Pollen Marketing

How much do you spend on Yellow Pages advertising each year? More importantly, are you getting a return to justify that cost? If you are not reviewing your Yellow Pages ad results, you may be shovelling hard-earned dollars down the drain. News Flash: My Yellow Pages go straight into the recycling bin. I don’t even let them in the house. My 9 year old will never ever know what they are.

Here are some flaws:

1. Expensive. Depending on its size and location, an ad can cost around $7,000 per year. Add in extra for designing a customised ad per letter or bold font. It takes a lot of clients just to break even at those costs. I know a business who spent well over $20k a year.

2. Clutter. Where does your ad live? Depending on the size of your market, right next to dozens, perhaps even hundreds of your competitors. I said your competitors!

3. Lack of Engagement. In today’s world, it takes a variety of messages to reach your audience and motivate them to contact you. There is nothing personable about an ad in the Yellow Pages.

4. Difficult to measure. Yellow Pages ads don’t allow you to test different marketing approaches. Once you place an ad, you have to wait a year to test a new headline or message. And unless a client says they found you through the phone directory, you have no way of knowing the effectiveness of your ad.

5. Reach the wrong market. Find out who actually reads the Yellow Pages. Are they actually the people who would buy your product or service?

Did I say never use Yellow Pages ads? No – a well designed Yellow Pages ads certainly have a place in ‘some’ marketing programs. However – If you went through the global financial crisis and the only thing you left in your marketing plan was your Yellow Pages ad – you have a problem. Advertising and marketing are not the same. You would be totally surprised as to what half of that Yellow Pages budget could achieve elsewhere!

As an owner of a start up or small business, you need to be many things to your business. One of those things is the Brand Manager. Blurry images, ill formatting, or links that go nowhere all add up to a sloppy impression. One thing that is very important is your email address. For a business or most organisations fit555@gmail.com is very unsuitable. You certainly can’t put it on a business card (if you don’t have those – we need to have a stern talk).

If you own your URL website domain name like www.gsbc.com.au, with a Google Apps account connected to your domain, you can have up to 50 users (in the standard edition). Google Apps also includes SMS calendar reminders and document sharing. Go and get it here.

An additional feature we use alot is the storage in the ‘Cloud’ of your documents or what I like to call a Collaborating Platform for my colleagues and I. Paying a hosting provider cost more money and is not worth it for just a few employees or team members.

Note: If you want tech support you better grab a $50/year Google Apps account instead. I haven’t needed it. The Google forums have been able to help me out so far. If you need help setting it up, drop me a line.

I was in a situation recently where I was seeking a web traffic analytics tool. In this particular instance, an over the counter product just wasn’t suitable for my client. In a meeting, I was asked various questions about what I needed it for and why. Later when it came time to present their offering to me, the gentleman had taken it well past the basic prescription I had asked for. I could see he was ardent about his craft and very intelligent. Nonetheless, to me it felt like he hadn’t listened to a word I had said. True – his solution was packed with loads of features that were no doubt remarkable and even groundbreaking, but many of them I hadn’t asked for and would not need.

Overselling can be a number of things.

1. Over promising – ie selling beyond what your goods and services are capable of delivering. A smart buyer will recognise this and you won’t get the sale. Others less astute may buy but will be disappointed and will either not come back to you or it will cause disputes. A good way to prevent this type of overselling is to understand the limits of your products and services and remember the adage “PROMISE GOOD AND DELIVER BETTER”.

2. Not recognising when you have the sale – You must listen to and watch the customer’s body language and not keep giving them information when they have already decided to buy. If you recognise when to stop selling and take an order you can always offer more information and the time of delivery, this will help show the customer that you are truly interested in them beyond that first order. This is very common.

3. Motor mouth – Again quite common. That is when a sales person just feels they have to tell you everything they can about everything they can. No cure for this but to get them out of sales and as far away from your potential or existing customers as you can.

In essence sales is about what you as a sales person don’t know about your customer’s wants or needs and therefore your ability to question them carefully until you fully understand what they really need to satisfy their requirements. This is a very important skill and in my opinion requires a certain degree of selflessness (that is another post). The customer is very grateful at this stage and if you can offer goods or services that meet that need do so. If you can’t see if you can point them in the right direction, Selling goods or services to a customer that don’t fit that need/desire requirement is the worst form of OVERSELLING. Indeed it is very selfish.

In short, overselling is selling beyond a customer present or reasonable future need/want requirement, selling above what your product or service is capable of delivering or simply over stating everything and most of all the inability to listen. Selling is simple – give em’ what they want.