7 Marketing Secrets Struggling Businesses Are Too Wimpy To Apply
Posted by Sant Qiu in : Marketing Maneuvers on October 6, 2007 , trackbackWhen entrepreneurs and small business owners got to know that I help companies boost their profits with better marketing, they would always ask for advice. A lot of the time after asking them a few questions I would know why their businesses were struggling.
They were just too wimpy to apply any real marketing!
“Ok, here’s what you can do…” I would say. And predictably they would say things like, “Oh… but we can’t do that.” “Erm, I don’t think it will work for my businesses.” “Isn’t that too hard sell? We’re not a hard sell company” “Will that be too much?” and many other excuses.
In my years of consulting with many different businesses I found that most small businesses are just too coward to do aggressive marketing. Sometimes I wonder why they are in business in the first place. Below I’m sharing 7 marketing strategies that I see are sorely lacking in small businesses. When applied, these strategies will create literally instant positive impact to your bottom line.
Here goes:
Marketing Strategy #1: Meet your prospects before you even start your business/promotion. Knowing your prospects before you offer them anything is incredibly powerful, not to mention profitable. On top of that, if you get to know them first, before doing a promotion, they will tend to respond more, thus bumping up your sales with no additional costs!
Marketing Strategy #2: Ethically ‘bribe’ your prospects to do business with you. I’m not asking you to do any ‘under the table’ stuffs! What I’m talking about here is to ‘bribe’ them with added value. You need to realize that people do business with those who give them the most ‘bribes’ (compelling benefits). So come up with strong compelling reasons why your prospects can benefit more from you, compared to others.
Marketing Strategy #3: Prove what you claim is true. In today’s market, people are getting constantly bombarded by advertisements and pitches all the time. They are overwhelmed and that’s why they have ‘grown an extra skin’ of skepticism. Today, one of the biggest challenges for a marketer is to be believed—to gain trust. One of the easiest ways to do that is to show genuine, powerful testimonials. Do you have them?
Marketing Strategy #4: Ask For ACTION! It has been said that prospects will say eight ‘no’s before they say a ‘yes’. And yet most marketers/salespeople only ask for the order once or at most twice before giving up. Prospects say ‘no’ due to many reasons, one of which is not having enough information. What you need to do is to lead them step-by-step through the sales process to the inevitable conclusion of buying. Remember this: Customers are silently begging to be led!
Marketing Strategy #5: Provide Guarantees. Providing a powerful guarantee can make a huge difference in your business. Yet most businesses do not offer one. Even if they have a guarantee, they don’t promote their guarantee. Majority of the people are afraid of taking risks. Every time you ask for the sale, you are essentially asking your customer to take a risk on you. Take away the risk and see your sales jump sky high!
Marketing Strategy #6: Follow Up. As mentioned above, most people will say many ‘no’s’ before a ‘yes’. This means that only a small percentage of your prospects will actually buy from you at your initial contact. The key is to consistently follow up. The Internet has made this so easy to do, not to mention with almost zero costs. Many businesses are too scared to ‘keep bothering’ their prospects. Big mistake! You’re not bothering them (unless they expressively say so), you’re giving them the opportunity to benefit from what you’re offering.
Marketing Strategy #7: Delegate and Automate. In the words of Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth, “Work ON your business, NOT IN your business.” Wise words indeed. This philosophy changed the way I work and it will help you to increase profits too. Everyone has 24hrs daily, so forget about trying to be an expert in every aspect of your business. It is just not possible. A Jack of all trades is an Ace in none. Focus on marketing your business instead. Why marketing? Because marketing is one of the only two things that brings in business, everything else is an expense against your business.
Apply them and profit from them!
i think the reason why small busineses don’t like exploring new business opportunities its due to the fact that they are new and they don’t want to spend their capital on ventures they do not have the assurance that it will be profitable. the other reason is being afraid that they might lose and the money is non-refundable, i mean who would want to spend their capital on a business venture that has the likelihood of losing and benefiting by 50% chances. although it does not realy show their ambition of being future business tycoons their fear of investing in other business related activities does not resemble their characterstics of being a business man or women. for all we know business is all about risk taking even if there is a prediction that you might lose your investment you have to take chances.
Hey OLebogeng,
That is why education and having better information is so critical. Most small biz owners don’t know what they don’t know. And that is the riskiest place to be.
Business is about taking smart, calculated risks, NOT blind risks. So actually, the odds should be on your side, not against. There are also a lot of marketing strategies that are literally risk-free. I’ve listed some of them above. For eg. asking for action from prospects is risk-free.