small business marketing

The 80/20 rule pops up all the time. And for good reason. It works. If you really take the time to analyze your customer or client base, you will find that 20% of your customers or clients are generating 80% of your revenues.

And the other 80% are costing you way more than they are worth in time, trouble and expenses.

So what’s the solution?

You need to really dig into that 20% and find out why they keep coming back to you. Because they are the answer to growing your business with only low cost, high return, premium clients or customers.

Pyro Marketing by Greg Stielstra is a marketing book based on the idea that if you promote your product to the people most likely to buy, then give them the right experience, your public will sell your product or service for you.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the book on a number of detail items, the guy has a pretty good premise. And I started thinking about his four step process for “pyro-marketing.”

Again, I saw things a little differently. Here’s my idea as to what the four step process should be to market effectively today in a world awash in ineffective advertising:

Writing copy for any marketing materials requires one thing over all others - if you want people to read, you have to lead.

There are two types of copywriting out there. There’s the typical “laundry list” style of copy writing where you tell people what you have and what is special about it. Great way to guarantee no one ever contacts you about your product or service.

Then there’s the other style of copywriting. This style of copywriting is written the way all great sales people speak to potential customers. Great sales people never start out telling people what they are selling. They start out by trying to identify what the customer is buying.

One of my favorite marketing resource web sites is called Marketing Experiments. There aren’t a whole lot of web sites that impress me when it comes to learning about marketing on the Internet or marketing in general. This is one of them.

They just released one of their latest webinars as either a Flash movie with audio and slides or as HTML with an mp3. Either way it’s worth checking out the latest one. It’s called:

A Proven Playbook for Growing Your Leads

Synopsis:

Ever wonder if you’re approaching lead generation the wrong way?

  I’ve seen two tag lines recently that really impress me:

VAN EX - Every Time You Call Us…We Deliver

Pro Staff - Talent That Works

Why am I so impressed with these two tag lines?

Because they both operate on more than one level. Let’s do a little quick analysis to see why these two tag lines work and what makes them special.

First, let’s look at VAN EX - Every Time You Call Us…We Deliver

On the first and obvious level, they tell us that every time we call them, your package will get delivered, which implies a guarantee of delivery.

ServPro - Like it never even happened is a great tagline or slogan. Why? Because it is totally focused on what their customers want. They literally took the words right out of their customers mouths.

What is it people who’ve suffered smoke or water damage to their home want the most? They want their home to look and feel “like it never even happened.”

That slogan is so good it makes me want to pick up the phone and call them every time their commercial plays. It resonates that well.