Here’s the older one for prosterity.

What is Google Places? If you use Google to do your searching, you’ve probably noticed a map in a prominent location and the local listings that go with it. These listings also tend to top the searches, beaten only by the pay-per-click ads. So, where are these results coming from?

The source of these listings is Google Places

Google Places is in essence free listing of businesses, allowing consumers to easily search for services or products in their local area. It is also an easy to place to find all the relevant information needed to find or contact a business.

The Places listings often dominate the first page of the results. Even where they do not push the standard results off the first page, they are still up there at the top. There can be as many as 7 Places listings and with that much choice there may be no need to ever to scroll further down.

However, there may also be as few as 3 or even none for certain searches. Does that mean those businesses don’t have to worry about Places? Not at all! You do! That’s because  it’s actually a golden opportunity for someone to utilise Places and jump easily to the top of the search….pipping you to the post and the new client!

If you don’t have a website or indeed any online presence currently, a Places page is perfect. It includes address, phone number and opening times amongst other things which is easily enough to get you started. When you, or if you do, have a website, linking it up with a good Places page can really boost it up the results.

You may be asking at this point “So how do I get a Places page?”

Well, first of all, make sure you don’t already have one. Yes, Google automatically adds listings. You may have had a Google Places page all along and just need to claim it. The process is free and quite simple to get the basics filled in – we can show you how at one of our Google Places workshops.

However, the basics will only go so far. Even in a niche with low competition, eventually someone will look at you and say “I can beat that” and before you know it you’re falling back down the rankings. You need to really optimise that Places page and it’s best done sooner rather than later.

And here’s where we come in.

Google Places Workshop

Cinnamon Edge runs workshops on Google Places that will show you how to get that listing created, verified and optimised with ease. Even better, the next one is only on 31 March 2011, so you’ll be up and running in no time!

Find out more about your Google Places workshop

Simply click here for more details and for information on how to sign up – and on how to claim yoru free video (worth £97). We look forward to seeing you at the Google Places workshop!

It was on why you need to build a list and how to automate the process.

(If you want to see the notes as well, click on the link. This will take you to SlideShare; look under the presentation for the notes.)

There is a tradition in marketing that says that you need an average of at least seven contacts with a potential customer before you get a sale. It might go something like this:

1.  The potential customer calls or emails you or signs up to your list. (That’s the first contact.)
2. You reply. (That’s the second contact.)
3. You follow up 10 days later with a phone call (etc)
4. They have some more questions so you send more information in the post
5. You email
6. You call again
7. They call you and they’re ready to buy

 Which contact number do you stop at?

 A typical seven step sales process may go:

•  Call, letter, call, letter, call, letter, call, sale, or
• Call, email, letter, call, email, letter, call, sale or
• Email, email, email, email, email, email, sale

 Nowadays, especially with the amount of advertising people are bombarded with, you’re more likely to be successful if you contact people 20 or 30 times, because they ignore three quarters of what they see: don’t take it personally; it’s often they’re just short of time. But even if you only stick to seven steps, choose now to follow up more with enquiries and customers.

 Look at your own buying habits, or pretend you’re one of your customers, and you’ll see that buying is often a process, rather than an instant decision. Say you want a new vacuum cleaner; the chances are, you don’t stroll into a store and buy the first one you see.

 Instead, you probably:

•  Decide it’s time for a new vacuum cleaner.
• Read some reviews on and offline
• Start noticing the car advertising
• Asking others their opinions/knowledge
• Call or email for some brochures and read them and/or visit a few stores
• Think about how much you want to spend and compare prices
• Make your purchase, or decide to hire the appliance

 This process applies if you’re house hunting, or wanting a new car, dinghy, horse, dinner service, plasma TV or computer. It can even apply to buying shampoo, but let’s stick to something like vacuum cleaners or cars for this example.

 So now you know how the buying process goes, can you see that keeping in touch could pay dividends? Even when they buy from you, keep up the customer service and they’ll be more likely to buy from you again in a few years’ time, or at least recommend you to other people.

 You need to start keeping in touch when the buyer puts out feelers and makes the initial contact (by phone, email, or in person). At this point they’ve given you permission to sell to them and communicate with them. Most retailers will send out the information and leave it at that: if you carry your marketing efforts further, you’ll get more rewards.

 It’s OK, you don’t need to go into ‘hard sell’ mode. All you need to do is be very helpful (not annoying or obsequious, just genuinely helpful) and focus on solving the prospects’ problems rather than on a sale per se. Ask questions, find out their needs and wants, and offer solutions. When the time comes to buy, they’ll seriously consider you. If you can’t help directly, then say so… and recommend someone else who can help them, even if it’s a direct competitor with whom you have no reciprocal agreement. The prospects will remember your good deed and tell others.

 And remember to do the same for your existing customers: keep in contact with them and see how you can help them further. This is especially important if they’re likely to be approached by your competitors or see adverts for similar products (and don’t see any of yours). Have a follow up system for your existing customers and offer them new/additional products or services at regular intervals. Mix your methods of communication and test to see which work best with whom and for what product.

It’s no good having a great USP if you don’t know much about your potential clients. Being the cheapest printer in the area might not matter if your prospects are well-off professionals: they may go for the printer who goes for a mix of quality and speed, for instance.

So, for a good marketing campaign, you need to know what your customers are like, what they like about you (this is where your USP will come in), what will be the most effective methods to bring them in, how you can contact your customers and prospects, the ways you can influence their buying, and lastly, how you can take control of all the processes involved.

In fact, ‘Think P’. Look at what’s important to you and your clients and decide which parts to concentrate on:

Positioning (For example, do you want to be known as the only lady plumber in the area, or the person to go to if the Inland Revenue is about to investigate you?)

Place (For example, do you want to sell from premises, a stall or online?)

Products (For example, what lines sell best or hardly at all? Which offer the best ROI? How do you package them? Is the image consistent?)

Price (For example, how much does it cost you to get a customer? Do they stay with you one month, one year, for always? How much are they worth to you over this period? What discounts can you offer? Will they incur any costs by moving across to you and can you offset these costs for them? Can you offer ‘free’ post and packing and include these costs in your price, yet still offer good value?)

Process (For example, do you make the whole process from seeing your product to buying it, to keeping them informed and giving follow up, consistent? Do you staff? It’s all marketing. Try the whole buying process out, from start to finish, for yourself, and get a ten-year-old to do it too.)

Promotion (For example, how do you promote yourself and your products or services, and how do you carry on promoting yourself even when you’re handing over an invoice?)

People (For example, how well are your staff trained? Do they put across a good and consistent marketing message? Do they know what to do when unusual things happen? How do they come across to the public?)

Presence (For example, it’s not only your staff that makes a difference to sales, it’s your vans, shop fronts, etc, that also matter.

Purpose (For example, what do you want your prospects to do when they land on your web page or visit your store?)

So, what are your Ps? Let your own ideas spill out – and then ask your staff, clients and prospects what they think too.

If you understand what it is that makes us respond, you can use the knowledge to develop your marketing approach. Here are a few pointers:

Your brain has three main areas. The outer cortex is known as the ‘new brain’ and is where rational thought takes place. The middle part of your brain deals with your emotions. The inner brain or ‘old brain’, shared by all sentient beings, deals with non-conscious decisions, actions and reactions. The trick is to reach your prospects’ old brains and get that to make the buying decision for them.

The old brain deals with tangibles, not intangibles, so you need to use direct language and solid proof. Thus, corporate-speak phrases such as, ‘You really can’t fail with interactive relative matrix approaches’ just won’t work! You can find plenty of examples of corporate gobbledegook and obfuscation at the plain English Campaign website. Happily, they also show you how to write in plain English too. And for a bit of light relief (though it’s scarily like real life pomposity), you can even generate your own gobbledegook at the site.

Be a bit like a dart player: get into position, focus, aim, and throw true. Once you’ve diagnosed the pain, differentiated yourself from the rest, and demonstrated the gain (benefits) to your prospect, aim and deliver the rest of the message to the old brain. Before you send that message flying on its way to their old brain, make sure it fits as many of the following criteria as possible.

Your old brain responds to ‘pattern interrupts’; in fact, it scans for them. If there’s a change in pattern in your environment, it tells your body to respond before your conscious thought kicks in. Think how often you’ve shied away from an attacker that’s leaped out at you from the shadows, only to realise it was a bush waving in the breeze. But if it had been an attacker, you would have been speeding out of there even before your outer cortex started interfering with an, ‘Eh? What? Is it a bush or an attacker? What should I do next?’ So:

This means you can use contrast to get the attention.

Brains also respond to ‘me’, so get your prospects’ attention by using their names and/or saying ‘you’ and ‘your’.

Remember we mentioned the old brain picks up on tangible ideas, not nebulous concepts? This means you need to use phrases such as, ‘We can save you over £13,671 in tax this year’ rather than stuff like, ‘We provide a flexible solution to your tax requirements.’ Note that we used a specific sum as well: it sounds more convincing than a round sum like £13,000.

Therefore, grab people’s attention with a pattern interrupt. How might you do this?

Also be aware of when people listen most to your message – that is, the beginning and the end. So when you start your conversation or pitch, don’t waffle on with uninteresting and uninformative facts like when your business was founded. Get right in with the main message, which is how you can help them; how you can find a solution to their pain. As you wrap up what you’re saying, repeat your main message. By the way, anticipation increases attention. This is because dopamine levels are raised. Try to raise anticipation levels before you start talking, especially if you’re speaking at a seminar or similar. How might you do this?

Remember, the primary purpose of all marketing strategies is to deliver a message to the consumer. The message may be an attempt to sell a specific product, to promote a specific brand, or to introduce the consumer to a company with something to sell.

There are many ways to get noticed by prospects and current clients for free or very little cost. Here are three of them.

1. Get on the phone and call your 21 best customers or prospects

… and ask them what they need and want rather than selling what you think they need to them. Talk to them and ask them questions about what you do for them and what they’d like done. Make them feel special and also find out what their current needs are – they may be different now from when they first bought from you. Act on what they say.

If you can, get out and meet your customers, especially the ones that bring you in the most profit. Look carefully at your accounts and you’ll see that about only 20% of your clients give you 80% of your income. Build and maintain these relationships, and think about dropping the rest. Use your meetings to try to get a buying decision.

If you can’t get out to meet your customers or can’t get them on the phone, they may be willing to help you out by filling in an online questionnaire: they’re quick, require very little effort, and you can bribe them with a free report. For example, ’7 Things you Must Know Before Buying a New Car’, which could be in PDF format. Or you could issue a voucher for them to print off. They get instant access to your ‘thank you gift’ as soon as they’ve filled in the questionnaire.

You can easily build your own questionnaire for free through sites such as Survey Monkey and Free Online Surveys. You don’t need to know how to code or design; it’s done for you. Even better, you get statistical feedback without having to do it yourself. You can send questionnaires through the post, but many people won’t be bothered unless they’re bored and looking for a diversion, or you have a hefty reward to make it worth their while, and a freepost envelope supplied.

What questions (face to face, by phone or online) will you ask your clients, and how will you thank them for giving you their time?

Try to get two referrals from each client you contact – this can be a natural part of the conversation if you have a good rapport with them. A referral means they recommend you to someone else, or give you someone’s name for you to call. If possible, get them to tell the person you’ll be contacting them, and why.

2. Upsell

Upselling means selling something more/extra at the moment they buy from you. You’ll be familiar with the, ‘Would you like fries with that?’ upsell. The initial marketing costs are the same, but at the point of purchase it costs no more to add some sales on. Even if only 16 out of every 100 customers say yes, you have 16 more sales for virtually no extra cost and a few seconds’ effort.

When people buy their first product or service from you, what could you be offering to them that they need/want? (If you have nothing, create it, or team up with someone. For example, if you’re selling houses, you could offer decoration, removal and carpeting services. Amazon are brilliant at upsells, offering you other books you might be interested in, a first class post, and the option of adding gift wrap and a message.)

3. Network

If you believe that your time can be as an important an asset in marketing your business as money is, you’ll get a lot of free marketing through networking. Yes, you are losing working hours, but if you network well, what you gain should be worth more than what you ‘lose’. Use the networking time to deliver your marketing message to new and current contacts rather than have a cosy gossip with your friends. When we say, ‘deliver your marketing message’, we don’t mean go straight up to someone and start pitching to them!

Find out about people’s business and how you can help them (you may have a contact they can benefit from). When they ask you in turn about you and your business, have your message prepared. Get your marketing in a nutshell (don’t ramble and drone), and speak in benefits rather than features. For example, instead of saying, ‘I’m an accountant’ say, ‘I help businesses save 27% on their tax bills.’ Networking is also great for setting up joint ventures (JVs), or at least finding the contacts for them.

Who do you want to meet, and what will you say at your networking meetings?

We’ll cover more low cost and free ways in the next article.

When you’re working out what marketing you’re going to do when, keep in mind future scenarios, and play a ‘what if’ game.

Ask other business and non-business people to come up with some ‘what if’ situations and ‘yes, but’ objections. Write them all down, no matter how daft sounding and decide on a plan. Obviously these plans needn’t be set in stone, but they do help you to be aware of the possibilities. Here’s an example: 

• At the moment, I am the only cobbler in the town. What if a competitor moves into the area?
• How might I make sure I know before it happens?
• How will I make sure I keep my existing clients?
• How will I step up my marketing? (And why aren’t I doing that now?)
• Will this affect my staffing levels?

In addition, ask yourself, “What ‘yes, buts’ can I think of and how can I answer them from a marketing point of view?” (For example, “Yes, but I’m the best there is in the industry” could be answered with, “So how will I let people know that, and who is it I want to know?”) 

Here are a few more scenarios that could affect you: 

• What if a competitor fails?
• What if there’s a technological breakthrough? Would you use it?
• What if there’s a technological breakthrough and your competitors start using it before you?
• What if you half your advertising spending?
• What if you double your advertising spending?
• What if new laws come in that affect your business?
• What if some laws are relaxed/deregulated in your industry?
• What if you want to buy out a competitor?
• What if you want to take on extra staff?
• What if you want to move much of your business online?
• What if several of your staff leave/go on holiday/go off sick at the same time?
• What if you broke your leg or developed a long-term illness?
• What if you wanted to sell your business?

 Once you have answers to these questions, think about how you would let people know if there were a change. A few very easy ways are to change your web pages, send out offline and online press releases, and alert people through your mailing list and/or email lists and/or Twitter (and other social media). 

 Other ways will be through blogs, articles, You Tube and SlideShare. The main thing is to keep clients, customers and prospects informed, and to keep them on your side. And any changes are always a good opportunity for some marketing. 

If you have to pay for your advertising (say your news release didn’t get taken up, for example, but you really want to get the message across NOW), make sure you get the best ROI (return on investment) you can. One reason small business advertising doesn’t work is because people pay far too much for their advertising campaigns. This can apply to medium sized businesses too. Corporations can absorb the costs but if you are involved in one, why not make the ROI the best you can?

The first thing to know is that advertising representatives (‘reps’) are usually paid on commission. They love it if you accept the rate they quote (the ‘rate card’), but that will mark you out as a beginner. They expect you to negotiate advertising rates – in fact, the figures they quote are often plucked out if the air!

Most media have two rate cards. This is because advertising is based on readership/listenership and you pay per 1000 readers or listeners. Larger businesses can negotiate a smaller rate than smaller businesses, purely through bulk buying.

1. Do a deal on the rate card

If a rep finds out you’re a small business, they’ll sting you for as much as they can. Cough in disbelief and initially offer half … and be tough. Say something along the lines of, ‘I’m testing this; if it works I’ll run with you, but this is what I’m prepared to pay.’ You may get the rate you offered or you may have meet in the middle; give way slowly. If it’s a weekly and the rep doesn’t give in, just let go – time is on your side.

One way they try to trick you is to call you and offer you a massive discount for ‘now only’ and say you’ll get some editorial free as a special offer. However, these figures are fantasy and they rely on you feeling guilty about negotiating on what’s already a discount. Reply, ‘I’m sorry, I can go with £300 but no more’ and stick to your planned budget.

2. Use their pressing deadlines against them

Now, sales teams are highly trained and use highly effective systems. For instance, if a member of a team gets hold of you on the phone and they establish you’re the decision maker (that is, you can OK the costs), he or she will stand up so the team leader knows to listen in on the call, and feed the rep with more information or prompts if necessary.

Individuals and teams are rewarded based on their results so as a deadline gets closer, they are more and more willing to do a deal because they have a target to reach. Call them the day before the deadline (find out when it is) and say, ‘I know you usually charge £540, but I’m calling to see if you have a slot you’d accept £97 for – I’m short on cash, but this money just came through.’

They may say no, so leave it. Next time they may listen. Even better, they may well say yes first time, especially if you have built a relationship with them. This applies to radio as well. They’d rather have £75 than nothing, even if they usually charge £400.

3. Have someone else buy your advertising

You can save time and money by using an advertising agency or media buying agency. They get better advertising rates than you because they can bulk buy for discount and because they have access to audience figures and can negotiate from a position of strength. They may not even charge you more than cost, as the media often give them a commission.

4. Have smaller ads …

… that produce a better response than the other ones appearing in the same paper/radio programme! Use that space or time effectively. Split test each component of your ad.

You could change your ad’s purpose and use it as a two-step response. This means you use the ad to get people to visit your site or call you, rather than trying to sell off the page (the latter requires AIDA, a guarantee, overcoming objections, etc, which is difficult if you can’t afford a full page ad – use the space on your website for all that instead).

Here’s an example for a computer repairs business. Instead of writing (and paying) much about fixing computers and talking about your company, write an ad like:

How Your Computer Repair Man Could Destroy Your Business!
FREE report tells you the essential information you need before
you make any decision about who to let loose on your computer.
This could be the most important business move you’ve made!
Visit www.NotTooLateToSaveYourPC.com now or call 0800 112233
(24 hr answer phone with a recorded message) and we’ll get your
report off to you immediately.

5. Use PPC (Pay Per Click)

Used effectively, PPC can be a cheap way of advertising. PPC is used on online search engines: when someone clicks on your ad, they’re taken to your specified web page (don’t necessarily use your home page, but one that’s relevant to the ad). You don’t pay for your ad to be there unless someone clicks on it, and even then the cost can be as little as a few cents or pence a click. Use something like Adwords in the first instance – it’s cheap and you get very quick feedback. Then use your best version in the paper if you want.

6. Advertise in someone’s newsletter

Find a complementary business that sends out a good offline or online newsletter to a lot of people. Ask if you can ‘sponsor’ it. This means you pay the newsletter owner, and they do a ‘message from our sponsor’ section at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the newsletter (it depends on what they want to charge and what you’re willing to pay).

7. Piggyback on someone else’s mail out.

If you know someone’s sending out a letter to their clients, and they’re in a business that’s complementary to yours, ask if they’ll include your advert/flier/letter for a fee. They get some of their costs paid for and you won’t have to fork out so much as you would on a single mailing.

8. Get the word out on Twitter – and ask people to retweet your posts

9. Put out online Press Releases – you get plenty of links back to your site

10. get onto Google Places and get shown on the “7-pack” – the companies that come along the side of the map

There are other ways, but that’s enough to get goinf with! Questions? Just contact us.