Center of Influence Marketing

Normal advertising sucks. Why? Because normal advertising will get you normal results. You don’t become an industry leader, or a dominant presence by doing things the “normal” way.

Most small businesses advertise in the yellow pages. I think you’re going to find yellow page advertising is going to become weaker and weaker, because more people now use the Internet to find their information.

Besides, almost all yellow page ads look the same. Hmmmm… could it because they’re all designed by the same person? So, everybody is normal.

Newspaper advertising is also falling. But let’s look at it – almost all the ads look the same. Could it be because they’re all designed by the same person? Hmmm… If everybody looks normal, everybody gets normal results.

Finally, consider this – you’re advertising in the same place as your competitors. That’s kind of dumb isn’t it? I’d rather advertise in a vacuum, where I’m the only choice.

We have to think outside the box! I fashion myself as a collector of good ideas. I look for those different ways of advertising that don’t get normal results… but extraordinary results.

What I’m about to show you is going to give you a far greater return than normal advertising ever will… it will also dramatically enhance the relationship you have with your fellow business owners… and finally it’ll just make others think you’re some sort of genius because of your innovation.

I’m talking about center of influence marketing. Here’s the premise – instead of going out hunting down your ideal prospects, what would happen if you already went to where a bunch of them hang out, and just put your sign up in front of them?

You’re going to where they already are, instead of picking them up “one by one” in the newspaper, on the television, or in the yellow pages.

Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do – we’re going to come up with a bunch of different places where our ideal customers frequent in large quantities… then we’re going to construct an offer that will allow us to siphon those ideal customers off into our sales funnel… and, it’s only going to cost us a small “toll booth” fee to do this, which we will only pay out of a portion of the profits we’ve generated.

Let’ take a second to talk about target marketing. Say you and I both owned a pizza place. I would only need one competitive advantage, and I could destroy you and win every single customer. I’d give you all other advantages, because, when totaled, they still wouldn’t give you a chance.

Yes, I would give you the best ingredients. I’d give you the best employees. I’d give you the best location. I’d give you the coolest store layout. I’d only ask for one thing…

I’d only ask that all my customers being dying of hunger!

When someone is hungry, they don’t care what your store looks like. They don’t care if you have good service. They don’t care if the food even tastes good. They are just so hungry, they’ll practically pay anything and eat anything to quell that hunger.

What target marketing does is isolates and focuses your efforts on singling out those who are “hungriest” for whatever you offer.

Let me make it real to you. Let’s say you’re in the retail flooring business. Okay, now people who buy flooring… what else do they tend to need that compliments it?

Well, a lot of people who need flooring also need paint. What would happen if you had a majority of the paint stores sending the customers who needed flooring your way?

If I wanted to market to small businesses to offer my marketing consultation services, where would I go? Well, I’d start with the local accountants, because they help a lot of business owners with their taxes.

I would go to the heads of trade associations that small business owners would be apart of (like the chamber of commerce, for example), and volunteer for free to give a speech where I’d share my expertise on how to get more customers.

I would go to attorneys that helped people form corporations, and attorneys who specialized in helping small businesses.

See what I’m doing here? I’m finding a complimentary, non-competitive business entity that already attracts the “hungry” customers that I’m in search of. Instead of having to find those customers myself, I’m leveraging their efforts.

Now, here’s how to NOT make this work. Go up to one of these centers of influence and say, “Hey, why don’t you tell your customers to come to me when they need X.” Stupid, stupid, stupid.

You have to make it make sense for them to refer others to you before they will. What’s an easy way to do this – why not say, “Hey, I know from time to time you have customers that also need my services. So how do you feel about this? Every time you send someone over my way, and they become my customer, I give you X% of the sale?”

Warning – in some industries, it’s illegal to do this. And since I’m no lawyer, check your laws first to make sure they apply. I’m just giving you one example here. There are other ways you can reward them.

For example, send customers to them in return. It could be as simple as making a stack of fliers up to put in their business, and they do likewise in your business. Now it’s a “referral revolving door” and more importantly… it’s a win-win situation.

Here’s how you can make it work for you. First, pull out the yellow pages. Go through them, and each time you find a category that would be complimentary to your business, write it down.

Get 5-10 different complimentary “industries”, and then pick the top 3 businesses in each of those industries. Now you have a list of 15-30 businesses to approach.

Second, create your irresistible offer to these businesses. If you can give them a cash incentive for a referral, then consider that as your offer. Or come up with something equally enticing that answers their number one question — “What’s in it for me?”

Another thing you can do here is to give a special offer just for their customers. It could be a discount, or something extra they get for free that you would normally charge for. This way, the “What’s in it for me?” is that their customers will like them more, because it looks like the owner went to bat and negotiated a special deal just for them.

How many businesses could you do this with? Well, as many as you would like. This can take care of the new customer acquisition end of things, especially when you combine it with referral marketing.

Think about it – you could easily get ten businesses that were complimentary to you to promote for you for some sort of incentive.

For some, it might just be where you put up some fliers at the counter, with a special “freebie” just for their customers. For other businesses, it might be a customer exchange. You send customers their way if they send customers your way. For others still, it might be were to downright pay them a cut of the sales.

In any case, realize the importance behind this – most of the cost for customer acquisition will only be paid after the customer is acquired. You pay a percentage of the sale – after the sale is made. You get referrals because you refer.

This truly takes the risk out of advertising, because you’ll only pay for it if it works. Not a bad deal!

FEEL FREE TO POST YOUR COMMENTS BELOW!