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.

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.

• 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.

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 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

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…"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.