I stood there speechless.

Simplicity brings clarity. I believe this is why many of the answers we seek tend to evade us. We often over-think and make things much more complex than need be. Too much complexity ‘muddies the water’ and deprives us from seeing things as they truly are. Eliminating complexity and embracing simplicity in everything your business does is THE toughest unspoken challenge you really face as a business owner.

Marketing your business can be simple. Do you believe this or are you willing to keep buying into the b.s. of complexity?

Marketing your business simply requires you to attract and retain your Ideal Brand Customers (IBCs) and surrender your Less Than Ideal customers (LTIs).  

It truly is as easy as that. Here’s good news: 20-30% of your existing customers are already your IBCs!

Therefore, 70-80% of the customers you now have are LTIs. These LTIs are the profit vampires who have been consuming your staff’s time, efforts, energy and sucking the profitability out of your business.

And here’s the rub: you’ve been spending the profit from your IBCs on advertising to attract even more LTIs! Ouch!

The absolute best advice I can give you is to stop advertising until you’ve identified your existing IBCs. Do your detective work and create an initial profile of your IBC. Then do the MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do to figure out how to effectively attract more of them: start communicating with them.  

I am very grateful to the thriving retailer who kindly shared his ‘struggle to success’ story with my audience on that awesome June day. He stopped advertising as recommended in his Thrive Marketing Action Plan and started communicating with his IBCs over 12 months ago and in the process increased his annual sales 83%.

Stop advertising. Start communicating. It’s that simple.

Are you ready to take your business to the next level?

Cheers to Your Success!

Bill Jackman

Faced with the management of our respective business we are expected to keep up with the speed of technology in all we do. As my collegue, Andrew Goldsworthy has aptly noted, more and more businesses are succumbing to the pressure of “TGIF”, an idea conceived by our mentor, marketing legend Al Ries.

Apparently, this interesting acronym is now more than just thanking your blessed deity for helping you make it to the end of another work week. “TGIF” has now become a great way to understand the nature of the thinking that is urging the rapid adoption of social media’s acceptance and integration into our personal realities.  

“TGIF” stands for the 4 major ‘network’ channels in web based media that are dominating the thoughts of business owners across North America today: Twitter, Google, Internet, Facebook.  I’m willing to bet that if you are in business then you have at least one of these four ‘network’ channels, if not all four, broadcasting the current status of your business to the world 168 hours per week – 52 weeks a year. Yes – you read that correctly – you are broadcasting.

Have you ever considered for a moment that social marketing is like owning and operating your very own television channel? Like “The Food Network”, ”TSN” or “History” channels. How long would they keep their viewers interest if their shows kept repeating and repeating over and over and never got updated? What would happen to viewers if the updates were out of date too?      

And make no mistake about it – if your use of any of the four TGIF ‘network’ channels is not up to date and relevent then you are doing yourself more harm than good. My advice: stay current consistently – if you cannot -then stop using the channel immediately. At least until you review your promotional strategy and implement a system that guarantees you’re consistently staying current on all the channels you broadcast your business on.

If you examine TGIF you’ll notice the “I” is in the middle between the “G” and the “F”. The “I” stands for ‘Internet’ and is the channel you normally refer to as your ’web site’. I simply cannot stress enough the importance of ensuring your ‘web site’ is designed to attract, qualify, convert, optimize and retain your relationship with your Ideal Brand Customers/Clients (IBCs). Anything less than this is a waste of your time, energy and money. Few are the business owners I’ve met that have this crucial structure in their web site.  

Imagine how fast a television station would tank if they only broadcasted a range of programs designed for all different ages and interests without any FOCUS on who their IBCs are – in this case the buying customers of eager corporations with budgets big enough to afford the cost of national advertising on major TV networks. \

Start right now, if you give still give a damn, and review your ‘Internet’ channel strategy and current web site. Begin with answering these two powerful questions:

1. Who is our Ideal Brand Customer/Client? (IBC)

2. Why?    

This process of identifying and understanding your IBCs will greatly help you focus your message moving forward. Those customers who do not meet the attributes of your IBC profile require you to let them go. 

However, I have found the easiest way to let them go is to stop encouraging them to come back. Change the look and feel of your brand so it appeals more to your IBCs. For example, if you move towards being higher end and more pricey, then price sensitive buyers will tend to stay away. When you consider these types of buyers as your “Less Than Ideal” Customers/Clients (LTIs) you’ll will begin to see how much sense it makes to surrender them to the other businesses in your buying category. 

Bottom line:  Before you jump on the social media wave (if you haven’t already by some freak chance) and start utilizing all four channels of “TGIF’ make sure you have a proven marketing strategy in place that will ensure you attract and retain your IBCs and surrend your LTIs consistently.  Do this and TGIF will rock your world.  Seriously.

BGR8,

Bill Jackman

Recall Buckley’s’ powerful slogan, “It tastes awful, but it works”?  It seems great marketing advice can be just as hard to swallow. I believe this is precisely why so few business owners market their businesses well. The truth is just too hard to swallow.   

In this particular case, the business owner was spending money on advertising without any idea if it was  breaking even or profitable. Does this situation sound familiar?  

I cannot understand how anyone in their right mind can spend their hard earned money on advertising and not a bloody cent to measure the results of that advertising. Are you guilty of this marketing sin?  

Results are the only logical reason for advertising in the first place. Why? Because your advertising has only one single purpose – to attract more of your Ideal Brand Customers (IBCs)  to your business.  (You do know who your IBCs are, right?)    

On many occasions I have heard business owners and managers say something like, “We don’t need to advertise – we rely on word of mouth.” For your information, advertising IS word or mouth – amplified. It makes sense then to encourage positive word of mouth about your business as long as it pays for itself.  Good advertising, at a minimum, should be a break-even proposition.  

With this in mind, I now share with you the first step of my proven method for measuring advertising results and determining which advertising medium works best for you.  

For explanation purposes, you have received several different proposals, packages and rate cards from various forms of media who communicate directly with your Ideal Brand Customers(IBCs). In order to make the best decision, it will be necessary for you to compare all the proposals on an ‘apples for apples’ basis.  

Ultimately, you want to know how many potential customers you must attract in order to convert enough of them to actual paying customers.  Remember, the number of actual customers must be sufficient to generate enough sales to cover the cost of advertising and still leave a profit.  Here’s how:  

1.  Determine your gross profit per sale of the advertised item or service  (Note: You can also determine your gross profit per Average Transaction Value (ATV) if you wish to apply the process to an entire advertising campaign.)

 2.  Determine the number of sales required for break-even by dividing the cost of the ad by the gross profit per sale.  This number is called “break-even sales”.

3.  Determine your “Sale Conversion Ratio”.  This requires you to divide the total number of customer sales in a period by the total of all enquiries made in that same period. 

 4.  Determine the number of potential customers required to generate enough break-even sales.  This is accomplished by converting your sales conversion ratio to a fraction, flipping it upside down and multiplying by the break-even sales number in step number 2.  For example:           

Gross profit per sale = $50.00

Proposed ad cost =   $1000.00

Break-even sales =   $1000.00/$50 = 20 new sales

Sales Conversion ratio =  25% = 1 out of 4 people buy

Potential enquiries = 4/1 x break-even sales = 4 x 20 = 80 

When you have completed this exercise, you will be able to quickly review various advertising proposals by simply plugging in the proposed “cost of the ad” in step 2 and comparing the quantity of potential customers needed and actual customers needed to break even.

Are you starting to understand how this can help you choose the right advertising medium?  The reality is that all advertising mediums work.  There is no such thing as advertising that doesn’t work.  As long as it pays for itself, and at a minimum – breaks even, it’s the right one for you.  If you now consider the Lifetime Net Value (LNV) of your IBCs you will quickly see the key to successful advertising is to break even on the front end and make it over the long term, on the back end.   Any questions?

Expressed as a percentage, less than 20% of businesses in North America survive past five years.

Why is this? Are we perpetuating a repeating cycle of five year ‘make work’ projects called “small business”?  

 How many times have you heard the expression from politicians and economists that ‘small to mid-sized businesses are the engine of the economy’?  

Well, if this is true, it seems to me our vital economic power-plant is long overdue for a tune-up?  Would you agree?  

I believe a strong, prosperous economy is built on having more business successes than failures.

In an effort to start making this a new reality, it is necessary for you and I to begin to understand why so many businesses go down the drain. Here’s a list of ‘Top Ten Reasons For Business Failure’ that I have discovered over my 25+ years as an entrepreneur:   

10.       Freedom Frenzy. This happens when someone who is technically skilled (or naturally talented) becomes temporarily possessed with the insatiable desire of having the freedom they perceive their current employer has. After quitting their job and rushing out to start their own business they soon find themselves working longer, harder and for less money an hour than earnings from their last job. My advice: seek continuous business training from experienced, qualified experts.

 9.         Ignoring the reality of the New Global Economy. How many of your competitors are franchises with head offices located in other provinces or states? In other countries? For example, did you know there are currently 40 Wal-Mart stores in Atlantic Canada?  

8.         Believing in the notion of “Build It and They Will Come”. Remember, “Field of Dreams” was just a movie. The old idea of building a better mousetrap and expecting the world to beat a path to your door is insane. Many entrepreneurs who believed this myth have found themselves broke with a ton of mousetraps nobody wants or is even willing to pay for.

 7.         Not Knowing What You Don’t Know. I think Yogi Berra really said it best when he said,” It’s not what you know that holds you back, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  Understanding your personal weaknesses and seeking advice and assistance from experienced mentors (those who know the ropes) is a key to making the best business decisions possible.

 6.         Innovation Phobia. If you are not committed to continually improving your products and service you may find yourself suffering from this dangerous condition. Successful business owners allocate resources for long range needs rather than only short term profitability. Plan to become innovative, to stay in business and to provide long term employment. Start by asking the question, “How can we improve on what we’re doing for others?

5.         Operating a “Reactive” Business System. Do you find yourself constantly “puttin’ out fires” in your business? If so you are practicing what I call ‘Chaos Management’. It is a highly stressful form of business management that rapidly leads to burn-out, frustration and failure – the exact opposite of what you really want. Establishing and formally documenting policies, procedures and processes is your only salvation. Start thinking  “Operations Manual”.       

4.        Lack of Adequate Financial Resources. The old axiom “it takes money to make money” still holds true. Successful entrepreneurs ensure adequate financing/investment is in place long before it is needed. How many franchises do you know that start and operate successfully on shoe-string budgets?  

3.         Expenses Exceeding Revenues. This one is a killer. Daily cashflow management and tight financial controls/reporting are critical to your business profitability and survival. Remember cashflow is the fuel of your business engine. Many a new business has simply run out of gas and been left abandoned on the side of the road.

 2.         No Marketing System. Without a system for creating new customer relationships, maintaining them effectively and enhancing them consistently a business will eventually wither and die. Your marketing system should address three types of customers: the Nows, Sooners and Laters. In my opinion 95% of businesses focus the majority of their attention on attracting the “Nows”. This is the most inefficient and expensive way to market your business. Ideally, your marketing system should seek to consistently communicate with the “Laters” who will eventually become “Sooners” and then finally become “Nows”.