Mar/100
You can be successful without marketing
If you have a good product or a good service, isn’t that enough to ensure customers return? To ensure that people buy from you again and become loyal fans of your business? Can’t you rely on your product or service to generate loyal custom, without having to advertise, build customer relationships, collect data and all of the hard work that goes with it?
A good product or service is necessary to ensure people return, but it is not sufficient. Why? There are two main reasons. First, you have competitors, some of whom also have a good product or service. In other words, your customers have a choice and you need to give them a reason to choose you. Second, life is busy. Most people have a lot going on. They have lots of different things competing for their attention every day. Combine this scarcity of attention with the fact that you have competition, and it becomes critical that your product or service is memorable.
Of course your product needs to be good. Without that, you have no business. But you must also find inventive ways to remind customers about you and entice them back. And you can’t do that unless you have their contact details. Who ever heard of a fan club where all the fans are anonymous?
However, all of this changes if you are exceptional. If you are outstanding, the rules are different. If your service is truly remarkable and stands out from the crowd, your customers won’t need to be enticed back. There are very few such businesses and if you are one of them, you have a terrific marketing strategy and won’t need to work so hard to be memorable. Otherwise, get to work on building that fan club!
Mar/100
Groups can harness the power of local too
If your local business is a shop, pub or restaurant, you undoubtedly compete with similar businesses in your area. A number of your competitors may belong to a group or chain of anything between a few to several thousand outlets.
Group businesses enjoy some substantial advantages over your business. For example, owing to the volumes they purchase, they get better prices from suppliers. Also, they have larger marketing budgets so can afford to entice local people in with press and radio advertising, perhaps even national press or TV. They offer predictable products and services and most people love the fact that they know exactly what to expect.
However, as an independent, you have a very powerful advantage over your group competitors. That advantage is you. You are more interested in your business than the manager of the local Starbucks or Café Rouge. You are far more motivated. You keep thinking about your business in the evening and it sometimes keeps you awake at night. You put far more energy into it. If a group could have one of you running each of their branches, they would be the most successful business in their sector.
For obvious reasons, it simply matters more to you and, crucially, it usually shows in your interactions with customers. For you it is a very personal matter that your customers are satisfied. If not, you will feel their discomfort in your pocket sooner or later. For you it is natural to remember your customers’ faces and names, their likes and dislikes. Most chain store managers don’t think this way.
And this is the best thing you have going for you when it comes to beating large competitors. You have the motivation and energy to take every person that walks into your store and work to convert them into a loyal customer. Today, most groups and chains underestimate the power of building local audiences, choosing instead to build central marketing databases where consumers interact with the HQ of Restaurant Group PLC rather than their local branch or store.
However, new technology is making it easier for groups and chains to build local fan bases quickly and inexpensively. They will never replicate the dedication of an owner at the branch level, but it is becoming easier for them to leverage their local premises and staff to convert footfall into loyalty more quickly. If they wake up to the power of local, your fight will become a little more difficult.
Feb/100
Worried about using your customer data for direct marketing?
Several local business owners have recently expressed to me their concerns over collecting and handling their customers’ data. They don’t want to annoy their customers and they want to make sure they don’t break any laws or regulations.
As more local businesses take advantage of mobile and internet technology to grow their own audiences, these concerns will become increasingly common. If you are a concerned business owner, here are the key points to keep in mind.
Firstly, you are right to be collecting your customers’ contact details and preferences. It is no longer viable to rent an audience from your local newspaper or radio station. Your competitors may be saving money and winning their customers’ loyalty by building their own audience. So should you. Don’t let your concerns put you off.
To succeed in building your local audience and converting them into true fans of your business, here is the most important thing to do. Get their explicit permission. Without that, their interest in your marketing messages will be minimal. Your response rates will be low and you may even upset some people. How often do you welcome a mailshot or email that you did not ask to receive? Invest time in finding good reasons for people to ‘opt-in’ to receiving your marketing. This is the best way to get high response rates. And responses lead to sales.
If customers give you their details as part of buying from you (for example, a salon takes your name and number when you make a booking), don’t assume that they want to receive your marketing. When you take their details, ask them if you can get in touch now and then when you have something special to tell them about. This is not only good practice, it is also an EU requirement for anyone that conducts marketing by electronic means. Oh, and don’t give their details to other businesses. At least not if you want to keep your customers.
Your next aim should be for customers to look forward to receiving your messages because this will generate the best response rates. To achieve this, you’ll either need to send very tempting marketing offers (very expensive for you) or send offers that are very relevant to people’s interests. If you are an off-license, is your customer interested in white wine, red wine, beer or champagne? This is where you’ll need to get creative about giving people reasons to tell you their interests and also making it easy for them to tell you.
It’s natural to be concerned about conducting business in a new way. The best way forward is to think it through, make a plan, then get stuck in. Treat it as a trial. Expect some error. When you get it right, you will enjoy a well deserved advantage over your competitors.
Feb/100
Write to sell
You will sometimes communicate with your customers or prospects in writing. This could be by email, text message, your web site, a printed brochure or, increasingly less often, a letter.
If you are writing to create a defined response, such as to increase sales or engender loyalty, there are things you can do to get best possible results. Read on to find out more.
If you are not writing to create a defined response, you are probably wasting your time. More to the point, you are squandering a valuable and limited resource – your customers’ attention to you.
Having just read ‘Write to sell’ by Andy Maslam, I strongly recommend it to you as a quick and easy guide to selling using the written word.
In my opinion, these are Andy’s top five tips for great copywriting. If you are serious about writing to sell, I suggest you read the book.
- Above all else, people are interested in themselves. As Dale Carnegie wrote, a headache is far more important to most people than thousands dying of starvation on the other side of the world. You cannot write effectively unless you understand your audience. So it pays to spend time getting to know your reader and working out what interests them.
- Write about benefits not features. In other words, tell your reader why they should buy, not what they’re buying.
- Make a plan. What do you want people to know after reading? How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do? Close your laptop and sketch your ideas on paper. Start typing only when you have a plan and a bunch of ideas you are happy with.
- Make your writing simple to read. Make sentences short and never use a long word when a short one will do. Write as you would speak because people, even business people, will relate more easily to you.
- Draft, edit mercilessly, redraft, edit some more. Repeat until you are satisfied that you have achieved what you set out to. Take a break before proof reading.
Feb/100
Do this and you will succeed
What would you say if I told you that there is one thing so powerful that, if you did it, your local business would succeed? Not only make more money, but become a resounding success. Far more successful than your competitors.
But that’s not all. If you do it right, you can tear up most of your to-do list, because it will soon become apparent that there is little else more important than this. Traditional marketing and advertising will become increasingly less useful and you will be able to fire all but your best customers. You will focus on this because it works and you will worry less about other tasks. Your priorities will be clearer and you will have more time and less stress.
Well, such a thing does exist and it is no secret. What you must do is find your 1,000 true, local fans. The 1,000 local people that love your business, trust you and talk about you to their friends and colleagues. The 1,000 local people that come back and buy from you regularly and enjoy giving you their money. These are the people that you must talk to and find out more about. These are the people you must communicate with and focus on.
Stop for a moment and think about the power of this. What is your average spend per customer? What do your best customers spend per visit? What if you had 1,000 customers that liked your business so much that they came back as often as they could? How much would you make in a year? Just from those 1,000? What do you think their lifetime value to your business would be? And what about all of the friends they would drive to your business?
Do you think you would still need to advertise? Wouldn’t it be great to focus all of your attention on making those 1,000 people happy? That would be the single most important marketing activity and it is quite likely that no other marketing would be necessary. When you get 1,001, fire you worst customer to make sure you have enough time to focus on your 1,000 true fans!
You don’t have 1,000 true fans? So start today. If you own a shop, pick a customer today that you think has the potential to become a true fan. Capture their contact details before they leave and think about how you will entice them back in and delight them when they arrive. If you do this each day, you will have 1,000 true fans within around 3 years.
You can start simply by inviting a person to receive your special offers by email or SMS. Then let them tell you what type of things they want to hear about. Next, tailor your offers to their preferences. And when they use your business, give them a simple way to praise or criticise without fearing confrontation or reprisal.
The magic of this approach is that it will make you focus on the important things, the products and services. In order to delight people and convert them into fans, you will need to do this. In addition, you will be forced to focus on the customers, creating a dialogue, finding out what interests them about your products and what they really think about your service.
The alterative is to follow the traditional path. Pay somebody else to rent their fan club, perhaps the local newspaper or radio station, in the hope that you can shout your message at them and that 2 or 3% of them might be remotely interested in you. This is not only hard work, stressful and distracting but it is also completely unaffordable when you consider that your competitors may be building their own fan club for little cost. The traditional path will make you feel like you’re progressing because it consumes so much of your energy and mind space. But if you want to succeed, you’ll need to take a different route.
Dec/090
Extend the Christmas rush into January
Many businesses, such as bars and restaurants, become extremely busy at Christmas time. They make far more money over Christmas and New Year than at any other time of year. They and their staff are completely flat out, their venues bursting at the seams. Then, very suddenly, it’s the 2nd of January and one of the year’s quietest periods commences.
What can be done to extend some of the seasonal rush past December into January and beyond?
For these types of businesses, the premises or venue is perhaps the most significant and costly business investment, as well as the most valuable. The value of a place of business is that it gives direct access to passing trade – prospects that can be converted to customers. A venue makes it possible to build sales from a standing start. Then, once the business is up and running, it provides the opportunity to build relationships with customers in person – something that many web-based businesses can only dream about.
Like any investment, it’s important to extract every bit of value from a place of business. If 8 out of every 10 people who walk into a shop are converted into regular customers, how long do you think it would be before that business would have to start turning people away or extending the shop to cope with the demand? A great problem to have!
This ideal scenario is altogether possible but it is not enough merely to engage with customers who walk in, although that is a great start. You also need to capture their details and preferences so that it is possible to reach out to them and entice them back in future. When you reach out to customers with a relevant and compelling reason to visit your business, some will respond. The more people you reach out to (always assuming a relevant and compelling offer), the more who will respond.
To start with, you need to seize every opportunity to collect your customers’ contact details and learn a little about them. There is no better opportunity than when they have chosen to walk into your premises. And, for the businesses in question, there in no other time of year when more people walk into their premises than at Christmas time.
Nov/090
Asking for Trouble
For the last few years, I’ve been wondering when my local butcher would improve the appearance of his shop. Perhaps make the outside look more welcoming and the inside a little less jaded. Recently I got my answer. Straight after a new, smarter butcher opened a few doors away.
Why did he leave it so long? What kind of impression did it give to locals and passers-by? I would imagine that all but his most committed customers would have migrated to the nearest other butcher (about 2 miles away) ages ago.
Perhaps the butcher saw no need for change. Maybe he was happy with the level of business he did and comfortable with the way things were.
But recently a new butcher opened literally a few doors away. It looked smart, welcoming and fresh. I can’t think why someone would pick the old one over the new one. There’s no doubt that locals were happily lured away from the old, neglected business. And how many of those customers do you think were lost for good?
The old butcher had the market cornered for years. He had no competitor in the town centre. At some point in the past, his business would have looked welcoming and fresh too. Neglecting to improve and change encourages existing customers to drift and deters potential new customers.
Crucially, this also makes your area look very inviting to hungry competitors. They think to themselves “all I need to do is be better than that jaded business a few doors away”.
For a local business, there are few better ways of inviting trouble.
Nov/090
Go get em Tiger
Are you a passive marketer or an active marketer? Do you go out and get customers or do you let them find you?
Being passive means waiting for people to walk past your shop, find you in an online directory or search engine, be told about you by friends, come across your advert in the local paper. This is less effort than being an active marketer because you simply pay some money and then hope customers find you.
Once you have some customers, you automatically have the opportunity to become an active marketer. Being active means reaching out to your customers and bringing them back to you again and again using methods such as direct mail, email or SMS. This requires some effort.
Firstly, you’ll need to collect the details of every customer you meet. But shouldn’t you be doing that anyway? You have invested money in premises, equipment, advertising or other things to get those customers in the first place, so surely you must keep in touch to make the most of your investment? Otherwise, wouldn’t it be like buying a box of matches and throwing the whole box away after using just one match? Just as a box will provide you with many matches after the first one, many customers will potentially buy from you several times. That is, unless you let them forget about you.
Secondly, you’ll need to keep customers interested by sending offers that they find compelling. There must always be something in it for them. Yes, it may cost you something to make offers compelling but you are building long-term sales potential, which is no less important than any of your other expenses. If you do this, you will be rewarded with a good response rate each time you actively reach out to your customers.
This is when active marketing really starts to pay. If customers have given you permission to contact them and you have learnt enough about them to send compelling offers, such that you always get a significant response to a campaign, you have effectively built a money-making machine. You have the power to generate sales whenever business is slow, when you have a special event or when you launch a new product. In fact, any time you like.
Oct/090
Do you know what your customers want?
Have you ever had the feeling that a customer was not entirely satisfied?
In the UK we’re famously bad at complaining, but as a perceptive business owner, you will usually know when someone is less than entirely happy with what you’ve sold them.
So what do you do? You try to improve. Bring their drinks faster, present their food better, try not to keep them waiting for their haircut, show up on time to fix their boiler. But, hang on a second, is that what was bothering them?
It’s not always obvious why people use your business instead of your competitors’ and it is more obvious in some industries than in others. Do people come to your pub because you serve the best pint in town or is it because they want to see, be seen and perhaps flirt a little with your other customers? If the beer was their main motivation, they could save money and time by drinking at home. Do people visit your hair salon because they want their hair to be shorter, curlier or more blonde? Or is it because they want to walk back out into the street feeling like a million dollars?
Some businesses are more functional than others, in the sense that they fulfil a more tangible need. For example, restaurants are more functional than bars since hungry people go there to be fed whereas thirst, as we have established, is not usually the key factor in driving people to bars. For the more functional businesses, the way customers want you to make them feel is still very important, but just not so much of a deal-breaker as it can be for the less functional ones.
So whatever your local business, ask yourself what your customer really want. And when they use your business, make sure they walk away with the feelings they hoped for as well as the products or services.
Get this right and your customers will reward you with loyalty and recommendations. How right do you have to get this? It depends on how good your competitors are.
Jul/090
Why loyalty brings you happiness if you run a local business
So you run a local business? Since you’re reading this, the chances are that you’re looking for ways to grow….but what does that mean? Usually, it means making more money. But there are lots of ways to go about making more money. Are you interested in finding new customers or persuading your existing customers to spend more? Do you want to increase sales or reduce costs? Create new products? Open a new branch? Employ more sales people?
It wasn’t too long ago that I was running my own local business, a bar and restaurant. My answer to the above would have been that I would prefer to do whatever costs least and makes most. For my bar, that meant focussing on what we had already….a shop with customers walking in and out of it on a regular basis. If yours is a retail business, your answer is probably the same. Even if you don’t have a shop, assuming that your product or service is any good, you probably have lots of customers that would like to hear from you occasionally.
Sometimes it seems that the only way forward is to find new customers….people that haven’t bought from you before. It’s always tempting to think that there must be thousands of people out there that would love to buy from you, if only you could let them know that you’re here. And you’re probably right. In your local area there probably are hundreds or even thousands of people that might buy from you…..and just imagine how much more profit you could make if you could reach even 10% of them. But that’s the problem, reaching those people is expensive. If you sell cars, this might not be a problem but if you sell coffee, it could cost more to get a new customer than that customer will spend………that is, unless that customer remains loyal and buys from you again and again.
And this is precisely the point…..it always comes back to loyalty. If you’re not capable of converting new customers into loyal customers, you’ll always struggle to grow your business no matter what else you do. You will always end up having to spend money to find new customers while the existing ones are busy spending their cash elsewhere.
So my advice is this. Don’t spend a penny on finding new customers until you know how to keep your existing customers coming back for more. Once you’ve figured that out, chances are you won’t need to spend money on finding new customer anyway, since most of your existing ones will be busy telling all their friends how great you are. Even if you do decide to find new customers, every pound you spend, will give you two, five or ten times more payback than it would have done before you had loyal customers.
This strategy brings with it a huge personal benefit. Can you imagine how much happier and more relaxed you will be without the constant striving for new customers?
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