lot and an empty drive through line.  My mind questioned whether people hadn’t heard about breakfast at the Bell yet or if they’d been here yesterday and knew better than to return before noon again.   I whipped my new geek mobile up to the drive through speaker and was greeted with a bright sign promoting the breakfast I was about to order.  Continuing to read while waiting on the robotic drive through voice, I saw something that made Taco Bell fail at their attempt to gain a breakfast customer.  

Breakfast 9am – noon. What!  9-noon?  You mean the Earliest I can eat breakfast on a Thursday morning is 90 minutes before most places begin serving lunch?
I guess they were up partying with the 4th meal folks they stay open late for.  In my opinion, cold pizza in the morning can be considered breakfast.  However,  just because you serve a mixture of traditional breakfast grub in your tortilia doesn’t make it breakfast.   Eggs, served at noon, is lunch.

I don’t know if this time choice is a franchise decision, or corporate.  I hope the execs at Taco Bell will lay off the hooch their pimply employees are toking in the back while serving 4th meal, set their alarm clocks, wake up while there’s still dew on the grass with the rest of world and realize that many of us eat breakfast before we go to work in the mornings.

I often partner with so called “marketing agencies” or “marketing consultants” (note: topic for another day).  When I partner with these folks, I normally spend the majority of my time fighting one problem.  The Forgetting of Process.  For instance, I’ll get a marketing consultant who sends me the content for a page pitching a particular program and the writing or graphics will be spectacular.  However, they forget how the client will be coming to that content.

You should always map out the process of bringing the client from first impression to end of sale follow-up.  Then write the content or put the pieces in place to match.

Slick writing and cool graphics are a waste of time if they don’t match one of the clearly defined steps you’re taking your prospect through.  If you create content first, you’ll find yourself trying to create a process around your content, which will probably not produce the results you’re looking for.

I sure do love fall.  The weather is the best of the year.  When the air is cool but the sun still warms your skin.

This is also the time of year to gear up your marketing and create business cash flow for the next couple of months.  There are usually only two extremes businesses experience this time of year.  Feast or Famine.

Those who experience feast are normally retail businesses who are able to gain on the upcoming holiday shopping fever or weather generated business.  While those experiencing famine are generally those businesses who will suffer from invisibility in November and December.  Has this been you in years past?  Are your clients and target audience so busy with purchasing from those feasting seasonal providers that you are put on the back burner.  Do you struggle through months 11 and 12 hoping for mid January to come quickly so you’ll be visible again.?

If so, what will you do differently this year to prepare?  Can you bulk up sales in October?  Or, leverage relationships and technology to stay in front of your customers so you’re not forgotten and they see you with more priority than grabbing the last Snuggie off the shelf to wrap for their distant cousin?

Now’s the time to take action, if you want to turn this normally slow time of year into a boom for your bank account.  Or you could simply do what you’ve done in years past and find a friend who’ll not mind listening to your complaining about how this time of year is rough on your business.

If you need help coming up with a plan.  Feel free to shoot me an email and and we can brainstorm some ideas.

Check out this graph showing the burst in searches for “auto body repair” in the OKC Metro area on Google around the time of this spring’s storms

Do you treat returning customers and new or potential customers the same way?  If so… Why?

Both people are important but they need to hear different messages and have a different experience.

We’ve all been to a restaurant when the server asks if we’ve ever been there before.  Only about half of the time does that make a difference in the presentation.  Why did they ask if they weren’t going to tell me anything different or offer an incentive for turning my guests into patrons.  What different messages need to be told in your business?

When it comes to your website, technology allows you to use cookies in order to show a different message to new visitors than that seen by people who are regular visitors.  Maybe the newbie needs different instruction and the regular needs a reason to refer a newbie.

In your store or office, find a way to recognize people who’ve visited your place before (or at least the regulars) and make them feel like more of a part of what’s going on.  Turn them into an exclusive group and give them an insider feeling.

For most people, hiring someone to build their website is as confusing & stressful than buying a car, and more important than who to hire to answer the phones.  I’ve created a short list of seven simple facts that web designers don’t want you to know.  The days of web design being kin to rocket science are over.  But, web designers don’t want you to know that. They’ll charge extreme prices for simple tasks just because either they haven’t upgraded to newer more efficient methods, or, they hope that keeping you in the dark will place a pair of  “golden handcuffs” on you and force you to put up with the poor customer service and worse attitude they throw at you.

Give me your email address below and I’ll send you the short checklist so you can make sure you’re not the one paying for the gold on those handcuffs. :~)

Email Marketing You Can Trust

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Email Marketing You Can Trust

Many business owners deal with this dellima. If you were to ask most business owners who is more valuable, they’d of course say that taking care of existing customers is more (or at least equally) as important as attracting new customers. However, does the company budget and time allowances reflect that? In most cases, the answer is no.

Why is investing in current customers harder for companies to do than spending their funding and time to attract new clientelle? There are many things that factor in but a few are:

• It’s easier to see a dollar value spent = dollar returned with new clients
• It’s a quicker process to a poor lead or new client
• The mindset of new customers = growth has probably been pressed to you in other previous jobs
• Any rejection comes from a stranger that you may never see again
• Investing in current clients means spending time assuring quality in service and experience and means sometimes patching holes that are easier ignored
• It’s sometimes a slow process.  Growing a fan club and depending on them takes more time than cold calling or direct mail.

So, why should we invest more in current clients rather than in seeking new clients?

• Investing in current customers can take them from being a simple customer to being a fan
• Fans are excited to spread the word and help to promote you
• Fans = new customers
• New customers provided by fans are excited to be your new customer/fan, thus spreading the word further
• A normally skeptical customer will jump in with both feet and be all in if their new to your fan club
• Once your fan club is going, they’ll keep you busy with existing clients rather than spending your time stressing for new clients. New fans will just… happen.

This is an idea that’s been bopping around in my head for a while now.  Will it work in your industry?

When we stake a price on our goods or services, that’s it.  That’s what we’ve said it’s worth.  Customers pay that and only that.  I don’t know anyone who’s gone to the local car wash, slid their card through the machine twice so that they could pay $20 for a car wash priced at $10 because of the great job this particular system does.  However, all day long, people will pull up to a group of teenagers and hand over twenty bucks for a wash that takes too long and is mediocre at best.

On the contrary, it’s common practice for people in the web development world to develop small functions or snippets of code and allow others to use at no cost.  Only asking that you donate if you feel that what they’ve produced is valuable.  This rarely results in much earnings.

The difference, the corporate owned car wash sells a clean car for just $10.  The web geek is selling the value of his coding and it’s functions (which he probably undervalues for the rate he commonly is willing to work for).  The group of teenagers is selling your opportunity to be a part of helping them achieve.  You just get a clean car as a thank you for taking part.  Try it.  Stop selling your goods and services.  Try selling people the chance to be a part of something.  Then let them choose the value of taking part.

Chances are, they’ll value you and your product well above the price you’d have tagged it with.

For those of you asking yourself this question.  Here’s a video posted to YouTube by SocialManiacs09.  It has some good numbers to get you thinking.  If you’re not using the power of social media to market your business, you’d better start.  Caution: Make sure you go about it correctly or you may do more harm than good.

Here’s how most marketing companies sell their media to advertisers:

A sales rep would walk into a business, pull their data and plans from a bag and begin to explain why they had the only option that made sense for every business in town.

This soooo wrong.  In soooo many ways.  What works for one, is not so good for another.  I often run across people who’s business would be dis-serviced by Pay Per Click marketing, which is the main staple of what my company AFH Marketing offers.  In fact, just last week, I talked to a client in the moving business, and suggested him find other ways of marketing their business.  You see, the cost per click for their industry, was out of proportion with their Return On Investment (ROI) per potential client gained.

My point is, if you truly care about your clients, and are in your business to help your clients.  Realize that your products and services, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ARE, are not the best options for EVERYONE!  This will relieve a lot of pressure on your end, as well as build relationships and happy clientele that are happy to refer you and help you grow your business.