According to Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Are you getting the number of inquiries and sales you want from your target market? If you’re not getting results then why keep marketing the same way over and over again?

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Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work

Small Business Marketing Question
“My marketing question is about my target market. I am re-structuring my business. I monogram (embroider) on items. I could market to anyone and everyone needing promotional wear but should I or would it be better to narrow down my target. At the same time I don’t want to miss an opportunity.

Your advice would me most appreciated.”
Cynthia

Answer
Pick a niche or a couple of niches and you can focus your marketing, charge more and make more.

- Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Make Sense and Make Money

Typically businesses that market to other businesses blame the slowdown in December on the holidays. Business owners and marketers will tell you that December is just slow, what with most of their prospects being preoccupied with the holidays.

Is this correct or is it nonsense?

Yes, it’s true at this time of year most people’s minds are focused on the holidays and many people are preoccupied with spending money on gifts, which is actually a good thing for B to B businesses smart enough to see this as an opportunity, not an obstacle.

Think about it, your prospects have a mindset to spend money, and like most people who never actually get the gifts they really want, are more than willing to spend money on themselves. They’re ripe and ready for you to market to them, though you just need to turn one obstacle into an opportunity.

The obstacle is they’re thinking about the holidays and Christmas. The opportunity - use the holidays and Christmas to market your products and services. For example, many people have wish lists for Christmas presents, why not ask them to create a wish list for their business. Ask them what they want and need to grow business next year and then list the products and services you sell.

With the right strategy - December can be your best month ever. Instead of seeing the holidays as a distraction, you can leverage them to increase your sales and profits.

- Charlie Cook
Marketing That Gets Results

If marketing your business has you spooked, discover how a Halloween marketing strategy can pull in all the business clients you want.

If you live in the U.S., at the end of October you’ll be preparing for a stream of young children to come to your door on Halloween. One by one or in groups of friends, they’ll ring the bell and shout, “Trick or Treat”.

To avoid having them actually play a trick on us, you bribe these youngsters with a selection of mini candy bars. You could offer them healthy treats like apples or small boxes of raisins or you could try something novel like telling them a favorite joke, but most young children are on a mission. They want to fill their plastic pumpkins and pillowcases with candy as quickly as possible.

You may not be a fan of sugar-based diets, but if you enjoy seeing all those undersized fairy godmothers and ghosts and goblins on Halloween, you’ll indulge them and dole out one candy bar after another. Your costumed customers know what they want. If they don’t get it from you, they’ll go next door.

This Halloween strategy can also help you grow your business. Want to get a steady stream of customers coming to your door? Want to avoid having potential clients go next door? Offer them a free treat! It works to get children ringing doorbells and talking to adults whom they barely know, and it will work for your business.

What kind of treats will bring in your prospects? Probably not Snickers Bars or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, delicious as these are. The answer depends on what you sell and what your prospects’ want. For example, if your prospects want to:

- Improve their finances - offer them a free guide or a workshop on ways to make more and save more money.

- Sell their home - give them a guide to maximizing their profits.

- Increase their physical mobility and avoid pain - give them tips on ways to improve their posture and strength.

- Get better results with their advertising - give them a guide to writing ads that get a better response.

If you know what your prospects want, you can pull them in like kids at Halloween with the right treat, free report or workshop. Using this strategy on the Internet, you can attract hundreds of qualified prospects each month to your business.

Over twenty thousand people currently subscribe to my weekly marketing newsletter. Each of them signed up in response to my offer of a free marketing guide. And this free marketing guide continues to attract over a thousand new subscribers each month.

Marketing Tricks to Avoid
Some companies think that tricking people into trying their services or products is a clever way to attract customers. phone companies and credit card companies offer low introductory rates that are subject to steep increases a few months later. Some small businesses make wild promises that their services and products don’t live up to.

No one likes to have tricks played on him or her at Halloween or any other time. Strong sales depend on trust. Violate trust and good will with marketing gimmickry, and you’ve lost your prospect for good - and probably several of the friends they tell about you as well.

Marketing Treats to Use
Offer prospects a treat to get them to contact you, to stay in touch, to visit your showroom and to thank them for making a purchase. Not sure what to give away to prompt prospects to contact you and visit your store?

In the 1930s, Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota built a reputation and their business by giving away a glass of ice water. Before cars were air-conditioned, the promise of a cold glass of water was enough to pull a steady stream of hot and thirsty travelers off the highway and into the store.

Today people are hungry for information and ideas that will solve their daily problems and simplify their lives. A Stamford, Connecticut financial firm used a series of f.ree workshops for wealthy investors to pull in prospects and quickly added mill0ns under management.

Make your free offer something your prospects won’t want to turn down, whether its a report, article, workshop, or educational CD. It doesn’t have to be big but it does need to target the interests of your market and be related to your products and services.

With the right freebie, you’ll attract prospects by the thousands and see your sales skyrocket.
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Speaking of freebies, don’t forget to sign-up for the free small business marketing guide with this link.
- Charlie Cook

Your surfing the web, looking for information to help you solve a problem. With a seemingly infinite number of sites to pick from your task is simple. You want to to scan sites as quickly as possible to determine whether they have the information, product or service that can help you. You want to minimize the amount of time you spend on each site and click on to the next web site until you find one that gets your full attention.

Your prospects do the same thing when they are searching for information online. If they can’t instantly see that you can help them solve their problem or have what they need, they’ll be gone to your competitors’ sites.

You’ve got just a second or two to grab their attention, to let them know you can help them.

What do you do when you come to a web site that leads with the company name, a welcome message or worse yet is titled “home page”? Do you spend the time looking down the page to find the information you want or do you skip to another web site that leads with a headline that specifically identifies your concern and promises the solution you are looking for.

If you want more prospects to stop at your web site you need to make it stand out from the crowd with your marketing message You need to discover how to use the copy and the web design to prompt prospects to contact you.
- Charlie Cook

Want to know what to put in your ads to pull in prospects like a magnet?

Think like your prospects. What is important to them?

Do they want to know your company name? (Eventually but that’s not their biggest concern.)

Do they want to know how many years you’ve been in business? (Maybe but its not high on their list.)

What they want to know is how you can help them. Use the limited space in your ads to get to the point, to tell them how you can help them and how they can get what they want.

Do this and you’ll see your sales go through the roof as one of my clients did when he changed his ad. His biggest complaint now is how to handle all the business he’s getting.
- Charlie Cook
Discover what can happen when you have an ad that pulls in prospects and sales