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Back in high school being called easy wasn’t exactly a compliment, but when it comes to your business, it’s essential.
Web folks like to talk about frictionless businesses or web sites as those that are very simple for the visitor to navigate and experience. There are many places your business can fall down in this regard and all perform a marketing function, for good or bad.
So, here are some common places to look and make sure you are easy.
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Are you easy:
- To communicate with - voicemail, email, contact us page, IM, click to call,
- To understand - narrowly defined market, simple core message of value
- To listen to - two or three well developed presentations on message
- To speak to - ability to listen and advise, know when to say no and thank you
- To network with - think give before get, throw away the score card
- To trust - consistency and content, be the authentic you, educate - don’t sell
- To buy from - smooth transaction, delivery, follow-up
- To work with - engaging experience, results driven
- To refer - tools that teach how to refer, give partners way to refer - workshops
I’ve found one or more of these to be gaps in the overall experience for most small business marketers and in many cases, some strategic thought mixed with an effective process can be the ticket to enhancing your overall brand and ultimately putting more money in your pocket.
Comments
This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at Jul 18, 08 | 11:58 am and is filed under Branding, Customer Service, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Referral Marketing, Strategic Partnering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
You forgot easy like Sunday morning.
Sorry when I read the headline I had a Lionel Richie moment.
After reading this blog, I decided it may be worth looking at my own website (www.garbarrassing.com), to see how it matched up with your standards of “easy.” I sadly realized that it is lacking in many of the categories you listed. It’s going to take a lot of work, but eventually it will get to where it needs to be. Thanks once again, for your help.
-@garbarrassing
GIGANTIC pet peeve of mine:
No phone number or email address on a business website. I have spent 15 minutes searching for one before giving up.
This is particularly bad for service professionals who want to get media exposure. If a reporter can’t find you in 30 seconds, they will go elsewhere. Make it easy!
The only reason I can think of why people don’t make this information accessible is that they don’t want to be disturbed. By paying customers. Go figure.
@Ron - that’s funny - but you know, that’s not a bad thought to add.
Very provocative title. I like it!
Sometimes we think we’re easy, but we’re not. I just did a “talking logo” exercise with a client. They’d been in business for 15 years, and we all thought it would be so easy to describe what they did — but all 4 people in the room had a different pitch.
So what I’m saying is don’t assume you’re easy - ASK and TEST!
Adrianne Machina
Tornado Marketing, Inc.
Authorized Duct Tape Coach
John,
I think you’re missing the word “easy” in your first sentence.
Very provocative title. I like it!
I was recently doing a “Talking Logo” exercise with a client. They’d been in business for 15 years, so we all assumed that it would be EASY for them to create their pitch. But each of the 4 people in the room had a completely different take on the company’s main message.
My point is: Don’t assume you are easy. TEST. ASK. And consider hiring a DTM Coach.
Adrianne Machina
Authorized DTM Coach
http://www.tornado-marketing.com
http://www.tornado-tools.com
@Mark - thanks, you’re right - I wrote this driving donw I10 - well actually I’m not driving, out near Joshua Tree National Park - maybe I should take in the Joshua Trees and quit working!
I want to be easy! Your outline is well done.
Click to call is very interesting to me but very few reviews out there. Google pulled the plug for some reason and Jajah seems to be the big player.
Any recommendations John?
“To understand” is still the hardest for me. I guess its just habit or human nature to want to appeal to everybody! And speak in a way that reaches everyone, all the time. Practically, it’s impossible, but why the resistance we have as small business owners to GO NARROW? We feel we may miss an opportunity, but we’re missing more by NOT.
What an awesome list! There is so much you offer and suggest in your blog posts that I’m trying to understand and assimilate appropriately in my business. Funny thing, the company my brother works for - you log onto their website and just about no one can understand what they do from a first read.
Great tips John and so true.
Isn’t it amazing how we can make it difficult for people to do exactly what we want them to do - contact us, buy from us, refer us - because we are too busy trying to keep life easy and simple for ourselves.
A timely reminder to look at everything from the other person’s perspective both in terms of “why should they do what I want” and “why won’t they”.
In my consultancy and coaching I sometimes take people through a reverse brainstorming exercises to look at what we could do to stop something we wanted to happen as a reminder that it is often easier to “not do” than it is “to do”.
Great post! What I liked is that all of the items were more or less “ask” and not tell. In other words, all of the things that make inbound communications better. Frictionless is an incredibly powerful term.
Its funny how a lot of these points are valuable in the office too.
Over the last 10 years I have had the pleasure of working with developers, designers, CEO’s, account managers, integrated consultants etc… It’s amazing all the different personalities you come across.
But something as simple as “communication” can make or break a deal.
Great post, John. We’re asking these questions in our organization, both in terms of communication/outreach and in the Jim Collins, “What do we do best?”/activities sense.