Client Appreciation Versus Client Referral Events

Clients sometimes confuse client appreciation events with client referral events and while the difference seems subtle, done correctly a client appreciation event will bring in referrals naturally as a result of the feeling of goodwill it generates whereas a client referral event is very much a business development exercise.

• Client Appreciation Event is to thank current business clients.
• Client Referral Event is for clients to bring one or more of their “qualified” friends to meet you.

A Client Appreciation Event assists businesses in retaining existing clients and developing repeat business, whereas a Referral Event is a vehicle to attract new clients. But remember, clients go where they are invited, and they stay only where they are appreciated.

Here are some ideas for a Client Appreciation event ranging from a few dollars per client up to about $ 100 per client. All of these need “fleshing” out to make them work, but they give you some food for thought. They are not all my ideas so thanks to all who have contributed.

1. Put on an old-fashioned family picnic (bouncy castles etc)
2. Take clients to sports events (football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc.)
3. Put together a Wine & Cheese tasting at a local restaurant or wine store
4. Chocolate tasting at a local Chocolatier
5. Host a dinner cruise
6. Invite clients to a theater event
7. Have a mobile spa come to your event (in Dallas try A Spa Affair)
8. Rent a movie theatre for a first-run movie
9. Host a holiday party
10. Have a wardrobe consultant give a presentation
11. Casino Night with proceeds to a charity
12. Invite clients to a cooking class
13. Rent out a public pool for a family swim night
14. Host a tail gate party at a sports event
15. Organize a family hike with a picnic after
16. Invite people to a tournament (golf, baseball, croquet etc)
17. Hot air balloon rides
18. Weekly dance lessons for clients
19. Create a Scavenger Hunt for clients and a have a party after
20. Rent the IMAX Theatre for a special showing
21. Take them to the horse race track and give them $ 25 to gamble
22. Have a Magician teach clients magic tricks
23. Hire a relevant Speaker
24. Reserve cars or go-carts at the local car race track and invite clients to drive them
25. Sports Fishing charter
26. Dinner & Private showing at an artists home
27. Whitewater rafting trip
28. Rent out a spa and provide 2 treatments per client
29. Evening golf lessons with a Pro

Have fun and make sure your clients feel appreciated.

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Collaborative Branding

There is a new concept in collaborative branding called Freshly Branded which I am going to watch. I have tried to participate in a number of these “marketing idea submission websites”, but the reward is never equal to the effort invested. I also feel like I am giving away too much, but this one may be different.

What is Freshly Branded?

Rather than going to a traditional design or marketing firm that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, Freshly Branded offers these services at a fraction of the cost (as low as $99) by allowing creative people from all over the world to compete. Held in a contest type format, the creative will submit their work for review to the business and after the contest has ended will choose the best one. Freshly Branded simply acts as a sort of intermediary to connect the business with the creative and makes sure interaction between the business and the creative goes smoothly.

What are Projects?

Projects are an open call to work on a particular creative need by a business. The Project creator, usually a small business, will provide a brief detailing what they need from the creative community. Typical projects include logo design, slogans, business and product names, etc.

How does a Project work?

The project creators write a brief describing what they want. They choose an award amount and finalize payment which is then held in escrow by Freshly Branded. The project is then posted on our site and creatives from all over the world will submit their concepts. After the project time has ended (typically 2 weeks) the project creator picks a winner. Freshly Branded will then attain the appropriate necessary files from the project winner and transfer the files. Once the files have been delivered the payment is sent from our escrow account to the winning creative, all rights to the winning project are transferred from the creative to the business.

How much does it cost to post a project?
To offer the service, Freshly Branded takes a flat $39 US fee plus 10% of the awarded amount. We also offer a couple of other services for a flat fee.

It is free for the creative community to submit their concepts to projects.

Why You Shouldn’t Take NO for an Answer!

Based on a study by The National Sales Executive Association I have a whole new outlook on the word “no” Now that I know I am going to hear it 98% of the time when I ask for the order it makes selling more fun.  According to their study 90% of your sales will come after your fifth follow-up with a prospect.

According to the study (which I  was not able to track down on the internet)

Average Sales Person After 1 NO!

• 2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
• 3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
• 5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
• 10% of sales are made on the 4th contact
• 80% of sales are made on the 5th – 12th contact

If you correlate this data with a post I wrote a couple of  years ago titled “Why prospects don’t respond with just one contact” it helps rationalize how important persistence and timing are to selling.

So why don’t people respond to your offer right away?  The fact is, most of the people who have an interest in what you are offering ‘do not’ usually respond the first time they receive your offer. They may have every intention of doing so, but for one reason or another, they don’t respond.

• They procrastinate.
• They get side-tracked by something else.
• They need to think about it–and then forget it.
• They don’t have the money right now.
• They have a million other things that they have to do first before they seriously consider your offer.
• Their circumstances won’t allow them to respond now, but those circumstances may change completely in a few months.

And on and on.

I always have flyers, emails, letters, post cards, etc. of offers that I am genuinely interested in. But I put them aside with every intention that later I will study them more closely and make a decision then. More often than not, those letters, emails, etc. eventually get misplaced or tossed.

So it is not necessarily your personality that is the problem. The best advice is to follow up…at least 5 times it would appear.

If you enjoyed this article and don’t want to miss the next one click here to get my marketing posts by email as soon as they are published. You will be prompted for an email address and you are set to go.

New Monthly Newsletter Service

I have been creating monthly newsletters for clients for years, but never offered a monthly service. I would like to announce that I can now provide a printed 2 page or 4 page newsletter complete with your branding and space to add your personal message such as a market update, recognition of referrals or new products and services. I have access to copyrighted articles that I can use in my newsletters so you can be assured of well-written and legal content.

I can either print and courier the finished product to you or email you a pdf that you can send to your local printer or Staples type store. Prices start at about $2.70 each for 200 2-page color newsletters and $3.65 for 100 4-page color newsletters. Call for a quote.

Here is a sample of a recent newsletter I created for a client. Call me at 800-568-8338 to request samples or send an email to marketingguy@shaw.ca.

Page 1

Page 2

When Is the Best Time to Send Marketing Emails to Your Database?

The answer is 6:30am.  Marketing messages, newsletters or other client communications should be in your client’s mail box when they start their day.  Two other strategic times are during lunch and near the end of the day. This is because studies show that employees are more likely to surf the internet during lunch and check their email before they leave their office.

Dr. Frank Luntz recently released a new book titled “What Americans Really Want… Really.”  Frank Luntz is one of the most honored communication professionals in America today. “Time Magazine” named him one of “50 of America’s most promising leaders aged 40 and under” and he is the “hottest pollster” in America according to the “Boston Globe.”

In the book, Dr. Luntz summarizes the typical day of an average person .   Two key findings from a marketing perspective were:

• most people begin their day in the dark because they have long commutes to work. More than 3 million people travel 50 miles or more to work.
• most people now go online within minutes of waking up to see what’s going on in their community, the weather and to get updates from their friends and family.

You should try to deliver some of your marketing messages, newsletters or other client communications so that your prospects have them first thing in the morning.  The study also indicated that most people check their email before leaving their home for work.

I am an example of someone who checks their email first thing in the morning and tend to focus more time reading that I do throughout the day.

If you enjoyed this article and don’t want to miss the next one click here to get my marketing posts by email as soon as they are published. You will be prompted for an email address and you are set to go.

Do Cute E-Cards Really Work?

A recent article in Marketing Vox about holiday e-cards looked at whether e-cards sent be email helped make messages stand out.  There is no doubt that our mailboxes are going to fill up this holiday season but is using a digital greeting cards going to entice customers into their stores? Coincidentally I received and Elf Yourself card from a number of my kids and while it was amusing I am not sure if a retailer could capture my attention.

According to the a study by comscore.com, in general, e-cards are proving popular with consumers this year, especially as budgets remain tight. comscore.com recently revealed that the category received a seasonal boost in traffic in October, thanks to Halloween, Boss’s Day and Sweetest Day, writes MarketingCharts. The sector attracted 21.9 million Americans – a 15% increase from September – making e-cards the top-gaining category for the month. Top performers in the category were Evite.com, MyFunCards.com, AG Interactive and 123Greetings.com.

Here are two popular e-card offerings.

Dancing with Elves – OfficeMax is continuing its popular ElfYourself.com campaign for the third year. By uploading photos to the platform, consumers can create free, personalized holiday eCards of themselves – or whoever is in the photo – as dancing elves.  Office Max first offered ElfYourself.com in 2006 with such choices as “Disco Elves”, “Country Elves” and “Elf Classic.” This year the platform also offers “Hip Hop Elves” and “Singing Elves” that perform a medley of holiday music. New this year is a social media component in which users are able to access their photos using Facebook Connect, as well as being able to post them to friends’ walls.

Intel’s Singing Offer – In a similar move, Intel has kicked off its  “Make Your Holidays Sing” campaign, which lets users create a personalized digital e-card as and view Intel products. Here too, users can upload their photos and pick from music selections. The eCard creation depicts the photo singing along with the music.

Apparently this niche technique has proven to be very popular with online consumers – ElfYourself.com received 36 million views in 2006 and 193 million views in 2007. Those numbers dropped substantially last year, however, when the site introduced a registration requirement. The registration step was eliminated this year and, as a result, Office Max is predicting wave of blockbuster views.

If you enjoyed this article and don’t want to miss the next one click here to get my marketing posts by email as soon as they are published. You will be prompted for an email address and you are set to go.

The Feel Good Ripple – Word of Mouth Marketing

I wonder if we were to give our customers a $10 coffee card and told them it was not for them, but it was theirs to give to someone else , whether the act of making them feel good about giving it away would have a stronger impact on how they thought about us? I am going to try it and see what happens and will report back to you in a later post.

Canadian credit union Servus is handing out ten-dollar bills to 20,000 people giving them the opportunity to create a Feel Good Ripple by giving that money to someone else. Servus is asking customers “How will you use ten dollars to make someone’s day?” Suggestions include ‘buy flowers for the grocery store cashier’, ‘buy the coffee for the person behind you in line at the drive-thru’ and ‘give $10 to a homeless shelter to pay for lunch or dinner supplies’. By pledging $ 200,000 to the effort, the company hopes to start a ‘ kindness movement’ that will positively affect at least 20,000 people.

Servus is distributing the bills through its branches throughout Alberta, and asking participants to write up stories of their kindness—monetary or otherwise—on feelgoodripple.ca. By sharing their experience online or at a branch, participants have a chance to win one of ten, $500 donations to a charity of their choice. While the contest will end on December 1st, Servus hopes the Feel Good Ripple will continue long afterwards. As of November 21, 2009 there have been 840 people posting their “feel good ripple”.

This type of sponsored charity—actively seeking customers’ collaboration—is meant to underline the cooperative mindset of credit unions (as opposed to, say, banks).

Client Gift Idea for Christmas – Personalized Memo Pads

It is that time of year and you are wracking your brain for a simple item of value you can send to your clients (and prospects) that will make you stand out in their minds without going over the top. Well here it is.

I featured this idea last year and was reminded of it the other day when I was in a client’s office and she was jotting down her to-do list on her personalized memo pad I sent her last Christmas.  Actually she was down to her last 5 pages so I better get them into production.

I am a big believer that too much emphasis is put on the sender and not enough on the recipient. When you send something to your client that is all about you, how much time do you think people spend reading it? What if you could send something to your clients that showed that you value their business and ensures that your name and phone number stay at the top of their mind.

Click on the images below for samples, but keep in mind there is no limit to what yours can look like.

Why not send a personalized note pad? For as little as $ 3.99 per client you can give them something that will have value to them, they will keep as long as the pages last and differentiates you from all of the other suppliers.

All you need to do is email me a list of names, agree on the layout and I can have the pads laid out and printed right where you live. (some restrictions apply)

Call Mike at 800-568-8338 (Vancouver 604-618-5512) or email me at marketingguy@shaw.ca.

If you enjoyed this article and don’t want to miss the next one click here to get my marketing posts by email as soon as they are published. You will be prompted for an email address and you are set to go.

Great Christmas Promotion Idea

When is the right time to advertise Christmas promotional ideas? When the deadline is only weeks away.

If you are looking for a way to “Spread Cheer & Build Your Brand” at the same time then customized, candy, cookie or donut boxes are the answer. Give yourself or your sales reps a reason to get out this season and visit your customers and referral sources.

While the packaging is food-safe and designed for candy, cookies and donuts use your imagination and think of what you can put inside. You might want to use the boxes as wrapping for a promotional item.

For more information email marketingguy@shaw.ca or call Mike Blaney at 800-568-8338.

Marketing Definitions from the Top Marketers on Twitter

The SystemicMarketing web site and blog will launch next month, but in the meantime they have asked the top marketing book authors, marketing professors, marketing analysts, and CMOs on Twitter to share their favorite definitions of marketing. Here are a few, but the rest can be viewed on their website:

My definition of marketing goes something like this:

“Good ideas are a dime a dozen, but implementation is priceless!” - Mike Blaney

“Marketing is how value is created, commuted, and communicated from a firm or person to a customer.”
–Dave Aron, Associate Professor at Dominican University
www.Twitter.com/ProfAron

“Marketing encompasses activities that maximize the value to the customer and the return on investment when bringing a product or service to market.”
–Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice
www.Twitter.com/SamDecker

“Good marketing is developing trust between a consumer and a product. Great marketing is developing trust between a consumer and a product without the consumer even knowing it happened.”
–Jesse Friedman, Professor at Johnson & Wales University
www.Twitter.com/Professor

“Marketing: to identify, acquire, and retain higher-margin clients.”
–David Harkleroad, Chief Marketing Officer at Hay Group
www.Twitter.com/DavidHarkleroad

Marketing is communicating to your customers and prospects what you want them to do and why.”
–Simms Jenkins, Author of “The Truth About E-mail Marketing” from FT Press
www.Twitter.com/SimmsJenkins

“Marketing is understanding customers’ needs, and then fulfilling those needs better than anyone else.”
–Jim Lyons, Professor at the University of Phoenix
www.Twitter.com/JFLyons

Marketing is telling a story to a targeted customer segment that they want or need to hear — resulting in some behavior change or transaction. In order to build a long-term relationship with the customer, the story must be valuable, relevant, compelling, and consistent, and must truly solve the customer’s pain points.”
–Joe Pulizzi, Coauthor of “Get Content, Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing” from McGraw-Hill
www.Twitter.com/JuntaJoe

Marketing is the process of persuading others that what you have is what they’ve always wanted.”
–Michael Stelzner
Author of “Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged” from WhitePaperSource Publishing
www.Twitter.com/Mike_Stelzner

“Marketing is an integrated communications process which develops messaging that attempts to gain attention from people in order to accomplish specific objectives.”
–Eric Yaverbaum
Coauthor of “Public Relations For Dummies: Second Edition” from John Wiley & Sons

If you enjoyed this article and don’t want to miss the next one click here to get my marketing posts by email as soon as they are published. You will be prompted for an email address and you are set to go.