Quick & Short Tips on Marketing & Communication Delivered on a Tuesday

Tuesday Tips are short snippets of information for small business owners. Little tips on marketing your business and communicating your message that you can use straight away. Get them every Tuesday morning over on our Facebook page – www.facebook.com/denisefayonline

Rinse and Repeat in Advertising

Doing advertising? Run it more than once. It’s in the repetition that you get credibility and more sales.

Do some competitor research

I’ve been talking to some business owners and many of them are winding down. So instead of winding down, use the time to do some research on your competitors. Find three things that you didn’t know about them before you finish for the year.
Start looking at their social media sites, see what they’re saying, what language they are using. Look at press releases that feature them or that they’ve issued. Spend a little bit of time and it will be worth it going into 2014.

Use Stories to Show Know-How

As an expert in your field, you have so much knowledge and in most cases, you want to share it. Yet it’s easy to overwhelm people with the knowledge that you have. Sometimes being reminded of what you don’t know is simply overwhelming. I for one, think that life is overwhelming enough so I don’t want to be told about it in a blog.
So why not use your knowledge in a story? People love stories. In fact, I’m writing a blog post at the moment about the 4Ps of marketing, using a story. (You’ll see it on Thursday). But often it puts things into a different perspective for the reader. You want them to think ‘ah ha’ rather than ‘oh no, not another thing I didn’t know’.
Try it and let me know how you get on.

Don’t think of a Blue Elephant

Certain phrases are to be avoided in your written copy. One of them is ‘Don’t’.
So how’s that blue elephant? You see, your brain can’t process a negative so turn the phrase around and write it in another way. Using that time honoured sign that most of us have seen at one time as an example: ‘Don’t walk on the grass’ could be changed around to ‘Walk on the Path Instead’.
It makes us think differently and achieves the objective that you want.

Be More Confident in your words

It’s time to be less vague and more results oriented in your copy.
When I do the Fay Way Copy Critiques, I see it all the time. “We will help you’ or “We will strive to fix your problem”. Forget the vagueness. If you help people to look better, then say it – instead of saying “we will help you” – simply say “You will feel better when you use us”.
See how more confident you sound?
Instead of “We will strive to fix your problem” say “Your problems will be fixed and should there be a challenge that needs further addressing, we’ll do that for you too.”
See, initially you were setting out the negative (problem) whereas in the second version – there is only a solution.
Another example – Instead of saying “sorry to bother you but“…say “excuse me, do you have a minute to talk“? You appear more confident.

Put yourself into your customer’s shoes and see things from their perspective.

Sometimes we see things from our eyes or in our shoes only but that’s not how our customers sees things. Look from the other perspective.
Here’s a little blog post I wrote some time ago. It’s a short one but have a read and wear your customers shoes – From Hot Pink Manolos to Black Suede Moccasins.
Let me know how you get on.