Gerald Voigt, co-founder of Zero To Sixty Marketing LLC and owner of Hawkeye’s Hobbies and Images by Hawkeye, lends his thought-provoking perspective to marketing in the micro to small business arena. In this post he describes some negative tendencies to be recognized and avoided by companies offering B to B services.

The customer is never wrong.

Well that may be true, but it doesn’t necessarily mean each customer is right, for you. Recently I was approached by a prospective client who was asking for assistance with marketing his business. I listened to him explain everything that he felt was wrong with all aspects relating to his business and its operations, mostly external. This lit the master caution light in my mind. Sure, there are those clients who just don’t start out running their businesses very well, and they struggle along the way. Some crash immediately after takeoff, yet some manage to get a little air, but no significant altitude.

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Express Marketing Memo

Is your business a piece of a larger puzzle? If you are one cog in an industry wheel, are you taking advantage of the momentum being sent your way by your neighboring cogs? Or are you skipping a beat … ?

Listen, there isn’t a company out there that can’t benefit from another, especially within the same niche or interconnected business. Those businesses can very easily cross-promote each other to the benefit of the consumer. When you look for ways to engage your customer in related offerings, you actually provide a service. They thought they would have to go elsewhere for that information, but there it was – and you provided it.

For example, an organic grocery store does well to have brochures and catalogs for a local retailer in organic clothing lines at point of sale locations. The consumer who “thinks organic” will love to have this information handy to them. In the same way, an organic fashion retailer who displays the weekly fliers from the neighborhood organic grocery has just become a resource to the consumer as well. Being that resource helps you stay valuable to your client.

Another example would be a model airplane builder and a niche paint provider for that plane. Gerald Voigt’s credibility in the area of niche paint for model airplanes has catapulted him in his career, primarily because of the value that information provides his audience in the hobby industry. He’s built his business on the relationships he’s cultivated within the hobby world through the product offerings those businesses provide.

If you’re not currently embracing a business relationship with “benefits”, you should be. I almost hate to say it because it is so over-used in the marketing industry, but becoming a valuable resource to your clients really will prove to benefit your business, too.

What like business relationships have you begun to develop? Tell us about them! If you’re having trouble figuring out what businesses might be a good fit, leave your questions in the comments section, or send us an email – we’ll be happy to share some ideas with you.

Do you make it a practice to ask each of your clients or customers how they found you? This is actually one of the easiest ways to discern which of your approaches were more effective than others. Unless you’re simply sitting there waiting for business to drop from the sky, you’re using multiple avenues to let people know you exist.

• Company website
• Brochures / fliers
• Print ads
• Social media promotion
• Telemarketing

Learning which of those tactics are truly beneficial will help you avoid wasting time.

If you’re not asking customers how they heard about you, how are you tracking your results from those efforts? There are many ways to gauge your ROI, but the easiest is to simply ask.

Asking the question starts a conversation and enables you to find out much more.

• What appealed to them?
• Was there any info they would have appreciated finding that wasn’t available?
• How could your message be improved to truly meet their needs?

If you’re not asking your customers where they heard about you, and what they heard about you that caused them to contact you, you’re missing out on valuable information. You’re also missing out on great ice-breaking conversation that endears them to you because you cared enough to ask.

Do you ask?

We all need ‘em, so how do you get that happy customer to actually take a moment to give you a review? And, if he does, what will you do with it? Where will it get maximum exposure? Some businesses know just how to get those reviews set up to be a regular part of day-to-day affairs. They know that the most effective way to get a review is to ask. Yes, it’s bold. But it’s also business. That happy client or customer is worth several more when they share their experience with others. Turn the request into a part of the way you run your company and it’s a no-brainer that you’ll have many reviews to choose from when you want to make your testimonials public.

Sure, not everyone will comply. But companies who practice this will tell you, if you don’t ask, chances are slim that you’ll have much to work with. There is a place within every transaction, or at the end of it, that is appropriate to request a favorable customer response:

• A follow-up phone call
• A perforated post card with return address and survey boxes
• A question asked as the project commences, “If you will fill out a brief review when the job is done, we’ll take five percent off your next … “
• “Please review us on MerchantCircle.com, or Yelp.com if you’re happy with the product or job performance.”

Making it easier on the customer is the name of the game. Give them an opportunity to know the best way to review your company and support your good effort. One thing is certain, if you don’t ask, you won’t get a response. Customers who give a favorable review out of the goodness of their heart are few and far between.

Where are the best places to post your reviews?

Whenever possible, have your customers post reviews on these sites:

• Yelp.com
• MerchantCircle.com
• Google Places
• CitySearch.com
• Insiderpages.com
• Local.com
• Superpages.com
• TripAdvisor

And make sure you’re listed on each of these sites! These places have high authority and the link to your site is a very powerful way to bring traffic to your website. Once easily added by your customers, these can be additionally pasted into your website testimonials page, your direct mail pieces, and any other media that promotes your company.

One more thing. Don’t forget to thank your customer for the favorable review and let him know in some manner how it benefits your company. And if you get a poor review, by all means, fix it! Speak with that customer immediately and ask them what can be done to satisfy, compensate, or make it better. Find out what he feels should have been done differently, and thank him for helping you cure a problem by bringing it to your attention. If you take a willing-to-fix-it attitude to your company reviews in response to comments, you’ll show a trustworthy aspect of your company to your viewers. That practice will endear the public to your company and be visible for quite some time.

Do you post reviews for great service?

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Small Business Listing: Images are Important

Case Study: Small Business Listings

What one company learned the hard way

Did you post photos on your Google Places listing? If you haven’t, consider this: one company didn’t, and the photo that was included was a poorly shot photo of the home of a customer who posted a review.

The review was favorable, the photo was not. Many times, these details seem insignificant until they are seen from the outside looking in. When you’re filling out the details of your business listing, the photos, videos, and reviews play a big part of your overall appearance, but may not seem like they need to be added now. Problem is, if you put it off for another day, another day comes and goes without your listing being completely finished. Images help your viewers understand where you are, who you are, and what products you offer. When you connect with the public on line in this way, you become a reality. You cease to be only a link on a page and become something they can identify with.

The same thing holds true for video. A brief video, a commercial or a tutorial piece is a nice way to connect with your viewers while letting them know you’re interested in offering what they want. Make it funny, and you’ll find it uploaded to YouTube.com, FunnyorDie.com, or a several other video streaming services. People love to share video content. When you’ve properly linked up your website to your small business listing, and posted a video that others want to share, you’ve made positive changes to your online presence that will increase your website visibility. It’s a great strategy.

No one wants their business to look less appealing than it should. These small details put you in the driver’s seat when it comes to your company’s appearance. Most listings require that your photo be no larger than 1MB, but generally you are allowed to add more than one. We suggest using the maximum number of pictures that represent you favorably. Remember that a picture’s worth a thousand words. A video – well, that’s a whole other story!

Do you have an image on your listing? Why or Why not?

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Case Study: Small Business Listing

Don’t forget to dot your ‘i’s and cross your ‘t’s!

When it comes to adding your company to a search engine directory, like Google, Bing, or others, there’s a lot to be said for finishing the job. Google is the absolute when it comes to listing locally. Once a company has claimed its business and set up their listing, every other search engine picks it up, regardless of whether or not you’ve listed with them as well. Funny enough, when you look up your company through the other search engines, your Google listing is likely the most frequently returned. It’s important to get it right, as unfinished details can hamper your efforts.

An example of this is can be found with a company who thought they had added their company to Google Places, but in fact had not quite finished the job. After enjoying a moderate rise in rank through our SEO efforts, they began to plateau and soon were outranked by a competitor who had several poor reviews and less than optimal website standards. The first company should have had no problem outranking this second company, as we later found out, had Google details been completed.

• Keywords are important – This is an ideal way to be found, so some research in this area is extremely helpful. Google allows you to craft four or five custom categories once you select from their main category. Using keywords associated with your business in the categories sections will ensure that your company is found by consumers looking for you. Strong keywords within your descriptive text, woven-well with actual value for the consumer, are crucial. Stuffing words for spider-sake that hold no value for people is absolutely pointless because this local listing service is human driven. Poor word use looks terrible and will more likely turn off your viewers.

• Location has an appropriate place - If a location is included in your company name, that’s one thing, but if you stuff locations into your company name that don’t belong there, you’re going to be disappointed. Your business may either be turned down or penalized by Google.

• Make sure you verify your company - If you don’t take that extra step at the end, your listing won’t be finalized. That means that everything you’ve just done, and it is somewhat time consuming, is for nothing. Google allows you and invites small businesses to take advantage of their local business center, now called Google Places. They will find a return for your company when a searcher uses certain terms to look for you, whether or not you’ve claimed your business. If you haven’t, you’re at the mercy of the results they find.

By claiming your business and filling out the information to your benefit, you’re given more authority as a business owner than if Google simply returned your company link for comments or social media encounters, which can happen! Take control of your online appearance by fully completing your information, or hiring someone to do that for you. Repairing the mistakes made by company # 1 made a difference immediately, and the business owner didn’t even realize those things had been left incomplete. Remember to dot your ‘i’s and cross your ‘t’s to get the most out of your small business listings.

What exactly is the purpose of your brochure? Do you want a certain reaction from its readers?

Yes, you want more business. But for your brochure to be truly effective, you’ll have to break that down. More business is the the long-term goal. What steps will a reader have to make in the short-term for that to happen?

Look at it like this:

• They need to pick it up
• They need to read it
• They need to be interested
• They need to be affected
• They need to know what you want them to do. Call? E-mail? Visit your website? Fill out a return postcard?

Most brochures that are sitting in a stand on a counter or set out on an accent table don’t get read. They don’t. They’re still an incredible marketing method, but you only have a one in 10 chance that out of the brochures read, you’ll even get business from them. That means you need to grab and captivate your audience quickly, and then you very specifically need to guide them through the entire piece without making it feel like a chore.

Hint: Men and women process information differently. Most men scan – not read – full context information.

How will you make sure he understands that what you offer matters to him?

• Be precise
• Be bold
• Speak directly to him, and
• Use graphics

Most women, on the other hand, read emotionally. She is more likely to respond to humorous or insightful messages – messages that give her perspective validity.

• Address the circumstance
• Use sarcastic, cynical or endearing humor, and
• Provide a cure

When you provide products or services that don’t cater to a specific gender, the tone, content and graphics yield better results when they’re more personal, and speak to the need a consumer has that would cause them to require your offering.

Whether selling to men, women or both, make it clear what you expect them to do with their newly-acquired information. Don’t let a sale slip through your fingers because you thought your product or service was more important than the consumer. Then request a phone call or website view so they can get more information on solving their problems.

Do you take gender into account when drafting marketing materials for your company? What did I miss? Let me know in the comments below, and feel free to hit reply in our newsletter for a personal response.

Within our unique business model, a full-service virtual marketing department, we all come together from different backgrounds and levels of understanding based on what services we have offered our clients over the years. Many times that spurs some interesting conversations about the terms we use within our company and whether or not our clients truly understand what we mean! Here’s a brief list of common definitions that may help you:

• Copy - This is a term that refers to any written product. Copy is the text on the page, and can mean the actual lettering (i.e. bold copy,) or the tone (i.e. dynamic copy, persuasive copy.)

• Content - Content fills space. It includes text, images, video and audio – the content of your blog page, for example, or article content.

• Graphics - Any image needed for any type of marketing material. A graphic can be a photo, a digital representation, an illustration, or even a logo. Letterheads, business cards, and even coffee mugs are examples of items that have graphics.

• Website banner - Sometimes referred to as the header. It’s at the top of a website and is generally a custom designed graphic containing a logo or a picture image in a particular size. Not to be confused with banner ads or banner graphics. Website banners can also be several images that rotate or fade, or even videos.

• Print media - This refers to direct mail, business cards, office stationary, basically the tangible materials in print.

• Business hosting - If you think of your domain as your street address on the Web, your business Web hosting would be your home on the Web. A website’s files reside in a Web hosting account on a server. Examples of hosting platforms include GoDaddy.com, Hostgator.com, Bluehost.com, in addition to many others. Your choice of Web host and the type of hosting you choose can effect your website’s performance. Price should not be the only determining factor in deciding where to host your site. We’ll cover that in another post, but leave your questions in the comments and we’ll be happy to discuss in further detail.

• Custom CMS design - We’ve discovered that this is the optimal website for today’s small to mid-size business due to it’s incredible flexibility. CMS refers to a Content Management System, and requires no desktop software to update. A CMS website can be built on the WordPress blog platform, and allows a company to continually update their own material for search engine friendly optimization. Updating regularly increases spider traffic, which directly impacts the authority-building strategies that cause a website to draw more attention.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) - Optimizing your website so that both the search engines and your visitors notice you is just smart business. SEO is a combination of keyword usage, link strategies, and interactivity that causes your visibility to increase substantially. Some methods show immediate results, some take longer, but all working together continue to impact your website performance over time.

• Autoresponders - An email is automatically sent in response to requested information. It has automatically responded. Once a reader has opted in to receive information from you, consecutively sent emails at certain daily, weekly, or monthly intervals keep your information current and in front of your reader’s eyes, until the sale is completed or aborted. To be done legally, this must include an opportunity for your readers to ‘opt-out’ of receiving that information whenever they want, and a way to contact you through a mailing address. Failure to provide (or act on) opt-out and mailing information violates CAN-SPAM law, enforced by the FTC.

• Video - Actual video footage or webcam video, but additionally includes slideshows and screen captures.

• Local Business Listings - Just because your website shows up in a list of searches does not mean that you’re listed locally in Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other engine, like Ask.com. Adding your business to those lists improves your business appearance and gives you an opportunity to represent yourself, rather than those engines relying solely on information they simply pull from anywhere your company is mentioned on the web.

• Domain name - Your URL is a domain name, and ends in .com, .net, .org, etc.

I hope this helps! If not, hit reply in our newsletter and ask us for more information! We’ll be happy to respond. If you’re reading this on our blog and have questions or other terms you would like to see defined, let us know and we’ll add them to another post.

Paperfest’s 6th Annual Tour de Fest bike tour is just around the corner. Have you signed up? If biking 18 – 100 miles, beginning at Kimberly, Wisconsin’s Sunset Beach is your idea of an awesome work out, then this tour is for you. There are four different routes to choose from: 18,40,70 or 100 miles. And when you’re done, you and your family can enjoy the Paperfest Festival at Sunset Park. There will even be a shuttle to take you to showers when you’re finished, so there’s no need to be self conscious about relaxing with them when you get back.

IF you get back …

No worries! Rest stops will be available along the way, offering food, drink and restrooms. If you do experience any mechanical or physical trouble, SAG wagons will be patrolling nearby to rescue you safely out of harm’s way.

Early registration has begun, and lasts until July 4. Race participation costs increase by $5.00 if you delay sign up till then.

So, why are we biking?

Proceeds from Tour de Fest pledges, jersey and t-shirt sales benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the world’s largest voluntary health organization dedicated to curing leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, and myeloma, and improving the quality of life of patients and their families.

Zero To Sixty Marketing LLC is the official Web site sponsor for Paperfest’s Tour de Fest annual bike tour, and would like to encourage your participation. Rain or shine, this event is a can’t miss for avid bike riders across the region – sign up today!

Tour de Fest Sign-up

Enjoy your day, moms. We know it has NOT been an easy ride – this roller coaster called parenting has seen the fastest spins and the quickest up-side-down maneuvers that any life could lead.

But you held on. You didn’t let go. You silently screamed, “LET ME OFF THIS CRAZY THING!” in your small voice when all you could do was trust God … while you hung on for dear life.

You applauded their style and commitment while you secretly questioned their judgment. And you prayed. A lot.

You spoke candidly when you had the opportunity to share your wisdom with them, and stood back up when their defiance knocked you over.

And it was worth it. Just look at them now. It will never be over, so we can’t ever say, “We did it!” But we can say now, with the wealth of understanding we’ve gleaned from seeing the things this journey has shown us, that we will never be the same. We will always be better for having taken that ride.

For stepping up to the plate. And for never letting completely go …

The moms of Zero To Sixty Marketing wish our fellow mothers a peaceful, memorable and joyful Mother’s Day.

More Applause:

Have a Happy Mother’s Day