A lot of small businesses produce marketing that, essentially, conveys the message featured in the headline. Surprise, surprise: that’s not effective marketing. Instead, you want to produce marketing that sends this message to your customers: “We care about you. We care about solving your problems. You are the centre of our universe.” So your marketing needs [...]
Here’s a true story about two pizzerias that illustrates the importance of marketing, and how the way customers perceive a business influences how much money they spend with that business. My friend told me about a new pizza shop that opened near his home. When he visited it for the first time, he knew the business [...]
What do you do when someone scratches your back? You scratch theirs in return. (Unless, of course, you’re a psychopath.) That’s how humans work. When someone does something nice for us, we feel a strong urge to reciprocate by doing something nice for them. This is known as the ‘law of reciprocity’ – and it partly [...]
If you can identify a customer’s pain points and clearly address them when you communicate by phone, email or face-to-face, it will add a lot of power to your marketing. For example, I recently spoke to a potential new client who clearly identified two pain points during our discussions: He didn’t have the time to write [...]
Repeat after me: “Familiarity equals trust equals sales.” When you meet someone for the first time, you don’t trust them. That means you’re wary of what they say, which makes it hard for them to influence you. As you get to know that person, you trust them more, which makes it easier for them to influence [...]
Many years ago, when I had my first job in journalism, I misspelled a few people’s names. They were outraged, took it really personally and never let me forget. It did teach me a valuable lesson, though. If you misspell someone’s name, it can feel like an attack on that person’s identity, and leave them feeling [...]
At the end of this short video, I’m going to tell you something incredibly important. First, though, let me tell you why every small business should do content marketing. The aim of content marketing is to build trust, credibility and brand recognition with your potential customers and referral partners. The more quality content you produce, the [...]
Marketing works best when it focuses not on you and your small business, but on your customers. But this is easier said than done. When a potential new client asks, “So, Nick, why should we use Hunter & Scribe?”, my instinct is always to talk about myself. So I have to remind myself that even though [...]
There are a lot of benefits to being regarded as a person of significance. The more significant people believe you are, the more likely they’ll be to regard you as knowledgeable, likeable and trustworthy. And the more they believe you have those qualities, the more likely they’ll be to send business your way. So there’s a [...]
When you come across five-star marketing, you can’t help but open your wallet, even when you recognise the psychological triggers being used by the seller. For example, I recently encountered a Facebook ad that had such persuasive writing, I felt compelled to click through to the landing page. And the landing page was so full of [...]
