Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Posted on June 2, 2011 - by Kwame

Online PR: The only mini-guide you will ever need on how to win new customers

It is amazing how some people use smart (cost-effective, efficient, etc.) ways to sell their brands online. Social media has made it more easy to share your brand’s story and also get other people to spread the word about your products and services for free. Unfortunately “the word” people spread about you can be good or bad. It can help you make sales and it can help you lose sales. That is why it is best to master online Public Relations techniques.

Today, I will be sharing with you a short guide about how to do online PR. I’ve listed things you need to be using and doing and I also shared some links to tools you should be using.

Read on and take notes.

Case-Studies:

Case studies are an awesome sales tool since they serve as testimonials and also highlight benefits of your service at the same time. What you need to do first is have some case-study type articles on your business’ blog. When your product or service helps someone solve a problem or do something differently, write a blog post about it.

Share the step-by-step process you used to resolve it and how other people (especially prospective customers) can avoid or solve such problems. You can also share case studies as guest posts on other blogs. This is a powerful way of leveraging some other site’s audience to drive more traffic to your website and sales for your business.

Daily Alerts:

There is no better way to monitor your brand(s) online. Subscribe to daily alerts and respond to questions and rumors about your company. If someone asks a question about your business on Facebook, Twitter, on their blog or any other place on the internet, write blog posts that answers their questions and point them to the article. They might share your answer with their audience.

Some tools for tracking your company online are:

• Google Alerts
• Social Mention
• Trackur (commercial)

Networking with Journalists and Bloggers:

Contact bloggers and journalists via email, Facebook, Twitter or their LinkedIn profiles and start developing relationships with them. You can start by telling them how you loved or hated one of their recent or old articles and continue from there.

Unless you are going to pay them to do it, develop relationships first with bloggers and journalists before you ask them to write about your product or service.

If you are inexperienced with influencing people, I suggest you read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Also, you can read the blog articles below:

Some tools for finding and networking with journalists:

• Muckruck
• Help A Reporter Out
• FlackList
• Newsbasis
• MediaKitty

I only knew about Muckruck and Help A Reporter Out; I saw the rest on Ben Lang’s post on Mashable here: 10 Ways For Entrepreneurs To Build Brands Online

If you have money and want to save time, write a press release and go to PRWeb to get it distributed to the news media for you.

Online shows:

Find online shows you want to be on and contact the host to have you on it to share your expertise or advice.

• Get on webinars as a guest host; You can offer yourself for free and teach someone else’s community for free. You get free publicity in return and you increase the value of you and your company just by hosting a webinar because you are perceived as a consultant/ trainer and that lets people perceive you and your business as value deliverers.
• Contact bloggers to interview you on their blogs. Many bloggers do this nowadays. My favorite blogger in this area is Andrew of Mixergy. He does a great job. Ask bloggers in your niche if they will want to interview you and see where it goes.
• Get on podcasts relevant to your business area  as a guest and offer free advice.

Conclusion:

What you just learned is basically, the essentials of online PR. Use the lessons in this article to grow a powerful online brand. If you also have something to share about online PR, be my teacher and share it in the comments box. I suggest you share and bookmark this article using the social buttons below. Don’t forget to also subscribe to the RSS feed for more.

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Posted on August 3, 2010 - by Kwame

10 Tips to Remember When Writing Sales Content

Do you sometimes forget the ingredients needed to cook up great sales content? Writing quality content is the only way to convince people to buy your products. If you sell soccer boots and just write, “red soccer boots”, next to a picture, all you’ll be doing is showing bones. And that’s scary.

Give your sales copy some skin. People want details so give it to them. You also need sales so here is a simple list to help you remember how to write your copy.

1. Picture your audience: You need to have a clear mental picture of who your audience is, the problems they have and how you think your solution will help them.

2. Talk to them: Not about yourself. Your “About” page is there to say everything about your business. Your sales content is supposed to have “you” and “your”; directly referring to anybody who reads it (in this case, your target audience).

3. Emotions trigger action: People act on two basic emotional principles:

• They take action on their fears
• They take action on their pleasures

With this knowledge, you can use words that spell out your reader’s fears and couple it with the joy (pleasure) they’ll get after using your product.

4. Spill out the benefits: What benefit does your product offer? People read about products because they want to know what it does so add some detail.

5. Spark imaginations: Make your content memorable by sparking the reader’s imagination. Some people read content with half-dead minds so you need to awaken them by taking them to Wonderland. Use phrases like, “imagine you …”, “think about the benefits.” Etc.

6. Where’s the proof?: Has your product helped many people already? Has it won any awards? Are people saying anything about it? Where’s the proof? Show it. It will help you get more conversions.

7. Any offers or bonuses?: Do you have any bonuses to offer? Do you have any discounts? What are they? This is not a necessity but it helps in conversions.

8. Where’s the call to action? Your content needs an enabler and that is what a call to action is for. After reading your content, people want to know what to do next. Tell them what you want them to do: buy a product, fill out a form, etc.

9. Say your last words: Your post script (P.S.) is a great tool for summing up your content. It’s a way of reminding the reader of what they’ll be getting or why they need to act fast.

10. Go over it: Your letter is not perfect yet. Go over it and see if it sounds right. Does it convince you? You can also show it to your family or friends you trust. Does it convince them? To find out, ask them if they’ll take action if they were to be your audience.

All you have to do now is to save this list somewhere and use it when you write.

Did I leave anything out? What do you use to spice up your sales copy? Let me know.

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Posted on July 29, 2010 - by Kwame

How to Effectively Communicate Your Online Brand

Do you know that communication can make or break your business? Many people think business communication is easy but it really isn’t. There is more to it than just words.

Communication is an essential tool for building your business and brand online. It actually has a direct relationship with content development and content marketing.

If you have an email list and social media community, you’ll need to know how to communicate with them.

In order to communicate effectively, there are nine questions you’ll need to ask yourself:

1. Who is the message for?
2. What relationship do you have with your target audience?
3. What is the actual message?
4. Will your message be useful to your audience?
5. Is the timing right?
6. What barriers are you likely to encounter?
7. What communication channel will you use?
8. What feedback are you likely to get?
9. How will you work with the feedback?

Basically, there are 4 characters involved in the communication process; the sender, the receiver, the message itself and channels.

Many people assume communication as a system that only has to do with words

The roles of the sender include:

• Developing the appropriate message/content for his audience: I once came across a college Twitter account with an update that said something like, “Get 1,000 followers in not time. Click here” or so. Please don’t do this. I was shocked when I saw it.

• Identifying channels for content distribution. Channels include: e-mail, social media and video sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc., whitepapers, ebooks, etc.

• Identifying barriers that may hinder the purpose of the message. Likely barriers include email filtering (to prevent spam), nature of your list (e.g. demographics, income levels, etc.) and language.

• Analyzing response: The kind of feedback you get will let you know how effective your message was. This is an essential part that is actively being considered by both new and old businesses.

As the sender, you have many tasks on your hand and you should make sure to follow through the above roles if you want to be effective. For example, once you identify appropriate channels for certain types of messages, you’ll not have to worry about what type of message to communicate and how to deliver it.

The receiver’s roles include:

• Consuming message
• Sharing message to other people who may be interested
• Giving Feedback
• Doing any other thing the message asks them to do.

The receiver has the magic wand when it comes to sharing and acting on your content.

Your message could be any of these types:

• Newsy
• Sales pitch
• Survey/feedback request
• Tips/tutorials

Messages can serve the following purposes:

• Inform
• Educate
• Convince

Messages can be converted to the following formats:

• Video
• Audio
• Document files; .PDF, .doc, .txt, etc.
• Graphic; .gif, .jpg, .png, etc.
• Regular text/ undocumented text
• Regular speech

Channels are paths for communication; email, social media, telephone, TV, Radio, etc..

The channels I currently use to communicate Sociatic are Q&A sites, Twitter, LinkedIn, Junta42, Social Media Today, Bizsugar, Delicious, Google Buzz, blogs (via this blog and via guest posting on other blogs) etc.

When you identify and recognize the communication process like this, you can easily convince and convert your leads into sales.

Let me know if I left something out.

Posted on July 26, 2010 - by Kwame

Understanding Social Media: The LIFE of Social Media Marketing

Do you have an easy means of reminding yourself of what social media is about? There are so many posts on this subject.

I’ve decided to summarize it so you can easily remember it for your business purposes.

Social media is about L.I.F.E. with your prospects on social sites.

Now, let’s define what L.I.F.E. means in social media. I’ll show you what each letter means; of course, starting with L and ending with E.

• ‘L’ is for Listening: Your prospects are out there. Are you listening to them? You can use these any of these social media listening tools: 10 tools for listening in social media.

• ‘I’ is for Innovating: What’s your unique feature? Have you blended that into your social media strategy? Innovation sparks interest. Here is a resource article for innovation: Using social media to drive business innovation: insights from Guy Kawasaki and Target’s Michael Axelin

• ‘F’ is for Friending: Friending means building relationships. You’ve earned some prospects (fans or followers) so the next thing to do is invest in them. Chris Brogan shared some tips on this: Deepen Your Networks.

• ‘E’ is for Engaging: Start conversations about your brand. Join conversations concerning your brand. Be present wherever your brand is being talked about. Kyle Lacy wrote a great article about how to engage: 20 Ways to Engage Contacts in Social Media.

In summary, social media is about Listening, Innovating, Friending and Engaging with your prospects.

Next time you want to remember what social media is all about, think, L.I.F.E. The meaning will let you draft a better social media strategy.

Posted on July 23, 2010 - by Kwame

Reasons Why Your Customers Should be Your Brand Ambassadors

All too often, businesses choose celebrities to be ambassadors and evangelists of their products. Celebrity endorsements can mean more sales for you but I think it is a short sighted way of marketing because it has some limitations.

I have two reasons why I think of celebrity endorsements as short sighted marketing.

1. People have their celebrity favorites. If you let celebrity “A” endorse your product, I may not be a fan of him and I won’t be moved to make a purchase because celebrity “A” is not my favorite celebrity and I don’t care what he has to say.

Give me celebrity “B” and I’ll buy your product, period! Can you afford to sign a contract with celebrities “A”, “B”, “C” to “Z”? I guess not.

2. Most people know that celebrities are paid to endorse products regardless if they like the products or not. Most of them do it for the money. You’ll have to use another strategy to convince them. I am this type of customer. Give me some real endorsement and I’ll follow you forever.

The best way around these two problems is to use your real customers and regular users of your products as ambassadors and endorsers of your product.

Here are 4 reasons why you owe your customers the ambassadorial right:

1. They give you their money. That’s how your business keeps growing remember?

2. They do your marketing for you by referring their friends to buy your products. Yes, you got that right; it’s called word of mouth marketing.

3. They help you improve because they give you their feedback. The awards for “quality”, “best product”, et cetera, was made possible because of them.

4. They use your product. They bought from you because they trusted you. You also owe them some trust and need to appreciate them. Fair right?

Why do you think Facebook is asking us to share our Facebook stories? Most of us have been evangelists for them and even continue to be. Sharing stories on Facebook means bringing back memories. Memories carry emotions along with them. Emotions sell. It means you’ll be promoting Facebook even more.

I read some people’s stories on Facebook and I thought to myself, “This site is really changing the world in other areas too, apart from business”. I think Facebook made their stories application public (you don’t even need to sign-in or sign-up to read people’s stories) in order to make us all see how they are changing the world and also encourage others to join. That sets our emotions in because they are not things Facebook is saying, it’s what ‘we’ (the users) are saying about what Facebook did for us.

My point with Facebook is that, they have created a category for their loyal fans (or evangelists) to share their stories. This has gotten blogs and other news media to talk about their (Facebook’s) new innovation and more people will jump on board to see what people have discovered/achieved through Facebook. It will also increase loyalty among current users.

Planning Your Company’s own stories:

So how do you choose ambassadors from your customers? Use the people who have already bought from you as your brand ambassador. Contact them and tell them you want 1, 3, or maybe 5 of them to be ambassadors of your brand. Tell them about the benefits and exactly what you want them to do to be considered. Whatever you do, don’t tell them to send an application in.

Tip: Instead of telling them to send in an application with a resume attached, you can organize a short quiz of say 10 questions and ask them to head towards there and answer the questions. Don’t forget to collect their names; email or phone numbers after the quiz so that you know who answered what.  This whole process will let you assess the strengths of your ambassadors-to-be before you choose them.

Things to be considered as useful strengths for brand ambassadors are:

1. Good communication skills; language, grammar, etc.
2. Knowledge about your products
3. A little time to spare after their day job or on weekends.
4. Feedback givers or readers of your blog

After choosing your ambassador, send a message to your other customers and prospects and let them know the criteria you used in making the decision.

Get your brand ambassador(s) a blog on your domain to share experiences with your product and interact with other customers.

Do any of these to allow customer interaction:

1. Allow comments on the blog,

2. Get a Twitter account for ambassadors only,

3. Get a number for them where other customers can reach your ambassador. If your ambassadors are extremely busy during weekdays and can’t take the phone, allow calls only on weekends.

Just get creative. Play with ideas (gosh, I like saying this a lot ).

Treat your ambassadors like celebrities and let them show on their special blog. Put your product ambassador’s picture on your home page and link to their blog from there. Other customers will definitely like to be treated that way. This will increase customer loyalty.

Let your brand ambassador(s) work with your marketing team. They should report to the marketing manager or whoever you deem fit.

Some brand ambassador responsibilities include:

• Gather feedback: let your ambassador(s) help you gather feedback
• Organize meetups with other customers to talk about your product or show off their versions or models of your product. Note that this works best with physical goods
• Report on product updates based on the feedback he or she delivered
• Share their own thoughts and experiences with your products
• Tell other customers what they are enjoying as ambassadors to your product.

Your brand ambassadors should be paid for all their work.

You can pay them back by:

1. Giving them the biggest discounts on your products
2. Giving them some cash benefits
3. Giving them some of your products for free
4. Letting them choose a cause they will like you to donate some of your products or cash to.

Try a combination of these payment methods or add your own.

Five benefits of using real customer(s) as brand ambassador(s) are:

Okay, let’s slow down for a bit. The four reasons I stated for why you owe your customers the ambassadorial rights are the first four benefits you will get from your customers if you make them brand ambassadors.

The only difference is that, there will be more of it; more money in your bank (sales), more referrals, more feedback and more trust. So the last benefit will be:

5. It creates new buzz for your business. People will talk about what you are doing regardless of them being customers or not. Just like what is happening with Facebook stories right now.

Even though you have all these ideas to try out, make sure your brand ambassadors approve of what is included in the contract.

Do you already have a customer strategy? What would you like to add or subtract?

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Posted on July 21, 2010 - by Kwame

Download: Sociatic Brand Communication Resource

Hello everyone. I have packaged some of my best blog posts into a tidy PDF so that you could read them offline and share them if you want. Yes, it is just for you so go ahead and download your copy. It is FREE.

The PDF shares 10 posts from this blog. All articles talk about marketing; branding, social media, etc.

It is easily sharable (incase you want to show it to your friends or colleagues) so go ahead and share it as much as you like. Your audience will thank you for giving them a valuable resource.

Click on this link to start your download.

P.S., I am available for hire if you want to have something like this for your blog or business. Get in touch.

Posted on July 20, 2010 - by Kwame

10 Ways to Generate Leads With Social Media

How many leads do you generate every month with social media? If you’re not getting enough leads, today is your lucky day.

After reading this article, you’ll have 10 ideas you can use to increase your website traffic and leads. You may already know some of the ideas but trust me; there will be some you don’t know. So make sure to read through all the ideas and let me know if you’re already using any.

Let’s begin.

1. Create a digital product, write guest posts and offer your product for free in your byline. The product could be an eBook, infographic, themes or any other digital product. Make sure you have your website links in the document. You can also encourage people to share it and put a link back to your site. Tip: A little bird told me that Infographics spread like wildfire .

2. Search Twitter for discussions related to your niche. If there are any questions, answer them with an @ reply and provide a link back to your blog post or any relevant page on your site. This tip doesn’t necessarily grow your traffic but it sure will give you quality leads if done right.

3. Turn your blog posts into slide presentations and upload them to slideshare and scribd. Put your website and social media profile URLs in there so people who view your slides can pay you a visit. This is a cool way of repurposing your blog posts and regaining some value back.

4. Plan a series of Videos and use Tubemogul to post them to the various video sites. Make the videos as interesting as possible. By interesting, I mean enlightening, funny, … something people will remember. At the end of each video, ask people to go to your site and sign up for your newsletter in order to receive new video alerts and other updates from you.

5. Answer relevant questions on Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers, Yedda and Answers.com. Ask people to Google “your business name or any keyword you rank #1 for” and click on the first result. You can post your website URL straight away but do that less often so you’re not seen as a spammy contributor to these sites. One more thing, answer the latest, freshest questions if you want to see any relevant increase in traffic.

6. Post short useful articles on forum sites relevant to your niche and leave a link back to your site.

7. Create an eBook. Take a sample out and make a PDF out of it. Share it on Lulu and Docstoc. At the beginning and end of the sample, provide a link to a page where people can put in their email addresses to receive the full book/report. Encourage people to share it with their friends and colleagues.

8. If you want to rank high for any keyword or phrase, make that phrase your anchor text in your guest post bylines. For example, say you want to rank high for the key phrase, “brand communication”, you use that as your anchor text and put your website link there. The higher the PR of the blog you are posting on, the better your chances of ranking higher. Do this consistently for all guest posts you write and use the same key phrase until you are on page 1 of Google’s search. I am on page 2 of Google right now for the key phrase, “brand communication” and I only used that as my anchor text in just one guest post. When I use it again on a top PR (page rank) blog, I will rank even higher. Try it for yourself. By the way, this is a neat trick I learnt from Brian Clark’s “How to Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well in Search Engines”. Download a copy on this page: SEO Copywriting Made Simple.

9. Answer Questions on LinkedIn. Connect with other professionals. Ask your past customers for recommendations. Jason Falls wrote an article on how to make LinkedIn answers part of your routine so head towards his blog to read about it.

10. Run a survey on your blog, Twitter and Facebook and share the results with other people. Explain the methodology and findings of your survey and publish the results in PDF format and share it on your site and other sites. Send a message @ everybody who participated in the survey on Twitter with a link to the results. You can also contact bloggers in your niche and ask them to share your findings. Tamar Weinberg shows you how to pitch superstar bloggers here: How to Get an Influencer’s Attention.

Phew! That was a short ride . Okay, seriously, you should apply these tips. You don’t have to implement all at once. Bookmark this page, start with 2 or 3 strategies and come back later to try out the other ones. Some may work for you and some may not.

Remember, social media is a lead generation tool and newsletters are your lead collection and sales tools so have your newsletter signup boxes ready to collect email addresses. Prepare some bait for the stubborn ones .

What strategy do you use to build more leads, links and traffic?

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Posted on July 3, 2010 - by Kwame

10 Bad Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

As marketers, we are constantly faced with the challenge of getting leads and converting those leads into customers. Because of the challenging nature of our trade, some of us tend to get frustrated and thus, ignore the basic ingredients needed for getting sales.

We are going to look at some common mistakes marketers make and how to avoid them. If you are making any of these mistakes, get rid of them immediately.

1. Over-promising: When you over-promise, you almost always deliver products that are at or below par with your promises. It’s better to under-promise. Leave some of the good stuff (services or bonuses) and give it to people who take action later as a reward. This will mean, you will be over-delivering on your initial promise. This has worked for me and most other good marketers and it will work for you too.

2. Arguing With Your Customers: Don’t argue with your customers. An argument is bad for business. If a prospect or customer challenges you, don’t tell them they are wrong because they may be right. Telling them they’re wrong will lead to an argument and this will do your business no good.

I remember buying something online and after 2 hours, my account was deactivated without any notice. I didn’t receive an email or a call giving me reasons why my account was deactivated.  I sent an email to support and they told me my account was active. I sent another one and then a third one before I got a message that said something like, “Oh, I just checked your account. It wasn’t active. I have activated it now.”

Then I checked my account again, and it was active. I had to send 3 emails. What they were telling me indirectly when I sent the first 2 was that I was not telling them the truth. Meanwhile, they were the ones not telling the truth about the status of my account. That is bad customer service. I haven’t bought anything again from them ever since.

3. Not studying your better competitors: You can learn and use the techniques that your better competitors are using to rake in sales for their products. Study and emulate their winning selling strategies, product launch strategies and their customer feedback.

The internet has made it possible to learn more about your customers. There are tools like SEMRush that help you know what keywords your customer is using. Again, you can use Twitter search, Facebook and Youtube to study your competitor’s customer feedback. You will know their winning strategies if they use it over and over again. If they use one strategy and stop using it after a little while, it means it went bad. Copy the better strategies but make yours stand out by adding extra value.

4. Lying in sales presentations: Nothing can ever make you suck as a marketer as much as lying in your sales presentation. If your product can’t perform a particular stuff, don’t say it can. If you haven’t sold 1,000’s of products in 24hrs don’t say you have. When just one of your customers find out that you are lying, it spreads out like wildfire and your reputation goes down the drain. You lose your customers to your competitors and it will be hard to get them back. Avoid lies, speak the truth, and you’ll win.

5. Not following-up: After your presentation, some people will buy your product straight away. Others will have to be courted. They may need a better offer or they may need a reassurance. Follow up on your leads and reassure them of your product and offer. Also, invite them to send you any questions they may have about your product via email, Twitter or on phone. They may need some things cleared up before they buy. Find out what it is.

6. Not Using Compliments: Compliments sell products. It is one of the most powerful marketing weapons that will help you sell more and also help start customer relationships. Psychologically, people are happy when you compliment them on their actions. It makes them start to like you.

Examples and Ideas: If you sell shirts, you can say something like, “Excuse me, I am Alfred, I like your suit and I know just what shirt will match it perfectly. Here is my card, call me or visit my website if you want to see some of my shirts”. This is a much friendly approach and you can see there is a compliment in that statement. If you say something like that, you will have the guy thinking, “What? Doesn’t this shirt match my suit?” and he will probably check you out. Be sure not to put the prospect in an embarrassing situation..

Membership site owners and newsletter publishers often use something like, “Bravo on your decision to join us” or “Congratulations on wanting to fulfill your desire” or “You made a right choice to visit us”.

Let’s say you are selling video game CDs, you can say something like, “You bought a wonderful console but there’s no fun in it until you have a game to play on it. Check out all the latest games from our store. We carry the best titles. It’s time to make your friends jealous.”

The compliment here is “You bought a wonderful console”. The last statement, “Time to make your friends jealous” sends the prospect or customer imagining what his or her friends will think about his new game. Let’s face it, we all like to impress.

Complimenting people after they have purchased something from you makes it easy to sell more products to them. You know why? When you compliment them, their brains translate it as “You made a smart decision”. So in order to keep that smartness, they will take the same action they took before.

Imagine a hot guy or girl complimenting your perfume or cologne. What will you think? Will you throw away that cologne or keep on using it? Will you buy a different one when the one that got the compliment is finished? I guess not.

That is how the human brain works. We like to feel smart and when someone tells us that we are smart, we always want to show them we still are smart so we do what they want us to do.

When you use compliments, avoid desperation. The whole idea is to make the customer feel like it is their idea when they buy what you are suggesting.

Don’t let it seem like you are trying to sell them another thing. Make it sound like you like their first action but you will suggest they should do this and that to get the complete solution to their needs. Do you get the idea?

7. Not Showing Interest In Your Customer’s Problem: Offer to solve your buyers problems with your products or services and then they will naturally be interested in you and keep coming back.

If you listen to what your market wants and let them know your product can solve their problems, you will most likely make the sale.

You can gather info through surveys or requesting feedback about your products or services through email, suggestion boxes in your office, telephone, etc. This is how you can find out your market’s problems.

People are interested in themselves more than anybody else. This principle also applies to when they are buying something so you have to make sure they get what they want; not what you want them to buy from you. Persuade your prospects with a good offer, excellent communication and a great product.

Be a good listener and encourage your prospects to tell you about what they need. Also, encourage them to give you their complaints about your products and their ideas of how to improve it. Get them involved and you all will see positive results.

8. Not Showing Appreciation: Show appreciation to your prospects after each action they take. Send them cards during occasions like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc. Write a short message to them and make sure you refer to them by their individual names. This makes the card more personal.

You can finish the message by leaving a discount code by saying something like: “Use this code during this festive season to get a 20% discount on our items” or you can also say something like, “Bring this card to any of our shops for a special gift when you order items costing $100 and above”. Don’t sell any particular item. Just give them a discount code.

You can also send a “thank you” note even if it’s not Christmas or even if your customer has not ordered anything in a while. Make sure it is branded to fit your business; with your logo, contact details and USP.

Again, don’t try to sell them anything in your thank you note. Just keep it simple like “(your customer’s name), Thank you for buying from us. We value you as our customer and we hope to be at your service again soon. We promise another special buying experience or a better one since we constantly keep improving.”

You will increase sales and will get a customer who will stay with you for long if you show them how valuable you think they are by appreciating them like this. If you love your customers, they will love you back. Period!

9. Making Market Assumptions: You can’t assume that your customer will buy your products if you haven’t done any research on what they want and how they want it. You can use the internet to research buyer conversations on the products you’re selling or about to sell. Use Twitter search, your competitor’s Facebook fan page and blogs and find out what their customers complain about in the comments area. When you find a couple of holes, write down which ones you can fill and add it to your production selling process. Using feedback and testimonials from your existing customers also helps you understand them better.

10.Providing inadequate product information: If you are selling a book on marketing, can you please tell us the contents? Some sellers don’t provide enough information about their products but they expect us to buy them. I won’t buy a book that only has “The Sociatic Marketing Book: A book for 21^st century marketers. Price: $27” as its description. Even if it is selling at $1, I will find it difficult to buy because I don’t know what it is actually about. What if it’s like all the other marketing books I have bought and read? I won’t take any chances and I bet your prospects will also feel the same way.  Note: This is not a counter-argument against my first point of under promising. Under-promising involves waiting for customers to heap praises on your products; how it helped them and what they think about each feature. Over-promising is when you praise your products and tell your customers that it is 100% efficient. Instead of praising yourself, let your customers do it for you and use their praises as testimonials in your sales material.

Conclusion:

If you are making any of the mistakes above, make sure you take them out from your marketing. Some of the mistakes will damage your reputation and will sink your sales fast. Change is possible. It only takes some effort and some patience.

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Further reading:

Customer Loyalty Comes from Conversation: ConversationAgent

What Does Your Audience Need: Chris Brogan