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What is Tipster Marketing?

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

When the cab driver taking you to your hotel starts chatting, and you end up getting a recommendation for a great place to eat… that’s tipster marketing.

When your chat with your hairdresser ends up as a discussion about the latest ‘fab’ movie they have seen… that’s tipster marketing.

When a travel agent has been to the place you are travelling to and suggests a spot you have to check out while you’re there, that too is tipster marketing.

Ever thought how amazing a piece of word of mouth this is?

Each of those tip-offs will be more powerful than any advertising could ever be.

It’s brilliant!

It’s from a (supposedly) unbiased / unrelated source. It’s immediately got influence because it’s delivered by a local expert. Even better it happens exactly when the person has the need for the information.

Powerful, powerful word of mouth marketing.

Yet I have never seen anyone talk specifically about this form of word of mouth for small business.

More to the point I had a past customer of “Word of Mouth Magic” – someone who was so pleased about it she gave me a testimonial – specifically say that she wished I had a ‘how-to’ on this type of marketing.

She was in Las Vegas, where most of the business is from tourists who are always asking the local hotel staff, cabbies, waitresses etc for tips. To really succeed she needed to break into that word of mouth circle.

But my bag of tricks had nothing specific at that time.

Three weeks ago I came across retail marketer John Stanley – for the second time.

The first time I came across John was in my local library. I saw a book titled “Just About Everything a Retail Manager Needs to Know“.

That’s a pretty arrogant title for a book, so I took a look.

Now I’m no retail expert, but I was actually impressed, and ever since, this book has been in my mind for the times when have a retail business needing a make-over.

Anyway, while researching a bakery marketer (don’t ask) I found myself clicking across to www.JohnStanley.cc and rediscovering John.

When I searched for “word of mouth” I found John’s info on what he calls ‘tipster marketing’.

[John thinks he read the term in a book many years ago, but neither he nor I can find the source. If you know the name or know this technique under a different name, then I'd love to hear it.]

Anyway think about this for your business…

1. When are customers naturally asking for recommendations about your product or service? [Hint: it's often BEFORE they get to the point of looking at ads or the yellow pages.]

2. Who are they getting their answers from – aka who are the tipsters?

3. How can you get those tipsters to know your points of difference so they can appropriately recommend you?

Remember, even though Las Vegas might be awash with tipsters who are paid referral fees (disclosed or otherwise), in most other places people won’t need payment because giving out information is all part of the process.

If  you simply make an effort to build a relationship with a potential tipster, then they may well talk about you for free!

Got your own ‘tipster marketing’ experiences?

Visit John’s newest blog www.TipsterMarketing.com where he has some stories of his own, and add your story as a comment there.

Just to up the ante, I’m offering a small prize to the person who leaves the best comment there. [Oh, and best means most helpful to other readers - at my sole discretion.]

www.TipsterMarketing.com

-Martin Russell

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Filed in Call To Action, Marketing, Networking, Small Business, Word of Mouth Referrals | Comments (5)

Can We Catch Up In Melbourne Or Sydney?

Thursday, January 29, 2009

With my counselling practice and three small kids, it is very rare for me to be available anywhere other than where I live.

However I’m going to be in Melbourne on Thursday Feb 12, and Sydney on Saturday Feb 14 for the first ever SendOutCards Treat ‘em Right seminars in Australia.

I’d love to catch up with you at this word of mouth event.

If you don’t know what a TER is then here is the official info…

“This is a personal development course like none you have ever attended before. The purpose of the Treat ‘em Right is to align your mind with success – Law of Attraction – and learn the process of how we can truly change our lives as well as the lives of others.  You will leave this event with a daily mechanism to send the positives out to the world and receive what you send back ten fold.”

More directly, from Laurie Delk, long-standing SOC entrepreneur and Executive…

“I just tell people it is a GREAT BUSINESS TYPE seminar – better than ones I have paid $1000 to attend!

If you WANT to learn to grow and enhance your business – you NEED to be there!”

Inspiring, educational, and fun all in one!

The Melbourne one will be 3-9pm (register at 2pm), and Sydney will be 9am-5pm.

I’d love for you to join me. The registration fee is US$25, but as a reader of this blog I’m happy to cover this for you with my compliments when we catch up.

But you need to email me Martin – at this domain name, or Skype: martinwrussell ASAP.

-Martin Russell

Filed in Marketing | Comments (0)

Tour de Lance Armstrong

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Lance Armstrong is one of THE great sporting figures.

Coming back from cancer that had spread throughout his body, Lance went on to dominate the world of cycling, including ending up winning the grueling Tour de France a record-breaking seven years, until he retired in 2005.

Now, I live in a city of 1 million people in Adelaide, Australia.

If you know Australia as a vast island the size of the US, Adelaide is along the middle, down the bottom, on the coast.

My little city has been trying to get a name for itself for a long time.

Our state of South Australia (pretty descriptive huh) is known for it’s wines and wineries.

We are also the driest state in the driest continent on earth. Maybe that’s why the wineries.

Our city of Adelaide is known as the City of Churches. Not much excitement there.

For a number of years we hosted Australia’s Formula 1 car racing Gran Prix, before it was taken east to Melbourne.

We also had a spate of serial killers that seemed to make our state well-known for a while, but we didn’t push that very much.

Anyway…

For the last few years we have hosted the ‘Tour Down Under’ – the event that kicks off the professional road racing calender.

This year the big news was that Lance Armstrong chose this race to come out of retirement and get back to cycling.

The event was dubbed the Tour de Lance. 35% more attendance at the Tour event. Major, major international publicity.

But in the end, Adelaide is still unknown.

As I contact people all around the world the commonest way people outside Australia say they have heard of Adelaide is that they passed through or over us as they crossed the country on holiday.

“Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.”

Do you feel like everyone is passing you by too?

Perhaps it’s because you are like my town of Adelaide; trying to act bigger than you are and be all things to all people.

You don’t need people’s awareness.

Instead you need to be something very special to a very particular group of people who will be fans, advocates, and eager word of mouthers.

Be Lance Armstrong.

-Martin Russell

Filed in WOW! | Comments (1)

The Only Real Marketing Expert Is…

Monday, January 19, 2009

…me.

Or, you.

Or whomever the buyer is.

You buy lots of stuff and in those situations you are the marketing expert. The one handing over the money is the one who is deciding what ‘marketing’ was effective.

Anyone else’s opinion is just that, an opinion.

Non-buyers such as visitors, lookie-looks, tyre-kickers, friends, family, even consultants and marketing “gurus” will all have an opinion, but beware of thinking they are the real expert.

Are you a buyer from your own business?

For most of us the answer will be, “No.”

Even if you use the service or products, you are probably doing so at least at a wholesale price, if not for free.

For example I’m not a customer for my own marketing e-book on word of mouth referrals. Even when I go and re-read it I’m not handing over money for it, so my opinion of how to market it is dangerous!

That’s why you need to listen, get feedback and test.

Let the customers decide for themselves what sells them.

As an example, the recently updated website for the “Word of Mouth Magic” ebook has software installed that is testing every single word, color and image on the page, and it has come up with variations that I wouldn’t personally have kept if I’d had the final say.

You may even find you get one that is totally bizarre, but if the “experts” have decided that that one was the marketing winner, I’m going to go with it.

-Martin Russell

Filed in Call To Action, Internet Marketing | Comments (3)

Case Study In Viral Word of Mouth

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Over the past 12 months I’ve been watching the internet for any truly viral marketing successes so I can use it as a word of mouth case study, and I’ve finally found one.

It came out in that classic lull that telemarketers, publicists and online marketers always want to take advantage of,  Christmas Day (apologies to devout Christians.)

Viral marketing means marketing that spreads like a flu epidemic, by passing from one person to many others and from those people to many more again.

It takes planning and skill to make viral marketing explosions happen deliberately.

For example, I’m on the Board of Advisors for the American Association of Business Professionals and Entrepreneurs™ (AABPE™) that launched Jan 1.

But just look at the comparison here…

alexa-aabpeword-webprosperity-com

The webprosperity site has raced up. (Remember this scale is logarithmic, which means on a normal graph it would be shooting up even faster like a stunt motorcyclist hitting the ramp.)

Keys to making something go viral really fast online and offline are…

  • Have an offer that directly matches a market that is just waiting for this
  • Include immense credibility to give people enough trust so they can act immediately
  • Make it really easy for people to join
  • Make it easy, and give incentives, to spread the word (this is where most people go wrong.)

In this case all of this is helped along by 3 other features of a product launch…

  • Signing up is free – okay not my favorite recommendation, but when you want to go viral quickly this is pretty much mandatory.
  • The January 6 noon Deadline, with a countdown clock – that’s a reliably brilliant play on scarcity [and they have gone one better by at the last minute extending the deadline by 7 days to Tues Jan 13! Nice one.]
  • The Social Proof – notice the names of the last 4 people to sign up are listed at the top, often only seconds ago, which makes it much more impactful than most sites where I’ve seen this.

WebProsperity is an internet marketing service I could use if it comes up to scratch, and there are some very, very clever marketers behind this so I’m watching for what they come up with next.

You can’t visit the site without a link so here’s mine so you can check it out…

word.webprosperity.com (no longer links because I stopped with it.)

Can you go viral too?

[Jan 12: Now they have released some more details as an FAQ on their blog, I have enough to say I will be joining up. And yes the viral spike on Alexa continued.]

[Apr 16: The products didn't turn out to be as complete as was necessary for all the build-up claims eg that you can be "selling like the billion-dollar companies with no learning curve...". Pity, because they have managed to keep a good flow of traffic ever since so they must be doing something right. Oh well.]

-Martin Russell

Filed in Internet Marketing | Comments (4)

Swap & Drop – A Million-Making Networking Tip

Sunday, December 21, 2008

One of the key rules of success has to be ‘copy what works.’

“Swap & Drop” is a little known, face-to-face networking method that actually works.

How do I know?

Because Jordan Adler, entrepreneur, trainer, author, networker, and the originator of the term “Swap & Drop”, used this exact method to make a connection with someone who knew someone, who knew someone, who connected with me.

That’s how I came to know Jordan in the first place.

But that single Swap and the subsequent Drop didn’t just lead Jordan to me. It also made him more than a million dollars in the past 3 years alone – from one connection! That’s the leverage power of networking.

In general Jordan’s networking skills are earning him well over a million dollars a year. He is still Swapping and Dropping, and he is still growing his business and income.

He is also openly generous in sharing what he does.

“Swap & Drop” is as simple as they come, and yet it encapsulates the entire networking mindset.

On the audio below you will hear Jordan say, “My objective is to start a life-long process.”

I managed to find time with Jordan Alder to get you inside the mind of this networking million-maker.

Download and save this audio, and listen over and over again. It may seem too simple, yet it is all you need for networking success, and it’s a mere 10 minutes long…

Swap And Drop – Jordan Adler Interview

-Martin Russell

Filed in Follow-Up, Networking, Small Business | Comments (5)

Does Your Marketing Compare Well On These 5 Measures?

Sunday, December 14, 2008

I just finished speaking with a woman who runs her own studio. She is generating 90% of her new clients from Google Adwords.

An impressive result, and one that has kept her business going for the last 3 years, but with diminishing returns.

With the economy falling, and people tightening their budgets, she is scared.

She contacted me because she realized one thing. She has lots of happy clients…

…But She Is Getting ZERO Referrals!

How does your current marketing compare to word of mouth referral methods on these 5 measures…

1. How much someone spends the first time they see you (Immediate Profit.)

People who are referred to you automatically trust you to a greater degree, because of the trust they have with the person who referred them.

This is probably why referred customers tend to spend more than clients brought in by any other marketing method. They have less need to test you out with a small sale first, just to be sure.

(How price sensitive do you think your customers are becoming?)

2. How often they come back (Repeat Sales.)

Word of mouth methods automatically include follow-up and client retention with the referral generation.

Clients are much more likely to return to you, even if only because they will often be in contact with the person who referred them to you in the first place.

If their experience with you is positive then the discussion about the referral will be a positive one too, perhaps encouraging both parties to want to come back to you again!

3. How often they refer others (Doing Your Marketing For You.)

Referred clients need much less education on referring others to you. They were referred themselves so they understand a) you accept/want referrals, and b) you will take good care of the person they refer, just like you looked after them.

This measure is so often missed when calculating the value of other forms of marketing, but is absolutely crucial when deciding the lifetime value of what a particular client brings into your business.

4. How effective are the referrals they give you (Quality Customers.)

Word of mouth clients generally complain less, pay on time more often, and are generally more enjoyable to work with, when compared to clients coming from any other method.

With good education of your best customers, word of mouth and referral methods will maintain and even improve the quality of customers you get.  Therefore, when your very finest clients refer people to you, you end up receiving incredible clients as a bonus, and your overall business goes up a level.

5. The overall profit per customer (The Life-Time Value Bottomline.)

Just on the basis of the first 4 measures alone no other method of marketing will produce as good a return on your investment as word of mouth referrals.

And… here’s the extra kicker!

Even though “Word of Mouth Magic” covers many referral marketing methods that require money to get started with, some of them can be done without even spending a single, solitary cent!

At its simplest, you just need to adapt what you are already doing. For instance, add to your written information on letterheads, emails, website and even invoices, something that lets people know that you get, want and appreciate referrals.

Planting the seeds for a harvest of referrals can often be done at no cost at all.

The woman running the studio knew her current marketing wasn’t giving her as good a return as referrals. That’s why she contacted me to discover more.

How well does your current marketing measure up against word of mouth methods?

-Martin Russell

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If You Hate Asking For Referrals…

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Below is a straight cut and paste of a post by legendary word of mouth sage, Seth Godin. I don’t even want you to have to click a further link to get to this, it’s that important.

People often ask me, “How can I ask for referrals?”

Actually they are usually also thinking, and sometimes even adding, “It seems so self-serving because it’s all about what I want. In fact to be honest, business isn’t that good at the moment, so I need all the buyers I can get. I’m getting desperate, and I feel like if I ask people for referrals it’s like begging!”

Welcome, and all hail Seth Godin…

Don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone

IWantSandy is folding, as are a number of web companies. So is that restaurant you loved down the street. Users are outraged. Outraged!

When you find a service or establishment or product that gives you joy, it’s tempting to keep it to yourself. Perhaps it’s uncomfortable to recommend it to a friend (after all, you might seem silly) and even more uncomfortable to recommend it to a stranger (after all, you might seem like a shill).

Plenty of people hesitate before spreading the word about a political candidate or a business or a medical device. We’re worried that we’ll look silly, or that the place will end up being too crowded and now we won’t be able to get in. Or perhaps we’re concerned about losing our uniqueness…

Anyway, the outcry that accompanies the closing of one of these businesses should be enough to remind you that your hesitation has a cost.

It’s simple, I think. In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

  • If you don’t like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change

and

  • If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business.

We get what we promote.

Courtesy of Seth Godin’s Blog and you can sign up there to get more of his wisdom.

Be what you want others to be – give your own word of mouth, be a networker and a referrer. Live both sides of the referral relationship, and people will end up following your example.

I’ve referred you just now to someone I value, Seth Godin.

Who can you GIVE a referral to – today?

-Martin Russell

Filed in Marketing, Networking, Word of Mouth Referrals | Comments (7)

A Cautionary Story Of A Financial Adviser

Monday, November 17, 2008

What would you think of a financial adviser or stockbroker who had told you to get out of the stockmarket and into cash back in June/July of this year?

Would you be just a little bit pleased with that advice?

Well I absolutely would.

This adviser would have steered me away from a huge chunk of the biggest stockmarket meltdown in most people’s lifetimes.

In fact, while everyone else was watching their hard-earned assets evaporate I would have been earning a trickle of money, and now be cashed up to pick and choose.

Now…

What if I told you that there is an adviser who did just that for his clients…

…but he has had to leave the company!?!

Incredible, but true!

By advising his clients to get into cash he lost all the income from commissions he was making by having people in the stockmarket. Therefore, to make ends meet he has gone off to get a job at a bank!

This guy is in Canada where the stock market has fallen around 30% in the quarter.

This means he saved all the clients who followed his advice a whopping 30% of their savings (and remember that if you have suffered a 33% fall, the maths sayd you need a 50% rise just to get back to where you started!)

His clients are now in a position where their cash can buy up stocks that are 30% or more cheaper than they used to be. A double advantage!

And yet in a couple of weeks time he will begin a new job with a bank to get back the income he has been losing.

This a cautionary tale of what can happen when someone doesn’t know how to apply Word of Mouth and referral marketing.

So when I heard of his plight I arranged to give him a call.

Do you think he is pleased to have lost an income because he gave good advice?

No, certainly not.

Do you think his client’s want to lose him as a financial adviser?

Not if they have any interest in their financial future they don’t, but they don’t know this is happening. He hadn’t told them a thing!

Do you think this is an fantastic dinner-table conversation starter that would have word of mouth recommendations flocking to him, if only this story was out there?

I absolutely do!

The tragedy is that this adviser had no idea how to turn this situation into an event that MAKES his career, rather than ends it.

Heck, this would be worthy of a page in a local newspaper…

“Elderly Widow’s Home Saved From Stockmarket Crash”

“My friend’s are all worried about how they are going to survive with bills increasing and their savings way down, let alone whether there will be anything to pass on to the kids.”

“But my financial adviser steered me clear of this and I sleep so much easier at night. I am not having to cut back on prescription medicines, or buying my dog his favorite treats!”

[Okay, so I never wrote for newspapers. Radio was more my thing.]

Let me get personal for a moment.

What are you saying about YOUR financial advisers at the moment?

Where do you think their real interests lie, and what word of mouth are you giving them?

Finally, what would it have been worth to you to have had THIS adviser looking after your money?

What’s your opinion?

Enter a comment on this post, and I will make sure to pass it on to the adviser himself for his learning.

-Martin Russell

Filed in Marketing, Small Business, Word of Mouth Referrals | Comments (9)

The Worst Mistake Has To Be…

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Many businesses have their busiest time in the November / December period.

Often this is the make or break time of year when earnings have finally passed overheads and taxes, and they are relieved to at last be making money for their own pocket.

Yet perhaps because it is so busy, this is exactly the time most businesses will stumble and drop the ball.

They will get so caught up in servicing customers that they will forget to think about their marketing – and in particular how they will go about following-up.

It happens in one of two ways…

1. You focus on the immediate customers, and forget about building relationships with the past ones who have done business with you throughout the year.

Or even worse…

2. You let all these new customers buy, and then leave – without collecting their contact details and permission to follow-up with them in future!

I was reminded of this just this week when doing a consulting session for a clever businessman about Christmas sales.

I knew he was doing alot of things right because most of the people in his industry have been driven out of business by changes in technology over the past 20 years. Yet he had kept upgrading his marketing and he was kicking along nicely.

He was certainly clever enough to be collecting contact details for his customers.

Much more impressively he had been using those details year-in year-out to recontact people. He was producing excellent repeat holiday business just like clockwork.

But when I asked him how regularly he was contacting these people DURING the year to offer them the rest of his product range, he paused.

“Never”, he said. “I hadn’t considered it.”

Hmmm.

As I say at the top of this blog, there are 3 keys to word of mouth.

By far the easiest to implement is ‘Follow-Up’. Personal, frequent, long-term follow-up.

The easiest sale you will ever make is a repeat sale.

The second easiest sale is a referral.

Both of these are far more likely when you follow-up.

If your follow-up is not bringing you all the results you want (or if it’s just been all too hard) then help is at hand.

Next week I’ll be doing a special-offer webinar specifically on follow-up and Word of Mouth – and demonstrating what I regard as the Ultimate Service to put your follow-up on autopilot. You will also discover…

  • A three step seasonal message that eases people into the next level of the buying relationship with you.
  • Follow-up that is personal, powerful AND, best of all, automatic.
  • How to make your follow-up marketing a profit-centre, not an expense.

Never risk the follow-up mistake again. Click on this link to sign-up and I’ll see you on the webinar Wednesday November 12.

-Martin Russell

Filed in Christmas, Follow-Up, Marketing, SendOutCards, Small Business, Systems | Comments (2)