Using Social Media to Your Advantage
Great article on how restaurants are using social media – give it a read.
It talks about Social with the use of: Billboards, contests, and events (like happy hour).
Even if you don’t own a restaurant, you can still benefit from this article. It has some good ideas…and ones to make you think, “How can I use that?”
Questions to ask yourself:
Is social media worth my time? Or, is it worth bringing someone on to do it for me?
Can I use social media more effectively? How?
How can I use social media to connect with my customers?
How To Get Free Publicity For Your Business
There are three key areas of public relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.
The key to public relations lies in Publicity, Merchandising, & Promotions
With a solid plan in place that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.
Public relations include all that is the media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines and more are all equally powerful. Online marketing is just as, if not more, important as conventional media.
Here are four steps to get noticed by the media:
Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.
Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting hook and angle to make sure the media person you are sending it to is interested in reading it.
Next, put your press release in professional formatting. With press releases you need a dateline, the most important information at the top, facts, figures and wrap it up with contact details, including who and how.
Send your press release to all television and radio stations, local and metro newspapers, national newspapers, industry magazines, and any other form of media that reaches your target market. Don’t forget to include relevant blogs, e-zines, press release submission sites and to industry professionals.
More important than a perfect press release is to make sure you have addressed the needs of your target market in the products or services you offer and make that clear in the press release. If you are providing people a solution to a problem, a way to avoid a problem and an opportunity to enhance their life, the media and public will be interested.
If you have a connection, or the ability to get a connection with a celebrity, this can practically guarantee you’ll get attention. Make sure you are offering newsworthy information, and then follow up with media outlets to make sure they are publicizing that information.
Jay Abraham says, “One of the most powerful techniques every business should use is free publicity. As the name implies, there is no cost, just the time and effort required to attract attention to your business.”
Our FREE test drive can show you how to put together press releases that work! Check out how the pros do it and craft the perfect press releases for your business. For more information and your free test drive, go to www.profitcatapultbusinessschool.com
Building Long Term Relationships With Your Vendors
It’s extremely important to build relationships with your vendors. By doing so, you can bring in new customers and clients and increase awareness of your company branding.
The people you work directly with on your products and services are really the ones with the most to gain when you find success. By taking the time to get to know them, you’ll find many opportunities you didn’t realize were there.
Look for great ways to offer your vendors rewards for helping grow your business and everyone wins. One of ways you can do this is by offering performance based incentives that are much larger than their normal charges.
Here’s a step-by-step process so you can put together a partnership with a vendor:
First, approach all the vendors you work with and offer an incentive based on performance. Next, put together a generous incentive plan together from their perspective. You may even take suggestions from them on what would motivate them. Now, develop a clear, concise and easy to track incentive plan. By doing so this will increase competition between vendors and also produce higher performance levels. Who doesn’t like a little friendly competition?
Don’t forget to encourage subsequent sales, too, instead of focusing only on the initial sale. By doing this you can give away more of the profit from the initial sale to your vendors and make higher profits off the back end products. So be sure to encourage future sales, upsells on more profitable products or services, and cross-selling over to additional products.
When you create an incentive plan that’s irresistible to your vendors by offering generous, exclusive compensation you both win!
Just think of all the vendors you work with and the creative ways you can put together an incentive plan that will entice them to be part of your business. Use their talents, capabilities and connections and you’ll both be winners.
Putting together an incentive plan doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Use our FREE test drive to come up with some great ideas and put your incentive plan together for maximum results. For more information and your free test drive, go to www.profitcatapultbusinessschool.com
Using Direct Mail and Telemarketing Effectively In Your Business
Today you’ll learn how to use direct mail and, yes, telemarketing, to your full advantage. I know, the word “telemarketing” might as well be a four letter word to some, but there is a way to help customers feel like they are getting personal attention and keep them from blocking your number!
With the success direct mail has had and the availability of computers, these can be used as a powerful marketing tool for your success. Telemarketing is best used for high priced, high margin products or services.
Let’s first go over the eight key steps to putting together a highly effective direct mail program:
First, list all the benefits your customers will get from the purchase of your products and services. Then, pick the single most powerful benefit out of that list. Next, build an attention-getting headline around that benefit. Remember to use emotion and fulfill the desire of your customers, whether it is to be young, wealthy, desired, popular or successful.
The next step is to develop a sales letter using the headline you created to grab attention, provide information and motivate customers to act. Now put together supplementary items, such as a brochure, order form, reply envelope or note that encourages them to read the letter. Go ahead and rent or purchase a mailing list. Make sure to compare your cost of mailing vs. your cost per order. Continue to test and refine your direct mail marketing plan.
You can see how direct mail will help you find a local or even national target market to send your message to and draw in new clientele and customers. Fine-tuning and continuously testing your marketing campaign will yield better results and therefore, lower the overall cost of the campaign.
To be successful in telemarketing you need to do a couple of things. The first is to put together a plan, so you know exactly what you want to accomplish during the call. Then, develop a list of topics to discuss and the questions you want to present around these topics. In your script, include an area where you check to see if you are calling at a good time.
Make sure to include enough questions to keep the conversation interesting, but not too many to sound like you are interrogating. One of the ways to do this is to start with broad questions and narrow your focus as the conversation continues. You can also offer feedback to show them you are paying attention and appreciate their time. Make sure to not insult their intelligence or manipulate them.
Always listen first, talk second. And be relaxed and conversational.
Telemarketing doesn’t have to be the trauma it’s made out to be. You can put together an honest, personal and effective telemarketing campaign that is endearing, informative and gets the job done. Think of how you would want to be treated on a marketing call. Ask your friends and family what they hate most about the telemarketing calls they get and work hard to craft your message in a better way.
Jay Abraham says, “When selling by telephone, you have approximately thirty seconds to convince the customer to listen to you. You need an opening statement that captures their attention, conveys who you are, what you want and why the prospect should listen.”
It’s easy to see how direct mail and telemarketing can positively affect your business by bringing in new customers and increasing the level of awareness about your products, services and company. Our FREE test drive offers the resources and tools you need to work through these processes and put together the best marketing plan you can. For more information and your free test drive, go to www.profitcatapultbusinessschool.com
13 Tips On How You Can Control Buyers Remorse
Today I’d like to talk about how to turn prospects into customers and how to keep them! While your marketing is bringing more prospects to you, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be Inviting, Informative, and Enjoyable!
The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded buyer’s remorse. You know the feeling: you just bought a large purchase, you get it home and then you think, what have I done???!!! As a business owner, you want to avoid this at all costs and as long as you provide a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, you should be fine.
However, buyers remorse CAN still occur. There are two ways to deal with this:
1. You can offer to refund money with a “no questions asked” policy.
2. You can offer a bonus they can keep, even if they return the product.
These offers alone will also help control buyer’s remorse because the customer will trust you more, just for offering these things.
Some other ways to turn a prospect into a customer are to offer a special price as an opportunity for you to test the market. Offer a lower price with a reason why you are offering the special rate. For example, to push inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s’ braces, or another tangible reason. Customers love this because it makes you feel so much more human.
You could also offer a referral incentive. Or, how about offering a smaller, more inexpensive product first to build trust? Another option to control buyers remorse is to offer package deals. Or you can also offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer. What about offering extra incentives, like longer warranties or free bonuses if ordered by a set date?
You can offer financing options, if applicable, or offer a bonus if they pay in full. You can offer special packaging or delivery. You could even consider offering a “name your own price” incentive! Some other offers could be comparative data or other comparison tools, offering a trade-up or upgrade to something they already have or additional, educational information to help them make their decision.
The options really are as limitless as you make it. You can use these or other ideas to find what works the best for your business, products or service and target market.
Jay Abraham says (and he’s so right), “By making it inviting, easy, informative, non-threatening, educational, inspiring and fun to do business with you, you’ll loft your company above the competition.”
Do you need help figuring out the best strategy for converting your prospects into customers? Our FREE test drive gives you exclusive access to a mountain of resources and tools and information. For more information and your free test drive, go to www.profitcatapultbusinessschool.com!