Failure To Monitor Your Results

Results. That’s all that matter in business. Results.

Any promotion that’s worth putting your time, money and effort into, is worth measuring how well it performs. The only way you can know whether the promotion is worth running again or what you may need to do to change or tweak it to make it more effective  is by knowing the results the marketing effort produced. Did you get more prospects? Did they convert to more customers?

It’s astounding how many business owners don’t understand this simple concept.

You’ll let the local newspaper advertising salesperson sell you an ad and layout the ad, because they are “the experts” then let them run it with no way of knowing whether or not anyone called or a customer was obtained as a result of the ad. These “institutional” bran type agencies love you, because you have no idea whether the investment has worked, and they are in no way accountable, and they will keep selling you more and more, because “you have to advertise regularly” to be effective. Ha!

The ad has no accountability or measurability.  So next week or next month, they convince you to run it again and you continue to complain about how bad business is.

As a smart business person, you should never consider running an ad or executing a mailing campaign or promotion without having some type of response mechanism to measure the results. However, it happens every day. And millions of dollars are wasted because of it. If you want grow your business, you need to be smarter.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your ads will create some kind of magical awareness of your product or service. Every one of your ads and mailings and sales promotions must have a definite, targeted purpose. And EVERY How To Improve Sales must be measured to see that it does achieve that purpose.

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Here’s a simple 4-step system you can set up to measure the results of every advertising or marketing tactic you implement to promote your business:

1. Put together an “Advertising and Promotion Results Analysis”book. A simple 2 ring binder works well for this.

2. On the inside of the binder, insert a few clear plastic page protectors.

3. Print out a few copies of the “Advertising and Promotion Results Analysis” form shown in Part 2 of Mistake #2, and insert one in each of the page protectors facing the back of the binder.

Every time you run an ad or Improve sales, put a copy of that ad or promotion in one of the page protectors facing the opposite direction of the Analysis form. If you do this every time you run an advertisement, or promote your business and you carefully analyse the results, you’ll quickly see which promotions are working, which ones need tweaking to improve, and which you should toss out ASAP.

As your binder grows, make three additional binders.

In one binder place all your “A” ads and sales letters – the ads that pulled the best.

In another binder, place the ads and letters that produced marginal results, or at least broke even; you could experiment with these in the future. And in the third binder, put all the “losers.” The ads and letters that absolutely bombed, which you want to stay away from in future.

This way when you are ready to do another Improve sales or want to boost sales you’ll know which ads or letters you can depend on to model the next promotion.

Failure To Let Your Prospects And Customers Know The Unique Benefits They Get From Doing Business With You And Not Your Competitors.

You need a Unique Competitive Advantage, or UCA (or USP). It’s the thing, the reason, the advantage that will make it not only worthwhile but beneficial and advantageous… even desirable for others to do business with you.

Here’s a simple exercise you can do to come up with your UCA:

1. Make a list. Get a piece of paper and write down every advantage you can think of why someone should do business with you. Make a big list of customer satisfaction. Don’t worry about whether or not your competitors offer the same advantages at this stage. Just get the points down on paper. Think in terms of how your business might fit in the following categories:

A. The name of your business.Does it say what you do, and position you in such a way that there can be no mistake? Can there be any doubt what kind of business “Modern Man’s Hair Style” is.  Can you use your business name as an advantage?

B. Exclusive niche or target market.Are you trying to be all things to all people? Or do you occupy and dominate (or have the potential to dominate) a certain market? The tighter a group you can cater to the more control you’ll have and the more opportunity you can have to dominate and control it.

C. Expertise.Do you have some type of specialised understanding of a particular market so you can become a recognised expert? If you do, people will look to you for help and expertise they can’t get elsewhere and you’ll have a big advantage.

D. Guarantee.A customer guarantee can be used as a massive unique competitive advantage. Think of the big stores that offer guarantees. It works for them to get customer satisfaction and it will work for you too!

E. Market positioning. How are you seen in your market? How do you stack up against the competition? What’s your market’s perception of you versus other competing businesses? Domino’s didn’t go head to head with other pizza shops trying to make a better pizza – they went after quick, in-home delivery and completely dominated the market.

F. Price. How do your prices compare to your competitors? Do you have the lowest prices for your products, and operate as a “discount” operation? Or, do you take a higher price-point position and operate at a more “exclusive” level? Either can be an advantage depending on how you position your business and the products and services you sell around it.

These are just a few of the areas you may want to consider as your unique competitive advantage. There are many more, but this will get your thinking started.

Take the time to develop your own unique competitive advantage and the results will be more leads, more prospects, more customer satisfaction, more sales and more revenue, and you will grow your business quickly.

Failure To Let Your Prospects And Customers Know The Unique Benefits They Get From Doing Business With You And Not Your Competitors.

“Why should I do business with you, instead of all the other options I have?”is a question that goes through your prospect’s minds before they choose to do business with you, and through each of your customer’s minds before they return to buy from you again.

And, it’s a question you must take the time to formulate an answer to. Without an answer, you become like every other business who sells the same products or services. It doesn’t matter what is being offered, your prospects and customers can go almost anywhere and find the exact same (or very similar) products or services offered for the same price, or perhaps for even less money than what you charge.

Think about your own situation. Why do you do shop at the same stores or eat at the same restaurants over and over? It may not be one single thing that influences you, but rather a combination of several factors. It’s likely the businesses you continue to support give you something special. Something unique. Something you just can’t get anywhere else. It’s that uniqueness that keeps you coming back over and over again and which build customer loyalty and customer retention.

If you want people to do business with you rather than your competition Customer retention , it’s imperative you have something to offer that your competition doesn’t have. Preferably something your competition can’t offer that sets you and your products or services apart from everyone else in your type of business.

That’s what’s known as your Unique Competitive Advantage, or UCA often referred to as a “USP” (Unique Selling Proposition),

No matter what you choose to use as your unique factor, it’s one of the most critical, yet most often overlooked marketing tools in business today.

Without a clearly defined and unique factor that differentiates you or sets you apart from everyone else who offers the same (or similar) products or services with Customer retention, your business will be no different than any other your clients or prospects will encounter, and there will be no reason for them to do business with you rather than your competitors, other than price. And the last thing you want in business is to only exist because you have the lowest price.

Marketing Is THE Major Key To Success In Your Business!

Sadly most people who start a business are not aware of some of the most important factors that contribute to, and ensure their success. It’s not easy to grow your business, and have high customer satisfaction.

Despite what many think, designing, creating, building, and growing a successful and profitable business that holds a dominant position in the market doesn’t only require hard work, frustration, and enormous costs.

We all know there’s more competition than ever before, in nearly every industry and profession you care to name. Not just from local bricks and mortar type business, but increasingly from web based or international operations.

However, there is also more opportunity to grow your business, especially for business owners who understand a few basic and fundamental concepts. It does not matter what your business, there are just a handful of things you need to know to gain a competitive advantage in your marketplace and have high customer satisfaction.

And if you master just three of these most important things, you’ll be able to write your ticket to success.

Almost every day, in the greatest and most prosperous times the world has ever known, a huge number of businesses close their doors, never to do business again. Many reasons or excuses are tabled but bottom line is for a business to even be a business, it has to have more customer satisfaction to exchange their money for your products and services.

You can have all the funding in the world, you can have great management skills, and you can even have a tremendous entrepreneurial mind, but unless and until you have someone to purchase your products and services in sufficient numbers, you’ll never have a successful business,  and you’ll only generate an average income, at best.