Grow Your Business... 3 Ways!

There are only 3 ways to boost your business: 1) Find new customers, 2) Get your existing customers to buy more often, and 3) Get customers to spend more each visit. How many of these do you do?

Make sure you have a program in place that gives your existing customers reasons to come in more often. Coupons, specials, and events are all proven performers. And don't forget to constantly market to your customers when you're interacting with them! Try to "up-sell" them to a larger purchase... or remind them of additional items they’ll benefit from. When you have all 3 legs of your marketing plan in place, your results can be 3x as effective!

Festivals for Fun and Profit!

Does your community, or one nearby, sponsor a local festival where you could set up a booth to represent your business? Especially appropriate for restaurants, you could either sell your products or hand out coupons to convert “strangers” into loyal customers. Many businesses attract dozens of new customers participating in these community events. They’re fun, inexpensive, and if they attract a good crowd (and you offer an excellent product or valuable coupon), can be a great source of new buyers.

Tell them to Act!

It's often not enough to simply present your product and price and hope people flock to you. Advertising is salesmanship in print. A good salesperson always asks for the sale... and so should your ads. Say, "Stop by"... "Call us"... "Phone in your order"... "Hurry... Limited-time special"... "Buy now"... "Call to schedule your appointment today" ... and other similar phrases. Remember, advertising is not just information... it’s also psychology... persuasion ... motivation... and influence. Don’t assume that people know what to do... tell them!

Capitalize on a poor economy

You should be promoting more aggressively than ever. During the Great Depression, for example, companies that reduced or eliminated advertising suffered greatly, while those that kept promoting enjoyed more businesses in the short term... and grew the fastest when the economy revived. Experts say direct mail and email are your best bets. There’s no waste and results can be measured. With newspaper and radio advertising, for example, there’s lots of waste. Your message often gets buried... or flat-out ignored. That's risky in this economy. So GET AGGRESSIVE NOW. While your competition is foolishly "lying low," you'll be capitalizing on their inactivity and scooping up the prospects that they’re not reaching.

Direct Marketing Truths

A well-respected advertising guru stated these two direct marketing truths:

1) “Direct marketing is the only medium that allows you to use hard numbers to plan, engineer, and measure programs” and

2) “Most people still don’t use the numbers to plan, engineer and measure programs.”

Hopefully you understand Truth #1 and don’t practice Truth #2. For example, make sure you save the gift certificates your customers redeem and then calculate the response rate you're getting. More importantly, always track how many sales and customers you make so you know the exact ROI you're getting. Something that’s virtually impossible with any other form of marketing!

Great Service Is Great Advertising

Great service is the best advertising you'll ever create. Most businesspeople slave over just the right combination of words and images to create super ads, but fail to provide super service once the customer steps through their doors! If you get new customers through your doors, but treat these fresh prospects like nobody special your cutting your own throat! For just one week, challenge your staff to provide customer service that's 10x as good as usual... and watch what happens!

Keep it Simple

The human mind is a sucker for simplicity, and that craving is never more apparent than when we sift through our email inbox, say agency execs Gary Levitt and Rob Lubow. "The eye embraces that which can be easily digested. Less is more," they wrote in a recent MarketingProfs article.

In an attempt to break from the herd, many email marketers ironically adopt a herd mentality of more clutter, more content, more images, more, more, more. This misguided quest of improved visibility merely leads to increased invisibility.

Unless you're emailing something of personal relevance or urgency to your client, you have only three and a half seconds to be interesting. Fail, and you're deleted. Simple is almost always best. Once simplicity is embraced, you're free to converse plainly with your clients—easily and often.

Before your next email promotion

Before your next email promotion, ask yourself three questions:

1. What is your favorite kind of email? If you're like most people, your favorite emails are those few lines of text sent by a friend or someone you were hoping to hear from—text solely aimed at you. If that person sent that mail in a decked-out styles-galore version, it would take longer to read, and you'd think that person needed to get out more.

2. How much time should you spend reading an email that was sent to you along with a zillion other people? Probably none. The mass marketer's not your friend. You can tell by the polished visuals that he's working overtime to manipulate you. In this lies a vital tip for marketers: Be a friend. Keep it simple.

3. What else is happening on the page when you view a typical email? What else is happening on the page? What isn't happening! Gmail is framed by content-sensitive ads, as are other web-based services like AOL, Hotmail, etc. There's only one way to stand out from all those ads: look less like an ad. Think simple.

Simple is almost always best. Embrace it, and your free to communicate easily and often with your clients.

Show What You're Selling!

If what you're selling is worth buying… it's also worth showing! Don't just talk about your food... show it! Don't just say how much your brake service is... show a mechanic doing the work! Don't just run a coupon for $20 off a massage... show someone enjoying the service in a beautiful, relaxing setting. Remember: always put images into people's heads. The easiest way to do this is with photos and illustrations!

Feature Testimonials

Most retailers overlook the most powerful feature of any ad: testimonials from happy customers! Do you use them? You should! They're powerful and believable. With your customers' approval, be sure to also include their full name and city, not just their initials. Offer them a freebie for their photo and your ad will have far greater impact.

Advertise for Everybody?

—Error! If readers can insert your competitor's name in place of yours and the ad still makes sense, then you are a generic advertiser! Your ad should make claims that your competition can't! What makes your products and services better? Find out now... and start bragging and selling more!

Be a Columnist

Many local newspapers would be happy to feature you as a columnist if you can provide interesting information to its readers. Simply ask! Auto shop owners can write a short Q&A column that helps readers with auto-related issues. Restaurants can write food-related articles. You make up the questions and answer them like the expert you are! "Car Corner" or "Food Facts!" or some other catchy title could become a popular feature. Best of all, it gets tremendous publicity for your shop... establishes you as a recognized expert... provides excellent clippings to hang on your waiting room wall... and it's 100% free!

Energize Your Customers Online

Competing for your customers' attention online can be tough, especially when you're up against dancing banner ads and all of the daily emails customers get. Here are three tips to cut through the clutter and capture your customers' attention in this crowded space:

1. Create a sense of urgency. Send out a coupon that needs to be used by midnight or offer a free product to the first 50 respondents.

2. Energize your customers to tell their friends. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful and valuable, especially on the internet. Give your customers something exciting that they'll want to share with their friends.

3. Make it fun. Whatever the interaction is, keep it simple, fresh, and engaging.

The New Senior

Seniors are the fastest growing group of Internet users, and use it they do. Some 65% of those between 50 and 64 use the Internet for communicating, for organizing groups of people with like interests, for shopping, and for connecting with family and friends.

Today's seniors are very active and involved in their destiny. They are also very consumer savvy. If you offer specials or discounts, make sure that the promise is delivered and it exceeds expectations.

Companies that are not focusing on the new senior market are handing over a huge portion of business to those who are catering to this very large and diverse consumer group. While it is inappropriate to lump this multi-faceted group of the new senior into one large category, it is just as inappropriate to ignore the impact they have had and will have on the economy and the future of our country.

How are you reaching this very important new senior consumer?

Do your customers remember you?

This is great advice... it was just in Bill Marvin's Electronic House Call #620.

"The big rule of thumb in the direct marketing business is that a list loses 10% of its value every month that passes without some sort of contact. This means that ten months of neglect and your list isn't worth a dime! How's that for perishable?"

Email your customers every two to three weeks. Not too little. Not too much. With pertinent content, it's just about right.