Small Business Marketing Tips – Most Businesses are Making Money In “This Awful Economy”

I gave a marketing seminar this morning to a group of about 30 business owners this morning that was sponsored by the local Small Business Development Center.  We asked the question, “How many of your businesses are doing well?”  Two thirds of them raised their hands.

Of the hands that didn’t go up, a couple of them were just starting out so nearly everyone in attendance was doing well (or faked it to be in the crowd).  Think about it, the companies that are doing well were at a marketing seminar, learning how to do better!  I should have invited a couple of reporters but I wasn’t planning on sharing any bad news so they probably would have ignored my invite.

Bloomberg reported this morning that retail sales actually ROSE 1% last month!  I wonder if the lead-in story on the national news will cover it tonight.  I don’t watch the news so I guess I’ll miss it but I just did a quick look at abcnewscnncbsnew.coms and none of them mentioned it.

Now, I don’t doubt that a lot of industries are hurting, BIG TIME but it shows there is opportunity.  The worst thing to cut in a recession, marketing, is the first thing way too many companies cut in a recession.  Then their sales suck and they say it’s the economy.

If I were to quit marketing, my sales would suck as well. However, over the past several months, I’ve busted my butt to get new clients and it’s paying off, big time.  A recession is acutally good for my business.  Smart companies realize they need to do smart marketing so they call people like me.

That’s a good note to end this post on.  If you want to increase your sales and are ready to do what it takes, call someone like me. Actually, strike that last remark.  Don’t call someone like me, call me. 513-829-6368.

Small Business Marketing Tips for Increasing Profits in a Down Economy

When I watch TV, listen to the radio or happen to flip through a magazine, I like to pay attention to the ads to try to see if they make any sense. I’m one of the weird marketers who thinks the primary purpose of an ad is to increase sales.  If brand awarness is also heightened, that’s a plus.

I’ve had a lot of high paid marketers tell me I’m full of it and that I don’t realize the value of a brand.  To me, the value of a brand is in the sales and profits it generates, not in how many people recognize the name.  I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, which is home to the largest advertiser in the world, Procter and Gamble.

I’ve heard the CEO, A.G. Lafley speak and have read several quotes of his.  When he speaks, he talks about company profitability and sales.  He mentions brands as they contribute to profitability, not how they increase the awareness of the P&G name.  I pay a lot attention to P&G ads.  Every one of them highlights the benefits of using the brand.  Whether it’s whiter teeth, cleaner clothing or cleaner floors, the ads promote what the brand will do for the consumer.  The brand is built and strengthened and more people buy it because it works, not because they’ve heard about it!

The lesson for you, the small business owner/marketer is to realize your ads have one purpose and that is to  generate sales, not awareness.  When the creditors are at your door, you’re paying them with money, not a brand name.  Next time an agency or media rep tells you about brand-building, say “Great!  How will I track sales results from the ad?”

In a slow economy, it’s not time to cut back on marketing or advertising, it’s time to make sure you’re getting a good return on it.  Market smart.  Write good sales copy.  Make your marketing work for you.  Let your competitors build their brands. You can say hello when you are at the bank making deposits resulting from your marketing while they are making withdrawals to pay for theirs.

How to write your Unique Selling Proposition

Once you’ve completed the research on your Unique Selling Proposition, you need to craft your initial USP. Don’t try to create a slogan or be cute. Write between 60 and 100 words that capture the essence of your uniqueness.

Once you have that and believe it fits the bill, start to wordsmith it down to fewer words. Read it into a recorder and play it back to see how it sounds to you. Improve it and then set it down for a day or so and read it again. Does it sound compelling? Is it filled with benefits for the client? Will it make a prospect say, “Really, tell me more?”

This video goes more into depth about actually writing your USP and gives some great tips and pointers about creating a powerful USP for your company.

Up your profits in a down economy part 3

In a down economy or market, far too many businesses withdraw and adapt a bunker mentality. This is the absolute biggest mistake they can make. Continue with your marketing but be more demanding for accountable results. If you need to cut anything, cut overhead that is not contributing to increased sales.

I’m going to be throwing up a lot of suggestions about what you can do to increase your profits. A lot of them will cost you absolutely nothing but will require time and focus.

The first and easiest thing to do is to focus on increasing the value of every transaction. Most businesses leave a fortune on the table with each transaction because they never attempt to cross-sell or up-sell. MacDonald’s makes an absolute fortune by asking the simple question, “Would you like fries and a drink?”

The easiest person to sell to is an existing client and you can leverage this fact. If they just made a decision to buy, what additional products or services can you add to the transaction? What will add to their initial purchase? Car dealers sell maintenance agreements, restaurants add deserts, clothing stores add accessories, CPA’s can add consulting services, insurance agents can add an umbrella policy.

You must train your staff and give them the sales scripts and the words they should say. Leave nothing to chance. Get your staff to suggest products and services that go together. Create a phone follow-up program to thank the client for their purchase and offer them a special “customer-only” discount or coupon on an additional service if they buy within the next 30 days. Always have an offer and a deadline.

I’ve worked with clients and increased the average transaction by 20% and more just by teaching them to do this. I made sure it was part of their culture. I created incentives and contests for staff to insure they were on board.

This is the easiest money that is hiding in your business!!! If you do nothing else with your marketing except to focus on this strategy, you can easily increase profits by 10% or more. The great thing about it is that it costs you no extra money to make the additional sale.

Go for it!

Increase your profits in a down economy- Part 2

Where do you want to spend your marketing dollars in a “down economy?”  In my last post, I wrote about how the media plays a big role in the perception of the economy.  If you believe them, the entire world is now broke and living in boxes underneath highway overpasses.

Business owners start to believe that there are no longer clients willing to buy from them and they enter a hibernation mode, hoping they will make enough sales to survive.

Have you been to a department or grocery store lately?  If so, you may have seen what I have been seen.  People are buying things.  Have you been to a restaurant lately?  Did you notice that people were buying meals? Have you noticed a dramatic decrease in rush-hour traffic because nobody has a job any more?

Hey, I believe there are some serious problems with the economy but the fact of the matter is that people are still making and spending money. The wise business is not retreating. Instead, they’re spending marketing dollars wisely. They are throwing useless “brand/image” advertising out the door. They are demanding accountability from agencies and others selling them media.

The way I look at it, if your marketing isn’t delivering a measurable return, either get rid of it or figure out how to measure it. There are companies out there that do detailed ROI projections for capital investments but often spend the same amount of money on marketing with no strategy to measure return.

The bottom line is that this is the worst time to cut back on your marketing. Your competition is probably doing it so why not take advantage of the situation to strengthen your presence? When things turn around, there will be a lot of your competitors who may be great buyout targets.

You also need to spend some serious time strengthening your relationships with your clients. Be sure you are maximizing revenue from each transaction. Be sure your sales reps are well-trained in selling skills and product knowledge. Be sure your service staff knows how to up-sell and cross-sell.

Finally, quit listening to the media and chart your own future.

Increase your profits in a recession!

I’m going to be writing a series of posts about small business strategies to profit during a recession.

First of all, I do believe there are some real serious economic challenges, particularly for large companies or even smaller companies who may be having some challenges obtaining credit.  I also believe that there are a lot more opportunities than the media would have us all believe.

Case in point – During a recent segment on Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer was interviewing an Avon distributor.  She acted astonished that women were buying cosmetics in such a tough economy.  About half of the people I know are women and I can’t tihink of a single one who quit applying makeup every day.  The absurdity of Ms. Sawyer’s comment was unbelievable!

Head to Walgreens, Krogers, Wal-Mart, Macy’s or any other store and see if they have cordoned off the cosmetics department because the economy is bad!

One thing I really shudder at is when a business owner tells me they are cutting back on their marketing because of the economy.  If they are cutting back, then their marketing was likely ineffective image advertising, they have no mechanism for tracking results or really don’t know what to do.

Don’t cut back!  Instead, sharpen your approach.  Understand your market, the media that will reach them and the message that you are sending.  Track your results, improve what is working and toss what isn’t.  Make every dollar you invest in marketing bring you prospects or sales.

Try multiple approaches and see what works best for you.  You won’t know what will work best unless you test it.  Be bold and different from your competition.  Stand apart from the crowd and provide incredible service.  Create a loyal fan base who would never consider leaving you.  Give them a reason to buy more from you and to buy more frequently.

In future posts, I’ll be giving you strategies and tactics that will likely deliver the greatest return for your business.   If there is something that works particularly well for you, share it with me so we can help each other gropw and succeed

Dedicated to multiplying your sales!

Paul

Are you making friends on facebook?

Do your client’s miss you? You must keep in touch with them!

Is this you? Staring out the window, hoping a client will appear over the horizon with loads of cash in their hands ready to fork it over to you? Do you wonder where your clients have been? For most business owners, the answer is yes. The reason is they’ve done nothing to create a relationship, let alone nurture one.

Just think about it. How often does any business you patronize ask for your name? What is the chance for them to develop a relationship with you if they don’t even know your name?

They spend tens of thousands of dollars in advertising to get new customers. They are out in the yard digging for bones when all they need to do is wag there tails and show appreciation to the person who gave them their last one.

They are ignoring a key marketing concept, Life Time Value (LTV). The LTV looks at the value of a client over the lifetime of the business relationship. Here’s a simple formula to calculate LTV:

What if the average dog refers one other neighborhood dog per year who becomes a loyal client? Over a twelve year period, the potential value of one happy dog can exceed $25,000!!! Can you see why it makes sense to spend $20 per year to strengthen relationships with existing clients.

Keep in touch with your clients. They do want to hear from you !! Ask them to return and to buy from you again and again. It’s that simple. Get their names and develop relationships with them. You need to do more than throw them the occasional bone or table scraps.

Here are some things the pet boutique can do to cement a bond with their furry clients:

• Send a coupon for a pampered pet day.
• Send a special treat on their birthday and monthly pet care newsletter.
• Take their picture and hang it on the lobby bulletin board. Use the picture to create custom post card appointment reminders.
• Send the dog’s family birthday cards on the family birthdays..
• Hold a “Where’s Fido?” month to ask back the dogs who quit coming to see you. Put a treat in a special envelope addressed to the dog and say “I miss your wagging tail and cold nose. Please come back in to see us.”
• Hold a special human training days where the dogs’ owners can learn how to take care of them.
• Have a pet art show. Hire a caricature artist to draw caricatures of the dog and their owners. Sign them with paw prints.
• Create a pet blog where your clients can share the funny and cute things their owners did.
• If you hear a client has died, send their owner a sympathy card.
• Get a welcome board to welcome all your clients by name on the day of their session. Their owners will say “Look, Sparky. There’s your name on the board!”
• Have a pet Halloween costume contest. Charge a $10 admission fee with all proceeds going to the local animal shelter. Invite local media. Find local celebrities that love animals and ask them to be celebrity judges.
• Call to confirm appointments.

The list of possibilities is endless. Notice that the cumulative cost of my suggestions is probably less than $10 per dog per year! Now, if your pet groomer did these things, would you look elsewhere for grooming services? You’d even pay them a premium.

Not in the dog grooming business? Well, there’s good news. Humans also like to hear from you. Before you say, “It’s expensive to keep in touch with all of my clients,” be sure to calculate the LTV and the cost to acquire a client. You may think good service is sufficient to retain clients but, in today’s world, good service is the minimum to BE in business.

There are many inexpensive and simple systems to maintain client contact. Topping my list of recommendations are newsletters and greeting cards. Here is an automated greeting card system I use and recommend. Email is easy but the odds of it being delivered and read keeps decreasing and dogs have a hard time with keyboards.

Your competition is sniffing the air and putting out plenty of treats to convince your clients and prospects to switch over to them. It is up to you to build an invisible fence of loyalty around them. You can help to insure that your clients will give your competitors a “slight correction” if they try for the business!

Client loyalty is not a mystery buried in the ground with old bones. It requires quality products and service and regular communications from you to let your clients know you appreciate their business and want them to buy from you again.  If you forget this critical concept, you can plan on always sniffing around the neighborhood, forever looking for your next client.

Can You Hear Me Now?

As a hobby, I am a woodworker.  I have learned to build fine furniture, jewelry boxes and a wide variety of other wood projects. I’ve even done some custom commission work and made decent money for doing so.  Someday I’ll get some pictures of my work on my site so you can take a look at my work.

Yesterday, I was down in my shop working on a shelf for the patio and took a look around the shop and wondered which tools were the most valuable.  I have several thousand dollars worth of woodworking machinery and hand tools and I’m pretty proud of my collection.  I couldn’t decide between the top two so it ended up being a tie for first place.

What was my choice?  Was it my cabinet saw, router, planer, workbench or any of my hand tools?    My cabinet saw is definitely what I use them most and if you were to survey woodworkers about the most valuable tool, the cabinet saw would win, hands down.   But that’s not the case for me.

The two items have a combined value of $30.  One is my safety glasses and the other are my hearing protectors.  Why am I telling you this?  Because I believe the two most important selling and marketing tools are closely related to my choice of shop tools.  In sales and marketing, your eyes and ears are the most important tools.

Words only play a small part in communications

A 1972 UCLA study concluded that the words we say account for 7% of our overall communication!  The other 93% of our communication is non-verbal and consist of body language and voice quality.  Now you can see why I chose the tools that protect my eyes and ears!
Your eyes allow you to read the body language and emotions of your customer.  You can see if you are connecting with them or if you are boring them.  Are they engaged with you or just being polite?   Your ears allow you to hear voice inflection and tone and understand your prospects needs.

Understanding body language and how to use it can mean a huge difference in your sales.  Countless studies have been done on the topic and you can find great resources online and in the library.  A study I read about several years ago revealed that the salespeople who sat with their legs crossed during the sales presentation closed dramatically fewer sales than those who sat with legs apart.  I don’t recall the exact percentage but it very significant.

God gave us one mouth and two ears for a reason

Some people see it as a cliché.  Well, there’s a reason it’s a cliche – it’s true, particularly in sales. It is so we can listen twice as much as we talk.  You will only know what benefits to stress when you understand your client’s needs and you can’t identify their needs and wants if you’re doing all the talking!

Listening is an art

A key listening skill is to avoid responding until the other person is speaking.  Notice I said listening, not hearing.  Ask your client or prospect to clarify and elaborate be sure you are answering the question they asked.  Avoid interrupting, unless it enhances or clarifies the topic.

I once heard a friend in a conversation with another person and he was quite frustrated about being interrupted by the other person.  He finally said, “Our conversation will be a lot better if you wait for me to finish my sentence before you talk.  You will know when I am done talking because I will stop.”   Talk about getting to the point!
Think of how frustrating it is for you when someone interrupts you in the middle of a sentence or answers your question with an irrelevant answer.  It shows they did not hear or care about what you were saying because their thoughts were what mattered, not yours.  The same applies in sales.  The top earners are not pushy and brash, they are recognized as professionals who understand and fulfill their client’s needs.  They do so because they listen and recommend solutions that will benefit the client.

Do you remember the Dean Whitter commercial that ran several years ago?  The tagline was “We grow our business one client at a time.”  I thought it was brilliant.  It meant they listened and cared about YOU, not the next sale.  The campaign ran for quite some time so it was obviously a success. It was built around the simple precept that people appreciate someone who listens to them.

As you look to improve selling skills, remember that the things that can make the biggest difference are as simple as seeing and listening.  Now, let me ask you… Can you hear me now and what do you see?