Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Groupon’s Lesson: Do You Know Who Your Customers Are?

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This is a guest post from Dan Janal.

Everyone’s concerned about Google keeping tabs on your privacy. Here’s one group of businesses that apparently don’t keep tabs on you – restaurateurs.

Here’s the story.

I bought a Groupon for a restaurant. I actually buy lots of them – Groupon has taught me never to pay full price for a meal – but that’s another story. I actually buy more food than the Groupon is worth so the restaurant can actually make money – but that’s another story.

My wife and I went to this interesting hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served Ethiopian food. The owner was marvelously charming. He immediately welcomed us and called us “friend.” Nice touch.

We asked him what was good since we understood steak, chicken and tilapia, but didn’t know anything about the spices. He gave us a good overview and we ordered.

Then we sat down to wait for the takeout order. The restaurant was in a dicey part of town and we thought it might be better to eat at home and watch TV.

Two minutes later, he brought out two bowls of soup and two bottles of water – on the house!

Nice touch.

Twenty minutes later, the food was cooked and placed in white, Styrofoam containers. But instead of getting our money and sending us on our way, he asked my wife to sample the food to make sure it was good.

It was! Very good.

We paid and as we left, he gave us two more bottles of water.

“In the Sahara,” he said, “People give water to friends when they leave their house.” Nice touch.

That would have been the end of a nice customer service story, but here’s the rest of the story.

I told this story to my buddy Stuart Gray who consults with restaurants. I thought he’d be bowled over by this wonderful customer service story.

Instead, he replied, “Did they put you on a list? Do they know how to reach you again? Uh, no.

Well, I guess Groupon knows, but I hear that Groupon will gladly sell that info to the restaurant. I wish my new friend had thought to ask. Oh well.

Do you know who your customers are? Do you give visitors a way to identify themselves to you and join your lists, read your blogs or connect with you on Facebook (which is going to become the dominant search marketing tool and customer retention tool)? If not, why not? You are letting repeat business slip through your fingers.

Dan Janal helps small businesses get publicity so they can sell more products. My clients get terrific results from my coaching, consulting, done-for-you services and do-it-yourself tools. For info, go to www.prleadsplus.com or call me at 952-380-1554.

What Does Your Customer Want From You?

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This is a guest post from Kirk Ward of http://secrets-of-marketing-accounting-services.com/.

Does your prospect know what business you’re in? Do you think they care?

Your prospect doesn’t give a Snail’s Hoot about you, or what business you are in. All they care about is getting their needs met. Contrary to what you think about yourself and your ilk, human’s are a very selfish lot. We really don’t care about your great credentials (unless we need someone with that particular credential), and we certainly don’t care about your beautiful packaging (unless it is one of our needs). [Read more…]

B2B Copywriting – Writing for the B2B market

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business-word-cloudThis is a guest post from Mitt Ray of The White Paper Blog.

When you write white papers, website copy, brochures or any other marketing material for the B2B market you need to keep certain factors in mind.

Writing for the B2B market has many similarities with writing for the B2C market. But there are certain factors you always need to keep in mind.

Some of these factors are:-

1. Always address the reader as you: Many people make the mistake of addressing the company as a whole or addressing them as many people. This is not how it should be written as your copy is normally read by one person at a time.

These people are normally sitting alone in their office or cubicle and reading it to themselves. So always address them as a single person using “you”. This will make them feel a special personal connection with your copy.

2. Write using the simplest words: It is important that you write using the simplest words. I have seen writers use complicated terms sometimes to make their copy sound more sophisticated. This is because many people think that using complicated material will make the company look sophisticated. But using these sophisticated words could actually work against you.

When you write for the B2B market you are usually writing for busy people. These people don’t have the time to read a document that is full of words that are hard to understand, as this will take up a lot of their time.  They want to read something that is easy to read, something they can finish quickly and get back to work. If they find it hard to read, they will just give up reading it and read something else, that is easy to read.

Therefore it is important that you keep everything in the copy as simple as possible, so that your client can finish reading the document quickly. Keeping it simple improves the chance of it being read completely.

3. Mention all the benefits businesses look for: One person or a group of individuals will be making the decision whether to use your service/product or not. What you need to keep in mind is that they are not making a personal decision, but they are making a decision for the entire company.

They’re looking for ways to save the company money, time, improve profits, reduce staff etc. So make sure that you work on these benefits and include them in your copy.

You also need to keep in mind that though they are making a decision for the entire company and are mainly looking at the welfare of the company. There will be certain personal benefits and emotions that will be involved in their decision.

If they make the right decision, their chances of getting a promotion or a raise go up and if they make a wrong decision it could cost the company’s future and their job. You need to keep these factors in mind too.

So whenever you write white papers, brochures, emails, or any other marketing materials for the B2B market always keep these factors in mind, as it will help you write a copy that works.

Mitt Ray is a copywriter. He specializes in writing and marketing white papers. He regularly posts articles on writing and marketing white papers on his blog at http://www.imittcopy.com/Thewhitepaperblog/what-is-a-white-paper/. He’s also the author of ”Understand and Write White Papers” which is a white paper on how to write white papers.

Comment Spam Content

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This is a guest post from Susan Perloff of http://SusanPerloffWrites.com/.

Many of the spam comments posted to blogs are unreadable garbage, but some can be entertaining.

“You seems to be an expert in this field, good article and keep up the great work, my friend recommended me it.”

These complimentary yet illiterate words appear as “comments” on my blog. Someone – a man, a machine or a mouse – wrote them. And I appreciate them, because I do believe I ams (sic) an expert in this field.

While a human told a computer to deliver these non-sentences, probably no mortal created them. Computers do that. They generate random copy, which naughty people send as spam to blogs and other online discussions. They attach coding to their messages in hopes of spawning links back to their own sites, where they sell investment tips, real estate in Arizona or male gonadic enhancements. The comments rarely relate to the blog, let alone appear grammatical or possible, but they can present amusing reading.

“I’m very contented with your writing capabilities and the website design on your blog site. Simply how much is this theme or did you personalize it on your own? Whatever it is, carry on this fantastic writing, fantastic material like these are hard to find,” reads another.

Comment spamming began in about 2003. I receive only about six spams a day. But now that I manage the blog for a business association, I receive another 36. If I take a weekend off, the in boxes nearly topple.

Periodically I read them before trashing. “Given this latest post I am speculating that you are an connoisseur of fine jewelry. I myself, like to collect natural stones in the form of rings, earrings, necklaces.” Well, I am an (sic) connoisseur, but not of fine jewelry. I specialize in fine grammar.

Computers did not invent unreadable garbage. I think one of my ex-relatives did. In an academic publication called “Why gestures are not communication,” she wrote: “Gestures have been investigated primarily as pictorial representations intended to communicate information to their perceivers visually. This paper argues that affiliative gestures, the gestures affiliated with words, are neither visual nor communicative. They are kinaesthetic apprehensions directed by gesturers to themselves.” See?

A spammer sends: “Good post. I be taught something tougher on totally different blogs every day. It’s going to at all times be stimulating to read content from different writers and practice a bit one thing from their store.”

Yes, the blog’s spam filter caught this garbage and labeled it spam. I nearly considered it a compliment. I’d better begin to react differently.

“Amazinggggg skills! Keep it up man, you rock!”Amazingly, rock though I might, my correspondent thinks I have a Y-chromosome.

One commenter sends free verse: “Activity magic or stalking repeated although miles reflect hours bent flickering mood calculating fish.” Even if I skim the rest of the poesy, I know that fella needs to increase his meds.

“We need copy writers badly,” says a spammer, and I snap to attention. “After looking over this website, we decided we want you on our crew. Please swing by and see what we have to offer.” I think I will – until I check the return address: Freechinesefood. Oh. Hot and sour soup, please.

I receive three compliments in a row.

• “You made some respectable factors there.” Certainly hope so. Wish I were creative enough to invent this stuff.

• “In excess of what we had thought of in advance of the time we stumbled on your fantastic blog. I actually no longer have doubts because you have attended to each of our needs here.” Thank you, kind sir. I am happy to relieve you of your troubles.

• “It’s awesome to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same unwanted rehashed material.” Unwanted, maybe. Rehashed, often.

But wait. They have found me out at last. “I was introduced about your blog from a neighbor. She is right about you.” Ah.

Susan Perloff is a freelance writer, editor and writing coach. She blogs http://www.susanperloffwrites.com/home/blog/ about business writing. Susan can help you write better, whether you write newsletters, annual reports, training manuals, profiles, brochures, corporate histories or personal stuff. With four national writing awards to her credit, she has written for more than 100 periodicals, including 125 articles for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Primarily she writes for businesses and nonprofits about college admissions and auto emissions, cancer and careers, pharmaceuticals and farms, search engines and service businesses, chemicals and condominiums, mammography and metal detectors. Clients include blue-chip companies and small professional practices. For 30 years she has taught adults to write.

The Power of Pay Per Click

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This is a guest post from Mike Seddon, co founder of the website promotion specialist KKSmarts.

Pay per click advertising has revolutionised the advertising landscape. Never before has there been an advertising medium that allowed you to advertise specifically to your target audience and measure accurately the results of that advertising.

It’s for these reasons alone that any business should seriously consider using pay per click as part of its marketing mix. However many businesses fail to grasp this opportunity properly.

The other compelling reason for using pay per click is that services like Google Adwords will actually allow small business to compete successfully alongside the big companies with deep advertising pockets. This is because Google rewards advertising that is relevant rather than just selling advertising space to the companies prepared to pay more.

Before I explain all this in more detail, let’s just first make sure we all understand what we mean by pay per click.

I’m sure you’ve all seen those adverts down the left hand side of your search results in Google. Those advertisers have bid in an auction to appear on that page whenever the search phrase you used was entered into Google. They will only pay if you click on their advert. They don’t pay anything just to appear. Hence the name pay per click.

Can you imagine paying for newspaper adverts in the basis that you only paid them for each person that was to contact you? There is no way the newspapers could offer that type of service. They simply can’t measure how people react to adverts. This is one of the great benefits of pay per click. You only pay when your advertising successfully brings in potential customers.

Also because you pick the words (called keywords) that you want your adverts to appear for, then you can effectively control who sees your adverts. By carefully choosing keywords you can ensure your adverts are only seen by people who are looking to buy your products.

Imagine the newspaper example again. Do you think newspapers could sell adverting based on only charging you for the newspapers that are read by the people who are specifically looking to buy your product? Not likely. Of course newspapers do have demographics they appeal to and that does give you some targeting for your advertising but it’s not as precisely targeted as pay per click can be.

So already you can see how pay per click makes a lot of sense.

However, what about my point that services like Google Adwords allows you to compete successfully with the big companies? The reason this is so is because they reward advertisers who deliver adverts that meet the needs of the people searching on Google. They assign a quality score for your keywords and your adverts. This quality score is used to decide the minimum bid you need to pay for your advert to appear and it also decides how high up the page you appear.

So by tailoring your adverts to closely match your keywords you can achieve a good quality score. If your advert then gets more clicks than the average expected for that keyword then Google rewards you by increasing your quality score. Thus you pay even less for your clicks.

The big companies rarely understand this and they just pay high bid prices. They also tend to bid on practically every keyword that can find and they use the same advert for all these keywords. Savvy internet advertisers can beat them every time.

So I urge you to embrace the power of pay per click.

Mike Seddon is co founder of the website promotion specialist KKSmarts. You can find out more about pay per click on their website. In particular they have lots of free guides on how to get the best out of Google Adwords.