Shaping Your Product/Service

Customer feedback is probably one of the best ways to make your business successful. Think of it like this; through negative feedback, you can shape your product/service into something you know the market will love.

Most people think that bad feedback comes from people they have never even done business with, or with some of their ‘bad’ clients, so they decide to ignore it. This is, in fact, a complete myth; most of the negative feedback you will get will be from some of your most loyal customers. Not because they want to put you down; because they want to remain your best customers.

Think of it like this; ‘bad’ customers, if they encounter a problem of flaw with your product/service, they will simply move on to the next company who will solve this problem for them. Whereas for a loyal customer, they want to tell you about the problem, hoping that you will fix it and they can remain customers of yours.

Think of it like this; customer feedback is a free way to conduct market research. Your clients will tell you how they want their product/service. They will tell you about any problems they have; although you may have to prompt them to do so; perhaps through a quiz of survey.

Free Marketing

Well, who would say no to some free marketing? Quite a few businesses actually, so it seems! Customer feedback, when it is good, can be used in a multitude of ways, the obvious one being testimonials.

Every time you get some good feedback, you should ask the client if you can use it as a testimonial on your website, leaflets, sales letters; anything which you send to a prospective client. Likewise, when you get bad feedback, you should act upon it immediately, because it really will result in not only your product/service getting better, but perhaps some more business!

Think about it; if you had a problem with a company that you bought from, and you complained about the problem then it was solved, how much more likely would you be to talk about that than just receiving a product and there being absolutely no flaws to it?

Entrepreneurs have to wear many hats when a business is just starting. Many things need to be delegated to others in order for the business to run smoothly and there are a few things that you must do yourself. If you can create a habit of performing these 5 things every day, some for just a few minutes, then you will see your business grow right alongside your dreams:

1. Plan for the future a few minutes each day. Assume that your product has stopped selling all of a sudden. What direction will you take your company next? What new income stream can you add? This is a time for day dreaming and recording notes in preparation for the future. You don’t necessarily have to take action on these items, but you need to think about them daily in order to bring out the golden ideas.

2.  Develop or strengthen your business network. You need to join or create a business network where you can help others and they can help you back. This is a great place to get free customers through referrals and an excellent mentoring opportunity using the mastermind principle.

3. Work on closing a sale every single day. Whether you are doing this on-line, on the phone, through the mail, or face-to-face you need to be selling every day. Without the close of a sale there is no business. This is not something that you can delegate all the way. Even if you have a sales force you need to be out there looking for deals.

4. Work on your marketing in some aspect every day to get new customers. If your prospective customers don’t know about you they won’t buy from you. Work on getting your message out every day even if it is just for a few minutes.

5. Contact your current customers. Don’t ever forget about the people that have already purchased from you. These are your best customers. They already like what you have to sell and they don’t cost anything to acquire. Contact your current customers frequently, even if you are just saying hello. They need to know what you have to offer and they need to know you are still breathing. They won’t seek you out. You must go to them.

We’re in the home stretch now just before the holidays, but it’s not too late to get an extra push out of your marketing. Those final few emails can make or break your holiday sales, so don’t overlook opportunities to grab the attention of last-minute shoppers.

The beauty of email is that you can quickly create and distribute virtually any kind of message — be it promotions, customer service information, big news, useful insight, account reminders or a quick holiday message — and send it directly to your most valuable customers.

Email marketing offers a variety of specialized uses that can be tailored to both your business and your customers. Here are five ways that email can help you boost your online marketing for the holidays:

If you plan to use email as a way to communicate with your customers and grow your business, make sure you begin with a plan on how to collect email addresses from your customers.  

First make sure you are clear on how you will use the email addresses and the benefit to your customers for providing an email address to you.   I’m happy to give my email address to someone that I want to contact me and where I see a value in the future interaction.   I will also give my email address when I think there may be something I want – and then opt out if I don’t see that benefit emerge. 

Ask your customers to provide their email address at the Point of Sale.  When you ask, make sure that you tell your clients the value they will receive.  I was standing in line at a retailer recently as I listened to the salesperson telling the customers that she needed their email to clean up the list.  As a customer, cleaning the retailer list is of no value to me.  But ensuring that your customers receive pre-notice of special sales does articulate the value.  Don’t fail to teach the value statements to all of your sales teams!

Also, make sure you collect email address at your website.  Using landing pages for your marketing campaigns where you can request an email address to receive a special offer.  Collect the email address when a prospect downloads a whitepaper, or to accesses an online printable coupon, etc.  There is instant value to the customer for providing the email address to you.  But keep the request simple – a nice short form to complete works.  Trying to collect too much information can turn off the prospect. 

Finally, as you use the emails you have collected, make sure to use the tools available to you to keep your list current by managing bouncebacks and opt outs.  Email is a tool to build a relationship and using the email address appropriately and responsibly will ensure that you build those relationships.

Build a Small Business Saturday campaign.

Make the most of Small Business Saturday by creating a multichannel marketing campaign plan now. Here are some things to consider as you build out your own Small Business Saturday campaign:

Create a complete campaign that leverages different ways to communicate with your customers and extend your reach to new prospects. Sequencing your outreach is critical. You want to be relevant, not annoying. Calendar out all the activities so you can see how many contacts you will be making with your customers.

• Create a unique message for your business that ties into the Small Business Saturday theme but highlights the value you deliver to your customers.
• Don’t miss out on the future relationship-building opportunity this campaign creates. Capture contact information from your customers and prospects so you can continue to communicate with them.

 Here are some tactical things to consider within your marketing campaign:

 Website customization

-          Add a banner to your Website in support of Small Business Saturday.

-          Add a landing page to your Website where you can feature your special campaign offer. Using coupons is a great way to give value to your Website visitors. Twenty-two percent of U.S. adults say their household uses digital coupons from email or the Internet. Allow your customers to redeem the coupon either in-store or online on Small Business Saturday.

• Direct-marketing campaigns

-          Create a series of emails to your current customers that tie into Small Business Saturday with special offers and coupons. Send two to three emails regarding the promotion, and if you have a retail location and are looking to generate in-store sales, make sure the last email is sent the day before your event as a reminder.

-          Always include links to your social sites as well as refer-a-friend options in your customer emails.

Use direct mail to target prospects and attract new customers to your business. Direct mail recipients buy 25 percent more items and spend more than non-direct-mail recipients, according to recent data published in a study by the U.S. Postal and Deliver Magazine, “How Direct Mail Strengthens Online Sales.” Direct mail is a great way to reach out to prospects and encourage them to begin a dialog with you via future email campaigns. Ensure that you are targeting the right customers with your direct-mail offers. Services like Experian’s Clone My Customer can help with refining your target audience for your direct-mail campaign.

-          Create a personalized URL (pURL), or landing page, for your direct-mail campaign where you can capture email addresses of new prospects. Use a special offer on the landing page to encourage consumers to give you their email addresses.

 Social marketing

-          Add new content to your blog that features the value of shopping local. Tie into the Small Business Saturday national advertising theme to make the most of blog postings.

-          Use Twitter and Facebook to promote your Small Business Saturday event. Link your tweets back to your landing page and your special offer. Facebook is a great way to not only get your message out and dialog with your customers, but also give special offers to your fans.

 Event marketing

-          Don’t forget to plan out the day of the event. Include messaging on your Website or in your business location that promotes your support of Small Business Saturday.

Capture email addresses from your customers. The best way to capture email is to offer a value, such as a free gift, a special discount or a newsletter subscription. These are all ways to encourage your new customers to give you their contact information.

Click here to download our entire ebooklet of tips to get your business prepared and ready for Saturday, November 26th.

Engage Your Existing Customers With The Ease Of Email

Differentiate your marketing for Small Business Saturday and the upcoming holiday season. Understand that as the holiday shopping season goes full throttle, so do the marketing messages that prospects receive. Make your message clear and concise. That means shorter emails, fewer emails and emails that are more effective.

As with direct-mail coupons, you can use email coupons to drive traffic in on Small Business Saturday. Consider sending a series of emails with your coupon offer to create urgency. For example, try designing a promotional email offering a “Five-Day Sale” that expires on Small Business Saturday. Follow up on Wednesday with a “Three Days Left” email message and then a “Don’t Miss Out! Final Sale Day!” email on Saturday. Announce the remaining number of days for the sale in your subject line, and include calls to action throughout your email.

You also can send your existing customers a special “customer appreciation” email in advance of Small Business Saturday letting them in on even more exclusive deals that the general public wouldn’t be privy to. This strategy will help to build on your customer loyalty now and during the rest of the year.

Remember, email marketing is often a catalyst for Web users to purchase offline. More than half of users in one survey had made a purchase offline after receiving an email promotion. Make it easy for customers to find your business by including your address, phone and hours of business in every email you send during this holiday season.

Try our email campaign builder for a FREE 60-day trial, and start sending your emails today.  And don’t forget to download our ebooklet of tips to help you drive in traffic during Small Business Saturday and the rest of this holiday season.

As the owner of your company you are responsible for casting the vision of your company and then communicating that vision to your employees. Without a leader who develops and communicates a vision for the company, employees will wander about their day jobs aimlessly.

Your mission is to transfer your passion to your employees through the communication of your vision. Here are three tips to communicate your vision:

1. Are We Moving Toward Our Vision?

As the owner of your business, you are responsible for moving your company toward its vision, but you don’t need to keep it a secret. Update your employees often on the company’s progress in moving toward its vision. If you can show your employees how their work creates positive results for the company they are more likely to continue working hard.

2. What Are We Doing to Accomplish Our Vision?

As an entrepreneur you have a vision of where you want your business to go. It may be a small vision, but at the very least you should have some purpose to your day-to-day activities. As a leader you must constantly proclaim your vision for the business to your employees, and ensure that your employees understand how their daily work helps to accomplish that vision.

3. What Can We Do To Continue to Move Toward Our Vision?

Not only do you need to show your employees how their work contributes to the progress of the company, but you need to empower your employees to help identify new ways to improve the business moving forward. If everyone in the business understands what their goal is and how it fits into a bigger vision they will be more likely to suggest innovative ways to improve the business.

Ultimately, as a business owner you hold an incredible amount of power when it comes to encouraging and motivating your employees. Your leadership should be centered around your vision and helping your employees realize their role in accomplishing that vision.

It’s easy to get into a marketing rut from time to time. You keep sending the same types of emails to the same list, and you keep getting the same result: lackluster sales. What gives?

It’s time to overhaul your marketing. Don’t get overwhelmed by the process. Just start small with the three ideas below, and your marketing will likely improve almost immediately.

Limited-Time Offers

“For a limited time, take 20 percent off your order.” Words like those get customers to stand up and take notice!

By implying that there is an end date to your promotion, you will get customers to respond more quickly. They can’t wait to take advantage of your offer, because if they do, it will be gone.

So instead of ignoring your email or direct mail, they will hop online and shop your Website. The constraint of a limited-time offer could be the extra push your customers need to take action, before it’s too late.

Solving a Problem

Present your customers with a dilemma and your implied solution. For example, an online baby blanket retailer could send an email stating, “Help your baby sleep better than ever with our lavender-infused blankets.”

Be sure your copy makes it clear that your products are better than the competition’s. You don’t need to name names or badmouth anyone. Simply state ways that your product solves a problem your competitors can’t solve. Maybe you have better service, better quality or better prices for the value.

Solving a problem sets your business apart as a company that customers want to buy from. Your audience will be more likely to become loyal customers if you show what makes you different and better than any other company like yours.

Get a Good List

The people receiving your email and direct mail must be good potential customers for your business. Your list should include prospects who are your ideal buyers in terms of demographics, psychographics and buying behaviors.

Basically, you want a list of prospects who are like your best customers. If you’re sending to the wrong people, they are not likely to read your messages — whereas with the right list, you increase your chances of building a loyal customer base. Experian’s customer cloning services are a great place to start building a list that will get results.

Simple yet effective, these three tips will help you get your marketing on the right track and increase your ROI on all your marketing campaigns.

With the holidays approaching, there’s no time like the present to think about how to market your business to new and existing customers. Ready to ramp up your sales? Try these five quick tips for making a lasting impression this holiday season:

1. Beef up your customer service. There’s no quicker way to turn away customers than with poor or nonexistent customer service. Include contact phone numbers and email addresses on your Website that make it easy for customers to get in touch with you regarding ordering questions and other needs. Even if your customer service department is just you, answer phone calls and emails like a big business — professionally and courteously, with a goal of solving the customer’s problem and ensuring they come back for repeat business.
2. Let them know you care. Customer appreciation emails that include a promotional offer “just for VIPs” make customers feel special. Send a few of them throughout the holiday season — say, offer $25 toward a future purchase with any purchase of $100 or more. Make sure they are limited-time offers that take place during the holiday season so customers sense the urgency in taking advantage of the deal.
3. Use social media. Use Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to announce special promotions and capture new email addresses. Start conversations that spark interest among your audience and get your customers talking about your brand.
4. Reach out to inactive customers. Do you have some customers who haven’t bought from you in a while? Tell them you miss them with a special email offer during the holidays. If the deal is good enough, they might come back and become active customers again.
5. Cross-promote. Work with another local business to cross-promote offers in your newsletters or in-store locations. A bakery could team up with a coffee shop, for example, so the businesses can offer a special discount to one another’s customers.

Simple yet effective, these five tips will give you the extra push you need to increase your sales during the holidays and beyond.

Thinking of including unusual discounts in emails? It might be best to keep it simple

If you’ve been keeping a close eye on email offer and subject line trends over the last year, you may have noticed that ‘odd’ or unusual offers, such as 14 percent or 56 percent off, have started to appear more. The offers, such as ‘14% Off Limited Time Only!’, ‘Our weekly deal 71% off of today’s item‘, ’56% off Membership‘, and ’Famous February Artists + 22% off‘, are just a few of the examples we noticed at Experian CheetahMail.