Total Marketing Solutions

Are you starting to feel the effects of the credit crunch? For your business, will it be a storm in a teacup, or the end of the civilized world as we know it? Whatever your opinion, take a look at few simple suggestions on how to market your business more effectively to minimise any crunching headaches you might have:

1. Customers - following on from last week’s post, make the most of your customer base by reactivating lapsed customers and increasing sales from existing ones. Get in touch again to tell them what you have been doing and give them reasons to buy from you again. Make sure your database is cleaned before embarking on any communications campaign and expand contact details regularly. An email newsletter is not only cost-effective, you can tailor your message to different market sectors and measure responses.

2. Shake some hands - whilst you may have avoided joining any kind of association like the plague, now could be a good time to overcome your shyness/disdain and bite the bullet. Many industry associations are now professionally-run, high profile organisations, which offer excellent networking opportunities and insights into your industry. 

3. Get  above the parapet - It’s time to get out there and spread the word. A well-run, targetted workshop can be a highly effective way to meet potential customers and generate new business, or indeed rekindle any lapsed relationships.  Whilst time-consuming, if you have something interesting to say, the rewards can be high. If you’re unable to schedule a face-to-face event, how about running a series of webinars? For the technophobe, more and more people are happy to participate in an online forum. More cost-effective than holding a workshop, more flexible in terms of geography, you still get to communicate with your customers and build relationships, which should generate future business.

4. Its ‘Terrier time’ - once you get a lead, hold on to it, follow it through and don’t let go. You’ve worked hard to generate a new lead, make sure you don’t lose it somewhere in “the system.” Make sure you continue to communicate effectively with your new leads, convincing them at every point of contact that you are the right person to do business with. 

5.  Get together - if you are struggling to think of how best to drive your business forward, perhaps there might be another company who could complement your existing products or services? Forming an alliance with another company might just open up new avenues for both of you. A little lateral thinking could save the day!

What’s the one thing really worth keeping when you’re in business? Yup, your customers, of course. It might seem blindingly obvious but this small yet rather crucial point in our experience is surprisingly overlooked by many companies, both large and small.In a recent post by John Jantsch of Duck Tape Marketing, he argued that there are four ways to grow a business, namely: get more leads, close more deals, increase your average transaction and/or add products or services to your current offering. He was quite right to also point out that a fixation on lead generation as the only way to grow a business inevitably runs your resources dry.But there is one more element to growing business that is not included in his list: stop losing customers - plug the leaky bucket!Many companies continue to win new business, close the deal - and then head for the hills! To get long-term value from all your marketing efforts you have to do all you can to hold onto those precious customers once you have got them.Frederick Reichheld, in his book “The Loyalty Effect” (Harvard Business School Press, 1996), states that a 1% increase in retention will amount to a 17% growth of the bottom line.  Compelling, isn’t it? Even if Reicheld is wrong by a factor of 50% it still demonstrates the value of looking after your customers.By ensuring that customer attrition is reduced as much as possible, all your efforts to secure that hard-won business won’t have been in vain.  As marketing consultants we have worked with a number of customers who have had startling results, simply by turning their attention to addressing their customer churn.  This is truly an effective use of marketing resources as a “lost” customer knows the company and products or services and was prepared to buy from you in the first place.The key to slowing your customer churn is to identify the reasons why customers stop buying from you - and then do something about it. When we looked at our customers’ leaky buckets, we found holes relating to poor customer service, inflexible payment terms and lack of ongoing communication. All these issues can be easily resolved by being focused on the customer and treating them as if they are worth more to you than the value of their last transaction. Keep in touch, keep them interested, make them feel loved and they’ll keep coming back for more.