There’s no doubt about it: Recession is here and we’re in the middle of it. And every day the media is showing you the worst of the worst. This can effect how you feel, day to day. The solution? A commitment to persistence.

And no one is pretending it’s easy. It takes a certain amount of courage to keep your doors open when business is hard to get. It’s tempting to give in, and let it all fall apart. That’s the easy way out though.

You know how business is a matter of finding out what people want rather than what they need, and then giving it to them.

You know price is not an issue and it’s all about value. You know how to do all this, you have to be proactive.

You know that if you turn your website into a lead-generation website rather than a ‘sales’ site you can improve your results by hundreds of per cent.

Yet it takes courage and fortitude to “do it all” when everyone else is doing the opposite. It’s hard to plug away with your marketing when everyone else is cutting back.

But, right now, this recession does represent a grand opportunity to anyone prepared to stand firm against fear, uncertainty and doubt. Advertising costs are at an all-time low, and all your competitors will have slashed their budgets and be running scared.

There is no better time than right now to get proactive and offer your customers the best value in your industry, I don’t mean by cutting prices, I mean by showing your customers what you have to offer up and above your competitors.

Now is the time to start networking with social groups of people, to offer your services to a much wider audience than ever before. The business is out there, but in today’s economic slow down you have to go out and get it, rather than wait for it to come to you.

Your customers still have money and most still want what you have to sell… if only you can go that extra distance to show them the value in what you offer.

I’m not talking about positive thinking. We’re backing this up with solid, advanced Marketing and Internet Marketing strategies. But the thing that’s going to get you to implement these strategies when everyone else is moaning is persistence. It always pays off.

Eventually when you hit that “perfect balance” in your marketing, you’ll find you’ve cracked it – and your business will grow and grow, regardless of the economy.

Here are six Marketing ideas to give your business an instant boost. When you’ve read them, implement them and let us know how you get on.

1. Test a change in the headline on your advertising. It’s one of the key differences that can increase response.

2. Call, mail or email the top 20% of your customers an irresistible offer for an immediate cash bonus.

3. Shift the emphasis of your website from a sales tool, to a vehicle to begin a relationship with your potential customers. You do this by offering valuable free information or products in return for their contact details.

4. Make sure that all of your Marketing copy is a personal communication to the person reading it talking about their needs and desires, rather than a dull description of you and your business.

5. If you haven’t done so already, test pay per click advertising. It’s revolutionizing Marketing and could revolutionize your business.

6. Register your business with as many FREE search engines as possible, the more you do the better known you will become, as finding your business on the internet will be much easier, register your business with as many FREE directory listings as possible. One the internet today there are thousands of these listed all offering a FREE listing service, perhaps you could start off with www.yell.com

Online Profits

The rewards that await you if you’re willing to put a little time and effort into understanding the Internet and E-marketing are enormous.
This is a vast area – but we want to give you 11 strategies that you can begin using immediately. Our one aim is to give you what you need to grow your business and increase your profits. These are very good starting points:

1. Get clear on what the purpose of your website is

Otherwise it can just end up a confusing mess. Is the purpose of your website to sell something, give information, nurture relationships??? It’s up to you – but get clear from the start. For example, the purpose of your website is to give leading edge information to your clients that can help you significantly grow your business and increase your profits. Simple as that. So get clear on what you want your website to be and focus on it.

2. Remember that your website should not be about you

OK it sounds weird but the truth is your prospective clients and customers aren’t that interested in you. They’re interested in what you can do for them. There’s a fundamental difference. Sure, you can have an ‘About us’ section and your website certainly needs to convey your pre-eminence in your field. But beyond that it should all be about your prospective clients. Step into their shoes. Meet their needs. Address their fears and concerns. Above all, give them solutions and solve some of their problems. Then you’ll have a website that people will want to visit.

3. Give People Free Stuff.

Don’t hold back. If the purpose of your business is to add real value to peoples’ lives – start now. Give visitors to your site information they can use that will make a real difference to them. This can be from news letters with interesting facts to free direct mail literature.

4. Collect Email Addresses

You would not believe that most businesses still do not collect the email addresses off everyone who contacts them. You may as well take a huge bucket of cash, go to the top of a mountain and throw it of the top. Every time a business fails to capture someone’s email address they’re turning down the opportunity to contact them for FREE, for weeks, months and years ahead. This is insanity. It’s also insane not to offer visitors to your website an easy way of submitting their email address, so they can see if you’re as good as you say you are.

5. Once you have Email Addresses – use them!

Of the businesses that are good at collecting email addresses, hardly any of them follow up by communicating regularly with their customers and clients in an effective way. You don’t just have to use email to sell stuff. You can use email to thank people for their business, make them a special offer, give them a free article or report, send a newsletter, recommend a product or service they may be interested in, ask for referrals, share some news that may be interested in, ask why they’ve not done business with you…the list is only limited by your imagination. The point is this. You could grow your business by 10, 20 or 30% just by adopting an effective e-marketing strategy.

6. Automate your Emails with Autoresponders

One of the reasons that Email Marketing is so powerful is because if you set it up properly, your entire email operation can be automated. Using autoresponders you can decide who gets which emails and when they get them. You can even create a system where people who purchase a particular product or service receive a series of emails leading them to further purchases. And the entire process is automated – which means that you can lie on the beach while the profits roll in.

7. Test Pay Per Click Advertising

How would you like your business to be at the very top of all the search engines without spending months on search engine optimization that probably wont work anyway. You can do this simply and rapidly with pay per click advertising. This enables you to get to the top of the search engines but you only pay when someone clicks to go to your website. So unlike most internet advertising, you only pay when someone visits your site. How much you pay will depend on how much competition there is amongst other advertisers in your category.

As with all marketing, the golden rule is to TEST and measure the results.

8. Use Audio on your website

The internet now offers the opportunity for you to speak directly to your customers and clients. Adding audio to your website can be very powerful and is not expensive. if you want to stand out from the crowd, aim to get audio on your site within the next month.

9. Consider Testing Internet Advertising

The collapse of internet advertising after the dot com boom, gave advertising on the web a bad name. But for many businesses, it’s become a key part of their marketing mix. Consider testing internet advertising on a small scale – if it’s successful and you are able to role it out, it can be a superb way to reach large numbers of potential customers and clients very rapid.

10. Forums

We also strongly recommend that you join as many forums as possible as this is huge form of advertising for your business and again grows awareness for you in a big way. You don’t have to just join forums to do with your trade / profession, join all types of forums you will be amazed at how much traffic this can drive to your site.

11. Branding

When you carry out any form of advertising through any media coverage, be it internet, direct mail, in person, vehicle livery or magazines make sure it is identical every time. What we mean by this is that you don’t confuse matters with different themes to your business, keep it the same at all times, giving across the same message over and over again, the most important message of all is to delivery exactly what you say, PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL, with all communications and the message you give to your customers.

Essential Tips for Writing Effective Marketing Letters

1. Step into the mind and the shoes of the person reading your copy.

Everything you write should be designed to meet their needs, wishes, desires, hopes, fears and dreams. Pay Attention To Detail!!

2. Keep it simple.

Don’t use language or sentence structure any more complicated than you would use in conversation with someone in person.

3. Benefits, benefits, benefits.

You must focus on the benefits of what you are offering, rather than the product or service. When you buy a new hi-fi, you’re probably not interested in how it was made or how many wires it has (the product) You’re interested in how it will sound (the benefit) If you buy a new sofa, you don’t really care if it took three years for a man in some far eastern country to make it (the product) You’re interested in how comfortable it’s going to be (the benefit) So all of your copy should focus on the benefits.

4. Remember the magic word – YOU.

By continuing to use the word ‘you’ in your copy, you are forcing yourself to have a personal conversation with the person reading it.

5. AIDA

Follow this classic rule of copy writing and you can’t go too wrong. AIDA stands for
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

6. PS

Always write a ps on your letter, as more people will read a ps line than they do the content of your letter, your ps caption line needs to be as powerful as your headline.

7. Good Communication

Communicating with your clients is very important, if you don’t communicate, they will go to someone else for business, make sure you email, write, phone or even visit your clients at least once a month. When in business always remember these very powerful words ATTENTION TO DETAIL.

All of your copy, whether it’s a letter, brochure or email, should follow this simple process. First you need to get their attention – this normally happens in a headline. Then create some interest. You then need to turn the interest into a real desire for your product or service. All of which is useless if the reader does not take action. So make it very clear what action people need to take to begin a relationship with you

In the market place we are all, we have to change to win business we have and will always change to win business.

Yesterday I was talking to a company who I won’t name about conducting business with them, it was not a great deal of money but over a period of a year could have been worth £50,000 to them.

They had already sent one of my companies a small sample of product to try out, it was OK, but we wanted a bigger sample, we said we would pay for it along with shipping costs, they said it would be £154.73, but then the area manager stepped in and said it was not viable for the company to send us the samples, I have been trying to do business with this company for 7 months now.

When they came up with all sorts of ideas why it was not viable i told them to forget it, so I moved on and found other suppliers who wanted my business, if this company had thought of the bigger long term picture they would have done this without hesitation.

Today that same area manager called me to say they  would go ahead and supply us, his loss not mine, so I had to tell he had lost the deal, then he started to offer me even better deals and prices.

For me he had lost the deal, I was not prepared to deal with a company who could not be flexible to gain business, I gave my business to a smaller company who needed the business to survive, so I hope that I can help them.

The moral to this is innovate, reinvent, think outside the box, grab it with both hands.

Richard

Never forget how you got to where you are today, I have not and still go out with my staff with every company I own and help them. They appreciate it that the boss can still do the work and has done the work as well.

Here I am

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Richard