Business

Shop Calumet City: The Coupon Book Quandary

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Supporting our neighboring communities is a great idea. It’s just not the stated purpose of the Shop Calumet City program or this coupon booklet.

Says the Alderman Jones in the booklet,

“When you shop and support local businesses in Calumet City, there will be more dollars available for local school districts, more money to improve our roads and streets and more funding will be available for our parks and libraries.”

If we’re trying to encourage shopping in Calumet City stores, why is one of the twelve coupons in the booklet belong to a store based in Midlothian? Doesn’t that encourage people to spend money in a suburb other than Cal City?

Cal City - Midlothian Coupon

Coupons are marketing devices. They can be a great way to generate interest in what a business has to offer and drive traffic to their locations.

Or they can go end up hidden at the bottom of kitchen drawers until spring cleaning time.

I applaud the 12 businesses that have coupons in this book for having the guts to take action to improve their business and participate building up the local economy. But to be frank, the decision-makers in these businesses should demand more from their marketing efforts.

Here are a few points worth noting about this coupon book:

  1. Again, 8.3% of the coupons direct shoppers to spend money outside of Calumet City
  2. Of the 12 coupons, eight of them are worth about $2. For example, a free McDouble with purchase of medium fry at McDonald’s or $2 off of a $20 dry cleaning order. In  most cases, any resulting sale will probably be profitable, but how many sales will result from the distribution of these coupons?
  3. One of the more seemingly valuable coupons is $5 of free gasoline. That’s pretty hard to resist. BUT how much does it help the gas station? With the less-than-razor-thin profit margins on fuel, it’s practically impossible to recoup the value of the coupon on a gas-only purchase.
    • What makes it even worse is that there’s almost no chance the customer who redeems the coupon will suddenly start buying their gas at that particular station. People buy gas a) at convenient locations or b) where it’s the cheapest. The coupon basically gives away gasoline for nothing in return (unless the driver buys snacks while getting their free fuel); it will not change buying behavior.
  4. For long-term economic impact, these coupons should include some way of building relationships with customers. The businesses should get these people’s contact information and follow up with them.
    • They could offer bounceback coupons to turn one-time shoppers into customers (people who make it a custom/habit to buy from you).

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I don’t mean to “go negative” here. I really love this town and the people in it. I honestly want things to get better. Why should Orland or Tinley Park enjoy more prosperity than us?

What we need is not short-sighted marketing ploys created by government officials. We need gutsy, intelligent entrepreneurs to lead the charge to a better future.

Since when do entrepreneurs rely on the government, anyway?

P.S. Next time, we’ll talk about specific business growth methods entrepreneurs in our area can use to start building a better tomorrow for our community.

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Shop Calumet City: The Article that Didn’t Make Quite It

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I submitted the following article to our local newspaper, the Shopper.

More than news, I guess it sounded like a letter to the editor, so it was printed in the “Speak Out” section of the paper, without a byline. (Maybe that’s not such a big deal. I’ll have to be more specific next time.)

I wasn’t going to publish it here, since news articles are printed on the Shopper’s website. But because this wasn’t considered news, it’s not. So here it is.

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‘Shop Cal City’ is a Two-Way Street

Residents of Calumet City have probably received a post card introducing the new “Shop Calumet City” program.  This project, the brainchild of Alderman Thaddeus Jones is designed to boost the local economy, support our local business community and generate revenue for schools and other municipal projects.

It’s a great idea. Probably long overdue.

It also seems to be somewhat incomplete in its scope.

In recent months, we’ve seen several major businesses pack up and leave town (Sears, Old Navy, etc.). Numerous small businesses have had to shut their doors, as well. River Oaks mall looks like a ghost town sometimes; Wentworth Woods looks even worse.

Shopping local is the responsibility of citizens in communities everywhere, isn’t it?

I often hear people grumble, “THEY need to put more stores here.” Well, the fact of the matter is, WE need to make setting up shop here in Calumet City a profitable endeavor.

But shopping local is a two-way street.

Businesses need to understand how to promote themselves and provide top-notch customer experiences for their local clientele. Owners can’t complain about a lack of customers if they’re just sitting and waiting for us to come.

It’s the responsibility of those people running the businesses to give customers a good reason to spend money with them.

We want to support you! But you have to let us know you’re there. You have to show us how we will benefit from shopping with you.

You have to be a real part of the community and create real value for the people in our neighborhoods.  Then we’ll happily patronize your store.

That’s the give and take of a shop local program. I think both  lanes on this two-way street could use some repairs. Hopefully Alderman Jones program will be a major step in the right direction.

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My buddy John Breese also posted an interesting perspective (his point of view is always interesting) over on the One Hour Startup blog. Check out The Dark Knight of Marketing Takes Over the City.

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Shop Calumet City: My Introduction

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I noticed the banners around town a few weeks ago.

To be perfectly honest, I thought they were not-so-subtle propaganda. Calumet City isn’t the greatest place to shop. Anyone familiar with the area knows that; outsiders would find out quickly.

About two weeks ago, a postcard mailer came out introducing the “Shop Calumet City” program. 3rd Ward Alderman Thaddeus Jones is spearheading an attempt to stimulate the local economy and support the business community here in town.

Now the banners make a little more sense.

As a Cal City citizen and businessperson, I feel compelled to comment on this program and it’s resulting effects. I plan to do so here on my blog over the coming days. I believe my gifts, expertise and experience could make valuable contributions to this effort.

As much as it will probably seem like it, I’m not attacking Jones or his ideas. But sometimes the best way to improve something is to point out weaknesses or inconsistencies, and that’s one of the things I do to help people and businesses get better at what they do. I come off harsh sometimes, the same way a trainer may seem rough on his boxing students.

I’ll be sharing my thoughts and I hope to hear from my fellow citizens in Chicago’s south suburbs and northwest Indiana. A lot of our neighborhoods are going through similar struggles. Many businesses will find insights that can help them reach higher levels of success.

If you’re interested in going even deeper, you can sign up for my email list specifically for Chicago’s South Siders. Here you go:

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How Do I Get People to Want What I Sell? Part 3

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In Parts 1 and 2 of this short course, we’ve been talking about intensifying your potential customers’ built-in desires and directing them towards the thing that you’re selling. There’s a common thread tying together each of the points we’ve covered. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

You use your words to paint vivid, evocative images in the minds of your prospects…their response will correspond directly with their desires, motivations and priorities…

You base your marketing messages or sales pitch on the quest they’re on, the vision they have for their lives and the way they see their place in the world…

You do your best to be convincing…but those who become your customers are those who convince themselves that you can deliver the results they want.

Do you see it? Conversion is essentially a self-initiated change. All persuasion is self-persuasion.

Persuasion’s Passive-Aggressive Nature

“No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves.” ~ Mignon McLaughlin

If you’re honest, you know deep down that this quote speaks to real experience.

As irresistible as your message may seem to you, what really matters is how it matches up with what the hearer thinks about himself (his quest)… about the problem you’re addressing or promise you’re making… about you.

For example, if he believes he was born to be an entrepreneur and that reading a book can speed up the process and increase his chances of success, he’ll actively search for those kinds of books.

If he believes that “I could never succeed in business” and that starting a business a risk reserved for richer, more educated people, “be your own boss” products won’t appeal to him.

Vision Is the Delivery Mechanism

In order to get someone to buy from you, you need him to convince himself that your product or service will give him what he wants. To do that, you have to give him the materials he needs to convince himself. That brings us back to the concept of building vision.

When you’re helping your prospect imagine all the wonderful tomorrows that are sure to come after he buys your product… when he can see himself enjoying a brighter future because of you, he’s really selling himself on your proposition. Of course you’re doing your part: feeding him the raw materials he needs to see that mental image. This is where copywriting, storytelling, demonstration and testimonials come into play.

You want him to come to a predetermined conclusion: that your product is his best option to achieve the transformation he’s looking for. Rather than stating that too explicitly (which will probably be a turn-off for most potential clients), you want to help him draw that conclusion on his own. As Blaise Pascal said, “People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.”

When he decides that you’re the best choice based on his own “reasoning,” you’ve won a firmly-convinced convert.

Arriving at Imbecility (and How to Avoid It)

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“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense…himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down… Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted…himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.” ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

Although Muggeridge was talking about the crumbling of Western society’s moral foundations, I think his observations apply to the world of marketing (especially online) in many ways.

Hear me out.

My friend Dov Gordon wrote a very insightful post entitled “Why Don’t I Implement the Marketing I Should Be Doing?” on his blog yesterday. The headline grabs our attention because it’s talking about an experience most of us are familiar with. How much time and money have we invested in learning marketing techniques and strategies that we’ve never used? How many newsletters do we get and read (including this one) but never put the ideas we get into practice?

I’m guilty of it, too, more than I’d like to admit. For example, the photo above is a shot of around $10k of infoproducts sitting on my bedroom floor. A telling illustration if I’ve ever seen one.

Ideas to Action

Education is a good thing. Information is critical to everything we do in life. But education and information has to lead us some place, not just fill out heads with “book knowledge.”

“The object of education is not knowledge; it is action.” ~ Thomas à Kempis

This should be self-evident, but the point often eludes us. We frequently, inadvertently make education an end unto itself. Twelve-plus years of public school will do that to you…

What you need is almost certainly not more information. You need to begin acting on what you do know and continue learning as you go. Action will help put new information into context, leading to continually-optimized action.

Don’t let education be your excuse for procrastination or your refuge from the terrors of the real world.

“Action is the foundational key to all success.” ~ Pablo Picasso

If you’re not moving on the information you consume, you’re blocking your own path to success. Success is the result of value creation; creation is an action. Three quick suggestions:

  1. Act on what you know now.
  2. Put what you learn in the future into practice as soon as you can do so responsibly.
  3. Stop wasting time obtaining information you’re not going to use. As Sherlock Holmes told Watson in A Study in Scarlet:

    “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things…the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent..there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

Countless millions of would-be marketers have educated themselves into imbecility by making information an end instead of a means. Many of them take what they’ve “learned” but never used, repackage it and try to market that information to other newbies.

When amateur marketers sell marketing information to amateur marketers (who probably plan to do the same thing), we have the blind leading the blind. A large part of the industry may end up in a ditch.

Focus on action and you’ll avoid the collapsing walls of Marketropolis.

P.S.  If these articles aren’t helping you get active and improve those actions, I encourage you to unsubscribe. 

Seriously.

Not that I want you to leave, but if I want to be consistent, my newsletter has to meet the same criteria I’m asking you to hold everyone else to. If there’s something I can do to make these communications more action-inducing, let me know. I don’t want to be party to any procrastination or avoidance of the nitty-gritty of real-life business.

What A Wet Floor Sign Can Teach You About Your Business

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What’s the purpose of wet floor signs from the perspective of a business owner?

Believe it or not, your answer to that question can tell you a lot about how you run your business. It doesn’t matter if you have a brick-and-mortar retail location or you sell strictly from your website. This exercise is purely hypothetical.

So what do you think? What’s the purpose behind wet floor signs?

If your answer is “to protect the business from legal liability if anyone should happen to slip on on the premises,” you may have uncovered a dangerous mindset that could threaten the vitality and growth of your own business.

What might this sort of response tell you about yourself? To put it plainly, you’re focused on the wrong thing.

What’s at the Center of Your Business?

If you’ve got a “protecting what’s mine” mentality (as indicated by the aforementioned response the the wet floor sign question), you’re exhibiting symptoms of an defensive-minded, self-centered entrepreneur. You place your own interests at the center of everything you do.

On the other hand, if you said that the purpose of the wet floor sign is to protect people in your store from getting hurt, you’re showing that you’re a customer-centered entrepreneur.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with protecting your business or yourself. It would be foolish not to. But when you focus on your business instead of your customers, you’re putting the cart before proverbial horse.

You’ve heard it a hundred times: “The purpose of business is to create a customer.” Not to build a store, invent a product or make a name for itself. If you want to get good at creating customers, you need to make them the most important thing.

Playing It Too Safe

It’s hard to grow your business proactively when you’re playing defense. If you’re too invested in protecting your reputation, image, your perceived upper-hand in relationships, etc., you’re probably playing too safe.

Risk-taking empowers you to make bold promises in your marketing. Playing it safe makes for boring advertisements.

Customer-centric courage frees you to offer strong guarantees, which can often increase sales by 300% even while inviting buyers to ask for their money back if they’re not fully satisfied. When you put your customers first, you’re willing to reverse the risk back on yourself.

Self-centered businesses hesitate before giving value in advance.  They’re worried about getting ripped off by cheapskates or copied by sneaky competitors. Customer-centric businesses know that offering value in advance brings more leads in, develops more trust and establishes more authority in the marketplace. Sure, there’s a little more risk involved, but the upside potential is worth it.

Business isn’t about you. The companies and solo professionals that really make a difference are usually those that make it their priority to take care of their customers. They want to make the world a better place, not just put money in their bank accounts.

Which description sounds more like your business?
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This illustration probably seems overly simplistic, but I think it’s also rather instructive. I’d love to hear what you think about it. Feel free to share your thoughts in the Comments section.

P.S. If you’d like to hear about some of the most courageous marketing and guarantees you can imagine, you might like to listen to my interview with Space Shuttle engineer-turned-consultant Mark Fox.

Unexpected Insights for the Christian Entrepreneur Pt. 6

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The Necessity of Copywriting for Christian Entrepreneurs in Spiritual or Secular Businesses

“If you talk to people in a language they don’t understand, how will they know what you mean? You might as well be talking to an empty room.”– 1 Corinthians 14:9

Unexpected Insight part 5 was about writing for ministry purposes. I want to get back to talking about business.

One of the most important qualities of strong copy is clarity.

As a writer, you should be easy to understand, and you should attempt to make the world easier to understand through your writing. No one wants more complexity in their lives. Colin Powell is quoted as saying “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers.” Donnie Bryant says that great writers are almost always great clarifiers.

Have you ever visited a website that made absolutely no sense to you? Read a letter that confused you instead of answering your questions? How does that experience make you feel about the other party?

Yet so many businesses I know spend as little time as possible putting together their messaging. They see it as a chore to get out of the way. “Let’s get to the selling!”

But confused prospects never buy.

Weak copy doesn’t answer questions, overcome skepticism, or demonstrate value.

What would happen if prospects were smarter and better-informed just for having visited your website? How much more likely are they to trust you over the guy who just threw some words on the page? How much more likely are they to believe that you understand them? How much more likely are they to connect with you and buy from you?

You must be able to write copy in an engaging, easy to understand way. Avoid trying to impress your readers. They’re not reading your message to admire your vocabulary or sentence structure. Gene Schwartz said that if someone read an advertisement and their response was “that was a great ad,” the ad was a failure. Instead, the reader should come away with a greater appreciation for, understanding of and desire for the product and the benefits that come with it.

This isn’t poetry.

Horace Greeley said that “The best style of writing, as well as the most forcible, is the plainest.” Say what needs to be said in the most consumable way possible.

You will lose a lot of readership by using big words, convoluted sentences and ambiguous statements.

Write and speak to be understood, not to impress. Not to make yourself feel smart. The Bible says that if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who will prepare himself for battle (1 Corinthians 14:8)?

Let there be no uncertainty in how you write. Business is no place for poetry or ambiguity. Clarity is of the utmost importance.

Spend the time necessary to write clearly and convincingly. You’ll never regret doing so. Or, enlist the help of someone you can trust to do a great job writing for you.

What’s the point of communicating if the reader doesn’t know what you’re saying?

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If you missed them, you can read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this series.

Unexpected Insights for the Christian Entrepreneur Pt. 5

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The Dangers of Christian Copywriting

“…preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.” – 1 Corinthians 1:17 KJV

“…When I came to you…not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God…And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom…” – 1 Corinthians 2:1,4 KJV

Ministry is not business. As such, ministries should not “market” in the traditional sense.

Not everyone will agree with this, but I’ve yet to find any way to justify using the idea that churches and para-church organizations should be treated the same way as secular businesses.

I’m not saying that marketing is bad. I’m not saying that persuasion is evil. Actually, I hold the opposite opinion.

But you can’t get around Scripture. In Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, he says a mouthful about his preaching and his approach to ministry.

Paul was among the most educated men of his day. He was a gifted orator with a brilliant mind, and he understood people (the human condition, the heart) probably as well as anyone in history. If anyone could have utilized “excellency of speech” or the “wisdom of words” to persuade his hearers, it would have been him.

But he refused to do so.

He knew that the gospel is a demonstration of God’s power, not of the speaker’s intelligence or ability to create emotional impact. Christians must rely on the Holy Spirit to convict and teach (John 16:8, 13).

As a copywriter, I spend a lot of time learning about persuasion, and I seek to gain mastery of the English language. But as a Bible teacher, I put all of that stuff to the side (Philippians 3:6). It would be harmful for me to depend on those skills to do work only God can do by His Spirit and His Word.

All I ask is this: any copywriters who are working to grow ministries, please don’t put your trust in your skills or abilities. God will build His church (Matthew 16:18) using his method: the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3) working through men and women committed to sharing His gift of eternal life with a dying world.

P.S.  I don’t mean to imply that the words used to promote ministry should not be carefully chosen. They clearly do. Just listen to Ravi Zacharias or R.C. Sproul; these are brilliant men who can use language as skillfully as anyone on the planet. But they don’t rely on copywriting tricks, NLP or other gimmicks to get their points across. The content speaks, the audience listens and the Lord edifies.

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Read Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the Unexpected Insight series.

Henry Ford: Misunderstood Marketing Genius

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Henry Ford is widely regarded as one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history. When you hear his name, you automatically think about how he innovated the use of assembly line techniques to revolutionize the automobile industry.  Listen to what Harvard Business school professor Theodore Levitt wrote about Ford:

“We habitually celebrate him for the wrong reason, his production genius. His real genius was marketing. We think he was able to cut his selling price and therefore sell millions of $500 cars because his invention of the assembly line reduced the costs. Actually he invented the assembly line because he had concluded that at $500 he could sell millions of cars. Mass production was the result, not the cause, of his low prices...He was brilliant because he fashioned a production system designed to fit market needs.” (Author’s emphasis)

Ford understood an indispensable key to successful marketing: the needs and desires of your target market must dictate the products and/or services you provide. That should be obvious. Unfortunately, many businesses work hard to sell what they want to sell (their latest invention or a gadget they think is really cool) instead of what the market wants or needs to buy. Those businesses fail.

Now, let’s look at this point from another angle. What did Henry Ford himself say about his market? “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” Doesn’t that negate what we’ve said thus far? Far from it.

Nobody wanted cars, it’s true. But they did want to travel more quickly. So Ford did manufacture and sell what people already wanted; it just came in a different package than they expected.

I think there’s an important lesson here. According to another Harvard professor, Paul R. Lawrence, all the decisions we make are based on 4 basic drives: to 1) acquire/achieve, 2) bond, 3) learn/comprehend and 4) defend. If you think about it, everything you purchase satisfies at least one of these motivations. For example, I may buy a Rolex watch to acquire the admiration of my peers. Or, maybe I’ll get the Timex to defend my bank account.

Of course, these drives are unique for everyone. That’s why you have to dig deep and really get to know your ideal clients. What drives are dominant in their decision-making process? What shape do those drives take? What stimulates those drives?

Creating your ideal customer profile is great, but make sure it’s rooted in reality, not your imagination.

Give ‘Em a Reason

Having a product people want usually isn’t enough to make you successful. We see companies with great products or services fail all the time.

Think about the multimillion dollar ad campaigns we see during major political elections. Candidates don’t settle for “getting their name out there.” They beat up the other guys and present specific “evidence” to demonstrate that they are the best choice. (Whether or not their statements were true is another conversation.)

Remember Paul Lawrence’s 4 Drives theory. Your sales and marketing messages should communicate the specific ways your offer will address these deep-seated drives in your audience. How does your product satisfy their desire to acquire something they badly want? How will they come to learn something they desperately need to know by working with you?

Just being the better choice won’t get a candidate elected; it certainly won’t convince people to buy from you. You have to give them a compelling reason why they should buy. Paint an accurate picture of life as they know it, then paint one showing what their experience will be like after they get their hands on your product. The more vivid the image, the more compelling it will be.

Back up your claims with proof: scientific or clinical evidence, testimonials, case studies, awards, etc. Make it real for them.

Once a prospect sees himself enjoying their new life, making the purchase is the next natural step. This usually takes work (research, writing, rewriting, testing). So does filing bankruptcy.

Oh, and One More Thing

People generally won’t buy from someone they don’t trust. It is of the utmost importance for entrepreneurs, marketers and sales people to gain the trust of their prospects and customers.

Allow me to refer you to an interview I did with a third Harvard man, best-selling author Charlie Green. During our 30-minute interview, Charlie talked about

  • why trust is critical to you success in business
  • specific ways you can build more trust in your relationships
  • mistakes you might be making which can sabotage your efforts to gain the trust of your prospects
  • common myths about trust
  • how long it really takes to start building (or rebuilding) trust
  • and more.

Check out the “30 Minutes to More Trust” interview here. I learned quite a bit and I think you will, too.

 

 

Unexpected Insights for the Christian Entrepreneur Pt. 4

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“Go! For I will send you…to the Gentiles.” – Acts 22:21 (NASB)

In Part 2 of this series, we talked about finding your message and standing for it boldly, no matter who doesn’t like it. We described your true audience as self-selecting. The message determines the audience inasmuch as the people you most want to work with and who will get the greatest benefit from working with you will respond to the message. Those who don’t probably aren’t your ideal clients or customers.

While I believe that’s 100% true, I’ve neglected an important factor.

Your message is made for someone. You are “sent” to reach a certain market, as it were. Paul had a very clear message, one that he couldn’t alter or water down. But he also had a target audience. The Lord had called him to preach that message to the Gentiles.

Paul is totally committed to the gospel. He was determined to concentrate solely on Christ and His completed work on the cross. This message is of the utmost importance: Paul could never tweak it to fit his hearers or to make it more appealing. But the message is precisely what those hearers need at the deepest level.

While the Apostle is dedicated to the message, he’s also passionately committed to his audience. The two can’t be separated. Both are utterly essential.

Consider the following:

1) By all means, your business should stand for something. Some people will be offended, and that’s okay. Stand firm.

2) Your message should be based on your provision for someone’s needs. If you stand for something irrelevant, you’re missing the point. Your message is only important in that it meets your market at a point of need.

3) Your message (and even your business) is not more important than your market. It’s important because of your market.

4a) Make sure you know who you’re “called” to serve. Otherwise you’ll waste a lot of time.

4b) Knowing who you’re called to serve implies that you know who you’re not called to serve. In Galatians 2:8, Paul explains that he was sent to the Gentiles and Peter was sent to Israel. There is value in knowing who not to focus your efforts on.

5) Unless your message is the gospel of Jesus Christ, you don’t have to be as stalwart as Paul on the wording or positioning of your message. But the changes you make should be for the purpose of improving your ability to reach your target audience.

Read Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Unexpected Insight series. Or move forward to Part 5.