But as a business owner or executive, you probably are starting to see more and more business opportunities present themselves every month – and being “lean and mean” is hurting you. It’s common in today’s economy that businesses don’t have the resources in-house to respond as quickly and effectively as they need to.

So what are your options? Do you always have to hire extra employees to be ready to respond? How do you know what abilities do you need?

One of the services Three Hats Marketing offers is virtual marketing employees. Simply put, what this can bring your business is the flexibility, resources, and the experience your business needs, when you need them. It alleviates the need to hire full time, in-house personnel and incur the on-going expense. It is the smart answer to the peaks and valleys all our businesses have.

To learn more about how a Three Hats Marketing virtual marketing employee can help your business, give us a call.

Often times we take our existing relationships for granted and as a result we unintentionally neglect them – clients and/or influencers. Many of you have probably experienced this issue in some form as it commonly happens to marketing and sales people. I guess it’s because we are always asked to “get more”. Get more traffic, get more leads, get more conversions, get more sales….get more! And if we are honest with ourselves, we’re all motivated by the chase of the new. This issue can probably be chalked up to “the pursuit of something new” syndrome (yes, I just made that up but I stake claim to it – please send all royalty payments in cash).

The irony is that many times, “the pursuit of something new” actually prevents us from getting more business, and takes longer or costs us significantly more to do so. Identifying those you suspect would be good customers, targeting prospective customers and building a relationship with a new customer is many times a long and expensive journey. On average, the cost of acquiring new customers can cost 5x more than retaining current customers.

Don’t get me wrong, your sales efforts need to be balanced based on your situation – and for many that is a balance between reoccurring sales, add-on sales and new sales. However, if you only have a dollar to spend on marketing – that dollar is best spent on communicating to your existing clients. Here are a few tips on marketing to existing customers to drive sales:

1. Stay in touch
We prefer email marketing or personalized notes. Keep in touch periodically and especially on special occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, etc).

2. Show your appreciation
Demonstrate your appreciation for their relationship by sending things like a gift certificate to their favorite coffee shop or restaurant.

3. Make connections
Make a referral and send your clients business whenever possible. Connecting clients with other business that may be a referral sources is often appreciated.

4. Spend time with them
While this may be more of a sales tactic, it doesn’t have to be a sales pitch. Make sure you spend time with you clients periodically – and don’t “sell” them unless they express interest. Think relationship building, not sales.

5. Manage your reputation
Good customer service keeps customers coming back but an unhappy customer can be costly. Make sure you listening for frustrations when you do interact with customers, but also listen on social media tools. Frustrated customers will share their frustration on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, SmallerIndiana and the like. By monitoring these tools you can response quickly an put out any fires. This is called reputation monitoring & management – if you are not doing this, contact Three Hats right away as it could be a costly mistake!

6. Share good news
When there is good news about your business or your clients business and industry, send them a quick note referencing the article.

7. Ask for feedback
Ask your customers how you are doing and if there are ways you can improve your service. This can be an informal call/email or a more formal survey.

But did you ever stop to think how in 28 minutes and 30 seconds they can take you from not knowing of their product to picking up the phone and placing an order? (That’s the part that is truly amazing.)

So how do they do it? How can I go from ShamWhat(?) to ShamWOW and actually be excited to buy one in such short time? It’s all about mastering the customer buying process – and there is no better example of it than an infomercial.

Here is the steps of the customer buying process and thus the steps an infomercial takes you through.

1. Create Awareness

First all infomercials must introduce you to their product. They make no assumption that you have ever heard of the product before. They outline all the features of the product in high detail showing you the in’s and out’s of everything about it.

2. Create Need

Next after you are aware of the features of their product, they walk you through all the benefits. How their product will save you time, or money, or hassle, or all three. Typically they solve a problem you didn’t realize you had until they point it out to you – and all that creates need.

3. Create Urgency

Next, infomercials are masters at creating urgency. Have you ever seen an infomercial that had a timer going in the corner of the screen? “Call in the next 30 minutes and pay just 3 payments instead of 4!” They force you to believe that now’s the time to act on this need.

4. Evaluate Choices

Once the viewer actually needs a product like this and is looking to buy one, they typically compare themselves to other options. Other products can’t possibly do it better, or faster than their product. Comparing other options that a buyer may be considering and showing what is better about their product removes these other options from consideration

5. Resolve Final Risk

Lastly, there is always no risk. “If you are not 100% satisfied, just return it for a full refund. What do you have to lose?” They know if you try it, there is little chance of you returning it, so “what do they have to lose” by making an offer like that?

So those are the steps of the buying process as it relates to an infomercial. Now, what can we learn from that and apply to our business?

You should communicate with your prospects in this order

This is a great model for us to consider when we are working with prospects. Model your marketing and sales presentations after the organizational structure of the infomercial, and you might be surprised at the success you find yourself having. If nothing else, you may learn where people are getting hung up in the process and where you might need to improve your tactics.

You can’t skip a step

This is something we try to do all the time. We present information to prospects when they are not ready to receive it. We share the price before they feel they need our product or service, so it goes on deaf ears, or the perceived value is lower than our price. Or sometimes we neglect to remove the final risk – thus putting their mind at ease with their decision and therefore never close the deal. Pay attention to the prospect’s questions and hear what they really need to know from you. Don’t move ahead in the process without making sure they’re along with you.

Only the buyer can move themselves to the next step

When does an infomercial not make you buy? When their tactics don’t move to the next step in the process. Maybe they didn’t create the need or the urgency for you or remove the risk for you. Regardless, you didn’t move yourself through the process – and therefore they didn’t get a sale. Now of course, they can’t stop a 30 minute program just for you – they have to keep going. But when you are working with your prospects, make sure they are moving along with you in the process. If not, go back to where you left them off.

Give these thoughts some consideration and if they make sense, apply them to your next presentation. If you need assistance in taking your presentations to the next level, give us a call. I promise it won’t be a waste of your time – you have our 100% money back guarantee.

As we become more and more of a “digital society”, how we communicate is changing and so are our communication habits. The Internet and the thousands of communication tools that have evolved with it (Email, Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter & many more) give us the ability to communicate 24/7 and with people all over the world, but are then enabling “bad communication practices”?

Are we using these tools improperly to communicate?

To answer this question, ask yourself these two basic questions:

1. Who am I communicating to with this tool – the target audience?
2. What information do these people want to receive?

We are seeing a lot of people communicating the same message, via multiple tools, to various audiences. Frankly, that’s just bad communication! Some of the more prevalent tools we see this happening on are Facebook, LinkedIN & Twitter. We commonly see people linking their Twitter accounts to the Facebook and LinkedIN accounts – and vice versa. Each of these tools has a different purposes, different audiences and function differently. As a result, you shouldn’t communicate the same across all of them.

To illustrate the point – would you share the same information to your mother on Facebook as you would with a potential employer on LinkedIN? Or better yet, would you share the same drunken college story with your buddy on Facebook as you would with a business partner in Twitter? Probably not. I don’t mean to pick on Facebook – that’s just the easiest example as it is one of the most common tools.

Below are some real world examples that we’ve seen on Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter.

Facebook Example
Would your Friends on Facebook understand a post like:

“Thanks @SomePersonsName for the @SomeOrganizationsName mention at #QRS! Thanks @ SomePersonsName & @ SomePersonsName for tweeting about it!”

Unless you are an active Twitter user, the above looks like Pig Latin to you and your Facebook Friends.

LinkedIN Example
Would your professional contacts on LinkedIN appreciate a status update like:

“It’s impossible to flirt with the bank tellers because they see how broke I am #tfln (awesome!) 3 days ago from Twitter”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say your business contacts don’t really care about you flirting with anyone and probably have a different perception of you after reading this!

Twitter Example
If you work for a nationally recognized PR firm, would your company, colleagues, peers or fellow citizens appreciate a Tweet like:

“Fine New Orleans. Go back to your stupid flooded sh#t hole of a city with the trophy”

I know for a fact that the person who tweeted this is perceived much differently now!

Should you communicate this way?

These types of bad communication practices are becoming more and more common and are “cluttering” up our lives even more than they already are. If I am connected to you on LinkedIN (a professional networking website) I don’t want to hear about you “flirting” with anyone. And as a result of you telling me that – I probably don’t want to be networked with you anymore.

It is imperative to understand what the purpose of the tool is, whom we are communicating to and what information they want to receive from us.

Why is this important

Why is this important to your business? Because if you don’t understand this point, your customers might not want to be networked with you anymore either! Remember, you do have some control over how you or your business is perceived.

If you want help understanding how to use these tools to better communicate for your business, give us a call. 888.694.0646

So what is your website saying to clients, potential clients, and prospective employees? Do you even know?

Here are some practical reasons why your website IS important:

It speaks on behalf of your company in ways you can’t.

The first thing I do when I hear about a company that I want to learn more about is go to their website, and so do most people. It has been said that when someone goes to a company’s website, they draw an opinion of that company within the first 3-5 seconds. The opinion could be good, or it could be bad. Nonetheless YOU have the ability to positively affect that opinion with an effective website.

It’s a marketing tool available 24/7.

Your business development folks may tell you they work 24/7, but they really don’t. Make the most of this tool by understanding what your target audience is really looking for. It gives them the ability to learn more about you anytime, anywhere. And also update the site frequently so people have a reason to come back to learn more about you and what you can offer them.

It should be a destination point for marketing efforts

At Three Hats Marketing, when we help clients with their marketing, their website becomes a great foundational tool for our marketing efforts because it offers the prospect a place to go to learn more. That effort on the part of the prospect is then tracked, which makes our marketing much more measurable and effective. How are you using your website? Is it just an online brochure? Or are you using it to the fullest potential?

It’s extremely cost effective

Unlike printed marketing pieces, your website can change constantly. And as a result, it should be the most recent information available about your company. If you don’t have resources internally to handle your website, consider contracting with a company like Three Hats to handle it for you.

Now, go ahead, visit your site and see what you are saying to the world. See if it represents your company well. If not, put together a plan to fix it. Could be one of the most important marketing efforts you do.

Maybe I just pay attention to marketing more than the average person, but I am continually surprised by the amount of wasted effort and money people spend on marketing. So much so, I thought maybe I would just simplify the process for companies and easily define for them 5 ways to waste their marketing dollars

Wasteful idea #1: Don’t collect email addresses.

One of the most cost effective ways to communicate with clients and prospects is through email. When you don’t spend the effort to ask permission to add your contacts to your email distribution list, you are not utilizing one of the most cost-effective ways to stay in front of them.

Wasteful idea #2: Get big Yellow Page Ads

I am constantly surprised by the amount of money still spent in this area. Do people still think Yellow Pages is worth the money? Come on! I have talked with companies who spend $1,000, $2,000, even $5,000 per month on ads.

Wasteful idea #3: Don’t put effort into your website

Your website is a view into your company 24×7. It speaks for you when you are not there to speak for your company. Many times, it is the first impression a prospect or “influencer” may have for your company. For many of our service clients, one or two new sales in a year as a result of website improvements can more than pay for the effort.

Wasteful idea #4: Sponsor events without purpose

It’s amazing how many opportunities small businesses have to sposor something. A table at a networking event here, or a sponsor at a community event there, or for $$ we will put your logo on this here. Unless you see it worth doing as “good-will” such as an opportunity to give back to your community (which is not marketing any more by the way), you must adhere to a couple of principles: first ask what you should expect as a return on your investment, and secondly ask to speak to someone who has done it before you to make sure they feel it was a good investment for them. Not always does that mean it will be for you, but you can learn an awful lot that way.

Wasteful idea #5: Buy print ads

You want to blow through a marketing budget quickly, buy print ads. They are as expensive as they ever have been, but now there are much more cost effective ways to advertise including Google ads, even Facebook ads if your target audience is found there. Be creative when trying to reach your audience. We have two clients that actually traded ad space. One placed the other’s ad on their website, and the other printed flyers and taped them to their take-out boxes. Little to no cost for each!

These points seem pretty simple when you step back and think about it. Be honest with yourself if you are spending money in the above ways. Are you just doing so because you want to do “something”? Is there a better way to spend your marketing dollars? If you want some help doing it better, give us a call.

Should I be using these tools to market my business?

We suggest the answer to this frequently asked question be a resounding, definite, straightforward, MAYBE!

Let me explain. First let’s start off with explaining that Facebook and Twitter are “social media tools”. Social media appears to be an ambiguous term and there are many different definitions floating around. Our interpretation of social media is web-based technologies used to stimulate social interaction and communication. At the end of the day, Facebook and Twitter are simply “communication tools”, and there are dozens of other “tools” just like them under the social media umbrella.

Now, back to the question at hand: Should I be using these tools to market my business? To answer this question, we refer to our three principles of marketing.

1. How are you different and why would someone what to buy from you?
2. Who is your target audience (in most cases, your buying audience)?
3. How does your target audience prefer to be communicated to?

Answering these three questions is the first step to every marketing initiative, and evaluating an investment into Facebook and Twitter is no different. It is easy to succumb to the peer pressure of Brian Williams and jump right into using Facebook and Twitter, but we are here to tell you….MAYBE!

The marketing principal of “How are You Different” is vitally important, but for this article, we are going to focus more on the “Target Audience” and “Communication Preference” principles.

The biggest attractions to these communication tools seems to be:

1. Everyone else claims they’re doing it, and
2. It’s free…we’ll, kinda

There are a tremendous amount of people, possibly even your target audience, using Facebook and Twitter but you must determine if they are the “right people”. So, you must ask yourself, “Is your target audience on Facebook and/or Twitter?” Both of these tools are Internet based, which means we have a tremendous amount of data to help us answer these questions. Spend some time defining your target audience, and performing research to determine if they are in fact using these either or both of these tools.

This is where the free part comes into question. The tools are free, but there is time required to determine if they are appropriate communication tactics for your business and what your plan is for reaching your target audience. Furthermore, there is time associated with setting up these tools, and actively using them to communicate and participate in conversations with your target audience.

That’s right, having conversations! An important aspect to both Facebook and Twitter is interaction. These are not your traditional one-way broadcast tools like TV or Radio. Those that are your Friends/Fans on Facebook and Followers on Twitter expect to have a virtual conversation with you. If you approach these relationships by just broadcasting information and not interacting, you’ll soon find that no-one is listening!

There is time associated with defining and building the measurement system to evaluate the effectiveness of your social media marketing plan and if you are receiving an appropriate return on investment. There may not be a cost to purchase these tools, but they certainly require planning and strategy along with time to use them properly – and time is money!

So MAYBE! Make sure you address the three principles of marketing and if you conclude that social media marketing is right for your business, spend the time to plan your work and work your plan.


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I think of myself as pretty “handy”. I enjoy doing small projects around the house but certainly know I have limitations when it comes to building things (especially when electricity is involved!) I’m lucky to have most the tools and actually know how to use the majority of them. I have multiple hammers and have driven a few nails over my 32 years.

Most of us have at least some building tools – like a hammer, and even though most would say they can use a hammer to hang a picture, or build a flower box, few would say they could use it to build something significant like a home. That requires a set of skills and experience many of us don’t have. I learned the lesson early in life when I misused a hammer and almost knocked myself unconscious… and I still have the scar to prove it!

Email Marketing is no different – maybe no physical scaring, but if you try to do it yourself you could be putting your business in harm’s way. Email marketing uses a tool, email – which is probably even more prevalent than a hammer these days. To do email marketing right, it requires a set of skills and experience many business owners don’t have – much like building a home. Just because I know how to use a hammer, I certainly wouldn’t try to use one to build my own home. In the nearly 10 years that I’ve been a marketer, I’ve found that Email Marketing is one of the most difficult aspects of marketing. It is extremely challenging – even for professionals that do it on a regular basis.

So why do so many people believe they can do email marketing without the necessary skills and experience? Based on the numerous conversations with clients that have tried it themselves, we believe it is due to a lack of understanding. There are simply hundreds of potential points of failure with email marketing. To be blunt, even though you know how to use email, or even one of the many “self service” systems available now for email marketing, you should not do your own Email Marketing unless you are an experienced professional. Your business may not be able to recover from the proverbial scar that could be made if you make even one mistake.

If not done properly, one simple email could cost you thousands of dollars in fines, damage your brand, harm your client relations or even lose customers.

Below are just a few of the finer details that many are not aware of with Email Marketing:

Email Permission:
Did you realize that if you send a mass email to someone without their permission, you are actually breaking the law? By far the most important aspect of email marketing is the concept of permission. Businesses sending emails without the recipients “permission” is SPAM and could be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, which means the sender could be subject to penalties of up to $16,000 for each separate incident. Just because you’ve exchanged business cards at a networking event, doesn’t give you the legal permission you need to add that person to your email list.

And even if you have a legitimate email list, there are a number of technical qualifications you must adhere to – like including your snail mail address in the email.

Email Design:
The design of your email plays a huge role if your email is received, opened and read. Did you know that there are over 18 mainstream email systems used and that the emails you send look differently in each of these various programs? Have you ever seen your email marketing in AOL? Yahoo? Gmail? Outlook 2003? Outlook 2007? Mozilla? If I am speaking a foreign language to you right now, then you may be sending poor-looking emails to your clients and prospects without knowing it – even if you are using a reputable “self-service” system.

Email Spam filters:
Are you aware that there are 11 mainstream Spam filters and that each have different definitions as to what looks like Spam? Do you know that the wrong characters and words in your email can affect whether your recipients even receive your email? If not, you are probably wasting money on emails that aren’t even being delivered to your recipient’s inbox – let alone being read. These are things that “self-service” systems typically don’t help with either.

Email Content
Once the email is delivered in the recipient’s inbox, the next most important piece is the subject line. Do you know what makes compelling subject lines – causing people to want to open and read your email? Are you aware that if your subject line is too short or too long, fewer people will open the email? Do you understand how images work in emails between email programs? Do you know when to use images and when not to use them? Were you aware that approx 30% of email recipients don’t even know that images are disabled in their email system – meaning they are not seeing your images?

Email Measurement
Do you understand keywords, hyperlinks, landing pages and other aspects in your content that make email marketing effective and measureable? Do you know the best days and times to send your emails to your target audience to assure the greatest open rate? Do you know what audience segmentation is and how it can add to your email effectiveness?

Much like building a home, email marketing requires the necessary skills and experience. If you think email marketing can be and effective marketing tool for your business, you need to leverage a professional who has spent the time learning the “ins and outs” of this marketing tactic.

Three Hats Marketing has helped many businesses effectively use email marketing – and we can help yours as well.

We’ve got the scars to prove it!

Correct or not, it has presented an anology that has been used in business over the years and I would like to make the point we see many businesses doing this with their marketing as well.

Here is a common conversation we have with business owners.

3hats: “So tell us what marketing activities you have done in the last 6 months.”
owner: “Well I had an ad in the local coupon pack.”
3hats: “Did it work for you? What was your goal for doing it?”
owner: “I don’t know….”
3hats: “What was your reason for doing it?”
owner: “I don’t know… I guess because my competitor did it.”

Often times business owners take actions with their marketing efforts solely based upon the actions of their competitors. Why is that wrong? Well, even though you are competitors and may offer customers similar products or services, there are many more things different between your businesses. Potentially your budget, your ideal customer, your geographic target area, your capacity, your services, your profit margin on certain products or services, your business model, your business goals, your vision, etc.

Instead, we advise companies to stick to the following for their marketing activities:

Follow your goals

Understand what you are trying to accomplish with your business (as well as your marketing) and stick to it! Set goals for yourself and determine the best ways to accomplish them in the most cost effective way. Know what your competitors are doing, but try not to let that influence the decisions you are making for your business – because as we pointed out above, you may not understand why they are making those decisions and as a result, may not be the right ones for you.

Follow your audience

Make sure you know where your ideal client is looking for the type of products and services you offer, and how they like to be communicated to – then go it ‘em. Be creative in how you reach out to them. Understand under what circumstance do they have a pain you can fix with your product or service and reach them then.

Follow your plan

Almost weekly businesses are presented with new marketing opportunities and new ways to spend their money. Develop a plan and weigh each marketing tactic against that plan. Is this the best way to spend these dollars? Do I know what I can expect as a result of spending this money? Does what I expect align with my business goals?

A little bit of thought and a little bit of discipline with your marketing can go a long way to help you reach your business goals. If you would like to discuss marketing planning or evaluate some of your marketing tactics further, please give us a call.

What is a brand?

Most people I talk with immediately assume that a companies logo is their brand. I think that is a common misinterpretation of the word. I believe that a logo is simply a graphical representation of how the company sees the brand. Brands are not concrete like a logo – brands are feelings and emotions. I have heard it said that “a brand is the emotional and psychological relationship you have with those you come in contact with.”

I would also argue that what your company does and look like can affect your brand. I find myself drawing conclusions about companies in less than 3 seconds based upon an emotional or psychological connection I have with them – through signage, their website, an interaction with an employee, a commercial, their logo and more.

So can a “person” have a brand?

Brands are typically reserved for discussions around companies, but what about people? Can people have a brand?

Well let me answer that question with two words: Tiger Woods. When you read his name, did it immediately draw an emotion or psychological reaction for you? I’m sure it did, and certainly his sponsors realize that it doesn’t evoke the same “emotional and psychological response” it did 6 months ago due to his recent issues in the news. Companies do realize that people have brands and they sometimes invest millions in them.

What are the benefits of a brand?

Branding offers you and your business both internal and external benefits. Externally, you create an identity that can connect with people – basically you form emotional relationships with those you come in contact with. Why is that important? Because in large part, a person’s buying decisions are based upon their emotional connection with that product or service.

Internally, your brand can serve as your conscience, or internal compass. By understanding your brand, it can help you make business decisions both operationally and in a marketing capacity.

So what about that homeless person?

OK, so we now have discussed that a brand is an emotional and/or psychological relationship you have with those you come in contact with and that “people” can have a brand. But is a personal brand only reserved for that “high ticket” celebrity or can even a homeless person have a brand?

Well, let me ask you this question: when you drive to the bottom of the ramp and see a person standing there asking for money, do you draw an emotional or psychological feeling about them? I do. Maybe it is just my marketing background that causes this (I doubt it), but I draw conclusions about their situation based upon how they are dressed, what their sign says, what they have with them, and the look on their face. All in about 3 seconds.

People make this “3 second” determination about celebrities, about homeless people, and everyone else including you and the company you work for. The million dollar question is “are you and your company paying attention to this fact?” Does your logo evoke the “feelings” about your brand you want? Does your website? Does your employees?

These pieces are a huge part of successful marketing. If you or your company need help in sorting through these issues – give us a ring. We promise to give you more than 3 seconds consideration.