Business Teaching in Rockford

Archive for the ‘Marketing Strategy’ Category

Customer service sells. Offline and online, customers are looking for hassle-free, convenient, pleasant shopping. “Gone are the days when the customer overlooked poor service because the price was discounted. Finding ways to exceed the customers’ expectations is the key” (Terry Wooten, “Providing Good Customer Service”).

Sleep Country Canada is one example of a Canadian retailer that has found ways to do this.

Have you ever seen a Sleep Country Canada ad? Like many successful ads, they feature testimonials by satisfied customers. But listen closely. Why are these customers so satisfied? They’re talking about the service, not the product. They say things such as, “They came to deliver my mattress just when they said they would.” And “I was so impressed when I saw the men putting on those little booties before they walked into my house.”

Christine Magee, the president of Sleep Country Canada, knows that good customer service is important to her business’ potential customers. She also knows that there are a lot of other companies that sell mattresses. But the way Sleep Country Canada delivers the mattresses they sell provides an illustration of our first customer service tip:

• Provide customer service that distinguishes your business from your competitors.

The best product in the world is just going to stay on the shelves and get dusty if you don’t support it with customer service that makes your product “better” than the identical product offered by the competition. The success of Sleep Country Canada also illustrates the power of word-of-mouth. Good customer service not only makes your customer want to come back and do more business with your company; it also encourages your customer to recommend your business to his or her friends.

Actively listening to the customer. Show that you’re actively listening to the customer by making eye contact, nodding, or even jotting down a note. Ask clarifying questions when the customer is finished speaking if necessary to get more details that will enable you to solve the customer’s problem. Do not interrupt a customer when he or she is speaking. You can’t listen when your mouth is moving.

Showing a knowledge of the business’s products and/or services. Be sure that you and your staff know your products and services inside out. And be sure that all staff know the difference between “showing a knowledge” and “showing off”. Customers do not come in to hear lectures about particular products or services. For good customer service, tell customers what they want to know, not everything you know about it.

Showing a knowledge of related products and/or services. Customers commonly compare products and/or services, so you and staff need to be able to do this, too. After all, you may be able to save them a trip to another store. You also need to be aware of any accessories or parts related to your products so you can tell customers where they can get them if you don’t supply them.

Being able to offer pertinent advice. Customers often have questions that aren’t directly about your products or services but are related to them. For instance, a customer interested in hardwood flooring might want to know what the best way of cleaning hardwood floors is. The answers you give (or aren’t able to give) can be a big influence on buying decisions and how the customer feels about your customer service.

What’s the most common customer service situation? A customer or client seeking help. So it’s extremely important to get this customer service interaction right. Properly done, a customer seeking help will not only feel that she or he has been treated well but will be more favourably disposed towards buying products and/or services from your business. Use the following tips for better customer service to educate your staff and evaluate their customer service performance.

Tips for Better Customer Service: How to Help a Customer

When a potential customer walks into your store or office you and/or your staff need to:

1) Be available in a timely manner.

The first way that you make your customer feel valued is by acknowledging her as soon as possible.

So when someone enters your store or office, you need to look up from your computer, stop stocking shelves or whatever else you’re doing as soon as possible. If your work involves being away from the floor, such as working in stockroom or workshop area for part of the time, you need to have some system that alerts you when a customer enters so you can attend to her.

2) Greet the customer in a friendly but appropriate way.

Make eye contact, smile and say something such as, “Hello. How may I help you today?”

Stop there. Allow the customer to respond.

3) Appear eager to help (but not in such an aggressive or rote fashion that the customer is turned/driven off).

Doing points one and two properly are often all that’s required to appear eager to help to a customer. Do not encourage staff to continually trail customers about the premises or to interrupt them every two minutes and ask them how they’re doing.

Customers who have responded to the initial question by saying something such as, “I just thought I’d take a look around” should be approached after an acceptable period of time (which will vary depending on the type of business, floor layout etc.) and asked if they have any questions or if they’ve found what they’re looking for.

It’s important to consider your virtual segmentation by selecting particular verticals to present your offerings to. Those verticals will have the particular likelihood of purchasing your products and services. Again, this saves you from wasting valuable time and money.

Small Business Marketing and Large Business Marketing are Different

If you are like the majority of small business owners your marketing budget is limited. The most effective way to market a small business is to create a well rounded program that combines sales activities with your marketing tactics. Your sales activities will not only decrease your out-of-pocket marketing expense but it also adds the value of interacting with your prospective customers and clients. This interaction will provide you with research that is priceless.

Small businesses typically have a limited marketing budget if any at all. Does that mean you can’t run with the big dogs? Absolutely not. It just means you have to think a little more creatively. How about launching your marketing campaign by doing one of the following:

• Call your vendors or associates and ask them to participate with you in co-op advertising
• Take some time to send your existing customers’ referrals and buying incentives.
• Have you thought about introducing yourself to the media? Free publicity has the potential to boost your business. By doing this you position yourself as an expert in your field.
• Invite people into your place of business by piggybacking onto an event. Is there a concert coming to town, are you willing to sell those tickets? It could mean free radio publicity. If that is not your cup of tea, how about a walkathon that is taking place in your area, why not be a public outreach and distribute their material?

When you do spend money on marketing, do not forget to create a way to track those marketing efforts. You can do this by coding your ads, using multiple toll-free telephone numbers, and asking prospects where they heard about you. This enables you to notice when a marketing tactic stops working. You can then quickly replace it with a better choice or method.

The essence of marketing is to understand your customers’ needs and develop a plan that surrounds those needs. Let’s face it anyone that has a business has a desire to grow their business. The most effective way to grow and expand your business is by focusing on organic growth.

You can increase organic growth in four different ways. They include:

• Acquiring more customers
• Persuading each customer to buy more products
• Persuading each customer to buy more expensive products or up selling each customer
• Persuading each customer to buy more profitable products

All four of these increase your revenue and profit. Let me encourage you to focus on the first which is to acquire more customers. Why? Because by acquiring more customers you increase your customer base and your revenues then come from a larger base.

How can you use marketing to acquire more customers?

Spend time researching and create a strategic marketing plan.
Guide your product development to reach out to customers you aren’t currently attracting.
Price your products and services competitively.
Develop your message and materials based on solution marketing.

The Importance of a Target Market in Small Business

When it comes to your customers keep in mind the importance of target marketing. The reason this is important is that only a proportion of the population is likely to purchase any products or service. By taking time pitch your sales and marketing efforts to the correct niche market you will be more productive and not waste your efforts or time.

When thinking about the importance of referral marketing I’m always reminded of an incident that happened at a fitness center. I made a decision to refocus on my fitness regimen by joining a gym. I was referred to a gym by a friend of mine, so a few of my friends and I called the fitness center to schedule an orientation appointment. After touring the facility we decided to join the gym and agreed to sign up for a membership. The person that had referred us was with us, so obviously being in the sales and marketing business I asked the representative what our friend would get for referring us to them. His response, “I can give her a water bottle.”

This response floored me, I could not believe that this fitness center had no referral program. A water bottle? I can go to a discount store and purchase one for under $5.00 yet this person brought them new business and that was how they would show their appreciation?

Think about this, the fitness center didn’t have to pay for an advertisement, they hadn’t sent us a mailing, so their outgoing costs for this new business was zero. In response to the referral given to them by a current customer, they had over $300 laying on the desk and two people signing membership agreements.

Do you think their referral offer was adequate?

I think sometimes we become so focused on our advertisements and our marketing plans that we ignore the basics. A referral program should be in place for every business, regardless of the size of the business.

Referrals are the most powerful form of marketing that you can use and it’s also the least expensive. Your referrals have more of an impact than any other marketing strategy or advertisement. Have you looked at your referral program lately? Perhaps it’s time to evaluate and calculate the value of your referrals and develop a program that rewards current clients and customers for sending you new business.

Make it worth your customers time. Be creative, be generous, and be reliable. Make sure what you offer has value to your customers. If a customer thinks enough of you to refer someone, show your appreciation promptly and generously – don’t offer them a water bottle.

Customer service is the service or care that a consumer receives before, during and after a purchase. It’s one of the factors that come in to play when a consumer is determining buying value, the other is the quality of the product or service that is being offered.

Consumers often must encounter an experience to not only be a satisfied customer, but a loyal customer. Customer service is a part of that experience. Top notch service will create loyalty and a returning customer, which is what we all must strive for.

Excellent customer service is vital to businesses today. It’s a component that is often missing, unfortunately. How do you provide great customer service? Always make your customer a priority. Greet them in a friendly manner, whether that be via telephone, email or in person. Let them know you are there to help and that you will take care of them, not only before the sale but after as well. After all, in a thriving business customers are not optional it’s a requirement for businesses to survive.

Many people argue that, our educational system should be revised again. Because, as long as this system tends to teach us to be afraid to do something. We are so afraid of making mistakes. For example, when our school, we always required by our teachers to do all things must not be wrong. In fact, the more we make a mistake, then we will learn a lot from that mistake.

So also when the first school we are always required to memorize the lessons and count numbers, and not how to communicate properly, how to practice leading, and how the practice works. So there are of the opinion that our education system at school has been really ‘impoverish intelligence entrepreneur’ our own.

Especially for us who want to wrestle the world of business, it will always be haunted by the feeling afraid to do something in business. Whereas in us running a business, no slahnya we learn from the mistakes we’ve ever done. That is, we must dare to do something. We do not be afraid to start or grow our business. That actually benefit if we really have intelligence entrepreneur, I briefly Entre-Q.

• First, a company will divest (sell) a business that is not part of the main operational areas, so the company can focus on best business area that it can. For example, Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor Company, and many other companies already sell a variety of businesses that do not relate to its core business.
• The second motive for divestiture is to gain profit. Divestment produce a better profit for the company because divestment is an attempt to sell the business in order to get money. For example, CSX Corporation divested to focus on its core business of railway construction and aims to make a profit so it can pay its debts as this.
• The third motive for divestiture is sometimes believed that the insurance company has to divest (sell their particular business) higher than the value of the firm prior to divestiture. In other words, the number of private liquidation value of assets exceeds the company’s market value when compared with the company at the time prior to divestiture. This strengthens the company’s desire to sell what should be valued at current value rather than liquidated prior to divestiture.
• The fourth motive for divestiture is a business unit is no longer profitable. The more business units run away from the core competence of the company, the possibility of failure in the greater operations.

Promotional items, also known as merchandising items are products that have the logo or name of a brand or company, and whose main objective is to promote that brand or company.

As a strategy for promotion, giving away promotional items to our customers enables us to keep or retain, and attract a greater number of them.

It allows us to maintain or retain customers by allowing us to be around them and constantly remind our brand or company, and allows us to attract new customers by allowing us to draw the attention of potential customers who possess different article.

These promotional items we can give all our customers, or only some, for example, our major customers or those who meet a certain number of purchases.

We can also send them to produce and give away at any time, or in special cases, for example, during the launch of a campaign.

Some common promotional items that we could give to our clients are pens, key chains, bottle openers, hats, jerseys, among others.

However, for this marketing strategy is effective promotion is not advisable to give the first products that we come to mind, but those associated with the rotation of our business, and are useful to our target audience.

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