Episode c3d 008 Identify New Users for Existing Offer

Introduction

Week two of your seriously social journey, a path that changed the way I do business forever and whose benefits regularly surprise me in terms of the opportunities they generate.

It is easy to get distracted by all the noise in the business world at large but jump day is your chance to settle in and work on your business in ways that allow you to make the most of your opportunities today, tomorrow and forever.

What’s the hardest thing about growing a business? For many small businesses, the answer is finding clients or getting customers. Customer acquisition is particularly difficult if your marketing budget is limited. IN today’s show I will take you through some time-tested strategies to help build your customer base.

IBGR is committed to your success and our programming is designed to give you the tools and resources as well as the one percenters you might be missing that are the difference between feeling like you are stuck on repeat and that weekend getaway you book  yourself to celebrate hitting your milestones this quarter.

Have a fantastic week, hopefully we have turned your hump day into jump day and you are all fired up for success.

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Show Objectives – The Why
Like any good business customer acquisition in the beginning is easy to a degree, but eventually you find yourself asking – what’s next? How do I grow without reinventing my business model? What else is out there?

Key Issues – Owner Perspective:

1. How to find new customers and increase sales.
2. Defining the market for my product or service
3. Generating sales leads and closing the deal.
4. Building your referral networks and strategic partnerships.

What You Need to Know – The What

1. Define the ideal customer.
2. Develop a plan for customer acquisition
3. Look for and follow business prospects on social media (define your SNAP)
4. Market research – the top 100.
5. Work within and expand your networks.

What You Need to Do – The How

1. You can get to know your customers and segment the market any number of ways including the ones below:

• Demographics — statistical data on a population including income levels, age, etc.
• Psychographics — the attitudes and tastes of a certain demographic.
• Ethnographics — examination of particular cultures.
• Buying habits — how, what and where customers purchase products and services

1. There are a variety of age-old staple techniques and newer tools you can use to find new customers and increase sales. It’s best to understand the choices you have in order to determine which may best allow you to reach new customers

• Cold calling – tried and tested but works on the basis that it is a numbers game
• Networking – it is important to evaluate both structured and unstructured networking events
• Digital advertising – Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, instagram and Twitter
• Event Sponsorship
• Run your own events
• Cross collaboration and promotion

1. SNAP – Your Social Networking Action Plan – there is way more to Social media than just the marketing understanding and mapping out your “SNAP” will drive action and success
2. Identify the top 10 mid tier companies in each market segment and reach out to them by phone to do some market research (100 calls in 10 days).

Shows
Previous: Episode C3.007 Opportunities to Increase Share of Wallet with best Customers  
Next: Episode C3.009 Balance Between Selling to the New and Servicing the Old

Written by Simone Douglas 
The Publican & Licensee of the Duke of Brunswick Hotel, Executive Director for BNI Adelaide North one of the biggest networking organisations in the world, the driving force behind South Australia’s leading social media agency, Digital Marketing AOK and now best-selling author with her first book “Seriously Social – turning your online game into real-world gain”.

You can connect with Simone on any of her seriously social platforms
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IBGR 0:06
This is William Eastman managing partner for Growth Works Media and station director for IBGR. One of my jobs is finding great on air talent Consultants and business owners presence with a story to tell. We’re expanding our broadcast team to represent our four core time zones North America, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the Philippines, the Indian subcontinent and the last four, United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe and Africa. If you are a small business consultant or business owner would like to audition for an on air slot in our six hour show cycle, contact the station director and that is at programming@IBGR.network, we will respond to your email within one business day. Thanks for listening and don’t miss this great opportunity to put the world back to work and grow with us.

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Simone Douglas 2:37
You are listening to the IBGR.network. IBGR is our callsign as a radio station and I am your host Simone Douglas. This is episode 8 in our C lane at IBGR.network sales and marketing today go to our website at IBGR.network and download the show notes to keep you on track today. And just just in case you’ve missed any of the one percenters so far.

So we move on to what it is that you need to do. So the challenge in any market or environment is making the most, is making the most of your new customers when they arrive and new market segments is accessing new audiences and networks and leveraging them. So here’s the simple to do list that I apply in all three of my businesses to ensure that I’m making the most of my resources and the opportunities that are out there that are available to me. Okay, first question I asked myself and the team are all of our ducks in a row? Do I have the right content on my website? And do I have a strategic plan for the organic content on my socials? Do I have some clarity about where I’m going and the types of customers that I’m trying to access and what is interesting to them? So quite often what will happen is that we make the mistake that we are the most interesting thing in in the world, and that what we’re talking about is all that our customers want to hear about. Okay? We default to a selling position instead of a relationship building position. So one of the biggest challenges is, am I building relationships with my customers through my organic social media content through the blogs and articles that I’m writing on my website, am I continuing to surprise, delight and inform them in a way that strengthens that relationship and moves them along the different stages of our customer journey? It’s important that we’ve also identified what that customer journey looks like, where the speed bumps might be, where we’ve fallen down in the past, and how we’re going to make the most of those different aspects, ensuring that the journey is a smooth one. And again, one that turns those people into net promoters. So for those of you that were listening, last week, we were talking about the Net Promoter Score question. It’s a really simple question that you want to make sure that you’re asking people at least quarterly that you’re checking in with your customers and saying on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend my product or service to your friends and family? We’re looking for 7 to 10s. That means that they’re a promoter that they really they’re enjoying their experience with you, they’re highly engaged, and they would happily refer you to their networks. If you’re getting the scores in the middle, then we’re in a little bit of bother. They’re called neutral and so we need to figure out how we can navigate them beyond that, and if they’re in the detractor basket, you’re either about to lose them or you need to put some serious runs on the board to fix that relationship. So getting clarity around that customer journey is really important.

We also have one of the next things that I like to ask myself is have I or my sales staff identified at least one structured networking environment like BNI that I will attend weekly and have identified at least three to four non-structured networks that I can play in on a monthly basis? Have I set myself some key performance indicators around, not how many sales I get out of those non structured networking events, but how many relationships I have started, how many follow up coffees, I’ve been able to do to get to know what makes people tick in the local business environment and in my customer segment. So my golden rule is often, if you are routinely attending networking events only to sell, you will get very few sales and you will mostly just irritate people and burn potential relationships that could be quite profitable. So you want to go out there looking to make business friends. And when you’re really lucky over time, you’ll turn those business friends into business family, and business family members are the ones that bend over backwards for you, they’ll facilitate the introduction that changes the face of your business, and they do it because you’ve earned your stripes with them. So attending those structured and non structured networking events allows you to continuously be expanding your networks in a way that supports your business success and your sales over time, and it gets to a point where it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. So the golden rule for me is if I’ve got to a point that I can’t walk into the room at a networking event without knowing at least 10 people, then it’s time to find another non structured networking event to play in, doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing this one that’s starting to really pay dividends, but I need to look for the next pond or the next pool to go swimming in because you never want to be spending all of your time where everybody knows you. That means that your networks are starting to constrict, and if your networks are starting to constrict, so is your customer base because they’ve heard you messaging already too many times. Then we need to look at what is my unique selling proposition or USP and how am I rolling that out in my advertising on both traditional media and digital? So you know, often many of my customers are surprised to learn that I actually think that there is a place for traditional media. I think that you know, if your customers are in an ageing demographic or not only that you’ve just identified that they all read a specific paper or they you know, get information via TV, then understanding where they play and reinforcing your traditional media with digital campaigns that engage and continue to follow people around to the point that they make that purchase decision is a really powerful way to reinforce brand recall. But what is my USP? Again, going back to features and benefits. People are interested in features but they buy benefits. So you have to get clarity around what are the benefits to your customer of buying that product or service , OK. Now a benefit is not a factual statements or benefit arguments like if I’m working with a divorce lawyer that’s really good at dealing with you know, mediation and parenting plans, you know, the benefit that they’re selling me really is security that, you know, I’m going to be okay and that I’m going to maintain custody of my children or whatever it might be. Okay. So these are the things that you need to be aware of. They’re intangible, but they’re the end result. They’re the end emotional or mental result of engaging with you, your company to secure a product or a service. Whereas features are it was simple, it was easy. It was structured all of these kinds of things.

So go back to your feature and benefits model and really get clarity around what your messaging should be around that and what your emotional hooks are, because all of those things will have some benefit. Then we need to look at should I be hosting or sponsoring events? And if so, what kinds Okay, so for me, I host every four weeks And Not A Boardroom Lunch. So it’s basically an old school business lunch where I get 20 business owners in a room. It’s never the same people, and we just sit down we have an old school lunch for two hours. Business isn’t on the agenda, we’re just there meeting new people. point having conversations. Funnily enough, business always gets done because people meet new people, and someone has an immediate need for somebody’s product or service. It also positions me at the centre of that network and as a centre of influence, and it’s a really powerful tool to expand our brand in the marketplace. Likewise, I host a dinner every six weeks for really successful women in business, who don’t necessarily like attending women’s only networking events. So they want to come and have some real raw conversation, so we do it over dinner in a private dining room, but again, it’s 20 business owners, who happened to be female, who are having those conversations and so I solidify my networks in different ways across the board. So what should you be sponsoring or hosting and think outside of the box? Okay, golf days have always been super popular for sponsorships and things like that, but what’s the real benefit to your business? Or is it that you just like a tax deductible day to go play golf. All of those things are okay, but having clarity around the what the why and what the outcomes are that you want from it are going to be really important.

Lastly, do I have meetings booked to this quarter to have cross collaboration conversations with my potential referral partners? So what is that win-win situation that we’re into? What am I trying to achieve, and where am I really building on those referral partnerships and relationships in a way that will have them share my content across their channels? So a really good way to do this is to set up live interviews, whether it’s Facebook live events or you know, you’re hosting them live on YouTube all of those things work really well because then you’re having conversation with someone that’s interesting to the wider marketplace. But you know, not banging on about everything that you do, you know, a great way that we do that Digital Marketing AOK is to have Seriously Social the Podcast, and so we have a conversation, you know, with interesting business owners that’s unscripted a little bit raw, and it goes where it goes, but it gives people something interesting to listen to that is consistent with our brand representation in the marketplace, which is being human, and talking to interesting people. So who are the people in your networks, who you can cross refer to? Who can regularly refer to you and have I set up those meetings to solidify those relationships in the next quarter? You should be having meetings with these people, you know, regularly, probably once a month, really, to find out what’s happening in their business, share what’s happening in your business and find other ways that you can both help each other, leverage what it is that you’re doing to get the most of it.

So bearing all of that in mind, remember that the power of your networks will determine to a large degree what happens on your new customer acquisition journey, life happens and business happens. It will be easy or hard based on how well you curate and support the networks that you create. So make sure that what you’re actually doing is going out of your way to put deposits into the favour bank. So when you’re making regular deposits by helping the other business owners in your network, then when you need a favour, it’s easier to call in that favour. The biggest mistake that people make is that they abuse the networks that they’re trying to create. So they’re forever asking, asking, asking and taking. And when you do that, what you’ll find is the network’s really aren’t predisposed to helping you at all. So, next week’s show, C3 we’re going to be covering the balance between selling to the new and servicing the old. Now depending on the size of your business or organisation, it can be really difficult so it’s definitely something worth having a look at. And I’m looking forward to discussing it all with you next week.

And the next episode of the day, you have the pleasure of listening to the dulcet tones of Richard Miller, a branding giant on the world in the world of advertising and marketing in his Building Brands and Selling Stuff, he’s going to take you through winning most profitable business, qualifying and quantifying an opportunity. Does the client fit with your business objectives, and can you make a difference to that client and a host of other things that will contribute to that happy dance at the end of the day when you get everything right.

So you’ve been listening to Seriously Social The Humanistic Approach to Sales and Marketing, episode C8, Identifying New Users for Existing Offers on International Business Growth Radio Network IBGR, I’m Simone Douglas and I look forward to hanging out with you all …