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 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

In my last post, I introduced the concept of LEVERAGE and the impact it will have on your business when you understand and integrate the concept into EVERYTHING you do. I wrote about leveraging every contact and individual in your business and network for to maximize the benefit to them and the profits to you.

This post is about leveraging and systematizing communications. When you prepare any client or prospect communication, think beyond using it for that individual and instead create it as a template for a communication you will be using repeatedly. Whether it is a thank you note, collection letter, sales letter or proposal letter, you can use it again. Create it as a mail merge document so you can maximize efficiency.

Does your staff send out personal communications? They should be sending out the same materials so you have control of the message and content as well as to improve their efficiency. Think of it like this: Do you want an employee who is having a bad day or is planning on leaving you to be writing to your clients and prospects without your oversight?

Do you want a sales rep who should be in front of clients and prospects to be spending hours or days preparing communications and proposals? Remember that it is human nature to find activities to fill the time available and many feel as long as they are doing something, anything, they are working, irregardless if it is actually productive.

Do you have an online or offline newsletter, autoresponder, ezine, blog, Web site or participate in social marketing sites like facebook? If so, you have massive opportunities to leverage and create a system in which one communication can be used for each of the marketing tactics.

If you properly structure all of these communications, you will have the materials required to prepare special reports to use as an incentive to get clients to sign up for your newsletter. If you combine the special reports, you have the material for a book or information product!

The majority of the materials and posts you read that I write are either from a special report that I’ve already written or are being compiled for a future report and book.

Leveraging and systematizing your marketing and business are so important that I will devote a lot of posts and notes to them. After all, I need materials for my book, don’t I?

Small Business Marketing Guide to Up Your Profits in a Down Economy

Let’s continue with profit-boosting ideas that will increase your profits without exhausting your marketing budget (I’m assuming that you are budgeting for marketing and not just hoping dollars will become available). I’m going to focus on two keywords and they are two words that can dramatically change the way you look at your business – Leverage and Systematize.

Think leverage – If there is a client in your business and they are buying from you, what can you do to leverage this contact? Here are some ideas:

• Cross-sell or up-sell to increase the value of the transaction
• Get their name, address, email address and record their buying preferences so you can continue marketing to them with coupons, newsletters and other tactics that encourage additional purchases.
• Ask them for referrals (learn how to ask for referrals!)

Give them coded coupons to hand out to their friends. When they are redeemed, send the client a thank you gift.

• Ask what business they are in and see if there are products or services you offer that the business could use.
• Start a platinum membership club for your key clients. Sell memberships that entitle them to special offers and privileges.
• Find out what other businesses they frequent and ask for an introduction to the business owner to explore joint ventures and strategic alliances with them.
• Send them a thank you note for their purchase and include a coupon for a discount on their next purchase if they return within the next month.

Pretty much every item listed is leveraging a relationship with a client. Do the same with your prospects and suppliers. You want to leverage every contact to see not only what additional profit you can gain but what additional service or benefit you can bring to your clients.

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.

Unique Selling Proposition Part 3

In this video, I continue to discuss the Unique Selling Proposition and get into the details of how to use the information you’ve gathered in the previous steps and begin writing and refining your million dollar USP!

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

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