Have you ever become frustrated trying to come up with content for your marketing messages, particularly for your Viral Marketing campaigns - well I did too - so I came up with a way to very simply and easily build Raw & Real marketing so compelling that people wanted to shout it out to everyone and I want to share it with other people now.
I love social networking and viral marketing strategies and techniques!
But more than that, I love people. I have a genuine interest in who people are, what they do, how they do it, their trials & tribulations. I could talk to people all day long who want to share their successes and failures in both Internet based and traditional marketing.
I started a business a few years ago and quickly became frustrated with the straight "interrupt" style big media type of marketing and advertising devised by the big Brand blazers.
I read books, Blogs, Websites, took courses, seminars, Webinars, talked to people who were doing it - anything I could get my hands on to figure out how to build more compelling marketing. I employed lots of these techniques with varying levels of success and for the most part, grew my business.
I just couldn't help but feel that something was still amiss - it still just didn't feel right to me.
At first, I had trouble trying to figure out what information to put into all those various marketing pipes - so not having an Ivy League business or Marketing background, I just copied what everyone else was doing with their marketing so it was still the catchy phrase, pretty picture interrupt style of marketing that we have all come to know and hate - its just that I was now using viral marketing techniques to do it.
Wasn't it Richard Prior who once said, "Cocaine is the wonder-drug cuz when your on it, it enhances your character - yeah, but if your already an Asshole!"
Marketing can be the same way, if the message your telling people is not compelling, helpful, educational, honest, and real (Raw & Real) then its just crap like all the other less than mediocre stuff out there that doesn't differentiate you with remarkable things happening - so what happens when you take crap marketing and put it into the Viral Marketing Rocket tubes - it becomes Super Crappy Marketing sent out to thousands more people at the speed of light! So if your goal is to get your crappy message out to as many people as you possibly can, mission accomplished - because if you have crappy, unhelpful, un-compelling, non-educational, dishonest stuff to say, then you can bet people will talk about it and tell all of their friends about it - they're going to tell all their friends about how crappy, un-compelling, un-educational, and dishonest your company is and how everyone should definitely avoid doing business with you.
Then it came to me (not all at once, but slowly over time, the idea became clearer and clearer). What if I just acted natural and did what I like to do without putting on a phony marketing face, would that be remarkable and compelling enough that people would want to do business with me - at first it sounded to plain and ordinary - turns out, I was wrong - or right depending on how you choose to look at it.
I decided to just take a down to earth approach to filling my marketing pipes with the things I liked to do best and share them with my customers - it was just plain old raw & real, true and honest stuff. I found, the more Raw & Real stuff I did, the more people liked it - no plastic surgery, botox, liposuction, or white dental implants in this business - just the real honest to goodness truth. And to think I had been spending a fortune building all that phony ad copy before.
The end result of the business I had at the time, was to build backyard leisure oasis's for family's (swimming pools, hot tubs, outdoor kitchens, cabanas, decks patio's, firepits you name it) but the real business I was in was creating a fun experience for friends and family to get together and forget about the pressures and stress's of day to day life.
So being in the business of bringing people together to forget about their problems, I decided to make everything about this business, remove the pressures of how to create and experience their little piece of heaven - no phony marketing to trick people into being our customer (not that I had been doing that before, but many businesses like mine were doing just that, and you know how prospects think - birds of a feather shall flock together).
The first thing I did was to debunk all the marketing crap on how Hot Tub & Pool company's were tricking people into buying their product and tell them how to outwit them at their own game.
So I wrote a little e-book to tell people about how to go about shopping for a Hot Tub, what questions to ask, how to negotiate with a Hot Tub Salesman (a lot of them, not all, but a lot of them are just like timeshare salespeople - they all have to spew their entire sales presentation, and don't dare interrupt them until they get out all their speeds and feeds & product features about why their product is better than anyone else's, and then hey if you buy it now, I have one left in the back that was custom ordered with all the bells & whistles and the guy just canceled the order - I'll let you have it for 1/2 price but you gotta act now or it will be gone by this afternoon - all the while the sales rep is talking in a whispered tone and looking around the showroom acting like some secret service guy like he doesn't want anyone else to hear about this unbelievable secret deal that only you and he can know about - he detects your waffling a little on the deal, so he asks you to wait right there for a minute, he goes into the back, probably for a cigarette or something, and comes back stating that he has just talked with the Boss, and has permission to give you one more totally unbelievable deal - not only are you going to get your brand new shiny with all the bells and whistles 1/2 price hot tub today, but we are also offering you a one-time rebate coupon that can be redeemed in 2 years to give you an additional 1/2 off the already 1/2 off price so you are essentially getting this hot tub for only 1/4 of the retail price).
Remember that old adage your mom used to tell you - "If its too good to be true ...." You guessed it - there was an extremely low %ge of people that would ever see their rebate. The rebate program was eventually investigated and shut down, not that a rebate system wasn't permitted, but because customers were being told they were guaranteed to get their rebate cheque when in fact only an extremely small %g ever saw a dime - this is a little thing called "disclosure" Do you think they followed the Raw & Real principles here? No way!
I call this the Show Up-And-Throw-Up routine - and it can literally make you feel like throwing up when it happens to you - I used to shop my competition routinely and everytime I did, I felt like I needed to take a shower by the time I left.
Now I know your saying to yourself, "that routine is so old and so obvious, I'd never fall for it" but you'd be amazed at how many people fall for it - and I'm talking about well educated intelligent people here.
You just know your being bamboozled here, but hey, what if, just what if there might be something to this - you don't want to miss out on the deal of the century here (even though there was a new "deal of the century" for every customer that walked through the door) - what if you leave and the next day a good friend of yours comes to work and says "Hey Fred, your not gonna believe the DEAL I just got on a Hot Tub yesterday!" Now aren't you going to feel like an idiot - you see, your subconscious just wont let you not take this deal - that is of course unless you either had iron will or had my little 10 page e-book telling you how to deal with this type of situation so you came out on top.
Also in this little quick tips book was information on the sales tax regulations and how it should be applied to a Hot Tub. You see, many companies were charging the provincial retail sales tax on a hot tub and pocketing the money or they ran Marketing Campaigns stating that they would pay the taxes for you when in fact a Hot Tub is considered Real Property (not movable chattel) by CRA. This means that it is considered to be professionally and permanently installed and therefore not subject to the PST but rather the RST (retail sales tax at source on the wholesale cost of the product). That meant that companies were adding the RST to their cost and then margining it up so in fact the customer was still paying the taxes, its just that its buried in the retail price - there's nothing wrong with this, in fact if you go to the CRA website and look it up, you will find it all spelled out specifically how this sales tax applies to a Hot Tub. So we decided to put this interesting fact into the little e-book and place a sign on each hot tub with a fully disclosed price breakdown for people to see right there in front of them - raw and real. It was public knowledge anyway - we just made it a little easier for people to find out this information so they knew what they were dealing with - that way if another company were trying to pull the wool over their heads by saying that they would pay for the sales tax, you pretty much knew you couldn't trust that company to buy your Hot Tub from - after all, if you needed aftermarket service, how could you trust this company that was blatantly lying to your face, to help you out later on if you needed it.
We offered a full 30 day money back Guarantee if you weren't satisfied with your purchase. One time a young couple bought a fairly expensive hot tub and about 2 months later, the guy comes in to talk to me. He told me he had just lost his job last week and could no longer afford the hot tub - did I know of anyone who might like to buy his used hot tub. I said to him, "you know you have a money back guarantee with your hot tub- you could just use that" He said, yeah but I thought that was only if you weren't satisfied with the product, plus its been well over 30 days - could I still use the money back guarantee?" What do you think I told this guy who was standing in front of me saying he had just lost his job - of course we let him exercise the money back guarantee! When I told him we would still honor it, he had tears in his eyes (I think I did too). Anyway we picked up his hot tub, gave him his money back and cleaned it up and put it up for sale on our floor. The hot tub was still in great condition and we probably could have sold it for close to full price just as a floor model - but we didn't, because that wouldn't be the truth now would it - that's not raw and real. So we put it up for sale and built a story around it in our marketing to tell the story about this poor guy who lost his job and we still took back the hot tub under the money back guarantee - plus the guy who lost his job wrote us an unsolicited testimonial to tell other people about his experience. This hot tub sold in under a week for only a very small percentage off. The next family who bought the hot tub didn't buy it for the discount, they bought it for the story they had to tell all of their friends and family about how they had contributed to helping this guy who had lost his job. People are craving for real stories like this that they can spread around - how many more hot tubs do you think we sold as a direct result of both the guy who lost his job, and the family who bought his hot tub telling all their friends and family about the experience - now that's genuine raw and real stuff - oh and by the way, do you think you could put that story into your Viral Marketing pipes to tell lots of other people - how fast do those stories spread around.
Then came some of the fun stuff - after all, we were in the business of removing stress and pressure in people's day to day lives, so shouldn't we make their experience in selecting a vendor, and designing their backyard dream - pressure-free?
So we did things like:
Cookie Credit Card for the kids - every kid that walked into our store was promptly given a cookie from our extra large cookie jar Plus they received a special credit card of their very own that they could use every-time they came into our store for another cookie treat (btw we also had nut-free cookies for kids with allergies - my wife made this suggestion since one of our son's has a nut allergy). This cookie credit card was given out to every single kid who walked into our store regardless of whether or not their parents actually bought anything.
Parties for everything - if there was a sale going on -there was a party!
One time it was a Halloween Costume contest and the winner received a small gift from the store. My wife came in dressed as Cat Women and the two boys were Star Wars characters and I had one of these air inflated blow up cowboys riding a bull.
Another time, I dressed up as Sponge Bob and ran around along the side of the road in front of our store waving people in wildly - when they looked over, they saw a full scale replica of a typical backyard oasis built right in front of our store complete with BBQ's smoking out pizza's and roast pork loin with Ted Reader's famous Cajun spice and Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum injection (no hot dog marketing here, unless of course you asked for it), fully running hot tub that you could try out, a glassed in cabana/bar where we were serving freshly blended Mai Tai's, Pinia Colada's, and Strawberry Daiquiri's. By the end of the evening one of the guys who worked in our store was passed out in an empty hot tub wearing the Sponge Bob costume (I guess he must have had a bad Mai Tai or something).
One year for March Break we had a hoola dance contest and invited people who hadn't gone to the Caribbean, to come experience the Caribbean right in our store complete with hot tubs, indoor swimming pool, and lots and lots of beach sand. Families came in with their kids to go for a hot tub, play in the sand, drink Mai Tai's, listen to the fabulous music "Sounds of the Caribbean" steel drums belting out in our store and outside on the waterproof rock speakers. How do you think that made them feel - do you think they wanted to build something like that in their own backyard - you bet they did! The promotion that day for people who weren't able to go to the Caribbean for March Break, was "Build an Oasis in your home so you can have a vacation Every day right in your own backyard"
This is just a sampling of some of the really great, fun, "Raw & Real" things we did with the people in our community, whether or not the chose to do business with us (although most of them did once they experienced this honest to goodness genuine treatment).
People just wanted to love us and do business with us because we loved them so much and not only did we tell them just that, but we showed them too by walking the walk and it was extremely gratifying to see the smiles on people's faces when they knew they were dealing with ethical integrity based people in a day and age when there are so many faceless companies out there that just want to grab a quick buck and move on to the next sucker. The best thing, was they told all their friends, we literally had customers that would not only tell their friends, but they would actually bring them into our store. We also had a number of customers that would come in religiously every Sat. or Sun (no pun intended) and bring a tray of Tim Horton's coffee's to give not only to our staff, but also other customers and they would stand at the water test lab (which by the way, we gave out free computerized water analysis to everyone even if you didn't buy from us) and talk to everyone who came in just to tell them how great we are to our customers and if you chose to do business with us, you could never be disappointed in your decision - talk about social networking power - now that is the way to add someone to your Facebook list!
At times, I think we are all too caught up in the World of the new Web 2.0 and the power of online Social Networking, Autoresponder campaigns, Blogs and all the other plethora of techniques and strategies and tools to put your marketing on steroids and Viral Market to the world (don't get me wrong here though - there are many great Viral Marketing tools and techniques out there that can and should be used)
I just believe that we really need to be spending more time ensuring that we build the reality of our businesses to match the perception of our customers or vice versa through the creation of truly remarkable business's with really great helpful, educational, compelling stuff in an honest and ethical way before putting it into the Viral Marketing rocket tubes.
It just makes sense, cuz its Raw & Real.
For these reasons, I've started to write a book to share with other people (its titled, Viral Marketing - Raw & Real - imagine that) and its about how to look inward at your business and build truly compelling, differentiated, and remarkable businesses so that you can create great marketing messages built on stuff that people really want to hear and know about and tell all their friends about.
In true Wikkipedia/Social Networking/Viral Marketing fashion, I am hoping that having read this message you too will feel compelled to spread the word and share your own personal experiences of the really great compelling remarkable things you have done in your business that you would like to share with others to help them grow truly remarkable businesses that people will want to talk about just because its Raw & Real!
Oh yeah, and I don't want to just hear the good stories either, tell me the bad stuff too - as a matter of fact - the badder the better if you want to ensure your story makes it to print.
...Shane
"People just wanted to love us and do business with us because we loved them so much and not only did we tell them just that, but we showed them too by walking the walk..."
I think that says it all.
Look forward to reading more. I'm especially interested in hearing your ideas about creating offerings (like your cookie credit or water test) for web based businesses.
See you on Twitter!
@LuminousHeart
Posted by: mahala | March 21, 2009 at 08:20 AM