People don't buy only based on price either. Testing a new
pricing structure can add profit to your bottom line in the long run. Yes you
could lose customers, true. But if your profit goes up and most of them stay,
you've already grown your business with a simple change.
You can also use your existing customers to grow your
customer base by offering referral rewards. Give your existing customers
motivation to bring in new customers for you by offering a discount or some
kind of reward.
People will buy the same products for vastly different
prices too. They might purchase the same jar of coffee from Harrods, for
example, as they can get from ASDA for less than half the price. By aligning
your branding and business with a premium image, you can charge more and
customers will happily pay if you offer a good service.
This comes down to brand perception. If you are perceived as
a market authority, people are more likely to buy from you anyway, because they
perceive you as 'the best'.
You can build you reputation in a number of ways. Branding,
celebrity endorsement and marketing are just some simple strategies. First
though, you need to build a loyal following. Once your customers like you, they
are much more likely to continue to use you. If they trust you and know you
offer a good service, they are likely to keep using you, despite small price
increases.
If you look at the top brands of mobile phones, for example,
you'll see them rolling out price changes on a near constant basis. that's
because they know you'll probably stick with them anyway, and for the few
people they lose, they'll make a huge profit for the ones who stay. Their
future customers will accept their pricing immediately anyway, as they build
their business.
So, if you test your prices, offer add-on products for
existing customers and offer a referral scheme to reward customers for
referrals, you can make a substantial shit in your business right away. That's
before spending any money!
Then you can also use Google Places for business. This is a
free service which you should be using if you're a small business. It allows
you to list your local business on Google's directory and it will usually show
in the results of the search results for your major keywords.
Bing and Yahoo also offer a similar service. It's well worth
the few minutes it takes to set up your listing. You then just need to verify
your listing after you get a code in the post. Once you've done this, you're
all up and running. You'll potentially have a free business listing which
brings you consistent new customers for years to come. Worth its weight in
gold.
Facebook also offer the option of building a free business
listing too. This is well worth doing. Your business listing on Facebook can
easily rank on Google's first page too, depending on your relative competition.
Again, this doesn't take long to set up and you can build a stream of new
customers through it.
Blogging is another free strategy for lead generation in
your business. Of course you need a website, but you should have one of these
already if you're serious about your business. Once you set up a website,
you'll also want to start building a list of subscribers from it. Email
marketing is an absolute necessity if you want to grow your business. By
offering a free giveaway product on your website, you can get your visitors to opt
in to your email list. The giveaway can be anything which your customers are
likely to benefit from and which are relevant to your business. You can offer
discount codes if you don't have anything else.
Then there's paid marketing. Direct response marketing is
the fastest way to grow your business. Each of the methods listed above, will
work, depending on your competition. However, pay per click advertising is
faster and can be scaled up very quickly.
If you don't know about pay per click marketing, and you
want to grow your business, you should definitely take the time to learn. It
can dramatically grow your business in a very short amount of time.
AdWords and Bing are good platforms to start with. Then
there's Facebook and even YouTube which offer a very targeted platform for
businesses.
Once you've mastered all of those strategies, you'll have a
business which is booming! Start with one strategy though and learn how it
works. AdWords does take time to learn and you need to be careful. You can burn
through a budget very quickly and get nothing if you don't know what you're
doing. Many business owners try this strategy and quit. That's because they
haven't stuck at it for long enough.
Initially your adverts might not work, but that's not the
fault of the platform. It's down to your understanding of how to test and
measure adverts, and to either cut back an advert or scale it up according to
its performance.
Start with a small daily budget and target keywords which
are relevant for your business. Your advert will show only for those keywords,
if you do an exact match search. You can also broaden your search if your
advert isn't showing up enough in the searches. Just be careful not to do a
broad match at first because you don't want your advert showing for any
keyword. This is how to burn through you budget very quickly and get the wrong
kind of traffic.
Over time, and with practice, you adverts will bring you new
customers. Make sure you track where your customers have come from. Then you'll
know if your advertising campaigns are working. When you have multiple
campaigns running along side each other, you'll be able to determine which to
scale up and which to cut back on.
You can apply this same methodology to other advertising
methods too. You don't have to stick entirely to online advertising, but it's a
good starting point. Once you have learned one strategy, you can move on to
another. Use newspaper adverts, magazine adverts, radio advertising and banner
advertising too. Make sure you track all your sales by using discount codes or
tracking in your online adverts.
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