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Does your business need more customers?

I think I already know your answer… Of course!

Do you realise that is the biggest problem virtually all business owners face, yet they do nothing about month after month and even year after year?

Why?

I don’t know. The solution is SIMPLE! Go and get more customers.

How you ask? Good question! Now you’re about to learn
something fantastic…

To get more customers than are you getting now, first of all it’s a good idea to know how many you are getting now! Does that make sense? If you know where your customers are coming from now, you’re part way there to solving the problem of knowing where to get more.

95% of all business owners I meet don’t know how many customers they are getting now… in this last week.

Do you know how many paying customers you had buy from you
last week? No? Then I suggest you go find out.

Then you’re ready for step 2. Don’t read on until you have started on step 1 and gone and worked out how many sales you had last week, okay?

Did you go and do it? Well….
This article isn’t going anywhere, so off you go. Go measure and come back.

Okay. Can I assume you went and did it?
No? Well how come? I’m trying to help you here.

Step 2.
Now that you have measured (!) what did you find?

Over the next week I want you to start asking people how they found out about you. It’s simple. That’s all you have to do.

People don’t mind you doing it either. Do it with every sale, preferably with every phone call too.

Over the week collate how many calls and customers come from different ads etc. Tally up each form of paid promotion and see where the customers are coming from. You’ll be amazed at the result, I guarantee it.

So just do this step and you’re ready for step 3. If you haven’t done step 2, or even step 1, because you are too busy… remember it’s not a busy-ness that gives you more money, it’s a business.

Step 3.
Now that you know where you customers come from, how many come from each paid promotion and how many find you through referrals or other means, it’s time to simply improve on those strategies and even create some new ones.

Lets break that into two areas…

Step 4.
This is where I will touch on how to improve what form of promotion you are using now.

Improving is easy! Yet so few people do anything about this. All you have to do is read one book and you will start to know how to make an improvement.

Have you read the book on advertising, “Scientific Advertising”
by Claude Hopkins? If not why not? It’s free from many websites, including my own you can see at the bottom of this article.

Again, being busy makes no difference to growing your business or getting more customers. Isn’t that what you need? You’ll always have a need to get new customers while you’re in business, so learning how TODAY is the beginning of solving the problem forever!

Read Scientific Advertising. If you have already read it, well done! Now I suggest you read it again as reading it once won’t get it all to sink in.

Just changing the top 20% of the ad to remove your business name or logo then putting a headline of some sort across the top of your ad beginning with “How to” and finishing it with a benefit relative for your industry will probably triple your responses. People don’t care what your business name is before they have ever bought from you. Do they?

Step 5.
This is where we need to look at how to get more customers. I could (and have) written a book on this. This is such a huge subject I won’t go into it too deeply.

But let me suggest that nearly ALL businesses can benefit from simply running an ad in their local newspaper.

Yes you heard right. The newspaper is a super profitable means of getting new customers, mainly because tens of thousands of people read the newspaper every single week and you can tell them about your business just by spending some money on an ad.

If you’ve “tried” newspaper advertising and it didn’t work for you I suggest you open your mind to the idea again. Here’s why…

Reason 1. Every business owner I have ever met, before I worked with them, has tried newspaper ads and has failed to get enough sales to pay for it from the profit of sales. That’s because they or the newspaper designed it themselves and neither of them has read a book from any of the top advertising legends in the world… ever!

Reason 2. By reading 1 or more books you can make a poor ad that gets no calls into a super profitable ad, in one week!

Reason 3. You only have to run an ad once to see if it works. No $5,000 commitments like radio, or TV.

Reason 4. If you take the time to study success principles of advertising you can get a fantastic number of customers, in fact more than you can handle! When that happens you just run the ad anytime you’d like more customers. How does that sound?

Reason 5. You can test a new ad design for just $200 or less, so there’s low risk.

With newspaper ads you need to run them on page 3, 5, 7 or 9. No later!

If you don’t then you won’t get the best value for money. More people read these pages than any other, that’s why the newspaper charges you extra for it. But wouldn’t you like to get 5 - 10 times better response by paying 30% more?

I know I would!

Getting an education about effective advertising and marketing is the best education you will ever get. Yet virtually no one in business bothers doing it.

You will always need to get new customers.

Now here is the most powerful thing I can teach you about marketing.

“The aim of marketing is to generate more customers than you can handle!”

When you have more customers than you can handle, it becomes a supply and demand situation. If there is a scarcity of supply, due to demand, it means you can put your prices up.

And when you put your prices up you make more net profit margin. That means more take home pay for YOU without more
hours of work, or extra employees, or stress.

Has that motivated you to want to do more marketing and become a student of it?

Tim Stokes is unlike most marketing men you will ever meet. He is a master at teaching people how to market, not a master at charging you a fortune to use his services for marketing. Which would you prefer?
Go to http://www.bbms.com.au to find out more about his huge range of professional business building services and see business owners getting fantastic results that are just like you!
To learn more for free subscribe to Tim’s free business growth tips newsletter available through his website. Or go there to receive Scientific Advertising for free!
See more of Tim’s articles at http://www.ezinearticles.com under Tim Stokes expert author

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When the word “marketing” comes up, most people immediately think of fancy ad campaigns and big budgets. They may make you feel good, but in today’s economy, most companies can only afford to spend money on marketing programs that actually drive sales leads in the door.

A tightly focused “guerrilla” marketing program, when done right, can help a company accelerate its sales at a fraction of the cost of traditional programs and campaigns.

As the economy starts to rebound, now is a great time to re-energize your marketing programs and focus on Marketing that Sells. Start by asking and answering the following questions:

Are my marketing programs maximizing awareness and lead generation at minimum cost?
Do my website, collateral and PR messages clearly communicate my company’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP), and why customers should pick us over the competition?

Is there effective hand-off of sales leads from Marketing to Sales, and am I sure that my Sales team is following up on every lead?

Do I really know what my Return On Investment is from my marketing spending?

Once you’ve answered the above questions, do what top companies are doing today, to maximize marketing ROI through guerilla marketing programs:

Continuously update/refresh your website and collateral to make sure you are clearly communicating your company’s USP.

Build low cost e-marketing campaigns using newsletters, search engine optimization and internet ad placement (such as Google AdWords).

Focus your PR efforts on feature article and case study placement in trade press that targets your customers.

Deploy an inside sales/lead development function to qualify leads generated by Marketing programs and ensure effective hand-off to Sales.

Customize your CRM system to track the source of all incoming leads, measure Marketing ROI, and ensure that every lead is actively managed by your Sales team.

These are just a few ideas to help get you started on the path toward “Marketing That Sells.”

About Cube Management

Cube Management delivers sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions (whether recruiting, interim management or consulting) that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results. Download the Cube Management Inside Sales Guide and the Cube Management Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide.

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Letters of recommendation are very powerful third-party endorsements aids to closing sales. They can also be considered “captured word-of-mouth.” The problem is most companies don’t typically have as many letters of recommendation as they need for a successful business to business marketing strategy. There are two reasons: 1) writing such a letter is not usually a high priority for your happy customer and they often do not follow through; and 2) You feel embarrassed pushing the issue with reminders and nudges.

There is a simple solution for your business to business marketing strategy. Invent an informal special occasion to be held about six weeks from the time you start the project. At the special occasion - a company meeting perhaps - the CEO will be presented with new letters of recommendation. This gives your customer a specific deadline and a reason to get the letter done.

Then assign someone like an upbeat, fairly aggressive receptionist, to be in charge of the project. The event can be quite informal but make it a real event so you will be telling the truth. Give your receptionist a four-week runway and a list of known happy customers with telephone numbers. Have the receptionist call each customer and ask if the person would be willing to write such a letter to be presented at the special occasion.

When they agree, as most will, set a date for the letter to be completed. Make sure you have some leeway too. That way, if the customer forgets, there will still be time to get the letter in your hands before the event. The receptionist will not experience the same embarrassment you would in asking for these letters of recommendation. I have seen as many as eight letters arrive in less than a week.

You can even pick certain subjects to be addressed in the letters. Let’s say that price is an issue with your company. Ask, through the receptionist, if the writer of the letter would please touch on the price issue in a favorable manner in the letter. Several such letters, properly referenced, will handle the “price” objection for many prospects.

Eight or 10 letters of recommendation skillfully used in the hands of your sales people can increase your closing ratio by as much as 50 percent. And these letters can open doors as well as close sales. Letters of recommendation are an essential part of any business to business marketing program. Use them well and use them often.

Author, John Elliott, founder and president of Power PR, Inc., has been an authority in public relations and marketing for more than 36 years. As a public relations executive, he has been instrumental in landing hundreds of pages and hundreds of hours of radio and television coverage for his various local, national, and international clients and employers, and has secured press coverage for political, art, sports, telecommunications, manufacturing, medical, scientific, and many other organizations.

More information can be found at http://www.powerpr.com

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