5 Marketing Tips My 5-Year-Old Taught Me

My five-year-old daughter, C, is an expert on sales and marketing.

If you’re a parent, you probably know what I’m talking about. Whether from the point of view of the customer or the marketer, young kids just seem to know what works and what doesn’t. And they’re not afraid to let the adults in their life know about it.

Here are five useful lessons my daughter’s taught me about sales and marketing:

1. Deliver On Your Promise

Recently, C and I went on a daddy/daughter day trip to a nearby amusement park. When we stopped for a restroom break, she asked for a snack. Ever-concerned about proper nutrition, I said, “Ok, but no sweets now, before lunch.”

She responded, “Can I have some on our way back home?” (Negotiation skills!) I said, “Ok, we can get the sweets now, but you can only eat them on our drive back.” Deal.

After a full afternoon of playing on the beach with a friend, and going on a bunch of rides, she climbed into the backseat of the car.

Before she could buckle-up, she asked, “Daddy, can I have my sweets now?” Doh! Daddy had totally forgotten about the sweets (maybe because he’d made sure to keep them hidden in the paper bag). “Sure, C, here. You can have them while drive back home.”

Marketing Tip: When you make a promise to your customers, you better deliver. They won’t forget it. So, you better not either.

2. Make a Direct Call to Action

Just before walking to the parking lot, C’s friend reminded her Mom that she’d promised her they’d play an arcade game before they left. (See, it’s not just my kid!) So we all walked back to where the games were. She played, she won a prize. We were all happy for her.

After walking back to the parking lot entrance, C says, “Daddy, I want to play an arcade game, too.” I didn’t make that promise. Not to mention, as I said to her, “C, we just came from there. I really don’t feel like walking all the way back.”

Then, she game me that look. It’s hard to describe. But, I’m sure other parents know that look. It communicates something like, “We’re not leaving here until I play an arcade game.”

So, we walked all the way back to the same arcade game her friend played. C played, she won a prize. Everyone was happy. Probably no one more than her Daddy.

Marketing Tip: Stand 100% behind your call to action. Be confident that the value to your customer is worth the cost (in terms of money, time, any perceived inconvenience). Don’t apologize for your pitch.

3. Don’t Oversell or Hype Your Claims

Wake up time can be a tug-of-war at our house. Mommy and Daddy say it’s time to get up for school or camp. C wants to sleep longer.

The other morning, I was getting a bit frustrated with C not heeding my repeated requests to get up, so I said, “C, I’ve asked you five times now to get out of bed and you’re still lying there. It’s time to get up right now.”

C: “No, Daddy, you only asked me three times.”

Uhh. Ok. Can’t recall what I said after that. But we both knew she’d scored a point. I had only asked her three times.

Marketing Tip: Stretching the facts even a little bit doesn’t work. Your customers will not respond if you’re overstating your case. Stick to the facts. That should be compelling enough.

4. Give Your Prospects Room to Choose

The afternoon of C’s first performance in a school play, Mommy and Daddy decided to take her out to her favorite ice cream shop for a treat. There were a few things to do before leaving for the performance, but we weren’t rushed. Yet.

Standing in front of the freezer filled with ice cream, the sometimes-overbearing Daddy says, “Why don’t you just get a chocolate cone?” (Her favorite.)

C’s slightly annoyed response: “Daddy, let me choose.”

After sampling coconut (and not liking it), C settled on a cone with one scoop of chocolate, one vanilla.

In her world, the difference wasn’t the scoop of vanilla. It was that it was her choice, not Daddy’s.

Marketing Tip: As a marketer, your job is to provide a powerful context for your prospects. Give them all the information, lead them to the decision point. Then, back off. Let them choose. They’ll own the decision. And appreciate you more afterwards.

5. Use Testimonials

This spring, scooters were all the rage for the “big kids” (the 10/11-year-olds) on our block. One day, C’s 5-year-old best friend/neighbor, E, got a scooter too. Of course, C wanted one herself, but she didn’t just start insisting that we get her one. Or pout about not having one.

Nope. She started telling us all the reasons that E loved having a scooter. It’s pretty! E gets to ride it with the big kids! She gets to ride it when she comes home from school! It’s so small, E’s Mom can put it in the car trunk on trips! E’s having lots of fun with it!

So, Mommy and Daddy asked E’s Mom about it. Yes, we were told, E really loves it for all of those reasons. And more.

Soon enough, yours truly was making a special trip to the nearby sporting goods store to pick up a scooter that was — you guessed it — exactly the same as E’s.

Marketing Tip: Know when to get out of the way and let other people’s experience and results sell the product.

Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp
@roadmapp

- - -
Like this article? You can subscribe to our full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

To Autopilot or Not to Autopilot?

Putting things on autopilot is all the rage these days.

Put Your Twitter on Autopilot!

Prospecting on Autopilot!

Generate Leads on Autopilot!

Put Your MLM on Autopilot!

Put Your Gmail on Autopilot!

Get Profits on Autopilot!

Put Your Blog on Autopilot!

What’s next?

Put Your Brain on Autopilot?

Put Your Life on Autopilot?

I’m all for automation. Taking the drudgery out of boring, repetitive tasks is one of the most useful things about computers and business systems.

Yes, I have a Twitterfeed that automatically updates my account periodically.

Yes, I do auto-bill pay.

Yes, I use an autoresponder.

Yes, I have a marketing funnel.

But all of the hype around not doing any work (or the thinking required to do that work ) can be dangerous or at least misleading.

Take Twitter, for example. A couple of people I followed were sending some automatic tweets. No problem. As stated, I do that too sometimes. I sent them a tweet to ask a question that only they could answer. Response? Crickets. No response at all. I soon unfollowed them.

Is Twitter becoming one big bot-fest?

Another example, Network Marketing. This is largely a "relationship business." Your success or failure in MLM is a function of your ability to forge significant and lasting bonds with other people.

Can a system or series of systems re-invent the way network marketing business is conducted so it is all "on auto-pilot"?

Some of it, yes. All of it, no.

The fact remains that at some point you will need to pick up the phone and actually speak to someone.

Or, you’ll need to actually respond to a tweet if you want to experience Twitter’s social value and potential.

Or, you’ll need to actually write your own blog posts every once in a while and not have all of them written by ghosts.

The value of putting some parts of your business on autopilot is that you can better leverage your time. You can add more of you , not less of you, to accomplishing your business’s most important goals.

I take my cue from commercial airline pilots themselves: Yes, they put the plane on autopilot once it’s in the air. But, for the really critical tasks–take-off and landing–they’ve got their hands directly on the controls.

Wishing You the Best,
Ben Mapp

- - -
Like this article? You can subscribe to our full feed RSS.

Autoresponder Email Deliverability Tips

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:

Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

* http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
* http://www.bondedsender.com
* http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

By Tom Kulzer
CEO, AWeber