Marketing and Advertising

The following information may apply to your situation, or maybe it does not. There is no one way to do it right in every case. Grab the ideas here and play with them. Marketing has to be dynamic. A successful strategy in one market does not guarantee success in a different market.

Always follow up

Why do businesses lose customers. Poor Service? Poor Quality? High prices? In most cases a business loses customers because of no follow-up. It’s like apathy after the sale. The business basically ignores the customers.

Did you know that the cost of selling something to a new customer is about six times higher than selling something to an existing customer? So, what can you do about this?

Follow up on every sale and on every sales inquiry. If a customer buys your products and you have his email address – send a thank you note within 48 hours after the sale. Send another email about 30 days after the initial sale and ask how things are going and if the customer has any concerns or problems. Make sure the customer knows that you care. Even if there might be a problem – knowing that you care will give the customer this warm, fuzzy feeling that he needs to feel comfortable using your service. Make it a habit to follow up every quarter thereafter. Inform customers about new products, features and services. Let them know what you did to make their stay more worth-while and that they have options to upgrade their hosting package whenever needed. The next quarter you offer referral fees – to motivate the client to recommend your services to friends and family. Once the first year anniversary arrives – offer the customer a freebie or a discount for a domain name renewal/registration. Offer a 10% discount on the next higher hosting package. You get the idea. Stay in touch with the client – build up a friendly relationship. This will make it harder for the customer to leave or to yell at you when something goes wrong with your service. Friends don’t yell at friends, right!?

Keep your best customers happy

Not all customers were created ‘equal’. Some spend more money on your service, always pay on time and are just pleasant to deal with. Support tickets are random, they don’t create much work for you. They don’t complain about a reasonable price adjustment. Those are your “A1” customers. Treat them like family. If you treat them right and (again) give them the warm, fuzzy feeling they need to feel comfortable – they will refer your services to friends and family. As mentioned before – not all customers are equal. I am very sure that you put your customers into certain groups. The range probably goes from customers that you hate to the customers you love. Treat the ones that are most beneficial to your business with the best service possible. It’ll pay off in the long run.

Create an elevator speech

In today’s world it is important for every business owner to compose an elevator speech for himself. If you think an elevator speech is only to be used in elevators, you’re wrong. The term “elevator speech” represents the time span you have to introduce your business to someone else. If you do not have a quick way to describe your business and your services and what value you can give to your customers, you might lose out on many sales occasions. Imagine waiting in line at the bank or at the supermarket. You do the typical small talk. Guess what – if you have an elevator speech prepared, you can use the moment to promote your business. Think about it – there are probably tons of situations where you could use your elevator speech to promote your business.

The elements of a good elevator speech are easy to recognize. Your elevator speech should describe what value you have to offer and what are the benefits to your customers.It should encourage the listener to speak and to ask you about your business. The elevator speech should need less than 30 seconds of speech time. Learn your phrase by heart and make it sound confident and impressive.

Press Releases

Make use of free media reports. Publish a press release whenever possible. The occasion has to be noteworthy of course. Newspapers, magazines, radio and TV – they all receive press releases from the newswires. A local newspaper might catch on and will contact you to print a story about you and your business. Look into the business section of your local newspaper – how often do you see a report about a local business? Where I live – it happens quite often. Maybe the newspaper publishes company profiles every once in a while. Maybe you’re the chosen one.

How to publish a press release? You should find out how you can directly submit a press release to your local newspaper. It might require some work, but newspapers are always looking for information that they can publish. Use services like PRWeb.com to publish your press release. PRWeb.com even offers templates so that you know how a professional press release looks like.

Communicate your personality

Every business has a company personality. Many customers stay loyal to a business because of the personality. If your business just looks like everyone else’s business, people will not really remember you. You will lose sales. If there is something that will stick to people’s mind – they will remember you.

To use ‘personality’ as part of your marketing strategy, you will have to develop a personality. What is personality? There are 2 key words that you will need to remember. Image and Identity. You could try to establish an image or you can try to establish your identity. You probably always thought, that you will need to have a good image in your industry. You build up an image – something that you think people will respond to. Guess what – people will feel that it is just an image. They will feel that this is not the real you. They will feel, that you and/or your employees are not 100% connected to your business. Sooner or later people will realize that it is just an image – not the real thing.

Identity: Identity expresses your personality as it really is. Your identity does not lie or sounds phony. The identity is exactly how the business has portrayed itself. People will feel this and it creates trust. Trust is the seed to get the business from the customer. And the best thing is – there is no cost involved, communicating your identity (personality). You are who you are. Just live up to it.

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