Marketing for Solopreneurs

Multi-Sensory Marketing—A Tale of Three Little Customers

Recently, I returned from a business networking event frustrated. It was an evening event, promising good food and fun after a two-day conference. After the last session, many of us had dropped our nametags in a big box for recycling. After all, we live in Seattle. Who could not be green-friendly?

That evening, with the loud chatter of people trying to be heard over the raging music, I felt like something was off. I just wasn't in top networking form—not in my element.

Several conference attendees, who I had seen but not had the chance to mingle with, introduced themselves, but their names just didn't stick.

Why? Because like 60% of the population, I am a visual learner. I see someone's name printed once, and I will remember it. I hear it spoken five times, and each time, it flies right out of my brain. I need that nametag.

All the time, people—your customers included—are giving you clues about how they process information, how they prefer to be treated, and how they want you to communicate with them.

The problem, of course, is that not all customers are the same.

What if, by understanding the different ways your customers take in information, you could learn to communicate on a deeper level, reaching each one with more effective marketing messages?

Well, you can. Really, you can.

People Think in Different Ways

Back in the 1970s, a linguist, a psychologist and an anthropologist walked into a bar. Oh, wait, wrong story.

Actually, what these three researchers did was conduct a ground-breaking study on how successful people communicate and learn.

Out of it came a new theory: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). It's a fancy name for the idea that we all experience the world through one of three sensory systems: the eyes (visual), the ears (auditory) and the hands (kinesthetic). And the way we are wired to send sensory information to our brains determines how we think and behave.

Today, NLP is used by:

• entrepreneurs to improve their interpersonal skills.
• salespeople to develop rapport and understand the values of their clients.
• mental health professionals to inspire their patients to make changes in their lives.
• real estate agents to improve their communication skills.
• trial lawyers to win courtroom verdicts by understanding non-verbal behavior.

What's all this got to do with marketing? For starters, knowing which one of these three styles your customers fit helps you use the right communication style for each one.

And if you learn to market and sell using all three styles, well, you're way ahead of the game. Because you'll be reaching each customer at a deeper level.

I used NLP in my teaching days and can say that without a doubt, it helped me deliver multi-sensory lessons that hit all the learning styles of my students. It really works.

The Three Little Customers

When you are meeting with a client, you can learn much about how they think and receive your sales messages by watching the way their eyes move before responding to a question. Not to get too technical on you, but in NLP terms, these are called Eye Accessing Cues.

Business communication experts often tell us to maintain eye contact during conversations, but if you ask a visual or auditory thinker a question and they look away, it's not a sign that they suck at networking. It might be that they are just processing your question before giving you an answer.

Let's look at the three customers—how to tell their sensory style and how best to sell to them:

The Visual Customer: Show Me

Thinks in pictures. In school, this was the kid who reacted to a teacher's question by looking up, above her head. Sometimes the teacher would say, "Well, the answer isn't on the ceiling!" But for that kid, the visual thinker, it was.

Does it drive you crazy to go to a networking event where no one is wearing a name tag? You are probably a visual thinker.

In the general population, approximately 60% of people are visual thinkers.

How to Tell: When responding to a question, looks up and to their left (remembering visual images) or up and to her right (constructing new images). May use words such as: imagine, focus on, point out, see, blind to, get a picture of, review.

How to Sell: Don't stand too close; they need a full view. Use image-rich language and materials, such as brochures, photographs, fliers, and Power Point slides. Match their thinking style by saying things like, "I see what you mean." Or, " Let me take a look at that and get back to you."

The Auditory Customer: Tell Me

Retains content better when hearing it. May repeat back what you said because they need to process it. Might look beyond you or close their eyes to listen to your words. In college, this was the student who could listen to an entire lecture without taking notes.

Do you prefer the phone to e-mail? You might be an auditory thinker.

In the general population, 20-30% of people are auditory learners.

How to Tell: When pondering a question, looks straight to their left (remembering auditory sounds) or straight to their right (imagining a sound). May say things like: talk through, tune in, listen to, ring a bell, explain, hear me out on this, keep telling myself.

How to Sell: Speak clearly and in complete sentences. Pause so they can process your words. Allow time for questions and answers. Match their thinking style by saying things like, "I hear you" or, "We're on the same wavelength."

The Kinesthetic Customer: Let Me Feel

Enjoys hands-on stuff. Wants to touch and feel. Likes to move. May fiddle with pens. Might pat you on the arm when talking to you. Doesn't want to let go when you shake hands.

Do you play around with things on your desk and get fidgety if you can't get up and move around during an event or presentation? You could be a kinesthetic.

In the general population, 10-20% of people are primarily kinesthetic.

How to Tell: When processing a question, often looks down and to their left (engaging in self-talk) or down and to their right (recalling emotions and kinesthetic sensations). May use phrases like: hold on, put my finger on, strikes me, get a grip on, in touch with, sticking with.

How to Sell: Encourage them to hold your products. Let them feel the grain of the paper samples and thumb through your materials. Avoid long presentations because they tend to get antsy after 15 minutes or so. Pause so they can process their feelings. Say things like, "I'm feeling that you need…" Or, "Let's touch on that idea for a moment."

Try practicing on friends or family first. Watch where their eyes go before answering a question. Keep in mind that people's eye movements are rarely slow and deliberate. They are more like brief, subtle flicks, so it takes some time to read them.

Listen for the language clues described above.

What it all means

Knowing these basic NLP cues will not make you a mind reader, but it will give you some insight into the way your customer is thinking. Just remember: although most people have a prominent thinking style, they cannot be put into neat little boxes.

The key takeaway? Pay attention when developing your marketing materials.

For example, consider making your website truly multi-media, with podcasts, print copy, videos and other tools to help you build rapport, strengthen relationships and communicate more effectively with all your customers—no matter what their sensory style is.

Watch for MarketingYourSmallBiz.com's new multi-sensory website, coming on September 1.

Pay More! Get Less! Who Would Want That?

Prices are going through the roof. Gas, food--everything, it seems.

Yesterday, Bob brought home a new carton of our favorite brand of frozen yogurt. He dropped it on the kitchen counter. "Looks smaller, doesn't it?" he said.

I looked closer. It was wider and shorter, but I couldn’t tell. Until I pulled the old carton from the freezer. Sure enough, the net weight on the new one had a lower number. And the yogurt’s price had increased by $1.50. So we were paying more and getting less.

Not a good thing, right? Who would use the marketing slogan, "Pay More! Get Less!"

A good friend of mine, a newspaper publisher, told me something that stuck with her over the years. One day, as she sat in one of her classes for her M.B.A. degree, her professor asked, "Is there anything you would pay more to get less of?"

At first his students were puzzled. But, as they gave it more thought, the overwhelming consensus, the most common answer, was: "information."

The Internet has caused an explosion of new information, the likes of which we have never seen before. If you google a topic, even narrowing it down from "e-marketing strategies" to "building a reliable, opt-in e-mail marketing list", you will have to wade through pages and pages of entries to find what you are looking for. And after you’ve sorted through it all to get to the good stuff, there’s the task of figuring out what it means to you, the solopreneur and small business owner.

There is a new and growing trend in information harvesting. Resources like our marketingyoursmallbiz.com e-publication,
The Solo Way, are combining the very best information with expert advice to help their readers solve real-world problems. If you pay just a little more, you’ll get less information, especially bad information—and a whole lot of practical, solopreneur-focused ideas and activities. Now, if we could just help you with your frozen yogurt prices

A Marketer’s Nightmare: The Death of FREE

There was a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live years ago, a TV show parody called, “People Who Ruin It for Other People.” Each week, the host would interview guests who had done something to take advantage of someone’s trust and “ruin it for other people.”

To the guy who first drove off without paying for his gas, the exasperated host said, “What you’re saying, then, is that you screwed up and didn’t pay for your gas, so you ruined it for other people. And now we have to pay before we pump? ”

The guest meekly bowed his head and said, “Well…yes.”

The next guest had gone into a restroom and trashed the place, making it so we all have to ask for the key first. And so on. People who ruin it for other people.

I was reminded of that skit when I recently read an article by Doug D’Anna in Clayton Makepeace’s ezine, The Total Package (makepeacetotalpackage.com). In his article, “Why FREE Doesn’t Work Anymore,” D’Anna declares the word FREE officially dead. His reasons: 1) Too many FREE e-zines (and, I might add, ones that are short on value— and full of sales pitches) and 2) the explosion of spam— and with it the consumer’s expectation that we are dangling the FREE carrot so we can get his e-mail address and hit him with frequent, blatant sales messages. I call this the “Businesses That Ruin It for Other Businesses” syndrome.

How else are businesses diluting the power of the word FREE? Deceptive advertising. Today I saw a TV commercial telling me I could get credit reports for FREE. They even had a website with “free credit report” in the name. But, in tiny letters at the top of the screen, it said, “Available when you sign up for the ‘Platinum Program.’

D’Anna suggests that the better strategy, at least in e-marketing, is to cultivate a relationship of trust with the people on your list first. And if you do offer a FREE e-zine in your sales copy, be sure the reader recognizes the value of your e-zine first—in and of itself.

I am still using the word FREE in the sign-up pitch for our weekly marketing e-tips. After all, they are free, with no purchase requirement — and our readers say that they are useful, so they have value. But it certainly gave me something to think about.

How about you? Has the misuse of the word FREE taken away its power as a marketing tool? Are you skeptical when you see it now?

Marketing with Music: What Is Led Zeppelin Selling?

Watching TV the other day, I recognized a Led Zeppelin song in a commercial. It was a commercial for a car, but I can't say for sure what brand or model. But the song, I definitely remember.

It got me thinking about target marketing. This commercial was aimed at the boomer market, the 44-62-year-old demographic—people born between 1946 and 1964.

For most of us, music is powerful. It brings back memories, both good and bad. How many of us hear a song and remember a very specific point in time, sometimes down to the street we were driving down and who we were with when we heard it?

So what's to say that when I am watching this commercial, and I hear this song, my mind doesn't wander to past times and the advertiser loses me? I no longer care about the car whipping along. I’m singing along to the music, remembering the good old Led Zeppelin days.

Or, do I subconsciously think, "Wow, this company knows me. It's playing a song from my past. I think I’ll check out this car." I think it could go either way.

Me? I remember the song. But the car? Couldn’t tell you the brand if my life depended on it.

What do you think? Is music a powerful advertising tool or does it distract you from the sales message?

‘Cutting Edge’ Marketing

Recently I was talking to a potential client who was looking for someone to help him with a new social networking site. The first words out of this mouth were, "I am looking for someone young, with lots of energy". Well, my 51st birthday approaching, I wondered, "Am I young and energetic?"

So here’s my question: in the field of marketing, are the “youth” taking over or are the veterans still holding ground with their experience?

I think it works both ways. All things considered, there is room for all of us.

Makes me think of a great line in the remake of the movie The Out-of-Towners. Steve Martin gets fired from the ad agency he works for and says to his wife, who is played by Goldie Hawn, "They are bringing in younger people. I guess I'm not considered cutting edge anymore."

She responds, “But, honey. You were never cutting edge!"

So am I young and energetic or over the hill? My thought: You're as young as you feel.

Don't Assume Anything

Whatever business we happen to be in, we all use terms and acronyms, assuming that everyone understands what we are talking about.

Recently I caught myself saying to a server at one of my favorite restaurants, “I just got out of a Chamber meeting.” Well, I know I mean chamber of commerce, but he smiled and then screwed up his face. He must have been wondering, “Chamber? Court chamber? Chamber of horrors?”

And a few days ago, I e-mailed a mockup of a marketing piece to a client. Since we didn’t have the copy yet, I filled it with the standard "junk text" called "Loren Ipsum". Which goes like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Morbi commodo, ipsum sed pharetra gravida, orci magna rhoncus neque, id pulvinar odio lorem non turpis. Nullam sit amet enim. Suspendisse id velit vitae ligula volutpat condimentum. Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed quis velit. Nulla facilisi. Nulla libero.

When I heard back from the client, her response was, "I love the layout, but why is that foreign language in there?" Okay, that gave me a chuckle, but back to my original thought: don't assume.

A Small Business Gets Self-Promotion Right

It is perhaps the most ignored on one hand and the most misused on the other: free publicity. While most businesses recognize the value of exposure in print and on TV, many do not understand that, in order to interest a reporter or editor, they must have a “news hook,” something that ties into what is going on in the world or your community right now. Nobody in the media wants to give you a free ad. But if you offer them a real story, connected to a timely issue, they will be interested, because it’s news.

The news and editorial calendars revolve around the seasons and the holidays. These are great opportunities for savvy marketers because the newspapers and television stations are always looking for tie-in stories.

I saw a great example just yesterday. It was Valentine’s Day and a Seattle coffee shop had a “Meet Someone Special” event. In their store was a bulletin board with numbered photos of participating customers. Colorful Valentine bags with red hearts hung on the wall. The numbers on the bags corresponded with the photos. Customers checked out the photos and put their own number in a bag if they were interested in meeting that particular person.

This story took me right back to the third grade, when the week of Valentine’s Day brought equal measures of excitement and fear. (Who will give me a card? What if nobody likes me?) On the day after Valentine’s Day, the coffee shop hosted an event so customers could open their bags and meet each other.

This was a clever idea. A new twist on Valentine’s Day at a coffee shop. And it paid off. This small biz owner got it right, understood the concept of self-promotion with free publicity. And it paid off. I saw the story on the local news of two different TV stations on Valentine’s Day. The reporter interviewed the shop owner and several customers. It was like a 30-second commercial for the store—at no charge.

This special event benefited the shop in other ways, too. It created more interactions between customers. It made it more likely that they would recognize another customer when they stopped by for their morning coffee. So it became a place to meet friends, rather than a shop filled with strangers.

How about you? Might your business lend itself to a story tied to a holiday theme? Have you had success getting free publicity with a seasonal- or holiday-themed story?

Marketing in a Recession: Cut Back or Increase Your Budget?

When consumers and customers reign in their spending, we small businesses feel the pinch because we must compete for fewer available dollars. But wait a minute. Aren’t the customers we sell to still going to need most of the products and services we offer?

The short answer is “yes.” But thanks in part to the media’s constant recession hype, we fall prey to the fear of doom and gloom. We feel that we must cut back on marketing, drop the “frills,” eliminate our advertising budget. But we forget one thing: people are still going to need stuff. They’re just may be a little more selective in deciding who they give their business to.

Study after study, dating back to the 1920s, has shown that during a recession, the largest sales increases are enjoyed by firms that advertise the most. Smart businesses know that growth does happen during economic downturns and with that knowledge they are able to make gains in their customer base and market share.

What’s more, after a recession is over, companies that had continued to market were well ahead of their competitors who had stopped their advertising. What might that mean for small businesses? Look at your marketing in a very broad sense. Don’t pull all your advertising, and, more than that find other ways to stay in front of your customers and clients: join a service club, such as Rotary, keep attending Chamber of Commerce events, sponsor a youth sports team, give to a deserving charity—anything to keep your business name out there.

I’d like to hear from you small biz owners out there. What is your marketing strategy during a recession? And does it work for you?