10 Startup Tips
Chapter 18: Sales Promotion: How to Get More Customers?
So you have your first customers.
Before you find more customers,
you need to have a three-point plan
to take care of your first customers
so that they become the basis of your business.
Step One: Make Customers Loyal to Your Product
It makes no sense if you try to win a new customer
while ignoring existing customers.
It’s pretty obvious but a lot of companies,
including multinationals,
have fallen into this trap.
Studies show that every four years,
on average,
a company loses 50% of its customers.
Along with continuous business development,
loyal customers also bring benefits such as:
They often outbid
because they trust you
(and you know how much you can bid them!).
Easier to sell other products.
Lower servicing costs
– you know what they want
and they know what you offer.
Things like loyalty cards,
scorecards,
and promotions are meaningless.
A French loyalty expert says:
You can’t make your lover loyal
by giving them points
and then doubling them again if they stay until breakfast.
As a result, most frequent business travelers are “loyal”
to as many as four different airlines
– they join all the programs and don’t care about grades.
Customer loyalty is not a difficult thing
– it is just a matter of affection and attention.
Show your customers your love.
As master manager Tom Peters has gathered from numerous studies that:
60% of customers leave a supplier because of price,
a better product, or simply a lack of care from the old supplier.
Call or visit customers regularly
(not when the sales pitch is approaching)
– even if the visit is just to see how they’re doing.
Take them out to dinner if you can
(legendary internet entrepreneur Jeffrey Archer often throws champagne
and hash browns parties for his darkest partners).
If you can’t visit or call them,
write to them.
Don’t just use your letter to sell new products.
Send them a simple letter with helpful advice
(and not just information about you).
The letter should be personal.
Send them a birthday card or a bottle of wine for Christmas.
And don’t just think about the people at the top, either.
The director’s secretary may also be the most important person to you.
Entrepreneurship Tip:
If you lose customers,
suppress your self-esteem.
I’ve learned from my own bitter experience that when you lose a customer,
you often feel extremely sad
and just want to get rid of everything,
but that doesn’t change anything.
Consider this a delayed opportunity.
Find out why you lost customers.
They may also feel guilty about saying “no” to you,
so they’ll give you honest and constructive feedback
so you can do better next time.
While they still feel guilty,
ask them what you can do now.
Stay in touch with them.
They can still be your potential customers
– their current supplier might not be doing so well.
Step Two:
Sell More Products to Loyal Customers
Selling to a loyal customer is five times easier than selling to a new customer.
Even if you’re working hard to get a new customer,
keep selling to old customers.
Go back and sell them other products and services.
Let’s expand other services.
Since they wanted to buy your product the first time,
there’s obviously no reason not to keep buying.
Alistair Rutherford – co-founder of Edinburgh Preserves
– was the first to sell homemade sauces according
to his grandmother’s recipe.
Once successful with this product,
they produce more than 20 different sauces along with mustard,
condiments, pudding sauces for supermarkets across the UK.
If you think that’s a huge number
– look at the ketchup brand
– it has 57 varieties!
Step three:
Word of mouth marketing
It would be great if people love your product
so much that they want to tell their friends,
their friends will tell others.
This can happen and has happened;
this is what you should try to do in your business.
Referrals will lead to a sale
because people often trust friends.
To meet experts in the field,
visit www.boden.co.uk
and see how they personalize their marketing.
Referrals do not always happen automatically.
The steps below can help you do this:
Referral request.
Make it a habit after you have provided a good service to a customer
and ask if they know three more people
who would also enjoy the service.
. And the great thing is that
they will refer you to other potential customers.
Or a quicker way is to ask:
“May I speak to them and mention your name?”
Let your customers know how valuable referrals are to you.
Emphasize this in meetings
and show it on the company website.
Let people have an idea about the referral.
You can get 10% off their next purchase,
or gift a bottle of champagne.
And you should say,
“Thanks for referring the client to us,
it means a lot to us”
– they will feel comfortable and more willing
to refer people in the future.
Try viral marketing.
Virus is a scary-sounding word that comes from the Internet,
where people often send each other links
to interesting websites and emails.
So give people something
they can send to each other,
like business cards,
decals,
letters,
or a website address.
Anything that makes it easy for them to say,
“Hold on, I have her number here.”
Identify featured referrers.
Keep track of who is your best source of referrals.
They may not be a customer but a supplier,
the head of a commercial organization
or your financial manager.
Be nice to them!
Keep contact.
How many times have you found yourself talking to someone:
“Wow, I was talking to someone about this the other day”?
Check for regular newsletters
or updates in your progress.
Entrepreneurship Tip:
Encourage People to Complain
You may have heard the saying:
A satisfied customer tells one person,
but a dissatisfied customer tells five people.
But the interesting thing is,
according to a study by a large bank,
the customers who complain the most are the customers
who are the most loyal.
If you can solve the problem of pleasing customers,
the more they will trust you in the future
and be able to tell others about the positive experience.
Therefore, make it easy for customers to give feedback.
Set up a comment box and always ask customers
if they are satisfied with your product.
Don’t just rely on what they say
because they may hold back their anger
and then say bad things.
Other ways to promote sales
In direct marketing, one style can make all the difference
So you’ve got a foundation of loyal customers
who’ve given you good words
and now you can start filling your funnel with new leads.
Direct Marketing:
This method has a bad reputation,
because you managed to go from Awareness to Action in one step
(see Chapter 15).
Even the big companies only have a 1-2% win rate.
With luck, 98% of other customers will not see your mail or ignore it
and will not hesitate to throw promotional messages in the spam box.
If you’re going to do direct marketing, here are some tips:
After sending the letter, make a call. Remember the AIDA formula?
Your odds of winning will increase dramatically
if you call people to see what they think of your offer.
Make sure your database is up and running.
If possible, pre-empt a quick phone call
to check the contact information,
determine if they are the right person you sent the information to
– you are already two steps forward in the sales funnel.
Try it out first with a limited amount
and then let someone not related to your business read through it to proofread.
A marketing company is running a campaign towards wealthy investors.
Everyone focused on this campaign
but no one checked before the letters were sent.
Envelopes are beautiful, but the problem is
that the letters all begin with “Dear hateful capitalist”.
Make differences.
This is the golden rule that we will continue to talk about.
It’s a noisy world out there,
and if you want to be noticed,
you have to stand out from the crowd.
However, don’t stick thousands of flyers designed like a parking ticket
under the windshield wipers like one company did.
Your Website:
In the first edition of this book,
I may have expressed skepticism about websites,
saying that people had put too much faith in websites in the hope
that they would generate business number for them.
“In the reprint,
you need to pay more attention to the Internet.
He said only make websites if needed,
but who doesn’t need them in this day and age?
When I’m at work,
if I want to find something,
I look it up on the Internet,
using Google.
If you provide the service
I need but don’t have a referral website,
then I probably won’t know you.
Besides, we get the most benefit from doing business
(we do typing services) on our website
and can easily provide services to you in your field.
We are located in Sussex, UK,
the furthest customer from us are in Western Australia.”
(Ashley, typist)
I have noticed the importance of the website.
And I also know a pretty well known 3D design company
(www.web3D.co.uk)
that gets a fair amount of work from the Internet.
So you must have a website!
However, don’t think
that once you have a website everything will be fine.
There must be visitors to your stall.
Take the time to show it up in the search engines.
Leave links to other websites,
or maybe banner ads.
You can also use electronic newsletters.
Again, make sure what you say is
to add value to the customer.
Not many people pay attention to your information,
but if you can inform,
educate and discuss with them a topic they are interested in,
then they won’t just throw your mail in the spam box anymore.
PR (Public Relations):
Mass media mentions can also be of great value.
It costs less than advertising
and can make your business more trustworthy.
It can also generate publicity
and be a reassurance to the customer.
Importantly, it can satisfy the most conservative
(if it is not mentioned in court cases).
To be mentioned in the media,
remember journalists are human,
then:
Make your story compelling.
If your message doesn’t look good in the first 5 seconds,
customers won’t notice.
Don’t rely on generic press releases.
Pick up the phone and call in person
to discuss the press release before sending it to them.
Then follow it closely.
The press wants to see if a small business can do well,
especially in competition with a large or small business.
Don’t downplay the severity of your feelings in your paper.
If you have a good connection, nurture it.
Keep them updated with your good news,
and if they’ve made a good report,
send them a bottle of wine as a thank you.
An employee of a small charitable unit invited a journalist
of a central newspaper
to a hearty lunch.
And for the whole year that followed,
this reporter had six half-page articles about philanthropy.
The initial £55 spent turned into thousands
of pounds thanks to increased publicity.
Try with pictures.
Sometimes a good picture can get people’s attention.
One person won a contract to supply plants
and flowers for a large grocery store.
Not a single newspaper reported on it.
However, then in the middle of her display appeared a bird’s nest.
So this picture made her more known.
Method: Visit www.fromacorns.com
for a list of tips on how to write a good press release.
Advertisement:
We live in a noisy world:
It is estimated that
the average customer views about one million marketing messages a year.
Last year, $100 billion was spent on direct marketing
with 1% response rate is good
– 2% will usually help the marketing professional promote sales.
Recently, Google can search over 3 billion web pages.
A typical modern household can watch up to 32 TV channels.
There are over 1,000 business journals,
professional journals and newsletters in the UK.
Yet recently on eBay,
a man sold his forehead for advertising
and made $30,000 a month.
In my opinion:
advertising is a way to lose a lot of money quickly
with very little results.
If you continue to do this,
follow these tips:
Remember the AIDA formula:
People don’t buy your product/service the first time they hear about it.
Don’t depend on one-time advertising,
be sure your ad campaign has hit its target several times
and is supported by various other forms of sales and promotion.
Be different:
You can’t buy yourself attention,
but you can do it with creativity.
One of the best examples are the trucks that Innocent Smoothies1 uses.
They are covered with grass
and have a horn in front of them.
This gets people’s attention and imprints it in memory.
This is what is valuable.
Make customers think:
A good advertisement should not only attract customers’ attention,
but also stimulate them.
Then you’re closer to a deal.
Eye-catching and funny does not require a lot of advertising money.
I saw a leather jacket store that said:
“Due to the expensive divorce,
Mr. Toskana is in a hurry to sell his shop.”
The cost of this sign may be only a few pounds,
but it is seen and remembered by thousands of people every day.
Business Secret:
Don’t be Convinced by Ads
Make sure you have a plan and stick to it.
To prove my point
– how do salespeople sell ad space to idiots?
Do they just put the ad in the magazine and hope you read it?
Of course they don’t do that.
They pick up the phone and call you
Networking and Notworking2:
Networking is the art of blending potential customers into an event
or golf course to work with them.
This way of working seems to be not working.
If done well and with the right people,
you can change a person from Awareness to Action
(in the AIDA formula) in just 5 minutes of talking.
There are many forums to help you meet potential clients:
Chamber of Commerce, local business club,
industry forum.
However,
before attending these places,
consider carefully whether you will meet many potential customers there.
Collaboration:
There’s a pretty good book,
Marketing Judo,
which is about a group of people who turned local fried fish
and chips restaurant Harry Ramsden’s into a global brand.
Their business philosophy is that agile small companies can achieve great success
by partnering with solid big businesses.
There are several ways you can do this:
Get a local celebrity to eat at your restaurant,
make you more known,
in return you can give them a free meal.
You can do it on a smaller scale.
For example, a local sports team can promote your sports store
if you give them shirts.
Or you can do it at scale.
Richard Tait invented a jigsaw puzzle called Cranium.
However, his company only has four employees,
and he doesn’t have enough access to big-name toy retailers.
But you have an acquaintance at Starbucks.
They are looking for other promotional items that complement their brand.
They chose Cranium,
first regionally,
then nationally and then worldwide.
It became their best seller.
And one night on the “Oprah Winfrey Show,”
Julia Roberts3 said she enjoyed playing the game.
So Cranium sold another 11 million sets,
becoming the best-selling indie puzzle game in history.