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~~ The Outstanding Results in Marketing ~~
Leading Small Business Marketing Newsletter
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Welcome back to Outstanding Results in Marketing!
In this issue:
How to get your customers to buy from you at least one
extra time per year - guaranteed!
1. Golden Rule #17 of Successful (Re)Advertising.
2. Check lists are great tool for maximising your
sales opportunity - Business Booster #7
3. Business Booster #8 - - Don’t Be A Marketing
Wimp Or An Image Peddler - Ask For Action
4. I spy with my little eye - great marketing ploy
“99% of your customers will come back if you give
them this offer”.
Word count for this issue: 1423. Approximate time to
read: Less than 8 minutes.
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1. Golden Rule #17 of Successful Advertising.
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Communicating with your existing customers can be your
most profitable activity. While many your companies are
spending enormous amounts of money to chase the new customers
and zero dollars to resell to your existing ones?
Did you ever buy a high ticket item, like a fridge, a lounge
suite or a - plasma TV in your local electronics store? Sure
you have… now how many “Thank you” postcards and/or letters
or picnic baskets have you received from that shop? My guess
will be – Nada, Zero, NONE.
How would you react if? - would you feel taken care of - as a
customer, or loved if you received a nice “thank you” or
“how’s your new item going” or “did you know that your item
will last longer if you…” card or letter? Of course you
would.
Most business owners or marketing managers, I speak to -
telling me one of two things
A) “I know we need to communicate with customers but what do
we say?”
B) “We just don’t have resources or time to communicate with
existing customers, it was so cumbersome that we gave up and
don’t do it anymore”
The place to start is first to collect your customer’s or
prospect’s birth days and to implement “The Birthday Club”
strategy. Here’s how this well known company have implemented
“The Birthday Club” –
The Birthday Card Club.
Let me make something clear- I’m against discounting in pure sense.
I’ve seen many companies embarking on price war or shaky discounting
path and going out of the business. Much better give your customer a
FREE gift. Perhaps have a choice of three and most definitely study
your customer preferences - what do they buy so that your gift is
relevant. Now the tricky part - how to make sure that you don’t
discounting the products or services that cost you money? For example
- I buy protein bars - the store I buy it from buys them in turn
from some wholesaler.
The wholesaler from time to time introduces the new product and
interested in retail stores to stock it. The only way the retail
store is going to buy it from wholesaler is that end customer is
interested to buy the product. So, the wholesaler has to spend
marketing $$$ to promote the product. Now if our retail store owner
will approach their wholesaler with an offer - “I’ll send or give a
free sample of your new product to my VIP customers - if you let me
have X samples for free - this way you’ll save money on advertising
and my buying customers will actually have a chance to try your product
- if they like it - they will buy more”. You’ve got the idea!
Above can be your starting point to address question (A). Now
you need to systematise it so that your Birthday Club runs on
auto-pilot.Here’s how:
Step 1. Start a folder with 12 plastic pockets. Step 2. Tag
each pocket with name of the month - January to December.
Step 3. As soon as you or your staff collect the birthday
date from the client or new prospect - hand sign a birthday
card and place it in the client’s birthday month pocket. Step
4. On the first day of each month empty this month pocket,
affix the post stamp to each card and mail it.
Now you have it…is it hard to implement? No! Do you think
you have to spend a lot of time on this program? No! The key
to successful marketing is the system - This will also be
the answer to question (B).
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2. Business Booster #7 - Check lists are great tool for
maximising your sales opportunity.
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Did you ever go to a paint shop to buy 10 liters of paint,
get back home and realised that you forgot the sand paper
and other painting tools? Now … how frustrating is that?
When the customer is standing in front of you and holding
his or her wallet – that’s the very best time - there will
never be a better time to ask them to buy more…they can even
teach 15 year old kids to do it at McDonalds!
Here’s what you must teach your staff to say “To save you
time and any frustration latter, may I suggest you to go
through this check list with me now, just to make sure that
you’ve got everything you need for the job”.
The plant shop can have following check list:
- appropriate potting mix for your plant (do you know that
different plants require different soil?);
- right fertiliser so that your plant will live longer and
blossom more often;
- the right sized pot and the Dish;
- marbles or stones to make your own mini garden or to make
a good drainage for your plant;
- etc;
The health shop can use this:
- vitamins to keep you healthy use below chart to find out
which ones you need:
>> Feeling fluish? Use Vitamin C.
>> Feeling tired all the time and no energy? Use Vitamin B
complex.
- hand cream to keep your hands healthy;
- feeling cluttered - consider using our special body cleansing
formula range of products;
- etc
You get the idea - now go and have fun implementing it!
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3. Business Booster #6 - Don’t Be A Marketing Wimp Or
An Image Peddler - Ask For Action
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Here’s what Most advertisements . . . “Here’s our beautiful
car, house, product or whatever” and that’s where they end.
If you run an advertisement for anything you must ask for action”.
For example. A car advertisement could end like this . . .
“Get into our showroom this weekend, take a test ride and you will
take home a free (Bottle of Special Red El Plonko wine, Our Special
Sun Shielder Cap, free dinner, free whatever) just for test driving it.”
An advertisement for a can of soup could end like this . . .
“Cut out the coupon and get a $1.50 can for just 25 cents at
your local store.”
Or a real estate advertisement . . .
“Inspect our unit or allow us to give you an appraisal and get
a thingamabob as a thank you. No obligation whatsoever.” Hey,
it’s a numbers game. Some will. Some won’t. So what. As long
as it’s profitable at the end of the day. And given the
thousands (no, millions) of dollars being wasted on ads and
promotions that don’t bring in any sales, this sort of offer
could be a bargain and get lots of people to your business.
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4. “I spy with my little eye”
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Remembering your customers birthday is a very good idea!
Everyone likes to be congratulated on their birthday.
Giving them something special is even better. You’ll achieve
several objectives. First - you’ll communicate with them and
keep your name in the front of them. Second - you’ll show
them that you care. Third - you endorse them to come to your
place of business. Four - you’ll have a chance to up-sell and
cross-sell them.
In the next newsletter I’ll reveal to you a smart marketing
plot used by jewellry store to attract hundreds of new customers
to their store - right under the nose of competitors - who
couldn’t figure out why!
More to come. Stay tuned, sell more, prosper and most
importantly - have fun!
In Next issue:
1. Golden Rule #18 of Successful Advertising.
2. Business Buster #9 and #10.
3. More of “I spy with my little eye”