Introduction Are you too busy running your business but never have enough time to spend on the business marketing it properly? Most probably, yes. It's not your fault; it's just a fact of life running a business. However there are a few marketing fundamentals that will really help you to market your business with less effort and achieve better results, while increasing your profits in the shortest possible time! In this report I am going to share with you 7 simple strategies to really help you market your business effectively. However they are only profitable if you take action and i alsomplement at least some of them into your business ASAP. There are no affiliate links in this article. They are just there as a resource for you. Profit System (1) Sell More to Your Existing Customers Do you realize that you could be losing up to 10% of your customers for every month you don't stay in contact with them! Yes, we all need new customers and should constantly strive to build our customer bautomotive service engineers but selling to your existing customers is so much easier. They have already bought from you, so you have built a relationship with them and they know like and trust you. So how much easier do you think it would be to make a targeted offer to your existing customers, bearing in mind you know what they have bought in the past and their buying habits? There are 3 main ways to grow your profits. You will see below that 2 out of 3 of them come from your existing customers: 1) More customers 2) Existing customers buying more products 3) Existing customers buying more often However there is a very important point to remember, if your existing customers are going to buy from you on a regular basis. You must stay in contact with them on a regular basis. There a several ways to do this using social media e.g. Facebook Twitter, e-mail or hard copy newsletter or even a simple e-mail tip of the week but whatever medium you use don't over do the offers. Nothing will get prospects to unsubscribe quicker if they think they are constantly being pitched to! Always offer useful content, free giveaways or competitions interspersed with your offers. Profit System (2) Cross Selling Up Selling and Packaging Your Products Look at the most popular sellers in your business and see how many can be cross sold with other products. For example, when you buy a pair of shoes they quite often try to sell you shoe cleaner or protector as well. Offer per year if they buy two or three things together. After all you don't need to make such a high profit on the other items as you have already paid in proving to get them to come in the door to start with. Train your employees to use a script like, "Would you thinking of X product with your purchautomotive service engineers as we are currently offering a 50% discount on this item when you buy both of them together". Next you can try the upsell. This is where you offer your customer a more expensive and premium version of the product they are about to buy! Say for example you were selling flooring with different types of underlay for the carpets you sell. You could say to your customer who was about to buy the basic underlay for his new carpet "If you invest a little more you can have this better quality underlay that will make your carpet last 5 years longer and feel a lot more comfortable under your feet?" Then simply explain why buying the better quality underlay will actually save them money by making their carpet last longer! Think of McDonald's, they use both systems. They cross sell you when the assistant asks if you would like a drink or fries with your meal and then they try to upsell you by asking if you want to go large with your order for just a small amount more. The last sales technique is packaging. Bear in mind that a lot of people don't like making choices or buying decisions so packing your products solves this problem and allows you to sell more in the process. You can create a package of services just as well as creating a package of physical products. Either way you make it clear that the customer is making a substantial saving by buying the package as opposed to buying the items or services individually. It's also a good idea to create a range of packages to meet specific customer needs like basic, standard and deluxe or bronze, silver and gold. It also plays to their ego as a lot of people will you must go for the deluxe or most expensive version as they want the best and don't want to miss out. Make your top package a lot higher priced and more luxurious than normal so that even if only a few of your customers buy it you will have made a lot more profit with hardly any extra work. Make all your packages easy to buy and emphasis the savings they will make when buying your packages. Profit System (3) Focus on The Top 20% of Your Customers You may have heard of Pareto's Rule, an Italian economist, who found that 80% of the wealth in the Italian Economy was controlled by 20% of the population. He later established that this was true for most other economies as well. So how does this affect you? Simply put, you need to focus most of your energy on the 20% of customers who provide you with 80% of your business. Now I'm not saying these will be the exact percentages but you will have a relatively small percentage of loyal customers who generate most of the profit in your business. You need to identify, if you haven't already, who these customers are and create a marketing campaign to get more customers like these and to sell more to them! Take your most profitable customers and analyze their demographics and psychographics. Demographics Examples: Size of household, Annual income, Age, Gender, Geographical location Psychographics Examples: What clubs they fit in with, What their hobbies and i alsonterests are, Their values, By identifying the above points you will find out who they are and what type of person they are. In other words what makes them tick! By doing this you will find out what type of people you need to attract into your business in the future. Now look at your best customer records and find out what services and goods you ca package that they haven't already bought but would complement the products and services they have bought from you in the past. Then write a personal letter making a special introductory offer to get them into your business or to buy from you online. Start by saying that you noticed that they have been a very good customer and that you really value their business. You found something that might benefit them and since they have been such a good customer you want to make them a special offer on the product the next time they come into your business or buy online. Try to give specifics of what they bought in the past and how this new product compliments it perfectly. Emphasis the special deal you are offering them and make it time limited to encourage them to act quickly. Close by telling them this is your way of thanking them for being such a special customer. Your best customers are also likely to be the best people to refer your business to others. It's very likely that they will associate with friends who have the same interests, values and beliefs. Therefore it makes sense to encourage them to refer their friends and colleague's to your business. Send another letter to your best customers telling them that you are going to make them a special offer. If they refer someone else to your business you will give their referrals a preferred VIP discount since they came from such a highly valued source - i.e. them! People like to do this because it makes them look good in front of their friends and word of mouth proving is also very powerful. Once you get these referrals into the door there is a good chance they will buy from you now and i alson the future and we all know the life time value of a customer! Don't forget to reward your best customers as well for referring others to you. Give them a large discount on their next purchautomotive service engineers or send them a gift certificate but make it something of real value so they don't feel taken for granted. If you reward them well it will encourage them to continue referring others to you and turn them into a raving fan for your business! To put this into action, give your best customers some of your business cards with their name on the back that they can give to their friends. When their referrals come in with your business card you will know who referred them. Profit System (4) Gift Certificates Gift certificates can be used in many different ways but primarily they boil down to just two. (1) You can ask other local non competing businesses to provide you with gift certificates so you can give them as gifts to those people who refer prospects to you. This way it costs you nothing and you end up with gift certificates worth a lot of money that your referrers will be glad to receive. (2) Print gift certificates for your own business and distribute or sell them yourself or have someone do it for you. Obviously it's very important that the offer you make gives the prospect who redeems your gift certificate real monetary value and i alsos a genuine incentive to come in to try the free product or service you are offering. A percentage off won't work so well, so make it free what ever it is.How To Travel To Peru Tips?. For example: Hairdresser - free haircut, Chiropractor - 1st appointment free, Dentist - free clean and polish, Carpet cleaner - free carpet cleaned. If it's a product, offer something that has a decent retail value that you bought at minimum wholesale or cost price. I can hear the howls of decent already. "I can't afford to give away stuff for free!" But which ever way you look at it you are going to have to pay to get customers into your business somehow and this is a very cost effective way of doing it. Far better to do this than waste hundreds or even thousands on ads that don't work with no real incentive to try your business. The best businesses to approach are the ones you are knowledgeable of or have an existing business relationship with. They are knowledgeable of and trust you and are likely to see the mutual benefit of gift certificates the way you do. One of the best ways to use your own gift certificates is to send them to your inactive customers who haven't bought from you recently. By telling your past customers how much you appreciate them and treating them as friends, you will keep them loyal and encourage those customers who haven't bought from you recently back into your business. The power of thank you is very strong! How many businesses do you know that take the trouble to say thank you to their customers? By thanking your customers and i alsoncluding a gift certificate of real value you will create repeat customers who will buy from you over and over again! An important point to remember when creating any gift certificate is to make it time sensitive. Print an expiry date on it and make it clear in your letter that your time limited offer must be redeemed before the date on the gift certificate. This creates a sense of urgency to respond to your offer quickly. An easy way to get them designed and printed is to go online to VistaPrint Also, make sure that all your gift certificates are printed on heavy grade quality paper and supplied with good quality envelopes. This all adds to the perceived value of your offer. Printing them on cheap nasty paper defeats the purpose of telling them you have something of value. Here are a few other creative ways to use your own gift certificates:
Profit System (5) Segmentation This is quite basic and common sense really but how many businesses actually take the time to do it? Probably not many but the effort will be well worth it! Look again at your customer records and create a spread sheet over the last 12 months with the following headings: Name, Address, Phone, Email, Type of Buyer (Trade or Retail), Date of Orders, Product Type, Order Frequency with the last column; Average Order Value. I appreciate this takes time to do but once it's done you will be able to see at a glance who your best customers are and their buying habits. You will find that patterns will form that show certain customers buying the same type of products. This will enable you to segment your list and form sub groups of buyers that you can create highly targeted offers for. Having this information is crucial to enable you to create offers that match as closely as possible your customer's needs. This will result in a far better response rate and obviously more profit for you! When you think of it logically, it's very unlikely that one offer made to your whole list on or offline will be a perfect match for all your customers. I'll close this section by leaving you with these 3 very important questions which can have a huge positive impact on your business: (1) How much do you really know about your customers or clients? Is it possible that some assumptions you have made about your customers are incorrect? (2) Are there commonalities that are shared by many of your customers that you are unknowledgeable of of? (3) Is there information that you are knowledgeable of about your customers that you aren't using? If you don't have this information, find it and use it to benefit your business! Profit System (6) Testimonials When you look at a lot of ads on or offline you see a lot of cliché phrautomotive service engineerss like: We all know they are just hollow phrautomotive service engineerss, meaningless and can't be proved but the power of social proof (testimonials) is very powerfully because it's someone else wasteing your trumpet and not you and therefore far more believable to those that read them. But we also need to know who to approach, when to approach them and how to get them written or recorded. Who to approach Ideally approach those customers who have a good or high social standing. Yes, I know that sounds really snobbish but who do you think your prospects would find more believable a doctor, accountant, teacher, trade professional or different oneer or refuse collector. No disrespect to any job as they are all very important in our society but from a readers perspective testimonials from higher grade jobs and professions will hold more weight, that's just a simple fact. The best time to ask for a testimonial is just after you have completed a job for them or provided a product they are very pleautomotive service engineersd with or even better they have told you how ecstatic they are with your service! Your customer will be in a great mood and very pleautomotive service engineersd with the result so simply ask or thank them and say; or "Thanks, would it be alright if I wrote down your comments to show others" or "Thanks, would it be alright if I quoted you in some of our marketing materials?" Then just quickly write down what they just said and ask them to approve it. You can also initiate a testimonial when you know you have done a good job. Just say something like: "I hope you have been pleautomotive service engineersd with our service" and wait for a positive reply like; "Yes, very pleautomotive service engineersd, thank you. I'll definitely use you again!" and then follow the steps above. Just try to catch them when they're a good mood and don't make it over complicated. If you really want a specific testimonial from a certain customer that you know would be particularly effective, go the extra mile on the next job you do for them. If you do a fantastic job how can they refuse! How to record them Obviously it makes sense to put all your written testimonials in a good quality folder to show your prospects but you can also ask to record their comments with a digital phone recorder or with a service like Skype's Pamela and post the MP3 audio file on your website for your visitors to listen to. You could also transcribe the audio comments and add them to your testimonial folder. Don't forget video testimonials either. It's very easy to do now with a simple press and record pocket video camera like the Flip Use the standard Flip ultra (not the HD version) which is ideal for uploading to your website or sharing on the many video sharing sites. You only need a few seconds of video, certainly no more than 30. It makes them an ideal length to send by e-mail as well. When to approach Video is extremely powerful so don't dismiss this idea and again you can use the audio file to add to your audio testimonials and transcribe them to add to your testimonial book or folder. Now you have your testimonials in three formats and your believability starts to go through the roof! Get as many testimonials as you can as quickly as you can. Nothing is going to persuade your prospects more than having lots of testimonials, so be pro-active in asking for them. Don't forget to ask them if it's alright to include their full name.Club Penguin Cheats. If not, just include their first name. Consider sending out a survey with a service like survey monkey Ask a few key questions on how they rated your business. Then ask those that responded with a positive reply if you could use their comments as a testimonial in your marketing materials. Wording of a good testimonial Here's a bad testimonial: "You did a great job" Here's a good testimonial: "You responded to our emergency call out in less than 15 minutes and told us how to save ?40 off the bill. Thanks for your terrific service. I will definitely use you again in the future (Name, Town, County)" Pretty obvious really, bad testimonials don't really say anything and are bland with no detail. Good testimonials are detailed, specific and relay the facts. Always try to get the name and location of the customer so it's believable. One last point, if you are trying to get a testimonial from a business owner they may be too busy to write or record one for you. If this is the cautomotive service engineers, then offer to write one for them. Write 2 or 3 variations and e-mail them to the business owner and let them authorize which one they would like you to use. Profit System (7) Joint Ventures Joint Ventures can be one of the quickest ways to generate more business because you are leveraging the assets and customer list of another company. You can either be the supplier of the product or the supplier of the list but either way you need to look for complementary but non competing businesses to find a good match for both parties involved. Your conversion rate should be a lot higher than if you were marketing by yourself because your JV partner will be either recommending your product to his list or you will be recommending his product to yours. In both cautomotive service engineerss the recommendation of the product to the list is being made by the list owner. Therefore trust and rapport from the list owner has built up over the years and they are not being sold to by someone they don't know. Here are some points for consideration before you embark on any JV
(1) A strong benefit of what they are going to find out in the proposal to encourage them to read on (2) What your product or service is (3) Why you picked them as a potential partner (4) What's in it for them - how will they benefit (5) Keep it simple and don't overcomplicate it (6) Sales figures - refund & conversion rates - facts without exaggeration (7) Write the proposal in the present and future tense with the belief that itis going to happen (8) Include a P.S. at the end summarizing your strongest benefit of the proposal as a reminder. Before sending the proposal, create a clear action plan with dates of when things are going to take place. Your JV partner will want to see more than just a brief proposal if they are going to take you seriously! Do a Pre-Test If you are dealing with a big list, test your promotional copy on a few hundred subscribers first. If the conversion rate is good you can then roll out your offer to the rest of the list. Don't forget the back end Think of the front end as building the list with short term profits as a bonus but the real money is in the back end for long term growth. Bring your new customers down the sales funnel selling more expensive products, continuity programs and cross promoting other products. In time you can build a substantial long term business which started of as just a simple JV. Always follow up Always follow up with a 2nd and 3rd letter, e-mail or whatever method you use. The hard fact is a lot of customers on the list won't buy the first time they see your offer but will on the 2nd or 3rd time they see it in future msufferings. Caution Consider a non discloser agreement signed to protect your systems,Club Penguin Money Cheats. product or intellectual property. Formal legal contracts are only usually needed for larger JVs but only get legal professionals involved after you have drawn up your agreements to get them finalized. If you get legal experts in too early you could frighten off a potential JV partner and the cost would be prohibitive. Always write out exactly who is responsible for what in your joint venture partnership and make sure you both have a copy! Otherwise disagreements will arise when one of you complains that they are doing all the work. If after the responsibilities are signed and understood you still find that the other half of the partnership isn't doing what they promised, you may have to consider closing the deal and moving on. Conclusion I do hope that you have found this article helpful and you can use the above systems to benefit your businesses. Even if you use just one or two of them I know they will really help you in your marketing efforts. Wishing you every success. |
