Most forms of out-bound marketing contain some type of offer or discount to seduce the potential customer to come to your business to spend their money. The offer can be many different things including; dollar amount discount, percentage amount discount, buy one get one free, total freebie, buy 9 get the 10th free and many, many more. I have compiled a list of things to keep in mind when deciding what kind of offer to use in your marketing package.
1-The offer needs to be good enough to arouse the interest of the customer enough to act upon it, but at the same time not too good that you are giving away too much and losing money on the offer. A good question to ask yourself is “Am I okay with giving this offer to everyone all day long?” If not, you might want to rethink the offer.
2-Giving away a total freebie can be a good thing and I have done this with my business before. We did a direct mailer to new move-ins in the area giving them a completely free service. We wanted to get these new move-ins to our business before they got a chance to go to our competitors. If you want to try this I can tell you that you really need to have your ducks in a row. You need to completely wow this new potential customer so that they won’t want to check out your competition. It is also very helpful to have a follow up offer ready for them to get them back again. If they don’t return to your business you might just as well have thrown the money you spent on your promotion out the window.
3-Prepare your sales staff and site to receive the customer when they come in to redeem the offer you have sent out to treat the customer like gold. This is another time for you to shine and give your customer reason to never want to visit your competitor. It is also a great time to gently up sell the customer since they are already thinking they are getting a good deal.
4- Use the offer to promote a product or service that needs to be bolstered, why give out an offer on something that is already selling well.
5-You are going to attract those who are coupon and discount seekers and have little sense of loyalty, it is just going to happen. The way to counter act this is to come up with a loyalty program. Get that coupon seeker into your business with your initial offer and keep them coming back with a loyalty program.
Let me hear some of your ideas on the subject.
11.17.2009
11.09.2009
Out-Bound Marketing Focus
Service industry businesses need to constantly seek new customers/clients and should design a marketing plan that includes out-bound, in-bound, and direct sales/marketing. Each type of marketing has its own set of characteristics that need to be understood and developed. It is most important to understand how to measure success and adapt. Marketing is rarely about finding the one process that works and sticking with if forever but rather finding what works now, using that particular process and then adapting and changing along with our customers/clients needs and wants.
I want to write on out-bound marketing for this article and how to focus our efforts and maximize our advertising budget to get the most benefit possible. Out-bound marketing for service industry businesses could include systems like direct mail coupons, newspaper inserts and ads, and innovative signage on your property to attract drive by traffic.
The biggest inherent problem with out-bound marketing is that it is usually expensive. When you spend a lot of money you want a lot of return and most times you are going to end up disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, there are out-bound marketing programs that will work well for your business but it seems to me that well working programs won’t stay that way forever.
At the onset it is an educated guessing game is to what method of out-bound marketing, or the offer of that program, will attract the attention of your potential customer/client, so how do you decide if you are receiving a good return. For example, if you put out a piece of direct mail coupon and you get a reasonable but not great return and you think it could be better, how or what do you change about the coupon to attract a larger return. Some might say to change one thing at a time about the offer and then track the success, then change another thing and see how that worked. The problem here is that it will take forever and be very costly to do so.
What I like to do is to ask my customers to tell me what worked for them with a quick customer feedback survey. Why wait any longer than you need to or spend any more money than you need to when you can get the answers right from the source itself almost immediately. Have you customer tell you what it was about that coupon or offer or ad that attracted them to come to your business. Was it the price point, was it the proximity of your business to their work or home, or any number of things, just ask them. From there you can change and adapt to be able to attract an even greater return on your marketing investment.
The last thing I want to mention is the need to continually be accessing the needs and wants of your customers/clients because they are continually changing. By asking them what they need and want, you can not only deliver it to them but also gauge the needs and wants of the majority of potential customers and be able to market to them in a much more focused way saving you both time and money.
Let me hear your thoughts.
I want to write on out-bound marketing for this article and how to focus our efforts and maximize our advertising budget to get the most benefit possible. Out-bound marketing for service industry businesses could include systems like direct mail coupons, newspaper inserts and ads, and innovative signage on your property to attract drive by traffic.
The biggest inherent problem with out-bound marketing is that it is usually expensive. When you spend a lot of money you want a lot of return and most times you are going to end up disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, there are out-bound marketing programs that will work well for your business but it seems to me that well working programs won’t stay that way forever.
At the onset it is an educated guessing game is to what method of out-bound marketing, or the offer of that program, will attract the attention of your potential customer/client, so how do you decide if you are receiving a good return. For example, if you put out a piece of direct mail coupon and you get a reasonable but not great return and you think it could be better, how or what do you change about the coupon to attract a larger return. Some might say to change one thing at a time about the offer and then track the success, then change another thing and see how that worked. The problem here is that it will take forever and be very costly to do so.
What I like to do is to ask my customers to tell me what worked for them with a quick customer feedback survey. Why wait any longer than you need to or spend any more money than you need to when you can get the answers right from the source itself almost immediately. Have you customer tell you what it was about that coupon or offer or ad that attracted them to come to your business. Was it the price point, was it the proximity of your business to their work or home, or any number of things, just ask them. From there you can change and adapt to be able to attract an even greater return on your marketing investment.
The last thing I want to mention is the need to continually be accessing the needs and wants of your customers/clients because they are continually changing. By asking them what they need and want, you can not only deliver it to them but also gauge the needs and wants of the majority of potential customers and be able to market to them in a much more focused way saving you both time and money.
Let me hear your thoughts.
11.03.2009
Ramblings of an Entrepreneur
I am calling this blog Ramblings of an Entrepreneur because that is exactly what it is, ramblings, mixed with a little business and life experiences that make up what I have learned and believe. I want to share my experiences and hope that others will share theirs. I am a big believer in the community and things learned from others experiences along with the synergy, camaraderie, and support that come with sharing each other’s experiences. No one has all of the answers (especially myself) but together we can solve most problems or at least make them less painful and the solutions more productive.
My background consist of being part of a family business in the service industry (car washes) where I learned from the ground up having done every job from vacuuming and drying cars to sales, managing sites, training, marketing, and accounting. Our family business was started 50 years ago by my father and grandfather and now is on the fourth generation. Along the way I have also built and sold a couple of start ups, a landscape design and installation business, and an off-road car manufacturing business.
Our latest adventure, Minute Response, is a software start up offering businesses a marketing system using a customer feedback survey as a vehicle to deliver customer retention, new customer referrals, operational and marketing insights, and opt-in email marketing database.
There are many topics I want to tackle and discuss within this blog such as; work ethic, the entrepreneur spirit, marketing, business management and others that come up on this journey.
My father came to me when I was 14 years old, just as he had done with my older brothers, and told me that anything that I wanted from that time forward (except room and board) I would need to pay for myself. He said I could work for him at the car washes or find another job but that I was going to work on Saturdays and during the summer. I knew this was coming from watching my brothers go through the same indoctrination into the work force and I was excited and eager to do so. I attribute this parental decision for giving me the work ethic that I now enjoy, especially if I wanted to participate in the offerings of youth that my friends had supplied to them by their parents.
Work ethic and the ability to push through the hard times are in my opinion one of the most important characteristics that an entrepreneur should posses. One might say that it is just as important as education, business knowledge, and experience. A good work ethic will propel your business and be able to sustain it during the hard times like we now are experiencing. A good work ethic won’t let you quit and pushes you to find the answers you need and that sometimes is more than half the battle.
Where does “work ethic” fit into your prioritization of character traits?
My background consist of being part of a family business in the service industry (car washes) where I learned from the ground up having done every job from vacuuming and drying cars to sales, managing sites, training, marketing, and accounting. Our family business was started 50 years ago by my father and grandfather and now is on the fourth generation. Along the way I have also built and sold a couple of start ups, a landscape design and installation business, and an off-road car manufacturing business.
Our latest adventure, Minute Response, is a software start up offering businesses a marketing system using a customer feedback survey as a vehicle to deliver customer retention, new customer referrals, operational and marketing insights, and opt-in email marketing database.
There are many topics I want to tackle and discuss within this blog such as; work ethic, the entrepreneur spirit, marketing, business management and others that come up on this journey.
My father came to me when I was 14 years old, just as he had done with my older brothers, and told me that anything that I wanted from that time forward (except room and board) I would need to pay for myself. He said I could work for him at the car washes or find another job but that I was going to work on Saturdays and during the summer. I knew this was coming from watching my brothers go through the same indoctrination into the work force and I was excited and eager to do so. I attribute this parental decision for giving me the work ethic that I now enjoy, especially if I wanted to participate in the offerings of youth that my friends had supplied to them by their parents.
Work ethic and the ability to push through the hard times are in my opinion one of the most important characteristics that an entrepreneur should posses. One might say that it is just as important as education, business knowledge, and experience. A good work ethic will propel your business and be able to sustain it during the hard times like we now are experiencing. A good work ethic won’t let you quit and pushes you to find the answers you need and that sometimes is more than half the battle.
Where does “work ethic” fit into your prioritization of character traits?
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