Never Get a ”Real„ Job (25 page)

Know how to wow. Make your marketing materials aesthetically appealing. Be conscious of your brand’s design work. Competitors with better-designed tactics will win every time. Don’t feel the urge to overdesign everything you produce either. This often leads to the same reaction as underdesigned work. If you don’t have a creative bone in your body, be a tasteful minimalist.

Make sure that the design of your marketing package sets the right tone, feel, and level of professionalism you would expect from a trusted brand. If you think it looks unprofessional, scrap it until you create something that works.

Encourage repeat business with a finishing touch
. Even though a customer might have paid you for your service, that doesn’t mean that your marketing job is over quite yet. Nothing says thank you more than a small, unexpected gesture. There isn’t much that’s better for your business than taking advantage of the opportune moment when your client is at his most satisfied state with your service to solidify life-long loyalty, encourage the spread of word-of-mouth, and engage the satisfied customer with an incentive to use your services again in the future.

For example, Sizzle It!, offers a year’s supply of free coffee with a customer’s first purchase. The coffee arrives at the client’s office along with a personalized thank-you note, a referral offer, and free coffee mug with Sizzle It!’s logo, marketing message, and contact information. This gift keeps our brand relevant by getting our marketing real estate in a place where it can serve as a potential conversation starter among coworkers. Who wouldn’t be curious to know why a coworker received free coffee for a year from a “video company?”

You have one shot to get this right—so don’t mess it up. Simply handing someone crappy marketing materials will put a bad taste in his mouth at the worst possible moment. Your finishing touch must provide your customer with real, tangible value. It also needs to be as purposeful for your brand as it is useful and thoughtful to your client. If you’re going to give something away, make sure it serves a dual purpose: to thank the customer and to call him back into action. Giving away pens and pads is all well and good, but if you fail to make them into effective selling tools by only including your logo and contact information, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity.

Don’t pass up the chance to ingrain your brand in your customer’s mind and turn them into a lead generator or a repeat customer. One happy client can pay off 10 times over.

THINK GUERRILLA, NOT GODZILLA

As you’re well aware by now, you don’t exactly have an unlimited checkbook to spend on marketing and advertising, which is all the more reason to make sure that everything you do or produce performs at the top of its game. To be a successful start-up marketer, you need to produce results on the cheap and become an 800-pound
guerrilla
. This is why it’s important that you learn to turn any circumstance or space into an effective marketing moment for your brand—one that converts eyeballs into cash.

Don’t rely on expensive ads
. I love listening to ad salespeople pitch me case studies and statistics. Often these facts and figures are anything but the norm or what can be expected. Those case study subjects who broke the mold didn’t just magically place their ads into a newspaper or e-blast and automatically get that response; they found a way to maximize the medium by inserting the right message content and creativity. Whether you decide that your brand and marketing messages will be most effective in churches or bars, your challenge isn’t to determine
how much
it will cost you to get your messages there, but rather how you can get them there with minimal, if any, up-front costs.

Find the best ways to control and disseminate your own brand and marketing messages while taking advantage of the audiences and eyeballs advertisers pay big bucks to target. Instead of taking out a newspaper ad, you might decide to drop neighborhood-specific flyers with special offers into your neighbors’ mailboxes. If an event sponsorship is too steep, you might consider attending as a guest, mingling, and then handing out business cards and marketing materials to attendees.

Limited cash demands that you come up with smart guerrilla marketing tactics. Hosting contests, giving away free product samples and gift certificates, wearing T-shirts with catchy marketing messages, adding special offers in your e-mail signature, producing online videos, and conducting local publicity stunts are examples of tactics that can yield high returns on investment for little up-front capital. Look for ways to transform ordinary objects, situations, or cheap materials into effective marketing tools that produce results.

You’re an expert (just ask you)!
As the creator of your service,
you
know that you offer your niche marketplace valuable insight and advice. However, simply proclaiming that you are an expert will get you nowhere. It’s not enough to just shamelessly pimp your own service; you also need to become a leading authority for your target customers.

Devise a moniker for which you want to be known for marketing and public relations purposes. Perhaps you want to be known as “The Green Dad” with an expertise in outdoor family activities in order to front your sports adventure travel company. To put a face to your gluten-free baking company, you may want others to label you as “The Gluten Free Cooking Queen” whose passion is to teach others to create great quality baked goods without the gluten.

Authenticity builds credibility. Don’t speak down to your customers; relate to them. Tell the story of how your service was founded. What problems did you encounter? How did you solve them? Give people a reason to listen to you by offering value to their lives with relevant and targeted information. Offer a fresh perspective in your market. Take a stand, be controversial, and pick a side on issues that are important to your niche marketplace.

Once you’ve perfected your message, syndicate your way to success by distributing content through the “expert real estate”—blogs, forums, press releases, newsletters, Web video, and podcasts—in your niche marketplace. Join and lead local industry groups or associations. Find guest blogging opportunities by reaching out to like-minded Web sites and offering your services at no charge. Build online communities centered on your expertise. Remember, no one knows your marketplace better than you.