From Amy…

Finding the right product to promote your company can be a challenge. If you or your company has a goofy side, why not try some of these giveaways at your next trade show, or use them as a calling card on your next sales visit.

The Goofy Guy pens feature a broad imprint area and a variety of imprint colors to showcase your logo and business name. The suction cup at the base ensures the little guy will stand tall while his head bobbles.
 
 

Pink or blue? You choose for this Funky Spring Bird pen. I love the blank stare the bird is giving, but guaranteed you won’t get a blank stare from your client when they see it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

These Goofy Stress guys are a great spin on the tried-and-true stress ball. With a decent-size imprint area and fuzzy head the customers will giggle when you hand them this one.
 
 

The magnetic face on this Goofy Paper Clip Dispenser rotates as it stores away the clips that are included in the deal.
 
 
 

Shopping tips
When shopping for promotional products like these there are a few things to keep in mind…

1. Just because it is on the website doesn’t mean it is available. Have a second choice ready to go in case your first pick isn’t available.

2. Check the imprint area for the graphic. If your logo is particularly detailed and the item has a very small imprint area it isn’t going to look great.

3. If you have a good size imprint area consider adding a tag line such as “Thanks for your business” or “Celebrating 25 years of service.”

4. Always check the production time and then add days for artwork and shipping. Plan for two weeks from the time you shop to the time it is dropped on your door step.

That’s because they are some of the most inexpensive and effective marketing any business can do.

They are also incredibly versatile.

Here are 5 different ways you can use a nurture program in your business…
 

1. Nurture prospects during the sales cycle

This is the most common way to use nurture… To take people who are serious prospects for your business - who are already interacting with your sales force - and send them something on a regular basis that reinforces what your sales people are doing with them and educates them about the value you provide.

Nurture programs of this type are typically heavily educational, since your goal is to overcome objections and teach them what they need to know to understand why your solution is the right one and why it is worth what you charge for it.

You might send case studies, educational articles you have written, reprints of articles published about your business or written by someone in your company, and articles written by others that support your point of view or explain why it makes sense to do things the way you do.

You might send links to videos of customer testimonials or demonstrations of how to use your products. You might have links to podcasts of interviews with you or key individuals in your company.

The goal of this type of nurture program is to help people move through the sales cycle faster, and to convert more prospects to customers.
 

2. Nurture “B” or “C” prospects

This is the second most common use of nurture programs…

These are people who are not quite ready to be serious prospects. Maybe they don’t have a budget yet, maybe they are still very early in the research stage.

They have contacted you and expressed an interest, but it is too early for them to actively engage with a sales rep.

However, you don’t want to ignore them because they are likely to buy at some point and you want them to buy from you, rather than a competitor.

Setting them up in a nurture program keeps your company in front of them, and lets them learn about your offerings in a low-key way.

Your goal here is to keep enough mindshare so that when they are ready to get serious, you’ll be on their list.
 

3. Nurture “ideal” prospects

This is an interesting strategy that can be extremely effective.

You identify up to 100 people who you would like to be customers.

They might be marquee customers, people or companies who are well-respected in your industry. They might be companies in an area where you want to expand and do more business. They might be organizations that are a little larger or better funded than your normal clients or just companies you really really want to do business with.

But they have never contacted you. They might not know you exist.

Well, you start marketing to them. You mail them something every month, something that educates them about what you do and what your offerings are.

Get in front of them month after month, and they will start falling into your sales cycle.

Your goal here is to introduce your company to high-value, ideal prospects and convert them to customers.
 

4. Nurture people who refer business to you

Most small businesses get most of their customers by referral. And most small businesses do nothing to general more referrals.

The main reason that’s the case is that almost all of us hate asking for referrals.

But it’s possible to get referrals without asking for them. At least, without asking in person.

You can set up a nurture program that goes out to people who refer prospects to you (or who could refer prospects to you) and have a little note on some of the pieces that says “We love referrals” or “If you know anyone who might be interested, we’d love to hear from them” or “Know anyone who might be interested? We’ll take excellent care of them (and send you a cool tshirt to say thank you).”

There are dozens of low-key ways to phrase a request for referrals. You can use any number of them.

But how you ask isn’t as important as that you DO ask.

Your goal here is to make sure the people who could refer business know what your business does and feel good about the quality of work you do, so they are comfortable making referrals. And, of course, to ask for the referrals.
 

5. Nurture your customers

You’ve seen all the statistics about how much more cost-effective it is to keep a current customer than attract a new one.

So direct a bit of your marketing budget towards making your current clients feel special and valued.

This is particularly easy if you have relatively few big customers. But it can be done even if you have thousands.

If you have fewer than a couple hundred customers, you can send a small gift once or twice a year. Not during the holidays, which is when everyone else does it. But in the spring or summer or early fall.

It can be inexpensive and clever - something with your company’s logo on it.

Or it can even be electronic, which is the way to go if you need to deliver thousands of them around the world. It could be a free ebook or tips on how to get the most out of your products…

The goal here is to make your customers feel appreciated and special.

There you go… 5 inexpensive ways to use nurture programs to help you grow your business. Which one are you going to try?

They were encouraging everyone to text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to their Disaster Relief Fund.

That’s a great idea. And it’s working.

As of a couple days ago more than 700,000 people had donated money, raising more than $7 million dollars.

There are lots of other places you can donate too. See a few of them at the end of this blog post.

We’re all looking for ways to help.

If you want to do something beyond donating money, this blog post is about ideas you might copy.

I know, it’s not exactly marketing.

But in a way, it is.

If you copy one of these ideas and share it with your customers or your list, you’re showing that you are a good world citizen. Everyone wants to do business with good people.

And you’re getting in front of your audience with a solid message. That has value too.

So check out some of these ideas and see if you think any of them are worth copying…

Give away your products to people who donate money

MJT Net and Perfect Table Plan, both small software companies, will send a free license for their software to anyone who donates money to Haiti Disaster Relief. You could do this with services too. In fact, we’re doing it at JMR. The web page should be up in the next couple of days.

Auction off a product and donate the proceeds

Olivia Wilde, Meryl Streep and others are auctioning off the clothes they wore at the Golden Globes through Artists for Peace and Justice. The auction will be run through eBay, which is handling similar auctions for other organizations, including the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. If you sell products on eBay, this wouldn’t be hard to do.

Donate a percentage of sales

Designate a period of time (maybe one day or one week in January) and donate a percentage of that week’s sales. John Bartlett, owner of a NY mens clothing store did that this past weekend.

Donate products

If you have products that can be used by the people of Haiti, contact a local relief organization to see if anyone is putting together a shipment. See if your customers or partners want to contribute anything along with you.

When you raise the money to donate, here are a few organizations you can feel comfortable sending it to:
American Red Cross
Doctors Without Borders
Plan USA
Save the Children

Consider adding some interviews.

If you want to, you can work with someone to do a “real” interview. You can record it and post the link to the audio or video on your website or blog.

Hint: You don’t have to pay $3000 or more to have a news personality do a formal interview. You can have one person in your company interview someone else. For example, you can have your marketing director interview your CEO.

If you decide to do a video, the easiest way to make it more professional is to do the filming yourself and then hire someone to edit it, adding a professional intro and conclusion. We worked with Pixability recently to do this and they did a great job for an affordable price.

You can also do the interview with webcams via Skype, if you want something very informal and inexpensive.

If you want only audio you can use Audio Acrobat (which is what we use) or one of the many similar services. Just do the interview over the phone, record it, and post the link to the recording.

But you can make it even easier…

Here’s how…

Just do a written interview. Write down the questions you want to answer, then answer them. Write it so it looks like a back-and-forth with an interviewer.

Here’s an example from one of our clients (I’m the Judy who did the interview):
Upgrading to iMIS 15: What Associations Need to Know

Can you see how easy that is?

And it has a lot of value. It has useful information, so it has value to web visitors. It’s keyword-rich, so it does well with the search engines, which helps bring people to the website.

Anyone can do interviews like this.

Here are 3 ways to use them:

1. Explain why your product or service matters

Lots of times, websites use formal language. They are written like a brochure, talking about what the company does, what the products do.

But that doesn’t tell you why people actually become customers.

You can explain that in an interview.

You can talk about how people use your products and services in an informal, casual way - what’s really cool about them, what kind of results they get, why they really buy - the way you would explain it to a friend or family member.

It’s a great way to add commentary to your website, to make points you can’t really make any other way, and to tell people what really matters.

2. Share your opinion on a hot topic

If you’ve got thoughts about a hot topic in the industry (and you’re not already blogging - or even if you are), this is a great way to get your opinions out there.

This is also a very useful way to bring traffic to your website, because there are probably a lot of searches on this topic. Just make sure you use the relevant keywords repeatedly throughout the interview.

3. Talk about what’s new

I bet you’ve got a new product or service that you introduced recently.

Do an interview about why you created that product or service. Talk about what’s great about it, why people need it. Share your excitement - let people see how much you care about this.

This is a good way to keep your website up-to-date. It also helps round out a launch and make it more interesting.

And it’s a good way to engage prospects and customers and bring them to your website - you can send them an email with a link to the interview and ask them to check it out.

So find a topic that would work for you and get an interview up on your site this month.

Here are 5 ideas for status updates that you can use in either place…

1. Tease upcoming product features

You’re probably working on an upgrade to your current product or developing a new service to offer customers. Talk about one of the cool features in that product or service.

For example… “Working on new training modules that we’re offering online. 10 videos, each 5 min long. First shows how to import data from Quickbooks.”

This is a great way to get people excited about what’s coming next.

2. Share customers’ results

Validate the enthusiasm of your fans by showing that other people are choosing your products and services and getting great results.

One way to do that is by talking about the results clients have achieved. You don’t need to name names - you can just talk about the improvements.

For example… “Just heard one of our clients saved $250,000 over the past 6 months using our software.”

3. Acknowledge achievements

Congratulate clients and business partners on winning awards.

For example… “One of our clients was just named to EContent’s 100 Companies that Matter Most in Digital Content. Congratulations to everyone at adenin!”

You can also congratulate employees on their achievements - best sales performance that month, achieving a development deadline, hitting a quality target, even something personal like completing a marathon.

4. Ask for feedback

Are you having internal debates about something? Post the question and ask for feedback.

For example… “Working on a logo for our new product and can’t decide which we like best. Want to vote? Both are posted at www.tinyurl.xxx”

5. Provide treats

The point of being a follower or fan is that you care about the person or the company. Show that you value their support by giving early information and making offers that are only available for fans.

For example… “We’re going into beta in two weeks. If you’d like to try out the new version, email Joe.”
Or “Just found 20 t-shirts from our last promotion. Really cool - black with our logo on back. Size L. Want one? Email me.”

It’s pretty easy once you get started.

So go ahead…

Get on Twitter or launch that fan page and start sharing your news.

There are a lot of advantages to crowdsourcing…

• You get a lot more brainpower poured into your project - the more people working on it and thinking about it, the better your results are likely to be.
• You typically get results pretty quickly. When people know there are others working on the same project, there’s more pressure to get it done and delivered fast.
• A lot of people do better work when they know they are competing against others. So there’s an incentive to deliver their best work.
• You can get some pretty innovative ideas, because people want their work to stand out.

Naturally, there are disadvantages too…

• Typically the best freelancers and firms don’t need to work “on spec” and so they tend not to participate in crowdsourcing. So you are likely to be dealing with people who are more junior or have enough time on their hands to dabble in outside projects.
• No one is going to invest a huge amount of time in a project where payment will be small or non-existent, so they won’t spend a lot of time learning about your products and your market.

For a lot of companies, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, at least for certain projects. So let’s look at a couple ways you can use crowdsourcing in your marketing…

Graphic design projects

There are marketplaces that have sprung up where you can post projects, typically for graphic design. Site members submit their designs, you choose the one you like best and pay the winner a fee - usually a fraction of what you would have paid a traditional design firm.

Two marketplaces that offer crowdsourcing are:
crowdSPRING
99designs

If you are looking for a new logo, letterhead or business cards, brochure, website design, advertisement, or something similar, this can be well worthwhile.

It’s also a good way to audition designers and look for someone you’ll want to work with on a regular basis.

Brainstorming and problem solving

A company that takes a slightly different approach is Ideas Culture. They have a program called Ideas While You Sleep.

You submit a challenge or a problem that you’re working on by 4pm (in the US) and they send it out to a group of people who work on it overnight. (They are in Australia.) They send you the input from everyone by 10am the next morning.

We tried this recently with a naming project. We had brainstormed internally and were getting nowhere. So we submitted the naming challenge to Ideas Culture. By the next morning we had 122 more names at a cost of about $450.

Did we use any of their names? No. We ended up going with a brilliant suggestion from one of our partners. But we got a lot of good ideas that we are using in other parts of the project. It was well worth the money.

Get feedback

Another way to use crowdsourcing in marketing is to get feedback on what you are currently doing. For example, you could ask for opinions about a headline, an advertisement, your website, a brochure, a tagline, or a sales letter.

A crowdsourcing site that specializes in feedback is Concept Feedback.

It’s designed for marketing professionals, but small business owners can use it too. You post what you’re working on or want feedback on, people tell you what they think, and you can act on it or not.

It’s free, but if you want faster results or more prominence for your project you can pay $9.99 to get higher priority.

You can also do something similar yourself (although you probably won’t get as many responses)… Just get on Twitter, Blellow, Facebook, LinkedIn or any industry forum, post what you’ve got and ask people for suggestions. Lots of times you’ll get really good input.

I recently started following Damon Carson, a PR wiz who advertised in one of the HARO newsletters.

For anyone who doesn’t know what HARO is… HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out. It’s a 3x/day listserv where reporters and bloggers ask for sources to help with stories they are writing. We’ve been able to get clients some amazing coverage thanks to HARO, including WSJ.com and CNN.com. Peter Shankman runs it - it’s free and well worth signing up for. You can sign up here: HARO

Anyway, one of the best parts about HARO is the advertisement at the top of each issue. I open every one, just to see who is advertising. And one day it was Damon.

He has some very interesting PR strategies, a lot of which can be copied by anyone and used in any market.

Here’s the latest (I checked and he said it was OK to share here)… You can find more tips from Damon at his website: Publicity Associates.

Leximimicry

(From the Greek – lexikos, of words, and mimesis, imitation)

            Here is a fun little technique – “leximimicry” – if you want to improve your press release and promotional writing. 

Find a magazine that has products or services either similar to yours or that target the same audience.  Read through this magazine.  Pay very close attention to the words used in the different articles written by the editors and reporters to describe different things.  Also, you can very often find a completely different product than yours described in a way that you could borrow to describe your own. 

Look at the paid advertisements in particular.  These advertisers are often large companies spending huge sums of money for the best ad designers in the world.  Part of any great print ad is the copy.  Very high-priced copywriters choose just the right words and phrases to position a product or service in just the right way so you will want to buy. 

            You don’t have to be a word sleuth, just a leximimric.  Read and copy.  This is Bootstrapping 101, baby.  You can get all the pizzazz of high-priced words and writing styles for nary a cent. 

            Not long ago I was working on a press release for a high-end design client.  I picked up a copy of an affluent design magazine and began reading very closely.  I typed into my computer any words or phrases that I thought were particularly good and/or descriptive.  Here are some I found:

            The use of vivid, expressive color enlivens any home.

            The lamp redefined.

            Inspired by…

            Intoxicating

            Following in the footsteps

            Unbridled talent

            Reminiscent of

            Discriminating clients

            Capture the imagination

            Motifs

            Kaleidoscope of color

            Blurring the line between form and function

            Reveals

            Metal like you’ve never seen it before

            I then integrated some of these words and phraseologies into the press release.  This is leximimicry.  At this point, I was using the language of the design world to pitch a design story.  If I were writing something promotional about a new fishing lure, I would want to study the language of fishing using this very same method.  Likewise, business has its own language…”return on investment,” “target market,” “break-even point.”

Using the proper language greatly enhances any press release or promotional writing.  And practicing leximimicry makes it fast and easy.

The idea is that the more you know about what to expect and how the process works, the easier it will be to manage someone doing that work for you, and the better your results will be.

The first course is almost ready…

It’s How to Manage Public Relations.

The idea is that you get 10 email lessons (one per day for 10 days). Most people will be able to read each email in less than 2 minutes.

So in 20 minutes total you will learn a whole lot about how to manage someone who is doing PR for you.

Those 10 emails cover:

1. Before you begin - what you need to understand before getting started

2. How much will it cost?

3. What info to gather - what information are you going to need to provide to your PR rep for them to do the work

4. What to look for in someone you hire to do PR - what personality, skills and experience you need

5. Interview questions - what to ask to tell if the PR person you are talking to knows what s/he is doing

6. The process - what steps are they going to go through in doing the work

7. Status reports - what kind of status reports should you ask for

8. Questions to ask - what questions should you ask in meetings to make sure things are going well and keep the work on track

9. Avoiding problems - common problems that occur with PR, how to identify them early, what to do, and how to prevent them in the first place

10. What if you have no budget - things you can do (by yourself or outsource) when your budget is $500 or less

We don’t have the course set up in the autoresponder yet, but if you’d like to see it I can send it to you in a Word doc.

But you have to promise to give me feedback!

Or you can check back in a week or two, when it should be available on our website.

If you’d like to see it now, email me at jaschramm@j-m-r.com.

Nurture programs are designed to educate prospects about the value you provide - because almost any offering requires some education - and generate excitement and buzz about your company.

The idea is that you identify a small list of people - typically 100-200. Then you send them something every month.

Who goes on the list?
- Prospects who are already in the sales cycle
- Ideal prospects (people or organizations that you would love to have as clients)
- Influencers (respected individuals who could refer business to you)
- Business partners
- Maybe editors or bloggers who you want to have cover you
- Maybe competitors (if you want to annoy them)
- Maybe your best customers
- You (because you want to see what everyone else is getting and ensure the quality is high)

What do you send them?

Your goal is to educate them about your offering, so they fully appreciate the value. You also want to keep them up with what’s new with your company - to show that you have lots of interesting, exciting things going on.

We typically rotate between the following things:
- Case studies
- Postcards (often with a special offer)
- Press releases
- Educational articles authored by you or someone in your company
- Reprints of articles that have appeared about you in industry publications
- Reprints of articles written by others that support your point of view or help educate about a topic they need to understand to fully appreciate your solution
- Personal letters introducing something new that you are doing or making a special offer
- Giveaways (something cute and relevant to your company or offering)

You can do this by email, which is a good idea if you are nurturing people around the world. But we prefer direct mail, because so few companies use direct mail anymore that your mailings stand out more.

Keep in mind that prospects don’t know that you are only mailing to a couple hundred people each month. For all they know, you are blanketing the industry. And in a tough market, where many companies are cutting back on marketing, that’s impressive.

They get the sense that there’s a lot going on with your company - you must be growing rapidly and doing well for them to hear from you so often. That helps your credibility as well as gains you mindshare.

These programs are simple to put together too. Just define the goals for your program, pull together a list to start with, and line up the first 6 months of what you’re going to mail. Then turn it over to an administrative person to execute - you can do it almost on autopilot.

Just revisit the plan every 4 months or so, as your business needs change. Update the mailing list, and tweak the items you are planning to send as new ideas come up and new collateral gets created.

Referrals are the leads that are most likely to close, and they are usually effectively free.

So why are you not doing more to increase the number of referrals you get?

The problem is that most people are reluctant to ask for referrals. It’s true for you (I’m sure it is!) - I know it’s true for me, and it’s almost certainly true for everyone who works for you.

But there are ways to generate more referrals that are practically painless. Let’s look at a couple of those…

1. Create a tag-team referral process

The best time to ask for a referral is right after someone has become a customer. They are enthusiastic about your company, and referring someone else to you validates and reinforces the decision they have just made. But sales reps can be very reluctant to ask for a favor at this point - they just got the purchase order and they don’t want to jeopardize that.

So make it easy for them. Set up a system where the sales rep calls to say thank you and tell them what the next steps are. Perhaps you need to schedule a kickoff call or meeting. Have the sales rep say that Sally will be calling to schedule the kickoff call, and when she does that she will also be asking if they know anyone else who might be able to use your solution.

That’s easy, right? Your sales rep is not asking for a referral. She is simply saying that in the future, they will be asked for a referral.

It’s easy for Sally too. Sally can now call and go through her checklist with them, schedule the meeting, and say that as Mary (your sales rep) may have mentioned, she would like to ask if they know of anyone else who might be able to use your solution. The question is no longer a loaded one, and it is not being sprung on them.

It’s easy for your customer too. They have had a chance to think about it, and if they know someone, chances are pretty good that they will have that person’s contact info handy. If not, they are prepared for the question and can graciously decline.

2. Have a scheduled referral contest

Let customers know that sales reps will be competing to see who can generate the most referrals in the month of April. That gives the customers a chance to think about it and be prepared for the question.

Then sales reps can email or call customers, tell them they’re trying to win, and ask if they know anyone. When it’s a game, it’s more fun to participate. And when you ask for referrals in a light-hearted way, it is easier for everyone.

3. Segment your referrals

Go through the following groups in your head, and try to find one individual or company in each group that might be interested in referring business back and forth. Then go ask them!
- Competitors
- Companies that sell products or services that are typically sold in conjunction with yours
- Companies that sell products or services that are typically needed before yours
- Companies that sell products or services that are typically needed after yours
- Consultants who work in your industry
- Service providers who work in your industry
- Accountants, lawyers, recruiters and other professionals who work in your industry

Yes, the first item on that list was competitors. Almost certainly your products or services are not identical. Each of you is stronger in certain areas. Refer business back and forth in the areas where you don’t overlap.

4. Consider other touchpoints

Where and when else do customers or prospects touch your company? Can you build in referral processes there? Here are a couple more places to look at:
- Your website (refer a friend button)
- Customer service/tech support (after the satisfactory resolution of their problem)
- Email marketing or email newsletters (ask recipients to forward the email)

If you work on adding one new referral source each month, in less than a year you will be generating a substantial number of new, high-quality leads.