You know all those goodies at the counter at the supermarket or at the petrol station? Well does anyone ever buy anything there? These are called impulse purchases and they are a $5 billion market!
In a US survey, people were asked how often they buy products from stands at the checkout counters, 46% of respondents said once a week or more, 38% said one to three times a month, and only 16% said less than once a month.
Are you missing an opportunity to create more sales?
I can’t hold off any longer. It feels like every day I’m seeing more and more people jump on the Pinterest bandwagon. Facebook, Twitter, at the gym or around the dinner table, people are talking about their newfound obsession of this quick to rise new social media superstar.
So for anyone who hasn’t yet immersed themselves, or if you are poised on the edge of taking the leap, let’s take a look at a few of the reasons Pinterest might just be a good way to market your business.
Now before we go on, I’ve got to give Hubspot credit for our highlights list today. We are just skimming the surface with this BLOG, for the in-depth detail, make sure you download the Hubspot
Free EBook just released: ‘How to use Pinterest for Business’
But just before I hand over to HubSpot, heres some food for thought for our Fitness Industry friends. Given its visual platform and themed based content creation, Pinterest strikes me as a prime environment for the fitness community. Just think of the inspiration clients could get from pin-boards full of pics, motivational sayings and the encouragement they might feel from a positive and uplifting virtual visual experience.
Ok, lets’ get cracking. Pinterest in summary: is a social network that allows users to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by posting, also known as ‘pinning,’ images or videos to their own or others’ pin-boards (i.e. a collection of ‘pins,’ usually with a common theme).
Users can either upload images from their computer or pin things they find on the web using the Pinterest bookmarklet, pin it button, or just a url.
So why use Pinterest for Business?
Highlights of Marketing for business:
Don’t forget for more detail jump on and check out the Free Ebook, here’s that link again: ‘How to use Pinterest for Business’
I suddenly feel myself becoming one of ‘those’ people. Best watch out the next time you see me at the gym, I might just start raving about “this great new social media site called Pinterest” Have you heard of it?
In your marketing piece, or even on your website, count the number of you’s and your’s. You should have at least twice as many you’s and your’s as I’s and mine’s and your company’s name. A ratio of four to one should be your target.
When your customers and clients read your marketing, they love it when you talk about their dreams, their problems, solutions you can provide to their problems, and the benefits they will receive. And they will show their appreciation – with sales!
So stop talking about yourself and start talking about them!
You’ve seen stories about industrial or even military espionage where a competitor or enemy gets hold of some cool piece of technology from you and then takes it apart to reverse engineer their own development of a competing product.
Now consider reverse engineering your sales process.
Pre internet, customers answered about 20% of their questions before sitting with a sales person.
Now the prospect has answers to 80% of their questions before meeting a sales person.
Prospects use the internet, social media and friends to learn about you and your product before they see you.
The challenge is the prospect who is already busy, already has 80% of what they need to know to make a purchase, and who is sitting with a sales person who has answers for the first 80% and does not know what the last 20% of the questions are.
If the sales process burns up the customer’s patience and time with the 80% and fails to answer the last 20%, sales are impacted negatively.
The 80% is what we know about our features and benefits from the club side. The 20% resides in the prospects. We can even ask, ‘Do you have any questions?’ but this has 3 problems:
Too often the member only has two conversations with the club: when they buy and months later when they leave.
Add a third one right after they buy – ideally within 24 hours – an in-depth post sale interview.
Open ended questions from a skilled, unbiased interviewer who establishes deep rapport will begin to reveal the last 20%. A sales person or sales manager could be too biased and defensive to do these interviews well.
Social media branding must be focused on people. ‘Humanising’ your brand is the golden rule of social media, because humans connect with humans, not logos.
Traditional marketing has always approached branding as a way to control the message. It’s crucial for a brand to provide access to its personalities in some capacity because logos have zero ability to socialise.
Controlled messages are distrusted in a world where social media can expose them so quickly. Revealing the people behind your brand builds trust. Trust is the first step to building loyalty.
When putting together a social media campaign, or evaluating it, you shouldn’t worry so much about generating tons of leads or followers, or about making money from it. It’s about using social media to address the problems of your target audience, to build the brand and to build those relationships.
Essentially, social media is another marketing tool, yes. But, social media is also a marketing tool with a human expectation. People expect another person is composing those tweets and putting those status updates together. If all you’re doing is marketing, then you’re not doing it right.
Source: Business Insider http://read.bi/X8N9Nx
We are huge fans of Google AdWords because we know how powerful a campaign can be for your Personal Training business. So we are super excited to bring you these great tips, shared with us from Mel Samson at Click–Winning Content.
Tips for your Google Ad-words campaign:
To check out more info on Click-Winning Content head to http://www.clickwinningcontent.com.au/
Great by Choice, written by Jim Collins and Morton Hansen, is the follow up to, Good to Great. ‘Chapter 4: Fire Bullets; then Cannonballs’ is a wonderful way to remember that experimentation and prototypes are extraordinarily valuable when seeking improvements and progress.
In the 18th Century, wise captains did not waste their cannonballs. They would shoot rifle bullets. By using the rifle shots, which were low cost, low risk and low distraction, they could test or experiment on the strength of the wind, the distance of the ship and its rate of speed.
Once they had hit the target with the experimental rifle shots, they would then zero in their cannonballs. This meant that the gunners did not have to have brilliant skills or insights; they simply needed to pursue the practice of low cost experimentation.
Great by Choice companies are not particularly creative; just creative enough, and they fire a lot of rifle shots to experiment and learn, and it’s through the learning that they make continuous, cumulative progress and get ten times ahead of their industry peers.
Too often, once a good idea does come along, the undisciplined captain fires cannonballs. We call these un-calibrated cannonballs because we have no idea if they’ll hit a target. An un-calibrated cannonball can lead to calamity – probably more often than a success. The missed venture burns huge resources, which will limit the ability to fund future experiments.
The failed venture will temper creative and risk taking behaviours into caution. ‘I tried that kind of thing once; we don’t do a lot of experimenting here anymore. We don’t try new things here. We wait until someone else has proven it and gotten it right, and then we might try to copy them.’
A rifle shot or a test or a prototype is a low cost, low risk, low distraction activity that you can conduct fairly quickly and learn from so that you can recalibrate the next rifle shot, eventually hit the target and decide how to fire the cannonball. The purpose of rifle shot successes is to bring together and marry relentless discipline and creativity.
If you would like our ‘Rifle Shot and Cannonball Business Assessment’ tool, then drop JT an email: [email protected]
Last month I stumbled across this very cool list of points that you can add to your HR library to help your staff engage more with each other and the culture of the business.
Source: Inc Magazine http://bit.ly/GDv7HH
