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It’s
that time of year again, when we decide how to during
over the next year.
If you are a business owner, who wants to
increase business this year, you need to consider
these three resolutions to get your business moving in
the right direction in 2008.
1)
Find
new customers
– Lead generation, advertising, networking, and
referrals are all ways to find the new customers.
Some work better than others, but you should at
least consider all of them.
a.
Referrals
are by far the least expensive and best way to get new
customers, but many small businesses still don’t
have a referral program in place.
You don’t have to offer old customers a
cruise to get them to send you new business.
Usually just asking them at certain times and a
nice thank you is enough if they really believe in
your business. Too
many times small businesses just don’t ask.
Some great opportunities to ask are when they
make a purchase (on the online Thank you, the receipt,
a sign up form), or after they have finished the
purchase (a note on the invoice or delivery form, a
follow up card or email).
A
simple hint: Hand
your customer two businesses cards on their next
visit, ask them to give one to a friend.
b.
Lead generation
since the Internet has become both easier and more
complicated. With
a click of the mouse you can get lists of either your
competitors or potential clients.
The complication is knowing how to get the
contact information and then how to reach them.
Spam is illegal, unethical, and annoying and
not the way small businesses should be spending their
money. Putting
together a Pull Marketing Campaign that uses both
email and snail mail combined with an offering to get
leads to your site, and capture their information is a
much better method to start the sales process.
c.
Networking
is another method of finding customers that has gotten
easier through the use of the Internet.
Sites like www.meetup.com;
www.linkedin.com
(Look me up, Tanya Eldert, I would be happy to link to
you) are great ways to meet contacts both online and
off. Meetup.com uses the electronic world to set up
in-person meetings and gatherings and great
integration of online and offline marketing.
Want a comprehensive list… check out
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
A
simple hint: If
you are going to create a social network page for your
business, consider Facebook over My Space.
It has a better reputation for business
professionals than My Space, unless your target market
is 13 to 25, then you should stick with My Space.
2)
Keep
the old customers coming back
– Return on investment (ROI) is always lower to
bring back previous customers than it is to find new
ones. Create
an E-newsletter campaign to stay in front of past
customers. If
you don’t have their email addresses, put a simple
program in place to collect them.
a.
If you have their mailing address, mail them a
letter with a return envelope, explain to save
resources (money and trees) you are going to be
sending out your specials via email from now on and
can they give you their email address.
b.
A third way, which is a little more
complicated, is to offer an incentive for going onto
your website while the customer is making a purchase;
such as a free item, or a coupon off a future purchase
etc. While
the customer is on your site, have a way to capture
their information.
You will have to create a special landing page
for this with a contact capture form, but that is the
only reason it is more complicated.
A
simple hint: Put
a sign up sheet asking for emails and offering
specials next to your cash register or add “email”
to any forms you use to gather client data.
3)
Make your presence known on the web
– Everyone already knows that the Internet is
changing the way people shop, compare and buy goods.
It has and will change the way we market our
goods and services…forever.
However, in my daily consulting I still run
across small businesses that don’t even have a
website. Yes,
really. They have ways of marketing that have worked for them in the
past, and are still working to a certain point today.
At this point in time, a website is needed if for no
other reason than to show the validity of a business.
I heard this recently at a network meeting, “What,
they don’t have a website? Are you sure they are a
real business?” Despite the fact this particular
company had been in business over 10 years. Here is my
list of essentials in order of priority:
a.
Email
address that works!
b.
Website
– professionally set up to pull customers to you and
capture leads.
c.
Search
Engine Optimization
(SEO) – If you really want to draw people to your
business through the Internet you need to get ranked
on the major search engines under your key search
terms. This
is not an easy process and can take a few a months.
Hint:
DO NOT hire any company who says they can get
you to the top of Goggle in a month or two without
using a pay-per-click campaign.
If they can, they will do it unethically and
your website can easily be banned from the search
engines. The
web is full of horror stories about unethical SEO
companies.
Some
simple tips to get started with Search Engine
Optimization:
Tweak
your website. I have a checklist you can use when you sign up for future
copies of my E-Newsletter. You want to make sure you
have keywords, rich content, a site map, good titles,
and meta tags.
Sign
up on Social Media sites.
As mentioned under networking, this is the
electronic form of a handshake plus elevator pitch on
a webpage.
Create
a Blog.
This is a great way to update your site
regularly and have some great content with keywords
for spiders to find.
Make sure that what you write is focused on
your target market.
All
of these resolutions take hard work, dedication, and
focus. None of them are get rich quick
ideas. If I knew how to do that legally and
ethically, I'd be in Bermuda right now sipping a
margarita. As a small business, I know it
takes hours a day to do marketing, luckily this is
something I find fun; but to other business owners it
is a tedious but necessary task. To get 2008 off
to the right start it is important to make sure you
have someone on your team that is dedicated to
marketing your business.
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