Is marketing your business in this economy more of a challenge than ever? Has it gotten harder for you to generate leads, close sales and meet your profit goals? Are you worried that it’s going to get harder in the year ahead? You’re not alone.
No question that the recession has focused our attention. Small business owners like you are looking hard at their marketing strategies and wondering what to do next.
Two simple marketing strategies to make your marketing rise to the challenge. Maximize your marketing and you can continue to profit in this economy.
1. Get The Most For Every Dollar You Spend
There I go again, stating the obvious. But too many business owners are resigned to poor returns on their marketing dollars. Don’t be one of them.
Almost every fall, my wife and I drive over the mountain from our Vermont vacation home to a family-owned orchard in Monkton to pick apples. We enjoy choosing different varieties for cooking and eating — and nothing beats the crisp taste of an apple right off the tree.
It’s easy picking, too; the trees typically are heavily laden with apples. The family that works the orchard has been pruning, grafting, and fertilizing so that every branch bears as much fruit as possible so they can maximize their profits.
The same is true with your marketing. You want each of your marketing activities to bear good fruit. Are your ads, mailings and website generating the maximum number of leads and sales? Or are they more like an apple tree, with only one or two apples on it.
Typically, small business owners spend plenty of money on marketing but get only a fraction of the business they could from it. Look at your website, for example.
– How many visitors do you get per day?
– How many of those visitors contact you?
If the number is anything less than 10%, you’re not getting the results you should from the money you’re spending.
2. Take Every Dollar Off The Table
After months of looking for a new bed, my wife and I finally agreed on a cherry bed frame from a craftsman in Maine. When my wife called to place the order, the savvy sales person asked her if we also wanted matching nightstands. He showed her several styles that would complement the bed, explained how easy it is to customize them, and offered free shipping on all the pieces if we decided within a week.
We hadn’t planned to buy night tables, but the logic of getting furniture that matched and the discount persuaded us.
Are you being as smart as this furniture sales person?
Once you have a client ready to make a purchase, they’ve already crossed the purchasing threshold. If you have more than one product or service, this is a good time to sell them more. You can increase the amount you make from each sale by 30% with an effective up-sell or cross-sell strategy.
And that’s only the beginning. With the right follow up marketing strategy, you can get your loyal clients to buy from you again and again.
The goal is to help your clients get not just the product or service they initially asked about but the best complement of products or services you provide. In doing so, you’ll maximize the value of each of your clients. You’ll make 30% to 100% more from each client.
Imagine you were in a meeting with a client and they put $1,300 hundred dollars on the table – money they had available to buy your products or services. Would you take $800 and walk away from the rest? Of course not, but that is what most business owners do every day by not optimizing their cross-sell, up-sell and follow-up strategies.
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