David Caruso

A Story from Amanda Gome on Smart Company – recently caught my attention: -

“Small and medium businesses in the US are now more likely to advertise online than in traditional media, shows a new study from the US.

Research from The Kelsey Group and Constat and reported on Digital Media shows that for the first time online advertising has overtaken traditional media.

About 77% of US SMEs used online for advertising in August 2009 compared with just 69% that used traditional media. A year before 73% advertised online while 74% used traditional media.

Steve Marshall, director of research at The Kelsey Group, says the milestone of digital/online surpassing traditional media among SMEs is an indicator of the broad shift to online platforms.

Though more SMEs used digital advertising, the majority of their budgets still found its way to traditional media, with only 36.8% of SMEs’ advertising budgets going toward online. However, that was up more than 14 percentage points over the prior year.

There is no comparable data for Australian SMEs. The closest may well come from the 2009 Sensis ebusiness report that shows that 24% of SMEs currently use the internet for marketing activities (including advertising on websites and portals). A further 8% are expected to start in 2010.”

Share on Facebook

By Mark Wayland

Try this quick test.

Write down the last 3 digits of your mobile phone number.

OK?

Now quickly estimate the date of Genghis Khan’s death.

Quickly…?

If you’re like most people, and most people are like most people, there should be a close relationship between the 3 numbers from your phone number (and I assume you got that right) and the date you had to estimate.

That is,most people estimate that GK died in the first 1000 years AD. So they write a 3 digit number for the year he died. Why? Because your brain has been anchored by the first question. GK actually died in 1227.

Attracting attention is the purpose of your introduction so it’s important to anchor the person/ people you’re talking with. To put it another way, giving people a context allows them to make a solid judgement about what you’re saying.

That’s why I start my “standard” introduction with the middle “problem” box question, “Have you ever sent someone to a training program, and then back at work on Monday morning, nothing changes?” 95% of the people I ask that of nod in agreement.

If I left it at that, well, the introduction goes nowhere. The function of the question is to anchor people’s brains and give them a context for what comes next, the higher “solution” box; “Well, that’s what I do. I make sure that there is a direct link between the investment in time and money (in training) and your return on behaviour.” That’s why we typically use Medium/ Skinny words, questions and phrases before we use the higher Fat/ Medium ones.

Here’s an example:

Anchor with “past occupation” box, “I’ve worked in the event industry for 20 years staging pop concerts all over Australia” and follow with a “present occupation” box, “now I have my own business sourcing and supplying all the merchandising items that are sold out front.”

Anchoring is the function of RRP – recommended retail price.

Anchoring is why lots of companies advertise their businesses based of past performance. The assumption is that past good performance predicts future performance. I see Neil Flett from Rogen International (www.rogen.com.au) is still using his company’s involvement in the 2000 Sydney Olympics bid as a plank in their advertising and that was work done over 14 years ago.

Anchoring is why we use testimonials or stories of recent successes. But wait there’s more. In using a 2 or 3 box introduction, matched to your audience or target group’s needs, with an anchored process built in differentiates you from the others. All too often I see businesses trying to distinguish their practices in ways that have little or no influence on customers’ buying decisions. Most often it’s all about them, not what we can do for you.

Think carefully if you claim; quality service, service responsiveness, credentials, the importance of the customers, testimonials and references in isolation, your methods tools and approaches and finally, the best price.

If your efforts are not directed towards “why should I do business with you?” your customers cannot separate you from your competitors and so the only common factor they can use is price. Then you and all the others become just another commodity.

Share on Facebook