Most small business owners fail when it comes to their small business marketing plans. They've got excellent technical skills in their line of work, but that just doesn't translate to having effective marketing skills.
As a result, profitability of many small businesses has been declining over the years. Ever increasing competition is making it more challenging in many ways. For those businesses that aren't losing money, most are not producing the profit they could be if they knew how to market themselves properly.
These business owners usually just copy what they see other businesses doing, or they follow the advice of some media sales person. The problem is they copy the wrong types of businesses, and the media sales people typically only know as much about effective marketing as the business owner does.
Without the right kind of marketing system in place, the success of any business is by pure chance. To help remedy this situation, below are seven things a small business can do to increase profits while spending less on marketing.
1. Use the power of free stuff
Everyone likes getting free stuff and you can use that to your advantage. If your business lends itself to giving away free samples of your product, do that. It helps get people hooked on it. Business profits have boomed on this marketing model.
As Chris Anderson author of the book titled, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" says, "You can make make money giving things away." In his book he talks about how businesses are giving away products and services they used to charge for, and in return, a percentage of their customers are buying something else. As a result, they are making more money than ever.
When you give something away, you often activate a universal law called the "Law of Reciprocity." It says that when people get something free, they feel obligated to do something for you. Obviously it doesn't work every time, but it does work enough of the time.
But there is another way to give away free stuff that can greatly benefit your business. When you do it right you get something very valuable in return: customer contact info...which leads us to the next tip.
2. Start capturing customer contact info and use it
One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is not tapping their current customer base. They let customers visit their business (online or offline) all day long without ever trying to capture their contact info so they can continue to market products or services to them.
You likely know how expensive it can be to get a new customer. But you can market to your current customers for little or no cost. Capturing and using customer contact info can mean the difference between a profitable business and one that barely gets by.
Your business has more customer value in it than a customer can possibly digest in a short visit so if you aren't continually marketing to your customers, you are throwing money away!
You can make customer contact capture easier simply by using the power of free from tip number one. Simply start a monthly drawing to give away something free and print some registration slips visitors can fill out. Also have people register online on your website.Tell customers they only have to register once for all drawings and you will contact them monthly via email to let them know who won. Of course you will always include an offer for a product or service!
What do you give away? Anything with a perceived value makes a great free item. Free items do not have to be expensive. Buy something on sale at WalMart or at eBay and offer it. You can also offer free informational reports that help people solve their problems. People are always looking for ways to solve problems they are having.
Of course, once you capture this information you have to do something with it. If you're too busy to take on any more work, then the next tip will help you out.
