Your Marketing Shouldn't Conform To The Norm!

Some businesses think they've come up with a good ad if it looks the same as others. That is, they think it looks professional. Well professional ads don't make you money, good ads make you money. Chuck McKay, author of Fishing for Customers, has a pertinant blog post on the topic here.

Keep in mind your advertising should always do the following things:

1. Get the attention of your target market by hitting on the hot buttons they have about your product, industry, or service.


2. Educate your prospects about how you provide solutions that address said hot buttons.


3. Get your prospects to take action by making a low (no) risk offer that is easy to act on.

P.S. Once they take action, you need a way to capture the contact information of your customers so you can follow up with them and make the sale (and hopefully do it again and again).

Another Reason to Visit Saskatchewan - Sarcasm

Part of being a Saskatchewinner is being able to make fun of yourself. The following clip from Corner Gas demonstrates that very well.

If you have plans on traveling to Amsterdam or any place in Europe, you can find the best Amsterdam hotels online. So if you are in Europe, head over to Spain and find the best hotels in Barcelona. Also, the hotels in Rome are some of the greatest places to stay in Europe.

West Jet - Not Just Another Airline

This morning I had the chance to attend a breakfast seminar put on by the Regina and District Chamber of Commerce as part of the Business to Business Expo. The featured speaker was Mr. Richard Bartrem, Vice President of Culture & Communications at WestJet. In addition to the great breakfast provided by The Conexus Arts Centre, Mr. Bartrem's presentation was a great way to start the morning.

The message was excellent, and served as a great demonstration of how successful business models aren't difficult to think up but aren't exactly easy to implement. WestJet provides a great customer experience by infusing good values into their company from the word go. Richard offered many anecdotal stories of little things that have gone a long way to making WestJet the model for customer service.

The message that really hit home for me was the fact that businesses often get caught up in creating policies instead of just enpowering their employees to do the right thing. Employees (WestJetters in the WestJet world) shouldn't need to look up a policy to determine the right thing to do. If you hire the right people, they will know the difference between treating customers right and wrong. Creating policies just inhibits your employee's ability to do the right thing.

Now I have no illusions that WestJet's success happened by accident. They have hired people like Richard to make sure that they continue to provide the proper incentives and training to everyone on the WestJet team. This ensures that they continue to provide the same customer experience over and over again.

The WestJet story is just more proof that marketing can't manufacture demand for a company. You actually have to have a company worth doing business with. By creating a great company, all you have to do in your marketing is point out the great things you do and people will catch themselves saying "Ya, those guys are good at that".

Mr. Bartrem made the point that you have a choice when you wake up in the morning whether you are going to be happy, grumpy, or indifferent about going to work. WestJet has created a corporate culture that allows their staff to feel happy about coming to work, something not a lot of businesses can say. And it's no coincidence that they have no problem finding people to work for them, because they have created such a great company to work in.

Bad companies always talk about how hard it is to attract and retain staff in a booming economy. But the problem isn't usually just one thing like money or benefits that keeps people from working for those businesses. The problem is that people can't get excited to go to work for someone that isn't exciting. WestJet is headquartered in Calgary, possibly the most cut-throat job market in Canada. They have no problem attracting staff (Richard states they receive about 1500 unsolicited resumes a week at their people department). People want to work at WestJet because it's a great place to work. If it was only about the money, all those applicants would be applying in the oil patch.

So what could you be doing in your business to make it a better place to work? What are you doing to encourage an outstanding corporate culture? I know I've got some ideas to take to our clients.

Below are some examples of a few of the cool things WestJet is doing. Notice that they don't have a policy to rip down videos that pop up on YouTube concerning their company like others do. They recognize that if people want to talk about them and spread the word it's fine by them. They have nothing to hide because they are a truly great company. It's the fake ones that tear down videos on YouTube.

WestJet's B737-200 Retirement Party Fly By(e)

WestJet's 11th Birthday Mac vs PC Spoof - Call Centre

WestJet's 11th Birthday Mac vs PC Spoof - Profit Sharing

WestJet's 11th Birthday Mac vs PC Spoof - Live TV Install

WestJet's 11th Birthday Mac vs PC Spoof - Good Bye 200's

Getting Started With Email Marketing

Here's a good article I received in the Entrepreneur.com email newsletter about (oddly enough) email marketing. It provides a good introduction to email marketing, and gives you ideas about building your email list.

One of the ways they suggest to build your email list is to add a sign up box to your website. At LRS Consulting, we can help you set up a sign up box on your website and design auto-responders for you to help manage your opt ins. Have a look at our email marketing packages at the following address: www.lrsconsulting.ca/marketingpackages.html.

Saskatchewan Bound

LRS Consulting's Sean Stefan and his wife Katlyn were featured in the Calgary Sun on Saturday. You can view the slideshow that went along with the article on the Calgary Sun website here, featuring Premier Lorne Calvert and other Saskatchewan residents, including Sean.

The article is reproduced below, as written by Bill Kaufmann of the Calgary Sun. You can also read it at the Sun website.

Duo moves on to greener greens
UPDATED: 2007-10-06 03:56:05 MST

By BILL KAUFMANN, CALGARY SUN


REGINA -- He's a billboard boy for Regina's prodigal sons and doesn't regret the face time.

Even leading the good life in Calgary's backyard mountain playground wasn't enough to keep Sean Stefan from heading back to his Saskatchewan home town and urging others to do the same in larger-than-life fashion.

A job emceeing a Think Regina event targeting his province's ex-pats in Calgary last May drew the attention of provincial officials seeking a human face for its headhunting forays in Alberta and other provinces.

On billboards posted all over Calgary and Edmonton, a beaming Stefan reaches for a putter amid the come-on "the morning drive in Saskatchewan," mocking the commuting headaches in the Alberta cities.

"I've grown up around golf my whole life," says Stefan, 22, a member of the Regina Regional Economic Development Authority. He was told to be at a Regina golf course at 6 a.m. to exploit the soft natural lighting that graces the Saskjobs.com billboard.

"Now I get Facebook messages and e-mails and phone calls just about every second day from people who see me on their drive ... but we like it here so I don't mind it."

In 2005, Regina native Stefan worked in the pro shop of the Kananaskis Country Golf Course while living near the slopes of Mt. Nakiska.


But he and wife Katlyn -- who was attending college in her hometown of Red Deer -- had come to a crossroads, wondering about their futures while resisting the notion of living in Alberta's bigger cities.

They were living in Regina after Katlyn had transferred to that city's university "and we had to decide whether we'd go back to Alberta or stay here," says Sean.

Added Katlyn: "There's no way I wanted to go to Calgary or Edmonton -- it's too big for me.

"I didn't know anyone in Regina but they convinced me." Last February, the couple was able to purchase a mid-1970s-vintage, 1,100 sq.-ft. bungalow in Regina's northwest Normanview West area for $169,000 -- about half the price they'd pay in Calgary.

At that time, friends thought they'd made a mistake in paying the asking price for the home, but since Regina's real-estate market has taken off, the sentiment's reversed to the incredulous 'you got your house for the asking price?' " says Sean, while relaxing on his backyard deck.

Sean is now employed by his father's marketing firm, working with restaurant clients as far away as Hamilton, while Katlyn majors in accounting at the University of Regina.

"For that job, I get paid in Toronto dollars but pay Saskatchewan bills," he says.

"It's not too expensive here that you have to be part of the elite to do things."

Regina, he says, is small enough that young people like him are able to make a difference they couldn't in a place like Calgary.

"I'm able to work on boards with the mayor, to have a real impact," he says.

While there's "no replacing the mountains," the couple realized during their stay in Alberta they were too busy working to fully enjoy the Rockies' splendour.

"When we visited the mountains, we saw more and did more in six days than we did in all our time living there," he says.

Sean said he has no illusions about the ultimate power of billboards and headhunting sessions.

"You can't pull the wool over peoples' eyes and talk people into coming back to Saskatchewan," he says. "What we do will make people want to know more about it."

When asked about Reginians' perception of Calgary, Katlyn says some views die hard at her adopted city's expense.

"It seems the place where everyone wants to go to make more money -- some of the kids think Regina is a bit of a dead end," she says.

But her husband insists a revival of Regina pride and economic fortune is real.

And the cost of playing a beloved round of golf at the province's best courses is only about $60, he adds.

"Compared to Alberta, that's basically a two-for-one special every day," he says.

Using online video to enhance your website and your web presence

Should you watch the video or read the manuscript below? I think this illustrates the point I am trying to make. Regardless, below is the text, word for word, in the video.

Online video is a great way to enhance the experience your visitors have at your website. Chances are you have a lot to say, but who really reads a website from top to bottom?

The internet is a medium that people use to browse for solutions. If a solution doesn’t pop out at them, they’ll be off to the next website.

The problem is that the majority of people are lazy when they use the internet because they can be. Why would someone spend 10 minutes reading something when they could watch a video or listen to audio that tells them the same thing in 3 minutes? That’s why the best way to get your point across to your visitors is through video and audio. A video on your homepage is a great way to summarize what your business is all about. If it does the job well enough, people will take an interest and browse the rest of your site, maybe watch a few more videos, and potentially do business with you. It also helps you build a relationship with your visitors. You might not be able to see every customer that walks through your door, but with online video everyone that visits your website can see and hear you, allowing them to determine whether you seem like a sincere person that they would want to do business with. – And creating the content for your videos is not nearly as hard as you’d think.

As you can see from this video, I’ve just used a picture to display on the screen and recorded the audio separately using the microphone on my computer and a great recording program called Camtasia. And if you’ve seen some of the other videos that we’ve done for the LRS Consulting site, you’ll notice that some are screen capture videos mixed with powerpoint presentations, and others are just me or my Dad talking into our digital video camera. All it takes is just a little editing at the end to put it all together and your video can be posted for the world to see.

If you’re not sure how the whole online video thing can work for your business, I have some examples of the videos we’ve done for our own sites, as well as some of our client’s videos posted on our blog at http://www.reginabusinessblog.com/.

Not only is online video great for demonstrating your products, describing your services, and getting the message out to your customers about the value you provide, it can also help your website’s search engine rankings. By hosting your videos on all of the different video hosting sites out there like Google Video, YouTube, Yahoo Video, and Revver, you can link back to your website and use keyword rich descriptions to help the search engine rankings for your site. People will also be able to easily find your videos in video searches. By targeting the right keywords, you’ll be able to drum up a ton of free, ongoing exposure for your business. And if you make your videos informative and enjoyable enough, people will also send them along to their friends, which equals more free exposure for you.

We offer online video creation services as part of our online marketing service package, or if you’re just looking to have a one or two videos done for your website, we can put a package together to meet your individual needs. Just visit us at www.lrsconsulting.ca or send an email to sean@lrsconsulting.ca to find out more.

Thanks for watching. You just proved that online video works.

Another borrowed idea from Seth Godin - This one about business blogging

In this blog post Seth Godin writes about how blogs can lead to sales. He breaks the concept down quite simply so I thought I would share it with you.

Write your blog about the problems that people have with the products or services that you sell. Provide those people with a solution to their problems, since that’s probably why they searched out your blog in the first place. In the process you will build a reputation and sales will eventually happen.

Seth breaks it down like this:

Attract people in trouble --> Help solve their problems --> Build your reputation --> Sales happen

I hope this concept can help you better understand how a blog can help grow your business. If you're looking for help getting your small business blog started, visit www.lrsconsulting.ca to check out our online marketing packages, or send an email to sean@lrsconsulting.ca.

Advertising Isn’t What Brings People To Your Business

In my post on Friday I talked about how advertising isn’t bringing people to Saskatchewan. Well the same goes for your small business. Advertising doesn’t create customers for you, it can only remind people about what they already know or attempt to inform them about what they don’t know.

You see franchise advertising all the time telling you how great their service is or how well they do this or that. You can’t just tell people that you do something well, you actually have to do it.

When McDonald’s ads tell me smiles are free, and show a smiling 25 year old man with 3% body fat serving someone in a commercial, I don’t buy that for a second. That’s because there’s a disconnect for me between the guy in the commercial and the 5’2” 240 pound girl with a permanent scowl on her face working the drive-thru at the local McDonald’s restaurant. She doesn’t offer free smiles. She only mumbles something about ketchup and napkins.

My intent isn’t to make fun of McDonald’s employees (I haven’t actually eaten there in a long time) or the fast food industry. It’s just an example that most people can picture. The point is that you can’t create something in advertising and expect it to work because I won’t remember your ads, but I will remember what happens in real life.

The trick to marketing is actually in having something good to market in the first place. Coke and Pepsi aren’t different at all so they have to rely on polar bears and generation next to position their products. You don’t want to be in that position with your small business because you don’t have the budget. Instead, build a business that truly is better than anything else out there and then creatively tell people about it as often and cost effectively as you can. Sounds easy doesn’t it?