To outwit, outsmart and win in business you need to sell more products and services. These 21 marketing know-how tips are guaranteed to help you find the customers you need.
By Laura Tiffany
1. Create quality marketing tools. This doesn’t mean you need to allot 75% of your budget to printing costs, presentation slides and a website. It means you need to put deep thought into the cohesive image you want to present. “Sit down and make a list of everything you’re going to need each time you make contact with a prospective customer or client, including a stationery package, brochures and presentation tools,” advises US marketing expert Kim T. Gordon. “Then, if you can’t afford to print it all at once, at least work with a designer and a copywriter to create the materials so you have them on disk.”
2. Greet clients with style. Voicemail may not seem like a component of your marketing plan, but if a potential client phones and your voice message is curt or the receptionist is not professional, that prospect or client will be gone before you can blink an eye. So get yourself a professional voicemail system (even the phone company offers options) with several boxes, advises Gordon, so callers can press “1” to hear more about your services, “2” for your web and email addresses, etc.
3. Focus as narrowly as possible. Instead of trying to reach all the people some of the time, narrow your target audience to highly qualified prospects. Instead of going to seven networking groups once every two months, go to the two groups with the best prospects every week. “Instead of marketing to 5 000 companies, find 100 highly qualified companies and make regular contact with them,” says Gordon. Phone them, mail your marketing materials and then ask to meet them. It will save you money and time.
4. Make the most of trade shows. Trade shows are ideal marketing platforms. Rick Crandall, a speaker, consultant and author of marketing books shares some of his secrets. “If you don’t get a booth beforehand, try to find someone who will share their space with you. You help them run the booth, and they get a local who can show them the town. If you decide not to get a booth, go anyway. You can always do business with the exhibitors; just be sure to respect their time with “real” customers before you approach them as a peer looking for some B2B action. After the seminar, be absolutely, positively sure that you follow up on your leads. What’s the point of attending if your leads end up in the trash? A study in 2000 found that 88% of exhibition attendees weren’t phoned by salespeople after the show.
5. Conduct competitive intelligence online. As one entrepreneur points out: “As a home-based business in 1978, how would you ever find out what your competition was doing, what they were charging or what kind of clients they had? Today, that information is completely at your fingertips. So find your competitors’ sites and get clicking”.
6. Offer your help. If you want to be known as a good businessperson, be helpful. The word of mouth value of someone you've assisted is worth its weight in marketing gold. Another way to help out your community and your business is to align yourself with a non-profit organisation. Patrick Bishop, author of Money-Tree Marketing, offers this idea: “Set up a fundraising programme that benefits a school, like a discount card. At the same time the children are selling the cards, they are promoting your business.”
7. Offer samples of work. For example, if you’re a Web designer, surf the Internet, find a potential client and send them a few tips they can use to improve their site. Or you can offer to do a small job for free just to show the potential client the quality of your work and to get them used to working with you.
8. Get out there and network. If this piece of marketing advice sounds like something you’ve heard before, there’s a good reason: it works. Join your local industry association or a networking club. When you go, ask the people you meet what leads they’re looking for and really listen to what they have to say. They’ll repay you in kind.
9. Cross-promote with other businesses. Who do you share customers with? Find them and figure out how you can promote one another. If you’re a PR person, hook up with a copywriter or graphic designer for client referrals. Or you could take note of collectives like a group of several wedding professionals (a caterer, DJ, dressmaker and photographer) for example, who work together through referrals. Another option is to add a brief note at the bottom of invoices referring your accounting clients to “an excellent computer consultant”, and have that consultant do the same for you.
10. Join a chat forum online. Find newsgroups that cater to your audience and join the fray. “I didn’t start participating in online discussion groups to generate business, but as a way to find information for myself on various subjects,” says Shel Horowitz, owner of the Massachusetts, US-based Accurate Writing & More and author of several marketing books, including Grassroots Marketing. “But it turned out to be the single best marketing tool I use. It costs only my time. One list alone has got me around 60 clients in the past five years.”
11. Offer an e-newsletter. Again, this establishes you as an expert, but it also provides another very important marketing tool: email addresses of potential clients. You’ve opened up the gates to creating a relationship with them by offering free information. Now they may approach you to do business, or you can use these “opt-in” addresses to offer your services.
12. Don’t wait for customers to find you. Rather than purchasing an email list for mass, impersonal advertising, spend some time surfing the Web for businesses that have some sort of connection to your own business. Then write them a personalised email telling them why you think they should build a business relationship with you. “Those letters have a high tendency to get answered because they are personal,” says Crandall. “And I’ve opened the door to business with people who were total strangers before I emailed them.”
13. Follow your best prospects. This is called play-space marketing. If you have a pet-sitting business, ask your local vet and groomer if you can display brochures. Are you a landscape artist? Offer to do a display for the local nursery. Do you throw children’s birthday parties? Buy a slide at the local movie theatre to be shown before family films. “Just be sure the environment is appropriate,” cautions Gordon. “If you’re a business consultant, you’re not going to run adverts on the movie screen. Advertise where people are likely to be thinking about what you’re selling.”
14. Become an expert. Develop business know-how into a marketing tool by writing online articles. “Write articles to show your talents and give them as fillers to any website owner who you feel is fitting. Not only does it bring you more traffic and potential customers, it also provides you with an international business portfolio to demonstrate your business sense and your product or service.
Other ways to establish yourself as an expert: answer questions in online forums; send tip sheets to local media outlets; write a book or pamphlet; or do the next tip on our list.
15. Host a seminar. It’s cheap, it’s easy and it’s a good way to get over your public-speaking fear. Crandall offers the story of a business broker who conducts free weekly seminars. People selling businesses don’t want to attend as they aren’t new to the business brokering process, but they do notice his advert and call for his services. Business buyers attend, and the broker now has “pre-qualified” prospects. “You’re getting free publicity, you’re getting prospects to call you, and you’re building on your level of expertise,” says Crandall, who hosts his own seminars on marketing.
16. Get local news coverage. Play up your locale as much as possible with personalised news releases. Which sounds better to your local press: a successful home-based caterer with a national contract, or a caterer from the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, with a national contract? Crandall recently promoted his mother’s children’s book by sending letters to the newspapers both where she currently lives and where she previously lived, and both picked up the story
17. Get ready for your close-up. Does TV sound remote for a business owner on a budget? Not so. If you’re the type of person who adores an audience, get onto a business show or lined up for an interview. “You can’t blatantly advertise a product or service, but it’s a good way to become better known,” says Bishop. “For example, if you sell crafts, you might start an instructional craft show. You could give away something for free or have a contest. When people phone or write in, you can start a mailing list and then contact them about your business.” Another bonus is that it adds to your expertise and gives you a great hook for your publicity efforts.”
18. When in doubt, pick up the phone. Instead of lamenting a lack of business, drumming your fingers on your desk and forming new worry lines on your face, call a customer. Touch base, see how they’re doing, visit their office when you’re running an errand, see if there’s anything you can do for them, even if it’s not a paid piece of work. It will improve your relationship, and you may jog their memory. After all, you’ll never hear “I’ve been meaning to call you!” if you don’t pick up the phone.
19. Thank you, dankie, ndiyabonga. Shower the top 20% of your clients who yield you the most sales (either in volume or rands) with appreciation, whether it’s via gifts, personalised notes or lunch. “It doesn’t cost a lot of money,” says Gordon, “but it’s a great way to let your best customers know they’re special.”
20. Offer a guarantee. More people will be willing to try out your business and recommend it if you offer “satisfaction guaranteed”.
21. Get them talking about you. Word of mouth marketing is just about the cheapest thing you can do to boost your business. The main way to attract referrals is to do a great job: impress your clients, and they will tell everyone they know. But there are more aggressive tactics you can use too. Ask everyone you know to refer to your business. Hand out several business cards to people rather than just one so they’re more likely to pass them on. Even go through your favourite client’s Rolodex (with his or her permission, of course) to find potential leads.
Please contact
Stoltz Marketing for more information regarding your marketing plan and strategy.
