Dog Eat Dog & Vice Versa
9 Secrets to Put the Bite into Your Marketing
Chapter 1
DO IT NOW!
Who do you think was responsible for the famous Nike® ad “Just Do It”? An Advertising Agency! Yes, in 1988 in a meeting with Nike® employees, Dan Wieden of the Wieden and Kennedy Agency (W+K), coined the phrase “Just Do It ™.” That simple phrase would amount to what most people consider the most definitive and effective tagline in advertising history (CFAR, Center for Applied Research). Why was it so effective? It’s simple, it tells the whole story, and it’s the truth. W+K, and other agencies, know just how truthful that statement really is. Can you imagine if they used “Just Try It!” instead? Even you and I know that wouldn’t work.
After reading this book, many of you will say, “I’m going to try some of those ideas…,” which means you never will. How do I know that? Let’s do a little experiment? Raise your right hand over your head. Okay, now put it down. Now TRY to raise your right hand over your head. No, don’t raise it, TRY to raise it. It may be just semantics; however, TRY tells the subconscious mind that you don’t have to do it. Think about it, if you said, “Rossi, why don’t you and Bishop stop by the house this weekend, we’d love to have you.” And I answered, “Thanks, we’ll try.” Will we be there? Of course not, using the word ‘try’ tells us we don’t have to. So don’t TRY the marketing ideas we’ll demonstrate in detail, DO IT NOW!
Each New Year begins the ‘Exercise Resolution’. Yes, you read correctly, not revolution, resolution. You know that time of year when we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “I’m going to the gym!” Gyms, Health Clubs, Yoga Studios, and YMCA’s across the country clean up their front office, put on extra sales staff to ready themselves for the onslaught of newbies, and re-newbies. This is the time of the year they make their profit. They count on us to enroll and show up a couple of times and never come back. I’ve reached the point where I just send them a check and forget about signing up. The first week of January for four consecutive years, I would look in the mirror and renounce fat, fried foods, sugar, and cream and proclaim my resolution, “This year, Rossi, you’re going to Just Do It™!” and I did, yes I went out and bought a new pair of Nike’s! It’s almost like that tagline is an embedded command. It’s positive, it’s simple, it’s repeatable, it creates a sense of urgency, and above all, it’s memorable. Nike® and W+K know the power of “Just Do It™” over just try it. How many times do you think this happens across the country every January? You can purchase the report to learn the exact amount from the US Market for Footwear http://www.mindbranch.com/catalog/print_product_page.jsp?code=R567-508 for $3,000 plus shipping. This report will give you all shoe manufacturers’ productions; it will be up to you to extrapolate Nike’s® numbers. Or, you can look at Nike® stock performance. Now I’m not holding myself out as an expert stock analyst; however, over the last five years there has been a big sales spike in January and February. Of course, a certain amount of this increase can be attributed to the gift buying holidays, or is it someone else saying DO IT.
For Nike®, “Just Do It™” is a tagline, brand line, or position statement. Later, we will discuss the creation and cost of such statements and how such statements can become a theme. Now, I simply want to use the phrase “Just Do It™” to make a point that the First Secret Ad Agencies don’t want you to know is: DO IT!
“Do what?” you ask. Let the people that can and will do business with you know you know you’re there. Let them know what you do, where you are, how they can find you, and let them know you want their business, and that you will do a great job! Just get your name out! Do it, do it, do it and do it NOW! Yes, what the message says is important, but it’s more important to Do It! Get something, anything, out there! The market has to know you exist quickly or you’ll cease to exist.
There are huge numbers of small businesses that fail every year, according to the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Economic Research. They have determined that 60% of small businesses fail before their 6th anniversary. These numbers are closely related to the number of small businesses that talk about marketing but never do it. The preferred method of marketing by small businesses is still word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is what happens when customers share information about your company with their friends.
Word-Of-Mouth Math. The numbers are strong based on Marketing 101: Each person knows 200 people and each 200 knows 200 and so on. If you establish great word-of-mouth advertising, you conservatively penetrate your market two levels deep. This means that every person who walks away happy after doing business with you will tell 200 people and they will tell 200 people, you’ll reach 40,000 people via word-of-mouth. Wow! Simply having 100 satisfied customers would generate 4 Million impressions! Four Million would know about your business. This word-of-mouth math was hyped before I began teaching marketing in 1975. It is well meaning and sort of true, at least the math is right. I believe this math has caused many businesses to fail because the owners said, “We’ll be so good at everything we do that our customers will be our best marketing.” And then count on word-of-mouth as their only marketing.
Five Fallacies of Word-Of-Mouth Marketing:
- One – Word-of-Mouth Marketing is ALL I need.
When the world was small, word-of-mouth wasn’t even necessary. We didn’t have a choice of where to do business; one general store, one livery stable, and one (if any) café. Then came the growth of the forties and fifties, businesses popped up everywhere with choice of brands, styles, and conveniences. Word-of-mouth became a necessity.
The phrase, “Success is based on who you know,” was born. Service was king as urban sprawl took over and business owners had to work harder to hold on to business. Everything was directed toward maintaining customer loyalty. Business owners would pride themselves on remembering names, faces, all of your family members and how everyone was connected. I remember driving half an hour to Meads Hardware, owned by old family friends, to get our Philco TV tubes checked and replaced. We would then go downtown to have prescriptions filled by ‘our family’s’ Pharmacist, Frank Riley, at the Rexall Drug Store. We then got our hair cut by dad’s barber, far from our house but close to his work.
Sadly, those days are over. In this fast-paced, “got to have it now” world, we look for the closest convenience store, strip center, or MegloMart to do our business. The ‘family business’ is all but gone as they can’t compete with Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target, convenience stores on every corner and a grocer on every other. Word-of-mouth is good and it can help, but believing that is all that’s needed to compete in this world is a sad mistake.
- Two – Negative News spreads faster than positive news.
It’s a known fact that if you make a mistake, have an off day, or lord forbid, your customer meets a disgruntled employee, they will tell a larger number of people about a negative experience than a positive one!
We are a society that thrives on the negative. Turn on the TV or radio, pick up a newspaper, or magazine, and what do you hear and see? Positive, good news, atta boy stories about wonderful happenings? No, you see war, disease, disasters, lying, cheating, crime, and abuse. Consider talk shows like Jerry Springer and others that make millions from the weird, degenerated, tainted part of today’s gene pool. Even the success-oriented American Idol caters to the negative by showcasing the screechy, tone deaf, no voice losers first. You know they wouldn’t do this if they didn’t get high ratings. My family and I watch it and believe it to be the best part of the show; grimacing, wincing, and giggling as we watch their horrible warbling of the ‘what were they thinking?’ wannabe contestants, and cheering on Simon Cowel as he tells them that they are possibly the worst singers he’s ever heard. There is a word for this response, it’s ‘Schandenfreaude’, a German term meaning ‘pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune’.
Another reason that negative news spreads faster than positive is that it is easier to remember the negative than the positive. If I said, “You really look nice today, that’s a great coat.” You’d most likely negate it with, “This old thing?” Many of us can’t accept a compliment. Let’s say you accept the compliment and hours later I point out that you have a poppy seed stuck in your teeth. Tomorrow, what will you remember, that I complimented your coat or that I pointed out the poppy seed? The poppy seed of course; hence, it’s easier to remember the negative.
Prior to 2001, we in the US had an abundance of freedom that we hardly appreciated. Then on one dreadful day in a flash, it was over and America rallied in fear of this negative event. The fear of losing freedom is a far stronger emotion then the joy of having it.
Negative word-of-mouth can be devastating.
- Three – Inconsistency in quality service and products are the norm.
The cost of training has exceeded the pace of hiring. The cost to train a minimum wage employee is approximately $250 per day. To circumvent this cost, we seek out experienced employees. Unfortunately, experienced does not necessarily mean trained. And if they are trained, are they trained in attitude, quality, and customer service? Have you noticed that even if they say they are, they might lie? Forget about calling for references. If you have a bad employee and ask them to leave, and their new employer calls you for a reference, what do you say? Nothing bad I’ll bet because you might get sued if you do.
So what happens to word-of-mouth when this Danny Dotel or Sally Sue ignores your customer or gives them the wrong part or direction? Everyone reading this can tell a horror story here. The end result is, you lose.
- Four – People are reluctant to give positive recommendations.
Has this ever happened to you? You go out to eat and have a great meal with wonderful service. As you leave, you plan your return. Then the next time you come back, YUCK, nothing’s good! But there is something worse. I call it the ‘sunburn effect’.
Bishop and I frequent an off-the-beaten path Italian Cajun Road House Restaurant called Mosca’s, across the river from New Orleans in Avondale. It’s old, quaint, inexpensive, and has exceptional food. In 2003, I was scheduled to present to an association of 20,000 attendees. We had bragged, to many of our member friends, about Mosca’s for years, so we decided to pre-plan an evening. We invited 12 people to join us for the 40 minute drive out of the French Quarter. That’s a big commitment when you think of the multitude of world famous restaurants within walking distance. I hired a van and a driver, as we planned on drinking mass quantities of inexpensive house wine with dinner. On the drive over, I whet my guests’ appetites with talk of oyster casserole served in iron skillets, Cajun barbequed shrimp, and angle hair pasta with promises of a night to remember. It was that, but for all the wrong reasons.
The place was packed as usual and the smells of fine food flooded the parking lot. They only accept reservations for large parties so we were down and on time, but I still warned my guests that there would be a wait. I assured them, however, that it would not be long and the owner would ease the time and hunger with his ‘la familia’ attitude, milling about the bar with platters of olives, fresh shucked oysters, garlic shrimp, and stuffed mushrooms. The usually cordial owner was obviously overwhelmed and in an extremely gruff mood. He scowled at us and barked at the hostess as he told us to go sit in the bar. The bar was packed with people and cigarette smoke, which quickly overpowered the smell of food! To my surprise, the carafes of house wine had been replaced by pricey wine lists and a corking fee. After an hour and a half of standing and several trips to the hostess stand asking, “When will we be seated?” we were finally given a table. The wait staff reflected the mood of the owner as they rushed us through our selections telling us, “No oyster casserole!” When I inquired as to how they could be out of their house specialty, the quick retort was, “Did we say we were out?” “I believe so,” I replied. “No we didn’t!” “Good, then bring us four orders.” They came back with, “No oyster casserole!” “Are you out of oysters?” I asked with anger in my voice. “Nope, we’re out of them skillets.” And it continued like that until we left with a tab three times as high per person as we had ever spent, indigestion, and sullen moods. See what I mean by ‘sunburn’? When you get excited about a person, product or service, and tell others and then it falls short of your praise, it ‘sizzles’ your skin!
I have yet to meet anyone who does not have a similar story. We are afraid to give a positive recommendation as we don’t want to get burnt. We’ll keep the words in our mouth to avoid this embarrassment.
- Five – We undervalue what our compliment might mean to others or just don’t know how to give a compliment.
To understand the value of a compliment, let’s examine a simple one like the thank you note. I’m a big proponent of thank you notes and I have been since I received my first one. When’s the last time you received a thank you note? It was for a gift correct? Well, they had better send one; after all, you forked out $50 for the gift off their register so you could eat rubber chicken and drink sugary punch while listening to some garage band play Proud Mary fifteen times.
Seriously, how do you feel when you send a gift and never get a response? Yeah, like that’s never happened to you. At least the thank you note eases the pain even if it’s twelve months after the ceremony. But have you ever received a thank you note that you didn’t expect? Wonderful wasn’t it! I got one from my mechanic that said, “I cannot tell you how much we appreciate your continued business. Thanks for being a friend of First Class Automotive.” It was a generic postcard, but it was first class posted and addressed to me! The point is, I didn’t expect it. Their message was a compliment to me and I continue using them as I have now for over twenty years! I believe this demonstrates how thank you notes can be subliminal marketing pieces. We’ll cover this in detail in Chapter _____.
Another example of using complimentary thank you notes centers around a check out gal, Ruby. Since I do the cooking at home, I also do most of the grocery shopping, devising a menu as I whisk up and down the aisles. Once in the grocery store, I have one objective, GET OUT! So at each round of the aisle on the check out side, I eyeball the checkers. I’m looking for the fastest checker who smiles and likes their job! I’ll do anything to avoid that slow-mo checker who wears out the scanner attempting to get the register to ring and has to bag their own as no one wants to work with a grouch. There she was, beaming at register 4, a large, smiling, conversant, redhead with a name badge that read, Ruby! She was scanning cans faster than a 60 year old guy on his way to the can! When it came time to check out, Ruby had a three cart line where checkout number 7 had two. I went to Ruby’s and, bingo, done in about the same time as checker 7 was starting her second cart. Later that evening, I wrote Ruby a thank you note, copied it for her manager, and mailed both. Three days later, stopping in for bread and wine, I walked through the door of the Krogers and, from across the store I heard, “Hello Mr. Rossi!” There was Ruby waving the note I’d sent. Checking out, Ruby said with a thick West Texas accent and a tear in her eye, “I’ve been checking groceries for seventeen years and this is the first thank you note I’ve ever received.” Oh, and the manager posted his copy on the bulletin board next to the office. I had no idea the impact this thank you note was going to make. Over the next year, if Ruby was there, I went to her line. She always greeted me loudly and had time to laugh and talk about her daughter, my business, and the weather. Ruby, without asking, consistently sent me clients and I, of course, sent her a thank you note each time. It was a sad day in Black Rock when she ran off and married a drummer in a country band who moved her to Tucson. Thank you notes are an invaluable form of compliment because they are uncommon, earnest, easy to carry out, and empowering to both parties.
Whenever you receive a referral, the first thing you do is send a thank you note to the referring party, even if no business was transacted.
What’s the best way to give a verbal compliment? Immediately, delayed compliments are never as gratifying as ones given as soon as noticed. Blanchard and Johnson say in their best selling business book, The One Minute Manager, “Catch someone doing something right.” This works in all areas of life. When you see someone effectively doing their job, no matter how small, give them a compliment.
Mark Twain said, “I can live for two years on a good compliment.” It doesn’t have to be some well-crafted oration, a simple, “Nice job,” “Thanks for the service and smiles,” or “You make doing business here a pleasure, thanks.” The idea is to do it promptly with a smile and eye contact with the person you’re complimenting. In the book, Find Something Nice to Say – The Power of Compliments, by Computer Competence, the author suggests that we give 25 small compliments a day for personal empowerment. Make compliments a habit; keep them short and always sincere. Just as when we sanction incompetence, it continues and grows. Compliments have a people changing effect. It’s Pavlovian as in ‘conditioned response.’ When people are complimented on a job well done, they have a tendency to repeat doing the job well; an empowering concept.
Being on the receiving end of a genuine compliment is wonderful and, if it’s in writing, all the better. Written compliments are ‘Testimonials’. ‘Testimonials’ are amazing marketing tools (see chapter??). The problem is that people feel incompetent in giving compliments.
My research has uncovered three areas that people claim as their reason for not giving compliments:
First, people are reluctant to give compliments (see Fallacy Four above). Another reason for their reluctance is that they have had a negative experience with someone who over complimented them (see Third below).
Second is self-effacing. Comments like: “What I have to say is of little or no value.” “I’m sure they hear that from people that count.” “It doesn’t matter what I have to say.” Oh no, the self-confidence card! I could write a book on this one, but none better than Rosabeth Moss Kantor’s, Confidence.
Third, compliments sound so phony. I can empathize with this one. I live in the South, I’m not from the South, but I got there as quickly as I could. It’s a fabulous place to live, with wonderful, warm-hearted people. However, they have a tendency to compliment everything. “If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all,” was coined in the South.” Am I saying that Southerners are insincere? Not at all, they will just as often work harder at looking for something positive to say. If they have something negative, they will say that as well. However, that will be done privately, as confronting you would be rude and impolite, especially in public. See Fallacy Two above.
In a business environment where criticism is withheld, incompetence in service continues to exist and the business is sure to fail. As a client of mine said so succinctly, “With compliments, you stay the same, with criticism you grow.” Remember, the hot book of the 70’s, The Peter Principle, by Laurence Peter, and his premise, “Everyone rises to their level of incompetence?” He also said, “Never sanction incompetence.” I took this to mean that if we permit incompetence, then growth will stop, which is what my client was saying, “…with criticism we grow.”
We’ve dispelled the number one reason that people don’t DO IT NOW; word-of-mouth will take the place of marketing with our five fallacies and we’ve established a need to market your business and to ‘DO IT NOW’. We have also recognized that ‘DO IT NOW’ simply includes the basics of; tell them who you are, tell them what you do, tell them how to find you, tell them THANKS, and tell them often! These are all basic business success actions. It’s what many call working smart. If you’re like many of us, we’ve been told all of our lives, “Work Smart Not Hard.” So just what is ‘work smart’ anyway? I have been told that so many times, I couldn’t begin to count. About five years ago, I decided to spend time and thought on the subject. After asking hundreds of successful people, “How do you define ‘Work Smart’?” I created the following: ‘Work Smart is simply doing the basics better and more often than anyone else.’ There’s no magic touchstone, no secret words, nothing but doing the basics better and more often then anyone else.
Again, the basic marketing elements are: Tell them who you are; Tell them what you do; Tell them how to find you; Tell them THANKS for their business; and Tell them often! Now how do we do this?
To define how you will ‘Do It Now,’ we will have to establish a few things. First, as Stephen Covey says, “Begin with an end in mind.” Who is your customer and what do you want them to do? If you’re a residential carpet cleaner, you want homeowners to hire you to clean their carpet. If you’re a personal injury attorney, you want people who have been involved in an accident to come to you. If you are a commercial landscaper, you want office building owners with whom you can create annual landscape maintenance contracts. This should be obvious; however, I met a man recently who owned a gutter-cleaning business. When I asked who his customers were, he said, “Business people who give me leads,” whatever that meant.
Next, where are these customers? This, too, should be an obvious question; however, a very common answer is, “Everywhere.” This could be true, but you would have to have a really big plan to market to everyone. There are plenty of companies that do market to everyone but they’re defined as Business Giants. Their products and services are Global in prominence. Most didn’t start big, they became big. Henry Ford didn’t start with a million dollar marketing budget, he started small with big ideas. If you are Anheuser-Busch, Ford Motor Company, or IBM, you won’t be reading this book. Now that that’s settled, let’s define where your customers are.
Target Marketing here, or what?
Now that you’ve identified where your customers are, it’s your job to stay in front of them. “Do It Now!” and do it as fast and cost effectively as practicable.
Summation addition
Secret number one, “Do It Now!” WHY is this a secret and why don’t ad agencies want you to know this? It’s simple, time is money. If you hired an agency, they would give you a campaign timeline and projected schedule that would look something like this eleven point timeline:
Client meeting and information gathering session
Define target market and revenue value
Budget development
Revenue projections
Uncover outcome parameters
Creative Concept Development
Presentations of three or more draft solutions
Finalization of decision solution
Creative conclusion development and presentation
Media placement and projection
Campaign activation
This would take a staff of people about 4 weeks to complete not counting meeting with you and meeting your available schedule, providing that that they don’t work on anything else. Time is money and this would cost a lot. Agencies know that this eleven step process works; however, they know better that if you were to do something, anything, you would have just a good a chance as if you were to develop a full plan. It’s like Zig Zigler says, “Many people are like a biscuit in the oven that squatted to cook and got cooked in a squat.” Too much getting ready to get ready instead of just “Do It Now”! If agencies were to let you know this, you probably would never make that first appointment. I’m not saying that the many great people that work in these agencies are not valuable or important. I’m not even saying that you should not use an agency, I’m only saying that if you are a small to medium sized business and spinning in circles not marketing, fretting over what to do and what to say, STOP IT! Do something, anything and DO IT NOW.