What Are QR Codes And How Can They Be Used In Your Business

What are QR codes? Well, they’re similar to the barcodes used by retailers to track inventory and price products at the point of sale. The main difference between the two is the amount of data they can communicate. Traditional bar codes which I’m sure you’re familiar with use vertical lines and can only hold up to 20 digits, whereas QR codes are two-dimensional (2D) and can hold much more information.

When a customer scans or reads a QR code with their iPhone, Android or other camera-enabled Smartphone, the phone can automatically:

• Be linked to a web page (for your shop, or business)
• Activate a number of phone functions including email, messaging or SMS
• Directed to an online video (Youtube, etc)
• Display prices or other data about a product, etc

Really it makes it EASIER for a customer (or potential customer) to obtain further information about a product – WITHOUT having to enter in information (e.g. your website address). It’s a good marketing and sales tool.

I’ve recently seen a big electrical goods retailer use QR codes as a ‘teaser’ for advertised specials. So it will be interesting to keep tabs on the varied (and creative) uses for QR codes in retailing and business.

$8,000+ In Net Profit After Sending 97 Letters

Direct mail is a beautiful thing once you have a well-crafted letter written in our style of marketing.

Our client, Brad Podmore of Coffee & Tea Supplies WA, sent 97 copies of the letter we wrote for him and picked up a new client worth more than $8,000 in net profit per year!

Brad’s Giovanni blend coffee is so good that he retains cafe and restaurant clients for many years – hence the Lifetime PROFIT Value of that new client would easily be $32,000 over 4 years.

To read other marketing success case-studies, click here.

Updated Marketing Tips For More Customers & Sales

Updated articles (December 2011) on marketing, more customers and sales:

• Tip #21 – Getting More Customers – Fast! (part 1)
• Tip #22 – Free Marketing Strategy: Lead Generation In Public
• Strategy #32 – Store Traffic Information : A Simple Way To Boost Store Sales!
• Strategy #33 – How Many Customers Didn’t Revisit Your Store? And What You Can Do About It!
• Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Products – our business marketing systems
• Client results – case studies and testimonials from clients using our business marketing systems
• Client results #2

Article published from our head office – Balcatta, Perth, Western Australia.

Want To Market Your Services To An Industry Or Niche?

Often good marketing requires TARGETING your ideal industry or niche – whether it’s accountants, lawyers, engineers, etc – or even the wealthy clients of the accountants, lawyers, engineers, etc.

By finding and joining suitable associations, you get the opportunity to “hang out” with your target market. You can then find out their specific needs and wants, to further refine your offering. It’s one thing to measure your marketing results by numbers, but it’s much better to actually ask your market – what they like and dislike about your products and services, and about your marketing. It’s market research at its best.

Check out the "Directory Of Australian Associations" by Crown Content.

 

How To Get More Customers Using The Internet And Social Media Marketing…

Maximising your online presence using a keyword bank

How do you search for suppliers on the internet? How do potential customers find you?

It’s a different process… rather than open the index page of the Yellow Pages or thumb through the local newspaper, consumers find services and products by the use of keywords and keyphrases. Unless your website contains these keywords and keyphrases – you won’t get people coming to your website.

A keyword bank is the most valuable resource for your online presence!

What is a keyword bank? It’s a list of keywords and keyphrases that are related to your business.

The image on above illustrates sample keywords for an accounting firm.

Sure, your website designer or your Internet advertising company may have used some of the popular terms (keywords) on your website or in your internet advertisements, but you, as business owner, should know WHAT the popular search terms ARE to ensure that your website contains articles and information USING those keywords.

Now this ‘keyword research’ is easy – you don’t need to pay someone thousands of dollars to do it. In fact, Google have a FREE search tool to assist you with your ‘keyword research’. Check it out…

Google Keyword Research Tool – click here

What’s The Best Way To Figure Out If Your Website Is Working For You Or Not?

The big trend now is a shift away from traditional PRINT media like magazines and newspapers to the internet. People like to search and find information online these days, especially for a product or a service.

A business website should bring in leads and assist to close sales to customers! Otherwise, it’s a waste of your hard earned money! Most businesses these days have an internet presence (ie. website). The CHALLENGE is to find out if YOUR website working for YOU? Will it generate leads and customers for you as effectively as traditional advertising? To answer these questions, you will need to TRACK enquires – no different to what you should have been doing with traditional advertising.

Okay, let’s work it out… Leads will come from your web-site in a number of ways:

1) Someone calls your business. To find out how many calls you get a week from your website, you can:

1. Use a separate phone number and note how many calls to that line (using a PABX, or a tally sheet), or
2. You can pay for a special VOIP service that records the number of calls, or
3. Train your staff to ask that important question "How did you find about us?"

2) Someone fills in your ‘Contact Us’ form (this is better than listing your email address on your website). Then record how many form enquiries you get each month.

3) Someone takes some other online action, like makes an online purchase, or enters their details to download a catalogue, etc. However, if someone subscribes to your e-newsletter – typically that is not a warm lead (as you usually only have their first name and email address only at this stage).

NEXT. Okay, you’ve got some tracking in place now – but then you discover that you are not getting as many enquires as you should… so we need to take the next step and IDENTIFY what’s happening on your website.

I’ll reveal exactly how you do this in my next post… as they say… "Stay tuned…"

How The Lifetime Customer Value Principle Can Make You A Rich Business Person…

The most difficult and expensive sale we ever make to a customer is the first one. In that first, important, transaction we earn or lose the trust of the customer.

Think back about your own consumer experiences – have you ever been just a little concerned about your first purchase from a business? It might have been from that florist delivery service you’ve never used before, or that tradesperson you’ve hired, or even product related concerns, say about a new computer or air-conditioning unit.

Once we have the trust of the customer, we open the door to many more sales and referrals.    Why would you want to know the lifetime value of a customer? The lifetime value of a customer is a measure of the value of the customer to your business. It is the potential contribution of the customer to your business over a period of time. When you know the lifetime value of a customer, you have an understanding and awareness of how much you would or should be willing to invest to acquire a customer.

For example:

Mary is a new customer. Mary spends $60 with you, but it costs you $20 to supply the product or service and $40 to acquire Mary as a customer. You might think that acquiring Mary was pointless, i.e. no profit was made. But if I was to tell you that Mary needs to repurchase or revisit every six weeks spending $60 each time, with a profit to you of $40, plus Mary begins refers other people to your business, essentially costing you zero in advertising costs… Well, I’m sure you can see the benefits here.

When you evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing, instead of focusing on that initial, single transaction, you should really focus on the Lifetime return for the investment made.

Lifetime Customer Value = average customer spend X number of times of repurchases in a year X the number of years a customer stays with your business (on average). PLUS Referrals!

Using our Mary example:

LTV = $60 X (52 weeks in a year / 6 weeks) X 5 years = $2,600

Would you spend that $40 to acquire Mary if she was worth $2,600 to your business PLUS referrals? I hope you said YES!

If you understand this significant marketing principle, you’ll see that you can now justify a much greater advertising/marketing investment when you look at your returns in this way, and this provides the engine for significant business growth.

Often your competitors are too cheap to make this important investment, and this can give you a competitive advantage.

Mobile/Internet Shopping – How Will It Affect Retailing?

What do you think about the above article from the Wall St Journal? It’s an important shopping trend not only for US consumers but for Australian shoppers as well.

Retailers, resellers, wholesalers, manufacturers and anyone that sells a ‘product’ will be affected by the growing trend towards researching and even purchasing online. Once wary and shy consumers are now experienced online consumers by the use of ebay, Google, Gumtree and even Facebook.

Whilst many traditional brick’s'morter retailers look at online shopping as a possible way to reduce their overheads (offering more stock without increasing floor space and reducing staff costs) it means they are now competing even more.

This means that the retail experience for the customer has to be even better so that consumers WANT to make the trip to a retail store. Retailers who don’t improve the customer experience and customer service will struggle to maintain revenue and will ultimately go out-of-business.

Corporate Business Finally Uses Some Good Marketing

Ahhh, so refreshing to see a corporate business use some good marketing and a bit of fun.

Traditional Corporate Marketing – oh, so, so boring!

Isn’t it amazing that almost all the marketing we see as consumers (and business owners) from the corporate world is so dry and boring. This includes the thousands of corporate and big business web sites out there.

Corporate businesses want to be seen as ‘Professional’, but professional doesn’t mean they have to put us to sleep!

Most of us respond to interesting news, we want to be entertained and have a little fun. Adding a bit of humour and personality in marketing goes a long way to CUTTING through the ordinary.

How can you use personality in your business marketing?

The main ‘trick’ is to use ordinary language and write like you are speaking to a person. Tell stories and explain why you are having a sale, or why you created a particular product, etc. Get excited about your product and service BENEFITS. Use emotional wording.

For example.

Treat yourself and your taste spuds to our tender, juicy and mouth watering MEX beef steak – cooked to perfection with your choice of tantalising sauces. If you don’t think our MEX is the best steak you’ve ever had – you won’t have to pay for it. In fact, we’ll give you a $30 voucher to use towards another main meal of your choice FREE!

So much better than…

Porterhouse steak $32.00.

What Are You Doing About Lost Customers?

True story. I just got off the phone after much frustration trying to track down my insurance broker.

As of last Friday we have relocated office and we need a new insurance policy (the insurance was covered in our outgoings at our old Erindale road office). I had a three year old letter which I kept from my insurance broker (it was the last correspondence I had from him). The broker was very experienced with commercial insurance which is why I wanted to use his services again. Now that I need him, I can’t find him. I’ve asked another insurance broker to quote me on a policy. The commission and the sale of the insurance policy will most likely go to this company.

HELP – I’m a ‘lost-customer’ with money to spend!

It just goes to show you that most businesses will spend an extraordinary amount of money to attract new customers and clients, but do very little to keep in touch with past customers. Sales are lost.

The leaky bucket photo above illustrates this problem.

I believe the main reason is that customer marketing is often ‘CLUNKY’. It requires administration effort to send something to a customer.

If the business owner or salesperson don’t ask the staff to organise it – it will never happen.

We understand that the business owner (or salesperson) wants the results (i.e. the sales). That’s why we provide a number of AUTOMATED customer follow-up systems to our clients.

If you would like more information about our AUTOMATED marketing systems, click here to send us an email.

Business Saves $1,177 Annually In 5 Minutes!

One important area of improving your profit margins is to reduce your costs. Sometimes you can reduce your costs without a reduction in the quality of service you receive from a supplier, sometimes you’ll see lower quality – cheaper isn’t always better. However…

I saved a client $1,177 in 5 minutes. Without mentioning the name of the client, I can say the business is located in Perth. For illustration purposes, let’s call my client – Mary.

Area saved #1 : Mary sent me an email saying that she was still paying $77 per month on her Sensis bill for a CitySearch web site.

CitySearch was one of the many online directories that popped up during the dotcom boom in 1997-2000. It was bought out by Sensis. Back in the 1997-2000 period many businesses were called with an offer of a new website for only $77 per month.

What many businesses didn’t realise is that this monthly fee went on forever. Sensis never contacted Mary to say “Hey we’re billing you $924 per annum for a web site we built 10 years ago, we can now update your website for free if you like.”

Mary’s website was replaced over a year ago (not by CitySearch), so I knew that the $77 per month was a totally unnecessary expense. I got Mary to cancel the CitySearch service. I only wish Mary brought it to my attention sooner. She could have saved over $1,000 in the past year.

STRATEGY FOR YOU : Check all your supplier’s invoices and question any unnecessary services.

Area saved #2 : Do you have a website? If you do you’ll be paying an annual fee for domain name renewal. Did you know however that I use Netregistry (an Australian company) – their annual fee for renewal is $44.95. If you’re paying any more than that you are paying too much.

STRATEGY FOR YOU : Check the bill from your domain name supplier.

Area saved #3 : Unnecessary domain name registration. Mary had a website ending with .net.au. DotnetDotau domains are really not needed. If you want to secure another domain for your business, register the Dotcom name as well as your DotcomDotau address.

STRATEGY FOR YOU : Don’t register or renew a DotnetDotau domain (.net.au). Save the money instead.

Mary’s savings per annum : $984 for CitySearch, $140 for (.net.au) and $113 for using Netregistry to renew her DotcomDotau address. Total saving $1,177.

(Actually it took less time for me to save my client $1,177 than to write this email. But I thought you’d appreciate this information.)

The lesson : Charges from suppliers for unnecessary or excessive fees is commmon. It’s worthwhile to periodically check all your invoices and question any charges you don’t know about or feel are overpriced. This is an easy way to improve your profit margins.

Buy Hummer, Get Free Shotgun – Real ‘Way-out’ Marketing!

Source : The Age, 16 March 2010

An American Hummer dealership is sending the Hummer off with a bang, giving away a free shotgun with every new car.

An American Hummer dealership will give away a Browning Citori White Lightning shotgun, worth $2,000, with every new Hummer they sell. Lynch Hummer in Chesterfield, Missouri is one of the highest selling Hummer dealerships in America, and last year they decided to add guns to their showroom.

With the recent ‘wind-down’ announcement from GM (the makers of Hummer) the dealership’s owner, Jim Lynch, says that he wants his Hummers to go out with a bang. “There is now real reason to believe that the current inventory on hand at dealers may be the last of the new Hummers, we wanted to send them off with something memorable,” he says. “Browning and Hummer are prestigious brands and American Icons – bringing them together is a natural fit. “The guns have been a huge hit with our Hummer customers and now we are taking the ‘Guns and Hummers’ concept one step further,” says Lynch.

What’s this got to do with marketing?

Everything – Not only has Lynch Hummer value adding to their Hummer ‘package’ – they’ve chosen a controversial ‘product’. Being controversial means Lynch Hummer has received tens of thousands of dollars in FREE publicity. Heck, the article got my attention and I’m as far away from Missouri, USA as you can be (Perth, Western Australia). Well done Lynch Hummer – great marketing!

Using The Open Day Marketing Strategy

Improving Local Awareness Of Your Business Using Open Days!

This week I’ve got a good example of how to improve the local awareness of your business.

Bunnings in Balcatta had an open day / weekend to celebrate the completion of their warehouse upgrade. My family and I went along and I would say they had around 500 people there around 8pm (see my photo below).

How you can use the Bunnings idea in your business

The open day marketing strategy doesn’t have to be limited to the first day your business was open to the public. You could use the same idea to celebrate any anniversary (of any year in business), or to launch new products or services, or to show off a store refurbishment (like Bunnings did) or even to celebrate a tie-in event like Easter, Father’s Day, Halloween, Melbourne Cup and so on.

The aim of the open day may not be to generate sales, but rather to improve the branding and awareness of your business in your area or to generate leads which you (or your sales team) could follow-up with later.

Above is the photo I took in the store during the Friday evening celebration party.

Above is a marketing flyer Bunnings used to promote the event.

Free Marketing Strategy: Lead Generation In Public

You are enjoying an alcoholic beverage at a party or a network event and someone asks "What do you do?"

Most business people in this situation will say something like "I’m an accountant", or "I’m a gardener", or "I have a gift shop in …"

A response statement like that will result in a nod of approval from the listener and that’s about it. But, in fact the business person has missed a golden opportunity to create interest and a possible lead. What’s needed is what they call an ‘Elevator speech’ An ‘Elevator speech’ is a short 30-60 second statement – essentially something that could be said in the time period of being in an elevator going from one floor to another – hence the name.

Here’s how you construct your own ‘Elevator speech’…

Say:

1. THE PROBLEM YOU SOLVE – for people or how you benefit them directly.
2. WHO IT IS YOU CATER TO – your target market.
3. THE SOLUTION : WHAT YOU DO – or what your company does.
4. OFFER FREE INFORMATION IN EXCHANGE FOR CONTACT DETAILS

Start with one of these statements

I’m sure you’ve seen…
I’m sure you’ve heard about…
I’m sure you know that…
You know how…

<the problem>

Well… what I do is…
Well… what our company does is…

Example : Accountant

"You know how most businesses frantically try to reduce their tax bill in June each year by spending up on extra business expenses. The problem with that approach is that the business owner is still missing out on even more deductions and rebates from the ATO. Well… what our company does is publish a quarterly report entitled "Free Money – Government rebates that every small business owner know about!"

"If you like I can send you a copy…"

The response you’ll now get is…

"Yes, please"

Then you smile and say …

"Sure, I’ll get my secretary to send you a copy. Is your postal address on your business card?" or,
"I’m happy to send you some information. Is your postal address on your business card?"

Then the listener will hand you their business card – effectively giving you permision to follow-up with them.

Now you’ve generated a warm lead – all in the space of 30-60 seconds. How’s that for effective marketing?

P.S. After the party or function, don’t forget to add that lead to your follow-up system when you get back to your office. If you promised to send them something – do it straight away.

P.P.S. For more information on writing and delivering an effective elevator speech, visit the website of Craig Harrison: www.expressionsofexcellence.com

Getting More Customers – Fast! (part 1)

Often business owners contact me because they need more customers – and more cashflow – today!

So how do we achieve this goal for our clients? The answer : We start with our Kinetic Media & Marketing ‘INSTANT CASHFLOW’ checklist!

One item on the checklist is the break-down of sales process into two components : The enquiry (lead, store browser) and the conversion of that lead into a paying customer. Often most businesses get enough enquiries, but it’s their sales and follow-up processes that are lacking. It’s easy to work out which area is the problem – we ask the business owner (and staff) to record how many enquires turned into sales. This becomes a percentage – sales conversion.

Funnily enough most business owners think their conversion is around 70-80%, but when we measure it, it’s often only around 10-40%.

It’s common for us to review the sales and follow-up systems for a business and make changes to improve sales conversion. I’ll give you an example :

A building material manufacturing company we worked with had a conversion from inbound calls to sales of only 18%. By reviewing ‘what’ they said to potential customers on the phone and then improving their telephone script, the sales conversion increased to 27%. The increase in percentage doesn’t sound like much but when you apply it to a half million dollar ($500,000) turn-over business – it equates to a massive $251,000 increase in sales.

Would you say it was worth it for this business to hire our consulting services? Hmmm, dumb question.

Summary

Improving sales conversion by examining inbound phone calls is one good marketing strategy to get more customers fast. In part two I’ll reveal another – watch this space…

Marketing Made Simple

Wouldn’t it be great to have dozens (or hundreds) of people with lots of money to spend (your ‘ideal’ customers or clients) contact your business every month or have thousands of people visit your retail store eager to buy? This is what good marketing is all about. But how do you start?

One of the most important lessons I learnt about marketing from my mentors is that marketing is simply maths and psychology.

What does that mean? Answer : Each marketing campaign needs to be analysed using questions that relate to the purpose, goals, actions and results expected. Perhaps some examples are in order…

Marketing psychology :

• What is the readership demographics of the newspaper I wish to advertise in?
• Will someone read my advertisement? Is the headline interesting enough?
• What’s the purpose of the advert? To sell from the page, or to create leads?
• Does the content (body copy) of the advert make sense? Will it be understood by a fifth-grader?
• Have I used ‘power’ words that have been tested and proven to improve response?
• Do I have a strong guarantee?
• Will the reader take action – call, request further information or visit my web site?
• Will the advert attract the ‘right’ type of prospect?

Marketing maths :

• What is the circulation of the newspaper?
• What is the cost of the advert?
• If the advert costs $600, how many leads and sales do I need to make to break-even?
• What is my conversion rate to a sale from leads generated from the advert?
• What is the lifetime value of these customers?

Every marketing campaign whether it’s print or internet advertising, direct mail, fax promotions, etc requires answers to these questions about maths and psychology.

Unfortunately most business people are busy and don’t take the time to use this method to correctly plan a particular marketing strategy. The outcome is either – spending money on something that got no response, OR, a marketing campaign that brought in good leads, good sales and good profit!