Small Business Marketing Tips, what about asking me to return?

What do these three quotes have in common?

1. “But Paul, I don’t want to bother them.”
2. “But Paul, I don’t have the time.”
3. “But Paul, it’s too expensive and they buy from me anyway.”

They are the reasons business owners and sales people give to me for not keeping in touch with their clients.

It’s been proven time and again that the easiest client to sell a product or service to is an existing or past client. It’s also proven that they are the best source of referrals and testimonials. That said, what are you doing to keep in touch with your clients?

Do you:

1. Capture all client names?
2. Follow up with clients to thank them for their business?
3. Keep in touch with phone calls, emails, newsletters, greeting cards?
4. Ask for referrals and have a special offer, discount or gift for anybody who gives you one?
5. Ask for testimonials and get permission to use them in your marketing materials?

If not, start now. If you don’t know how, get in touch with me because I already have these systems designed and can have you trained and using them in a matter of days.

Waiting and delaying is no different than holding the door open for your competition to come in and get the business away from you. One way or another, the level of success in your business can hinge on the outcome.

Cheap Marketing in a Down Economy

I’m constantly amazed at the number of business owners who tell me they don’t contact their clients because they don’t want to bother them or because, “Nobody wants to hear about _____ (fill in the blank product or service).

If they never wanted to hear anything about it, why did they buy it in the first place? Why do people assume nobody wants to hear from them? I think a lot of it is psychological and related to insecurities and fears they may have related to having to “sell themselves.”

Do you have the “Nobody wants to hear from me syndrome?” If so, you need to get over it. Unless you are a real pain in the neck and are bothersome, the issue is not in your client’s mind, it’s in yours.

Just think about it for a minute… Say you buy something or use a companies services and the owner or sales rep calls you and asks if you were satisfied with the purchase. Do you suddenly freak out and scream, “Why are you bothering me?”

Probably not. You tell them what you thought and thank them for calling.

Now imagine this scenario… This same business sends you a card every few months to thank you for your business and asks you to come back. Once again, do you freak out and scream, “THIS DUDE HAS A LOT OF NERVE FOR BOTHERING ME!!!”

Probably not. You look at the card and offer and either keep it or throw it away. One thing that’s likely is that you have a positive attitude about them.

Your clients are the same. If you do a good job and ask them to do business again, it’s likely they’ll be back. If you ignore them because you are afraid of bothering them, there’s a good chance you won’t have the chance to bother them again.

Something to think about!

Top Small Business Marketing Tips – Spend Less to Make More

With the economy slowing, business owners are contacting me more frequently asking what they can do that is is new or different to spur on their business and turn things around.

“Paul, do you think I need a web site?”

“Should I advertise on TV or the radio?”

“Should I join BNI or another networking group?”

“I need something really kick-ass to get people buying more.”

These are all things that I am hearing.  Whether the economy is slow or not doesn’t impact my response.  It still comes down to the basics:

1. Set yourself apart from your competition and give your prospects and clients a good reason to buy from you now with a powerful Unique Selling Proposition. Here’s mine – I’ll increase your sales 20% or more in as little as 90 days, guaranteed.  That’s unique and it gets me business.
2. Be sure that every staff member who is in contact with a client understands basic selling skills. Each of them must kn0w and be given incentive to cross-sell and up-sell.  Focus on increasing the value of the transaction.  I’ve increased client sales by over 10% in 30 days just teaching this one!
3. Get a database program and develop a relationship with your clients.  Communicate with them monthly and ask them to buy from you again.  Ask for testimonials and referrals. Have a strategy to work the referrals.  Add a newsletter and start sending birthday cards and other greeting cards.  This can easily result in another 10% increase in your sales.
4. Get a few joint venture partners with whom you can share lists and market to each others clients.  You endorse them and they endorse you.  It’s that simple. Last year, I made over $24,000 in sales from joint venture referrals.  My total cost was less than $400.  If you aren’t doing joint ventures, you ar leaving a fortune on the table.

There you go.  4 strategies that can easily increase your sales by 25% or more this year. The key is to act now.  It’s smart marketing that can make you an absolute fortune and will save you an absolute fortune in advertising fees.

The reason I guarantee my work is that I implement the above 4 marketing pillars in my clients.  If you are wondering if I can do the same in your business, be sure to drop me an email or give me a call at 513-829-6368.

Small business marketing tips to profit in ANY economy

Quote from Mr. or Mrs. faltering business owner, “Oh no, the economy is “bad” I better not buy anything. I better cut back on my marketing. I think I should save my money just in case the “bad” economy cuts into my cash flow.”

Does this sound familiar? Let’s move forward 6 months and ask Mr. or Mrs. faltering (soon to be failing) business owner, “How’s business?” They will reply “Oh this economy is killing me. Sales are way down. I’m not getting any new customers and I hear from fewer old customers than I used to.”

I say, “Hmmm, Mr. Owner lets look at a few other factors. Last year in the first quarter, you spent $10,000 on marketing and this year, $1,500. Last year, you sent your newsletter out monthly and this year, you cut it from the budget. Last year, you conducted sales training every week but this year, you decided the trainer was too expensive. Last year, you sent every client a thank you card for visiting the store and also sent out birthday cards. This year, you cut it from the budget.

Now, let’s look for the underlying cause of your sales shortfall. Because the media telling you the economy is bad and people are not buying, you slashed your budget on strategies that brought you clients, sales and profits.”

Hey, I’m a realist! I’m aware that the economy is faltering but the worst thing you can do is to stop marketing. If you are going to cut marketing, cut the marketing that is not delivering a measurable, positive return. If you don’t know your return, you need to calculate it. Drop useless image advertising that doesn’t deliver clients or prospects.

Learn and implement direct response marketing. That’s the marketing you see that has an offer and tells the prospect to act. If it’s good, you get a response and make money on it. If it’s not good, nothing happens and you lose money on it. Set a system to measure and track results. Determine your ROI and remember client lifetime value. If you break-even or lose on the initial transaction but know the client will be highly profitable over the next year, that’s good!

The lesson here is simple. A down economy is a bad reason to cut good marketing and a good reason to cut bad marketing!

Small Business Marketing tips to Profit in a Recession – Advice from a Friend at the Small Business Development Center

I’m going a bit off topic with this post. My past few were about the importance of leverage and systems. I’ll be going back to the topic but I had a conversation with a Joint Venture partner today that I wanted to pass along.

He and I are both small business marketing and growth experts and are giving a Growth Strategy Seminar for our local Small Business Development Center (SBDC) clients. The SBDC is an organization funded by the Small Business Administration (SBA) that has a mission to help Americans start, build and grow businesses.

The Director of the local SBDC is a friend of mine who used to be president of a fairly large, worldwide insurance company. He’s working with the SBDC now because of his passion to help the small business owner succeed and prosper. In preparation for the seminar, we asked him what are the most important messages we need to communicate to seminar attendees (particularly in light of the tough economy).

Here is what he said is the most important marketing messages that business owners need to know:

1. Keep on marketing. This is no time to cut back on the life-blood of attracting and keeping clients.
2. Know your customers, their needs and why they are buying your product or service.
3. Have all clients and prospects in a database so you can regularly communicate with them and give them reasons to purchase from you. Use your database to build demographic and psychographic profiles of your target market.
4. Market to your target market. It is a huge waste of resources to be marketing to people who are not prospects. Unfortunately, most businesses spend the majority of marketing resources on people who will never buy from them.
5. Give clients a consistent experience. Remember that your product and service are elements of your marketing mix. For years, the buzz word has been “exceed expectations,” which is great but the first part is to provide a consistent client experience. Most people expect, and are satisfied if you do this.
6. Track and measure what marketing is working. If you don’t track, you don’t know if it is working. If it isn’t working, you are wasting resources. If it is working, you want to build on and improve it to maximize results.
7. Don’t try to find the magic bullet. Small improvements in different areas can yield exponential increases in sales.

There you have it. If you find yourself swimming against the tide or so overwhelmed with what you should be doing next, you want to give me a call. If you want to see how you can achieve dramatic increases in sales (or to just stop the bleeding!), you want to give me a call. I look forward to hearing from you.

Small Business Marketing to Up Your Profits in a Down Economy with Marketing Systems

One of the single biggest marketing problems I see with small businesses is the lack of a marketing system. Every thing they do is tactical and is rarely planned, budgeted, tracked or measured.

A media rep comes into the business and says, “You need my product to get clients.” TV, radio, newspaper, Yellow Pages or an agency. The thing is that they all have compelling stories and loads of statistics on impressions, market awareness, branding and loads of other marketing terms. Which do you choose?

Most businesses are in a “trial” mode and will keep trying whatever is sold to them, hoping that one of them will be the magis bullet. Worse yet, they continue running an ad without knowing if it is generating the results they need. They think, “Hey, I’m getting my name out there.” When somebody needs me, they’ll give me a ring.

As the spider webs gather on the phone, the owner gets frustrated, the ad rep tells them they need to run a larger ad or run it longer. That’s a bunch of garbage. If you had an investment that was tanking and your broker told you to wait or invest more, you’d find a new broker.

Before you advertise, you need to think of how you are going to systematize your marketing. The advantage of the marketing system is that you can actually plan on results. Wouldn’t it be nice to know if you implement a certain element of your marketing system, you will most likely make a fairly predictable amount of profit?

Companies all over the world are doing it everyday. The owner knows what business is coming in and where it is coming from. Once I set up a system in a business and test my materials, the owner knows that if they send out a certain mailing to their clients, they will make a predictable return. If they run a particular ad with a particular offer, they know it will make them a predictable amount of money.

You can do the same in your business. In my previous posts, I talked about leverage. Now we are into the systems and the types of systems that you can build in your business. I make money and get referrals through the success of my clients, not due to the size or frequency of their media buys. Stick with me and I you will learn the basic elements of implementing my powerful and guaranteed Hidden Asset Marketing System in your business.

Up your profits in a down economy – How to open a cash windfall

Have you ever “mined” your client list? If you have a list of satisfied clients, an email list, a list of vendors and a personal network, you are probably sitting on a gold mine from which you can “extract” a cash windfall.

In my previous couple of posts, I referenced the importance of regularly “touching” your clients. If you’ve been doing that (or even if you haven’t done so regularly), you’ve been building and cultivating a relationship with them since they have been buying from you. You can leverage this relationship for immediate cash.

How do you go about doing this? Sit down in front of your computer and write a letter to your best clients and tell them about your situation, that you need to raise cash to help build and improve your company. In return for their support, you will give them special treatment, special discounts and bonuses just for them.

This is a very powerful technique that leverages one of your most important Hidden Marketing Assets, the relationships you have cultivated over the years. Will it work for you? Only testing will tell but the odds are in your favor because your clients trust you and people enjoy helping people they trust and have given them good service

Now, if you really want to leverage this concept, start thinking about whom you can create a joint venture with and make a special offer to their client and prospect list. I’m not talking about the BS internet joint ventures where a guru gets other gurus to promote their latest and greatest products, without seeing it or having any idea of what it does. You know what I mean. You get the same email from twenty people saying their “good friend” has the most amazing money making system in the world

I’m talking about a genuine relationship with a business owner you know and trust. Somebody who has the same beliefs about quality and service that you do. I’ll go more into structuring joint ventures in another post but start thinking of how you can approach clients and prospects with a very special offer.

Up your profits in a down economy – Increase client value

In this order, these are the easiest people to sell to:

1. An existing client
2. A past client
3. A referred or endorsed client
4. A cold prospect

This list is an established fact. Even knowing this, where do the vast majority of companies spend the majority of their marketing dollars and effort? On number 4, the cold prospect. Nearly every client or prospect I speak with spends little, if any of their marketing dollars strengthening their relationship with their existing clients.

The thing is, most of them realize they should be keeping in touch with customers but still do nothing about it. Very few companies even have any process or method of getting basic contact information like name, address, phone number, email address or a list of the products purchased by their clients. According to a study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, for every month that passes without your contacting your clients, there’s a 10% reduction in loyalty to your business.

For about $10 to $15 per client per year, nearly any business can build a customer contact program that will dramatically increase their sales and profits at a fraction of cost of obtaining a new client. Ideally, you will have 12 to 14 contacts per year. Rather than looking at this as an expense, look upon it as an investment in the lifetime value of your clients.

The key to success in your client contact strategy is to include an offer, a coupon, a discount or other reason for your clients to contact you and purchase additional products or services from you.

In my next post, I’ll list some of my favorite client contact strategies and tactics you can use to increase your profits.

Till then…
Dedicated to multiplying your sales!

Up your profits in a down economy – Post 3

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of improving your selling skills. Without a doubt, it is the simplest way to dramatically increase the value of each sale.

Even if you don’t take the time to go through a professional selling course or book, there are some things you can do to increase the average transaction value.

• Start by identifying your most popular selling products or those that are easiest to sell.
• Select one or more products or services that compliment these products.
• Create “bundles” with special package pricing that applies if the client buys the extra product at the same time as the initial purchase.
• Create a sales script and rehearse the words that you will use to up-sell to a client. Say you own a pet store and a client just bought a training leash for their new dog. You say, “If you are using this for training, I recommend you also get the bookGood Owners, Great Dogs. I think it’s one of the best training books ever written. If you get the book today with the training leash, I can discount the book 10%.”
• It’s that easy. The key is to know what extra value you can bring to your client, believe in the value of what you are offering and ask the client to buy it.

The key is to get used to asking. Will it work every time? No, but it will only work if you ask! Whatever you sell, it is very likely you can add value with additional products. Since you’ve already spent the money to get the client in front of you, you owe it to yourself and the client to insure they have everything they need!

Up your profits in a down economy – Increase profit per transaction

One of the simplest tactics for increasing your profits is to pay attention to the client who is directly in front of you. It doesn’t matter if you have the person on the phone, in your store, in your restaurant or on your web page, it is fairly simple to get the client to buy more.

Most businesses leave an absolute fortune on the table because they simply ring up the sale that is in front of them and make absolutely no effort to add to the transaction. To put things in perspective, think of the additional profits McDonald’s makes every year because they ask the question, “Would you like fries and a Coke with your meal?” Most of us could easily retire if we had that money!

The easiest person to sell to is an existing client. What you need to do is to train yourself and your staff to ask/recommend to the client to buy more. Too many people feel they are being pushy but that’s not the case. Imagine yourself in a clothing store. If a salesperson suggests a nice shirt to go along with the slacks you just bought, do you feel they are being pushy? What about the waitress who encourages you to get dessert? Do you think she is being pushy? I doubt it!

The bottom line is that it comes down to selling skills and having an attitude of serving your customer. If you have a good product or service, offering it to your client is a way to serve them.

Have you ever read any sales books or bought any sales programs? It is one of the strongest recommendations I have for you. It’s made a major difference in my income over the years and can do the same for you. Spend some time in the bookstore, online or in the library. Buy several programs and develop your own style around the proven strategies and tactics of the sales masters.

Click on the resources tab at the top of the blog and see who I recommend. Become a student of sales and apply what you learn.

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