Archive for April, 2010

Ideal Customer meets Real World

Posted in PLM Files on April 20th, 2010 by Yvonne_PLM – 1 Comment

My mate Jeffrey reckons that 9 times out of 10, people will shut down if you mention the “ideal client”.

Real World Customers 300x275 Ideal Customer meets Real World And now that he has mentioned it, I look back on my experiences with tracking down the elusive “ideal client” and I know what he means. Your eyes glaze over and it becomes a purely clinical exercise.

However, people are not clinical or cold, nor can they be represented purely by statistics. Humans are warm blooded emotional beings.

Jeffrey has developed a way of making a real emotional connection with your “ideal client”, using Avatars.

It starts with asking about a customer who has really annoyed you. 

He teases these negative attributes out of you relatively painlessly. Then he reverses these negative attributes to establish the positive credentials for the Avatar.

Of course there is a lot more to it than that but the outcome is amazing. You end up with a real connection to real customers.

If you then take that customer Avatar and accurately assess your demographics, you will work out whether you have a target market, how big it is and where to find those real world customers.

Social Networking through LinkedIn

Posted in PLM Files on April 1st, 2010 by Yvonne_PLM – 1 Comment

I recently participated in a discussion about whether LinkedIn was useful for getting business, meaning real hard sales.funnel Social Networking through LinkedIn

Here is what I said.

for me it is very clear…

1. Start the conversation
2. Build the relationship
3. Make the sale.

This is what we do when we are doing online product launches and integrated Internet marketing.

1. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, offline networking etc all start the conversation.

2. Sometimes you also carry on the conversation with social media but you really start to build the relationship in your blog, on the phone, in email and face to face.

3. Only then are you in a position to sell. If you miss the relationship building, whether online or offline, you are back to the bad old days of hard selling whatever medium you use.

LinkedIn is just another funnel of opportunities and prospects with a specific demographic that just happens to be the demographic for my business. Facebook doesn’t work for me. Twitter opens up a few prospects occasionally.

I think there is another important point when talking about LinkedIn in that you need to set it up so you “attract” business. Does your profile work for you? There is no doubt that I attract business on LinkedIn. I was approached, as recently as yesterday, by someone with an attractive business proposition who found me on LinkedIn.

I consider LinkedIn extremely useful if you see it in the context of the 3 points above.

In relation to online marketing you may have heard that the money is in the list.  Well as Jeff Walker says, the money is in the relationship with your list.

We make sure we work VERY hard on creating the relationship with you existing and potential customers when doing an online product launch. 

Yvonne

linkedin2 Social Networking through LinkedIn