Not to put a damper on things, but so what? High open rates feel good (believe me I know) but what does that really mean for your bottom line?

Last newsletter started at the very beginning, now I want to jump all the way to the end: The ‘Call to Action’. Often seen as a ‘Click here to learn more’ button, the Call to Action is an essential yet often overlooked part of any marketing message.

In the short term, this makes getting something out of your marketing efforts possible. In the long term, it forces you to ask hard questions about why exactly you are communicating with your customers.

Your goals may feel obvious, but close examination of your past marketing may reveal that you aren’t communicating those goals clearly. If people aren’t sure what you want them to do, they’ll simply do nothing.

When it comes to your business, you know (or should know) where, when, and how you actually close deals and money winds up in your pocket. As great as facebook and twitter are, there’s no way for money to change hands, so it’s not happening there. Odds are it isn’t happening on your beautiful website, either.

For most businesses, some form of direct, face-to-face contact is necessary for the deal to close. The call to action must always be used to draw customers closer to the point where business actually gets done.

Remembering this will go a long way in making sure that your marketing budget isn’t going to waste.

The call to action will form the basis for the next marketing element that is going to need consideration: the offer. The offer is the ‘why they’ll do it’ that drives the ‘what you want them to do’.

So, if you’d like to lean more, fill out this form to receive your Free one hour consultation.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s newsletter.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

And, what better place to start talking about email than at the start of the email: the subject line?

As with most things in life, the thing that is probably the most important usually winds up getting the least amount of attention. Which is unfortunate, because after all the time that you’ve put into crafting your message, it’d be a shame if it went unread for the want of a few interesting words.

So, what to do? Well, here are some basic guidelines that are worth keeping in mind and will help you avoid some common mistakes.

The most important takeaway? Cut to the chase. You can tell people exactly what’s inside the email, or you can tease them a little; just make sure your subject line provides a clear and unambiguous reason to click.

But remember, these are only guidelines -they can’t tell you what works with your customers.

To really get results, you need to find out what works (and what doesn’t) for your audience. The best way to do that is simple enough; look at the numbers. Check previous emails to see what kinds of subject lines got responses and use those to narrow down the types of subject lines that you’re going to try in the future.

Going forward, test out different subject lines and track the results.

This should help you clear the first hurdle of successful marketing -getting people to listen.

But don’t think that a clever subject line will solve all of your problems. Establishing trust and developing a positive reputation are still essential if you ever want your email to be more than spam in the eyes of customers.

Next month we’ll take a look at the ‘Call to Action’.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s newsletter and are busy getting back to business.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Sincerely,

Bradford Nicoll
Bradford H. Nicoll -Marketing Communications
516.652.6530
bradfordhnicoll@gmail.com

I know it’s nice outside, finally, so I’ll be brief. I was going to write about an article that caught my eye, but while I was combing through the sites I usually visit for an appropriate article, I started getting IMd by a young man that I’d met at a networking event and subsequently accepted a facebook request from.

It was a short chat that let me further explain my company, and ended with an agreement to stay in touch and with me adding him to my newsletter list.

Maybe we’ll work together, maybe we won’t. But, it’s an important reminder that even if you don’t have a ‘social media’ strategy or any desire to build a company page, it’s worth being in those places.

At their most basic, social media platforms are (free) communications channels, and there’s no reason to close them off.

The reality is, that with fewer opportunities to communicate, it’s no longer enough to reach people at the right times, you need a message that’s really going to connect. Getting someone to listen to your message is hard enough. Getting someone’s attention and then taking their thoughts to a topic that they aren’t already considering is exponentially harder. Putting your message where their minds already are will help do some of the heavy lifting.

Unfortunately, there is no set formula for when and how to speak with your customers. The only thing you can do is to spend some time thinking about your customers, their industry, and what its natural ebb and flow is. By taking this into account, you can do a better job of making sure that you (and your message) are on the right topic, in the right place, at the right time.

As I have mentioned in previous blog postings and newsletters, companies with enough resources can purchase a well crafted identity and put it on like a uniform. Potential customers learn about who you are from your website and marketing materials, and your sales force creates a customer experience that matches that identity.

If you are the company, the identity is presented and experienced through personal interaction first, and then it is (hopefully) backed up and reinforced by the website and marketing materials. The challenge becomes finding an identity that is compelling and engaging, while being true to, and representative of the person. And, at the same time, it must hint at something bigger than a single person.

After all, one of the reasons to adopt a company name and brand identity is to convey to customers that you are not just one person, but a ‘company’. Justified or not, freelancers are seen as unpredictable rouges, while companies are reliable partners. Anyone that is serious about building a future for themselves needs to build ongoing partnerships. Becoming a company is an important step in that process.

*Name suggestions are welcome.

Pulling myself out of the minute details of my own niche to look at the whole picture with fresh eyes can give me a lot to think about, and I highly recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately, I find that a lot of the marketing seminars out there place so much emphasis on the technical details of what can be done and how to do it, that no attention is paid to the why you are doing it.

The ‘Why’ is better known by its technical name: ‘Strategy’. And, anyone with any experience or understanding of marketing will tell you that without a good strategy behind a plan, it’s not going to get anywhere.

There are lots of great new ways to communicate with current and potential customers, but if you don’t know why you are talking to them, there probably isn’t a reason why anyone would listen. And, if they’re not listening, the what and the how become a lot less exciting.

This is probably one of the hardest and scariest parts of building your own business. Besides the strategic trade-off between pricing yourself out of work and being saddled with clients that won’t ever pay you enough to make a genuine go of it, there is the philosophical dilemma of putting a tangible price on what you do (and by extension, you as a person).

The psychological hurdle is probably the hardest to clear; having potential client doubt your worth can really make you start doubting yourself, too. So, when I find myself having to quote a price I try to remember this important piece of advice from my first marketing professor: ‘In the absence of other evidence, consumers use price as an indicator of quality.’ Just ask this guy.

Or, as my friend, a one-time Red Bull rep told me, ‘You’ve got to pay a premium price for a premium product’.

Don’t spend effort convincing people that your product is worth their money only to have your price tell them that it isn’t.

But is anybody listening? Is just saying ‘value’ enough to convince consumers to open up their wallets?

Shouting  ‘value!’ at anyone and everyone within earshot is not the same thing as Communicating value. Communication is not just saying something; it is making sure that information is received. And for good measure, genuine communication should involve some degree of interaction.

‘Value’ is not about what the consumer gives up (and you get), but what the consumer gets back. Unless you want to get caught in a race to the bottom and possibly priced out of existence, you’d be better served by approaching the value discussion with this in mind.

I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a nerve-wracking proposal that is a lot easier said than done, but for the long term health of your business you should think about what you can add, rather than trying to see how much you can take away.