Archive | February, 2018

It’s amazing what a little personalization can do to increase sales…

Quick example: You go into a store looking to buy something. A sales person helps you, but you leave without making a purchase. You go back a week later, and the sales person greets you by calling you by name.

How do you feel? Maybe respected, appreciated and memorable? And do you want to do business with someone who cares enough to remember your name? Of course.

When Coca-Cola introduced Coke bottles personalized with people’s names, sales jumped 2%. Now I know 2% might not sound like much, but to a company as big as Coke, it’s huge.

Personalization – when used properly – can double your conversions. Here are 10 ideas on how to personalize not just words, but actual images – and how you might use these ideas in your own business…

1: Inactive Customers or Subscribers:

Re-engage with customers and even subscribers who are no longer active.

For example, for customers who haven’t made a purchase in 90 days, or subscribers who haven’t clicked a link in a month, send them a photo of you in front of a whiteboard looking sad.

The whiteboard has a simple mathematical equation with your business name, minus their name and a frowny face, like this:

Your Business Name

– Your customer’s name

☹

2: New Customers and Subscribers:

Create life-long customers and communities by taking the time to welcome someone when they join you. For example, you might send them a picture of you holding a sign that says, “Welcome Paul!”

3: Product Sales:

When your customers buy a product that you are shipping out, keep them engaged by sending them an email with a picture of their package. This keeps them excited and tells them it’s on the way.

Bonus: Get a clear shot of the address label, and it will help them to confirm their shipping address before it’s too late.

4: Webinar Attendance:

Get people to show up for your webinars by sending them a personalized reminder email in the form of a photo of a handwritten note, or of you standing next to a whiteboard with the written words, “Are you coming to the webinar, Joan?”

This will capture their attention, be far more memorable and do more to get them on the webinar than the standard email that webinar services send out as reminders.

5: Cart Abandonment:

Send out a photo of an empty box with their name on it, such as, “Order for Bob Smith.”

This emphasizes the sense of loss in not ordering, and will get some of your customers to come back and finalize their purchase.

6: Text Messages:

If you use text messages for following up with customers, how about adding an image of a newspaper that features their name and the reason for the follow up?

It’s guaranteed that you’ll have their attention.

7: Customer Anniversaries:

Send out a personalized image that contains congratulations on their anniversary – perhaps the anniversary of purchasing a product, subscribing to your list, joining your membership site, etc.

You’ll make them feel special and important.

8: Upsells:

This is a brilliant idea that can put serious money in your pocket almost immediately – send out an image letting your customer know they forgot something.

It might be a picture of the upsell they didn’t take, along with words such as, “You forgot something John! (It’s our best offer).

9: Certificates:

Do you offer any kind of courses or online training?

Send out personalized and official looking certificates of completion with their name, the training level achieved, the date, signatures and seal.

10: Online Order Confirmation:

When someone places an order, send them a photo of you and your team with a sign that welcomes them by name. It might say something like, “Welcome to the family, Aaron.” Make sure everyone in the photo looks especially happy.

Now then, you might be saying: “Sure, this is all well and good and I can see how it will help me to retain customers and make more sales, but who has time to do all this?”

Good question. The answer is, you do – if you get PicSnippets.

PicSnippets creates personalized images for marketing, sales and customer follow-up. You can create your PicSnippet and use it on nearly any platform such as Infusionsoft, ClickFunnels, Shopify, ManyChat, Klaviyo, FixYourFUnnel and more.

Put personalization to work in your business and get ready for your customer engagement and sales to reach new all-time highs!

Your customers are bombarded daily by the same types of offers – so how can you stand apart from the crowd?

Let’s take the online marketing niche as an example: Everyone is proclaiming to have THE product that will enable ANYONE to make a million dollars this year, or more.

Prospects are confused because there are simply too many choices. What they need is some relief from the continuous barrage of similar looking offers.

Here you come, offering not to sell them the latest greatest program, but instead help them to solve the problem they have right now.

What is their immediate problem? It’s not making a million dollars this year. But it is learning how to make enough money to quit the job they hate.

You offer a Facebook group that is aimed at replacing their salaries and allowing them to quit their job.

Finally, they found someone who is meeting them where they are, instead of tying to call them to the top of Mt. Everest. Because let’s face it, when you’re not making a dime online, making a million bucks seem about as likely as scaling Everest with no prior training.

Instead of being one of many gurus, you position yourself as the guy next door who works on cars and does gardening, and also happens to have a thriving internet business. Sure, you’ll teach them what you know over a few cups of coffee and some good conversation.

Now who wouldn’t jump at that?

There’s two elements at play here:

First, you’re breaking down that sky-high goal into something people truly believe they can achieve.

Become an Olympian athlete? Not likely. Lose 20 pounds and feel and look better? Yes!

Date the hottest models on the planet? No honest man is going to believe that. But be able to get dates with the nice women they meet through their work or hobbies? Now that they believe.

Second is your own positioning. Instead of being THE Diet Expert or THE Dating God or THE Internet Marketing Guru, you are a normal, everyday person.

Think about who you are – stay at home mom? Nutritionist? Astronomer? Astrologist? Doctor? Airplane mechanic? Crafter? Gardener? Cat lover? Write down the things you like the most about yourself.

Now how can you incorporate that into your chosen niche? You might be the cat lady who teaches diet and nutrition, or the shade tree mechanic who also teaches body building. Or maybe the prolific gardener who also teaches online marketing.

Whatever the case, use your own life to differentiate yourself from the crowd.

By doing these two things – starting with goals your audience believes they can achieve and being a person they can relate to – you’ll stand apart from any competition.

Your message will become crystal clear and people who need your message will flock to you. You’ll also be much more memorable as the ‘sky writing physical trainer’ than any of the other thousands of people teaching physical training online.

And there’s another benefit as well.

People will believe you because you come across as human. You show your mistakes, and you talk a little bit about yourself.

What you don’t show is ridiculous claims, Lamborghinis, mansions and yachts parked on tropical beaches.

We talk about targeting the right people for your product, but just how valuable is it to know your audience?

Here’s a quick case study of a deodorant that became a top seller through nothing more than pinpoint targeting of its customers:

In Brandwashed: Tricks Companies use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, we learn how Axe Deodorant took over their market through targeting.

Unilever executive David Cousino tells us that Unilever first analyzed the potential male deodorant user by breaking men down into six profiles:

• The Predator — He takes advantage of drunk girls, and lies about his job and where he lives
• Natural Talent — Athletic, smart, and confident. He doesn’t need to lie to score
• Marriage Material — Humble and respectful, he’s the sort of guy you want to bring home to Mom and Dad
• Always the Friend — He always hits that glass ceiling
• The Insecure Novice — He has absolutely no clue what he’s doing, and things get awkward fast — the geeks and nerds
• The Enthusiastic Novice — He has absolutely no clue what he’s doing, but he’s outgoing and tries valiantly anyway

Based on these six profiles, they chose to target the ‘Insecure Novice,’ since these are the guys who need the most help in getting women.

And frankly, this is the target market that could most easily be persuaded into buying a product – ANY product – that could potentially help them get over their nerdiness and get the woman. Or women. Lots of women.

The next step was to create the ads. Research showed that the ultimate male fantasy isn’t to have just one woman at a time – it’s to be irresistible to several sexy women at once. (Seriously, did they really need research to determine this?)

That’s why the TV ads proclaim that if you use Axe Deodorant, you will get the chicks. ALL the chicks.

The result?

Axe came out of nowhere to be the #1 male antiperspirant / deodorant brand.

Notice they weren’t targeting EVERY man. They didn’t target married men, old men, men who could already get women on their own and so forth. They targeted ONE demographic – men in their 20’s and 30’s who were nerdy and had trouble getting women.

But in the process, they had a great deal of crossover into the other groups as well.

This is an added benefit of targeting that most marketers don’t realize. They think in order to get the biggest share of the market, they must target everyone.

But when you target everyone, you tend to get almost no one. Paradoxically, when you target one specific group, you tend to get customers from all the other groups as well.

One side note: In this case, Axe’s marketing worked almost TOO well. High school kids were completely dousing themselves in Axe, thinking they would get every girl in class to fall all over them.

Instead, school districts complained of kids reeking of the cologne-like smell.

How could Axe have fixed this? Perhaps by cautioning its users that because of the power of Axe, a normal amount was actually more effective than going full coverage.

Instead, Axe backpedaled a bit from their original campaign, and sales declined.

Which is another lesson – when you find a target market that works for your product – or better still, you target your product to the right market – don’t change what’s working.

Here’s what you can do:

• Make a list of potential target markets for your next product.
• From that list, choose the market – or demographic – you want to target.
• Create a profile of ONE person in that market – this is your ideal customer.
• Tailor your product and your message to that one person.
• Dance around your office as you see the sales come flooding into your in box.

Stop targeting everyone and start targeting your ideal customer. Once you do, it will become clear how you should market, where you’ll find your customers, and how to get them on board. And yes, your sales will almost certainly increase.