Research is the key to success

The more you know about your potential client, competitors and your potential marketplace the better placed you will be to make decisions about the positioning and packaging of your proposition.

Take the time out to find out. Call up some of your competitors as a customer and ask some questions. Find out what they are doing, what they are offering, what their sales process is and their prices. Listen to how they are they presenting their service? Look at their websites. You can learn a huge amount from this and it may influence ultimately how you choose to package your service. Take a day out and go and visit some of your local competitors, play the role of a customer, look at their layout, promotions, customer service. Look at what works and what doesn't, pinch ideas that you could adapt to suit your business.

A useful way to summarise this information and compare notes at a glance is to create a spread sheet and compare like for like. To down load your free competitor analysis spread sheet click here

Find out about your potential buyers

Look out for surveys reports and articles which are regularly available from your industry associations, and read your industry press. What are some of your buyer's problems, issues and concerns? This information will help you to understand exactly how you can position what you have to offer to address some of these concerns.

Ask questions. Call up some of your contacts and ask them what they think? Commission a survey. A survey will not only help you to explore some of the issues, views and opinions your potential customer has but can also act as a marketing tool in its own right.

If you want to run a research survey we can help – online or paper based ask us for details contact us

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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Advert Design

Correctly Targeted Advertising A lot of any ones advertising budget can be wasted through poorly targeted advertising. To avoid this, you should only advertise when your message will be read by a high enough concentration of your qualified target prospects. If you are going to advertise you really need to do your research. You need to be able to answer the following questions

Think Marketing Questions

• Who reads it?
• Are the readers the people you want to reach?
• What are the readership or circulation figures?
• What geographical region does it cover?
• What are the planned features and you advertise how will they attract attention to your advert?
• Are there any specific sections that may naturally draw attention to your advertisement?
• Who else is advertising – what kind of responses and reactions did they get from their advert (people are often more than happy to share their experiences)

Advertising is expensive if it doesn't generate you a good return so the more research you can do before you make your decision the better.

Give your advert the best chance of working

Whenever you run an advertisement there are three elements to making your advertising productive and effective:

• You must attract their attention and motivate them with what's in it for the reader
• It must be easy to read and respond to
• You've got to give them a reason why they should contact you or phone you, or come in, or try out the product or service you're offering.

Unless your advertisement combines these three elements; self-serving advantage for the intended customer and a reason why they should take the action of contacting you or your business, your advertising will be so much less effective than it could be

Follow the AIDCA formula

To give your Adverts the best opportunity of getting read you need to follow the AIDCA formula. (Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, Action)

• Attention - It must attract ‘attention' with the headline and the picture
• Interest - It must keep the interest by making it easy to read and understand
• Desire - 'It must build ‘desire' with the value, offers and benefits
• Convince - It must ‘convince'
• Action - It must ask for ‘action'

These rules apply to any form of advertising that you do

Measure results

If you are running a number of adverts it is always useful to think about how you are going to effectively measure the results it generates. One way is to ask people where they heard about you. Or another is to make sure that you make a very specific and direct offer that you know would have only come from any one particular advert campaign.

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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Networking

Networking is a great way to build new relationships. There are so many different types of networking events to choose from. If you are an early riser a breakfast meeting might suit, or an evening event if you prefer. There are speed networking events, profit clubs, lunches, boat trips, theatre visits, presentations, speaker sessions, discussion groups and more. The most important thing is to choose the networking event, locations and target audience that most suits what you are looking for.

• Find out about people by asking questions – don't just start pitching what you do
• Listen for some problems or needs that you might be able to help with
• Speak to as many people as you can – mix and mingle
• Remember that everyone there is open to talking as they are all there for the same reason
• Concentrate on building rapport not selling
• Enjoy yourself and relax
• Take a business card with you (I know that is obvious but some people don't)
• Follow up the people you meet with a brief email or letter
• If you meet someone you think you could do some thing with in the future set up an meeting to talk in further detail
• If you get a chance to speak for a few minutes about who you are and what you do know your USP's and have a short statement that you can make that gets that across and keeps it in people's minds
• Have an elevator speech that you feel comfortable with – be able to speak easily about how your business helps people and solves problems
• Be clear about what you are looking for in terms of new business. If you are presenting what you do at a profit or referral club you will get the opportunity to explain what you are looking for so that they can get introductions for you.
• Build up a few events that you like and go on a regular basis for a while – this will make it easier to build stronger relationships and trust

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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Direct Mail

Follow up

Don't send out more than you have the resource to follow up this, needs to be done within a few days of sending the mail shot.

Hand Deliver and Test

Another useful trick to getting a better return from your mail shot is to be selective about where you distribute it, and test small batches by hand delivering in the evenings.

An evening delivery is more likely to be read as it is not competing with the morning post. The other advantage is that you can selectively test headlines, copy and special incentives and see what works before investing in a larger distribution.

There are various ways in which direct mail can be delivered to your target audience.

• As an insert in the local or national press or industry magazine
• Directly to households with the postman
• As a sales letter in an envelope
• Hand delivered as a flyer
• Handed out to passers by
• Delivered with some thing complimentary or connected they have purchased
• Nationally or internationally via a direct mailing organisation
• Using your own targeted direct mailing list

Measure Results

You need to choose the method to suit your goals and your budget

Again consider the value of testing in small batches before you spend a lot on bulk mail outs as if you are not careful many will end up in the bin.

Just like an advertisement you can greatly influence the response rate of every direct mail flyer or letter by the way that the message or offering is communicated. Remember you need to write with your audiences interests at heart as it is them that you need to stimulate into action.

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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Getting free PR is easier than you think.

First, decide who could be interested in your story or your expertise

• Local Press
• Local Radio
• Trade, Technical and Specialist Magazines
• National Press
• Lifestyle Magazines
• Industry Association Websites

You can find details of all publications in directories like BRAD or Hollis Press and Public Relations Annual at your local reference library. A simple goggle search is also effective. All you have to do is find out what the editors of all your industry press and websites are looking for. They all produce regular feature lists and article writing guidance notes that explain exactly what you need to write in order to fulfil their criteria. Then it is just a matter of adhering to their deadlines and sending your articles in. It always helps to have built up a relationship with the editor beforehand, so having a conversation about the article and angle you are planning making an enquiry about their interest and its suitability for their readers will help.

Write with the reader in mind

To be successful with PR understanding that it is that it's all about writing something that'll be of value to the reader, listener or viewer…i.e. not a self-serving press release or article that's all about you, is vital. People care about what's important to them – things that will improve their life, expand their comfort, enrich them, entertain them, fulfil them and protect them.

Public relations will work for you as long as you keep your focus on what will benefit people's lives or businesses the most.

Be the expert

It is also possible to get opportunities to promote yourself on TV and Radio. Producers are always looking for new angles and ideas to book viewings and listeners. Breakfast shows, national quizzes, central or local news, specialist shows, interviews. If you can provide something creative that would be of interest to the general public and can position yourself as the expert then you would have a very good chance of getting an opportunity.

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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If you are able to obtain your existing customers email addresses and their permission to communicate with them in this way it is an excellent time and money saving way of staying in touch, and keeping your business name in the forefront of their mind. You do need to think about what you use it for and consider the amount of spam that the majority get bothered with on a daily basis, your email needs to be some thing that people welcome. You could use it for special reminders for appointments booked, follow up special offers, some useful information or ideas, new product launches, new services, competitions and more…. think about it what could you use the email for.

How easy is your email address to use?

The other thing to consider if you are in business is how easy is your email address to use? If it is long winded with lots of letters and words that are difficult to spell the chances are that you will loose some business because off it. Also if your email reads like a small local resident that is how you will perceived, this is no good when you need to come across as credible business.

So choose email addresses and domain names that make it completely clear what business you are in and make them as easy and as straight forward as you can to use.

If you want a new email address and domain name we can set it up for you as well as advise you on the best name to use. Go to websites for more information.

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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The relationships that you build will be the life blood of your business success. It requires much more effort to attract a new customer.

Than it does to maintain and nurture an existing one. Many people do have a real sense of loyalty to the supplier they use and providing that they are being well looked after will not go else where even if the price goes up So do everything you can to strengthen the bond between you and your existing customers and they will stay with you. Host Beneficiary Relationships Host beneficiary relationships are based on harnessing the existing goodwill and strong relationships that all sorts of other businesses have already established with prime prospects for your product or service.

Ask yourself who in your marketing area already sells to the customers you want to reach or serve? They'll tend to be selling something that goes before, goes along with or follows the product or service you would sell to these people.

The moment you identify who these businesses are, all you have to do is contact those businesses and make it easy and advantageous for them to recommend their customers to you.

Think marketing questions

• What kind of business already deals with your potential customers?
• Who is most likely to do business with your potential customers before your service would be required?
• Who is most likely to do business with your potential customers after a service like yours has been delivered?
• What kind of people would it be beneficial for you to create a host beneficiary relationship with?

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When you introduce referrals systems, you introduce specific processes that you use regularly to get your customers to recommend other people they associate with to seek out your products or services.

Referrals are by far the best types of customers to have. They already know how good you are as a result of someone else's positive experience. This means that they've invariably pre-disposed to deal with you and they're far less likely to be “price shoppers”.

Referral systems are surprisingly simple and easy to set up, and require very little extra effort, cost or time. They also represent the most immediate source of increased customers available to your business.

One idea is to offer your customers a significant discount in return for 2 introductions. Let your satisfied customer do the initial introduction and recommendation which you follow up. It is much easier to follow up a hot lead than it is to approach a cold one.

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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Direct telephone prospect research

If you are using the telephone to make direct contact with prospective clients make sure that who ever is making the calls qualifies the prospect against the criteria you have set.

For example depending on what you are selling you will have a set of criteria someone would need to fulfil in order for them to be a potential prospect for your services.

Direct telephone contact with prospects does work if it is coupled with an intelligent and disciplined approach to the necessary follow up. As you probably have already experienced there is usually a right time for your prospects to buy and you need to find out exactly when that is and make sure that your follow up co-insides with that.

Some examples of prospect research questions that could be applied or adapted to suit your business are as follows…

• Do you currently use ………………. for X and Y
• When do you tend to make your decisions about the suppliers you are going to use?
• How do you evaluate providers – what is the process you go through?
• What would we need to do to create the opportunity for you to see what we do could do?
• What kind of problems do you have in the X and Y area?
• What kind of solutions are you exploring?
• Are you interested in finding out more about how we could help?

“Quantity” doesn't matter in lead generation. “Quality and convertibility” are the key factors. Quality refers to your prospects capacity and level of desire to buy your product or service. Somebody could desire your product or service but not be motivated to buy it right now. You need to find out as quickly as possible if they are a genuine prospect and if they are what their criteria, is for both exploring and potentially buying from you is. People will appreciate you being up front and asking, and it saves a lot of following up with people that are never going to become customers.

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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How many shop windows do you pass in a typical day? How many of them are using the space to their advantage? We are often attracted into a shop by what we see in the window.

Shops that are located close to traffic lights or road junctions where cars typically queue up really do have a captive audience for their window display.

The window display is like your advert for your business. It is the first thing people see when they pass by and it does influence first impressions.

Some window display tips

• Look at your window display from the customer's point of view and ask yourself what does your window display say about your business?
• Make sure it is clean and clear of clutter
• Use special offers and new popular products, to attract attention
• Measure what works – notice what people are looking at and responding to
• Up date displays every week – give your customers something new to look at
• Keep your messages simple and straight forward
• Make sure your brand image is reflected throughout the display
• Co-ordinate your corporate colour scheme
• Use scrolling signs to attract the eye
• Use lights after dark to make your window display stand out
• Make sure the natural light in your shop ensure people know your shop is open
• Don't leave grills or grates up or windows that reflect poor or dark lighting it can make you look shut

For more ideas book a free marketing consultation contact us

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

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Customer Service

Stepping into the customers shoes is the best way to understand how important it is. Consider a typical day out in your town shopping and having lunch out. What do you remember about the service you received? Probably not very much unless it was particularly bad or outstandingly good. How many titimes have you been waiting to get served at a counter and felt that you were some how invisible to the person on the other side who seemed more interested in talking to their colleague about how long it is until finishing time. Businesses don't survive without customers. They are its life blood. Each customer that enters your business is a potential gold mine. To put this into perspective, think about your answers to the following questions

How many existing customers does your business have?

How often do they do business with you?

On average how much do they spend each time they do business with you?

How long do they tend to stay with you?

On average what is the potential financial value of each good customer you have?

It is so much more costly to attract new customers than it is to look after and keep the ones you have got. And really apart from being genuine supporters of your enterprise they are worth a lot financially too. Many people do have a sense of loyalty when they have been using a particular service for some time and will probably continue even if the prices rise if they continue to get what is important to them in terms of a service they value.

So how do customers like to be treated? What is important to people when they use your business?

Ask your customers these questions? Run a customer service survey. Find out what they think. Some of the simple things that are expressed are probably very inexpensive to carry out. A nice smile and a true interest in them as people is free.

For more Money Making Marketing Ideas, Free Reports and Recommended Resources go to www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com