How to Be Remarkable and Get More Clients

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

A web design firm was having trouble getting more clients. They asked the following question on a marketing forum:

Our local area is full of other web design firms. How can we effectively market ourselves without a price war?

They got several answers to their question, including attending Chamber of Commerce events, using client referrals, and using social media. All good ideas.

If they really want to stand out, they may need a little extra something (just in case other web designers in town are at those same events)!

They’ll need to do something that makes their firm different. Worth talking about.

Four ways to be remarkable

1) Create a progress dashboard so that clients can go to your site and instantly see the status of their project

2) Give each new client a t-shirt with their newly-designed logo on it (this time, make it big!)

3) Hold a design of the week/month contest. Visitors to your site vote designs up or down. The winner gets a donation to their favorite charity.

4) Offer a work with what you have service. Refresh the site, rather than a complete do-over. You can offer this as a cheaper service, without compromising your regular rates.

It doesn’t have to be revolutionary. Remarkable can be small.

What else could they do? And what are you doing in your own businesses to stand out? Share your ideas in the comments.

Earn More Money by Giving Free Gifts

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

Publishers, including The New York Times, Hachette, and Penguin) are panicking over e-books. They’re resisting the Kindle, trying to force DRM, and retain end-to-end control over pricing.

However, according (ironically) to an article published in The Times itself on Jan. 22, 2010, other publishers have decided to embrace e-books – and find ways to make money by actually giving books away.

It’s part of what Seth Godin calls the “gift” culture in his new book, Linchpin (plain old link). Gifts bring us closer, and free can actually earn more money.

How does this work?

HarperCollins and Scholastic, among others, are offering free downloads of books by new or little-known authors for a limited time. The idea is that if the readers like the free book, they’ll want to come back and buy more books by the same writer.

Earn money with free

For example, Samhain publishing offered free digital versions of a romance novel. It was downloading 26,897 times. Meanwhile, sales of the author’s two other books went from 97 and 119 to 2,666 and 3,297 respectively. Not huge numbers, true, but found money for both publisher and author.

You can do it too

This works in other businesses too. Give away the information and posts in your blog for free. Offer e-books, newsletters, free articles, and white papers as downloads. Let them spread. Give readers permission to re-post them and share them (with credit). Spread your ideas.

Then, add paid how-to workbooks, bundle posts with extra information and create paid e-books, add video or audio and you’ve got a workshop. The more specific, personal, and unique the service, the higher the value, and the more it costs.

Are you using free information to make money? Share your stories in the comments.

Image: mydogsighs

How to Turn Your Clients Into Raving Fans

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Jodi Kaplan

Would you like your clients to be raving fans?

The germ of this idea started a few weeks ago when I went to a focus group. A big financial services company wanted to roll out new tools for small businesses to help them manage their money.

Afterward, I thought, what do small business owners really want today? They want more business!

Help your clients, and yourself too

What if you were the company that helped them get it? What if your company brought those together — and offered a true relationship?

Use strategies that bring people back, and get them talking, so other businesses will want to join in.

I don’t care about shopping points or coupons I must use in 30 days. I do care about a company that takes the time to listen, and develop a relationship.

Unless you’re different and worth talking about nobody will be interested. You have to interact and show you actually care.

A little something extra

A free soup strategy, that brings a smile to your customers’ faces.

Thank you notes or birthday cards. A gift card for their favorite coffee shop. Or, a framed photo of their favorite sports team’s championship win.

Help them help each other.

Encourage one client to help another. Introduce the florist to the candy-maker. Or, host events for small businesses, bringing the florist, the candy-maker, and the jewelry designer into the same room.

Invite clients for breakfast, ask them for ideas, let them interact, and brainstorm. Watch how they use your tools. What’s obvious to you (because you’ve lived with it for two years) may not be to people who haven’t.

When you go to events, listen more. Be the person who brings people together (rather than the person with the big sales pitch).

What are you doing to bring your clients together?

Image: Lucy Boynton

Being Remarkable Gets You More Business

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Jodi Kaplan

Once, Checker cabs were ordinary. You could see them on city streets every day. Now, taxi regulations require that cars be taken out of service after they reach a mileage limit. So there are only a few left. Seeing one is remarkable, worth talking about.

Be worth talking about

Being remarkable is one way to do that. Be worth talking about (like the Checker cab, or the fun car wash, or a no-kill public animal shelter). Talk to people (not at them). Yelling louder and louder won’t attract clients. You will get them by listening, asking questions, and building trust. Bob told me about a car wash that lets you squirt water and soap on the car (like a giant fire hose). It’s owned by Procter & Gamble, which is also a remarkable thing – that a big company could do something unusual.

Think different

As I was writing this post, an email popped up from a marketing forum. Someone wanted advice on how to promote her computer repair business. They’re the only Apple service/sales store in the area, but they also want to promote PC repair and document management services. When they focus on Apple, nobody knows they fix PCs. If they concentrate on PC service, the reverse happens. Then, there’s the document management software they sell.

Focus your message

Being the only Apple repair store in town makes them remarkable and worth talking about, “Hey, they’re the Apple guys. Thank goodness! I can get my Mac fixed.”

Doing too many other things makes their advertising messages confusing and changes their service from remarkable to ordinary.

You’ll get more business (and more rapid fans) being a purple cow than a brown one.

How are you remarkable? What are you doing to stand out?

Image: wikimedia

Note: The sad thing is, I saw an actual Checker cab a few weeks ago, and took a photo with my dumb cell phone. Unfortunately, Verizon has put all sorts of barriers in place to make it hard to get the photo from phone to screen (the USB cables don’t fit, for one thing). If you want to post an image you have to pay a fee to email it to yourself.

Remarkable Can be Small

Posted on November 19, 2009 by Jodi Kaplan

On Tuesday, Seth said that you can create a breakthrough or you can win incrementally – with small changes that gradually build attention and trust.

A change can be small and still be remarkable.

On Monday, I was down in Union Square in New York City. I noticed that the crossing lights had a countdown clock. The lights counted down, so you knew how much time you had to get across the street before the light changed.

A small thing, but one that made it much easier to cross the street.

What small thing can you do that will make it easier for your customers? Or for yourself? Or that would be worth talking about?