Attracting Customers « Zenworkz Blog

Attracting Customers

The Key to Finding Customers – A Deep Understanding of what makes them tick!

Successful small businesses continuously seek feedback and a deep understanding of what makes their customer tick. This helps them anticipate evolving customer needs and wants to help them fine tune their product and services offerings.

Market Intelligence is an activity that all businesses, whatever their size, should engage in to answer the questions of “who, what, how much” your customers buy, “when, where” and, what is happening in your market?

At a fundamental level gathering Market Intelligence is as simple as talking to your customers, asking them about themselves, what they like, their issues or problems in their business; and storing that information. Then to be used to inform product or service development decisions and marketing campaigns; identifying trends and preparing your business for whatever the future brings.

No customer is wholly satisfied with their situation, because if they were satisfied, nothing would ever change. Insecurities cause dissatisfaction which then motivates us to pursue actions to change the status quo. If you want to write a marketing message that resonates deeply with your customer, you have to tackle their dissatisfactions as well as their wants.

Overwhelmingly, what people are worrying about is finding the right customers? And it helps to know what they’re willing to do to resolve this.

Use this approach to build a clearer profile of your ideal customer:

What price are they willing to pay?
Are they willing to shop around or make an immediate purchase?
How desperate are they?
Do they need a solution immediately or over time?
How much do they want to work with you compared to another business?

Customers sometimes have different needs and therefore are attracted to different offers. In creating your USP or Value Proposition, you need to satisfy the following:

be distinctly superior to other offers available,
be highly valued by a sufficiently large customer market,
it’s possible to communicate it in a simple and impactful way,
is not easily copied by your competitors,
that the target customers will be capable and willing to pay,
that you will achieve additional profit margin as a result of being different.

You cannot position yourself as the preferred solution if you have not deeply understood your customers needs or frustrations, nor can you build rapport without being absolutely authentic. What are their frustrations and how could you reduce or eliminate them?

With the answers to these questions, you can create marketing plans that have a balance of strategies for attracting new customers as well as retaining existing ones. You will know what areas you need to work on and what to constantly keep on top of to avoid losing customers.

Evolving and tailoring your business marketing message and offer for your ideal customer builds trust, and trust creates raving fans and advocates. Customer advocates will promote your business to potential customers; the very best way to find more customers.

When was the last time you asked your customers how they feel about your products or services?

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the boss lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and educates businesses to think, create, engage and optimise their marketing effort. She coaches customers in strategies for traditional and online marketing; and implementation. If you would like free how-to-do-it-yourself marketing resources or to subscribe to free e-news about all things marketing, please visit the website:

http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to our fabulous community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Attracting Customers / Authentic Marketing / Authentic Message Creation / Authentic Values / Inspiration — No Comments
2
May 13

Great Quotes for Marketing!

Welcome to the Marketing Quotes that I have created over the last year.

Dream. Believe. Plan. Create. Succeed.

Observe the masses, then do the opposite.

Customer Focus: Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

’Those who tell stories – rule the world’ ~ Plato

Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make it’s colours appear.

Rejection can sometimes be the Universe’s way of saying ‘wrong direction’, find another way. ~ Unknown

Dream the impossible. Seek the unknown. Achieve Greatness.

The Facebook Paradox: The attention economy is not growing! That means we have to grab attention that someone else has today!

To be successful, you must surround yourself with positive people and seek advice from capable, trusted sources.

About the content creator: Teresa Bassham is the boss lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and educates businesses to think, create, engage and optimise their marketing effort. She coaches customers in Strategies for traditional and online Marketing; and implementation. If you would like free how-to-do-it-yourself marketing resources or to subscribe to free e-news about all things marketing, please visit the website:

http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to our fabulous community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Action Plans / Attracting Customers / Marketing Plans / Setting Marketing Strategies / Yearly Business Review — 4 Comments
24
Apr 13

Sounds a little crazy but is it time to stop the busyness?

When you have a vision of how you want to make a difference in the world through your business, you can become overtly obsessed with finding customers and sales.

You do everything that the ‘experts’ tell you – you are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Community Engine, go to Networking events, joined the Chamber of Commerce – post, blog, comment on everything and anything; but it still may not get enough customers to pay the bills.

Feeling a little desperate, you ask and listen to the advice of valued friends, networking colleagues and kindly marketing, PR and business ‘experts’, read copious blogs, hoping that someone will give you enlightenment, a way through and that all important result – more sales. You become overwhelmingly busy trying many different strategies and tactics, dropping them quickly when results don’t turn out like you expected. Increasingly feeling like you are wasting time, which only increases your feelings of frustration, because you know the customers are out there but you don’t understand why they aren’t buying this fantastic opportunity?

From my extensive experience with small business startups, when marketing activities become reactionary, it will feel like you are drowning, always treading water to keep your head up and keep breathing. Every new tactic is a floating piece of wood that you cling to, but underneath the surface you are working your legs franticly just to stay afloat – does this sound like you?

The good news is that there is a buff Bondi life saver waiting to save you. The bad news is you may need to stop all the busyness, rethink your current strategies, narrow your focus to the highest priority activity that will give you the maximum impact; and have clear goals and an action plan. Simple right? It depends. How are you going to feel if you stopped all the busyness on social media channels, after you have objectively assessed that it’s not bringing you customers or sales?

We have been brainwashed to a certain extent to ‘keep calm and keep on engaging’, keep churning out the remarkable content through social media channels; rather than objectively assessing our ROI and it’s validity to achieve our business goals: life long customers who pay us well, and building our fledgling business.

By narrowing and highly targeting your business focus, it will empower you to see results quickly. Seeing results will lift your flagging spirits, put a smile back on your face, get your creative juices flowing again, and boost your results.

How? By simply taking timeout of the busyness and working on a priority action plan – one with a very narrow focus with no more than one or two objectives – sounds crazy but it is liberating – trust my experience, I am a Marketing Coach and I’m here to help you! Is it time to liberate yourself, your busyness and your demons?

Let me know how you are doing, and if applying this approach will help you?

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the boss lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and educates businesses to think, create, engage and optimise their marketing effort. She coaches customers in Strategies for traditional and online Marketing; and implementation. If you would like some free how-to do it marketing resources or to subscribe to free e-news about all things marketing, please visit the website: http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to the community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Attracting Customers / Authentic Marketing / Authentic Message Creation / Mindset / Trends — 1 Comment
18
Dec 12

Zenworkz Marketing Predictions for 2013 – Be yourself, Believe in Yourself

If you have followed my blog for a while you would know that customers love marketing that presents a human connection which includes:

being sincerely valued,
being heard,
feeling important to your business, and
the experience of getting more than they expected.

Your unique marketing message is how well you personalise these emotions, and do it sincerely.

The creation of your unique message is finding which “wow factor” you can deliver that would mean the most to the customers that matter most to you.

Forget the distractions, like chasing trends or the next new thing. Go back to basics, talk to your customers and focus on your core package or offer that you haven’t quite nailed yet.

Zenworkz Marketing Prediction for 2013, be yourself, believe in yourself.

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the principle of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, and is passionate about educating small and medium business professionals to create their differential advantage, attract more ideal customers and create a marketing plan to achieve success. She coaches customers online and by phone – if you would like to request coaching – please contact me.

Attracting Customers / Customer Research / Marketing 101 / Marketing Plans / Setting Marketing Objectives / Setting Marketing Strategies — No Comments
17
Dec 12

Small Business Marketing Goals for 2013 – Get Started Now!

The end of a year is a good time for contemplation and review. It’s also a time to determine your businesses goals for the New Year.

Smart business owners are working on this task now. Where do you want your business to be one year from now? What do you want to achieve?

If you start your planning today instead of waiting until the new year is upon you, you’ll have much more time to consider, review, decide, prepare, organise, and communicate the important outcomes that your business wants to achieve to be successful during 2013.

With that in mind, here are some steps to build your 2013 marketing plan:

Talk to your customers: Successful businesses start planning for a new year by talking to their customers. They listen carefully to what they have to say and respond accordingly.
Establish very specific strategic and financial goals: SMART goals lead to better outcomes. You will have both strategic goals (markets, customers, competitors, products, services, distribution channels, staffing, resources and processes) and financial goals (revenue, margin, expense, and profits). All should be highly defined and very specific.
Set long-term and short-term goals: Long-term goals (such as yearly revenue forecasts) provide sign posts to help you measure progress. Short-term monthly and quarterly objectives focus your business on the steps that accomplish the longer-term goals. Allow for variation in your planning. Have a set of alternative options that address unexpected challenges or opportunities outside of your control.
Measure, evaluate, and act: Review all your goals at the end of each month. You can evaluate and determine what needs to happen before the next months review to align current results with expected outcomes.

In a nut shell, to succeed in establishing and reaching your marketing goals, you should focus well in advance on what needs to happen and spend effort necessary to ensure success. While some goals may be harder to achieve than others, effort now will refine your focus and improve the time and energy you spend on reaching key objectives that bring your bigger goals within reach.

Get started now, and you’ll be much more likely to succeed in the new year.

Attracting Customers / Integrated Marketing Strategy / Marketing Analysis Tools / Marketing Masterclass / Marketing Mix Strategies / Marketing Plans — No Comments
7
Oct 12

Marketing Masterclass Questions 1 and 2 – getting started!

MARKETING IS EVERYTHING you do to grow your business, from the moment you conceive it, to the point where customers buy your product or service, and keep coming back on a regular basis.

“You can see marketing as a circle that starts with your idea for making a living doing what you love, and completes itself when you have the patronage of repeat and referral customers” ~ Zenworkz Marketing Coach

Marketing includes your business name, determining the best product or service to meet a demand by customers, the colours, sizes, and shape of your product, the packaging, the location of your business, whether it’s brick and mortar or an online shop, the advertising/promotion, the public relations, the sales training, the sales presentation, phone enquires, problem solving, the growth plan, the referral plan, and the follow up. What you see is that marketing is a complex process.

Your business purpose, differentiation strategy, defining your product or service, identifying viable customer segments, unique marketing message or selling point, marketing mix elements, market forces analysis, SWOT analysis …. overwhelmed yet? Well, of course you are.

Because if you try to tackle all of these things at once, you’ll give up. No person can process all of that in one hit. But the good news is I will make it easier through this Facebook series of discussion questions: MARKETING MASTERCLASS, where each of those complex questions can be broken into relatively simple discussion topics and best practice.

Clarity can be gained. Challenges can be overcome. Problems can be solved. Solutions can be put into place. One question at a time, each weeknight, just in time to tackle the next one. When you feel alone and frustrated by the complexity, you can find a community of fellow business owners who can help you with ideas, feedback and support.

1. What is your business purpose?

The point here is just to communicate the essence of what makes you get up in the morning and what impact you want to make for a customer with your work. Your business purpose statement expresses how you want yourself and your business to be seen to the wider customer community.

2. How is your business different?

It is the unique and the different that makes a lasting impression. Never be afraid to be different or take the road less travelled. Do not be afraid to do or say something others will not (caveat: diplomacy and tact take precedence here). Be creative and stand out from the crowd in a positive way.

The goal for MARKETING MASTERCLASS is to ask the hard questions and through your answers, facilitate and enable you to develop a plan to use in marketing your business. The process of planning is based on matching your purpose, skills and capabilities with your customer needs/wants/challenges, in the environment in which your business operates.

Process Step: Capture each question in a document: save it as _______ Business Marketing Plan and let’s get started?

Any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment here or on Facebook?

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the principle of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, and is passionate about educating small and medium business professionals to create their differential advantage, attract more ideal customers and create a marketing plan to achieve success. She coach customers online and by phone – if you would like to request coaching – please contact me.

To participate in MARKETING MASTERCLASS visit and “like” my facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Attracting Customers / Authentic Marketing / Authentic Message Creation / Authentic Values / Branding / Engaging customers — 1 Comment
7
Aug 12

Why should customers buy from you?

In your journey to attract and keep new customers, unique and authentic messages work best. Today, a small business must understand and optimise every interaction with customers in a way that establishes positive, emotional responses to form meaningful relationships with you and your message.

Getting the message right for what your business sells is important, because it provides the basis for your business relationship with your customers; and it answers the question foremost in every potential customer’s mind: Why should I buy from you? Over time, these customers will become your best marketing advocates and promoters.

Here are 3 tips to help you to create your authentic marketing message and grow your business:

Any authentic message must be simple: Put yourself in the shoes of potential customers and ask “Are my messages easy to understand? Do they motivate customers to purchase?” When constructing your authentic message, you need to first research your ideal target customers. Then visualise who they are and write directly to them.

Benefits – not features, will grab your targeted audience’s attention: Your customers want to hear a clear, simple message that demonstrates that you understand their situation – that you recognise the problem they wish to solve, or the outcome they wish to achieve. Followed by a specific offer or explanation how the benefits of your products or services will help them address their situation. A simple authentic message like this will be the single deciding factor for customers choosing you over someone else.

Tell your authentic story: Potential customers buy from people they know, like, and trust. Building trust begins with sharing the story of your business and the people behind it. Telling your authentic story helps both you and your prospective customers by:

Demonstrating your values, so you naturally attract customers who relate to you
Explaining why you do what you do, which helps prospective customers understand you and trust you
Sharing your unique persona, enabling customers to understand what you’ll be like to work or deal with

In today’s crowded marketplace, with new competitors emerging from around the world, distracted audiences, and almost saturation marketing of products and services; it is more important than ever to ensure that when you have the attention of a potential customer, you are able to offer a compelling and authentic reason for doing business with you.

Taking an authentic marketing approach, developing insights into your customers’ needs and wants, and understanding what motivates them requires effort and investment. Figuring out what you stand for and the core authentic message you present to your ideal target market as a brand is easier said than done, but is easier with the help of an Marketing Coach.

I’d love to hear your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment or question below.

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the principle of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, and is passionate about educating small and medium business professionals to research their customer market; create their authentic marketing message; attract more ideal customers; and create a marketing plan to achieve success in 2012/2013. She runs local workshops in Northern NSW and coaches customers online and by phone – if you would like to attend the next scheduled workshops or request distance coaching online –please contact me.

Visit my website and subscribe for monthly e-News updates on all topics related marketing.

For daily Authentic Marketing updates visit and “like” my facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Advertising / Attracting Customers / Authentic Message Creation / Authentic Values / Coaching / Engaging customers / Integrated Marketing Strategy / Keep Calm & Keep Marketing / Marketing 101 / Selling — No Comments
17
Jul 12

Keep Calm and Keep Marketing Part 2 – Focus on Marketing Tactics

Recently I responded to a request to help small businesses that were feeling despondent because of falling sales and general feelings of frustration with marketing a small business in difficult, trading times. In this series of posts, Part 2 will focus on marketing tactics you can do to survive and thrive.

Firstly don’t be tempted to stop marketing! This is not the time to cut back on marketing activity. The key to building customer awareness is to take consistent, regular action. Be sure to keep your marketing activities going at least six months so that you can track your rate of return.

Promoting your products or service, little and often is better than one large, expensive campaign. The more you crop up in potential customer’s awareness, the more they feel that something is drawing them to you. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this from my customers – it was meant to be! Little did they know it is my marketing tactic.

Identify your best product or service by it’s revenue margin; then focus your promotional and selling efforts on this only. Add as many low cost promotional options as you have time for, like Twitter and Facebook Pages to broadcast valuable information about how to solve customers problems or bring them joy. Update your LinkedIn profile regularly with updates about your business and any valuable content such as blog posts.

Work out how you are unique to your best customer and focus on doing this better. Define what your unique marketing difference is and promote that consistently. Being different and finding that difference is easier in a service based business because YOU are unique. Finding the difference in a product market, means adding or augmenting your products with value added services, like lay-by’s, special deliveries, or exceptional customer service – there are a thousand different options. The secret is understanding what you need to do to make your service or product a vital part of someone’s life to the extent that they just won’t be tempted by your direct competitor’s offers.

What makes your marketing message unique is your story, your purpose, and your values. What makes your message compelling is that it is customer focused – it speaks to the customers hot button that your service or product fulfils as a necessary part of their life or business. It must tap into the emotional metaphors: looking good, feeling good, being successful, rewarding themselves – refer to Maslow’s Hierarchy of highest needs.

Finally, recognise that you can’t always do this alone and if you are, not with peace or joy. To be able to hire support, you need to focus on sales and cash flow. You may need support from someone who can guide you? A coach or mentor can look at your business and your progress with an honest and objective eye; and guide you away from costly mistakes and focus on a direction that may well challenge you; but will also bring you the business success you desire.

I’d love to hear your thoughts? Please leave a comment below:

About the Author: Teresa Bassham of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing inspires small businesses to develop and use an empowering Marketing and Communications Plan for Business Profitability … see my full services at www.zenworkz.com and while you are visiting my website – subscribe for weekly e-News updates on all topics related to authentic marketing.

Attracting Customers / Keep Calm & Keep Marketing / Marketing 101 / Marketing Plans / Process Improvement / Selling — No Comments
9
Jul 12

Keep Calm and Keep Marketing! Part 1 – Focus on Sales

Recently I responded to a request to help small businesses that were feeling despondent because of falling sales and general feelings of frustration with marketing a small business in difficult, trading times. I too experience these feelings, they come up for me when business is slow, and I follow my own advice which centers around the philosophy that:

“A clear vision, backed by a marketing plan, gives a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.”

In a series of Keep Calm & Keep Marketing posts to help improve feelings of confidence and personal power; part 1 will focus on 5 tips to improve Sales:

Develop 30-day sales goals each month

Break down how many sales you need each month to meet your revenue targets. Determine exactly how many meetings, calls, emails and blog posts you need to have, make, send or write to generate your target sales.

Make the first task of every day, activities to create sales

Focus each day, first thing in the morning, on actions that are “selling” or will definitely lead to sales. Do this offline and don’t go online* (*read getting distracted) until complete. You should be doing at least 60 minutes of sales cultivation activities per day.

Ask existing customer for referrals

Ask for referrals, they can always say no – but be honest – you need the work or you need to sell!

Prepare for “ Sales Objections”

Write down all the “sales objections” you get from potential customers and then script positive responses – so you are prepared for them when they are spoken. It will be the difference between passive and active selling that will get better results.

Mine that dormant pot of gold!

Follow-up on old sales leads – get out every old business card, brochure or any other sales lead that you may have and start calling these contacts. Take out any old enquiries that had not been converted into orders and follow up on every single one of them.

Let me know if find you find these tips helpful? Please leave a comment below:

While you are visiting my website – subscribe for weekly e-News updates on all topics related to authentic marketing.

For daily Authentic Marketing updates visit and “like” my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Attracting Customers / Branding / Integrated Marketing Strategy / Marketing 101 / Online Marketing — No Comments
2
Jul 12

Is Facebook Failing Small Business!

Social media promises so much, the numbers online are staggering and everyone’s involvement is on the rise, but why is the average small business finding it so hard to realise the potential of social channels, like Facebook?

Being the beginning of a new financial year, it’s timely to question whether the continued changes being made by Facebook (presumably due to the IPO); will be to the detriment of smaller businesses trying to use Facebook in a cost effective way to promote their business?

It’s very difficult to get any real information about small businesses failing in their social media actions. The predominant voice in the marketplace is overtaken by businesses who make money from those “struggling with technology and digital marketing strategies” and “all you need to know about being success using social media” approaches! We are being so drowned out by the marketing messages above, that small business is rapidly losing their voice (and reach) on Facebook. Why? This “Facebook selling” industry is driving social media and there is no room for facts and data because they are selling a dream (and you should know that by the number of times every day the word “dream” appears in posts!).

It’s time to face some facts:

Social Media is not free and costs are increasing! If you are a business and your time is worth something – time spent on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Pinterest/Youtube has a cost to your business. To be even moderately successful, requires time and commitment, to regularly engage; and keep up to date on your own core subject area, to be able to craft good quality content.

You need skills and knowledge, often about subject areas that are new and ever changing. Mastering these skills takes you away from your core job of running your business. Solution: hire someone to manage social media for you; but these people value their time more than you do and they actually charge for this enormous investment in time.

It’s often hard to gauge this but not every social media channel is right for every business, because it’s depends which channels your customer engages in? Not understanding this fact, is like throwing cow pats at the barn door and hoping some of it sticks!

Very few small businesses actually define “Measures of Success” to evaluate their social media marketing efforts! Is it more sales leads, more likes, great brand awareness? Failing to identify your marketing promotion objectives, means that you can’t measure; and therefore you don’t know if your time and efforts have been rewarded with a measurable result?

Much of what I see on Facebook are businesses talking about using Facebook to promote Facebook. Have you ever thought of not just using social media to promote your website, but instead combining the power of the Internet with traditional marketing concepts?

Marketing promotion through any media, is based on four concepts, commonly referred to by the acronym AIDA: First, you need to attract the customers Attention; you then gain their Interest in your product or service by highlighting the benefits it will bring to them; following this you create Desire (the “must have” message); and finally you motivate customers to take Action (make a purchase). The most effective way to move through each step of AIDA with your customers is by blending traditional marketing with social media marketing.

It is possible to improve your business results in this next financial year using traditional marketing concepts with social media; if that’s the channel that reaches your customer market effectively. This is where the use of an empowering marketing action plan will keep you focused on achieving your business goals, with measurable results from effective and appropriate use of social media marketing channels.

Are you a small business using Facebook? Do you think Facebook is failing small business? Please leave your comments below:

While you are visiting my website – subscribe for weekly e-News updates on all topics related to authentic marketing.

For daily Authentic Marketing updates visit and “like” my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

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