Sweet Treats = Sweet Deals

Are you looking for a unique way to create a memorable atmosphere for your customers and prospects? Consider offering refreshments at your business on an everyday basis. Something as simple as coffee, lemonade, and cookies will encourage visitors to stop and chat while they enjoy a tasty treat. (By the way, cookies are even more enticing when baked fresh onsite -- even if baked in a portable pizza oven.)

Celebrating a special event such as a corporate anniversary, coworker's birthday, or holiday? Consider offering mini cupcakes, muffins, caramel roll bites, popcorn, or seasonal snacks.

Don't attack visitors and push a sales pitch down their throat while they are enjoying a treat. Instead, create an inviting environment with a high-top table or small table and chairs, then use this perfect opportunity to visit and build relationships.

While your visitors will likely do a great job promoting your delicious goodies to others via word of mouth, don't forget to devote some space in your next marketing promotion to invite others to stop by for a sweet treat and a sweet deal on XYZ.

The Positive Side of Negative Reviews

Does your business offer an outlet to post or share customer reviews, good and bad alike? Many businesses cringe at the thought of sharing negative customer reviews, thinking they may taint their image or scare away business. However, negative reviews can be good for business.

Negative feedback provides credibility and tells customers the business is confident enough to show a range of customer feedback. Nobody is perfect, and the same holds true for businesses. Honest feedback and suggestions for improvement can even improve your business (IF you are eager to fix the issue).

Negative reviews offer a great opportunity to show you care about your customers -- not only to the person who wrote the review, but also to everyone else reading it. Quickly resolve any complaints, and reestablish credibility by offering refunds, future discounts, gift cards, etc.

While negative reviews can be a great learning tool for your business and customers alike, be sure to maintain a constant online presence to neutralize negative conversations and quickly delete any inappropriate comments.

Marketing as an Underdog

Have you ever watched a small, passionate business overcome challenges and succeed when the odds are against them? While getting your feet off the ground may be tough, there are actually several advantages to marketing as an underdog. Here are a few reasons why customers love and support the underdogs, especially during difficult economic times:

• Customers relate to the underdog's passion and determination to succeed against the odds.


• Underdogs often start local. By supporting them, you are also supporting your community.


• Underdogs will work harder at keeping your loyalty, while business giants may view you as just another fish in the sea.


• Underdogs often resolve any issues much faster and change rules or policies easily to better accommodate their customers.


• Underdogs are often smaller and can take on creative opportunities or risks that business giants won't consider.


• Even if companies grow large, people identify with them easier when they understand the journey the company has had to endure along the way.

As Vince Lombardi once said, "It's not whether you get knocked down; it's whether you get up." If your business has an encouraging story to tell about how your business persevered, share it in your marketing materials, website, blog, etc. Stories about overcoming adversity are a great way to connect and strengthen relationships with prospects and customers.

Being Direct Can Improve Your Bottom Line

Finding new customers for your products and services can be a challenge at any time, but in today's economic environment, it can be even more critical to the health and well-being of your company. Smart marketers are continually on the lookout for effective methods that will bring new leads into their sales cycle funnel. The challenge for businesses today is the same as it has always been:

• Find new, profitable customers.


• Communicate, educate, nurture, and serve them.


• Build a bond and relationship so they continually come back to you.

The difference today is that marketing budgets are getting cut to the bone, making it more difficult to recover from a dud campaign. So finding a cost-effective return on your ad spend investment is especially important. There can be no denying the compelling case made by the new tools of search engine marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing. However, in the frantic search for cost-effective marketing, it's easy to forget one of the most powerful tools still available to you: direct mail. Dollar for dollar, direct-mail marketing, when done correctly, results in more sales than any other marketing medium available. You may be able to get in front of more eyeballs with Google, Facebook, Twitter, and email blasts, but if the majority of those are not interested in your products or services, really how cost-effective is that?

As the shiny-new-object feel of online and social media are starting to wear off, more marketers are demanding proof of ROI. New media companies have been feverishly trying to figure out how to solve the problem of getting your message in front of a relevant audience. There have been improvements, but there is still a long way to go. In reality, they are trying to solve a problem that direct-mail marketing solved a long time ago. What may have been forgotten (or maybe never learned) is that just like with anything else worthwhile in life, a successful direct-mail campaign requires real homework. There is no simple "Send" button. It requires thinking, and in today's immediate gratification, microwave oven, frantic world, this is a tougher proposition.

A successful direct-mail campaign is not as daunting or difficult as it may seem. It requires a pen and paper (remember those!), some data, quiet time, and your brain. Here are the basic steps involved:

Step1: Take a look at your existing customer database. Find out who your best current customers are. Learn as much as you can about them: what industries they are in, the size of their company, how many years they have been in business, their approximate sales per year, etc. The more data you can find, the better.

Step 2: Pick one or two out of those customers, and think about why they are using your services. It is best if you can call them or invite them to coffee and ask them directly. Tell them exactly why you are asking (because you want more customers just like them). Most people would be honored to hear this and will share a lot of very useful info with you. Ask them questions and listen to their answers. You want to find out not only why they are using your company but also what their concerns are and what keeps them up at night (in relation to the types of products and services you sell).

Step 3: Based on your findings, create a direct-mail piece that clearly answers the concerns of your target audience. The piece needs to be visually appealing and have a clear call to action (call you, take advantage of a special discount, come see you, go to your website... you get the point). Don't hide or bury this call to action. Make it very easy to find.

Step 4: Now it is time to find contact information for more of the types of people you identified in step one. This is where direct mail really shines and where it holds a big advantage over all other media. With the huge amount of very detailed data compiled on businesses and consumers, you can find just about any type of mailing list imaginable with a little effort. Your goal here is to find characteristics and demographics that most closely match your best current customers.

Step 5: When you reach the right prospects at the right time with the right type of message, your mail is not "junk mail." It is actually as close as you can get to legally printing money!

Repeat the above steps as often as your budget allows. It's best to mail monthly or at least quarterly. Not every prospect on your list is ready to buy today, but if you mail consistently, you can bet they will remember you because you made the effort to stay top of mind. If your budget is tight right now, mail to fewer prospects until your budget grows. But don't wait!

The point here is not to demean or belittle other forms of advertising and marketing. It is just a reminder not to forget about one of the most powerful tools you have in your marketing arsenal. It is not shiny or new, but it is proven, effective, and extremely powerful if used correctly.

It's all about how you say it

Marketing that is misleading or deceptive is poor business practice. Not only will misleading marketing cause distrust, but it will also damage your company's reputation. While the following can be used legitimately, here are a few of the top culprits that can often make marketing messages appear misleading:

* Free. While the word "free" may grab attention, it should always be followed by detailed information about the offer to ensure the marketing message isn't misleading. For example, if your promotion highlights a "free gift bag," be sure to include expanded details if necessary regarding how to acquire the free gift, such as "free gift bag with $50 purchase."

* Up to... Marketing messages that say "up to XX percent off" are often misleading and cause disappointment amongst customers who arrive for a sale and find very few items at the advertised XX percent discount. Not only can a false impression annoy customers, but it will also make them leery of future sales and promotions.

* Limited Time Offer. Sales and limited time offers are legit; however, low tactics to fake time sensitivity are not. For example, if your website says "offer ends at midnight tonight" (no matter which day a customer sees it on), those who rush to buy will feel cheated when they return to the site later and see the identical promotion. A legitimate sale deadline will make customers feel more confident with their purchases.

There is no need to avoid these words entirely when promoting your business or special offers. Just remember to use clarity in your messaging. Honest, straightforward communications increase customer retention and loyalty, which also means more profits for you.

How can you come up with more ideas for content?

Coming up with ideas for fresh, new content for offline marketing and the new digital world can be a constant and ongoing battle. The need for content creation has become a hungry, never fully satisfied monster that must be tamed. It simply cannot be ignored if you want your website to rank high in search engines, your blog to be read regularly, and your direct mail to have the intended effect on your target audience.

Google has clearly stated, in no uncertain terms, that relevant, quality content is key to where your website ranks in its search engines. No matter how great your printed materials look, if the content falls flat, you won't get the results you hope for. Clearly, having very good content can be your competitive advantage in all of your marketing efforts, so it is worth your time to invest in improving the quality of what you have to say.

Idea generation can take its sweet time if you sit back and wait for inspiration to strike. Even though ideas by necessity come from a creative process, nevertheless, you must have a planned approach and a systematic way to harness those ideas in order to be successful.

It really doesn't matter what kind of system you put in place. You just need to have one. Of course, your system does need to have some basic components, starting with an organized way to collect, store, and categorize your ideas. Think of it as a swipe file, a place you can turn when you need fresh content. If you take care of your swipe file by constantly feeding it and pruning it, you will never run out of ideas for fresh content.

When you need to refill the swipe file, put your journalist's hat on to come up with ideas for interesting stories and content your audience craves. While you're thinking about potential topics and doing your research, look at the world around you through a journalist's eyes. Sometimes the best content is right under our nose; we just haven't noticed it yet.

People love good stories and useful content. Give them what they want, and they will beat a path to your door.

The press release, evolved

When you think of ways to spread newsy tidbits about your business, it's unlikely that press releases are the first thing you think of. With the recent overtake of social media, they are often viewed as a thing of the past. However, press releases are just as important as ever and can be easily modified to fit the new age marketing world.

For example, social media news releases are designed to meet the ways people now connect, via blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social channels. Likewise, information releases are often published online through sites such as Business Wire. By continuing to post press releases and other newsworthy information, you not only keep your communications up-to-date, but you also beef up your search engine results.

Even though social media avenues have become the more popular communication method when it comes to information updates, traditional press releases continue to maintain higher credibility in situations such as crisis communication, announcing new products and services, mergers, etc. So even though its role has evolved and will continue to change, the press release will remain an important tool in business communications for years to come.