Do you find marketing your business to be one of the most challenging things to do? If so, I know how you feel. When I first started my business, I had no idea how to market my products and services. I primarily used direct mail to sell my products, but there was only one problem with my campaigns: I had a poor quality list.
If you do direct mail and don’t properly target your list, your campaign will more than likely fail. But, of course, I don’t want you to fail, and I know you don’t want you to fail. So I’m going to be giving you some tips that you can use to get more customers and have more success in your business.
The first thing that you will want to do is train your staff about good customer service. One of the first things that can turn a prospect off about your business is a rude employee. Now hopefully, you don’t have rude employees.
Most companies only have employees who aren’t trained. Sure they probably do well at their position, but when it comes to handling customer complaints and requests, most employees won’t do the job of handling and resolving the issue.
It’s a good idea to have a quick five-minute staff meeting at the beginning of every morning. You want to do this so that you and your staff are equipped with savvy customer service skills. You also want to run down the list of complaints stated by previous customers so that your employees know how to handle the situation when it arises.
A well-trained staff can do wonders for repeat business. Another thing that can be good for repeat business is a strong marketing campaign. Now it’s not your employees’ job to bring you more customers – it’s your job to do that. You will want to research and be on top of the marketplace to pinpoint your targeted prospect correctly.
This is incredibly easy to do on the internet. I would advise you to start on the internet also. You can join forums in your niche and see what the latest problems are. I do this all the time. I’m very active in the forums that I am in. And because of it, I know what the latest trends and fads are in my niche.
You have to be at this level also. Leverage some of your time to see what’s happening in your niche. If you have limited time to do this, you should consider subscribing to a magazine in your niche.
For example, if you’re a chiropractor, subscribe to a chiropractor magazine to see the latest issues. Then search on the internet to see if any issues might be plaguing the chiropractic industry as a whole. You can learn about a lot of stuff (and pick up new ideas) from implementing these two techniques.
Location and its role in marketing your business
We’ve all heard it before: Location, location, location. Your location plays a vital role in getting more new customers into your business. With that being said, even though location can be attributed to almost 70% of your business potential, marketing your products and services elsewhere is important also.
I know some business owners who do a lousy job of marketing their business, but they still get tons of customers every day. How is it possible? Well, I believe that it all has to do with his business being in a good location.
I don’t receive any backend mail from this business owner; I see no ads in the newspapers, and I don’t see any place to give this business owner my email address. If it wasn’t for his location, his business would have been long gone by now.
So if you’re in a desirable location, what can you do to get more sales? One way to do so is by hanging up plastic signs in front of your building with the word “SALE” on it. Tell prospects walking by that they can get a buy one get one free deal, or a buy one get one half off deal, etc. You want to put posters in your store window advertising some of your top-selling products also.
Another thing about business location is that you could team up with another business owner nearby and run joint venture marketing campaigns with them. This will boost your profits and alleviate some of the costs of acquiring new customers. You can take advantage of a good location if you know how to do it.
Now, what should you do if you don’t have a good location for your business? What should you do if you’re business is in the middle of nowhere? Well, you have to start getting creative with your marketing campaign. Run direct mail, run a newspaper ad, run a yellow pages ad, do joint ventures. Create some press releases, and most importantly… continue to sell more to your existing customers.
If you already have an existing customer base, you will want to begin your marketing with them. These are people who know you and like you and won’t mind doing business with you. 80% of your total business profits will come from sales from your existing customers. So if you’re not tapping into this lucrative profit source, you’re missing out on a lot of profits.
Location is important, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. With the right location, you’ll still get walk-in new customers again and again, and this may be enough to keep your business afloat. But if you’re in the middle of nowhere, you have to become a marketing genius. Becoming a marketing whiz isn’t hard; it just takes some “thinking outside of the box.”
Remember to keep in contact with your existing customers to minimize your costs of marketing and get more sales from the backend. It will prove to be more than worth it if you implement it in your business.
Joint venture marketing
Thousands of business owners are constantly looking for ways to improve their sales and profits without spending too much money on advertising. Frustrated by their lack of progress, most business owners resort to doing what they’ve been doing – which inevitably will cause them to go out of business.
Luckily, there’s a marketing tactic that small business owners can use to get the word out about their business in a short amount of time. This technique is known as joint venture marketing. It doesn’t matter with joint ventures if you don’t have a product, don’t have a list, or don’t have a market. Somewhere in between, there is an opportunity to tap into a local profit center that both partners can take advantage of.
So how does joint venture marketing work? Well, believe it or not, the premise is simple. Let’s say your company has a product that is wonderful and that sells well. You can target another business owner’s customer list and promote your product to these people. In exchange for letting you promote your product to their list, the business owner you’re partnering with will receive a nice percentage of each sale.
At the end of the campaign, you and your strategic partner will tally up the orders and share the profits accordingly to how it was structured. So, with the basic premise of joint venture marketing being defined, I think it’s time for you to delve into this lucrative marketing technique.
Another reason to get into a joint venture arrangement is that you reduce the time it takes to make products. Your partner may already have a ton of products, while you have an excellent customer list. So you and your partner can team up and run a campaign that could work for both of you.
With the product creation problem solved, you can spend more of your time getting your existing customers to buy more from you. 80% of your business profits will come from orders made on the backend, so this is where you should be focusing most of your energies in any way.
If you’re a small company, you will be pleased to know that you can borrow credibility from a larger corporation. Once your customers see that you have partnered up with a larger company, they will get on their heels to see what you have to say. People love it when you do big things in life and partnering up with a large corporation that your current customers will love.
If the first attempt of a joint venture is successful, there’s no reason why you should stop running the campaigns. Do the joint venture over and over again until there isn’t any more money to be made. This could be an additional profit center for you in your business, so don’t pass it up.
Joint ventures are exciting and very worthwhile if you want to get the word out about your business. Hopefully, you will use the tips in this article to take your business to the next level.
Endorsement marketing
Endorsements can be an excellent way to sell your products and services more effectively. Your current and past customers can dramatically improve sales in your business. Your customers have done business with you. They trust and like you. So when focusing on endorsement marketing for your business, focus on your customer or client list first.
When seeking out endorsements, you have to ask your endorsee a series of questions that will help to get the ball moving on what to say. For example, you could ask them, “how soon did the techniques take to work?” Or, “Was the instructions easy to implement?” Or, “How would you rate our company?” Questions like these (and more) are the backbone of endorsements, so have a list of questions ready whenever you want to start collecting feedback.
You have a few options when it comes to getting referrals from your customers. You can do a standard endorsement, an audio endorsement, or a video endorsement. You also have to know where to run your endorsement for the maximum effect. Let’s take a look at the first form of endorsement:
1) Standard endorsement
This is where you get an endorsement from a customer in writing. This form of endorsement is very effective also, so don’t neglect using them in your business. The easiest way to get a standard endorsement is simply sending out a letter to your customer base. I’m confident that if you’ve taken good care of them, they will be more than happy to do an endorsement for you.
A standard endorsement can run all over the place. You can run them on your website, on social media ads, in magazines, etc. This form of marketing can bring in new customers for you in an instant. Let’s take a look at an audio endorsement.
2) Audio endorsement
You typically see these endorsements on the web, but you can do this offline too. When doing this, you can expect to see a major improvement in your conversion rates. People love to listen to things, so instead of having them read your endorsement, allow them to listen to it also.
Let’s take a look at video endorsements.
3) Video endorsements
This is typically something that you see on the internet also, and when done right, it can easily lead to a major bump in conversion rates. This will also give you credibility because it makes your customers feel like they know you and can relate to you.
When asking your customers to do a video endorsement for you, include a “goodie” that they will jump at. Gaining a video endorsement will give you more bump in sales than just standard or regular written endorsements. You should have video endorsements all over your website also.
All of these forms of endorsements can help you attain the sales and profits you desire. If you don’t have time to solicit audio and video endorsements, use standard endorsements instead. A lot of people saying great things about you will improve your sales and profits.
Take these techniques and use them to have the utmost success in your business.
