My new book, Building Billion Dollar Brands, was released this week on Amazon. I was pleasantly surprised at the great reception it received. On my birthday recently it was in the Top 5 books for the Direct Marketing category ahead of Seth Godin’s book, which was a nice present!

In the book I talk about the 5 keys to building a great brand. These are certain foundational elements that every new product or company should have if they want to grow and be a long term success. We use many case studies from over 30 years of marketing products direct to the consumer and these 5 keys kept repeating even though marketing channels have drastically changed over the years. Even though we talk about building billion dollar brands, this book is mostly aimed at smaller companies, inventors and entrepreneurs.

This is my second book and one thing I’ve found is that you cannot always include all the content that you may want. In this current book I was originally going to have a chapter entitled, 11 Timeless Marketing Tips to Grow your Business. The book was running long, so I couldn’t include it.  Since it didn’t make it into the book I thought I would share it here.

But why 11 tips?

If you’ve ever wondered where people come up with the titles to their lists, like: The Top 10 restaurants, The 3 best Places to Visit, The 5 Things You Need to do Every Morning, ect.

Here’s where mine came from. I mentioned earlier it was my birthday recently — I was born on 11/29/56. 11/ 2+9=11/ 5+6=11 11 11 1. I always felt this was a great combination of numbers, and so I started using it in my marketing. At one of my speaking engagements, where I was sharing this information someone once asked me, “Why 11 Tips? Why not 7 or 8 or 15?” and the simple answer is 11 is a lucky number for me.  So now you know the background, here is my list.

Tip #1 – ALWAYS UPSELL

Whenever a customer or client is buying your product or service offer them more of your products or services. You will never find a more qualified buyer than the one who is purchasing from you now. I have found that at least 20 to 30 percent of the people will automatically say yes to your next offer if you simply ask.

Tip #2 – LEARN FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPERIENCE

Read books, go to seminars and webinars, join mastermind groups. People have already had an encounter in your business growth — why repeat them and learn the hard and expensive way when that can be avoided?

TIP #3 – CREATE A BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY

When launching a new product or service you will have a much better chance of success if you think what part of the market you can penetrate that is not already crowded with the competition. A good example of this was GoPro. There were many huge camera companies in the market place, but none of them we building or selling action cameras. GoPro found this category and built a billion dollar business in only 8 years! Look for the “Blue Ocean.”

Tip #4 – FEATURES TELL – BENEFITS SELL

In your advertising don’t talk about product features, but talk about what problem your product can solve for the consumer. When we built the Juiceman brand we beat out large companies like Braun and Krups, because we focused on the benefits of the juice, more energy, lower cholesterol, anti-aging, ect. and not the features such as a more powerful motor.

Tip #5 – EDUCATE THE CONSUMER

Sell through education. Deliver relevant content to your people and they will make the decision to buy without having to be sold. An example is with the Sonicare toothbrush. In order to understand how different this new sonic technology was they first had to understand gum disease and it’s causes, then they would value the fact that sonic technology allowed them to “clean beyond the bristles” and each of the nooks and crannies between teeth where gum disease starts.

Tip #6 – ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY

If people believe what you are saying they will buy your products and services. There are many ways to establish credibility. Use PR to get people to write about you. If someone hears it from a credible source it must be true. We were having trouble selling juicers when we first started, and so we hired a PR firm who got us a story in the Washington Post. Sales took off after that. The NY Times wrote a story about the George Foreman Grill, and then sales skyrocketed. We used these articles in our future marketing.

Tip #7 – USE KEY OPINION LEADERS & INFLUENCERS

With Sonicare we used top dentists and periodontists as spokespeople. GoPro had extreme athletes, top snowboarders and surfers, using their cameras to spread the word.

Both Sonicare and Clarisonic were on Oprah and benefited from the “Oprah Effect.”

I’m on the board of advisors of a fast growing supplement company called Natural Stacks, they launched their rapidly growing business by having both Tim Ferris and Dave Asprey recommend the products to their following.

Tip #8 – KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER

You need to talk to your customers to understand what they like about you, your company and your products. There is no other information that is as valuable as this. One of the first things I do when working with a new business is to set up day to interview 10-15 people who have purchased products from the company. These people will tell me everything I need to know about what they like about the products and what they don’t. We can fix the things they do not like making the product better and use the things they do like to help craft the advertising message moving forward. When we first launched the George Foreman Grill it didn’t sell well. We were focusing on his boxing background. By talking too early to the customer, mostly women, we found they did not like boxing. We removed this and sales took off.

Tip #9 – USE TESTIMONIALS

Testimonials are your most powerful marketing tool, start collecting them early and often and share them on your website and through social media and use them on your Amazon listings.

I’m not going to go into more detail here because I wrote two earlier blogs about the power of testimonials.  I truly believe that I can sell any product even if I have enough authentic testimonials. They will work for you too!

Tip #10 – POWERFUL BEFORE AND AFTER DEMONSTRATIONS

This tip is responsible for selling billions and billions of dollars worth of consumer products. Think of the before and after images used in weightloss, fitness, skincare, cleaning products, ect.

The simple, highly visible, demo we did of Billy Mays using OxiClean turning dirty water clean, and removing spots and stains from clothes, which were the centerpiece that drove the entire business.

Tip #11 – MAKE THE CUSTOMER THE HERO

In your marketing it is always about what you can do for the customer. Using the word YOU is the most powerful word in marketing. Think of the GoPro tag line, Be a Hero — buying their camera will make you the hero of your own action films. Now you can be like the big guys you see on TV. Always make it about the customer.

So I just shared with you my crash course in marketing that took me 30 thirty years and many millions of dollars to learn. I guarantee that if you start implementing these tips into your business you will see sales start to soar!

And just in case you missed the link to Building Billion Dollar Brands, here it is again on Amazon.