Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

You know, CEOs it is your responsibility to make sure that everyone in your organization knows your vision, your core values, and your mission.  No doubt you have spent a good deal of time preparing these parts of your culture, but have you done all that you can to communicate them to your people?  More important, have you made sure that your messages about culture have been clearly understood by everyone?  All too often we find that even though the CEO has tried to make sure everyone is on board, there are people in the organization who really don’t get it.

Here’s a tip:  Take every opportunity you can to communicate your culture to your team.  Whatever means you use to get the message out, be sure to craft that message with care.  It is important to think about how the people who will read or hear the message will understand what you are saying.  It is even a good idea to check with members of your team periodically to see if they are on the same page you are.  Remember, if you want to communicate clearly you need to make sure that your message is understood by the person who receives the message.  To make this happen, craft every message with care.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click to listen to the CEO rule of the week

Would you allow your sales people to mail out printed brochures that contain inaccurate or outdated information?  Would you allow your printer to reproduce high quality, glossy, multi-page brochures at a very high cost if they were not accurate or updated?  Now ask yourself, do these same standards of accuracy and excellence apply to your website?  Is everything there accurate and up to date?  Are you using the best tools and most effective strategies to get the most from the site?  Remember, your website is your very best brochure.

Here’s a tip:  For every dollar you invest in printed marketing material, allocate a similar dollar amount towards the enhancement and development of your Website.  Review the site for accuracy and up to date information at least once each quarter.  You should also explore the opportunities to have voice-recorded testimonials and animated demonstrations of your product and service placed on your website.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO rule of the week

We market because we want to be known and make an impact.  Our sales people hand out business cards, we give out brochures, we mail flyers or cards, but what makes us stand out.  All too often we find companies doing exactly the same things as their competitors.  The center of the message is all about why my service or my product is better than the competing product or service, but nothing really makes the company stand out.  Nothing really makes the company memorable.  Is this happening to you?

Here’s a tip:  Take one marketing piece, something like a little token that you give away when you’re networking or a desktop item that you leave behind on a visit to the customer, and redesign it to make it a clever reminder of who you are.  A clever give-away or leave behind can often replace a business card or brochure because people will hold on to the giveaways.  A business card is easy to toss away when the meeting is done.  A brochure will likely find its way quickly into the trash can.  But a clever and memorable giveaway will find its way to the desktop or perhaps even the pocket of your prospect and when it comes time to make the buying decision, guess who they are likely to call first.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO rule of the week

As CEOs we know by now that we need a brand identity.  We need a picture, a logo or something that works to create a visual connection between us and the people we want to connect with.  This is because people think in pictures.  They need images to help them identify with and recall who you are and what you do.  We also need slogans, a word or phrase that helps connect the images to our emotions.  Of course, it is not enough to just create the images and words that create that brand identity.  We need to make sure that we develop policies and systems to ensure that it’s consistent and constant.  What do I mean by that?

Here’s a tip:  Look at the forms that your company uses internally.  Is your logo and slogan on everything that you print?  Look at the forms that your customers fill out.  Is your logo and slogan there also?  I’m sure it’s on your business cards, probably on your letterhead, but is it on your checks?  Look at those areas where it is printed, put them side-by-side, is it consistent, and is it constant?  Think of having your printer create a Standard Corporate Identity Manual for your business so that anytime something goes to print that includes your logo or your slogan it’s printed with the same colors, the same font, and the same fill.  Do everything possible to make sure that every time your corporate identity appears, it looks the same as every other time.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

I was out at Home Depot recently doing some shopping.  I happened to be wearing a shirt that had the logo of one of my client’s companies embroidered on it. I was surprised when another shopper walked over and asked me, “is that your company.”  I briefly explained my relationship to the company, and we had a brief talk, and then we went our separate ways.  As I got back to my shopping I had an ahaaa . . . my client’s identity was growing because I was wearing a shirt with his brand on it.

You know, CEO’s we talk a lot about branding in our business because we know how important it is to have a great company logo and a memorable slogan.  But what are you doing to make sure that the hard work and expense you went through to get that logo is having its biggest impact?  What are you doing beyond the brand itself to make sure that people recognize you?  There are many, many ways that you can identify yourself uniquely in the market you serve.  You could use a clever little giveaway with your logo or slogan on it.  You might get your slogan put on shirts that you and your employees wear.  You might find that your best identifier is something unique in your product or service that you are able to promote in a public way.  It can be just about anything, but it must be something.  The rule is, if you don’t have something that uniquely identifies you, you have no identity.

Here’s a tip:   Think about your business.  Think about what you have that can be promoted or distributed to uniquely identify you in your market.  What will people remember?  For example, I once had a client that served the real estate industry.  To make sure people knew who he was, he would fill a candy jar with his logo and his name on it.  He gave these jars to real estate agents as gifts, and then every couple months he’d go around to the different real estate agents and refill that candy jar with candy.  He became known as the Candy Man.  At Estrada Strategies, we put our logo and website address on a gold coin that we call a “Round TUIT.”  I am sure many of you have one.  People know us as the company that has that little gold coin that helps people get things done in order to move forward.  What do you have? 

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please Click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

CEOs, we all know that the best way to learn how we can improve as an organization is through consistent and regular feedback from our customers.  For some companies this happens by accident.  Other companies track this through complaints they receive.  The better companies have a well structured system to get customer feedback.  More often than not, those structured system surveys contain 20 to 30 long questions. Many of us have been exposed to them.  The survey is either delivered through a phone call or they mail them to us.  We may pick up the survey after dinner and look at it, but we never fill it out.  More often than not, we simply throw it away.

So, here’s a tip:  When you are putting together your client feedback system, focus on the three high impact features of your product or service that you feel set you apart from your competition.  Create your survey from those three questions.  You might find that you will get feedback containing more focused information that is very relevant as it relates to setting you apart from your competitors.

This has been your Estrada Strategies CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your next move.

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

I was out at Home Depot recently doing some shopping.  I happened to be wearing a shirt that had the logo of one of my client’s companies embroidered on it. I was surprised when another shopper walked over and asked me, “is that your company.”  I briefly explained my relationship to the company, and we had a brief talk, and then we went our separate ways.  As I got back to my shopping I had an ahaaa . . . my client’s identity was growing because I was wearing a shirt with his brand on it.

You know, CEO’s we talk a lot about branding in our business because we know how important it is to have a great company logo and a memorable slogan.  But what are you doing to make sure that the hard work and expense you went through to get that logo is having its biggest impact?  What are you doing beyond the brand itself to make sure that people recognize you?  There are many, many ways that you can identify yourself uniquely in the market you serve.  You could use a clever little giveaway with your logo or slogan on it.  You might get your slogan put on shirts that you and your employees wear.  You might find that your best identifier is something unique in your product or service that you are able to promote in a public way.  It can be just about anything, but it must be something.  The rule is, if you don’t have something that uniquely identifies you, you have no identity.

Here’s a tip:   Think about your business.  Think about what you have that can be promoted or distributed to uniquely identify you in your market.  What will people remember?  For example, I once had a client that served the real estate industry.  To make sure people knew who he was, he would fill a candy jar with his logo and his name on it.  He gave these jars to real estate agents as gifts, and then every couple months he’d go around to the different real estate agents and refill that candy jar with candy.  He became known as the Candy Man.  At Estrada Strategies, we put our logo and website address on a gold coin that we call a “Round TUIT.”  I am sure many of you have one.  People know us as the company that has that little gold coin that helps people get things done in order to move forward.  What do you have? 

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO RULE of the Week

Would you allow your sales people to mail out printed brochures that contain inaccurate or outdated information?  Would you allow your printer to reproduce high quality, glossy, multi-page brochures at a very high cost if they were not accurate or updated?  Now ask yourself, do these same standards of accuracy and excellence apply to your website?  Is everything there accurate and up to date?  Are you using the best tools and most effective strategies to get the most from the site?  Remember, your website is your very best brochure.

Here’s a tip:  For every dollar you invest in printed marketing material, allocate a similar dollar amount towards the enhancement and development of your Website.  Review the site for accuracy and up to date information at least once each quarter.  You should also explore the opportunities to have voice-recorded testimonials and animated demonstrations of your product and service placed on your website.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

We market because we want to be known and make an impact.  Our sales people hand out business cards, we give out brochures, we mail flyers or cards, but what makes us stand out.  All too often we find companies doing exactly the same things as their competitors.  The center of the message is all about why my service or my product is better than the competing product or service, but nothing really makes the company stand out.  Nothing really makes the company memorable.  Is this happening to you?

Here’s a tip:  Take one marketing piece, something like a little token that you give away when you’re networking or a desktop item that you leave behind on a visit to the customer, and redesign it to make it a clever reminder of who you are.  A clever give-away or leave behind can often replace a business card or brochure because people will hold on to the giveaways.  A business card is easy to toss away when the meeting is done.  A brochure will likely find its way quickly into the trash can.  But a clever and memorable giveaway will find its way to the desktop or perhaps even the pocket of your prospect and when it comes time to make the buying decision, guess who they are likely to call first.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Here’s what I mean by that.  Often when I am working with a client we look at how they are managing their sales process.  The first question I ask is:  How do you define a suspect?  Once they have a good definition for suspects, then I ask how do you inventory those suspects?  If possible, I try to get them to point me to one place where they have all of their suspect’s inventoried. Often, as we talk it becomes clear that their suspect data base is collected in some form of Electronic Rolodex.  Maybe it is an excel file, or perhaps it is in Outlook or some other contact database.  My next question is often the most revealing.  I say, “How do you market your product or services to that list of suspects”?  Here is where most business owners run into difficulty because they have no clear way to use or manage their Electronic Rolodex.

So then I say to them:  “Okay, here’s a scenario.  What if I were to give you 2,000 names and numbers of contact people, company profiles, e-mail addresses of suspects, people who I know could use your service?  What could you do with that information?  They usually respond with a flurry of ideas: I could e-market to them, I could send them newsletters.  And so on.  “Exactly,” I say, “you would do something with that new list of suspects to make sure you could turn them into prospects.”  The point is most business owners are constantly building a database of suspects without even realizing it.  Every time you or your sales reps call on a qualified suspect that doesn’t turn immediately into a prospect, that name should go into a CRM database.  As you build your database over time and continue to market to that database, you develop a “warm” market for your product or service. It is warm because as a result of your regular marketing, they recognize your name and identify your product or service. 

For many businesses however, that potential warm database never develops because the names they collect are tucked away somewhere in an Excel spreadsheet or in Outlook just sitting there stagnantly.  What they have is an Electronic Rolodex, not a CRM system.  The difference between the two is not so much how they are put together, but what you do with them.

Here’s a tip:  Look carefully at your sales and marketing systems.  Identify clearly where are you inventorying all your suspects?  First, no matter what system you use to collect and maintain the data, make sure you have someone in your organization managing some type of system to ensure that this suspect database is constantly growing?  Second, identify someone to make sure that there is some regular strategic marketing being done to that database?

This has been your Estrada Strategies CEO Rule of the Week.

I am Ruben Estrada and this is your next move.

Click here to listen to the CEO rule of the week