ideas to boost business

Ideas to Boost Business

A collection of practical business, financial, legal and personal tips to help your business survive
1. Know Who Your Customers Are
a. Describe the person most likely to want or need your product.
b. Why should they want to buy your product?
c. When you know the motivation, you can target the product to the correct customer base.
d. You cant sell a product until it is defined and positioned.
Note: A pharmaceutical company shelved a cold medicine because they couldnt correct the drowsiness it produced. Someone renamed it NyQuil and sold it as a bedtime cold medicine. It became the largest selling cold medicine on the market. Just because your product is good doesnt mean it will sell. It must be positioned correctly. Thats what marketing does.
2. Promote With Postcards
a. The U.S. Postal Service is proposing slight increases for mailing letters and postcards but leaving first class Forever stamps at their present 49 cents.
Under a filing with the Postal Regulatory Commission, letters to international destinations would rise from $1.15 to $1.20. Postcards would rise from 34 cents to 35 cents. The increases being proposed if passed would become effective on April 26,2015.
b. Postcards convey a sense of urgency to the customer. They may not read your letter but they will turn your postcard over. You have 3 seconds to get your message across. The average time people look at an ad.
c. Postcards will keep your mailing list clean Address Correction Requested , First class returned and corrected free of charge by the Post Office. Bulk Mail letter corrections will have additional charges. Check with the Post Office .
d. With a postcard, your message is out in the open. Other potential customers will see it too, not just the person its addressed to.
3. Create A Survey
a. Mail a survey to customers to find what motivates them to buy.
b. Where do they work? What magazines do they read? Age Group?
c. This information will tell you where and how to reach your targets.
d. Offer a gift or discount for completing the survey.
4. Use A Two Step Approach
a. Offer complimentary business related information to potential customers.
Step 1: Offer a free fact sheet to customers that shows your expertise.
Step 2: Add these customers to your mailing list and mail to them often.
5. Say Happy Birthday
a. Mail greeting cards to your customers dates from your survey #3 .
b. Include a coupon or special offer or tell them about your product that they should give themselves as a gift.
6. Team Up With Another Business
a. Share advertising costs with another company.
b. Sharing costs makes high quality printing and larger ads affordable.
c. Can your product be teamed with another product? Motor Oil packaged with your new funnel invention.
7. Be Consistent And Committed
a. Research shows a message must be repeated to be remembered.
b. Send multiple mailers to the same people.
c. If you advertise, do it where you can afford to do it often.
8. Use The Telephone
a. Test a new idea by phone before you commit to costly promotions.
b. Response from 100 phone calls will be similar to 1,000 pieces of mail.
c. Youll receive faster results, it costs less, and youll generate greater input and feedback.
9. Raise Your Prices
a. Has your competition raised their prices? Maybe you should too.
b. Higher prices separate you from the crowd, and implies your product is better, an deserves a premium price. BMW does not compete with Yugos.
c. Be careful in this area. The customer must see the value of the higher price.
10. Promote Trends or Current Events
a. Can you tie your product or service to the environment, Olympics, World Series?
b. Gain valuable credibility and interest by association with known groups.