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Follow Up Marketing Experts Blog: Marketing Tips
SHARE THIS EBOOKINTRODUCTIONSummer comes with both challenges and opportunities for all types of businesses to improve and build your marketingchannels. For some businesses, the summer months can bring inlots of seasonal business from tourists, families, and foot traffic.For others, the summer season is quiet and an opportunity for small business owners to plan and gear up the marketing they will do for the rest of the year.Whether you capitalize on the momentum of the season to grow your business or use the quiet summer months to build your marketing assets- summer brings opportunities for smallbusinesses to get creative with their marketing. Our guide is filled with ideas, tips, and tactics to attract customers through the summer months as well as build your marketing assets for the rest of the year. What’s your biggest marketing challenge during the summer?”“SHARE THIS EBOOK
Here is a picture of Buddy and me. We really love each other!
I just read a cool post about ways to market your business. It was
written for retailers but many can be used for any business. Here you go!
Do "How To" videos.
If you have a flower shop you could do one on putting together a centerpiece
for fall.
If you are a service provider, like we are, you could do one on ways to
network. Show the right way and the wrong way.
Put the video on your website and social media sites, like Facebook,
Pinterest etc. If you have a physical location, you could have the video
playing in the store.
A clothing store could be demonstrating how to use scarves.
Think about what you do and then do a video!
Partner with another business.
This might be displaying their product in your store and they will display
yours!
You could also give out gift certificates for the other business and they
give out yours.
Share information about community events.
We are having a Quilt Show this weekend at the high school. Tell people
if they bring in their receipt from the show that they will get 20% off their
total purchases. It would be great to have a booth there too to promote
your store and show your support for the community.
You might want to put together a list of events each month and give it out
to customers.
Give out gift certificates to volunteers.
For example, the people that help at the Quilt Show might receive a $10 gift
certificate to your store as a thank you for helping.
Create your own event.
Our town does Trick or Treat Street. You might want to add to that by
offering pictures of the kids in their costumes. Be creative with this
idea.
Well, Buddy and I are going to go get the red dot! Wish us luck!
Meow and Purrs till tomorrow!
Thomas Dos is doing worse and we feel that the end is in sight. We are all very sad at our house. Buddy even has a hard time chasing the red dot and I am feeling down too. It is so hard to loose someone that is with you day in and day out.
I did listen to a great You Tube video that I am going to share with you. It is a great presentation and something to really think about. So enjoy and meow and purrs till tomorrow.
Tama – the station master cat who raised over $10 million and helped save a
train line
Love this story about Tama.
What a terrific thing for a cat to do! I am very proud of him!
He lives in Kinokawa City (Wakayama,
Japan). He manns the train station with his friends.
This began in 2003 when a small
railroad company was trying to stay in business and went into business with
another railroad. As a result of the union, a small cat shelter had to go
away. The lady that looked after the cats asked the president of the station
to let the cats live at the station otherwise who knows what would have
happened to them. He agreed.
That was when Tama became the
station master. The owner saw Tama as a maneki-neko, a Japanese lucky charm in
the motif of a cat and that was to bring good business. This was very
successful. The press picked it up and it spread everywhere!
Suddenly there was a 10% jump in people riding the train. Due to the
increase in ridership and the selling of memorabilia items caused the business
to make 10 million dollars!
Tama was promoted to Super Station
Master and given a new window, a super cool hat and a years’ worth of cat food!
Way to go Tama!
Thinking out of the box really
worked! How can your business think out of the box? When you are
the same as the next guy you go nowhere. Try to think of ways to set your
business apart from all the others!
Below is a picture of Tama!
Super cute cat. Well, Meow and Purrs.
Festivals can prove outstanding opportunities to reach new customers, especially if you develop a strategic festival marketing strategy for earning permission-based marketing rights. The following 10 festival marketing tips for small business will help you maximize lead generation and sales.
1. Target your festival
Targeting
your festival audience is essential: should you set up a booth at movie
festival, a music festival or a local community festival? The answer
ultimately depends on who your customers are. Meet your customers on
their terms to establish common ground, and you can demonstrate a shared
culture that fosters long-term customer loyalty.
2. Give takeaways
Make sure everyone who visits your booth leaves with a business card,
brochure and/or coolie cup – something physical they can hold on to.
You want them to remember you and to follow-up for more information.
Another great option: T-shirts, since your booth visitors will wear them
and thus expose others to your brand.
3. Lead people to your booth
If
you’re attending a crowded festival or have poor booth placement, don’t
let potentially enthusiastic customers unwittingly pass you by. Use vinyl banners, posters or flyers strategically placed to draw traffic toward your booth.
4. Product demonstrations
If
you really want to draw a crowd around your booth, offer product
demonstrations that are both effective and entertaining. A skateboard
retailer, for example, might have a skateboarder doing tricks in front
of their booth.
5. Give people a reason to buy
It’s
one thing to pass information at your festival booth, it’s quite another
to effectively market your business. Give people a reason to buy with a
time-limited coupon or some other incentive that motivates them to make
an immediate purchase. And, of course, make the benefits of choosing
your company well-known.
6. Make it fun and interactive
Product
demonstrations can be fun, but dunk tanks, trivia, contests, and other
games can make your booth fun and interactive. Give your audience a
hands-on experience that, if possible, puts your product in their hands.
7. Collect contact information
You
want to collect contact information so you can follow-up with potential
customers, but don’t make the mistake of placing a sign-up sheet on the
table. It won’t be filled out. Instead, have customers give their
information in order to be entered into a contest to win a desirable prize. If the prize is good, you’ll have plenty of calls to make next week.
8. Sponsor other activities
Your
booth isn’t the only marketing outlet you have at festivals. Sponsor
music pavilions, tournaments, rides, or other festival-related events to
get your banners and other marketing materials out and about on
festival grounds. You can also consider guerrilla marketing by employing
a team to canvas the crowd with brochures, flyers, coolie cups and
other marketing materials.
9. Pre-market
Let
potential customers know you’ll be at the festival before it begins, so
they’ll know to look for you. Publication ads (especially the festival’s
own flyers and brochures) are perfect for this. You can also place
signage in your location; and advertise on your website, Facebook,
Twitter and newsletters.
10. Post-market
Take plenty of photos and videos at the festival and post them on your social media
networks to generate shares and increase exposure for your company.
Through sharing, you can pick up customers who weren’t even at the
festival.
What festival marketing tips for small business can you share?
Successful people will often tell you
that luck and hard work got them where they are. But under the surface,
there's much more going on. People who rise to top of their fields have
a lot in common. Learning what sets them apart can help you find
lasting success in your own business.
Jeff Brown, a Harvard Medical School faculty psychologist and co-author of The Winner's Brain (DaCapo, 2010), studies highly successful people, looking at their brain activity and life stories for clues to what makes them unique.
Turns out, they think differently than those whose success peters out
or never comes to pass. "People who are successful have learned to
optimize their brains," Brown says.
He's uncovered strategies, which he calls "brain power tools," that
successful people use to achieve their goals. Each tool is a way of
thinking that affects your choices and actions as you work toward a
goal. Taken together, they help you find opportunities, build mastery,
work through failures and surpass the status quo.
Consider Brown's five keys to lasting success as outlined below. Give
these tactics a try to reach your goals time and time again.
1. Create your own serendipity.
If you look at highly successful people, their road to greatness was
full of twists and turns. "Successful people take very circuitous
paths," Brown says. "They have a real knack for recognizing
nontraditional opportunities."
Rather than waiting in a long line of succession, look for paths that
others haven't tried. Take on projects that add a unique skill to your
toolkit, find ways to meet people you admire, or pitch yourself for
opportunities that seem like an unexpected match. Don't be afraid to get
creative. There are many ways to reach every destination.
2. Know what you bring to the table.
Successful people take inventory of their skills and abilities
regularly, and they use that feedback to improve. "If they have a
deficit, they want to know it," Brown says.
Ask mentors and coaches to assess your strengths and weaknesses, and
measure your skills objectively if you can. Use that information to
identify what to learn or practice so that you master strengths and
bolster weak skills. And don't shy away from criticism out of fear or
pride, Brown says. "That's the kiss of death when it comes to success."
3. Focus on a single end goal.
The ability to choose a goal and work toward it without getting
distracted is a trademark among highly successful people. "They have
laser focus, which boosts their ability to think and execute," Brown
says.
Create a list of priorities and use them to select which
opportunities to pursue. "Don't be duped by the illusion of missed
opportunity where you think you have to do everything that comes your
way," Brown says. "Lock onto your goal and don't get distracted."
4. Work at the edge of your comfort zone.
Risk is necessary if you want to truly excel, and successful people
approach risk with a clear sense of how much they can handle. "They take
moderate risks," Brown says. "They're out of their comfort zone but not
going crazy."
Test your own boundaries by looking for risks that make you slightly
uncomfortable but still more excited than anxious. "You have an optimal
risk range that you have to learn to gauge and understand," Brown says.
The more you experiment with taking risks, big and small, the easier it
will be to find your sweet spot in the future.
5. Put your energy into the daily grind.
Successful people work tirelessly toward their goals. They're
propelled by an internal energy that keeps them moving forward, even
when they face setbacks or success seems far away. "They keep giving to
the process and keep investing," Brown says. Their drive isn't pushy or
demanding. It's persistent.
Rather than always looking ahead at the end goal, immerse yourself in
the daily practice of building toward it. Learning to enjoy and embrace
that process will help you develop the stamina and resilience you need
to see it through. "You should enjoy the pursuit of success," Brown
says. "The chase lasts much longer than the catch."
What
are your keys to entrepreneurial success? Share your thoughts in the
comments below. The best submissions will be featured with your name.
Nadia Goodman is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, NY. She is a
former editor at YouBeauty.com, where she wrote about the psychology of
health and beauty. She earned a B.A. in English from Northwestern
University and an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University.
Visit her website, nadiagoodman.com.
27. Get a booth at a trade show or expo attended by your target market.
28. Give a speech or volunteer for a career day at a high school.
29. Sponsor an Adopt-a-Highway area in your community to keep roads litter-free.
30. Donate your product or service to a charity event or auction.
31. Have a Yellow Pages ad listed under your main industry and in related categories.
32. Volunteer your time to a charity or non-profit organization.
33. Create a loyalty program to reward existing customers.
34. Create an opt-in email or print newsletter for your customers.
Fill each edition with specials, tips and other timely information.
35. Send hand-written thank you notes to important customers every chance you get.
36. Use brightly colored envelopes and unique stationary when sending direct mail pieces.
37. Show product demos or related videos on a television on the sales floors during store hours.
38. Book a celebrity guest for an event at your store. Use people in your industry or television news anchors or local authors.
39. Create window displays in locations away from your shop.
Airports, hospitals, and large office buildings occasionally have
display areas they rent to local businesses.
40. Team up with a non-competing business in your area to offer a package promotion.
41. Pick the slowest day of the week to hold a one-day sale.
42. Create a warm, welcoming waiting area for your customers.
43. Provide extra customer service training for your staff.
44. Sign up for a newsletter or join online discussion groups in your industry.
45. If possible, loan your facilities to other groups for a meeting place.
46. Create a unique lapel pin based on the products you sell to wear at meetings.
47. Choose a regular customer to spotlight as a Customer of the
Month. Create a brief write up to submit to the local newspaper about
the customer and be sure to give he or she a copy of the article as well
as have one framed to hang in the store.
48. Pair up slow moving items with related products and repackage as a special buy.
49. Start a blog. Write about your industry or detail in-store happenings.
50. Offer your customers discounts for each referral they provide.
Marketing is most effective if done in coordination with other
exposure. Enhance the above efforts with additional signage, newspaper
ads, displays and radio ads. Remember to tailor each event for your
target audience. If your message isn't being delivered to the right
person, it may be a wasted effort.
Small business owners can easily get too involved in the day-to-day
operations of their retail stores to spend any time brainstorming
marketing ideas or promotional events.
Some retailers worry that marketing is too expensive, others may find
it too time consuming. Without announcing who you are and what you sell,
how will anyone know? Here are 50 marketing ideas for retailers.
1. Create a calendar for customers with your shop's name and address on it.
2. Print the products you sell or services offered on the back of your business cards.
3. Always carry business cards with you. Give them freely and ask
permission to leave them in places your target market may visit.
4. Join a trade association or organization related to your industry.
5. Have a drawing for a product or a gift certificate. Use the entry forms to collect customers' mailing addresses.
6. Develop a brochure of services your shop offers.
7. Conduct monthly clinics about a product or service you offer or
schedule semi-annual seminars on related "how-to" information for your
industry.
8. Print a tagline for your business on letterhead, fax cover sheets, e-mails and invoices.
9. Develop a website to showcase your products, services and
location. Use a memorable URL and include it on all marketing materials.
10. Include customer testimonials in your printed literature.
11. Promote yourself as an expert by writing articles or tips on topics related to your industry.
12. Submit to the local newspaper, trade journal or other publications.
13. Host an after-hours gathering for your employees and their friends/relatives.
14. Provide free t-shirts with your logo to your staff to wear.
15. Send newsworthy press releases as often as needed.
16. Create an annual award and publicize it.
17. Develop your own TV show on your specialty and present it to your local cable station or public broadcasting station.
18. Create a press kit and keep its contents current.
19. Use an answering machine or voice mail system to catch
after-hours phone calls. Include basic information in your outgoing
messages such as business hours, location, website, etc.
20. Join a Chamber of Commerce where you can network with area business owners.
21. Hold an open house. Invite prominent city officials and the press.
22. Get a memorable local or toll-free phone number.
23. Place ads in publications your market reads. Be sure to reach the non-English speaking market as well.
24. Distribute specialty products such as pens, mouse pads, or mugs with your store's logo.
25. Advertise in creative locations such as park benches, buses, and popular Web sites.
I’m not talking about persuasive or manipulative marketing
techniques. I’m not impressed by those. In fact, quite the opposite,
that’s the quickest way to lose me as a customer.
What I am referring to is marketing that’s effective AND respects and rewards the customer or prospect.
Recently I was the recipient of such marketing.
I thought I’d share it to highlight it as a great example of what TO
do, and to inspire others to market in ways that not only serve their
business, but also their potential customers.
Camp Bow Wow’s Free Trial
A few weeks ago my husband and I attended a local street faire. Since
we have a new puppy, we were drawn to a booth from a local dog daycare
and boarding business. They had a sign-up sheet to win a free day of
doggie daycare. Our puppy Hope loves to socialize with other dogs, so we
signed up.
A few days later we received an email… we had won the free day. When
we called to follow up we were told we’d need to bring Hope in for an
interview (to make sure she would get along with the other dogs and to
provide proof she has received all her vaccinations). They also said
she’d be able to stay all day if we wanted (this was NOT her free day…
it was just a prep for the free day).
The day before our scheduled interview, I received both telephone and email reminders.
The email reminder even included a link that put the appointment on
my calendar! Upon arrival for the interview, they took Hope’s picture,
had her meet a few dogs (she passed with flying colors) and gave me a
complete tour of the facility, explaining all their procedures for
keeping the dogs safe and well cared for, whether you board for the day
or overnight. The owners also spent a few minutes chatting with me
before I left, while we watched Hope playing with the other dogs on the
Camper Cam video feed they feature in their lobby. They also informed me
I could watch her on their website, or via an app I could download on
my iPhone.
When I picked up Hope later that afternoon, I received a certificate
complete with her picture and verifying she had passed her interview and
was now approved to play or board at any Camp Bow Wow location across
the country. I was given several discount coupons and reminded I could
drop off Hope any weekday for her free day—no appointment necessary
(could they make it any easier?).
I also received a folder with a bumper sticker, several brochures,
educational materials about several dog health issues, her own Camp Bow
Wow name tag on her leash, and a handwritten report card from her
certified camp counselor advising me how her day went.
I left with a pooped-out pup and a positive experience.
The next morning I received a follow-up phone call from the owner
asking how Hope was doing and reminding me I could bring her back for
her free day anytime. I also discovered they had posted several photos
of Hope on their Facebook page (they must know dog owners love seeing
pics of their pups!) By the way, an out-of-state doggie daycare we
visited in May (and loved) asked us to Like their Facebook page and told
us to look for pic’s of Hope… a month later I’m still waiting for those
photos to be posted!
Camp Bow Wow didn’t just ask me to Like their Facebook page.
They gave me a reason to go to their website (to check out the Camper
Cam and see MY dog) and while there I saw their Facebook button and
clicked through. While I’m not a huge social media fan (if you’ve read my book
you know why) I have always advocated that if you’re going to use
social media for marketing it’s crucial to give people a reason to
follow you rather than simple ask them to.
To say I was impressed with Camp Bow Wow’s level of customer service is almost an understatement.
In this day and age of automation and computers, so many businesses
have lost sight of the power of the personal touch. Clearly these
owners, and this franchise have not.
Not only did they offer a free day to try out their facility, they
fully indoctrinated me and my dog into their family and system. We
haven’t even used the free day we won at the street faire yet and I’ve
already had a great experience.
It’s a great example of smart marketing.
As a marketer myself, I almost wanted to ask if they awarded everyone
who entered at the street faire a free day of puppy play. But I figured
I’d let them keep that secret to themselves. Whether we really did win,
or that’s how they treat everyone who shows an interest in their
facility (that would almost be MORE impressive) really doesn’t
matter. What matters is how they treated us and our precious pup.
How can you employ this kind of smart marketing in your business?
How can you share this level of customer service with not only your
paying clients, but also your prospects? How can you introduce potential
clients to you and your business in a way that creates a positive
relationship and gets them talking about you? How can you add personal
touches to make a stronger connection with your clients… to make them
feel appreciated?
Have you been impressed by smart marketing?
If so I’d love to hear about it. My mission is to educate and inspire
business owners to market with integrity and respect, so we can
eliminate manipulative marketing techniques. So, please post a comment
and share.
MSH Blog Creator and Chief Blogger
