Why saying sorry is a great marketing tactic

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'm a huge fan of US t-shirt biz Threadless - and now it's for more than their shirts and business model.

They had server issues during a sale - and instead of saying to their customers "too bad, so sad", they've created a marketing opportunity & made themselves look good in the process.

Here's what they said:

"Earlier this week, during your most crucial purchasing moments of our Spring Cleaning sale, we experienced some serious down-time. The frustration that many of you experienced while trying to make purchases is unacceptable and we promise to never ever let this happen again forever ever.

To allow you to make the most of the sale, our friends at Rackspace (the folks that host Threadless) are sponsoring five thousand $5 coupons on orders of $50 or more. The first five thousand people to use the coupon code 'spring08' during the Spring Cleaning sale will receive $5 off their order on top of the already discounted sale price. Time to go on a shopping spree!!!!

In addition to the $5 coupons and to make up for lost time, we are extending the Spring Cleaning sale until 11:59:59 CST on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008! The new shirts to be released on Monday will also be on sale!If you are interested in all the geeky details of what went wrong, please join Harper Reed, our CTO, in a live discussion of your questions and concerns..."

So first them empathised - great customer services. Then they told you what happened (and made sure you knew it wasn't all them), then they've made a supplier cover their mistake AND offered their customers a special in the mean time, then they've extended their sale and then they've even gone a step further and allowed for full interaction by setting up a discussion with the IT department.

And how did it go down? Well, you can see for yourself, as this was a blog post. The vast majority of the comments went like this: "You guys are so nice. Not like them other nasty corporations." and " wow, yes.i already ordered 3 times,but i will definitely order again monday."

So next time something in your business goes wrong, don't aim for a cover us and don't ignore your customers. Work out how you can make them feel you've listened, acted - and then keep them buying more and talking about you to everyone they know.

Don't forget the simple things

Successful marketing is rarely about a single silver bullet. Instead, it's about many, many little things that joined together, deliver results for a business.

So this post is about a little thing. Your email signature. If your business is anything like mine, you can send and receive around 100 emails a day. Even if you only send 10 emails a day, each one is an opportunity to share a little information about yourself and your business (AND as a bonus it makes it a lot easier for the recipient to get in touch with you in the future).

Now if you're tempted to think that no-one reads an email signature, I'm able to recount from very recent experience that this is definitely not the case. I added a sentence to the bottom of my (already relatively long) email signature about the launch of my new book. And I immediately got back a tonne of questions and congratulations about it. I really didn't think anyone would pay that much attention. But about a third of the people I emailed that week commented on it - which means more probably read it.

So if you've got something new or exciting happening, pop it onto the bottom of your daily emails. It's totally zero budget - and I know you'll be surprised at the response.

Providing experience to get free to cheap design and copy

Great design and copy writing can make a small brand look BIG and PROFESSIONAL -which we all know are key factors in attracting customers. I'm constantly amazed by how many shabby websites I come across and my instant thought is " this business isn't to be taken seriously".

But great design & copy has to cost a lot - doesn't it? Well, no.

If you have the world's tightest budget, why not consider getting a promising student designer or writer to work for you? You can contact Universities like RMIT (who run advertising and design courses) for a referral. Or independent outfits like The Australian School of Copywriting, who need 'real life' projects to give their students the experience they need. I recently referred a friend starting out a new venture (Little Fry) to The Australian School of Copywriting. Just going in to brief the budding writers gave the Little Fry team a good chance to articulate (and even form) their marketing vision. They then received several different writing perspectives for their brand, which has not only given them material to use immediately, but some fresh ideas for the future.

So if you have the time to dedicate, and are prepared to give as well as get, you can get some top notch design and copy for little or no cost. And as your business grows, and your student's talent grows, it could be the beginning of a long a mutually profitable relationship for both of you!

Design consistency is not only good for your brand it's good for your budget

Marketers love consistency - that's why all the big brands have thick design manuals covering the rules of how their brand can be used, in what colours and related colour palettes and even how much white space should be around a logo.

Just because you're a smaller brand doesn't mean you should be lax about ensuring all elements of your look and feel aren't consistent. Apart from making you look like a professional outfit, it also has the added benefit of being cost-effective in the long term. Why? Well, when you have a clear idea and guidelines on what font, colours and style to use, it will take a designer less time to create new work for you. And that translates to lower cost.

Also, some strong design elements have the advantage of being useful for multiple purposes, which I've been reminded of recently. I partnered with a talented designer and illustrator on Dont Drink and Dial...and other secrets of female friendship (my first book, being published by Penguin and on sale this week) and we've been able to use variations on the illustrations she's created for everything from a stationery line to icons on our website.

So get committed to consistency for all the right reasons: professionalism, aesthetics and cost control.

Ok, if you're really, really poor here's an idea for you

So I've been coming across a website a lot lately when hunting for stuff online. It's called Gumtree and it's essentially a free community noticeboard, where you can place free ads for just about anything. Their SEO (that's "search engine optimisation" which is how high up you appear in something like google) must be top notch, as it seems like every other search I conduct online for just about anything gives me one of these listings in the top ten!

So check out Melbourne Gumtree (and their 60 other cities) if you're looking for a totally, utterly, truly zero budget marketing tool to drive sales and possibly traffic to your own website. If it costs you nothing, is there any harm in trying it out?!

What they have to say about their service:

"Gumtree.com was started in March 2000 as a local London classified ads and community site, designed to connect people who were either planning to move, or had just arrived in the city, and needed help getting started with accommodation, employment and meeting new people.
We've grown a lot since then through word of mouth and we're proud to say that Gumtree is loved by its rapidly growing community. We now cover 60 cities across 6 countries - the UK, Ireland, Poland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. "

Viral isn't dead if the offer is good enough

"Viral" marketing was a bit of a buzz word over the past few years that seems to have gone out of fashion in 07 - but the concept of viral is exciting because it's the ultimate zero budget concept. That is, you send out something (a promotion, an offer, news of a sale, a movie/joke/story) to a set group and then people pass it on for you. And it continues to spread...like a virus. So your original message to 100 people could end up reaching 10,000 people.

A good viral campaign isnt easy to come up with. The original (and future) recipients have to think it's exicting enough to pass on, such that their friends or colleagues wont be annoyed to receive it. So a really compelling offer - or a very funny message - is what's needed.

I just received a great offer passed on by a friend - and it was so good I wondered if it was real. So after a long investigation (well, actually, after clicking on a couple of links) I confirmed that Krispy Kreme WERE in fact giving away a half dozen donuts on the day after the election.

They've even tied in database building element, some topical marketing by linking it to the federal election, a cause related element by asking for a gold coin donation to the Salvos and some amusing creative. This little promo really ticks all my boxes! (They've also got some safety nets built in - see the preferred store and the "up to 6 donuts" to help them cover their tushies).

So Krispy Kreme have done it again - for the cost of some clever creative and I'm assuming several thousand donuts - they'll be gaining both a customer database and store traffic, at what I'm sure will be a very low cost per unit.

If I had a zero budget gold star, I'd slap it on them right now!

Knowing your customer makes for easy copy writing

I was trawling the net the other day looking for a company that does decking and fencing as I'm planning a spot of "back yard renovation". This being my first home, I dont really know much about what I'm looking for - and I imagine the majority of people who are investigating online are in the same boat. And yet most of the sites I came across were AWFUL. Some had obviously had a lot of cash spent on them (eg. Bluescope Steel's site) but they were all tremendously unhelpful. No "general" information about their product, lousy pictures and no advice.

And then I came across a little gem. The Outdoor Timber Company. It's not the world's most stylish site, but it spoke to people like me immediately. No chest beating and waffling words. The page on decking started with: "Decking timbers can be divided into three main groups" - and went on to explain the world of decking to me - and ultimately why these are the people to buy it from.

You can tell this site hasn't been written by a copy writer either. It's been written by someone that's passionate about what they do - and they make you feel rather passionate by the end too.

So the zero budget marketing thought for the day is to visual a customer interaction...

Do you know what questions your customer usually opens with? Of course you do.

Answer these questions up front and people will assume that you know your stuff - and you'll save yourself a tonne of time answering the same queries over and over.