I started dancing ballroom in college (well before Dancing with the Stars went on the air) and was instantly hooked. I even joined the Ballroom Dance Team at UCSD and spent many hours practicing, dancing and having a blast.

Ballroom dancing is lots of fun, good exercise and you can meet some wonderful people. I should know… that’s how I met my lovely wife

In this series of articles, I’m going to go over 3 marketing lessons from ballroom dancing. Today, I’m going to focus on the first lesson.

Lesson # 1 – People like having a clear and direct “lead”

In ballroom dancing, a “lead” is a signal or cue that you give your dance partner so they know exactly what you are going to do next. For example, you may nudge them in a certain direction, raise your hand to signal they should turn under your arm, or present your hand in front of them as a cue for them to grab it.

Leads are not as important with fully choreographed routines, like the ones you see in Dancing With The Stars, where both partners know exactly what’s going to happen throughout the routine.

However, giving a clear & direct lead is VERY important when you are dancing socially because your partner doesn’t know what the next step or pattern is going to be ahead of time. Since you can’t tell them verbally, you use leads to communicate with them using your body language.

My wife has told me many times that dancing with someone with weak, ambiguous or unclear leads is very frustrating because you don’t know what you are supposed to do next. And that can lead to confusion, awkward moments (like crashing into other couples) and even embarrassing spills.

On the other hand, dancing with a partner with a clear, direct lead (like me!), feels much better. You feel more comfortable, confident and relaxed. And you can actually enjoy dancing because you can trust your partner to take good care of you on the dance floor.

What does this have to do with marketing?

In marketing, you also need to give clear and direct leads so that your prospects know exactly what they are supposed to do next.

The name is different in marketing (“call to action” instead of lead,) but the idea is exactly the same. It’s a clear signal or cue that tells prospects what they should do next.

And just like a dance partner likes having a clear lead, your prospects and clients like having a clear call to action.

Why does a clear, direct and strong call to action matter?

In his bestselling book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about a study performed in the 1960′s by Yale researcher Howard Levanthal, who was trying to understand why it’s often hard to get people to do things that are good for them.

He was testing different approaches to encourage Yale seniors to get a tetanus shots. He tried different types of printed materials like flyers and brochures, some even had graphic images of tetanus infections.

But they didn’t work very well. Only 3% of eligible students showed up to get a tetanus shot after seeing the brochure.

Then he tested something else. At the end of the brochure, he just added a map of the campus with the student health center circled, a written description of where students should go and the specific hours when the free tetanus shots were going to be given.

The results were amazing. A full 28% of the target student audience showed up to get a shot. That was an 833% improvement!

What made the difference?

The new brochure not only made the information seem more personal and practical, but the map with the circle, the description of where to go and the hours for the shot provided a clear, direct call to action for the students. It told them exactly where to go and when to show up to get their shot.

So here’s your homework. Check the call to action you are using in your marketing communications. Check your website, presentations, brochures, flyers, advertisements, etc.

Is the call to action clear? Is it direct? Is the next step to take obvious?

Your prospects and clients want you to be a great dance partner and give them a clear, direct lead. Don’t disappoint them.

What was your biggest insight from this article?

Leave your comment below.

One reason why this is a common view is that the first part is definitely true. Marketing IS necessary in business. In fact, one of my mentors said that marketing is the LIFEBLOOD of any business because it touches and affects everything else. It truly is that important.

Now let’s look at the other half. Here’s how professor Joshua Margolis from Harvard Business School defines a ‘necessary evil’:

“We define a necessary evil as a work-related task that requires a person to cause physical, emotional, or material harm to another human being in order to advance a perceived greater good.”

I’m bringing this up because if you see marketing as a ‘necessary evil,’ you will never be able to do it effectively or authentically. So you are going to get poor results from all your marketing efforts no matter how hard you try.

Why? Because you will be “out of integrity” and end up sabotaging your efforts. After all, you are in business to help people and make a difference, not to cause harm to other human beings. That internal conflict will come across and send your prospects running for the hills.

While there are unscrupulous people who do use certain marketing tactics for evil purposes to manipulate people into doing things that cause them harm, that’s not the kind of marketing that I’m talking about here.

So what can you do about this?

Simple. Reframe the way you view marketing.

Here’s a much better way to think about marketing based on the definition from the American Marketing Association. One that you can truly feel good about using to attract clients and grow your business.

“Marketing is the process of creating, delivering and communicating VALUE to your customers.”

I love this definition because it emphasizes the creation, delivery and communication of value… and that’s exactly what best forms of marketing end up doing.

Figuring out what your clients will find most valuable (what they truly want & need)… and determining how to best deliver and communicate that value to them.

Now isn’t that something you can authentically commit to doing for your clients with total integrity?

Share your thoughts below.

“I’m going into life coaching. How do I define the population I want to coach?

Gail”

My Answer:

Hi Gail… that is a great question.

Since defining your target audience and tribe is so important, I think it’s worth taking the time to get this puzzle piece right.

The thing is, it’s very hard to figure this out completely in your head. You need to get out in the real world, interact with real people and “explore” different ideas.

So instead of putting your business “on hold” while you go into a cave and try to figure out who your audience & tribe should be, you need to actively explore different audiences until you find one that feels right for you.

Your ideal audience will probably change and evolve over time as you learn more about your market, what they want & need and how you most want to serve them. That’s a good thing that will only happen as you engage and work with real people.

Having said that, there is a way to save yourself a lot of time, aggravation and effort by starting the process with audiences that have a “high potential” of being a good fit for you and your business.

The late copywriter Gary Halbert liked to ask his students something along the lines of “What advantage would you most want to have in order to build a very successful hamburger stand?”

Most of his students focused on things like access to superior meat, or creating a premium gourmet burger, or high quality sesame seed buns, or having a great location, or the lowest prices in town.

Halbert would then tell them that even if they had every single one of those advantages, he could still beat them and build a more successful hamburger stand with just one advantage on his side.

“What advantage is that?” they would ask him.

“The only advantage I need…” he would reply, “is a HUNGRY crowd.”

So that’s where I would suggest you start your exploration and search for your audience and tribe.

Look for a hungry crowd that you can serve through your work.

A great way to find such a “hungry crowd” is in what I call the “sweet spot” of your business, which takes into account what YOU bring to the table, WHO you most want to serve and work with, along with a profitable market that already wants something you can offer them.

Got any insights from this article? Please share them below… and if you’d like me to answer your marketing questions in a future article, you can ask them here.

After all, most of them truly feel that they can help all sorts of people solve all kinds of problems. So why not cast a wide net and offer their services to anyone who needs help?

What most people don’t realize is how Facebook & Nike actually got started… and the process they went through before they became huge hits.

How Facebook Got Started

In the case of Facebook, when the website first launched in February of 2004, it was only available to Harvard students. That’s it. No one else could use it even if they wanted to. Within the first month, over half of Harvard’s undergraduate students where registered users of Facebook.

In March 2004, Facebook expanded to include students from Stanford, Columbia and Yale. Over the next year they gradually added other Ivy League universities and eventually most universities in the US and Canada.

Facebook started a high school version in September of 2005, and only opened up membership to “everyone” in September 2006, a full 2 and a half years after it originally launched.

Instead of focusing on everyone from the start, Facebook did something very smart. It targeted at a VERY specific audience: university students.

Only after understanding how to serve this audience VERY well for over 2 years did Facebook even consider expanding and opening its doors to everyone. By then, they knew exactly what they were doing and had lots of confidence they could provide a very valuable service to a broader market.

How Nike Got Started

Nike had similar origins. Instead of trying to sell their shoes to everyone, Nike’s founders started by focusing just on track & field athletes. For several years, they made most of their sales at track & field meets selling their shoes out of Nike founder Phil Knight’s car.

The Marketing Lesson

So what’s the great marketing lesson from Facebook & Nike?

Instead of trying to sell & market to everyone, start by focusing on a very specific audience. Your target audience.

By focusing on a specific audience, you’ll be much more likely to figure out what that audience wants and understand how you can best serve them.

Once you know how to serve your audience really well, you can use that knowledge and understanding to expand your reach with much more confidence.

Did you get any other insights from Facebook & Nike’s stories? Share them in the comments…

I run a counselling business mostly aimed at working in schools with young people aged from 11 – 16.
The problem I have is getting the schools to realise that counselling is a very important service and can help them support their most vulnerable students and then getting them to pay for the service.
Jennie

Jennie, this is a great question because it shows a very common challenge that many professionals like you run into.

I can definitely understand why you feel frustrated about trying to convince the schools that counseling is an important service that can truly help their students and then getting them to pay for your services. You probably also feel some resistance to even approach the schools in the first place.

The good news is that there’s a simple marketing secret that will make it MUCH easier for you to approach these schools… and more likely that they’ll invest in your services.

Here’s the secret…

You really can’t CONVINCE people to want what you are offering (your products or services).

What you need to do instead is figure out something they ALREADY want, like a problem they are trying to solve or a desire they want fulfilled, and then demonstrate how you can help them get it (what they already want) in a reasonable and cost effective way.

Lots of people believe that marketing is about trying to convince, pressure or even trick people into buying products and services. So they end up using BAD marketing approaches that don’t work (and may even repel the very people they are trying to attract)… or they shy away from doing any marketing at all because they see it as inauthentic and undignified.

Good marketing is nothing like that. It’s simply telling people that you have something they want and demonstrating how you can deliver it to them in an easier, faster or better way.

Jennie, with that in mind, I would recommend visiting a few of these schools and talking to the administrators about the problems & challenges their students are facing. Find out what problems are keeping the school officials up at night. What are they worried or frustrated about?

Once you find a common problem that you can solve through your counseling services, you can “repackage” and position your services as a solution to that very problem.

By using this attraction marketing approach, you’ll be much more likely to get the attention of the school officials (in a very dignified and authentic way) while greatly enhancing the chances that they’ll hire you.

Obviously, this is just a first step in the marketing process, but it’s a HUGE shift from the “trying to convince them” approach that usually doesn’t work very well.

If you have a marketing or technology question that you would like me to answer in a future newsletter, you can also ask it by clicking here.

Any other suggestions or advice for Jennie? Leave your comments below…

Why is this a good thing?

Because it means that you don’t need to worry about perfection. You don’t have to get it right the first time. You have plenty of time to listen to your audience, figure out what they truly want and refine your business & marketing accordingly as you go.

That’s the Ready, Fire, Aim approach to marketing that I’m a big fan of… and that ends up working much better as well!

Remember that marketing is NOT about trying to convince people to buy what you want to sell to them… it’s about creating, delivering and communicating VALUE by helping people get what they want. And it takes time to figure this out. It’s impossible to do it all in your head. You need to interact with your audience and test different offers in order to find what works.

Your job is to listen to your audience and understand what they truly want… then do everything you can to give it to them in a faster, easier or better way. And keep doing that consistently over time.

Here are some practical tips to help you do that:

1) Look at your business through your client’s eyes and think about all the different things that could influence their desire to do business with you. Here are some areas to consider:

• The products & services you offer and how you package them
• The brand & marketing message you are using
• The benefits and value you communicate through your marketing
• The look, feel and functionality of your website
• The gift or special report you are offering to encourage prospects to sign up
• The process that your customers go through in order to do business with you
• The prices for your various products & services
• The client magnets you are using to attract ideal prospects
• The value you provide through articles, newsletters and other content
• The way you use social media and engage with your audience
• How you deal with customer support

2) Listen to your audience. Interact with your prospects, ask them what they want and get their feedback about what you are doing. You can use simple surveys, interviews, social media, networking… this is a great way to get ideas of what you could do differently.

3) In addition to your own audience, you can also look at other successful companies in the marketplace to see what they are doing. What are they offering? How are they marketing? How could you do what they do in a easier, faster or better way?

You do need to be careful about copycat marketing when you do this, but looking at other successful businesses can be a good source of inspiration and ideas of things you could do better.

4) Remember that marketing is a process of continuous improvement and refinement. Keep asking yourself, “What do our ideal clients really want?” “How can we give it to them in an easier, better or faster way?” “What do we need to test to find out what really works best?”

The key to growing your business is consistency in your marketing. Not just in promoting your business, but in deepening your understanding of your clients and refining your marketing over time.

A great way to find the right audience for you and your business is to start narrowing down and defining your “tribe.”

What exactly is a tribe?

Seth Godin defines a tribe as “a group of people connected to each other, connected to a leader and connected to an idea.”

Let’s look at each element of this definition in a slightly different order.

1) A group of people…

That’s your audience. A group of people with common wants, problems, needs and a shared group identity.

The first step in defining your tribe is figuring out WHO your audience is. Who are you talking to? Who do you work with? Who do you help?

What do they have in common? What gives them that sense of shared group identity?

Knowing your target audience is critical because it drives all your marketing decisions. Once you know and understand WHO your audience is, you’ll know where to go find them, what kind of marketing strategies to focus on, how to best reach them (PPC, SEO, Networking, Social Media, Partnerships, etc.) and which tactics to use first (Facebook vs. LinkedIn vs. Twitter).

2) Connected to an idea …

People will want to join your tribe because they are attracted to the core idea that your tribe represents.

This is where the WHAT or topic of your work comes into play. What do you help your audience with? What problems do you solve? What solutions do you provide?

What do you stand for? What are your ideals and values? What causes or ideas are you championing through your work?

How does your work impact your client’s lives? How does it make their world a better place?

The more you can clarify these things and combine them into a single, compelling, overarching idea, the more attractive your tribe becomes.

3) Connected to a leader …

When it comes to your tribe, YOU are the leader. Your tribe is looking for someone to step up and communicate an inspiring vision of what’s possible for them; they are looking for someone to guide them and show them the way; to help them overcome the challenges and obstacles blocking the path.

That someone is YOU.

4) And connected to each other.

The more you can connect the members of your tribe to each other, the stronger, richer AND more attractive your tribe becomes. Building this type of interactive community allows your tribe members to engage and interact with each other even when you are not there.

This not only increases their participation and sense of belonging, but it also makes your tribe more attractive and compelling to others. As your tribe grows, consider incorporating more and more community, connection and engagement opportunities.

Defining your tribe will make your marketing more specific, clear and compelling, helping you attract more clients and grow a more thriving, profitable practice.

Share your insights about your tribe below…

As a general disclaimer, remember that nobody knows your business better than you. If an idea or suggestion doesn’t feel right, ignore it. And always test suggestions against what you are doing now to see what works better.

In this review, I’m going to offer feedback and suggestions for the Matt Hsu, owner of Upright Health, a practice offering Egoscue, Rolfing and other noninvasive approaches for pain relief and posture correction in San Diego.

Click On Image To See Full Size

For this review, I’m going to focus on just a few key areas in the home page.

First, notice that the design is nice and clean. It’s simple, uncluttered and works well with the overall message of the business.

The business name itself is memorable and contains the ultimate benefit of health as part of the name, which is good.

The Title for the home page is “Pain Relief, Posture Correction, Performance Enhancement | Rolfing and Egoscue Posture Alignment Therapy in San Diego.” Since this is a local business in San Diego, I would put San Diego at the front of the title “San Diego Pain Relief…” for the benefit of visitors and search engines alike.

Now let’s look at the tagline: “Pain Sucks. Life Shouldn’t.”

It’s definitely a good start because it addresses one of the key problems that Matt’s clients are facing: pain. And by saying “Pain Sucks,” Matt is connecting with his audience and implies that he understands where they are at. They are in pain… and that sucks.

The problem with the tagline is that it is just stating facts, and not explicitly stating any benefits.

Yes, pain sucks and life shouldn’t, but what are you going to do about it? Can you help me get out of pain? It’s left up to the visitor’s imagination to infer that Matt can actually help them get rid of the pain.

Matt could amplify his tagline by adding a sub-tagline below saying something like, “Natural Pain Relief Without Drugs Or Surgery.”

That would explicitly & immediately tell visitors what this site is all about. If they are in pain and are looking for natural means to relieve the pain (without drugs or surgery), then they are definitely in the right place. That would help the tagline connect with ideal prospects much more powerfully.

The video below the menu is a good way to introduce Matt to the audience and show that he understands where they are at. It gives the website a “face” and helps people see that they are dealing with a real person. Adding a short benefit rich headline above the video may help draw the audience in, but with a strong tag line, the extra headline may not be necessary (it would be an interesting thing to test.)

A problem with the “Conquer Pain” orange button below the video is that breaks the flow of the text. Matt asks a few good questions in the opening paragraph and then you see this big orange block. It’s actually a link to another part of the website, but it doesn’t look clickable unless you hover over it with the mouse.

What I would recommend instead is to continue with the text flow and at least provide an answer to the questions that Matt asked in the opening paragraph before providing a big orange block like this for users to click on.

Then, Matt could start segmenting his audience into different parts of the website depending on their situation and needs.

For example, provide two orange buttons in a single row… “Click Here For Back Pain Relief” and “Click Here For Neck & Shoulder Pain Relief”, or something like that.

Another important element that is missing from the website is a way to capture email addresses and build an ongoing relationship with prospects who may be interested in Matt’s services, but not necessarily ready to buy right when they first show up.

Having some sort of free report specific to the most common types of pain that Matt’s clients deal with would be a good way to build credibility and trust about the approach, while also maintaining a long-term relationship with prospects.

Finally, Matt is covering three different topics in this website: pain relief, posture correction and performance enhancement.

Out of those three, pain relief is by FAR the strongest. I’m not sure that Matt is gaining a lot from emphasizing the other two so much. They seem like minor benefits compared to the major benefit of pain relief.

In this case, focusing much more on the pain relief benefit and de-emphasizing the posture correction and performance boosting parts could help position Upright Health as more of a specialist, the leader in natural pain relief without drugs or surgery.

To take this idea even further, Matt could specialize even further by focusing on just back pain… or back & neck pain… or whatever the two or three most common types of pain his client’s deal with.

That would position Matt and Upright Health as a specialist rather than a generalist. Specialists, like cardiologists and neurosurgeons, are more scarce and perceived as providing a more expensive and valuable service than generalists, which is why they can command higher fees while remaining in high demand.

This is something to think about for the long-term planning of Upright Health’s business. Does he want to be a generalist or a specialist? Nothing wrong with either, just do it intentionally.

There are other issues with the website that I don’t have time to cover in a short review like this, but I hope you got a couple of good ideas of things you could improve on your own website.

If you’d like a review of your own website, just click here to let me know.

I only have a limited number available each month… and I may even publish yours here.

Because online marketing is still relatively new, it’s easy to forget that people have been using direct marketing for more than 100 years. In fact, Montgomery Ward produced its first mail-order catalog all the way back in 1872!

One of the most important principles gleaned from those 100+ years of marketing experience is the famous “60/30/10 Rule.” If there is ONE THING that you should focus on and pay attention to in your marketing, this is IT.

The 60/30/10 rule says that there are 3 main factors that determine the success of ALL of your marketing efforts.

The first factor is the audience you choose to target and reach, which accounts for 60% of your total marketing success.

It doesn’t matter how great your products or services are, how well you package and present them, or even how good your deals are, if you don’t put them in front of the right audience, you won’t get good results. For example, even if you have the best cat food in the world, you won’t make many sales if you spend your time talking with people who don’t own cats.

The second factor are the offers that you present to your audience, which account for 30% of your total marketing success.

The most important part of your offer is your product or service itself. Is it something that your target audience really wants? Does it solve an urgent problem? Does it satisfy a craving or desire? Does it offer compelling benefits?

Your offer also includes other important elements like your angle or hook, the price, the payment options, the guarantee, the positioning and anything else that distinguishes you from your competition.

Your offer is important because even if you are targeting and reaching the right audience, if you offer something they don’t want, you’ll still get poor results.

But if you present them with a truly compelling offer, something they really want at a price they are willing to pay, you’ll obviously get MUCH better results.

The third factor is the way you present or communicate your offer, which accounts for 10% of your total marketing success.

This includes the specific words you use to describe your offer, the stories you use, the supporting design and images and anything else you use to communicate or present it.

To recap, in all your marketing efforts:

• 60% of your success comes from the audience you chose to target
• 30% of your success comes from the offers that you present to them
• And the final 10% comes from the way you present and communicate your offers.

The overall success of your marketing comes down to making the RIGHT OFFERS to the RIGHT AUDIENCE at the RIGHT TIME and presenting them in the RIGHT WAY. The more you can do that, the better results you’ll get.

And the most important factor by far is finding the RIGHT AUDIENCE for YOU and your business. That’s why Key # 6 in the report is so important, because the “Sweet Spot” of your business is where you’ll find YOUR ideal audience.

Share your insights and comments below…

They are frustrated because their website is definitely NOT working for them, and they don’t really know WHY or what to do about it.

As I mentioned in Key # 2 of the report, your website is one of the most important components of an effective marketing system because it’s the central “hub” of your business online.

The problem is that most websites are NOT designed to effectively attract qualified prospects and turn them into paying clients. A BAD website can actually be worse than not having a website at all, because it can confuse (even repel) your potential clients and send them running for the door.

So is your website helping you attract all the prospects, clients and business you want? Is it growing your email list and allowing your audience to know, like and trust you more? Are you happy with the results?

Here are some of the high-level areas you need to think about to help you decide how well your website is working:

Ease of Use – How easy is your website to navigate? Can visitors find what they are looking for quickly and easily? Are you clear about WHO your website is for and what you want them to DO while visiting your website?

Clarity – How well does your website connect with your ideal prospects? Does it clearly communicate to them that they ARE in the right place and that you can help them? Is your marketing message crystal clear? Or is it muddled because you are trying to talk to “everybody”?

Relationship – Are you building a long-term relationship with your prospects through your website by capturing their email address and sending a regular newsletter?

Content – Do you offer compelling content that draws prospects in, gets them excited about how you can help them and motivates them to take action?

Traffic – Do you have a clear plan and strategy for generating leads and attracting quality prospects to your website?

If you’d like a review of your website to go over these key areas and get specific advice on what you can do NOW to make it work better, click here to learn more.