7 Simple Marketing Tips and Tricks

Marketing isn't rocket science, as with most things it's about action. Below are seven useful tips to help you to market your business:

1. Take the P.S
   Personalize your sales letters with a p.s. at the bottom of the page, but make sure it's hand written, adding a typed p.s at the end of a document defeats the object. Putting a personal slant on your mailings makes your customers feel valued and reports suggest that arond 65% of customers will leave your business simply because they think you don't care about them.
   
   
   
2. Do it Again.
   Whenever you leaflet drop repeat the process for the same customers 2 weeks later. People are bombarded with adverts and brands every single day so by giving them a second or third chance to see your ad you'll greatly increase the likihood of a response to it.
   
   
   
3. Steal
   Use others people ideas at the basis for your own. Don't be shy about stealing a great idea, if it works for someone else there's a likihood it'll work for you. In my opinion the most successful forms of imitation are when you take an idea from outside your industry and apply it to your business. For example, be the first in your industry to offer a 200% guarantee or a guaranteed service within 24 hours.
   
   
4. Reward Loyalty
   Send your customers an unexpected gift, even if it's just a money off coupon for your service or a fee addtion next time they buy. My local car dealer always sends my wife a bunch of flowers or a bottle of wine when she buys a new car. This is exceptional service - always be exceptional.
   
   
   
5. Sack Your Customers
   However good we are we all have customers who we could do with out, they could be the "big" comapany that buys alot but you make very poor margins on, or the customer who constantly enquires but never buys. Get rid of them! By cutting these customers out of the equation you can spend alot more time on the customers that really matter, helping your profits and improving your repuation at the same time.
   
   
6. Don't Drop Your Price - Improve your service
   Simple additions to your product or service such as gift wrapping, an aftercare service or extended guarantees can raise the value of your product but cost you little. While your competitors may spend time trying to drop their prices to as little as possible you can keep yours high and still get more business with a superior service.
   
   
7. Spend more time with your customers.
   A customer who buys from you once can be valuable but a customer for lifetime can be priceless. Work with your existing customers, send them birthday cards, a thank you card, a newsletter, anything to let them kown that you value them or risk losing them to the competition.
   

7 TIps for a killer Press Release

Press Releases are often regarded as the holy grail of marketing. If done correctly they can be a highly effective way of driving enquiries to your business and best of all cost you next to nothing to produce.

Below are 7 tips to help get your press release feature in the local newspapers.

1. You Must Be Newsworthy! The clue is in the name, it's a newspaper no one is going to run you a free ad in their paper. You need to have something that is out the ordinary, some controversial or inspiring. This is more often than not down to you to make yourself newsworthy, your business might of hit and landmark of it's 500 th customer, or be delivering a product or service in a unique and innovative way.
   
   
2. Headlines Are Vital Don't assume that it's the reporters job to right your headline, more often than not the papers will receive dozens of press releases every single day, most of these aren't read past the headline, if you want to spark interest make your headline exciting forcing the reader to want to know more. I often draft 10 - 15 different headlines before settling on the one I want, be outlandish and look at your story from every possible angle - with a bit of practice you'll get the hang of writing that elusive "hook" every time.
   
   
3. Add Human Interest Almost all news has a human interest story. This could be a rags- to-riches tale about yourself, overcoming adversity, building relationships or solving someones problems - the media LOVES human interest, without it your story will end up on the scrapheap.
   
   
4. Be Controversial No one wants to read about something that they already know. Try to challenge established beliefs. For example, you could write about lack of education not holding you back from being a successful business man, or how adopting a highly unusual approach to your business reaped rewards. I had a client who was a painter and decorator and offered a by one get one free deal on painting rooms which gained him a load of publicity.
   
   
5. Keep it Simple Don't get overly technical in terms of jargon about your industry or about your business, remember human interest is key and people will soon get very bored reading facts and figures - try to tell a story in your copy.
   
   
6. Don't Send it in Unannouced If a journalist is expecting your story they're much more likely to read it - no suprises there! A 1 min phone call telling the journalist what you're going to send can work wonders.
   
   
7. Leave it Out Don't tell them everything try to leave juicy questions unanswered, forcing the journalist to call you and get more information. If your headline is catchy and the copy leaves them wanting to know more you can hold the best 'til last and your almost guaranteed to be featured!
   
   
   
   

Researching Your Market

I'm a big fan of market research, anyone starting any type of business needs to know what they are getting themselves into! That's not to say market research will tell you everything you need to know but what it will do is give you some idea of what you can expect.

What type of market research you do really depends on the type of business you are going to be starting. For instance, I was recently helping a guy who was setting up his own plastering business, he'd been a plasterer for 20 odd years and knew everything there was to know about the trade. He'd recently been made redundant and decided to follow his life long dream of working for himself. This guy knew who his customers were, he'd been dealing with these people for over 20 years, it really was a no brainer and understandably he didn't see the point of market research. So he knew who his customers were but he didn't know why other people weren't his customers.

What I asked him to try was simple; list 10 business that weren't his customers and get in touch with them to see if they'd consider using his services. On the list were:

• Estate Agents
• Local Authorities
• Shopping Centres
• Construction Firms
  
• Other Contractors

What we found was that 6 of the 10 were interested in using the service, and 3 of those wanted work doing immediately. The potential was immediately obvious as one the businesses, an estate agency had a lot of landlords it represented and these people often needed RELIABLE tradesmen to fix up their properties. Just by making one phone call my client got a client with massive potential!

There are three main questions you need to ask when doing market research:

• Will you buy my product / service?
• How often will you buy it?
• How much will you spend?

To get an idea of your market these are the things you really need to know. It's not rocket science and can often be a good excuse to make those phone calls to generate leads. So get out there and start asking questions, you never know what you might find out.

Getting Inspiration

One of the things that people often say to me is "I'd like to start a business but don't have any skills"

I get this all of the time. But normally after a little bit of a chat people are suprised to see just how many skills they have got. It's about viewing business and viewing yourself in a different way. So many people think that in order to have their own business they've got to have a lightbulb moment. But most of the successful businesses I know are started by people who take an existing business model and just do it themselves, some of them do it differenty, some of them do it better but they all do it. This is crucial if you wait for the right time, the right moment or the right opportunity you'll be waiting a very long time. The true spirit of an entreprenuer is to get out there and make things happen, get the ball rolling, get of your arse and do something, anything! Very few business start with one idea that doesn't change over time. Look at Richard Branson, he started out running a magazine, then a mail order record service, a student helpline, now he's involved in banks, airlines, hotels.... basically everything and that's because he gets out there and does it.

So since you may not have had the lightbulb / Eureka! moment what type of business could you start? Well here are a few examples of business you could start without having to have obvious "skills" or qualifications.

• Ironing Service
• Pet Sitting Service
• Gardening
• Catering
• Direct Selling (other peoples products)
• Ebay Trader
• Sandwich Delivery Round
• Small Jobs Service (i.e. picking up dry cleaning, posting letters, buying gifts etc)
• Junk Clearance Services
• Car Valeting Service

All of these business can be seen as unskilled but the truth is the skill may not lie within the work but it certainly lies within anyone running a successful business. In an increasing competitve and service driven economy it has become less important what you do but vitally important how you do it.

Running a business is not about skills it's about attitude being in the right frame of mind, willing to tackle problems and take criticism on the chin. Everything else can be learned but the attitude has to come from within you.

So I realise that this has been a bit of meandering post but the essence of what I'm saying is that we all have the skills and the ability to start our own businesses but it's only with action that we'll be able to achieve anything.

Welcome To My Blog....

Thanks for stopping by my new blog. This is my first post, I'll use this blog to talk about what I do - help people start businesses. I come across people every day who come to me for advice on how to start up, how to grow and how to improve their businesses. I learn alot from these people and hopefully they learn a little from me too!

I'll be posting my first post very soon..