Turn Business Around with New Customers

Recession usually means downturn in business which equals less revenue. The only way to reverse the trend even while in recession is to get more revenues. If you are waiting for your existing customers to do better, then you are at the affect of the recession.

If you want to be in control, get more customers. Find the ones that are doing well. Offer them something that will help them do even better. Be their partners or allies. Brainstorm with them and understand how you could help them be better.

Have more partnering conversations. Reach out. Let people know you are available to help, not just licking your wounds. Be pro active. Have a website that is in the path of people trying to do business. Reach out by email inviting people to participate in new growth with you. Publish free articles and blogs about your spirit of growth and ability to help.

Don’t sell, but invite. Offer free information on your philosophy and how you put in practice to make your customers more effective. What is your Unique Selling Proposition? Don’t keep it a secret.

In this new social media age, humans have been raised to new levels of respect. Whether we want to recognize it or not, everything we do now includes more choice.

We have a wide selection of how we stay on top of the day’s events. We can read the newspaper or get it online. We can watch the news on TV or get it through Digg or Technorati. We have lots of email deliveries we have opted into for specific news or industries we want to follow.

We can delete sources that deliver news to us because it is not interesting or no longer useful. We now live in a media rich age where we can learn through emails, video, pod casts, and websites. We can Google almost anything that raises our curiosity.

Therefore, connecting with new customers should keep in mind their priorities. Time is very important. We work so we can pursue our pleasures but if we can enjoy our work then it is a bonus.

We will go further to avoid pain then we will to pursue pleasure. Saving people time and money and allowing them to pursue our information in a manner that pleases them, makes them more inclined to engage with us.

A three pronged approach to attracting their interest and leading them to more engagement are

Invite them to engage on our website with a phone call, registering for more information, or to be contacted.

Sending an email that mentions a subject they might be interested in and offering them an avenue to get more useful information

Blogging, article writing, or tweeting may catch their interest and invite them to learn more.

Social Media may have caused or resulted in a new culture of communication or both.

Most small business executives prefer taking care of existing orders and getting new business becomes a secondary priority.

The fact is, one system can take care of both. A system has component parts. Highly evolved service companies follow up each customer interaction with a survey of satisfaction.  Another avenue is to keep in contact with existing customers providing information about new services and innovations and asking for referrals.

The same system can reach out to Prospects or Capture visitors to a web site and begin sending insightful information on how to improve their business with your type of services and offering all the information they need to make a wise decision.

A third component of the system is to blog or publish free insightful information on how to succeed with your type of services. The fact that you are an expert in this service is self serving, but you are providing free information.

One automatic system can take care of customers and prospects while you take care of business at hand.

Sites get dated. There is no doubt. But even more important than dating is they fall out of communication.

Web designers built your first site maybe five to ten years ago. You may be rebuilding because your business has changed or expanded, so it is entirely justified. You may be rebuilding because it doesn’t attract nor capture traffic. So by rebuilding it with a web designer you might be doing a little more of the same.

Websites are organic. They require lots of input and outflow to be living valuable organisms. Buying a car off the show room floor to race at a track requires lots of changes and not just appearance. The new systems installed like stability, engine, transmission, exhaust, and intake, will not change the appearance much, but will be essential to winning.

Optimizing can have a big affect at a fraction of the price. At the most, the appearance of the landing page will need to be modified or for the same price one can add a new landing page template that attaches to the existing site.

Understand the end result desired before making a change.

When I open my browser in the morning, I spend the first few minutes deleting the unwanted messages. Most of these messages are from firms I had at one time given permission to contact me.

They missed their opportunity or I no longer need their information.  Email provides a short window in which the sender must capitalize or most likely lose the prospect to procrastination or a competitor. It is the procrastination concept that keeps us sending the message forever.

But email has a golden opportunity up front to supply the Prospect exactly what he wants. Prospects are paranoid and they are particular. The message isn’t going to satisfy everyone. But the first criteria for engaging with us is going to be trust. The Second criteria is going to require us to stayi on point. The third criteria is going to be affordability or cost effectiveness for the Prospect’s purposes.

The best way to develop trust is to give away a lot of information. Offer it in downloads, white papers, e books, podcasts, YouTubes, DVD’s, and even snail mail. The best way to stay on point is track the Prospects reactions and know when his interest has changed. If you are Sending A and he now is focused on B, you have lost him.

The third criteria is make it easy to buy by breaking down payments, offering free trial periods, creating a low initial start up fee. Once the client is comfortable it is a good fit, he will fully engage.

Email can attract an interested party by offering free information. Email can track the party’s interest, adjust the message, and deliver the message in any media form desired. Email can take an order.

It’s no longer your father’s radio.

For most firms, it doesn’t produce results. Most Fixers who say they have the answer, don’t. The Search Engines don’t disclose exactly how they choose Sites, just like credit rating firms don’t tell how they get your score.

That means that Site owners have to go on faith that the Fixer is telling the truth. After a few experiences, the Site owners don’t believe anyone. But this doesn’t justify not getting involved.

It is hard to imagine any firm with long term aspirations not harnessing the internet to fight their competition. The competition is not only people you know, it is people you don’t know and it is emerging firms you don’t know and emerging technologies and innovations you don’t know.

Your Brand has to stand for something. General Electric and Ford are not the same company’s formed by their fore bearers but they have a brand that means something. The world is always changing and every industry will move from caterpillar to butterfly. A Brand allows a firm to keep their following through the changes.

The internet allows you to build your Brand. Part of a Brand is keeping contemporary with current tastes and communications. The public wants to know who you are, what you do and what you stand for. Like in politics, transparency in this age of paranoia is crucial. Right now Social Media is a great way to create a Brand regardless of how well known you are.

It is relatively inexpensive, can create the perfect following, and allows a firm to get their feet wet before expending a lot of money building a new site. Most sites need to be tuned rather than rebuilt.

Isn’t this the first point of marketing?

The second point is more important but we can’t get to home until we get to first base.

How do we make our message stand out? This is also difficult and why getting prospects to listen to the message is a challenge. We usually have to give them a summary first before we deliver the message and let them choose in.

Only TV and Radio can deliver a whole message without first getting permission.

We need to deliver a short, precise keyword message of why we want their attention. We need to understand who our target is, the purpose of our service, why it is the best, why it solves a problem for the prospect, and tell it in as few words as possible.

Once we have the Prospects attention, we might need extra permission to deliver our entire presentation of what we do, how we solve their problem, why we are best, and how we charge.

Only through a more lengthy presentation are we going to be able to state our Unique Selling Proposition and move the Prospect to the trial or purchasing step.

The best way to achieve this is by giving away the information that the Prospect is searching for. We give them insights into how they can accomplish what they need and how we will achieve that. Until they understand both, they are not likely to further engage. Anything less just leaves them paranoid to move further and the biggest deal killer of all, “I’ll have to think about it.”

Whereas we often feel that we are giving away too much information and the client will get all the answers they need and not buy our service, the truth is unless they fully understand what they are paying for, they would rather keep their time and money.

Most people have a good idea about how the internet works but not how to effectively harness it. We know by experience that if we want to find a service we can Google it and look at our choices.

Effectively harnessing the internet delivers a desirable result. We know that we need traffic and we want the traffic to be our customers. Getting the two requires we put several actions in play. To attract traffic, our site has to be set up so that Search Engines can read it in the format they use.

Secondly, Search Engines have to think our site is a better candidate than our competitors’ sites.

Thirdly, we have to clearly identify our business which we do in keywords. The Search Engines won’t guess at what business we are in and we must use the same words as the people who are searching.

Fourthly, we also need to drive traffic to our site. We can do that with the pro-active acts of publishing interesting work that will bring people to our sites. We can exchange links with others or get other sites to link our site to theirs.

Fifthly, we have to have a system for inducing engagement from visitors. Our site has to provide what visitors are looking for. We want them to call us because something they have seen gives them the confidence to spend more time with us. There are several ways to create this trust.

We can offer them insights and free information for which we might require their email. We can follow up on those emails until our visitor is comfortable enough to engage with us.

The internet is extremely effective like a great freeway system but you have to have a car that will travel 65 mph to fully utilize it. You can’t slap the car together and hope for the best.

New Customers are the Key To Competition Success

Focusing on new customer development energizes an organization. It is aggressive and pro-active. It creates a need for every department to function at its optimum. It is the difference between firms that want to survive in the future.

Firms that are several generations old have to be careful about accepting what has always worked in the past. Reputations for dependability and great service are irreplaceable. The one enemy to tradition is innovation.

Innovation and efficiency are the weapons of newcomers and of your top competition. The easiest way to slice up someone’s competition is to show Prospects how service can be better and cheaper.

The best way to preserve the old order is to continuously develop new customers and understand what it takes to get them and hold them.

Firms developing new customers will find out about innovations first when they are in competition everyday.

Developing New Customers is not just good practices,  it is the key to long term profitability.

The best marketing presentation is often in person. Short of that, gaining permission and time to develop a relationship with a great prospect may need more than one approach.

The best campaign is multi pronged with the message being supported and reinforced.

A combination could be a blog and twitter leading back to a website or

An email followed by a direct mail piece creating an introduction, special offer, trial, or invitation. or

An article, blog, and twitters pointing to Services listed on a Web site are great reinforcement and ways to reinforce a message.