Yes, it really is that time of year again. Is the time it takes to get to Christmas each year directly proportional to your age? I think so. When I was ten years old it seemed to take such a long time to come around each year. Now? It feels like only a few months!
I thought i’d take a different look at Christmas this week. I jumped on Google and searched for a few fun facts about Christmas. All seven of the “facts” I found the most interesting are from the internet, so they must be true. All my sources are listed at the bottom of this post.
Seven things you didn’t know about Christmas
1 Jesus’ birthday was not the 25th of December. There is no reference in the Bible to the actual date of Jesus’ birth, and given the descriptions of the farming activity going on (baby animals etc), it was probably a spring birth. The Catholic Church chose the 25th of December for the Feast of the Nativity in the 4th century.
2 The tradition of sending Christmas Cards began with a lazy Englishman. In 1843, wealthy English businessman Sir Henry Cole had forgotten or not left enough time to write Christmas letters to his friends and colleagues wishing them well. So he instead commissioned an artist to draw a scene of friends raising a glass in toast with a message of well wishes below. He printed cards en masse and sent them instead.
3 Coca Cola made Santa fat. Saint Nick had been depicted as tall, short, elf like and any number of other ways until 1930′s Coca Cola advertisements depicted him as a fat, jolly man with a large white beard and a red suit. Since then, that image of Santa Claus has persisted and become the basis of most modern depictions of the fat man. Someone should have told him about all the sugar……
4 Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer started life as a promotional product – A colouring book story to be handed out by a department store Santa to be precise. According to Snopes.com there is one of “those” email going around stating that a father wrote the story for his young daughter to help her get through the passing of her mother (due to a terminal illess). The story has elements of truth; the man who wrote Rudolph did have a daughter he “tested” his story on, and his wife did have a terminal illness around the time of the writing, but the reason for writing the story was simply because his boss asked him to. A nice side of the story is that the copyright to the story (first held by the advertising company) was eventually passed to the authour after his wife’s passing to help ease his financial problems.
5 In the UK, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day. - Due to several other old, yet to be repealed laws, Brits must all attend Mass (but not drive there), they can not play any sport except archery, the Christmas meal must consist of no other fowl than a goose, and they must not go fishing on Christmas day.
6 George W Bush has sent the most Christmas cards from the White House in 2002, sending 1.5 Million cards out.
7 Weighing in at 225 ton, and standing 46.5 mt high, the world’s largest Christmas gift was the Statue of Liberty, given to the citizens of the USA in 1886 by the the people of France.
The interweb resource list -
www.venere.com
www.whitehousechristmascards.com
www.pressbox.co.uk
www.time.com
www.thecoca-colacompany.com
www.snopes.com
PDF Is unique the holy grail of promotional products? Given the number of times I am asked for something “different” you might think so. Different is great, but when it comes to your corporate christmas gift, useful beats different every time.
Your staff or client Christmas gifts should be personal, and reflect not only your brand but the value you place on the recipient. Sending a generic card to your high value clients may send the wrong message, but so will your logo emblazoned the full length of a six foot beach towel. A high quality towel with a small subtle logo will be more appreciated and more useful.
If you simply grab a catalogue and print up 2500 stress balls to stick your logo on, you risk having your gift tossed straight into the bin.
Consider the message – A USB memory stick is an economical, useful way to say thank you to corporate clients. It’s 100% re-usable gift and with a well thought out message is perfect for those wanting an environmentally friendly solution.
What message do you convey with a cheap and cheerful plastic pen? While they have a place and a time to be used as a promotion, a Christmas gift is not that place or time.
Most of all, a corporate Christmas gift for your personnel or clients should say “Thank You”
Consider your brand – Should you associate your brand with a generic low quality item, or should you consider associating with a well known retail brand. A lot of retail brands can be purchased and even personalised these days.
For example, Jamie Oliver’s books and kitchen sets make an ideal gift given the growing trend of Australians enjoying food and cooking more and more.
Consider the value – Carefully consider the value of the gift you use. Too little and you send a poor message “This is how much I value your business” We have a handy guide on setting a Christmas gift available.
There are exceptions to every rule of course, a fun toy like a yo yo or a slinky might get the message across that you want, and it doesn’t really matter if it breaks or is given to the kids after a few days.
Consider the decoration – Reality is, we really don’t want a “gift” with your logo splashed all over it. Your Mum and spouse are very proud of your logo, your clients don’t care. Of course, you want your logo on your gifts, and I recommend it, just get a little clever about it.
For example, if you are giving your clients a black picnic cooler bag, consider embroidering or printing your logo in black or a dark colour. It makes the logo almost invisible until the bag is in hand.
Leave the item plain, but decorate the packaging.
Useful beats different, hands down. – You want your gift to be remembered and used, make it useful. Personal items that a client or staff member can take away and use at home or at leisure will be far more appreciated than a funky new stapler with a light in it.
Here is a idea list of useful, personal brand name corporate Christmas gifts that I hope you find handy.
Bren
Corporate Christmas Gifts for $50 and over
Corporate Christmas Gifts for around $50 & under
Corporate Christmas Gifts for around $35 & under
Corporate Christmas Gifts for around $25 & under
Corporate Christmas Gifts for around $15 & under
Corporate Christmas Gifts for around $10 & under
I don’t claim to be an expert copywriter, I outsource the big jobs when I need an expert. However over the course of a normal month of business at Black Dog Promotions we often assist clients to come up with the copy for a flier, business card, or promotional product. Due to the limited amount of space on most of these items, we are often limited to a simple “Features / Benefits” style of copy.
The first thing we do is have a look at the business, the goods & services for sale, the target market, the current & past advertising in other media, and from there create a list of features and benefits of the product or service our client sells. Of course there are many variables of this style of advertisement, so for simplicity we’ll simply deal with creating the features / benefit list.
The most common mistake I see when creating this feature & benefit list is the advertiser believing that the feature is more important than the benefit. This is an understandable error, because often the business owner created the business from scratch, so they are justifiably proud of what they have created. Trouble is, when we beleive the feature is more important than the benefit, your client will think “So what?”, and just like that, you lost them.
There is a simple way to test if your features / benefits list will work in an advertisement.
I call it the “So that or So what?” test.
Let’s say you sell orange juice. You know that your target market is Mums, and you know that the most important thing to those Mums is the health and well being of their children.
“Your OJ is sealed with our special vacuum sealed ‘pop top’ lid, so that you are assured the OJ is as fresh as the day it was sealed. When you hear the ‘Pop’, you know it’s fresh”
Feature – Vacuum sealed lid with a method of quality assurance (pop top) the consumer can test themselves.
Benefit – The consumer knows the product is fresh.
Notice we can use the words “so that” in between the feature and the benefit? If we can’t use the words “so that” between a feature and a benefit, it may just be that the customer says “so what?” Here’s an example.
The same OJ bottle has a picture of the CEO’s nephew on the bottle. He’s a handsome young man with a shock of red hair and freckles, and just cute as a button. His uncle (the CEO) and his mother are very very proud that the little fella has pride of place on the OJ bottle. Nice feature for them, absolutely no benefit whatsoever to the customer.
Feature – This OJ bottle has a picture of the CEO’s nephew on it ……. so what?
Benefit – His Mum is very proud……
So that, or So what?
Think of a feature of your product or service, and stick the words “So that” after it. You will probably find that the next sentence that you write makes perfect sense and illustrates a great benefit for the client.
If the next sentence is a struggle, and you realise that the feature you thought was important doesn’t really have a direct benefit to the client then you might have to put the words “so what?” there instead.
Next time you need to write an advertisement for your business, try the “So that or So what?” test. It may stop you from making a big deal about your nephew on the bottle!
Ok, you had your logo designed, it looks great, your Mum likes it, your spouse likes it, your clients like it.
If you read last week’s post (The 10 mistakes of logo design I see most often), your designer created your logo in a vector program, and sent you several different file types, right? Great.
So now you want to get your new design out there on some new promotional products. Mouse mats, stubby holders, printed pens, business cards, and some new fliers. You call your friendly promotions guy and organise what you want. Easy. Then he asks you for your logo files.
Here is the time I see the most confusion about artwork and art files. The best results when reproducing your logo come from starting with the best sources file. Often, my clients will send me over a bitmap file like a jpg, bmp, gif or something similar because it’s the only one the designer sent over that they can open!
They might have Adobe Illustrator or eps files, but because they don’t have Illustrator on their computer, they can’t open it. If they can’t open it, they think it is no good, and don’t send it to me.
Here is what you can do to open some of the files you thought you couldn’t.
AI (Adobe illustrator) files
For PCs –
* Right click the file and select open
* A dialog box will tell you you can’t open this file type (at which point you would probably give up normally)
* the dialog box will ask if you would like to choose a program from a list – select “yes”
* Choose Acrobat Reader
In 99% of cases the file will simply open and you will be able to view it as a normal pdf file. Very occasionally the file may throw an error, this would usually be because the file was saved for MAC (as opposed to PC). Don’t despair or throw the file out, this means you can’t see it, it doesn’t mean the file is bad, we can probably still see it.
The catch? You can’t save or edit the file, only view it, but this is of course handy if you need to send it to someone else and you want to make sure of which file you are sending.
For MACs –
Well, it’s a MAC, so of course it actually very simple (excuse me, is my bias showing?)
Simply open the file in preview or your pdf reader.
Again, very occasionally the file will throw an error, and again this is usually a MAC vs PC thing.
EPS (Encapsulated Post Script) Files
For PCs –
* Open a blank document in Word
* “Pick Up” the eps file by clicking and holding the left mouse button
* Drag and drop (drag the file and release the left mouse button) into the blank Word doc
* Word has a built in EPS filter and will show you the EPS file in all it’s glory!
Again, you can not save or edit the file, and it may throw a MAC / PC error.
For MAC –
* Use preview (yep, it really is simpler on a MAC)
Same error / save / edit rules apply!
Go try a few files!
Bren
A colleague in the USA showed me this well meaning but totally inappropriate promotional product today.
The “Mother’s Against Drunk Drivers” organisation apparently needed a product that kids would find useful and hang onto. Carabiner fits the bill for sure. However, considering that practically the only bottles that need an opener these days are imported beers and pre-mix alcohol drinks bottles, I probably would not have advised going with this particular carabiner.
Great organisation, but seemingly a horrible choice.
As you can imagine, I see a lot of logos everyday. Some are great, some not so great. The not so great ones usually have several mistakes in common. Here are the mistakes I see repeated most often.
1 My nephew can draw really well!
Yes, we all have a cousin, brother, sister, nephew or some other relation that “can draw”. This does not mean you should employ them to design your logo. If you really want to help their design career along, buy them an all year train ticket so they can go to design school and become a professional.
Using an amateur drawn logo is probably the worst mistake you can make, because usually they make at least one (if not more) of the other mistakes listed below. You usually get what you pay for and design is no exception to the rule.
Having said that, i’m led to believe the NIKE swoosh was designed by a student. Let’s assume it was a design student, not a vet, in which case I stick by my first premise and suggest you only use a design pro, not your nephew.
2 It’s Raster, Mon.
If your logo is designed in Photoshop, Corel Photo, or any other software that includes the word “photo”, then your logo has been created as “raster” art. This is not good.
Programs like Abode Illustrator & Corel Draw create “vector” files.
What’s the difference? Here is a resource file you are welcome to download that fully explains the difference between raster art and vector art.
Here is the readers digest version –
* Raster art – Mostly saved as Bitmaps (.psd, .bmp, .tiff, .jpg, .jpeg, .wmf, .gif). Bitmaps are made up of multi-colour pixels placed on a grid, I liken them to the graph drawings we used to create in primary school.
Raster files are resolution dependent, meaning they can not be enlarged without losing quality. If you zoom in or enlarge a raster image you will be able to see the “rough edges” Raster files can not be edited.
* Vector art – Mostly saved as program specific files, like .ai for Adobe Illustrator or .cdr for CorelDraw. Vector art is made up of outlines plotted on an x/y plane and filled with colour. More like a mathematical equation. Points (or nodes) are placed on a graph, and line draw between them. I liken them to a join the dots colour book. First you join the dots (nodes) then fill in the colour.
Vector files are resolution independent, meaning you can create vector art the size of a postage stamp and enlarge it to the size of a billboard and not lose any image quality or resolution. They can also be more easily broken down, edited, and have colour changes made.
If you supply a raster file to your friendly promotional products supplier, they will need to “trace or redraw ” it and create a vector file, so it’s a lot easier to simply create it as vector art in the first place.
3 I found it on the interweb.
It is not ok to use an image you found on the internet as or in your logo. There is no “percentage” you can change an image to make it ok to use. It is really just that black and white folks. If it is not yours or paid for, then you can’t use it, real simple.
Apart from that, try to avoid using very common stock images. There are tons of stock image sites around, I prefer iStockphoto myself. 
If you insist on using clip art or a stock image, be careful of A/ using an image that has been downloaded and used 3 million times before B/ checking the license of use to see it is ok to use in your logo. Some licenses have limitations in relation to what the image can be used for, and if it can be changed at all or not. Read the fine print, it matters.
4 It’s crowded in here.
Your image may or may not have to be scaled to different sizes for different purposes. If it has a lot of fine lines or excessive detail, then you may have trouble using it in different ways. For example, a logo that includes a fish with scales may look fine on the side of a bus, but will look like a blob on the side of a printed pen.
Less is more, keep it simple.
5 I want it to fade from sunshine yellow through to vermillion.
If your logo relies on colours or gradients you will find it far less flexible than one that doesn’t. Make sure your logo still works in greyscale or monochrome (see seagull poop below). It is good practise to have multiple versions of your logo available. For example, a monochrome (black & white) version, a reverse mono, a grey scale, and even a version with a yellow back ground (so you know what it looks like in the yellow pages). Having multiple options made once the overall concept is decided will not cost much more and in the long run you will save money later on.
Gradients are another colour trap. Gradients are simply a fade from one colour or tone to another. They look great on a monitor or magazine, but are impossible to embroider, can cost more to print, and sometimes even limits the products you can use when it comes time for you to use promotional products.
6 I want you to use “Comic Sans” for the first word, “Brush script” for the tag line, “Times New Roman” for the web address, and “Arial” for the second word.
Too many fonts spoil the broth. Stick to one or two fonts max. More than that is jumbled and grating on the eye.
Just a safety note. If you ask for Comic Sans in your logo, your designer may try to stab you in the eye with a pencil. They hate it. You have been warned.
7 It looks like a seagull pooped on the corner of your fax!
Remember your logo will be used on faxes, perhaps newspaper ads, the yellow pages, and not always in colour. So your logo needs to work in greyscale or monochrome as well as colour.
Run your logo through the photocopier or fax it to yourself, if it looks like a blob of seagull poop on the corner of the page, it’s probably not working well in greyscale.
8 Does my bum look big in this?
There comes a time when one needs to stop wearing mini skirts and bell bottom jeans. Basing your logo on a trend or an item that can date means you may have to change it later on down the track.
If your logo included a VHS video tape in it, you would have had to rebrand by now.
9 Picasso would have drawn horrible logos.
Don’t get me wrong, i’m a Pablo fan, but I wouldn’t have had him draw a logo for me. If the design or concept is too abstract, people will move on real quick. Keep it simple, and don’t forget that the customer wants to know what you can do for them with your service, not that you have a good imagination.
10 But it’s the rules!!!
Don’t get too hung up on all the rules. Do some research on Google and you will find tons of these types of articles on designer blogs about all the horrible mistakes you can make when designing your logo.
It’s your logo, so if you want lots of colours and a gradient, then go for it! Just remember that you may have limitations down the track when trying to use it in certain ways.
I do however recommend you listen to your designer’s advice with an open mind. Yes, you are the customer and you should be able to get what you want, but you are hiring your design pro because you don’t have the skills to do it yourself, so listen to them.
Call me on 1300 784 420 if you want any help with starting off the logo design process.
Bren
As the golf season fast approaches, you maybe considering hosting or sponsoring a corporate golf day. A golf day is attractive to sponsors, hosts, and participants on multiple levels. The sponsors and hosts have ample time and opportunity to get their message across, and the participants have not only a fun day, but multiple networking opportunities. Here’s how to get the most out of the day.
Timing is important
It’s a corporate golf event, so avoid holidays. Weekends, Public holidays, school holidays and even other large event days. Grand final day for a Melbourne Corporate golf day? Don’t expect a huge turnout
Golf courses sometimes only allow these type of events on certain days, and they can be booked far in advance, so start checking early.
Remember who your target market are
Given that you are organising a corporate golf day for business people, chances are you will have a mixed bag of abilities. Some will never have picked up a club, some will be shooting off scratch. It would be fairly safe to assume that most will be “average” golfers, so it pays to remember that when choosing a venue, and what type of competition you will offer. A corporate golf day should have enough fun in it so as not to turn off the rawest beginner, but challenging enough to give the more advanced golfers a good hit out.
Some fun clinics with a local pro, or even some games hosted by a celebrity could be a good way to make the day more fun for those beginners.
It’s a long day, don’t forget to feed them!
Normally, a breakfast, lunch or dinner would be provided for participants before or after the event, but don’t forget to have refreshments available around the course.
Get visual!
Before, during, and after the game, there are ample opportunities for signage on a golf day.
Pull up Banners, tear drop banners, vinyl outdoor banners, corflute signs can be used on and around the course to great advantage. Signage options are also a great way to offer a more valuable package to sponsors.
Don’t forget your mobile billboards – your people. Event golf shirts (polo shirts), embroidered caps, embroidered jackets and other decorated apparel for your staff, sponsors, and even participants become mobile billboards on the day (and beyond).
Make it pay!
It’s a competition after all. Sure, you want it to be fun and open to all abilities, but add a little spice with some prizes.
You can offer cash or prize incentives for overall winner, stroke winner, nearest the pin, longest drive, worst stroke score, hole in one.
Some on course entertainment with some spot prizes and give aways are fun too. Yet another opportunity for a sponsor to get more value from the day.
Prize insurance is vital if you decided to offer a hole in one prize. Research has shown that a $20,000 prize on an easy par 3 is more exciting and generates more interest than a $100,000 prize on a harder par 4. Hole in one insurance is not as expensive as you might think, and handing over a big cheque could prove irresistible to sponsors (who should foot the insurance bill!) A hole in one or two on your corporate golf day also gives you a nice human interest story the local newspapers will be interested in after the event, further leveraging the publicity for you and your sponsors.
Get generous!
Create a “Game Pack” for before the round starts. Golf Tees, Golf balls, Golf towels, Golf bag tags, Sunglasses, Sunscreen, Caps, Visors or Hats, Green repairers, Insect repellent, Stubby or can holders, tee shirts, polo shirts, spray jackets, golf umbrellas, Golf pencils or Pens can all be custom decorated and gifted to the participants before (or after) the round of golf.
This again is an opportunity for sponsors to get on board as well as your own branding.
Entertain them!
Provide entertainment before during and after the round of golf. Celebrity players, Golf professionals, on course entertainers can all be hired to make appearances during the day.
It’s a good idea to have a photographer around to record the day. Everyone likes rubbing shoulders with celebs, and a photo is even better.
Fortune is in the follow up!
Make sure you are getting details, details, details. Details of all the guests, the sponsors, etc etc.
Follow up the event with a feedback survey for your guests & sponsors. If it was a fund raiser, let everyone know how much was raised. Leverage off some of the celeb pics and do a press release.
Keep in touch with everyone after the event via email, and start preparing for next year!
To help you organise your next Corporate Golf Day we’ve provided you you with a quick start Corporate Golf Day Checklist. In addition to that, we can kick start your prize pool with a special offer of a free golf bag with an order of as little as 144 Maxfli Noodles. Click through on the image below for more details.
A well designed card is like the perfect handshake, not too firm, not too soft, not sweaty, not too vigorous. It makes either a good impression, or not….
If your business card has one or more of the traits listed below, it may not be leaving the impression you want it to.
Your card sucks because -
* It wont fit anywhere! If your card is too big or too small, it is essentially useless. The main reason we want our card taken is so our prospects can store it for use at a later time. If it wont fit in or gets lost in a pocket, wallet, business card holder, or purse, it will probably get dumped into the nearest suitable receptacle.
Custom shapes can be cool and work well, but sometimes they don’t. Just because something looks cool, doesn’t make it useful (think Paris Hilton)
* It’s poor Quality! Just because you can get free business cards on the internet, or $25 worth from a vending machine – doesn’t mean you should. The stock (paper, plastic, whatever you end up choosing) should reflect quality. Heavier, lighter, different stocks all have a place – but the main message is it should convey a level of quality that suits your business. Want to be seen as a light weight cheapskate? No? Then step away from the vending machine please.
Cards with and without a laminate, matt or gloss, heavy or lighter stock are just some of the choices to be made. A professional business card supplier will ask a few questions, get to know what your business and you are about, and offer the right mix to convey the right image. They will use materials that are ecologically sound. They will offer inks that don’t run in the rain….
* It doesn’t say anything! Your card must have a marketing message. You are the owner of ABC industries, and you have a nice logo – your Mum is proud of you, as is your spouse – no-one else cares, they care only about what ABC Industries can do for them. So you have to tell them.
If your card only has the bare minimum of contact details on it, how does the recipient know what you can do for them? Especially if they met you at a networking event, you may be one of 20 people they met, and maybe your sparkling personality wasn’t enough to have them remember who you were. A card with some benefits of working with you may jog their memory or even just prompt them to keep your details.
* It has vacant land! If you are not utilising the back of your card then you are wasting half your advertising space. Imagine taking a yellow pages ad of 18 cm x 11 cm ($5-6000 or so I guess), and then leaving half of the ad empty ….. you wouldn’t. You’d fill the space with benefit filled information about why it’s a good idea to do business with you.
So if you wouldn’t do that with a yellow ad, why do it with your card?
* It’s inappropriate! Design can make us feel. We can convey fun, sombre, corporate, sad, stoic, professional, happy, sexy, homey, old fashioned, young, new, funky, trendy.
Think a lawyer should have the same card design as a clown for hire? (no lawyer jokes please..)
Think about your business, and more so, think about your target market. You may have the funnest, happiest, youngest, trendiest team of staff in your industry, but that doesn’t mean you should convey that in your card if your business is Undertaking……sombre & professional might work better because that’s what your target market wants.
A designer should probably have a card that shows off design flair and imagination. An accountant should have a card that conveys stability, trust, and attention to detail.
* It has too much on it! Crowded, stuffed with pictures, special offers, and 40 ways to contact you or talk to you can be too much. Get the essentials on there, the best way to contact you, the most important reasons they should use you, and leave it at that.
* It doesn’t have enough on it! If you are Google, ignore this, you can probably just put “Google” on your card and leave it at that. If you are not Google, and don’t have that much brand power, you should probably put a little more info on your cards other than your logo.
Does your card sound like any of those? If so, call the “My Business card sucks” hotline – 1300 784 420 and our trained counsellors will guide you through the process of creating a new un-sucky card. All calls are confidential, and to help ease the pain I will design your card for free if you mention this article. I’ll throw in 1 hour worth of artwork (value $66) with any business card order of more than $500 value generated from this post.
Bren
A lot of people reading this may be thinking to themselves, “I can’t guarantee anything in my business, it’s too high risk, it’s going to cost me too much money, people are going to take advantage of me!” It’s true there are people out there in this world that will try to grab at easy dollar, but on the whole most people are genuine and won’t try to take advantage of a good guarantee.
A well written and well constructed guarantee will nearly always create more business than it actually costs you in replacement sales or services. Of course you must be aware not to put too much on the line, don’t risk more than you can afford. The business does have to keep trading after all. Different businesses have different profit levels often it depends on how much pain your business can actually stand. Also remember that the more conditions or exceptions that you attach to your guarantee the less valuable it will seem to your customer and the less effective it will be at actually creating more business. So be careful not to attach too many conditions to any guarantee that you write.
One of the good things about a guarantee is that not too many people use them, so if you are using one in an industry that not many people do you are really standing out from the crowd. By guaranteeing something you are actually positioning yourself better than 95% of your competition.
Here are my seven steps of creating a dynamic guarantee.
Step 1
A guarantee is part of marketing your business. I always find when I am dealing with the marketing of my business the first thing that I do is a competitive analysis, and a guarantee is no different. A competitive analysis doesn’t have to be difficult, it can simply be a case of writing a list of the top ten competitors in your field. You then move onto Step 2.
Note! Just remember, your competition is not necessarily the people who have exactly the same business as you. For example, if you own a pizza shop your competition is not just pizza shops, it’s also any other takeaway food within your area. Anyone who is your competition is someone who is competing for the same dollar that you are even if they are in a slightly different business.
Step 2
Take the top competitor from the list of ten and analyse your business in comparison to theirs. Take a look at things like hours of operation, do you have toll free phone numbers? Anything that is quantifiable you can compare your business to theirs. Be honest with yourself and decide who is doing it better, you or them? Once you have that list you can figure out ways to give yourself a competitive edge.
If they offer a call back in 1 hour, you offer 30 minute call backs.
Step 3
The list is also the beginning of a USP list, a Unique Selling Proposition, which is the third step of writing a guarantee. Once you have worked out how you do things differently (and better) compared to your competition you have a list of things that are unique about your business that help you sell it, therefore a list of unique selling propositions. From your USP list you can decide which one of those USPs are most important when it comes to the guarantee.
Step 4
Have a look at what you are already doing. What happens when something goes wrong? Every business has times when a customer is not entirely satisfied, a product or service doesn’t work exactly as they thought it might. When something goes wrong what do you do? Do you replace? Do you repair? Do you refund? What is it that you do that satisfies your customers?
Step 5
Work out how much pain your business can stand, sustainable pain. If you are refunding, repairing or replacing any service or product it is probably going to cost you money and you have to decide how much you can actually stand. You need to be able to keep the business trading so guaranteeing something that is going to completely wipe out the business in one hit is not a good guarantee.
The reality is, if you have a good product, replacing it under a guarantee will be rare, but you should of course be prepared because it will eventually happen.
Step 6
Make sure that anything you guarantee is useful to your clients. As you have been writing down points on how you might be able to guarantee a service or product in your business, make sure when you look at it that it is not just useful to you, but it is also useful to your clients.
For example, if your product is time sensitive, replacement guarantee is probably not useful to the client, but an on time guarantee is. In my industry, we supply a lot of trade show events. A replacement guarantee is useless to my clients if i cant replace faulty stock in time for a trade show event. However, an on time guarantee is something powerful in that case (which is exactly why we offer an on time delivery guarantee)
Step 7
Make sure you use your guarantee in all marketing. There is not much point in having a guarantee and not telling anyone about it. It is the same as not having a guarantee at all. This might seem the most obvious step, but amazingly, it is the step most people do not take.
To summarise the seven steps to creating a dynamic guarantee.
1. Do a competitive analysis of your business and your competition.
2. Analyse your top competitor and see how they are doing things either better or worse than yourself.
3. Create a list of unique selling propositions about your business that may or may not be able to be used in your guarantee.
4. Analyse what is already happening in your business. You may not need to change anything at all, you may already have a guarantee but you are just not marketing it.
5. Decide how much pain your business can stand. If you had to replace your largest order that you have in your business right now would that send your business broke or would you be able to withstand that? If the answer is yes, then you can probably afford to offer an unconditional guarantee.
6. Make sure any guarantee you write is useful to your client, not just to you.
7. Most important, market your guarantee aggressively. In all your advertising, website, fliers, radio, TV, etc. Make sure people know that you offer a guarantee because 95% of your competitors won’t.
Happy analysing!
Below is a short video about a new feature i’ve added to the site.
We had some feedback that printing the articles was a bit awkward and ugly, and used a little too much ink. So i’ve added a little software that takes care of that and gives you multiple options for saving and sharing the posts.
You can now print, save to pdf, or email a much improved printer friendly version of every post on the site.
Please let me know what you think via the comments below!
Bren
