Scott Channell

Excerpt from the book “My Area Marketing” by Scott Channell

Your local marketing messages have three major objectives.
1. If a potential ideal client is unaware of you, your messaging must put you on their list of viable options to explore when they are ready to act.
2. If a future buyer is aware of you, your messaging must also favorably alter their impression of you. Awareness does not help you if it does not alter the lens future ideal buyers see you through. Your messaging must move you into the top-tier of choices.
3. Your messaging must also move future buyers to act. What do you want them to do? Is the next step to schedule a meeting, visit your store, call you, request a quote or go to your website and fill out a form for information or contact?

There is only One Question with Messaging.
What will your perfect prospects think?

Clients are not buying your service or product but the expectation of a better future.
You must communicate from your prospect’s point of view. The goal is to elevate yourself into the top tier of choices. You are seeking to communicate a competitive difference placing you at the top of a buyer’s vendor choice list.

If you are a newbie in an area that contains well known competitors with established reputations for providing what you offer, how are you going to compete?

Creating awareness alone will not be enough when you have competitors with awareness and positive perceptions of expertise, quality and/or convenience in the community. There are only so many buyers for what you offer in a local area. Your messaging must rip perfect prospects from the hands of competitors.

You must make inroads into the minds of future buyers so that you become the top tier option among better known, more established and favorably viewed competitors.

Business Lawyer Example.
True story. Entrepreneur goes looking for a business lawyer in their area. What is the first thing they do? Search online.

First online listing is for a well-known firm with an excellent reputation. The website is well designed and contains all the generic blah blah blah expected. In the buyer’s mind, this well-known firm has done nothing to eliminate themselves. Previous perceptions were confirmed. They are still an option.

Next listing is for a firm located farther away than preferred and the site does nothing to provide a reason for the trip. Next.

Another listing is a local firm. Their website contains general platitudes with the typical lowest common denominator messaging: How they really care about their clients, work tirelessly on their behalf and seek to make their community a better place. Nothing noteworthy here. Total yawn fest. Next.

The next listing is a bit different. The website itself is not very impressive compared to others. But in those few initial seconds, easy to see and visible “above the fold” were inviting headlines about client success stories.
This local marketer provided eye-catching headlines. These spotlighted specific examples of client advocacy. This “proved” the marketer’s expertise, caring and dedication to meeting the needs of clients. There was a call to action to fill in a form for more specific information relevant to that buyer.

Guess what? The solo practitioner with the subpar website won the business over a larger, better-known competitor. Why? Because her messaging communicated a competitive difference between her and those larger, better-known competitors.

Goal of Your Messaging.
Your messaging must reach and interact with enough ideal prospects with a consistent message sufficient to create a perception of a competitive difference and spur action toward you.

Gain a Foothold into a Targeted Niche.
Each future buyer will have a unique set of needs or wants. Specific criteria for purchase might involve money, time, convenience, ego, quality/expertise, features or what side of the street you are on.
Tailor your messaging to appeal to a subset of all buyers so they will move toward you, rather than the competition.

If your messaging can touch upon or nail a magic bullet solution to a problem or burning issue they face, you are communicating a message with a competitive difference that will win over a segment of future buyers.
Your offer of a free quote, consult or discount may not be enough to steer future buyers toward you if others offer the same. The same-old same-old will not be enough to compel action or tilt buying momentum toward you.

Your Future Ideal Buyers Define Value.
What you think is good enough may not be.
You must provide value. But your marketing messaging must also provide a perception of value in the mind of a specific ideal prospect or you don’t get the business.

That you in fact do a better job is not enough to win you the job today. Clients have doubts about providers. They cannot evaluate quality (as they perceive quality) before buying. Quality is determined after they make the buy decision.

Your messaging must resolve client doubt. Your future clients will have doubts diminished if you can relate actual stories of prior experiences similar to theirs.

A Lesson about Perceptions of Value.
As a young man in school, I worked on a construction crew building swimming pools in the summer. An in-ground pool can look great initially but be harder to maintain and fall apart quickly if not built right. There are things the client has no clue about. They can’t judge the quality of the concrete, whether the pipe is laid correctly, if drains have been placed correctly for easy maintenance or whether the pump and filter are the right one for them.

Those were the issues determining whether we, in fact, were doing a “good job.” But clients cannot make those judgments. So how did they decide whether we were doing a good job? They based it on whether the job site was clean.

I learned perceptions of value are as important as actual value. Our crew could do a fantastic high-quality job unsurpassed by competitors, but if the work site was messy, the clients would downgrade their perceptions of the quality of the work.

Your goal is to provide actual quality and value to a client and enable them to appreciate it. Your messaging must activate perceptions of value and be meaningful to a segment of potential buyers to get them in the first place.

If someone does not know you, is not referred to you or has no perceptions of your quality, whether you in fact keep your promises or do a good job will not win you the business alone.
You want to do a good job, but your messaging must be credible with proofs to create the perception you will do a good job.

How will Future Ideal Clients Distinguish You from the Competition?
Think about your point of entry.
What message would be sufficient for a future ideal client to not only notice you but perceive a competitive difference over your competition?

If you have been around a long time and have a solid reputation, you may have many satisfied clients or customers singing your praises. You might attract a lot of business with messaging merely reminding buyers of your existence.

But if that is not your situation, your messaging must create a force, steering buyers away from larger, better known competitors to you.

How are future clients to distinguish you from all the rest? It is the only thing that matters.
Move up the Ladder in the Minds of Active Ideal Buyers.
If you are unknown to them, your messaging must be visible and good enough to make perfect prospects perceive you as a viable option to check out, at a minimum.

If buyers are aware of you but have not formed an impression about where you rank among their options, your messaging must be powerful enough to propel you to the top.

If you are perceived to be a “maybe” option or a run-of-the-mill nothing special provider or advisor, your messaging must impact indifference in the minds of perfect prospects powerfully enough to bounce you into the top tier of options and hopefully the #1 spot of vendor choices.

A message perceived to be same-old same-old, who cares, a nothing special here snore fest, will soon be forgotten if noticed at all.

And if buyers already have you as a top tier option, your messaging must not only reinforce the impression, but sharpen the competitive difference to vault you into the #1 spot in their minds.

Buyers Seek a Better Future.
Buyers are seeking to improve their lives, homes and businesses.
You want messaging enabling future buyers to exclaim, “That’s what I want. This looks like the person, store or company best for me.”

Strategically, your marketing must reach and convey a message to enough active buyers in your area and then spur them to take an action along the road to a purchase.

Think of the benefits valued by clients.
Think of how you are going to allay doubts that you are the best choice. What proof can you offer?
Think of different headlines to appeal to segments of your ideal client target market.

If there are certain triggers or life events leading to a purchase, your buyers must know you, or easily find you, and have a perception you can provide the value they seek.
Some combination of experience, quality, convenience, delivery, proofs, speed, service experience, bundling or guarantee must create a competitive difference.

Future ideal clients must know you and perceive that difference.

Excerpt from book “My Area Marketing” by Scott Channell.

7. Be Tactic Agnostic. (Or, all Roads Lead Online, But…)
All marketing roads lead to digital interaction. However, what has happened (or not happened) offline may very well determine whether an online investigation of you takes place and whether they complete a next step when they find you.

Be agnostic when evaluating marketing tools and options. You may want to use blogging, social media, human billboards and sidewalk sign spinners, but those tactics may not work best for you. Prejudging and making incorrect assumptions will hinder best allocation of your marketing time and budget to tactics most probable to help.

Do not pre-judge tactics.

8. Test Small. Fail Fast.
Marketing is the art of assessing the probability of human behavior. If you or I were any good at predicting human behavior, I would not have bothered to write this book and you would not be reading it. We would be mega rich living on some island we own.

If you learn from and model those most successful at marketing in your trade or profession, you increase the odds of making high probability marketing bets. When you try something new, you want to minimize your downside.

You need to structure your marketing tests so that even when they do not work you learned something. There is a big difference between spinning the marketing wheel of fortune again and again and working a deliberate marketing process.

Even when something does not get the result you wanted, you want to learn something about whether a tool was right for you or if placements, frequency, headlines, copy or offers might be improved. Even when you stumble, you learned something and place a better bet next time.

If you are trying a new marketing tactic, placement, headline or offer, test small when possible. You are working a marketing process.

Those Best at Marketing are Best at Testing.

Test small and fail fast. Learn from everything you do. Jump right back in and test again until you can be confident in your approach. Then you can allocate more time and money to what has proven to work.

Stay Flexible Financially.
When you are trying to figure out what will work, I strongly encourage you to stay flexible. Do not get locked into spending a high percentage of your marketing budget on anything until testing as best you can, and are confident it is worthwhile.

I do not care about how much you can save by making a larger buy upfront. Until you know what works, those “savings” are more likely to cost you a lot of money and opportunity.

Local marketers can cripple themselves by placing expensive or long-term marketing bets too soon.

9. When You Screw up Marketing, Your Greatest Loss is not the Marketing Investment.
When you place poor bets at the marketing roulette wheel, you lose far more than money. You lose opportunities.

The lost opportunity to grab winnable clients harms you the most — not the wasted marketing money. The value of new ideal clients lost due to poor marketing bets or execution is what you should be crying about.
When those clients who could have been yours went to a competitor, you lost out on them buying from you again, you lost cross-selling opportunities and the mother lode of all, you lost the referrals and word-of-mouth benefits from servicing those clients well.

Plus, you lost the community presence and branding value, which builds with marketing that appeals to ideal clients.

10. Fix the Potholes in the Buyer’s Road to You.
When I was a young pup in school, my summer job was laying and burying pipe in long deep trenches. At some point we would cross our fingers and turn things on.

We would say, “a pipe is only as strong as its weakest point.” I have also applied that thought to marketing as well. Marketing will only be as strong as its weakest point.

Example: I was reading a local publication with “native advertising” from a nearby dentist. (Native advertising is paid content that looks like an article.) It was an informative article, and the dentist made a great impression. I mentioned it to others who told me, “Oh yeah, Dr. Payne has been writing those articles for years.”
So, impressed and hearing that Dr. Payne seemed to have a good reputation, I explored the offer within his article. I went to his website for more information and a report offered on this specialized topic.
But the promised report was not to be found. In fact, little information on the topic was there.

So, Dr. Payne had some great marketing going for him. He caught the attention of a qualified buyer. He built awareness and credibility by running those articles in the same publication for years. He did an outstanding job of getting buyers to the next step — his website.

But on the next step of this marketing journey, hopes and expectations were dashed. A weak link in the marketing chain ruined the perfect prospect experience. Potential ideal clients on a marketing path to Dr. Payne will likely choose another as the road became too bumpy, unclear or blown up.

Think about this:
⦁ If your “great marketing” moves perfect prospects to your website (or another next step) and you disappoint, you lose.
⦁ If you get them to make an appointment but your interviewing skills are poor or the initial visit to your location provided a subpar client experience, you lose.
⦁ If you get the client but do a poor job communicating with them or servicing them, you lose out on repeat purchases and referrals.
⦁ If you do a good job and don’t keep in touch with the client, you will also lose out on repeat purchases and referrals.

My point is that you should identify, focus on and fix weak links, roadblocks and bottlenecks in your future buyer’s journey from recognition of need to paying you money.
Often, hard-working business owners are doing a lot of marketing things right but losing opportunities due to a few weak links in the chain.

11. Be a Master of Probabilities, not the “Exceptions to the Rule.”
When I speak or conduct a training, I set a few rules upfront. One of them is no one can say “Yeah, but.” It absolutely drives me crazy.

As marketing involves dealing with the great unwashed, a lot of crazy stuff happens around the edges. At times you must deal with illogical behavior and the lunatic fringe.

As for every tried and true marketing rule highly probable to work, there is an exception to the rule. So what?
The wannabes who never will be in marketing or sales land are quick to point out “that doesn’t always work.” They are masters at the exceptions to the rules. Ask them what they would do, you are likely to hear, “well, it depends, every situation is different, yada, yada” and get no clear answer as to what to do. They typically have no clarity about what they would do or what they feel is most probable to work.

Market leaders have clarity about that which is likely to work and they can communicate it. Also rans don’t. Become a master of probabilities, not possibilities.
Develop a clear sense of what is most likely to work or the process by which you can determine what is most likely to work. Stay focused on your high-probability result zone.

12. The 80/20 Rule in Reverse.
80% Of results come from 20% of our efforts. 80% Of revenue comes from 20% of the clients. For you it might be 80/20, 90/10 or 85/15, but it is a truism to say most results come from a small part of our efforts.
The 80/20 rule in reverse is also true. 20% Of the most common marketing mistakes are responsible for 80% of marketing failures.

You should have on your marketing radar the most common marketing mistakes to avoid. Ask yourself, “How can I screw this up?”

Having unrealistic expectations, not properly allocating marketing time and money, selecting tactics without strategy, using media that will not reach enough perfect prospects, not consistently touching your house list and being biased toward tactics unlikely to work are all common mistakes predicting a typically bad marketing result.

How can I screw this up? Answer objectively and honestly. Then, try to avoid those mistakes. Challenge your thinking. Invite challenges to your thinking.

13. Work a Balanced Integrated Plan, not a Series of Disconnected One-Offs.
Marketing is a process, part science, craft and art. From real world experience and studies, we know a lot about what is most probable to work. As we are dealing with human behavior and every business situation is a bit unique, it is also a bit art.

Build on a strong marketing foundation. Grow and learn methodically step by step. The more you learn about marketing, the faster you can move and profitably expand your efforts.
It might take you 30, 60, 90 days or more to change your marketing mindset and behaviors. Commit to making specific changes. Otherwise, you doom yourself to buying marketing scratch tickets.

Excerpt from the book “My Area Marketing” by Scott Channell.

Believe in Something.
When faced with multiple marketing choices, different opinions, a sewing circle that hates the approach and a sales rep with a “great deal” is making a convincing case everything that used to work is now “dead” and the one tactic they represent will be a game changer for you…what are you going to do?

Well, if you do not possess core beliefs to guide you in such times, you are going to make a lot of poor marketing decisions. You will discount the proven because some people don’t like it. You will favor the familiar, the popular and the marketing shiny object of the month over what would work best for you.
Your core beliefs keep you on track. Your core beliefs keep you in the high-probability zone.

1. Good Marketing Moves Numbers.
What numbers are you trying to move?
Choose from some combination of gross revenue, profit, margin dollars, number of new accounts or clients, average account size, percentage of repeat or referral business or number of first-time clients. Establish some combination of specific measurable objectives.

“Getting your name out” or “building your brand” is woefully inadequate.
You sharpen your marketing approach with specific measurable goals you can track against.

2. Gain Clarity About Ideal Clients.
You need a clear description of clients who are most profitable, most satisfied, most likely to buy again or refer, contribute the most to your bottom line and those you enjoy working with.

Now, here is where many local marketers start to slide down the greased chute to marketing frustration and wasted money. They think, “Wait a minute. I don’t want to limit myself to just ideal clients, I also want average clients. In fact, I have a good number of less than average value clients I barely make any money with, but I like them and don’t want to miss out on them.”

Gaining clarity about your ideal clients is about sharpening your marketing message and making better decisions about placement.

Focus on reaching ideal clients in your marketing bullseye. You will project a clearer, more powerful message to all. Even those outside of your bullseye will better recognize what you do and your competitive difference.
When your ideal client bullseye resembles the side of a barn more than the center of a target, your marketing messages and placements get watered down with less impact on all potential clients: Ideal, average and below average.

3. Identify The Most Successful: Do What They Do.
It does not matter what service or product you are selling locally. Similar companies, somewhere, doing pretty much what you are doing or want to do are much more successful than most.

Using easily available, many times free tools, you can identify the largest companies in your space, those in business the longest, those with the highest gross revenues, those whose websites get the most traffic and have the highest SEO value. You can identify those in your industry successfully using pay per click, review the ads and keyword placements they use and extract other useful information. There are many things you can do to get “recon” on those that are where you want to be and most successful.

There are companies in your space who learn from marketing trial and error and survive to try another day. Others paid competent people to advise them to get their marketing right.
Get on their email lists. Study what they do. Visit them.

The closer you align your behaviors with the behaviors of the most successful in your industry, or those in a situation like yours that grew and prospered, the greater the odds of your success.

4. Pick Your Mentors and Your Information Sources Carefully.
Unfortunately, too many local marketers have wasted tens of thousands of dollars on marketing tactics or tools to generate not one dime of results.

Incomplete, inaccurate or biased information seduced them. You need not be a marketing expert, but you must know enough to tell a real marketing expert from someone pretending to be. You must know enough.
Many years ago, having been burned too many times, I decided to ignore advice from anyone who has not “been there, done that.” As soon as someone says “(fill in the blank) is dead,” buh-bye. Anyone preaching ONE THING is the answer. See you later.

If you follow the crowd and do what most do, you will take a long walk on a short marketing pier.

5. Understand Concepts of Reach, Frequency and Impact.
Consider this true story. A law firm draws almost all of its business within a 10-mile radius. It airs commercials on a regional television station watched by those within a 100-mile radius.

That campaign has a reach of 100 miles. As the station is regional, ad time is expensive, so they do not run many commercials, just 2 a week. There is low frequency.

As for the clients most likely to hire them, those within 10 miles of the office, that marketing campaign had little impact. Why? As the firm ran only two spots a week on only one station, their potential future clients, if they saw them at all, saw them infrequently so little impact was made.

What about all those who saw the commercials located over 10 miles from the office? Well, besides the low frequency they were too far away so there was no impact on them. 90% Of that firm’s spend was wasted.
That firm tired of spending a lot of money with few results. They changed their strategy. They broadcast on local cable for more focus on their target bullseye and less waste. Their reach was to a smaller geographic area where most of their clients and prospects were located.

As spots were more affordable, they ran a ton of them on multiple stations. There was smaller reach, but more frequency. That campaign impacted their ideal client prospect pool and was a great success — and at 30% of the cost of the failed campaign.

This Was a Very Poor Marketing Bet.

A couple of pages ago I made a harsh statement that small businesses marketing locally do a lot of dumb marketing stuff. The above is an outstanding example of that.

I am sure the sales rep or agency pitching that regional TV station produced a ton of stats, testimonials, and social proof to justify the choice. But it was a really dumb idea, virtually certain to fail. You cannot make mistakes like that. The law firm told me they went with the regional station buy as it was the same station they watched “The Three Stooges” on as kids and “everybody” watched. Talk about knuckleheads.

This was the largest amount of money they ever spent on marketing. 90% Of the people reached were not likely prospects as they were too far away. 10% Of the people reached were local and prime prospects, but as the spot aired on only one station sparingly, there was low frequency and did practically nothing to alter awareness and shape perceptions of those most likely to be ideal clients. There was no impact.

Consider Reach, Frequency and Impact, for Every Marketing Tactic You Consider.

It may be marketing tactics you are familiar with and very much wish would work, just will not reach enough potential ideal clients to move your marketing numbers.

6. To Create Awareness, Build Credibility and Stimulate an Action. Be Where Your Potential Clients Are.

What are your best potential clients interacting with before and during their “who should I do business with” decision-making process? You need to be where they are.

You must interact with enough perfect prospects to even have a chance of reaching objectives. Sounds basic, yet local marketers make this mistake far too frequently. They spend money on marketing tools that don’t reach enough solid prospects.

If your best prospects are going to be thinking on some level about a major purchase or life event change for 12 months before settling on a short list of vendors or service providers, you need to be interacting with them during those 12 months.

You might have great SEO and local paid search visibility. When an active buyer starts checking out providers, you show up. But, if an active buyer has already formed favorable impressions of others and don’t know you, those competitors have an advantage.

How many potential buyers in your area are “thinking about” or actively searching for a vendor or service provider like you?

Which marketing tools will reach them? Which tools will enable you to interact with them in such a way favorable perceptions of you grow?

Manage your visibility at each stage of a prospect’s buying journey. Be where they are.