Why you business needs a database
Setting up and using a database to manage customer information is a vital tool for your business. It’s not expensive to create either. A well- managed database will help you identify key trends and valuable information such as your most profitable customers. This enables you to target your marketing more effectively.
Being able to establish who and what customers buy from you is essential to your business success.
You will benefit from:
• Effective marketing communications. You will be able to create a relationship with your customers with a personal approach.
• Increased sales to new and existing customers with better timing, identifying needs and cross-selling of similar products.
• Improved customer retention and greater customer satisfaction.
• Increased value from your existing customers and reduced costs.
Imagine not only having names and addresses of customers on your database, but also e-mail addresses, phone numbers, items they bought, how much they spent and when they spend. These relatively straight-forward pieces of information, which you should be able to collect from all of your customers without much effort, will help you save money and generate huge amounts of extra business.
You will be able to plot geographically where your customers live or work. This means that you can focus your marketing efforts on similar demographic areas and not waste money on ‘blanket marketing’.
You will be able to identify your ‘big spenders’ and ‘frequent visitors’ and target your marketing efforts accordingly.
You will be able to create a range of e-mail marketing messages to groups of people at different times, all with different offers. Don’t forget e-mail is free.
You will be able to marry up your database to other ‘paid for’ databases and hire or buy in details on potential customers including their names, addresses and e-mails.
The list of opportunities is endless. However like all good things, you get out what you put in. So your database needs to be accurate and kept up-to-date. You will then need to have a strategy for using the data that you have captured, to generate greater profits for your business.
Apple Pie Marketing can help you to:
• Create a low cost database
• Help you capture customer information
• Analyse your database
• Create maps to show you where your customers live or work
• Help you target new and existing customers with the right information at the right time
• Measure the success of using your database
• Offer advice and assistance in all areas of database management
What is your USP?
USP means ‘unique selling point’ and every company should have one. A USP is something that sets your product or service apart from your competitors in the eyes of your customers, both new and existing.
If you want to differentiate yourself from your competition, then you must have a strong USP. Most business owners don’t bother to create one and may be losing out on sales and enquiries as a result.
You may think that you offer exactly the same services or products as your competitors and therefore find it difficult to create an effective USP. However, if a customer asked you why they should do business with you instead of your competitors, would you come up with a blank answer?
Your USP is a statement that clearly singles you out from the competition in just a few words. It forms the foundation on which to build your marketing activity.
If you have a good, clear and honest USP, there is a good chance that you will be able to compete on factors other than price.
Creating your USP
1. Visit your competition and see if you can find something that you do better. Try to stay away from pricing as this isn’t necessarily a USP. Find something that is of value or of benefit to your customers.
2. Ask your own customers why they do business with you. You may be surprised at the response that you get. Don’t be surprised if the impression they have of your company is different from the impression you have. Remember: it’s the customer’s perspective that is important, not yours.
When you have gathered a list of points, you should have a good sense of what makes you special or unique. Start drafting a statement that defines what makes you unique or special. You will probably start with a long statement of two or three paragraphs. You may also find that you have a number of USPs that cover a range of areas of your business. Narrow these down to the most profitable one for your business and one which gives the most value to your customers.
Edit your statement until it is short, snappy and to the point, describing your uniqueness.
Making the most of your USP
When you have identified your company’s USP, you will need to use it in every aspect of your business. Share your USP in your marketing materials, at networking events, on your business cards, on your website, advertising and at any other time when given the opportunity.
You, your staff and your sales team, in particular will need to own your USP and incorporate it into every phone call, meeting or letter you produce. This will reinforce why customers should choose to do business with you, rather than your competition.
When you have a USP that really works, your customers, new and existing, will think only of your company, when they have a need for that product or service.
Making web site links work for your business
Increasing the number of quality links to your web site is a very efficient technique you can use to increase traffic to your web site and boost your search engine rankings.
Benefits
The benefits of having a large number of relevant web sites linking to yours are two-fold:
1. Direct traffic
Your web site will start to receive a consistent stream of highly targeted visitors. Unlike search engine rankings and paid advertising (banners, per click, etc.), traffic generated by links can usually be counted on for years to come, with no ecurring cost. If you have a commercial site, an added benefit is that incoming visitors may perceive your site in a better light, since they have found it via a recommendation (link) on another web site.
2. Search engine rankings
Increasing the link popularity (total number of quality websites linked to your web site) of your web site can dramatically improve your search engine rankings. Most major search engines reward sites which have high link popularity. There are two reasons for this.
- Search engines have found that judging a site by who links to it is one of the best indicators of site quality. After all, not many web designers make a habit out of linking to bad or less than useful web sites.
- In the past, search engines have played a cat and mouse game with many web designers who try to ‘trick the engines’ or ‘beat the system’. Link popularity is one of the few factors which is very difficult to abuse. As a result, it is a safe bet that the major search engines will continue to rely on link popularity and reward ‘well-linked’ sites in the future.
It is this approach which has made search engines like Google the new standard. In fact, Google’s entire approach relies heavily on link promotion and link quality. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”
It’s not just quantity…. its quality!
Just getting hundreds of random web sites to link to you will not help your traffic or search engine rankings. The quality and content of these sites are critical. Ideally, you will want to approach established sites, already listed in the search ngines, which have content related to your web site. These sites already have a steady stream of targeted visitors. In addition, links from these sites have the advantage of being considered ‘more relevant’ by the search engines and will help to improve your own rankings.
In a nutshell, effective and well-executed link promotion will dramatically increase the number of quality web sites that link to you. These additional links will provide your web site with a consistent stream of highly targeted visitors and give you an ongoing advantage with the major search engines.
The value of testimonials
Nothing communicates the quality of what you are offering better than the words of other people who have experienced doing business with you.
One of the biggest obstacles to growing your business is convincing people that you can really deliver on your promises. A testimonial does it for you. And it’s free!
So when customers tell you that they’re pleased with your work, ask if they would be willing to share their experience with others.
Testimonials should give a detailed and specific description of how the person has benefitted from what you have to offer. Try not to use one liners where possible. Include the customers’ name if they don’t mind and, if appropriate, their business name on the testimonial.
Do not use anonymous testimonials because people don’t believe them.
• Once you’ve got testimonials – use them. Put them everywhere – on your website, brochures, emails etc.
• If you are planning to start a new business, plan to make testimonials an integral part of your marketing from the beginning.
• Don’t underestimate the power of testimonials…….They can increase your conversion rates by 30% or more.
Can radio advertising boost your business?
Radio advertising can be effective if it is done correctly. Large international brands have been using national radio stations to promote their products for a long time. Smaller businesses have used local radio very effectively, generating significant profits for their business.
Radio adverting is worth, considering, at some point. Firstly it is reasonably inexpensive especially when compared to other forms of adverting e.g. TV advertising. Secondly, radio advertising is very personal. People listen to the radio in all sorts of locations including the car, at work in bed or even in the shower. Radio listeners are a very captive audience.
People have an attachment to their chosen station which means that any advertising featured on the station can also be well received. It is also difficult to ignore an advert on the radio when compared to adverts within a magazine. It can be easy to skip over adverts within a magazine but when people listen to the radio and an advert comes on, all of the listeners will hear it.
Radio advertising can also be very targeted. If you wanted to promote a product to an audience of men aged between 24 and 44, you would target your campaign on a station that attracts that kind of audience, usually by the nature of the music they play.
So why isn’t everybody advertising on the radio?
Radio also has a number of disadvantages. There can be a huge amount of wastage. There will be a significant number of listeners who will not be interested in the products being advertised. Businesses who redirect their budget from radio advertising to direct mailing or telephone calling will be speaking directly to a potential customer.
Radio is also not a great direct response medium. Direct response advertising must result in a sale that can be measured for it to be successful. However, this can be difficult to do when the peak times for advertising are during the mornings and early evenings. People rushing around to get to work, or driving home from work, are not necessarily going to make a note of your phone number or website when they hear it on the radio.
10 steps to successful radio advertising
1. Only think of radio advertising as one element of your marketing mix. Don’t be dependent upon it. Never spend more than you’re willing to lose.
2. Don’t commit to radio advertising until you have tried more obvious forms of marketing. Improve your marketing to existing customers before you try radio advertising.
3. Test your advertising on a small scale before rolling it out on a large scale. Ignore the incentives that radio sales teams will use to encourage you to try a large campaign.
4. Understand how radio stations come up with their advertising rates. Stations often have two different ways of charging for their advertising. Small businesses new to advertising are often charged from a rate card where to pricing can be high. Agencies who book advertising on behalf of their clients will be charged per 1000 listeners. Radio stations employ independent researchers who are able to identify the number of listeners tuned into to a particular station at a particular time of day. Agencies are then able to select and agree a rate and a time of day when the radio runs an advert. Ask the radio sales team what the cost per 1000 listeners would be. You will probably get a much reduced rate.
5. Make sure that your adverts go out at the best time of day when they are most likely to work for you. Remember that there are certain periods of time during the day when very few people are listening. The most popular time of day is the breakfast show; however you may not want to be advertising at this time of day as most people are just too busy to respond to your advert. Mid-morning and early afternoon are often good times. Avoid evenings because people watch television. Weekends tend to have fewer listeners than weekdays.
6. Beware of the cheap deals on very small local stations. They often have very low listening numbers and are not worth the investment. You will get what you pay for.
7. Negotiate great deals on your radio advertising. Offer to run a week’s advertising at a ridiculously low price. You may not get the price that you asked for but you will get a much cheaper rate than you would have done if you had booked adverts using the rate card. The sales teams are always working towards targets and will be more desperate to hit their targets towards the end of the month. This tends to be the best time to negotiate a really good deal.
8. Avoid clever or funny adverts. You don’t want an advert that’s going to win an award, you want an advert that’s going to sell for you and bring you customers. Follow the AIDA principal: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Try using a straight-forward voiceover and use the word YOU a lot in the script. Remember to tell the listener what to do next. Create a direct personal, message to the person hearing your advert.
9. Consider other forms of radio advertising. You can sponsor the weather or the news. Radio stations also run promotions which tend to be competitions that run throughout the day or week. Advertisers provide a prize and pay for the commercials but often get greater airtime because of the number of time the competition is mentioned.
10. Measure the results of your advertising accurately. You need to know if the advertising is working. If it is, you will want to roll it out on a bigger scale, even trying different stations. If it’s not working, drop it and invest your marketing budget elsewhere. You need to know where your enquiries are coming from. Set up a separate phone line for radio adverts only.
Profit from Customer Loyalty
The goal is to get your best customers to return and spend more or buy more frequently.
Increasing a customer retention rate by only 5% can boost the average customer net worth value by an astonishing 35% to 95%, according to recent research by consultant Bain and Company.
How loyal are your customers ?
You will need to know who your best customers are. This may not necessarily be the regular shopper who spends a lot of time in your shop, chatting and spending very little. It may actually be the internet shopper who spends a great deal with you on-line a couple of times a year.
• Spend time looking at who spends most and how often. Cross check this information with the customer details that you have on your database. (For more information on database management read the page on why you need a database).
• Create three or four categories of customer types with the most profitable at the top and the least profitable at the bottom. You will need to focus almost all of your customer loyalty activity on the top group.
• Find out what these customers most like about your products or services and what offers or improvements are appealing. You can do this simply by casually asking questions each time they call. When you’ve formed some ideas, mail a postcard survey to get detailed answers.
• Make sure that you get enough responses to make a decision about what really motivates these customers to buy. You may need to do more than one mailing.
You should now have a list of top customers along with a list of top products (most profitable) that they buy. This is simply gold dust to you! You don’t have to start big with your loyalty activity. Your loyalty activity, including the marketing materials you create to promoteit, can be very affordable.
Make the most of your research
• Send personalised thank-you messages after each visit or major purchase. You may also include a discount or offer that they can use on their next purchase.
• If you are measuring the frequency of purchases your customers are making, you may want to send out reminders. Send a letter or postcard with an offer or incentive after a certain period of time during which the customer hasn’t bought anything.
• Use e-mail. E-mail only offers are a great way of communicating with your customer and it’s free.
• Send a gift or a card on an anniversary such as a birthday.
• Send information about a particular brand or new line that you have that may interest your customers.
• Send free information or advice. A customer may have purchased an expensive garment or piece of furniture. Sending advice on how to care for this item shows that you care.
Newspaper Leafleting Campaign
Leafleting through newspapers is probably the simplest and cheapest form of direct marketing. However it is true to say that leafleting through newspapers has a poor reputation. Most of the leaflets that fall out of newspapers are thrown away without actually being read. This problem can be overcome with careful thought, planning and preparation.
Companies like Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Homebase, and Robert Dyas use newspaper inserts on a regular basis because they generate business and sales. A carefully targeted leaflet campaign can bring new business to companies with small marketing budgets too.
It is feasible to distribute 5000, full-colour leaflets to 5000 households, targeted in a specific location, through a local newspaper for less than £300. This works out at £0.06p per leaflet.
Here is a guide to organizing a leaflet drop through a newspaper and how to avoid a large amount of wastage.
Set your objectives
You may want your campaign to generate sales, launch a product or service or build a database of leads.
Allocate a budget
How many leaflets can you afford to design, print and distribute? Set yourself a budget and stick to it.
Create an action plan
How many leaflets do you want to distribute? When and how often will they be distributed?
Homebase will often use leaflet campaigns through newspapers the week before a bank holiday, promoting their gardening products, because they know that on bank holidays most of us will want to spend time working in our gardens. Supermarkets will often run weekly leaflet campaigns through newspapers in the lead-up to Christmas to generate sales of food, drink and gifts.
Identify your target audience
Who are your current customers and where do they live? Do you need to identify and target new customers? Distribution agencies use data that is collected from the national census and other sources. They use this data to help you target your distribution. It is possible to distribute to households within a certain street or to households that fit into a certain income bracket. The demographic information available through distribution agencies is endless and will dramatically increase the success of your campaign.
In theory, if you are able to identify an area within a town, where you currently have existing customers, then those people who live in that same location, who are not yet customers, will have a similar demographic profile to your existing customers, and therefore, are a ‘hot target’.
Select your targeting method
Distribution through newspapers can be done in two ways:
• Newshare – your leaflets are distributed alongside the free local newspaper. This is the most flexible and widely-used method.
• Paid for – your leaflets are inserted into ‘paid for’ newspapers on a local and regional basis. This method is best used in rural areas where there is no free newspaper distribution.
Produce effective leaflets
Your leaflet needs to be eye-catching and professionally printed. A sales campaign will be more cost-effective than an awareness campaign. Create an incentive and a call to action on your leaflet. Offer a discount available for a short period of time.
Check the distribution
Contact friends, family members and customers who fall within your distribution area to see if they received a copy of your leaflet. Distribution agencies are bound by legislation to carry-out the services that they offer and, as a result, many have a follow-up procedure if you feel that your leaflets were not distributed as you had agreed.
Analyze and measure your response
If the test that you have carried out on a small scale has been successful, consider rolling out your leaflet campaign more frequently and on a bigger scale. Don’t forget to include it as a part of your annual marketing activity.
The response rate of a leaflet campaign can be drastically improved if the leaflet is supported with an advert within the newspaper itself. However this can often double the cost of running your campaign and you may decide to run two leaflet campaigns back to back instead.
Finding New Customers
Attracting new customers to your business can be a difficult, time-consuming and expensive exercise. There are a number a tried and tested techniques that can bring new business in your direction. Many companies offer great services and packages that will help you find names and addresses, but this can be costly and you may end up buying details that are not appropriate to your business.
A simple and inexpensive way to find new customers
For the purpose of this exercise, we are going to assume that you have a database of existing customers. This database can be as small or as large as you wish, but it should be accurate and contain the names and addresses of people who have bought from you in the past. The information you keep about existing customers will help you build a profile of the type of people who buy from you, where they live, the amount they spend, the frequency of their spending with you and much more.
Addresses and postcodes are quite possibly the most important pieces of data that you should have about your customers. They should be kept up-to-date on a regular basis.
This very simple exercise involves plotting onto a map where your customers live or work. You will need a map, preferably with street names visible but this will depend upon how widespread your customer base is. You can download a range of maps with different scales on them from the internet. Next you will need to plot (a simple coloured dot will do) the address of the customers from your database. At the end of this process, you will be left with a map covered with lots of dots showing your customers’ location.
Identifying your new targets
When you look at your completed map covered with small dots, you should be able to identify ‘hot spots’. These ‘hot spots’ are clusters of dots that are close to each other. You may find a street with a high number of dots along it, you may find that an area of a town has a larger number of dots than others, or you may find a town in your catchment area with more dots than other towns.
These ‘hot spots’ are very important to you as they not only tell you where your existing customers live or work, but also tell you that households or businesses within the ‘hot spot’ area are likely to be made up of a similar demographic profile to your existing customers, they are therefore a target for your business. You may find that you have a number of ‘hot spots’ on your map.
You are now in a position to think about target marketing. You know where existing customers live to target with loyalty promotions, and you know where your ‘hot spot’ customers live to target new business.
What next?
Your next step is to create a marketing strategy for these two groups and start communicating with them straight away.
Apple Pie Marketing can help you:
• Set up a database
• Clean up existing databases
• Plot customers onto maps using our software
• Provide completed maps with customer locations
• Source names and addresses of new and potential customers
• Create a marketing strategy for new and existing customers
Advertising – some do’s and don’ts
Do – Stop your advertising if you can’t measure how effective it is.
Don’t – Place adverts in the local newspaper because you feel that you have to.
Do – Focus on advertising a special offer or a specific benefit of your product. This is known as direct-response advertising.
Don’t – Create an awareness advert telling the reader about your business. This is known as brand advertising used by Coca-Cola, McDonalds etc.
Do – Think about who is going to read your advert. Is it going to be new customers or existing ones?
Don’t – Use an everlasting advert. Readers will become board with looking at the same design.
Do – Create an urgency for the reader to react quickly e.g. include a closing date on an offer.
Don’t – Rush into making a decision about placing an advert because someone is offering you a deal.
Do - Think about a run of at least three adverts in your chosen pubication.
Don’t – Just book one advert as you will dramatically limit the number of potential readers.
Do – seriously consider whether advertising is the most cost-effective solution to promote your business.
Don’t – advertise just because your competitors are. Think of a new approach that they may not be using.
Do – Think about the media that you are intending to use. Is there an opportunity for you to focus on a more specific journal targeted at your customers?
Don’t – Believe that if a journal has 80,000 readership, then 80,000 people will read your advert. It’s more likely to be 80.
Do – Think carefully about your design. It needs to be simple and to the point.
Don’t – Try to be too creative and flashy with your design. The message may be difficult to find.
Do – Spend most of your time coming up with a catchy headline.
Don’t – Include your company name in the headline. You will almost certainly increase the response rate if you leave the name out and sell the benefits.
Do – Always make sure that your advert is on the right-hand page.
Don’t – Ever place your advert on the left-hand page. The readers eyes are always drawn to the right-hand side of the page when they flick through a magazine or paper.
Do – Negotiate with the journal on pricing. Rate cards are often inflated.
Don’t – Pay the normal rate. Haggle with the salesperson. They are used to it.
Do – Consider using Apple Pie marketing for the content and booking of your advert.
Don’t – Forget to ask us to measure the results of your advertising or, any of your other marketing activities.
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15 Low Cost Marketing Ideas
Focus on customer needs
1. Step into your customers’ shoes. When writing content for leaflets, brochures, websites etc. everything you write should be designed to meet the needs, wishes and hopes of your customers. The main focus of all of your copywriting should be on the benefits to the customer.
2. Do some market research. When did you last research your competitors to see what they are up to? Do they have that unique selling point? Are their products cheaper or better quality than your own? Don’t guess, go and have a look, pretend you’re a shopper. They may have already been to look at your business.
Customer details are key
3. Use a guestbook. This is a great way to capture names, addresses and e-mails free of charge. You may feel uneasy about asking for customers’ details but, if they have recently made a purchase with you, they are obviously happy with your products and, are therefore usually happy to give you this valuable information. The guestbook allows you to send new product lists or information to customers who are interested, or have purchased from you in the past.
4. Keep an accurate and up-to-date database. A quality database is possibly the most important marketing tool you can have. It will tell you what customers are buying and at what price and it will tell you where they live. This means that you can target your chosen products to the right target markets saving you time and a great deal of money.
Cut costs and make money
5. Think carefully about your design and print. There are huge savings to be made when designing and printing marketing collateral. Make sure that you have shopped around for the best deal before you go ahead.
6. Use e-mail. It’s free, you can use it as little or as often as you like and it’s measurable. Why not send e-mails to your customers with general free information about an individual product rather than a hard- sell? Why not send an e-mail saying ‘Happy Birthday’? How powerful do you think that would be?
7. Look at your prices. If your customers are happy buying your products or services on a regular basis, then they have made a commitment to using you. Reviewing your pricing structure will not necessarily put them off, but could make a big difference to your bottom-line.
Fine-tune your marketing skills
8. Put some thought into your Marketing. You can make the best widget or provide the ultimate service, but if you not promoting them to the right market, at the right time, and at the right price, you will not succeed. Spend more time and effort on your marketing skills and stay ahead of the competition.
9. Sell the benefits. Focus your marketing material on the benefits that your products or services offer, rather than the features. Customers don’t want to read a long list of technical terms, they want to know what your product or service will do for them.
10. Review your home page. If your home page tells the reader all about you and what you do, change it. People will know what you do already because they will have searched for a particular item or product and you will have been in a list of similar businesses. Change your front page to promote the benefits of your business and start selling. Include the ‘about us’ somewhere on your site but not on the opening page. Remember, your front page is an advert for the benefits of your services or products, not an autobiography.
11. Follow-up regularly. Making your business stand out from the competition requires some effort and some great ideas. What will make you stand out from the rest? Following-up a sale with a phone call, letter or e-mail could make all the difference.
Some marketing specifics
12. Don’t advertise for the sake of it. If the results of your advertising can’t be measured, how can you be sure its working? There are better ways to generate business than an advert in a newspaper. If you are measuring the success of your advertising, what are you doing to make it work even better for you?
13. Think about branding. Branding isn’t just about a logo or name. A brand symbolises how people think about your business, which will help in their decision-making process.
14. Direct mail. Probably the best form of marketing but it can also be the most expensive if you get it wrong. Take great care when using direct mail as a marketing tool and make sure you plan the campaign carefully. You will benefit greatly if you do.
15. Write a newsworthy item. Getting free newspaper coverage is often very difficult to do, but there are some simple steps to follow to have a better chance of having your article published. Write an informative or newsworthy article and stay away from the hard-sell until the end of your piece.
