4 Tips on Effective Use of Promotional Items

Do you use promotional items in your business already? If not, you should take a look at what you can use as a promotional item in your business that will help market your business and keep your business’s name on the top of your prospect’s minds.

Promotional items are a great way to get your name in front of your prospects and customers each and every day. You see promotional items all over the place. If used correctly, they can be a great addition to your marketing mix. But, if you don’t know how to choose the right promotional item, it can be a huge waste of your marketing dollars.

Are You Paying 10X More Than You Should To Make A Sale?

What if you could cut your advertising budget in ½ ? How about 90%? Well, I wouldn’t advise going that far but I want you to see the point here. Most small businesses spend way more money on their advertising budget than they need to in most cases. Let me explain how…

Most small businesses focus all their energy and money on marketing to new customers all the time. Now you will always need some degree of this and new customers help you grow your small business but you need to also focus some of your efforts on marketing to your existing customers and making them loyal repeat customers for life.

This is where most small business marketing falls short for most businesses.

It is ten times easier to sell to an existing happy customer than it is to find another new customer. Did you know that? If you customer is happy with your products and services, then you can easily sell them again and again as long as you keep providing valuable products and services to them.

So how can you keep selling to the same customers over and over again?

How To Increase Sales In Any Business Without Additional Advertising

If business is slow like it is for many other businesses around the world, your business could easily ramp back up and increase sales without additional advertising by simply focusing on your existing customers.

So many businesses make the mistake of just spending their marketing budget on trying to get new customers that they tend to forget about the customers they already have. This is an untapped goldmine for most businesses.

Become Unstoppable!

Ok, So this isn’t a marketing tip or resource but I have to share an experience worth way more than any marketing resource I could ever give you.

It’s about becoming unstoppable in your life and your business.

So here’s how it starts…

3 Ways To Increase Sales In Any Economy

If you are in business, you are probably concerned about keeping your business growing. It doesn’t matter what type of economy we are in, your primary goal with your business is to grow and increase sales.

The thing is that most business owners scramble to find ways to increase sales and usually over complicate the process in pure desperation. Years ago I learned a very basic and simple principle about how business works and how to increase your income in any business, in any economy. There are only 3 ways to increase sales in any business and that’s it. If you can keep these 3 principles in mind when marketing your business, you can easily excel in any business that you are in. I learned about this basic process from Marketing Legend Jay Abraham years ago and they run just as true today and will for pretty much all of eternity.

1. Increase customers
By increasing customers, you increase sales and can grow your business. This is something that you should always be looking in your business. But… Most companies JUST focus on this method to increase sales. They don’t realize that this is actually the hardest method of growing your business. It costs more time and it eats up the most of your marketing dollars.

2. Increase Price
This is the second way to increase your income in any business. Most businesses undercut themselves anyway and it is something that you should take a serious look at in your business. If you were to just increase your prices by 10% you’ve just given yourself a 10% raise. Most of the time, that 10% increase won’t even be noticed by your customers but it will add up to quite a bit over all the products or services you sell over the year.

One thing people always say is that they can’t raise their prices because then customers will go someplace else. Well, this is true to some extent. You will almost definitely loose the guys who always want something cheap. Guess what, those customers are also usually the ones that complain a lot and take up the most time. In reality, you can spend a lot less time with those few clients and spend that time with your better customers anyway and end up working less for the same amount of money.

This actually brings me to the third way to increase sales.

3. Increase the number of sales a customer makes
What do I mean by this? Upsells and future sales. Just by adding additional products or services that compliment your existing products, you can easily increase your sales by 10-20 percent almost immediately. Many times, if you offer a deluxe package or premium option to a customer, they will take it. In reality, it doesn’t take much more work on your part to give them the extra product or service, but the increase in sale amounts can add up very quickly.

Remember that your existing customers are the easiest customers to sell to. It is 10 times easier to sell to an existing happy customer than it is to find a new customer and convince them to buy from you. Is there an add-on product or package that you can offer to your main products that would be easy to sell to your customers? Be creative and you you can easily increase your sales without much extra work. This works in any business and while your competition is running like crazy trying to figure out how they can get new customers, you can be sitting there growing your business without having to compete with them.

Using Lumpy Mail Marketing To Get Your Small Business Noticed

Are you using direct mail marketing in your business? Postcards or sales letters are the most common ways most small businesses use direct mail to market their business. Whether you are using direct mail currently or not, you might want to look at using Lumpy mail otherwise called dimensional mail to step up your marketing efforts to stand out from the crowd and get you mail opened by your prospects.

Any more, people get so much junk mail on a daily basis that both consumers and businesses open their mail over the trash can and toss the stuff that they don’t think is relevant or wanted by them. You don’t want to waste you hard earned marketing dollars by not even getting your mail opened.

Top 3 Steps To Easily Getting Free Marketing With Local Publications

What makes you stand out from other businesses in your industry? This is one of the most basic yet most important questions any business has to be able to answer in order to get ahead and run a successful business. You need to be known as the expert in your industry. So how do you do this?

One of the easiest ways to do this is to write a regular column for a local publication on a regular basis. If you are an expert in your industry, and you should be if you are in business, you’re ability to give valuable information to others and educate them on the aspects of your business can easily be one of the easiest ways to get your name known out there and quickly become known as the expert in your industry.

How To Increase Sales With Simple Employee Training

Every business owner knows that customer service is important to keep your customers happy and excited to come back. What most don’t think about is that your employees are also your main sales people. Everyone from the stock people to the cashier.

If you want to increase sales in your business, you need to make your employees aware of your customers and encourage them to interact with your customers on a more personal basis. If you’ve ever been to a small town, you have most likely seen this as most small town businesses do this much better than they do in bigger cities. The process is really the same and should not be overlooked.

Let me explain what I am talking about.

Driving You Marketing – Be Prepared

In the latest installment of Driving Your Marketing I talk about Being Prepared at ALL times.

I was going through Starbucks the other day and as I went through the Drive Thru I struck up a conversation with the guy at the window. He asked what I did and when I told him he was suddenly very excited. Come to find out he is working at Starbucks part time while he grows his own business.

3 Tips To Marketing With Newsletters

In any business, top of mind awareness is critical to keep ahead of your competition. Using newsletters in your marketing mix is a great way to keep in touch with customers and prospects alike. Using newsletters in your marketing allows you to communicate with your customers on a regular basis by educating them, sharing great useful information with them and announcing any new products, services or specials your company has on a timed schedule.

You will have to decide if you want a printed newsletter or an electronic newsletter (or ezine). Though printed newsletters are more costly than electronic newsletters you might want to look at adding this in to your budget as you will get a much higher return and open rate from a physical printed newsletter than an ezine.

Ezines are great because there is no print cost and you can automate the process quite easily. It doesn’t cost any more to do a full color ezine than a plain text ezine which is great. They also can be delivered automatically and you don’t have to worry about postage costs along with print costs.